Legal Impact for Chickens’ strategic litigation has the potential to create transformative change for billions of animals. Their sustained legal pressure and growing academic recognition demonstrate competent execution of their strategic approach. However, consistent with their long-term, high-impact, low-probability strategy, transformative legal victories have not yet materialized. Therefore, while we recognize their significant potential, our recommendations favored organizations with more established track records of large-scale impact.
ACE ended up not recommending LIC. However, their estimate for the future cost-effectiveness of LIC of 343suffering-adjusted days (SADs) averted per $ is 34.3 (= 343⁄10) times their estimate for the future cost-effectiveness of Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira (SVB) of10 SADs averted per $, and they recommended SVB. Here are ACE’s thoughts on the comparison. My understanding is that risk aversion plays a role in ACE’s charity recommendations. Personally, I believe it makes sense to be risk neutral with respect to maximising welfare.
Most EA Forum readers probably agree that farmed animal welfare matters. But it’s not the only thing that matters. EA Forum author Vasco Grilo has also expressed concern for the welfare of wild animals, such as soil nematodes.
Thanks for mentioning this! Here is a post that expands on the above.
That said, of course there is a chance that companies treating animals better could result in fewer animals being used for food. For instance, the better animals are treated, the fewer will die before slaughter. Thus, treating animals better can result in producing the same amount of food with fewer animals. And on the margin, that could result in less land being used for animal agriculture, and more land being preserved as nature. Therefore, someone who views nature as primarily a cause of suffering may still worry about LIC’s approach of improving animal welfare.
You got it! I should clarify I am very uncertain about whether soil animals have positive or negative lives. More recently, I also become very uncertain about whether increasing agricultural land increases or decreases the number of soil animals. So I recommend research on the welfare of soil animals over pursuing whatever land use change interventions seem to increase their welfare.
LIC believes that our work mostly sidesteps this issue. We aren’t trying to shut down animal agriculture. We are only working to improve the welfare of animals used for food.
[...] That said, LIC is primarily focused on improving the welfare of small animals, especially chickens. These animals take less space to farm than larger animals, and thus improving the welfare of these small animals will have even less of an impact on the environment.
Alas, I think effects on soil animals still matter for interventions aiming to improve the conditions of chickens. I estimatethat cage-free and broiler welfare corporate campaigns change, I do not know if for the better or worse, the welfare of soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes 1.15 k and 18.0 k times as much as they increase the welfare of chickens. This is for my estimates that they change the living time of soil animals by 57.7 M and 331 M animal-years per $, and improve 10.8 and 3.00 chicken-years per $. They change the number of soil animals due to changing the amount of feed needed to produce 1 kg of eggs and chicken meat.
Thanks for the post, Alene!
People may be interested in Animal Charity Evaluators’s (ACE’s) review of LIC.
ACE ended up not recommending LIC. However, their estimate for the future cost-effectiveness of LIC of 343 suffering-adjusted days (SADs) averted per $ is 34.3 (= 343⁄10) times their estimate for the future cost-effectiveness of Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira (SVB) of 10 SADs averted per $, and they recommended SVB. Here are ACE’s thoughts on the comparison. My understanding is that risk aversion plays a role in ACE’s charity recommendations. Personally, I believe it makes sense to be risk neutral with respect to maximising welfare.
Thanks for mentioning this! Here is a post that expands on the above.
You got it! I should clarify I am very uncertain about whether soil animals have positive or negative lives. More recently, I also become very uncertain about whether increasing agricultural land increases or decreases the number of soil animals. So I recommend research on the welfare of soil animals over pursuing whatever land use change interventions seem to increase their welfare.
Alas, I think effects on soil animals still matter for interventions aiming to improve the conditions of chickens. I estimate that cage-free and broiler welfare corporate campaigns change, I do not know if for the better or worse, the welfare of soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes 1.15 k and 18.0 k times as much as they increase the welfare of chickens. This is for my estimates that they change the living time of soil animals by 57.7 M and 331 M animal-years per $, and improve 10.8 and 3.00 chicken-years per $. They change the number of soil animals due to changing the amount of feed needed to produce 1 kg of eggs and chicken meat.