Hi Aaron and Will. I estimated how much cage-free corporate campaigns for layers, and the Shrimp Welfare Project’s (SWP’s) Humane Slaughter Initiative (HSI) increase the welfare of their target beneficiaries for individual welfare per fully-healthy-animal-year proportional to “individual number of neurons”^”exponent”, and “exponent” from 0 to 2, which covers the best guesses that I consider reasonable. An exponent of 1 would correspond to the linear weighting preferred by Will. Below is a graph with the results. I calculate cage-free corporate campaigns increase the welfare of chickens more cost-effectively than HSI has increased the welfare of shrimps for an exponent of at least 0.94. For exponents of 0 and 2, cage-free corporate campaigns increase the welfare of chickens 6.71*10^-4 and 4.43 k times as cost-effectively as HSI has increased the welfare of shrimps.
The above only looks into effects on the target benefeciaries. However, I believe effects on soil animals resulting from changes in land use can easily dominate, as illustrated below. I assume that increasing agricultural land increases the welfare of soil animals, but I have very little idea about whether this is the case. So “Increase in the welfare” in the title of the graph should be read as “Absolute value of the change in the welfare”. The graph does not look into HSI (electrically stunning shrimp), but I also do not know whether this increases or decreases welfare in expectation due to potentially dominant effects on soil animals and microorganisms.
Discussed on twitter here.
Hi Aaron and Will. I estimated how much cage-free corporate campaigns for layers, and the Shrimp Welfare Project’s (SWP’s) Humane Slaughter Initiative (HSI) increase the welfare of their target beneficiaries for individual welfare per fully-healthy-animal-year proportional to “individual number of neurons”^”exponent”, and “exponent” from 0 to 2, which covers the best guesses that I consider reasonable. An exponent of 1 would correspond to the linear weighting preferred by Will. Below is a graph with the results. I calculate cage-free corporate campaigns increase the welfare of chickens more cost-effectively than HSI has increased the welfare of shrimps for an exponent of at least 0.94. For exponents of 0 and 2, cage-free corporate campaigns increase the welfare of chickens 6.71*10^-4 and 4.43 k times as cost-effectively as HSI has increased the welfare of shrimps.
The above only looks into effects on the target benefeciaries. However, I believe effects on soil animals resulting from changes in land use can easily dominate, as illustrated below. I assume that increasing agricultural land increases the welfare of soil animals, but I have very little idea about whether this is the case. So “Increase in the welfare” in the title of the graph should be read as “Absolute value of the change in the welfare”. The graph does not look into HSI (electrically stunning shrimp), but I also do not know whether this increases or decreases welfare in expectation due to potentially dominant effects on soil animals and microorganisms.