Vasco Grilo🔸 comments on The scale of animal agriculture

[Vasco Grilo🔸]

Thanks, Michael! For readers’ reference, I have also estimated the scale of the welfare of various animal populations^[1]:

Population	Intensity of the mean experience as a fraction of the median welfare range	Median welfare range	Intensity of the mean experience as a fraction of that of humans	Population size	Absolute value of ETHU as a fraction of that of humans
Farmed insects raised for food and feed	12.9 μ	2.00 m	3.87 m	8.65E10	0.0423
Farmed pigs	12.9 μ	0.515	1.00	9.86E8	0.124
Farmed crayfish, crabs and lobsters	12.9 μ	0.0305	0.0590	2.21E10	0.165
Humans	6.67 μ	1.00	1.00	7.91E9	1.00
Farmed shrimps and prawns	12.9 μ	0.0310	0.0599	1.39E11	1.05
Farmed fish	12.9 μ	0.0560	0.108	1.11E11	1.52
Farmed chickens	12.9 μ	0.332	0.642	2.14E10	1.74
Farmed animals analysed here	12.9 μ	0.0362	0.0700	1.36E12	4.64
Wild mammals	6.67 μ	0.515	0.515	6.75E11	43.9
Wild fish	6.67 μ	0.0560	0.0560	6.20E14	4.39 k
Wild terrestrial arthropods	6.67 μ	2.00 m	2.00 m	1.00E18	253 k
Wild marine arthropods	6.67 μ	2.00 m	2.00 m	1.00E20	25.3 M
Nematodes	6.67 μ	0.200 m	0.200 m	1.00E21	25.3 M
Wild animals analysed here	6.67 μ	0.365 m	0.365 m	1.10E21	50.8 M

I think it makes sense that Open Philanthropy prioritises chickens, fish and shrimp, as these are the 3 populations of farmed animals with the most suffering according to the above (1.74, 1.52 and 1.05 as much suffering as the happiness of all humans).

1. ^

   ETHU in the header of the last column means expected total hedonistic utility.

[MichaelStJules]

Ah, I definitely saw your post before, but it looks like I forgot about it. Thanks for the reminder.

(I started building the table here for another piece that uses it, and decided to spin off a separate piece with the table. That next post should be up in the next few days.)

I guess I’ll add humans for comparison, like you.