Can you elaborate on what difference species makes for the wild bug, wild fish, etc reports? I could imagine that a spider has a pretty different welfare on average than an ant, for example, so it seems hard to know what kind of animal these particular scores represent when they cover big categories.
Also, it seems like some of the welfare considerations for factory farmed animals don’t account fully for regional laws, etc. (e.g. a country where debeaking is banned probably would have a different score for laying hens in battery cages than in ones where it isn’t). Do you think that the average life tends to be close enough to some minimum that these sorts of differences don’t end up mattering?
Also, as a small side note—you note in the broiler report that broilers are debeaked—that isn’t accurate generally, except for breeding stock, since broilers are killed at a pretty young age now, before pecking negatively impacts the flock.
When we looked at larger groups like fish or bugs we looked for species that were a) more studied and b) more populous. For example, for bugs this tended to be ants, bees, flies, and beetles. Overall though we tried to get a score that we felt would be consistent with “a random unknown bug is killed by an insecticide. What was the welfare score of that bug?”
We only set aside enough time to cover a certain number of animals, and we did not think looking at most regional differences was as important as covering more animals. We will be releasing a table with some specific welfare changes (e.g. animals raised without any physical alterations) which will shed a bit of light on some regional differences. That being said, I expect the broadest level conclusions (e.g. prioritizing fish) to hold across different locations.
Thanks. It indeed looks like that was taken from a report on the breeders.
I have a few questions -
Can you elaborate on what difference species makes for the wild bug, wild fish, etc reports? I could imagine that a spider has a pretty different welfare on average than an ant, for example, so it seems hard to know what kind of animal these particular scores represent when they cover big categories.
Also, it seems like some of the welfare considerations for factory farmed animals don’t account fully for regional laws, etc. (e.g. a country where debeaking is banned probably would have a different score for laying hens in battery cages than in ones where it isn’t). Do you think that the average life tends to be close enough to some minimum that these sorts of differences don’t end up mattering?
Also, as a small side note—you note in the broiler report that broilers are debeaked—that isn’t accurate generally, except for breeding stock, since broilers are killed at a pretty young age now, before pecking negatively impacts the flock.
When we looked at larger groups like fish or bugs we looked for species that were a) more studied and b) more populous. For example, for bugs this tended to be ants, bees, flies, and beetles. Overall though we tried to get a score that we felt would be consistent with “a random unknown bug is killed by an insecticide. What was the welfare score of that bug?”
We only set aside enough time to cover a certain number of animals, and we did not think looking at most regional differences was as important as covering more animals. We will be releasing a table with some specific welfare changes (e.g. animals raised without any physical alterations) which will shed a bit of light on some regional differences. That being said, I expect the broadest level conclusions (e.g. prioritizing fish) to hold across different locations.
Thanks. It indeed looks like that was taken from a report on the breeders.
Thanks!