It would be better to spend an extra $100M in the next two years on animal welfare than on global health
Do any of these megaproject suggestions change your mind? Some of them could absorb amounts of funding potentially nearing or exceeding that $100M bar just by themselves, e.g. the advance market commitments for alt proteins idea (cf. the $925M carbon removal AMC Stripe led), or subsidizing alternatives to conventionally produced meat, or funding think tanks to do policy research at scale for which we (quote) “could spend £100m+ easily on this”, or funding “10+ very large RCTs/population-wide studies, especially in Asia” (many ideas in the list), or “Healthier Hens x1000” as one example of many in the list of “GiveDirectly for animals: reasonably cost-effective, massively scalable, very strong evidence-base, and almost guaranteed impact”, etc.
Not really, primarily because I don’t think the animal welfare world currently has the organizational competency to do any of them successfully at that scale, and not shoot itself in the foot while doing so, with the potential exception of the advance market commitments. I don’t think the existing groups have the organizational competency to handle the ~$200M they already receive well, and think the majority that money is already being spent in expectedly worse ways than giving to GiveWell top charities, even if the best animal stuff is incredibly cost-effective. I think that the movement could get there at some point. But if I imagine that much money going to any existing group to be spent in the next 2 years I think it would mostly be wasted.
I think many of these ideas seem feasible in the longrun, and are viable candidates for what to try, though I just generally think that farmed animal welfare is significantly less tractable than wild animal welfare or invertebrate welfare in the longrun, so would rather the funds went to scaling those fields instead of farmed animal welfare. Also, it is not obvious to me that lots of these ideas will beat out global health charities, though I think blue sky thinking is good.
Also just generally, most of those ideas are ones that don’t need to be implemented at scale? E.g. Healthier Hens doesn’t seem like it has been able to demonstrate that it is cost-effective to donors at a small scale. Why would scaling it up 1000x go better? It seems like if these ideas could absorb $100M, many could be tried now. The one that hasn’t been tried at that scale is advance market commitments, but I think the track record for alternative proteins doesn’t look great in general right now, and it isn’t obvious to me that R&D is the main barrier — see the margarine issues.
I also generally think lots of untried ideas look good on paper, but will probably not end up being effective if tried. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try them, but I think the bar has to be higher than “beats GiveWell in expectation from current evidence,” because the uncertainty is also a lot higher.
I think that if I were allocating this funding, there is a very low chance I’d choose to allocate any significant portion of it to farmed animal welfare, given that it isn’t nearly as neglected as other larger scale animal issues, and I don’t think there are good opportunities on the horizon at scales larger than OpenPhil’s animal welfare budget. If OpenPhil stopped funding animal welfare entirely, I’d likely want to see something like $50M going to farmed animal welfare, and almost entirely to corporate campaigns for shrimp as well as some cage-free clean up work, and maybe something in the near future on fish that no one has figured out yet.
If I had to guess at “the fastest way we could spend $100M on animals extremely effectively”, I’m think it will be something like putting some research into insecticide interventions and scaling them a lot, and definitely nothing implemented by existing farmed animal groups. If there was anything in the farmed animal space, it would be research, but again—I’m skeptical there are good opportunities beyond what OpenPhil can already fund.
I feel pretty disappointed by a lot of the above—I spent several years professionally working on corporate campaigns, and am as animal friendly as they come, but I’ve just heavily decreased my confidence in the actual scale of tractable opportunities to improve farmed animal welfare as a whole over the last few years — in large part because it seems like very little has worked despite lots of money being poured into the space.
E.g. Healthier Hens doesn’t seem like it has been able to demonstrate that it is cost-effective to donors at a small scale. Why would scaling it up 1000x go better?
FWIW, I thought some interventions they were exploring looked potentially pretty cost-effective, near the bar for marginal animal welfare work, and with a ratio of 7 years of disabling chicken pain prevented per year of waking human life saved by GiveWell recommendations. See here.
Ah, FWIW, the ideas that looked cost-effective were not related to keel bone fractures or based on feed fortification. Their feed trial ended up going badly for the hens.
Do any of these megaproject suggestions change your mind? Some of them could absorb amounts of funding potentially nearing or exceeding that $100M bar just by themselves, e.g. the advance market commitments for alt proteins idea (cf. the $925M carbon removal AMC Stripe led), or subsidizing alternatives to conventionally produced meat, or funding think tanks to do policy research at scale for which we (quote) “could spend £100m+ easily on this”, or funding “10+ very large RCTs/population-wide studies, especially in Asia” (many ideas in the list), or “Healthier Hens x1000” as one example of many in the list of “GiveDirectly for animals: reasonably cost-effective, massively scalable, very strong evidence-base, and almost guaranteed impact”, etc.
Not really, primarily because I don’t think the animal welfare world currently has the organizational competency to do any of them successfully at that scale, and not shoot itself in the foot while doing so, with the potential exception of the advance market commitments. I don’t think the existing groups have the organizational competency to handle the ~$200M they already receive well, and think the majority that money is already being spent in expectedly worse ways than giving to GiveWell top charities, even if the best animal stuff is incredibly cost-effective. I think that the movement could get there at some point. But if I imagine that much money going to any existing group to be spent in the next 2 years I think it would mostly be wasted.
I think many of these ideas seem feasible in the longrun, and are viable candidates for what to try, though I just generally think that farmed animal welfare is significantly less tractable than wild animal welfare or invertebrate welfare in the longrun, so would rather the funds went to scaling those fields instead of farmed animal welfare. Also, it is not obvious to me that lots of these ideas will beat out global health charities, though I think blue sky thinking is good.
Also just generally, most of those ideas are ones that don’t need to be implemented at scale? E.g. Healthier Hens doesn’t seem like it has been able to demonstrate that it is cost-effective to donors at a small scale. Why would scaling it up 1000x go better? It seems like if these ideas could absorb $100M, many could be tried now. The one that hasn’t been tried at that scale is advance market commitments, but I think the track record for alternative proteins doesn’t look great in general right now, and it isn’t obvious to me that R&D is the main barrier — see the margarine issues.
I also generally think lots of untried ideas look good on paper, but will probably not end up being effective if tried. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try them, but I think the bar has to be higher than “beats GiveWell in expectation from current evidence,” because the uncertainty is also a lot higher.
I think that if I were allocating this funding, there is a very low chance I’d choose to allocate any significant portion of it to farmed animal welfare, given that it isn’t nearly as neglected as other larger scale animal issues, and I don’t think there are good opportunities on the horizon at scales larger than OpenPhil’s animal welfare budget. If OpenPhil stopped funding animal welfare entirely, I’d likely want to see something like $50M going to farmed animal welfare, and almost entirely to corporate campaigns for shrimp as well as some cage-free clean up work, and maybe something in the near future on fish that no one has figured out yet.
If I had to guess at “the fastest way we could spend $100M on animals extremely effectively”, I’m think it will be something like putting some research into insecticide interventions and scaling them a lot, and definitely nothing implemented by existing farmed animal groups. If there was anything in the farmed animal space, it would be research, but again—I’m skeptical there are good opportunities beyond what OpenPhil can already fund.
I feel pretty disappointed by a lot of the above—I spent several years professionally working on corporate campaigns, and am as animal friendly as they come, but I’ve just heavily decreased my confidence in the actual scale of tractable opportunities to improve farmed animal welfare as a whole over the last few years — in large part because it seems like very little has worked despite lots of money being poured into the space.
FWIW, I thought some interventions they were exploring looked potentially pretty cost-effective, near the bar for marginal animal welfare work, and with a ratio of 7 years of disabling chicken pain prevented per year of waking human life saved by GiveWell recommendations. See here.
Healthier Hens has since shut down, though, and CE/AIM is looking to start a keel bone fracture charity with a different and much higher leverage strategy: certifier outreach. This probably can’t absorb nearly as much funding, though.
Nice—that’s good to know—I was under the impression that it was a good idea, but didn’t get much traction.
Ah, FWIW, the ideas that looked cost-effective were not related to keel bone fractures or based on feed fortification. Their feed trial ended up going badly for the hens.