Vasco Grilo🔸 comments on Welfare ranges per calorie consumption

[Vasco Grilo🔸]

Thanks for the comment, Chris!

Am I thinking about this correctly?

Yes.

And if so, is there a good resource for actual welfare values for farmed animals, rather than the theoretical ranges?

I have estimated the welfare per living time of chickens in various conditions in animal quality-adjusted life years (AQALYs) per chicken-year. 1 AQALY corresponds to 1 year of a practically maximally happy life. As a rough approximation, you can get the welfare in QALYs mutiplying the welfare in AQALYs by Rethink Priorities’ median welfare ranges^[1].

Animal	Broiler in a conventional scenario	Broiler in a reformed scenario	Hen in a conventional cage	Hen in a cage-free aviary
Welfare per living time (AQALY/​year)	-2.27	-0.161	-1.69	-0.333

I have some estimates for shrimp too (this post has estimates for chickens, but these rely on underestimates of the time they spend in pain, whereas the ones above try to correct for this).

1. ^

   This would only be 100 % correct if the welfare per time of the practically maximally happy life as a fraction of the welfare range is constant across species.

[Chris Said]

Thanks Vasco,

As a rough approximation, you can get the welfare an QALYs mutiplying the welfare in AQALYs by Rethink Priorities’ median welfare ranges

I might be misunderstanding something, but I’m not sure that’s right, even with your footnote. My understanding is that animal AQALYs per years and human QALYs per year both range from +1 at the top, to some species-specific negative value at the bottom. The same is true of the Rethink welfare units, but with a different scale. If so, shouldn’t the formula be as described below?

[Vasco Grilo🔸]

This would only be 100 % correct if the welfare per time of the practically maximally happy life as a fraction of the welfare range is constant across species.

In this case, “maximum welfare of a chicken-year”/​(“maximum welfare of a chicken-year”—“minimum welfare of a chicken-year”) = “maximum welfare of a human-year”/​(“maximum welfare of a human-year”—“minimum welfare of a human-year”) ⇔ “maximum welfare of a chicken-year” = (“maximum welfare of a chicken-year”—“minimum welfare of a chicken-year”)/​(“maximum welfare of a human-year”—“minimum welfare of a human-year”)*”maximum welfare of a human-year”. Since “welfare range of chickens” = (“maximum welfare of a chicken-year”—“minimum welfare of a chicken-year”)/​(“maximum welfare of a human-year”—“minimum welfare of a human-year”), “maximum welfare of a chicken-year” = “1 AQALY in chickens”, and “maximum welfare of a human-year” = “1 QALY”, “1 AQALY in chickens” = “welfare range of chickens”*”1 QALY”. So, given the condition I mentioned in the footnote, one can get the welfare in QALYs mutiplying the welfare in AQALYs by the welfare range.

[Chris Said]

Got it, thanks. For those following along at home, I misread your footnote and the graphs I made do not reflect the condition in the footnote.

[Chris Said]

If it makes things easier, you can copy the Google Slides source to tweak the illustration https://​​docs.google.com/​​presentation/​​d/​​1LuSpONztS9Tl0OSn-YeyWJG7B6UIYtff49p1WREPPgA/​​edit#slide=id.p