A few comments here coming from a global health background.
“I think your cage-free example is a good one. There have been 50+ studies and large-scale data collection efforts on relative mortality in caged vs. cage-free housing systems and we still don’t have a clear answer on it.
If there had been 50 studies which compared mortality between two global health intervention and overall results was unequivocal, we would probably conclude that there was no major difference between the two, rather than say we didn’t have a clear answer and needed more research. I would imagine this situation is more nuanced but I would like to understand that nuance.
Mortality in hens seems pretty easy and likely inexpensive to measure? All the hens are in a barn in one place with a 3 month lifespan. Compared to mortality in humans this measurement situation seems very easy. I would imagine farmers will be collecting this data for profitability reasons as well. I’m naive here so might be missing something important.
“But I think when a cluster of evidence points to a high likelihood that something is robustly net positive—as I believe it does for cage-free (sorry I don’t have time to go into all the specifics here!) -- than we should move forward on it.”
The specifics are the crux for me. Before this post I thought it was super obvious that cage free was way better and it was just a magnitude-of-good question. After this post, I would appreciate a post on the forum actually laying out why there is a “high likelihood of cage free bring robustly net positive”. This is a post with specifics, so I think it’s important to refute specifics as well as outline general principles. You’re right there are some good comments on these specifics though, thanks especially @Vasco Grilo🔸.
I think it would be worth it if someone in your kind of position (if not you) did take the time to disagree on the specifics here.
Thanks Nick. I’m really glad to see that Cynthia Shuck of the Welfare Footprint Project has just commented around the specifics on cage-free, so I’ll defer to her on that. I’ll just add a few quick thoughts on your comments here.
“If there had been 50 studies which compared mortality between two global health intervention and overall results was unequivocal, we would probably conclude that there was no major difference between the two … Mortality in hens seems pretty easy and likely inexpensive to measure.”
To clarify: the results are not unequivocal. Different studies point to very different results. This is both due to study design, but also due to lots of variation in actual conditions (lab vs on-farm, small farms vs. big farms, experienced farmers vs. inexperienced, healthy pullets vs. unhealthy, etc).
Mortality on-farm is indeed easy and cheap to measure, but very few farmers will allow researchers on-farm to measure this or publicly share their own results. So a lot of these studies end up being in unrepresentative lab conditions or on individual farms that may not be representative.
That said, I think the on-farm data that Cynthia cites (the “database from a breeder for countries around the world”) is probably the best data we have. And it does indeed conclude there isn’t a major difference between the two systems.
“Before this post I thought it was super obvious that cage free was way better and it was just a magnitude-of-good question. After this post, I would appreciate a post on the forum actually laying out why there is a “high likelihood of cage free bring robustly net positive”.”
I don’t think this post should be a major update for you on whether cage-free is better than caged. It’s just not clear that mortality is that good a proxy for total welfare. E.g. everyone agrees that mortality is highest in free-range and pasture-based farming, but few conclude from that that these systems are worse for total welfare than intensive confinement.
Given how hard it is to measure animals’ actual subjective wellbeing, I think we should look to lots of different sources of evidence and reasoning, not just the few indicators we can objectively measure. My personal view that cage-free is better is probably based on something like: ~40% priors that pretty much all animals like to move around and have more space, ~30% preference studies showing that hens really value the things they can only access in cage-free (nesting boxes, perches, dustbathing, etc), ~10% my sense that pretty much all independent animal welfare scientists agree it’s better, ~10% my experience with rescued battery cage hens who have a very strong preference to stay out of cages, ~10% that mortality is pretty much the only indicator suggesting it could be worse and actually that data is very messy. (TBC: not an official CG view, and it’s possible I’d change those numbers a bunch on reflection. I share them just to suggest that resolving the mortality debate wouldn’t be transformative for my views.)
~30% preference studies showing that hens really value the things they can only access in cage-free (nesting boxes, perches, dustbathing, etc)
The above is an argument against barren battery cages, but not against all types of cages? All caged chickens in the European Union (EU) must have “a nest”, “litter such that pecking and scratching are possible”, and “appropriate perches of at least 15 cm”. Relatedly, I estimate moving hens from battery to furnished cages increases the welfare of chickens 70.6 % as much as moving hens from battery cages to cage-free aviaries.
“If there had been 50 studies which compared mortality between two global health intervention and overall results was unequivocal, we would probably conclude that there was no major difference between the two, rather than say we didn’t have a clear answer and needed more research.”—True, but the goal of cage-free isn’t reducing mortality, it’s reducing suffering. Mortality is one possible (but deeply confounded) indicator of suffering we can look at. If, when doing so, we conclude that there is no major difference between mortality in caged and cage-free systems, this has little to no bearing on whether cage-free reduces suffering.
First I wasn’t making any big claims about what’s most important, I’m just responding to Lewis’s comment there which confused me a bit, and suggesting that perhaps more research in that in particular might not be so useful.
On your comment I would though expect mortality to not be a direct, ideal measure of suffering but still be important as one of the few objective measures we have. If chickens are dying early that could indicate health issues which might also cause suffering Some of the same things that would kill a chicken would be heavily correlated with what makes them suffer I imagine?
I agree it’s not going to be the most important metric but it is objective at least.
A few comments here coming from a global health background.
“I think your cage-free example is a good one. There have been 50+ studies and large-scale data collection efforts on relative mortality in caged vs. cage-free housing systems and we still don’t have a clear answer on it.
If there had been 50 studies which compared mortality between two global health intervention and overall results was unequivocal, we would probably conclude that there was no major difference between the two, rather than say we didn’t have a clear answer and needed more research. I would imagine this situation is more nuanced but I would like to understand that nuance.
Mortality in hens seems pretty easy and likely inexpensive to measure? All the hens are in a barn in one place with a 3 month lifespan. Compared to mortality in humans this measurement situation seems very easy. I would imagine farmers will be collecting this data for profitability reasons as well. I’m naive here so might be missing something important.
“But I think when a cluster of evidence points to a high likelihood that something is robustly net positive—as I believe it does for cage-free (sorry I don’t have time to go into all the specifics here!) -- than we should move forward on it.”
The specifics are the crux for me. Before this post I thought it was super obvious that cage free was way better and it was just a magnitude-of-good question. After this post, I would appreciate a post on the forum actually laying out why there is a “high likelihood of cage free bring robustly net positive”. This is a post with specifics, so I think it’s important to refute specifics as well as outline general principles. You’re right there are some good comments on these specifics though, thanks especially @Vasco Grilo🔸.
I think it would be worth it if someone in your kind of position (if not you) did take the time to disagree on the specifics here.
Thanks Nick. I’m really glad to see that Cynthia Shuck of the Welfare Footprint Project has just commented around the specifics on cage-free, so I’ll defer to her on that. I’ll just add a few quick thoughts on your comments here.
“If there had been 50 studies which compared mortality between two global health intervention and overall results was unequivocal, we would probably conclude that there was no major difference between the two … Mortality in hens seems pretty easy and likely inexpensive to measure.”
To clarify: the results are not unequivocal. Different studies point to very different results. This is both due to study design, but also due to lots of variation in actual conditions (lab vs on-farm, small farms vs. big farms, experienced farmers vs. inexperienced, healthy pullets vs. unhealthy, etc).
Mortality on-farm is indeed easy and cheap to measure, but very few farmers will allow researchers on-farm to measure this or publicly share their own results. So a lot of these studies end up being in unrepresentative lab conditions or on individual farms that may not be representative.
That said, I think the on-farm data that Cynthia cites (the “database from a breeder for countries around the world”) is probably the best data we have. And it does indeed conclude there isn’t a major difference between the two systems.
“Before this post I thought it was super obvious that cage free was way better and it was just a magnitude-of-good question. After this post, I would appreciate a post on the forum actually laying out why there is a “high likelihood of cage free bring robustly net positive”.”
I don’t think this post should be a major update for you on whether cage-free is better than caged. It’s just not clear that mortality is that good a proxy for total welfare. E.g. everyone agrees that mortality is highest in free-range and pasture-based farming, but few conclude from that that these systems are worse for total welfare than intensive confinement.
Given how hard it is to measure animals’ actual subjective wellbeing, I think we should look to lots of different sources of evidence and reasoning, not just the few indicators we can objectively measure. My personal view that cage-free is better is probably based on something like: ~40% priors that pretty much all animals like to move around and have more space, ~30% preference studies showing that hens really value the things they can only access in cage-free (nesting boxes, perches, dustbathing, etc), ~10% my sense that pretty much all independent animal welfare scientists agree it’s better, ~10% my experience with rescued battery cage hens who have a very strong preference to stay out of cages, ~10% that mortality is pretty much the only indicator suggesting it could be worse and actually that data is very messy. (TBC: not an official CG view, and it’s possible I’d change those numbers a bunch on reflection. I share them just to suggest that resolving the mortality debate wouldn’t be transformative for my views.)
The above is an argument against barren battery cages, but not against all types of cages? All caged chickens in the European Union (EU) must have “a nest”, “litter such that pecking and scratching are possible”, and “appropriate perches of at least 15 cm”. Relatedly, I estimate moving hens from battery to furnished cages increases the welfare of chickens 70.6 % as much as moving hens from battery cages to cage-free aviaries.
“If there had been 50 studies which compared mortality between two global health intervention and overall results was unequivocal, we would probably conclude that there was no major difference between the two, rather than say we didn’t have a clear answer and needed more research.”—True, but the goal of cage-free isn’t reducing mortality, it’s reducing suffering. Mortality is one possible (but deeply confounded) indicator of suffering we can look at. If, when doing so, we conclude that there is no major difference between mortality in caged and cage-free systems, this has little to no bearing on whether cage-free reduces suffering.
First I wasn’t making any big claims about what’s most important, I’m just responding to Lewis’s comment there which confused me a bit, and suggesting that perhaps more research in that in particular might not be so useful.
On your comment I would though expect mortality to not be a direct, ideal measure of suffering but still be important as one of the few objective measures we have. If chickens are dying early that could indicate health issues which might also cause suffering Some of the same things that would kill a chicken would be heavily correlated with what makes them suffer I imagine?
I agree it’s not going to be the most important metric but it is objective at least.