Broilers being awake is as good as hurtful pain is bad. This means being awake with hurtful pain is neutral, thus accounting for positive experiences.
I agree there are a few issues with this. However (I have added what follows in a footnote):
This [the above] assumption affects the (signed) intensity of the mean experience of broilers, but not the improvement in their welfare when they go from a conventional to a reformed scenario, because the lifespan of broilers and value of them being alive is the same in both scenarios. As a consequence, the assumption does not impact the cost-effectiveness of corporate campaigns for broiler welfare.
If the WFP is capturing most of the painful experiences (weighted by intensity), and pleasurable experiences are negligible, then my assumption will not influence the cost-effectiveness of corporate campaigns. It can potentially change whether chickens have good or bad lives, and therefore impact whether consuming less animals is good/​bad, but I think this is pretty unclear anyway for other reasons (e.g. effects on wild animals).
I’d expect that Vasco overestimated the amount of pleasure they experience at least 2 times with this assumption. We get at least around 2x too much just from point 3, assuming the inactive hours aren’t very pleasurable.
If I assume all the time not classified by the WFP is neutral, I get the lives of broilers in a conventional and reformed scenario are, per unit time, 3.08 and 1.07 times as bad as human lives are good. So the lives of broilers in a conventional and reformed scenario would become worse by a factor of 1.19 (= 3.08/​2.58) and 1.86 (= 1.07/​0.574).
Thanks for commenting, Michael!
I agree there are a few issues with this. However (I have added what follows in a footnote):
If the WFP is capturing most of the painful experiences (weighted by intensity), and pleasurable experiences are negligible, then my assumption will not influence the cost-effectiveness of corporate campaigns. It can potentially change whether chickens have good or bad lives, and therefore impact whether consuming less animals is good/​bad, but I think this is pretty unclear anyway for other reasons (e.g. effects on wild animals).
If I assume all the time not classified by the WFP is neutral, I get the lives of broilers in a conventional and reformed scenario are, per unit time, 3.08 and 1.07 times as bad as human lives are good. So the lives of broilers in a conventional and reformed scenario would become worse by a factor of 1.19 (= 3.08/​2.58) and 1.86 (= 1.07/​0.574).