Thank you so much for taking the time explain your reasons in great detail! I broadly agree with all the points you make.
Itās worth noting that CE does consider cross-cause effects in all the interventions we consider/ārecommend, including possible animal effects and WAS effects.
Could you elaborate on how CE does this? Among the 9 CEās health reports of 2023, I only found 3 instances of the word āanimalā. Here (emphasis mine):
A lower birth rate is also associated with fewer CO2 emissions and a gain of welfare points due to averted consumption of animal products.
There are reasons to believe that this situation may change in the near future, as poorer countries undergo the so-called ānutrition transitionā toward diets high in sugars, fat, and animal foods (Reardon et al., 2021).
Animal studies also suggest that improving oxygen access may reduce mortality rates.
Only the 1st of these refers to animal welfare, and has very little detail.
Marginal funding and reliability in effects: Hereās a good example of how a CEA can regress really quickly; GiveWell typically does CEAs on marginal donations made, whereas many other CEAsāincluding the one you use from Sauliusādo not consider marginal funding. I currently think that the marginal dollar to corporate campaigns is way less impactful when compared to the average dollar of spending pre-2018. This can affect a CEA quite drastically.
Hey, I am the author of the corporate campaigns cost-effectiveness estimate you mention. In case itās relevant, I recently spent 3 months doing another (much more detailed) cost-effectiveness estimate of chicken welfare reforms (corporate and legislative) that I unfortunately can not make public. According to this new estimate, in 2019-2020 chicken welfare reforms affected 65 years of chicken life per dollar spent. According to the same new estimate, the cost-effectiveness in 2016-2018 was about 2.5 times higher. So while itās true that lately campaigns were not as cost-effective as they were some years ago, I think that they are still very cost-effective. In fact, even more cost-effective than my linked report [which I used in my post] suggests because in that report I think I underestimated the cost-effectiveness. Also, because of the research of the Welfare Footprint Project, I now think that these reforms are more important to chickens than I thought previously (although I havenāt yet examined the broiler book in detail).
So cost-effectiveness used to be higher, but Sauliusā updated estimate of 65 years of chicken life per dollar is 4.33 (= 65ā15) times as high as the one I used in my BOTEC. If the 2019-2020 average cost-effectiveness is also about 4.33 times as high as the current marginal cost-effectiveness, my BOTEC will not be too off. I did not easily find estimates for the marginal cost-effectiveness. Kieran Greig (from RP) surveyed groups working on corporate campaigns globally, and told me roughly 1 year ago that:
These campaigns have some pretty significant room for more funding. Easily in the millions of dollars per year.[1]
Are there any quantitative analyses of the marginal cost-effectiveness?
The effects on animals vary quite a lot, depending on the intervention. Interventions that primarily affect mortality in Africa, for instance, end up looking like how you describe. But morbidity-focused interventions, mental health focused interventions, and family planning interventions are all significantly less affected by this consideration.
Great point! It crossed my mind, but I ended up not including it.
Strength of evidence discounting: CEAs are not all equal when they are based on very different strengths of evidence, and I think we weight this factor a lot heavier. Itās quite common for the impact of any given intervention to regress fairly heavily as more research/āwork is put into it.
I agree this tends to be the case, but I am not sure how much. For example, I have the impression RPās median welfare ranges are higher than what most people expected a priori. In general, it seems hard to know how much to adjust estimates, and I guess it would be better to invest more resources (at the margin) into decreasing our incertainty.
Hi Joey,
Thank you so much for taking the time explain your reasons in great detail! I broadly agree with all the points you make.
Could you elaborate on how CE does this? Among the 9 CEās health reports of 2023, I only found 3 instances of the word āanimalā. Here (emphasis mine):
Here (emphasis mine):
Here (emphasis mine):
Only the 1st of these refers to animal welfare, and has very little detail.
Saulius commented that (emphasis mine):
So cost-effectiveness used to be higher, but Sauliusā updated estimate of 65 years of chicken life per dollar is 4.33 (= 65ā15) times as high as the one I used in my BOTEC. If the 2019-2020 average cost-effectiveness is also about 4.33 times as high as the current marginal cost-effectiveness, my BOTEC will not be too off. I did not easily find estimates for the marginal cost-effectiveness. Kieran Greig (from RP) surveyed groups working on corporate campaigns globally, and told me roughly 1 year ago that:
Are there any quantitative analyses of the marginal cost-effectiveness?
Great point! It crossed my mind, but I ended up not including it.
I agree this tends to be the case, but I am not sure how much. For example, I have the impression RPās median welfare ranges are higher than what most people expected a priori. In general, it seems hard to know how much to adjust estimates, and I guess it would be better to invest more resources (at the margin) into decreasing our incertainty.
Further details are confidential:
- āI apologize that I canāt share too much specifically as I promised organizations that those results would be confidentialā.