I haven’t read the case, but under US antitrust law this case would have the same result. The reasoning would be that individual consumers WTP for animal welfare improvements is a benefit to them, but that benefit can be realized without anticompetitive harms of raised costs and reduced variety: namely, welfare-conscious consumers can pay more for chicken raised in better conditions, and welfare-indifferent consumers still have the option to buy cheaper chickens. The discussion of “welfare” as such would therefore be a bit misleading in the US context—it’s a shorthand for the maximal consumer surplus in competitive market conditions, not the type of felicific calculus EAs often do.
I haven’t read the case, but under US antitrust law this case would have the same result. The reasoning would be that individual consumers WTP for animal welfare improvements is a benefit to them, but that benefit can be realized without anticompetitive harms of raised costs and reduced variety: namely, welfare-conscious consumers can pay more for chicken raised in better conditions, and welfare-indifferent consumers still have the option to buy cheaper chickens. The discussion of “welfare” as such would therefore be a bit misleading in the US context—it’s a shorthand for the maximal consumer surplus in competitive market conditions, not the type of felicific calculus EAs often do.
True, this resonates with arguments presented in the In Re Processed Eggs… case: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca3/19-1088/19-1088-2020-06-22.html