Thanks, Vasco! We appreciate the feedback. For a complete view of each charity’s spending and cost-effectiveness, we encourage looking into their respective reviews, particularly the Cost-Effectiveness and Financials and Future Plans spreadsheets.
It’s correct that we maintained a 45% weight for the six academic estimates of disutility across different pain levels, and that these estimates are orders of magnitude lower than those reported in the EA and animal advocacy community surveys (which we weighted slightly higher at 55%). As you know, we’re testing alternative approaches intended to address these types of methodological concerns, including the issue that applying human trade-offs to animals may not be entirely accurate because it doesn’t fully account for their smaller welfare ranges. However, for this year, we chose to maintain the same moral weights framework to avoid large and potentially unwarranted shifts in our methods and values from one year to the next.
We also briefly looked at how these kinds of adjustments might affect our decisions. While they tend to shift prioritization toward animal groups that experience more intense forms of suffering (e.g., pigs and salmon over layer hens), we don’t think they would have changed our recommendation decisions this year. This is partly because we don’t rely solely on SADs averted per dollar when interpreting our CEAs, but also consider metrics like animals helped per dollar. We remain cautious about how precisely SADs reflect actual welfare differences, especially since results can vary substantially with small methodological changes or alternative pain classifications.
This is partly because we don’t rely solely on SADs averted per dollar when interpreting our CEAs, but also consider metrics like animals helped per dollar.
Could you elaborate on why you use the number of animals helped per $? In the context of interventions targeting humans, that is analogous to using people helped per $ in addition to QALYs per $. I wonder whether you could change the estimates for SADs such that they account for the reasons which make you independently value the number of animals helped. Using animals helped per $ favours interventions targeting smaller animals with a lower capacity for welfare, so you may want to use a higher welfare range for these.
Ideally, we would be fully reliant on SADs, which take into account the species’ capacity to suffer as well as the intensity and duration of their suffering. However, SADs are still a new method with some speculative inputs and ongoing updates. To account for this methodological uncertainty, our CEAs show results in both SADs averted per dollar and animals helped per dollar. In our decision-making, we look at both of these metrics and more, and interpret them alongside the broader context of the intervention.
Thanks, Vasco! We appreciate the feedback. For a complete view of each charity’s spending and cost-effectiveness, we encourage looking into their respective reviews, particularly the Cost-Effectiveness and Financials and Future Plans spreadsheets.
It’s correct that we maintained a 45% weight for the six academic estimates of disutility across different pain levels, and that these estimates are orders of magnitude lower than those reported in the EA and animal advocacy community surveys (which we weighted slightly higher at 55%). As you know, we’re testing alternative approaches intended to address these types of methodological concerns, including the issue that applying human trade-offs to animals may not be entirely accurate because it doesn’t fully account for their smaller welfare ranges. However, for this year, we chose to maintain the same moral weights framework to avoid large and potentially unwarranted shifts in our methods and values from one year to the next.
We also briefly looked at how these kinds of adjustments might affect our decisions. While they tend to shift prioritization toward animal groups that experience more intense forms of suffering (e.g., pigs and salmon over layer hens), we don’t think they would have changed our recommendation decisions this year. This is partly because we don’t rely solely on SADs averted per dollar when interpreting our CEAs, but also consider metrics like animals helped per dollar. We remain cautious about how precisely SADs reflect actual welfare differences, especially since results can vary substantially with small methodological changes or alternative pain classifications.
Thanks for clarifying!
Could you elaborate on why you use the number of animals helped per $? In the context of interventions targeting humans, that is analogous to using people helped per $ in addition to QALYs per $. I wonder whether you could change the estimates for SADs such that they account for the reasons which make you independently value the number of animals helped. Using animals helped per $ favours interventions targeting smaller animals with a lower capacity for welfare, so you may want to use a higher welfare range for these.
Ideally, we would be fully reliant on SADs, which take into account the species’ capacity to suffer as well as the intensity and duration of their suffering. However, SADs are still a new method with some speculative inputs and ongoing updates. To account for this methodological uncertainty, our CEAs show results in both SADs averted per dollar and animals helped per dollar. In our decision-making, we look at both of these metrics and more, and interpret them alongside the broader context of the intervention.