I think wild animal welfare interventions would have to target aquatic or invertebrate animals in order to be as cost-effective as the best invertebrate welfare interventions.
I was just looking into Wild Animal Initiativeâs 2024 report, and it includes a cost-effectiveness analysis of âA government program to vaccinate raccoons against rabiesâ (pp. 28 to 31). They estimated the program prevented 0.0641 deaths/â$ (= 1â15.6). Wild raccoons live for about 5 years. If each deaths from rabies prevented resulted in 2.5 additional raccoon-years (= 5â2), the program created 0.160 raccoon-years/â$ (= 0.0641*2.5). Assuming 0.258 QALYs/âraccoon-year (= 0.5*0.515), which is 50 % of Rethink Prioritiesâ (RPâs) median welfare range of pigs, the cost-effectiveness would be 0.0413 QALY/â$ (= 0.160*0.258), which is 0.00646 % (= 0.0413/â639) of my estimate for the past cost-effectiveness of the Shrimp Welfare Project (SWP). I guess advocating for the government to spend money on such a vaccination program could be 10 times as cost-effective as funding the program itself[1], which would be 0.0646 % (= 6.46*10^-5*10) as cost-effective as SWP has been. @mal_grahamđ¸, you may be interested in this quick analysis.
I have ignored above the indirect effects of the vaccination program. I think including would play in favour of SWP. This mainly advocates for electrically stunning shrimp before slaughter via the Humane Slaughter Initiative (HSI), which has minimal effects on non-target animals, whereas increasing raccoon-years will tend to decrease the population of the animals they eat. I do not know whether this is good or bad, but I think it may well be the driver of the overall effect.
The Centre for Exploratory Altruism Research (CEARCH) estimated donating 1 $ to Giving What We Can results in an increase of 13 $ in donations to organisations as cost-effective as GiveWellâs top charities.
I was just looking into Wild Animal Initiativeâs 2024 report, and it includes a cost-effectiveness analysis of âA government program to vaccinate raccoons against rabiesâ (pp. 28 to 31). They estimated the program prevented 0.0641 deaths/â$ (= 1â15.6). Wild raccoons live for about 5 years. If each deaths from rabies prevented resulted in 2.5 additional raccoon-years (= 5â2), the program created 0.160 raccoon-years/â$ (= 0.0641*2.5). Assuming 0.258 QALYs/âraccoon-year (= 0.5*0.515), which is 50 % of Rethink Prioritiesâ (RPâs) median welfare range of pigs, the cost-effectiveness would be 0.0413 QALY/â$ (= 0.160*0.258), which is 0.00646 % (= 0.0413/â639) of my estimate for the past cost-effectiveness of the Shrimp Welfare Project (SWP). I guess advocating for the government to spend money on such a vaccination program could be 10 times as cost-effective as funding the program itself[1], which would be 0.0646 % (= 6.46*10^-5*10) as cost-effective as SWP has been. @mal_grahamđ¸, you may be interested in this quick analysis.
I have ignored above the indirect effects of the vaccination program. I think including would play in favour of SWP. This mainly advocates for electrically stunning shrimp before slaughter via the Humane Slaughter Initiative (HSI), which has minimal effects on non-target animals, whereas increasing raccoon-years will tend to decrease the population of the animals they eat. I do not know whether this is good or bad, but I think it may well be the driver of the overall effect.
The Centre for Exploratory Altruism Research (CEARCH) estimated donating 1 $ to Giving What We Can results in an increase of 13 $ in donations to organisations as cost-effective as GiveWellâs top charities.