This post explains why we think wild animal welfare science could lead to the development of large-scale, highly cost-effective interventions to reduce wild animal suffering. To check our rationale against a historical, real-world example with data, we do a back-of-the-envelope estimation of the cost-effectiveness of vaccinating raccoons in Texas against rabies.
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Given that the program costs about $2.3 million dollars per year, that would mean the average cost of preventing one raccoon from dying of rabies (and suffering greatly along the way) would be $15.64 [0.0639 deaths from rabies averted per $ (= 1ā15.64)].
I like that you estimated the cost-effectiveness, but I do not think it illustrates āanimal welfare science could lead to the development of large-scale, highly cost-effective interventionsā. The Shrimp Welfare Projectās (SWPās) Humane Slaughter Initiative (HSI) averts the suffering involved in the air asphyxiation of 15 k shrimp per $, thus helping 235 k (= 15*10^3*15.64) times as many animals per $ as vaccinating raccoons. From Table 8.6 of Bob Fischerās book about comparing welfare across species, the welfare range of shrimp is 18.2 % (= 0.080/ā0.44) of that of pigs. Assuming the welfare range of raccoons equals that of pigs, which I guess overestimates the welfare range of raccoons, the welfare range of shrimp is 18.2 % that of raccoons. In this case, HSI would help 42.8 k (= 235*10^3*0.182) as many animals weighted by welfare range per $ as vaccinating raccoons.
There are also other interventions which look way more cost-effective than vaccinating raccoons accounting for effects on soil animals, even relying on my preferred welfare ranges proportional to the square root of the number of neurons. I estimate the Centre for Exploratory Altruism Researchās (CEARCHās) High Impact Philanthropy Fund (HIPF) has a cost-effectiveness accounting for target beneficiaries, and soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes of 70.6 kQALY/ā$ due to decreasing the living time of those animals by 5.07 billion animal-years per $. Even if preventing one raccoon from dying of rabies was as good as 10 QALY (10 fully happy human-years), the cost-effectiveness of vaccinating raccoons accounting only for target beneficiaries would be 0.639 QALY/ā$ (= 10ā15.64), 9.05*10^-6 (= 0.639/ā(70.6*10^3)) of my estimate for the cost-effectiveness of funding HIPF accounting for target beneficiaries and soil animals.
@Cameron Meyer Shorb šø, has Wild Animal Initiative considered doing or funding research on soil animals?
I like that you estimated the cost-effectiveness, but I do not think it illustrates āanimal welfare science could lead to the development of large-scale, highly cost-effective interventionsā
I was worried I didnāt articulate this claim clearly enough in the original post, so I appreciate you giving me the chance to clarify!
I did not mean to say āThis is highly cost-effective relative to other animal welfare interventionsā or āThis is about how cost-effective I expect wild animal welfare interventions to be.ā
I was aiming for something more like: āI donāt think itās crazy to think we could develop highly cost-effective wild animal welfare interventions, because hereās an example of a program that wasnāt even optimized for wild animal welfare but still seemed to be doing likely-good things fairly affordably.ā
Wild Animal Initiativeās whole deal is advancing research that we think will lead to interventions that are orders of magnitude more scalable and more cost-effective than whatās possible now. Some people seem to think thatās hopeless, in part because it seems so far beyond what we can imagine now. We disagree. The goal of this post wasnāt to provide definitive proof for every part of that argument, but rather to provide an empirical reality check. Given how early we are in the history of wild animal welfare science, I think itās a pretty encouraging sign that weāre already doing plausibly-helpful things that are within a few orders of magnitude of competitive cost-effectiveness.
[P.S. Still planning to reply to your point about soil animals, but ran out of time today.]
I was aiming for something more like: āI donāt think itās crazy to think we could develop highly cost-effective wild animal welfare interventions, because hereās an example of a program that wasnāt even optimized for wild animal welfare but still seemed to be doing likely-good things fairly affordably.ā
I understand that. However, advocating for interventions improving the lives of wild animals seems way less promising that for popular interventions which cost-effectively change land use, such as cost-effectively saving human lives (to decrease the number of soil animals if these have negative lives), or increasing forest area (to increase the number of soil animals if these have positive lives):
Funding HIPF is also not optimised for increasing the welfare of wild animals, and I estimate it increases the welfare of soil animals 110 k (= 1/ā(9.05*10^-6)) times as cost-effectively as vaccinating raccoons increases the welfare of these even if preventing one raccoon from dying of rabies was as good as 10 QALY.
The cost-effectiveness of advocating for an intervention is the cost-effectiveness of funding the intervention times the money moved to the intervention as a fraction of the spending advocating for it. Fundraising for saving human lives, and increasing forest area is much easier than for improving the conditions of soil animals. So advocating for the former will be more cost-effective than for the latter even if the cost-effectiveness of funding them directly was the same.
[P.S. Still planning to reply to your point about soil animals, but ran out of time today.]
Are you still planning to reply to my points about soil animals?
Thanks for the post, Cam!
I like that you estimated the cost-effectiveness, but I do not think it illustrates āanimal welfare science could lead to the development of large-scale, highly cost-effective interventionsā. The Shrimp Welfare Projectās (SWPās) Humane Slaughter Initiative (HSI) averts the suffering involved in the air asphyxiation of 15 k shrimp per $, thus helping 235 k (= 15*10^3*15.64) times as many animals per $ as vaccinating raccoons. From Table 8.6 of Bob Fischerās book about comparing welfare across species, the welfare range of shrimp is 18.2 % (= 0.080/ā0.44) of that of pigs. Assuming the welfare range of raccoons equals that of pigs, which I guess overestimates the welfare range of raccoons, the welfare range of shrimp is 18.2 % that of raccoons. In this case, HSI would help 42.8 k (= 235*10^3*0.182) as many animals weighted by welfare range per $ as vaccinating raccoons.
There are also other interventions which look way more cost-effective than vaccinating raccoons accounting for effects on soil animals, even relying on my preferred welfare ranges proportional to the square root of the number of neurons. I estimate the Centre for Exploratory Altruism Researchās (CEARCHās) High Impact Philanthropy Fund (HIPF) has a cost-effectiveness accounting for target beneficiaries, and soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes of 70.6 kQALY/ā$ due to decreasing the living time of those animals by 5.07 billion animal-years per $. Even if preventing one raccoon from dying of rabies was as good as 10 QALY (10 fully happy human-years), the cost-effectiveness of vaccinating raccoons accounting only for target beneficiaries would be 0.639 QALY/ā$ (= 10ā15.64), 9.05*10^-6 (= 0.639/ā(70.6*10^3)) of my estimate for the cost-effectiveness of funding HIPF accounting for target beneficiaries and soil animals.
@Cameron Meyer Shorb šø, has Wild Animal Initiative considered doing or funding research on soil animals?
I was worried I didnāt articulate this claim clearly enough in the original post, so I appreciate you giving me the chance to clarify!
I did not mean to say āThis is highly cost-effective relative to other animal welfare interventionsā or āThis is about how cost-effective I expect wild animal welfare interventions to be.ā
I was aiming for something more like: āI donāt think itās crazy to think we could develop highly cost-effective wild animal welfare interventions, because hereās an example of a program that wasnāt even optimized for wild animal welfare but still seemed to be doing likely-good things fairly affordably.ā
Wild Animal Initiativeās whole deal is advancing research that we think will lead to interventions that are orders of magnitude more scalable and more cost-effective than whatās possible now. Some people seem to think thatās hopeless, in part because it seems so far beyond what we can imagine now. We disagree. The goal of this post wasnāt to provide definitive proof for every part of that argument, but rather to provide an empirical reality check. Given how early we are in the history of wild animal welfare science, I think itās a pretty encouraging sign that weāre already doing plausibly-helpful things that are within a few orders of magnitude of competitive cost-effectiveness.
[P.S. Still planning to reply to your point about soil animals, but ran out of time today.]
Thanks, Cam.
I understand that. However, advocating for interventions improving the lives of wild animals seems way less promising that for popular interventions which cost-effectively change land use, such as cost-effectively saving human lives (to decrease the number of soil animals if these have negative lives), or increasing forest area (to increase the number of soil animals if these have positive lives):
Funding HIPF is also not optimised for increasing the welfare of wild animals, and I estimate it increases the welfare of soil animals 110 k (= 1/ā(9.05*10^-6)) times as cost-effectively as vaccinating raccoons increases the welfare of these even if preventing one raccoon from dying of rabies was as good as 10 QALY.
The cost-effectiveness of advocating for an intervention is the cost-effectiveness of funding the intervention times the money moved to the intervention as a fraction of the spending advocating for it. Fundraising for saving human lives, and increasing forest area is much easier than for improving the conditions of soil animals. So advocating for the former will be more cost-effective than for the latter even if the cost-effectiveness of funding them directly was the same.
Are you still planning to reply to my points about soil animals?
Do you have any thoughts, @mal_grahamšø?