Program Manager (Animal Welfare) at Ambitious Impact, and co-founder of Shrimp Welfare Project.
Aaron Boddyđ¸
Karma: 2,515
AIMâs new apÂproach to inÂcuÂbatÂing for the anÂiÂmals (apÂpliÂcaÂtions open!)
Why now might be the best time ever to start an anÂiÂmal charity
PlayÂbooks: TurnÂing AmÂbiÂtion into Action
TurnÂing Farms into Welfare Labs
Killing the wasps
Personally, I agree that pursuing research into soil animal welfare would likely be valuable. In general, Iâm extremely impressed by how much salience you have brought to this issue over this past year. My intuitions around how to think about these animals currently seem to generally align with Bob Fischerâs thoughts.
Even if soil animals become the most cost effective use of marginal dollars, I still think we need opportunities in the animal space with high absorbency. I donât think that this research could absorb millions in the way other animal orgs could. I still think we need more aquatic animal projects and that the animal movement needs to be thought about as an ecosystem, rather than a single org.
Have you heard of High Impact Engineers?
They recently relaunched and have their own Forumâthe Impact Forgeâwhich could be a good place to crosspost this question :)
Thanks for the kind words, Johannes!
Thatâs a great question, and youâre exactly right that our âincreasing confidenceâ is focused on answering questions like that.
One of the reasons we started the Humane Slaughter Initiative was to deploy stunners in different regions and contexts in order to remove barriers to uptake. The industry was telling us that humane slaughter wasnât possible in this or that context for one reason or another. We thought it made sense to try it out and understand the barriers in each context better.
Weâre still very much in this learning phase, and due to the variety of contexts weâve deployed stunners in, there isnât really a âgiven stunnerââeffectiveness varies significantly by context, equipment type, species, and operational practices. Additionally, weâre exploring New Solutions & Protocols, which further complicates providing a single answer.
What I can say is that:
Weâve seen successful implementation in multiple contexts, but with notable variation
Our monitoring suggests that proper training and ongoing support are critical factors
This variation is exactly why weâre prioritising better M&E systems and implementation support
Iâm hesitant to give a specific confidence curve right now because (1) it would likely be context-dependent rather than universal, and (2) improving this is an active focus area for us, so any number I give today could anchor peopleâs thinking even as we make progress.
Itâs a goal of ours to publish more research and data as we collect over the next 12 months. This will help donors and industry partners better understand effectiveness across different contexts. So, stay tuned for those developments in the coming year :)
Shrimp Welfare ProÂjectâs path to helping 100 billion shrimps per year
The imÂpacts of AI on anÂiÂmal advocacy
The FuÂture of AnÂiÂmal WelÂlbeÂing in 2050
To build on Michaelâs pointâAIM has been recommending âFish Welfare Initiative in a new countryâ since at least 2023. And another fish welfare charity in Europe can be thought of as taking Shrimp Welfare Projectâs model and applying it to fishes.
For (what became) Scale Welfare, my understanding is that many potential co-founder pairings fell apart due to the time needed in country (and I would also guess that the Program attracts people who want to start something new, and founding a similar project isnât as exciting as something brand new).
I also think a main reason AIM probably arenât recommending more is because of their modest prioritization value, and wanting to recommend charities that maximise impact over a range of worldviews. I imagine there probably could be a world where AIM exclusively incubated aquatic animal welfare projects, but they (understandably) have epistemic uncertainty about this.
(Thereâs also probably an argument that the ecosystem can only really accommodate 1-2 new projects per year, and not a flood of new projects all at once).
Then, one day, his wife, a social worker whoâd spent her career supporting refugees
Oh so youâre helping refugees?
The curÂrent marÂket price for anÂiÂmal welfare is zero
I think Heather Browning has an upcoming book project about Interspecies Welfare Comparisonsâhereâs an example of her published work on the topic
Welfare tech should be deÂvelÂoped by welfare people
AnÂiÂmal adÂvoÂcates are too reÂlucÂtant to sit at the inÂdusÂtryâs table
GIFTing breeder anÂiÂmals is a huÂmanÂiÂtarÂian intervention
Thanks Vasco :)
Precision WelfareâI appreciate your feedback here. Iâve had some positive responses from industry folks on this term, but Iâm not locked into the specific language around this just yetâdo you have any thoughts on other ways to frame this idea?
CertifiersâThatâs true. I guess the wider point I wanted to make here is that I think people are locked into a particular view of what certification looks likeâand I think there is a lot of scope for ways to reimagine certification that is more innovative and responsive.
False creditsâYep good point. I think requiring more monitoring on farms to verify that producers arenât falsifying credit generation would be a good thing. This is actually one of the reasons why weâre interested in Precision Aquaculture technology hereâhaving automated sensors that could detect both pre-stunning movement and effective stunning outcomes would create a more robust verification system than relying solely on periodic inspections or self-reporting.
Per shrimp /â per kgâProducers sometimes do âpartial harvestsâ throughout a crop (to recoup losses in case of a future disease outbreak, or to reduce biomass so that the remaining shrimps can grow larger without straining the pondâs carrying capacity, etc.). So my assumption (if we paid on a per shrimp basis) would be that it would incentivise farmers to stock higher at the beginningâthen do a partial harvest as soon as feasible to generate creditsâthen continue to grow the remaining shrimps until the full harvest.
Also, I think meeting the industry âwhere theyâre atâ is often usefulâif the industry already trades on a per kg basis, it makes it much easier to integrate credits into this system if we also use per kg.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment!
I guess what I mean by Welfare Labs in this context is something lower down on the Scientific Evidence Pyramid. There doesnât seem to be an agreed-upon version of the evidence pyramid (especially in animal welfare), but often it looks something like this:
1 - Systematic Reviews /â RCTs
2 - Primary Studies
3 - Observational Studies /â Case Reports
4 - Expert Opinion
Where the lower down the pyramid you go, the weaker the evidence is. I think that academic research and the process you outlined above falls in the category of Primary Studies. But I think that leaping from Opinion to Primary Study often misses out this useful middle step of Observational Studies. And I think farms are well placed to rapidly test hypotheses, before committing to a Primary Study with more rigour.
To answer your specific questions:
This very much depends on the farm, but I think it can be surprising how well equipped some farms are to collect data (I think many have more data than they know what to do with)
I think Universities arenât really incentivised to be quickâand Iâd imagine there are a bunch of ways you could structure work like this to be more streamlined than university research
Yeah I think this very much depends on the question youâre trying to answer, but I do think that by jumping straight to Primary Studies, you can miss important insights from Observational Studies