Program Manager (Animal Welfare) at Ambitious Impact, and co-founder of Shrimp Welfare Project.
Aaron Boddyđ¸
Karma: 2,513
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 :)
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?
I think Heather Browning has an upcoming book project about Interspecies Welfare Comparisonsâhereâs an example of her published work on the topic
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.
Hi Angelina, Austin, and Vasco :)
Apologies for all the confusion hereâin terms of the idea Iâm presenting in the post I think Vasco has done a really great job of summarising the idea above.
But I think the conversation above has helped me recognise a distinction that I donât think Iâd articulated particularly well in my post, which is that I see a difference between the application of credits for contexts like shrimp stunning, and the wider application of credits for animal welfare more broadly:
As a transition tool (as in shrimp stunning credits) - In the case of offsetting âbadâ practices, credits arenât intended to be very valuable, just a way to unblock logistical issues of transitioning a supply chain. Ultimately we want a situation where no-one is buying stunning credits because theyâve all directly transitioned their supply chains. (Again, I think Vasco actually does a great job of outlining my sense of how this would work without increasing shrimp production in his comment below).
As a tool to put a price on positive welfare (similar to Paul Christianoâs Demand Offsetting proposalâthanks @Austin! I hadnât read this article before) - In cases of trying to optimise for âgoodâ practices (where an improvement could lead to net positive lives for farmed animals), I wanted to paint a picture of a world where credits could be used to create lasting mechanisms that financially incentivise these welfare improvements.
Also, Iâve just realised that Iâve referenced @Vasco Grilođ¸âs comments a few times in this reply to help clarify my thinkingâjust wanted to say that I really appreciate your help in articulating the points I wanted to make!
Thanks Pete :)
Good question! The margin on the merch is pretty slim (around 20% per item, depending on what you get), we mainly use it as an awareness tool rather than a major fundraising channel.
So if you wanted to distribute t-shirts/âstickers to friends, then I agree it probably makes more sense to get a bunch made up yourself rather than buy them through our store.
Thanks Vasco :)
And good spot on the repeat! Iâve edited that out now
Thank you to Vetted Causes for this thoughtful review of Shrimp Welfare Projectâs work. I appreciate both the recognition of our cost-effectiveness and the constructive feedback on areas where we can improve.
I wanted to address a few points raised in the review:
Regarding monitoring stunner usage: Itâs worth noting that our current monitoring approach is consistent with standard practice across the animal welfare movement, such as cage-free campaigns. Like these initiatives, we rely on retailers and producers facing potential public backlash if they fail to honor commitments made to their stakeholders. While this approach has driven significant progress in animal welfare to date, weâre excited to go further. Weâre actually piloting the first version of a direct monitoring system in the next few months, with plans to iterate and improve as we learn.
On public information: This presents an interesting challenge for us. Our website must primarily serve industry stakeholders, whose communication expectations differ significantly from those in the EA community. Detailed numerical analyses and assumptions that would be appreciated by EA readers can sometimes be off-putting to corporate audiences. Weâre actively trying to navigate this balance between different audience needs while maintaining our effective engagement with industry partners.
That said, weâre committed to transparency: We have prioritised our MEL (Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning) initiatives by transitioning our MEL Officer from a part-time to full-time role. She is currently upskilling through the AIM Research Program and will finish at the end of June, meaning Shrimp Welfare Project will have much stronger MEL capacity from the second half of 2025.
Weâre grateful to be part of a community that values both impact and transparency, and we look forward to continuing to improve our work to help billions of shrimps.
I think the general point still stands that we want to advocate for more aquatic animal charities in the space.
Even if you think shrimps are the most cost-effective donation opportunity currently, a key point we wanted to make was that just because there is a Shrimp Welfare Project doesnât mean that there isnât space for more orgs.
There are a number of things SWP is not pursuing that could be really impactful, like working on shrimp paste, or brine shrimp, or fish fry.
Hey Vasco! Yeah I think Iâd advocate for more aquatic animal orgs at the margin (though I do think that funding in this space is increasing, so this trade-off might not be super clear cut anyway).
I liked Karolinaâs response to a similar question during the recent EA Animal Welfare Funds AMA and I usually give a similar response when people ask me about funding SWPâI think new orgs in this space often have a really high Expected Value, so depending on your risk-tolerance for funding I think they represent a really exciting opportunity.
I think SWP itself might be quite a good example of thisâwe came out of the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program with a seed grant of $100k. We then got a couple of grants from EAAWF ($45k) and ACE Movement Grants ($40k) as well as some smaller donors here and there. I think this got us to the point where we had figured out our main intervention, could secure some Open Philanthropy funding, and start to have impact.
I think itâs very possible SWP has only found a local maximum and that there are other opportunities out there that could help us get closer to the global maximum in this space. So if I was a donor trying to allocate ~$200k, I would put serious effort into looking for new orgs/âopportunities that I thought had a good chance of being more cost-effective than SWP (I think AIM have previously estimated that 20% of their charities could become field-leadingâIâm not sure if this is generalisable outside of AIM, but might be a useful baserate for considering opportunities).
Aaron from Shrimp Welfare Project here :)
I just wanted to add that FWI likely significantly accelerated SWPâs impact, probably by more than a year (maybe longer, itâs hard to know for sure).
For example, two of our big pivots towards what is now our primary intervention are a direct result of engaging with FWI:
In our first month, having a discussion with Haven who convinced us to take demand-side work seriously, rather than a purely supply-side approach as we had initially planned.
About six months in, when we were able to visit India (we were delayed due to COVID) and saw a shrimp harvest for the first time, which convinced us to think much more about pre-slaughter stunning (we could have visited India without the help of FWI, but being able to benefit from their living situation, and their on-the-ground expertise while we were there was hugely valuable).
Additionally, our first hire in India was through a recommendation by FWI, and has been instrumental to our farmer engagement program in India (likewise, I donât think he would have heard of SWP, or trusted us enough to leave his previous job for SWP, if not for the recommendation from FWI).
There are probably a bunch of other examples I could give, and similar to Tom I want to highlight my own biases here (SWP and FWI are very close friends, professionally and personally), but it seems hard to separate the impact of individual organisations from the wider ecosystem they operate in (at least for animal advocacy, I donât really have experience with other cause areas).
I would probably model it with https://ââwww.getguesstimate.com/ââ to give a range of uncertainty in the numbers. But yeah it wouldnât surprise me if the number was ~100%
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Something in the ballpark of a few hundred thousand dollars.
This is a slightly tricky question to answer as:
We donât have a specific funding gap for 2025
i.e. our overheads are covered, as well as the costs for our target number of stunners
However, it could be the case that we get unexpected momentum next year, and can give away more stunners than weâd planned for
Weâve run into this situation before, where we had an unexpected string of wins, and had to rapidly fundraise in order to pay for them
So effectively weâre trying to build up our war chest so that weâre able to deploy it when the opportunities present themselves
So all of that doesnât lead me to be confident in saying any specific number, but I think something in the ballpark of a few hundred thousand dollars seems reasonable
Thanks Angelina :)
In our Guesstimate model, the overhead costs to date are included in the bottom right (something like cell L15 if it were a spreadsheet) - between the total cost of the stunners, and the final overall cost titled SWP Total Expenses.So the cost-effectiveness we report on our website factors in this cost, but when weâre fundraising for marginal dollars, we often try to highlight the fact that marginal dollars are more cost-effective than the average dollar (which is unusual for an animal charity). But I agree that this is something of a judgement call, and the complex reality of marginal dollars is somewhere between those two numbers.
Hope thatâs helpful!
Good question Michael!
Our current estimate is that weâll buy 50 stunners, but Iâd take that number with a huge pinch of salt, as there are a number of factors that could influence how many stunners we ultimately need to buy (probably the most important one is that we want to focus on getting retailer commitments as our goal going forward (rather than a specific number of stunners), and itâs not super clear to us what the adoption curve will look like for retail commitments as we work with retailers outside of the UK).
We regularly evaluate our HSI program, and update our estimates if we think itâs appropriate. It could turn out we need fewer than 50, it could turn out that we need more. I guess a message I would like to emphasise is that we will use marginal funding in the most cost-effective way we can, whether or not the marginal funding goes towards a specific stunner, or towards more general corporate engagment work to reach commitments.
Answering on behalf of Shrimp Welfare Project :)
Our overheads (i.e. salaries, travel/âconferences), and program costs for our work in India are currently covered by grants until the end of 2026. This means that any additional funds are put towards our Humane Slaughter Initiative. (For context, our secured grants also cover the cost of some stunners, but HSI as a program is still able to absorb more funding.)
Each stunner costs us $55k and we ask the producers we work with to commit to stunning a minimum of 120 million shrimps per annum. This results in a cost-effectiveness of ~2,000+ shrimps helped /â $ /â year (i.e. our marginal impact of additional dollars is higher than our historical cost-effectiveness).
Although weâre very excited by how cost-effective it is in its own right, ultimately we want to catalyse industry-wide adoption by deploying stunners to the early adopters in order to build towards a tipping point that achieves critical mass. In other words, over the next few years we want to take the HSI program from Growth to Scale.
Weâve had some good indications recently that HSI does contribute to âlocking-inâ industry adoption, with Tesco and Sainsburyâs recently publishing welfare policies, building on similar wins in the past (such as M&S and Albert Heijn).
If anyone wants to reach out to me directly, you can contact me at aaron@shrimpwelfareproject.org. You can also donate to SWP through our website, or book a meeting with me via this link.
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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