At Animal Charity Evaluators, we find and promote the most effective ways to help animals. We use effective altruism principles to evaluate causes and research.
Animal Charity Evaluators
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Shrimp Welfare Project’s ranges are narrower for a few reasons. Because SWP works directly with farmers, they can track and estimate the number of shrimp on partner farms, reducing uncertainty about the animals affected. We also either used point estimates or narrow ranges for other parameters, such as the duration of impact (based on the lifespan of electrical stunners) and the duration of improved water quality. This means the main source of uncertainty in SWP’s CEA lies in the SADs estimates, whereas other charities’ CEAs combine multiple uncertain parameters that multiply into wider ranges.
Adding uncertainty ranges to SADs would be complex, since it would involve modeling variation in welfare ranges, sentience, pain severity, and/or moral weights between pain types. We’ve chosen not to include ranges so far because of time constraints and because the final estimates are already quite broad. If we do so in the future, we’d collaborate with the organizations that produced the original SADs estimates to make sure that uncertainty is modeled appropriately.
We don’t intentionally aim to represent a broad range of approaches among our Recommended Charities. While we take steps to invite a pluralistic pool of applicants—especially from underfunded areas—those considerations don’t factor into our selection for evaluation, our assessments, or our decision making. If we thought that funding a marginal charity would have less impact than supporting the others, we wouldn’t recommend them, even if their inclusion could add more diversity of approaches to our list of Recommended Charities.
The animal advocacy movement faces deep uncertainty about which interventions will prove most effective across different regions and contexts. Supporting a mix of institutional, corporate, policy, and movement-building approaches helps generate information value, mitigates risks, and strengthens the movement’s resilience and adaptability. So while plurality isn’t a recommendation criterion, we see it as a welcome byproduct of our data and evidence-driven process.
For more background, you can see ACE’s Position on Plurality. Please note that some parts are outdated and refer to elements, such as synergy scores, that we no longer use.
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.
While we have high confidence in the quality of their fellowship program (with fellows reporting high rates of improved leadership skills, increased confidence, and motivation to pursue roles to help animals), as well as in the thorough monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) that New Roots Institute conducts for their programs, we’re not sure about the extent to which fellows are significantly stronger advocates because of the fellowship, and whether they fill key talent bottlenecks. Overall, this leads us to not being convinced that their cost effectiveness is comparable to our recommended charities.
Because the outcomes and impacts of the fellowship will span decade-long careers of the fellows, it is possible that a future evaluation, when the fellows are further into their careers, will bring more insight into the cost-effectiveness of the program. Their evaluated charity review has more details and is available on our website.
Thanks for your comments and your interest in WAI’s work!
While we agree that an established field should focus on helping the most abundant animals, we also agree with WAI’s reasoning that while building the field, having a singular focus on optimizing for the number of animals would come at the expense of other strategic field-building goals.
We address this in WAI’s review, e.g., here: “Though not all grants funded have a very high scope, this aligns with WAI’s long-term strategy that balances maximizing immediate impact with building a diverse and engaged scientific field. This dual strategy is based on sound reasoning and endorsed by several experts we spoke to.”
ACE’s Evaluations program has a higher bar for uncertainty than Movement Grants, given that (i) the financial and non-financial benefits we direct toward recommended charities are greater, (ii) our target audiences have different expectations, and (iii) the downside risks are higher. These aversions include, but are not limited to, a lack of track record/wins/achievements, variance in possible outcomes, low probability of very high impact, and unknown probabilities.
We thought that LIC’s cost-effectiveness analysis was very promising, but it was ultimately based on hypothetical future scenarios. Unfortunately, we can’t go into further detail because it involves confidential information that, if public, could undermine their impact.
We also want to note that our understanding of a charity’s impact includes their theory of change. In LIC’s case, we considered their current track record of legal wins to be only moderate evidence that their theory of change would play out as intended, compared to SVB, where we were more convinced.
You can find more information about our selection process here. In 2024, GFI decided to postpone re-evaluation to a future year to allow their teams more time to focus on opportunities and challenges in the alternative proteins sector. They decided not to apply to be evaluated in 2025.
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.
Thank you for raising questions about ACE’s values and priorities. While we understand that the original claim made in the post has since been retracted, we still wanted to take the opportunity to respond—both for transparency and trust within the community, and to engage our team in clarifying our approach. These conversations help us reflect, improve, and ultimately strengthen our work to reduce animal suffering as effectively as possible.
ACE’s mission remains squarely focused on identifying, promoting and fundraising for impactful strategies and organizations to help non-human animals at scale. At the same time, we recognize that this work does not happen in a vacuum. While not the aim of our work, we affirm in our guiding principles the importance of treating all people—regardless of gender identity, race, sexuality, or political beliefs—with empathy and respect, just as we show non-human animals compassion. We strive to ensure that our practices support high-performing, mission-driven teams and reflect our commitment to fairness and respect—without prescribing any particular ideology.
People across the political spectrum care about animals, and our goal is to welcome that broad support. As we continue to support effective animal advocacy, we remain committed to broadening the movement, welcoming counterfactual supporters, and making decisions that maximize our collective impact.
Hi Vasco, we intend to publish a blog post on the consequences of farmed animal welfare interventions for wild animals, after the busy work of charity evaluations is wrapped up for the season. Thank you.
Hi Vasco, thank you for encouraging us to think about the downstream effects of farmed animal interventions on wild animals whose experiences are so neglected. As you noticed by the selection of charities we’ve made, we are not confident enough yet of the potential impact on the wellbeing of free ranging individuals like nematodes or even insects and larger wild animals. It is possible that in our theory of change analyses of charities this question will come up. But we expect that the uncertainty will mean we won’t give the answer much weight in this evaluation round. Thanks.
Note: this comment has been posted in response to both Vetted Causes’ first and second posts about Sinergia, as it addresses points raised in each.
ACE welcomes rigorous external evaluations of our work, as such feedback strengthens our ability to provide high-quality recommendations to donors and, ultimately, helps us maximize our impact for animals. To this end, we engage with external experts on a) our methodology for evaluations and grantmaking and b) on evaluations and grant reviews themselves. For instance, we interact with the EA and FAST forums and the Hive Slack channel, taking advantage of both solicited and unsolicited feedback. The strongest example of our commitment to engaging with feedback lies in GWWC’s evaluation of our programs.
The recent post by Vetted Causes is no exception. However, to balance the opportunity cost of engaging with this feedback with its potential to increase the quality of our work, we will first address the content of the concerns raised. We will then offer some suggestions for improvement of future reviews by Vetted Causes.
Regarding Vetted Causes’ specific claims about Sinergia, most of those claims have been addressed by Sinergia directly. We’d also like to note that while Vetted Causes refers to “ACE/Sinergia”, we’d prefer that we be treated as separate entities. Therefore, there are several notes we’d like to add that refer to ACE’s work specifically:
Issue 1
Alleged Commitment 1: Vetted Causes states, “in 2024, JBS stated that they still use ear notching due to ‘Difficulty in finding alternatives that ensure process traceability.’”
This report came out after ACE’s evaluation of Sinergia was completed, so it did not inform any part of our evaluation. Sinergia addressed the specifics of this claim in their response.
Issue 2
Alleged Commitment 2: Vetted Causes states, “Sinergia claims that in 2023, JBS published a commitment to not use gestation crates in all new projects, with a ‘Transition deadline’ of 2023.
As evidence for this claim, Sinergia provided a link to one of the JBS’s animal welfare pages. However, the gestation crate policy that the alleged commitment references was already listed on JBS’s website in 2020, and has been in effect since that point.”
In their second post about Sinergia, Vetted Causes also states, “Although Sinergia downplays this as a ‘minor mistake,’ it results in Sinergia receiving credit for helping millions of JBS’s pigs who were not impacted. This is not a ‘minor mistake.’ Further, Sinergia claims that this mistake has been corrected, but all that was fixed was changing the phrase ‘by 2023’ to ‘in 2023’ in Cell K10. The impact calculations were not fixed, and still incorrectly credit Sinergia for helping millions of JBS’s pigs who were not impacted.”
As Sinergia notes in their response, the number of sows reported for JBS includes those whose welfare may be impacted by the enforcement of the previous commitment.
In the process of double-checking our calculations with Sinergia, we noticed the same miscommunication that would have caused changes to our calculations. Although it would have been ideal to apply discounts at both the “number of animals affected” and the “SADs averted per dollar” levels, our SADs estimates were already conservative, and the magnitude of the change would not affect our decision to recommend Sinergia. Therefore, we are currently opting not to spend the time refreshing these calculations, as the changes could be quite involved.
Issue 3
Sinergia Claims That With $1 They can “Liberat[e]” 354 Piglets from “Brutal Confinement”
Vetted Causes states that, “ACE gave Sinergia credit for helping over 30 million female piglets through surgical castration commitments that Sinergia allegedly secured.”
Out of the two figures that ACE publishes for Sinergia’s pig welfare program (SADs averted per dollar and piglets affected per dollar), the former is correct because Ambitious Impact’s SADs calculations already take into consideration the “prevalence” of castration (which only occurs in male piglets). However, the latter indeed requires the same prevalence discount.
We have adjusted the estimates in the CEA spreadsheet for Sinergia’s pig welfare program. As a result, the impact estimate has been reduced from 354 piglets affected per dollar to 285 piglets affected per dollar. We have updated our review of Sinergia to reflect this change.
We would like to acknowledge that the difference in the cost-effectiveness of one of Sinergia’s programs (representing ~9% of expenditures) would not have had a determinative impact on our decision to recommend Sinergia. In fact, we believe we were conservative elsewhere in our estimates. For example, because Sinergia wasn’t able to provide estimates for the number of animals affected by three major commitments from food retailers and processors (Ceratti, Dia, and Habib’s in rows 7–9), we conservatively assumed that the number was zero. We remain proud to recommend Sinergia to donors and thank them for their excellent work.
Deletion of Column W
In their second post about Sinergia, Vetted Causes states, “Unfortunately, Sinergia/ACE deleted all of Column W right before Sinergia posted their response, and did not add any note stating that this column was deleted.”
During ACE’s evaluations of charities, we often redact information that charities provide us before publication on our website. In this particular instance, Sinergia had requested that we remove this column last year during their evaluation for confidentiality reasons related to their work, but we missed it in this particular case. This was not related to Vetted Causes’ review of Sinergia, but it was something that we noticed recently when double-checking our spreadsheet. We are not trying to hide any information; cell K10 states the change we made related to issue 2 above.
Improving Collaboration for Better Collective Results
We would like to take this opportunity to raise some questions about Vetted Causes’ approach to evaluations and the publication of their reviews, as well as provide our perspective on them.
Approach and intent: ACE aims to identify where additional donations are likely to reduce animal suffering as much as possible and drive counterfactual funding toward effective animal advocacy. Understanding Vetted Causes’ theory of change and mission would help clarify their aims and how to best collaborate moving forward. Are Vetted Causes focusing their evaluations solely on animal charities and/or ACE Recommended Charities? It’d be valuable to understand how they prioritize causes and organizations, and why.
Avoiding undue harm: Evaluation relies on nuances about program implementation (which, as noted by numerous commenters on this post, are notoriously challenging in animal advocacy, especially for those unfamiliar with the space). Furthermore, some types of work require confidentiality, so an evaluator would not get all the relevant context solely from looking at a charity’s website or external reviews. As such, we believe that it is important that Vetted Causes shares their reviews with charities before publishing them so that any factual errors can be corrected and knowledge gaps can be filled before making claims that can lead to reputational harm (e.g., Sinergia Makes False Claims About Helping Millions of Animals, Sinergia Continues to Make False Claims, etc.). This is not just ACE’s opinion—many others share our perspective. Furthermore, publicly responding point-by-point requires significantly more time than privately sharing context or clarifying misunderstandings directly. As such, our willingness to fully engage with future posts will depend on how Vetted Causes chooses to engage moving forward, to minimize further disruption to our work.
We believe that if Vetted Causes were to take a more collaborative approach, this would better serve our shared goal of reducing animal suffering as effectively as possible. We welcome continued discussion about how we can collectively improve our evaluation methods and maintain high standards of evidence while also acknowledging the complex realities of animal advocacy work.
Note: this comment has been posted in response to both Vetted Causes’ first and second posts about Sinergia, as it addresses points raised in each.
ACE welcomes rigorous external evaluations of our work, as such feedback strengthens our ability to provide high-quality recommendations to donors and, ultimately, helps us maximize our impact for animals. To this end, we engage with external experts on a) our methodology for evaluations and grantmaking and b) on evaluations and grant reviews themselves. For instance, we interact with the EA and FAST forums and the Hive Slack channel, taking advantage of both solicited and unsolicited feedback. The strongest example of our commitment to engaging with feedback lies in GWWC’s evaluation of our programs.
The recent post by Vetted Causes is no exception. However, to balance the opportunity cost of engaging with this feedback with its potential to increase the quality of our work, we will first address the content of the concerns raised. We will then offer some suggestions for improvement of future reviews by Vetted Causes.
Regarding Vetted Causes’ specific claims about Sinergia, most of those claims have been addressed by Sinergia directly. We’d also like to note that while Vetted Causes refers to “ACE/Sinergia”, we’d prefer that we be treated as separate entities. Therefore, there are several notes we’d like to add that refer to ACE’s work specifically:
Issue 1
Alleged Commitment 1: Vetted Causes states, “in 2024, JBS stated that they still use ear notching due to ‘Difficulty in finding alternatives that ensure process traceability.’”
This report came out after ACE’s evaluation of Sinergia was completed, so it did not inform any part of our evaluation. Sinergia addressed the specifics of this claim in their response.
Issue 2
Alleged Commitment 2: Vetted Causes states, “Sinergia claims that in 2023, JBS published a commitment to not use gestation crates in all new projects, with a ‘Transition deadline’ of 2023.
As evidence for this claim, Sinergia provided a link to one of the JBS’s animal welfare pages. However, the gestation crate policy that the alleged commitment references was already listed on JBS’s website in 2020, and has been in effect since that point.”
In their second post about Sinergia, Vetted Causes also states, “Although Sinergia downplays this as a ‘minor mistake,’ it results in Sinergia receiving credit for helping millions of JBS’s pigs who were not impacted. This is not a ‘minor mistake.’ Further, Sinergia claims that this mistake has been corrected, but all that was fixed was changing the phrase ‘by 2023’ to ‘in 2023’ in Cell K10. The impact calculations were not fixed, and still incorrectly credit Sinergia for helping millions of JBS’s pigs who were not impacted.”
As Sinergia notes in their response, the number of sows reported for JBS includes those whose welfare may be impacted by the enforcement of the previous commitment.
In the process of double-checking our calculations with Sinergia, we noticed the same miscommunication that would have caused changes to our calculations. Although it would have been ideal to apply discounts at both the “number of animals affected” and the “SADs averted per dollar” levels, our SADs estimates were already conservative, and the magnitude of the change would not affect our decision to recommend Sinergia. Therefore, we are currently opting not to spend the time refreshing these calculations, as the changes could be quite involved.
Issue 3
Sinergia Claims That With $1 They can “Liberat[e]” 354 Piglets from “Brutal Confinement”
Vetted Causes states that, “ACE gave Sinergia credit for helping over 30 million female piglets through surgical castration commitments that Sinergia allegedly secured.”
Out of the two figures that ACE publishes for Sinergia’s pig welfare program (SADs averted per dollar and piglets affected per dollar), the former is correct because Ambitious Impact’s SADs calculations already take into consideration the “prevalence” of castration (which only occurs in male piglets). However, the latter indeed requires the same prevalence discount.
We have adjusted the estimates in the CEA spreadsheet for Sinergia’s pig welfare program. As a result, the impact estimate has been reduced from 354 piglets affected per dollar to 285 piglets affected per dollar. We have updated our review of Sinergia to reflect this change.
We would like to acknowledge that the difference in the cost-effectiveness of one of Sinergia’s programs (representing ~9% of expenditures) would not have had a determinative impact on our decision to recommend Sinergia. In fact, we believe we were conservative elsewhere in our estimates. For example, because Sinergia wasn’t able to provide estimates for the number of animals affected by three major commitments from food retailers and processors (Ceratti, Dia, and Habib’s in rows 7–9), we conservatively assumed that the number was zero. We remain proud to recommend Sinergia to donors and thank them for their excellent work.
Deletion of Column W
In their second post about Sinergia, Vetted Causes states, “Unfortunately, Sinergia/ACE deleted all of Column W right before Sinergia posted their response, and did not add any note stating that this column was deleted.”
During ACE’s evaluations of charities, we often redact information that charities provide us before publication on our website. In this particular instance, Sinergia had requested that we remove this column last year during their evaluation for confidentiality reasons related to their work, but we missed it in this particular case. This was not related to Vetted Causes’ review of Sinergia, but it was something that we noticed recently when double-checking our spreadsheet. We are not trying to hide any information; cell K10 states the change we made related to issue 2 above.
Improving Collaboration for Better Collective Results
We would like to take this opportunity to raise some questions about Vetted Causes’ approach to evaluations and the publication of their reviews, as well as provide our perspective on them.
Approach and intent: ACE aims to identify where additional donations are likely to reduce animal suffering as much as possible and drive counterfactual funding toward effective animal advocacy. Understanding Vetted Causes’ theory of change and mission would help clarify their aims and how to best collaborate moving forward. Are Vetted Causes focusing their evaluations solely on animal charities and/or ACE Recommended Charities? It’d be valuable to understand how they prioritize causes and organizations, and why.
Avoiding undue harm: Evaluation relies on nuances about program implementation (which, as noted by numerous commenters on this post, are notoriously challenging in animal advocacy, especially for those unfamiliar with the space). Furthermore, some types of work require confidentiality, so an evaluator would not get all the relevant context solely from looking at a charity’s website or external reviews. As such, we believe that it is important that Vetted Causes shares their reviews with charities before publishing them so that any factual errors can be corrected and knowledge gaps can be filled before making claims that can lead to reputational harm (e.g., Sinergia Makes False Claims About Helping Millions of Animals, Sinergia Continues to Make False Claims, etc.). This is not just ACE’s opinion—many others share our perspective. Furthermore, publicly responding point-by-point requires significantly more time than privately sharing context or clarifying misunderstandings directly. As such, our willingness to fully engage with future posts will depend on how Vetted Causes chooses to engage moving forward, to minimize further disruption to our work.
We believe that if Vetted Causes were to take a more collaborative approach, this would better serve our shared goal of reducing animal suffering as effectively as possible. We welcome continued discussion about how we can collectively improve our evaluation methods and maintain high standards of evidence while also acknowledging the complex realities of animal advocacy work.
Thanks for this interesting perspective on how to balance different values within the work of evaluations, Devin. Considering you drafted this in 2022, we do want to note that a lot has changed at ACE in the last three years, not least of which has been a shift to new leadership. Since early 2022, ACE has transitioned to a new Executive Director, Programs Director, Charity Evaluations Manager, Movement Grants Manager, Operations Director, and Communications Director.
That said, ACE continues to assess organizational health as part of our charity evaluations—we assess whether any aspects of an organization’s governance or work environment pose a risk to its effectiveness or stability, thereby reducing its potential to help animals. Furthermore, bad actors and toxic practices could negatively affect the reputation of the broader animal advocacy movement, which is highly relevant for a growing social movement, as well as advocates’ wellbeing and their willingness to remain in the movement. You can read more about our reasoning here and about our current evaluation criteria here.
Thanks for your thought-provoking piece. We are continually refining our evaluation methods so we will consider your points further about the kinds of instrumental information we might want to gather and how we could do so in a pragmatic way.
Thanks, Elisabeth
Hi Vasco,
We agree that the majority of our analysis should focus on the future work that would be enabled by ACE’s recommendation. However, forward-looking CEAs are inherently more subjective because they rely on projected metrics rather than actual past results. For this reason, we tend to create backward-looking CEAs and then assess whether there are any reasons to expect diminishing returns in the next two years (the duration of an ACE recommendation). When GWWC shared with us anonymized comments from the experts they consulted on this topic, the comments acknowledged these limitations of forward-looking CEAs. However, we also think there are cases where forward-looking CEAs can be helpful despite these limitations, for example when charities are planning new programs that are not currently funded.
We do not recommend charities if there is a large enough gap between their expected marginal cost-effectiveness and that of our other charities, and we do use the framing that you suggest when considering adding the next marginal charity. However, since we are unable to always fully quantify the impact on animals of charities’ work, this is partially based on qualitative arguments and judgments, so our decisions may not always appear consistent with the results of our CEAs.
In general, we quantify uncertainty within our CEA assessments and we also qualitatively assess the risk of each program. Additionally, we screen out applicants whose work is “too” uncertain based on their track record and whether or not the charities themselves are uncertain about where future funding would go. Our Movement Grants program does not have these bars and is willing to fund newer and more exploratory programs. However, we do agree that it’d be worthwhile to be clearer about how we weigh different types of risk in our decision-making, and we’ll consider adding this to our communications.
Thanks, Vince
Thanks for the questions!
As noted in GWWC’s report, our reasoning for recommending ÇHKD is that we think they’re very plausibly competitive with our other recommended charities, such as Sinergia. Sinergia’s CEA rested on more high uncertainty assumptions than ÇHKD’s did, and their CEA covered a smaller percentage of their work. We think it’s reasonable to support both a charity that we are more certain is highly cost-effective (such as ÇHKD) as well as one that we are more uncertain is extremely cost-effective (such as Sinergia). We also think ÇHKD may have more potential to have increased cost-effectiveness in the future, based on their recent shift to focus attention on winning commitments from larger retailers.
There are a few things we’d like to note when it comes to SWP and ALI:
They were evaluated in different years (SWP in 2023 and ALI in 2024) with different methodologies for assessing cost-effectiveness. In 2023, we assessed cost-effectiveness using weighted factor models that consider achievement quantity and quality, whereas in 2024 we switched to back-of-the-envelope calculations of impact per dollar. Because of this, there was no direct comparison between the shrimp stunning programs at SWP and ALI. However, the next time we evaluate SWP we expect to create an impact per dollar estimate, in which case the estimates you’ve created (including differentiating slaughter via ice slurry vs asphyxiation) will come in handy.
ALI’s shrimp work only accounts for ~38% of their overall expenditure, and we had strong reasons to recommend them for their other work (policy outreach, the Aquatic Animal Alliance, etc.).
While ACE values plurality, we don’t take a “best-in-class” approach and wouldn’t rule out recommending multiple charities doing similar work.
Thanks, Vince
Hi Steven! That’s fantastic that you’re planning to donate to cost-effective animal charities. Thanks for thinking of ACE’s Recommended Charities and engaging with our work. When people ask us about the most impactful animal charities to donate to, we typically recommend donating to our Recommended Charity Fund. Our team of researchers decides how best to allocate this money among our Recommended Charities based on their current funding needs and the latest information on which activities this money would fund so that we can be confident that donations are being used as cost-effectively as possible. That said, here are some things we think are worth considering if you prefer to select charities yourself:
At ACE, we agree with the other commenters regarding the importance of wild animal welfare, given the sheer number of animals living in the wild, the likelihood that many of these animals suffer intensely, and the fact that the wild animal welfare field is currently so neglected. It’s great that you’re planning to look into this in more detail. If you haven’t seen them already, some helpful resources include this EA Forum post and a recent 80,000 Hours interview with Cameron Meyer Shorb (head of Wild Animal Initiative). ACE’s Why Wild Animals? page also cites some useful sources.
As for fishes, there is strong and growing evidence for their sentience and capacity for pain and pleasure. This briefing gives a helpful overview; you could also check out this EA Forum post or this recent interview with Doug Waley on the How I Learned to Love Shrimp podcast.
While there’s little current evidence for shrimp sentience, this is because there has been very little research in general rather than because people have found evidence against shrimp sentience. Shrimp Welfare Project has published an overview of the existing evidence, and this report by Rethink Priorities gives a great rundown of the potential welfare threats of shrimp farming. When you consider these threats, the huge numbers farmed, and the reasonable probability of shrimp sentience, it seems likely that current shrimp farming practices could be a major source of suffering.
Finally, while the kinds of work done by Faunalytics and New Roots Institute are less direct than some of our other charities, we think they’re likely to relieve a great deal of suffering by empowering other advocates and organizations to help many more animals than they otherwise would. Effective animal advocacy strategies to build a world where animals experience well-being has a relatively long time horizon. We expect that the work these organizations do speeds up the timeline significantly. The faster we can bring about a future where animals are protected, the more suffering is abated.
Hope that’s helpful and wherever you end up donating, thank you for thoughtfully trying to create a better world for animals!
- Max
Thank you, Vasco! Yes, that’s what I will be working toward next and assessing over time. I will be sure to share my findings :)
Holly
Please find more information on animal suffering below:
Farmed animal suffering
Trillions of farmed animals (including fishes) experience cruel treatment and brutal deaths on factory farms. Farmed animal advocacy presents one of the most significant opportunities to reduce animal suffering on a large scale.
Chickens
Chickens are among the most abundant farmed animals, outranked only by farmed fishes and certain invertebrates, with an estimated 75 billion killed annually. When given enough space and an appropriate environment, chickens will forage for food, form nests and roosts, preen their feathers, and socialize with their flock. In contrast, chickens on factory farms live their entire lives in cramped, barren battery cages or crowded together in a shed with thousands of others, with little to no room to turn around or stretch their wings.
Fishes
As detailed in our Farmed Fish Welfare Report, existing research on fish welfare is limited, and the research that has been done tends to focus more on maximizing benefits for farms rather than fishes. While we believe that more research into promising ways to help farmed fish species is needed, we still believe that fish welfare should be prioritized within the broader effective animal advocacy movement. This is due to the current neglectedness of farmed fish animal welfare, the viability of potential strategies to improve farmed fish welfare, and the immense scale of fish farming—roughly 124 billion fishes are farmed in the world annually, with an additional 1.56 trillion caught (mid point) in the wild each year, not including bycatch and discards.
Shrimps
It is estimated that up to 518 billion (upper bound) farmed crustaceans are killed for food each year worldwide, yet less than 1% of animal welfare funding helps them. Unlike other invertebrates, it is more widely accepted that decapod crustaceans (e.g., shrimp, crabs, lobsters) and cephalopod mollusks (e.g., octopus, squid) are sentient creatures. In 2022, the sentience of both animal groups was officially recognized in U.K. law—an extremely promising development for organizations working to improve welfare conditions in aquatic animal farms. However, there is still significant room for more funding in this highly neglected area.
Pigs
Pigs are highly sentient animals capable of experiencing complex emotions, yet they are subjected to severe welfare issues, including confinement, tail mutilations, and the inability to exhibit natural behaviors such as playing and socializing. With nearly 1.5 billion pigs slaughtered for meat each year worldwide, addressing their welfare is both impactful and viable, given the availability of practical strategies to alleviate suffering and the current neglect of this issue.
Cows
Life for farmed cows is far from the idyllic, green pastures we see on milk cartons and meat packaging. Many of these curious animals spend their days in a crowded, confined space, with little chance to roam or enjoy a quiet rest under shady trees. Like humans, mother cows must give birth to produce milk. On farms, they are artificially inseminated every single year to become pregnant. In most cases, mother cows are separated from their calves after giving birth, denying them the chance to bond and nurture their young—a deeply distressing experience for both mothers and calves. Male calves are deemed “no use” by the dairy industry, so they are sold off for veal or beef or sometimes killed immediately after birth. It is estimated that around 308 million cows are killed for food each year worldwide.
Wild animal suffering
The number of wild animals far exceeds the combined number of humans, farmed animals, companion animals, and animals in laboratories. Unfortunately, many wild animals—possibly the vast majority—live very short lives and experience painful deaths.
Most organizations that focus on wild animals seem to be concerned with biodiversity conservation rather than the welfare of individual wild animals. We know of only a handful of charities that primarily focus on improving wild animal welfare. Their total global funding is estimated to be less than $5 million per year—a tiny amount relative to other cause areas; e.g., $290 million goes toward farmed animal welfare each year. We hope to see more charities working to improve wild animal welfare in the near future.
The lack of evidence for the effectiveness of strategies to improve wild animal welfare is partially due to the complexity of natural ecosystems and the difficulty of measuring the impacts of interventions in the wild. Due to this limitation, we believe that: (i) research is a promising way to help wild animals because it can inform decisions about which strategies to pursue. We acknowledge that improving wild animal welfare involves a high level of uncertainty, but its potential positive impact is also high.
We think WAI’s grantmaking criteria—such as Neglectedness, Scope, and Impact—are explicitly designed to prioritize cost-effectiveness and maximize counterfactual impact for large numbers of animals. Beyond that, their distribution may be limited by the types of projects they receive suitable applications from.