VettedCauses
Thank you for your comment, Allison.
In our evaluations, we prioritize outcomes over processes (assuming the processes are not unethical/illegal).
If you prefer to donate to organizations whose internal focus more closely aligns with your values, there are legal charities like Legal Impact for Chickens that focus exclusively on farmed animals. However, in terms of impact per dollar for farmed animals, we believe ALDF is the stronger choice.
Ultimately, it’s your decision as a donor how to weigh those factors, and we fully respect that.
Is their lack of transparency acceptable for a recommended charity?
Could you explain what you mean by a lack of transparency? From our perspective, ALDF’s transparency is well above average for a non-profit:
Cases are public: ALDF’s cases are well-documented and typically accompanied by easy to read summaries. Here are 199 of ALDF’s active and past cases.
ALDF releases numerous press releases describing their work: Here are over 500 press of ALDF’s press releases.
ALDF responds to donor inquiries: In our experience, ALDF has been more than willing to interact with donors.
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback, Vasco—it’s very much appreciated!
To clarify a few things:
We looked at a lot of charities, and in our opinion, these three were the best. That said, we don’t want readers to donate just because we called them “top” charities. Our goal is for people to read our reviews, understand what each charity is doing, and make their own decision based on their values and priorities.
It’s possible there are large differences in cost-effectiveness between our recommendations, but we don’t know if this is true, and we also don’t have a strong intuition as to what the ranking between the three would be. We also think that trying to rank the three in terms of cost-effectiveness would be somewhat misleading (like trying to say a banana is more cost-effective than a hammer). Each solves a different problem, and which one is “better” depends heavily on what the donor values.
We only estimated total cost-effectiveness for SWP. For FWI, we cited their historical cost-effectiveness calculation, but didn’t attempt to calculate their total cost-effectiveness. It’s entirely possible FWI is the most (or least) cost-effective of the three. For example, FWI is currently attempting to use satellites to monitor water quality. If this succeeds, this could make it much cheaper to monitor water quality on fish farms. However, it remains speculative whether or not this will happen.
Thanks again for engaging with our work—we really value this kind of discussion
Thank you for your comment, Vasco.
Our goal at Vetted Causes is to provide unbiased, accurate information to help readers make their own donation decisions. While we include cost-effectiveness estimates when feasible, we hope that donors consider other factors, such as:
How much the animals are helped: Stunning improves a shrimp’s experience for a few minutes, while improving water quality may help a fish every day of their life. Which matters more, and to what degree?
Species: How much (if at all) do we prioritize the suffering of larger or more cognitively complex animals—such as pigs, cows, or fish—over that of shrimp?
Helping future animals vs. current ones: Animals are suffering today, and it’s valuable to relieve that suffering. But should we focus on immediate change (which may just be a temporary fix), or prioritize long-term structural improvements?
We see cost-effectiveness analysis as a valuable tool, but in some cases, it requires so many uncertain assumptions that it risks obscuring more than it reveals. In certain cases, two reasonable models can differ so much that one suggests a massive impact, and the other little to no impact.
Our hope is that donors to use cost-effectiveness estimates as one input, rather than treating them as final scores. Our goal isn’t to say which charity is “best,” but to offer high-quality information that empowers donors to make informed decisions.
Vetted Causes’ 2025 Charity Recommendations
Thanks for your opinion.
Hi Yarrow, thank you for your comment.
We posted an article about Sinergia on February 20th indicating that their 354 piglets per dollar claim was wrong.
On March 21st, Sinergia commented acknowledging that their 354 piglets per dollar claim was wrong. Their comment also included the follow advertisement from their main donation page.
(image from Sinergia’s March 21st comment)
On April 9th (8 days before publication), we sent Sinergia a follow-up article expressing our concern that they were misleading donors with their advertisements.
On April 21st, Sinergia still had not stopped advertising the 354 piglets per dollar claim on their main donation page.
We then made a post stating Sinergia was committing fraud. Less than 24 hours after we made this post, Sinergia took down the 354 piglets per dollar claim.
Our priority is protecting donors, not upvotes.
Hi Michael,
Thank you for your comment.
Here is the relevant quote from Sinergia Post 1 (note: we didn’t add the bracketed part in this quote, Sinergia did): [1]
the latter [number of piglets affected] was stated incorrectly because they didn’t include the same discount. In other words: Sinergia never said the number of piglets was correct. It was an unintentional mistake of Sinergia’s team to leave all piglets, and not only male piglets on the spreadsheet that estimates the number of animals.
To further clarify:
ACE gave Sinergia credit for helping female piglets through surgical castration commitments — even though female piglets can’t be surgically castrated.
This issue is what led ACE to reduce Sinergia’s impact calculation from 354 piglets per dollar to 285.
As stated in the ACE Post:[2]
Vetted Causes states that, “ACE gave Sinergia credit for helping over 30 million female piglets through surgical castration commitments that Sinergia allegedly secured.”
[...]
the impact estimate has been reduced from 354 piglets affected per dollar to 285 piglets affected per dollar.
- ^
Sinergia Post 1 - See “Female Piglets Surgical Castration”
- ^
ACE Post - See “Issue 3”
Sinergia (ACE Top Charity) is Committing Fraud
1. JBS Ear Notching—Non-existent commitment, according to Vetted Causes
SINERGIA’S RESPONSE:
Sinergia already explained this is a valid commitment and Vetted Causes was mistaken to classify it as a non-existing commitment. We acknowledge and regret the deadline error in our spreadsheet shared with ACE.
There are two JBS ear notching commitments Sinergia has claimed existed:
Commitment 1: A commitment from JBS to stop ear notching by 2023.
Commitment 2: A commitment from JBS to stop ear notching by 2027.
It appears Sinergia and Vetted Causes agree that Commitment 1 never existed.
Note: Sinergia is currently being credited for Commitment 1 even though it never existed.
2. JBS Gestation Crates—Pre-existing Policy Presented As a New Commitment, according to Vetted Causes
SINERGIA’S RESPONSE:
[...]
2021 Report:
“New projects adopt the ‘cobre e solta’ system, allowing the sows, after being artificially inseminated, to be housed in group housing.”It appears Sinergia and Vetted Causes agree that this is a pre-existing policy being presented as a new commitment. The policy was already in place in 2021, yet Sinergia claimed it as a new 2023 win.
It’s also worth noting that many of the commitments Sinergia takes credit for don’t use definitive language like “100%” or “all farms.” For example, Alibem’s surgical castration commitment from Row 4 states Alibem will: “Maintain immunocastration instead of surgical castration – a procedure that was voluntarily eliminated from the Company’s protocols in 2010.” (translated from Portuguese to English).
Sinergia took 70% credit for this 2010 policy even though Sinergia didn’t exist until 2017. Further, there is no mention of “100%” or “all farms.”
Additionally, Sinergia’s own “Upper bound” for how many companies will actually follow through on their commitments is just 65% (see Cell B14), which shows many of these commitments are not reliable or permanent. JBS themselves has already walked back their ear notching commitment (see Page 42) .
3. Teeth Clipping—Practice Was Already Illegal Prior to Alleged Commitments, according to Vetted Causes
SINERGIA’S RESPONSE:
[...]
It is also important to clarify that Sinergia Animal did not, at any point, discourage ACE from considering IN 113 as a basis for assessing legal deadlines
It appears Sinergia and Vetted Causes agree teeth clipping was already illegal prior to the alleged commitments. Here is a quote from Sinergia’s Pigs in Focus report: “According to Normative Instruction 113/2020 (IN 113/2020), teeth clipping is prohibited”.
4. Aurora—Pre-Existing Policy Presented as a New Commitment, According to Vetted Causes
SINERGIA’S RESPONSE:
[…]
The claim that Aurora had a formal and exclusive immunocastration policy prior to 2023 does not align with the timeline of documented changes to the company’s website. On October 24, 2022, Aurora’s webpage underwent two rapid edits, according to Web Archive.
The first edit, at 16:44, introduced the phrase cited by Vetted Causes: “The Cooperative only chooses to adopt immunocastration, as it is a less invasive practice.” However, this version was online for just one minute (if Web Archive is right). At 16:45, the page was edited again, and that second version—which does not contain the language cited by Vetted Causes—is the one that remained publicly available and is the one we referenced in Sinergia’s 2022 Pigs in Focus report.
This is factually incorrect, the edits Sinergia describes did not occur. Every archive of the webpage from October 24, 2022 states: “The Cooperative only chooses to adopt immunocastration, as it is a less invasive practice.” (translated from Portuguese to English)
Here is a screen recording proving this to be the case.
5. BRF—Pre-Existing Policy Presented as a New Commitment, According to Vetted Causes
SINERGIA’S RESPONSE:
[…]
the current 5% is likely to increase in future years.
It appears Sinergia and Vetted Causes agree that Sinergia should not have taken credit for helping 100% of BRF’s sows in 2023 through this commitment when only ~5% were impacted.
6. Female Piglets Surgical Castration
SINERGIA’S RESPONSE: […] Sinergia never said the number of piglets was correct. It was an unintentional mistake of Sinergia’s team to leave all piglets
It appears Sinergia and Vetted Causes agree that:
ACE’s impact calculations were not correct
Sinergia and ACE didn’t account for female piglets not being surgically castrated
Sinergia was incorrectly credited for helping millions of female piglets through surgical castration commitments
Addressing Sinergia’s Response: Factual Corrections
@Jeff Kaufman 🔸, @Jason, @Toby Tremlett🔹,
Thank you for providing your opinions on this situation. Do you think it is reasonable for us to post our response on April 17? If so, we will notify Sinergia by email.
Thanks for the tip! We’ve implemented it.
Thanks for letting us know! Thankfully there was nothing that important that we covered in black bars.
How did you get the text of the emails? We didn’t think we posted it or share it with you, and you’ve included information we didn’t think we posted, including the name of a previously anonymous member of Vetted Causes.
Maybe I am misunderstanding, I took this email as saying that you were sending them the post before posting in order for them to review, and clarify anything that needs clarifying
The clarifications refers to the 3 clarifying questions we sent (referenced in Email 7):
We didn’t include this image in the list of emails before, but we’ve added it now. Sorry for the confusion!
The assumption is that since you are asking for their response, it’s in their court to tell you how long a response would take.
We think there is a misunderstanding. We never asked Sinergia for a response to our article. We simply told Sinergia we would send them our article before publication.
Hi Toby, thank you for your reply.
Here’s the request you’re looking for:
“after reviewing them, we will inform you of the time required to provide our response”.
We’re a bit confused, because the quoted statement — “after reviewing them, we will inform you of the time required to provide our response” — does not request anything from us. It simply says Sinergia will do something.
Hi Jason, thank you for your insights. We have decided not to post the article today to respect the charity’s wishes as reasonably as we can.
We did not mention this in our initial post since we did not yet have permission from the charity (Sinergia) to post the emails. Now that we have permission, the full context regarding the “request to check on deadlines” can be found here (we don’t want to strawman what Sinergia meant when they said this).
To me, that is enough to forbear from publishing tomorrow without getting into the lost e-mail issue at all.
Also, to clarify, Sinergia has indicated to us that no email was lost.
Hi Toby, thank you for your thoughtful reply.
We did not mention this in our initial post since we did not yet have permission from the charity (Sinergia) to post the emails. Now that we have permission, here is additional context.
Our article is about factual corrections to Sinergia’s response to our review of them. We believe our organization has been suffering reputational harm from factually incorrect claims in Sinergia’s response, and we’ve been trying to move quickly to correct the record.
Here’s a brief timeline:
On March 26, we emailed Sinergia informing them of our plan to publish an article responding to them.
On March 27, we scheduled a call with Carolina (Sinergia’s director) after she accepted our offer to do one.
On April 2, we informed Carolina we would need consent to record the call. In response Carolina canceled the call.
On April 3 (now knowing we wouldn’t be able to ask our clarifications on the call with Carolina), we sent three written clarification questions.
On April 4, we told Carolina about our plan to publish our response on April 10th, noting that we “want to post our response soon since people are likely wondering why we haven’t responded yet.”
Between April 4 and the morning of April 9, we received no replies from Sinergia to any of our emails. We then sent Sinergia the draft article for their review on the morning of April 9, reiterating the planned April 10 publication date.
It was only after receiving the article that Sinergia responded, stating
we do plan to share in the forum our disappointment that our request to check on deadlines was not accepted. We are likely not to respond to further requests if they are done in the same manner.
However, in our email history, no such request was ever made.
We’d also like to note:
We offered to show the article to Sinergia more than 24 hours prior to publication, but Sinergia never told us they wanted this.
Sinergia showed us their response to our review only 24 hours prior to publication, and their response was much longer than our upcoming article.
Vetted Causes is a small, volunteer-run organization. Sinergia is a multimillion-dollar organization with paid staff. If 24 hours was sufficient for our volunteers, we believed it would be fair for Sinergia as well.
That said, we have decided not to post the article today to respect Sinergia’s wishes as reasonably as we can. We are working with them to coordinate a reasonable timeline for publication.
Thanks again for your feedback — we really appreciate it as we continue improving our process.
The 3.3 billion shrimp per year estimate reflects the total projected impact if all planned stunners are deployed. As of April 2025, Shrimp Welfare Project has agreed to distribute 17 stunners, but less than 40% have actually been deployed so far (see Section “How it Works”).
It typically takes 6 to 8 months to distribute a stunner and have it operational once an agreement has been signed (see Citation 6). The remaining stunners should be operational shortly.
[1]
Conflict of Interest Disclosure (as of 5/15/2025): Vetted Causes is a volunteer-run charity evaluator that currently covers all costs out-of-pocket. That said, we may benefit from promoting charities we’ve given positive reviews to (i.e. Shrimp Welfare Project) and criticizing charities we’ve given negative reviews to (i.e. Animal Charity Evaluators).