VettedCauses
We posted a critique of Sinergia’s 354 piglets per dollar metric on February 21, 2025. Sinergia responded by admitting the metric was wrong[1], but wouldn’t stop advertising it.
On April 21, 2025, we posted that Sinergia is committing fraud (this was a legal opinion from an experienced attorney).
Less than 24 hours after the fraud post, Sinergia removed the 354 piglets per dollar metric from their main donation page, and replaced it with a new claim: 285 piglets per dollar.[2] However, this updated metric is still based on knowingly false information.
For example, the 285 figure relies on Sinergia being credited for securing a commitment from JBS to stop ear-notching pigs by 2023. But JBS never made that commitment—and both ACE and Sinergia have acknowledged this.[3] This issue alone leads to Sinergia being credited with helping over 10 million JBS piglets they did not help.[4]
We pointed this out months ago[5], and the EA community sided with ACE and Sinergia. At this point, even when metrics are acknowledged to be false, they remain in use[6] and are defended. There is little we can do about that.
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Sinergia Comment—Key Quote: “JBS clearly states in Brazilian Portuguese on its website: “100% da mossa abolida até 2027,” which translates to “100% of ear cropping will be abolished by 2027.” [...] Sinergia’s Brazilian team, which is native in Portuguese but not English, made a minor mistake in the spreadsheet shared with ACE. It stated “Committed to banning ear notching by 2023,””
ACE’s Spreadsheets for Sinergia, Recording from November 6, 2025 - Cell K10 Quote: “The second comment previously read “Committed to banning ear notching by 2023” but was updated in March 2025. Because of this miscommunication, 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 have not refreshed the calculations for the number of animals impacted by the commitment.”
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November 6, 2025 - Sinergia’s Main Donation Page. It has now been over half a year, and Sinergia is still using the 285 piglets per dollar metric that is based on knowingly false information.
ACE/Sinergia only used 1 row for each company, regardless of how many commitments they made.
This resulted in the wrong deadlines being used for numerous commitments. For example, for Alibem in row 4, 2031 is used as the transition deadline and 2045 as the legal deadline for all of the commitments, even though the commitments have different transition & legal deadlines.
Overall, this results in Sinergia being credited for helping millions of additional pigs who were not helped.
Re: Litigation: It sounds like your read of “much of our current efforts involve policy advocacy and litigation, which we keep confidential” was something akin to “we are actively engaged in one or more already-filed lawsuits,” which is not how it was intended. What we meant was that litigation as a general strategy is one of our current efforts (as opposed to some other strategy, for example), and that confidentiality is important to us in that strategy. At this stage, this practically means things like researching issues and causes of action, searching for plaintiffs, consulting with potential witnesses, and other tasks performed in preparation for litigation. With that said, in the interest of disambiguation, we will edit the original post for clarity and note how it has been edited.
Thank you for fixing it.
Re: Confidentiality: As for why confidentiality is important, this is because opposition could take more effective countermeasures to lower the effectiveness of our interventions if they knew exactly what we were doing or preparing to do.
We’ve openly stated that in many circumstances, confidentiality is appropriate or even necessary. If you’re preparing for a lawsuit, we don’t object to keeping specific legal strategies or related information confidential. Our concern has never been about the existence of confidentiality—it’s about how confidentiality was used rhetorically to deflect criticism, and to suggest more progress and impact than the facts supported.
You asked us not to mention that SPI’s work is confidential, claiming it “could raise suspicion from industry.” This reason doesn’t make sense. Simply knowing SPI has some form of confidential work does not provide any meaningful information; everyone does work that could be self-labeled as confidential. Industry does not care about a charity that filed zero lawsuits, litigated zero cases, and operated with $0 in expenditures in their most recent fiscal year.
Further, there is no way for any opposition to develop “more effective countermeasures” in reaction to simply knowing SPI has some form of work that’s been self-labeled as confidential.
Re: Pending cases: As others have noted in this thread, there are multiple reasonable interpretations of the phrase “pending cases.” We thought it understandable from the context of the post, but again, to be as clear as possible, we will edit the original post and note how it has been edited.
When you say: “Much of our current efforts involve […] litigation, which we keep confidential for operational reasons—sharing details publicly would compromise pending cases.”
there’s a good chance many people will reasonably interpret that to mean:
You’ve actually done litigation, and
You have legal cases that are currently pending.
Since neither of those things is true, the statement was materially misleading.
Invoking confidentiality here discouraged additional inquiry, and furthered the false impression that SPI was engaged in sensitive, ongoing litigation, despite no cases having been filed.
Re: Policy advocacy: The types of policy advocacy actions we engage in range from organizational outreach, public outreach, and legislator/regulator outreach. These are ongoing initiatives and not yet fully realized outcomes. We do not think that having the words “Reform Pesticide Use” on our website next to our other initiatives implies that we have already finished the initiative.
Above is an image from SPI’s website.
“We try to reform pesticide use” and “We do reform pesticide use” are two completely different claims—just like saying “We try to discover aliens” versus “We do discover aliens.”
You can’t honestly claim to reform pesticide use until pesticide use is actually changing as a result of your work.
Thanks for the comment, Hugh.
Yes, we think both of those wordings would have been acceptable. Ideally, though, the organization would also clarify what it’s actually doing to try to reform pesticide use—whether that’s creating content, conducting research, or something else.
Thank you for your comment Michael. You’ve contested one factual assertion we made, so we will address that.
“It is impossible to reform pesticide use with $0.”
This is obviously false. You can do political advocacy on a volunteer basis.
We’d appreciate if you could answer two questions:
If someone engages in “political advocacy on a volunteer basis,” does that mean they “reform pesticide use”?
If someone posts on Instagram once a month about altering pesticide laws, can they honestly tell people: “I reform pesticide use”?
Our answer to both questions is “no.” How about you?
SPI stated: “Much of our current efforts involve […] litigation, which we keep confidential for operational reasons—sharing details publicly would compromise pending cases.”[1]
We do not think SPI’s statement makes it clear that SPI has not litigated any cases, and only has “potential litigation in development and preparation.”[2]
Their response disclosed that they were running on volunteer labor with a shoestring budget.
Filing cases is often free for volunteer-run charities due to fee waivers.
Moreover, the reference to a desire for confidentiality strongly implies that the referenced cases were at the pre-filing stage of the litigation process. Civil actions are almost always a matter of public record, and the case-initiating documents
There is often a lot of information that you’d still want to keep confidential even if the lawsuit you’ve filed can be found with a docket number. Some of this confidentiality is even legally required.
In practice, it is also much less likely that people would find your cases if you don’t mention them to anyone (i.e. confidentiality).
False Claim: “SPI Uses ‘Confidentiality’ to Mislead the Public” SPI has never used confidentiality to mislead anyone.
SPI has done no litigation, yet SPI publicly stated: “Much of our current efforts involve policy advocacy and litigation, which we keep confidential.”
This is using confidentiality to mislead the public.
It is also notable that you now say you merely have “potential litigation in development,” which is materially different from litigation.
False Claim: “SPI Used ‘Confidentiality’ to Mislead Vetted Causes” SPI had genuine concerns about how confidentiality was discussed in VettedCauses’ draft.
You asked us not to mention that SPI’s work is confidential, claiming it “could raise suspicion from industry.” We accommodated your request. You then responded to our critique by raising confidentiality as a defense, without giving us the chance to update our review to note that you’d asked us to not mention confidentiality.
More importantly: Why would industry care about SPI’s work? You’ve filed zero lawsuits, litigated zero cases, and operated with $0 in expenditures in your most recent fiscal year.
Mischaracterization of “Pending Cases”: VettedCauses claims we “legally never had a ‘pending case.’” Our use of “pending cases” refers to potential litigation in development and preparation—which is a common colloquial usage of the phrase.
This is not a common colloquial usage of the phrase, and it is patently false legally. SPI has no pending cases, and never has.
False Claim: “It is impossible to reform pesticide use with $0” This demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of advocacy work in general. Public advocacy, policy research, coalition building, and strategy development can all be done on a volunteer basis at zero cost. We have engaged in advocacy and continue to do so as volunteers.
When you claim to “Reform pesticide use,” are you referring to things like posting on your Instagram?
How has pesticide use changed because of SPI?
False Claim: “SPI secures donations with inaccurate claims” We have been completely transparent with our donors about our stage of development, our accomplished tasks, our volunteer status, and our work. We have never made inaccurate claims to secure donations.
If this were true, it would’ve been known that SPI has filed zero lawsuits and litigated zero cases. Instead, SPI decided to claim that much of their work involves “litigation” and that they have “pending cases.”
We hope that in future reviews, VettedCauses will engage in follow-up dialogue when they have concerns about an organization’s statements.
We would have followed up, but based on your prior actions, we expected that even basic facts—like the fact that you’ve filed zero lawsuits and litigated zero cases—would be labeled “confidential,” and that we’d be accused of violating confidentiality if we included them.
Hi Eevee, thanks for the comment.
Also, is there really no information you can share about SPI’s work so far? This doesn’t match my impression of the work they were up to.
We searched for publicly available information about SPI’s work, and also reached out directly to SPI. We shared multiple drafts of the review with SPI and, between drafts, specifically asked for information about their work. However, SPI told us there wasn’t any work we could include in the review.
Shrimp Welfare Projects’ impact page (which says they have helped 3.3 billion shrimp per year;
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.
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.
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.”
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the impact estimate has been reduced from 354 piglets affected per dollar to 285 piglets affected per dollar.
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Sinergia Post 1 - See “Female Piglets Surgical Castration”
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ACE Post - See “Issue 3”
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:
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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:
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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:
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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:
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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
@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.
In our view, it is unacceptable to:
Admit a cost-effectiveness metric is based on materially false information.[1]
Intentionally raise money using that cost-effectiveness metric for over half a year.[2]
ACE and Sinergia have done exactly that, and are continuing to do so as of this writing.[2]
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Our values do not align with the values EA practices.
Sinergia March 21, 2025 Statement - Key Quote: “JBS clearly states in Brazilian Portuguese on its website: “100% da mossa abolida até 2027,” which translates to “100% of ear cropping will be abolished by 2027.” [...] Sinergia’s Brazilian team, which is native in Portuguese but not English, made a minor mistake in the spreadsheet shared with ACE. It stated “Committed to banning ear notching by 2023,””
ACE’s Spreadsheets for Sinergia, Recording from April 11 , 2025 - Cell K10 Quote: “The second comment previously read “Committed to banning ear notching by 2023” but was updated in March 2025. Because of this miscommunication, 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 have not refreshed the calculations for the number of animals impacted by the commitment.”
ACE’s Spreadsheets for Sinergia, Recording from November 6, 2025 - Cell K10 Quote: “The second comment previously read “Committed to banning ear notching by 2023” but was updated in March 2025. Because of this miscommunication, 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 have not refreshed the calculations for the number of animals impacted by the commitment.”
Note that this is only one of the pieces of knowingly false information being used by ACE, and it results in Sinergia being credited for helping over 10 million JBS piglets that they did not help.
November 7, 2025 - Sinergia’s Main Donation Page. It has now been over half a year, and Sinergia is still advertising the 285 piglets per dollar metric that is based on knowingly false information. Sinergia began advertising this metric on April 22, 2025.