EA - Corporate campaigns for chicken welfare are 10,000 times as effective as GiveWell's Maximum Impact Fund? by Vasco Grilo

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Corporate campaigns for chicken welfare are 10,000 times as effective as GiveWell's Maximum Impact Fund?, published by Vasco Grilo on July 28, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Summary This analysis estimates the cost-effectiveness of corporate campaigns for chicken welfare (CCCW), and compares it with that of GiveWell's Maximum Impact Fund (MIF) (see Methodology). The results were obtained with this Colab, and the key ones are summarised in the table below (for more, see Results). Comments about how to interpret them are welcome. The mean ratio between the cost-effectiveness of CCCW and MIF is estimated to be 10 k (i.e. 10^4). The specific value depends on very uncertain parameters, such as the ones defining the badness of the conditions of factory-farmed chickens relative to the goodness of fully healthy chicken life, and the moral weight. However, it appears to be robustly larger than 1 (see Discussion). ResultMeanMedianImprovement in the conditions of broilers (cQALY/cyear)1.120.505Improvement in the conditions of laying hens (cQALY/cyear)1.410.806Improvement in the conditions of chickens (cQALY/cyear)1.370.783Improvement in the conditions of broilers (%)45.449.8Improvement in the conditions of laying hens (%)64.665.2Improvement in the conditions of chickens (%)62.863.4Moral weight of chickens relative to humans (QALY/cQALY)2.410.0180Cost-effectiveness of CCCW for broilers (QALY/$)64.40.0269Cost-effectiveness of CCCW for laying hens (QALY/$)2040.656Cost-effectiveness of CCCW (QALY/$)1510.494Ratio between the cost-effectiveness of CCCW and MIF12.2 k38.9 Acknowledgements Thanks to Cynthia Schuck-Paim, Kieran Greig, Lewis Bollard, and Saulius Simcikas. Introduction About 2 year ago Stephen Clare and Aidan Goth (S&A) published an analysis comparing the cost-effectiveness of The Humane League (THL) and Against Malaria Foundation (AMF). The analysis presented here has the same motivation of better allocating resources between different causes (namely, animal welfare and global health and development). In addition, it relies on data from the Welfare Footprint Project (WFP; overviewed here) to model more accurately the relative improvement in the conditions of broilers and laying hens. Methodology The ratio between the cost-effectiveness of CCCW and MIF was calculated via a Monte Carlo simulation in this Colab. All distributions were assumed to be independent, and their parameters were estimated from quantiles as explained here. The methodology to determine the cost-effectiveness of CCCW and MIF, and assess room for more funding are presented below. Cost-effectiveness of corporate campaigns for chicken welfare The cost-effectiveness of CCCW was based on its cage-free campaigns, and determined from the product between: The cost of improving the conditions of chickens (cyear/$). The improvement in the conditions of chickens (cQALY/cyear). The moral weight of chickens relative to humans (QALY/cQALY). Cost of improving the conditions of chickens The cost of improving the conditions of chickens was supposed to follow a lognormal distribution with 5th and 95th percentiles in cyear/$ equal to: For broilers, 0.2 and 90. For laying hens, 12 and 160. For both combined, 9.6 and 120. These are the lower and upper bound of the 90 % subjective confidence interval estimated for the cost-effectiveness of "broiler and cage-free campaigns" in this analysis from Saulius Simcikas. Potential concerns with those estimates are discussed here. Improvement in the conditions of chickens The improvement in the conditions of chickens were calculated assuming weights of: 12 % for changing broilers from a conventional scenario (CS) to a reformed scenario (RS). 88 % for changing laying hens from conventional cages (CC) to cage-free aviaries (CFA). The fractions above were computed with the Guessti...