In this article, I estimate the cost-effectiveness of five Anima International programs in Poland: improving cage-free and broiler welfare, blocking new factory farms, banning fur farming, and encouraging retailers to sell more plant-based protein. I estimate that together, these programs help roughly 136 animals—or 32 years of farmed animal life—per dollar spent. Animal years affected per dollar spent was within an order of magnitude for all five evaluated interventions.

I also tried to estimate how much suffering each program alleviates. Using SADs (Suffering-Adjusted Days)—a metric developed by Ambitious Impact (AIM) that accounts for species differences and pain intensity—Anima's programs appear highly cost-effective, even compared to charities recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators.

However, I also ran a small informal survey to understand how people intuitively weigh different categories of pain defined by the Welfare Footprint Institute. The results suggested that SADs may heavily underweight brief but intense suffering. Based [...]

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Outline:

(02:16) Background

(02:46) Results

(05:57) Explanations of the programs

(08:59) Why these estimates are very uncertain

(13:48) Animal welfare metric

(16:42) Comparison to SADs

(19:42) Comparison to other charities

(19:47) Comparisons of SADs estimates

(20:54) Comparisons of cage-free estimates

(24:26) For how many years do reforms have an impact?

(25:21) Cage-free

(29:45) Broilers

(31:18) Stop the farms

(32:57) Fur farms

The original text contained 8 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

Source:

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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