It refers to animal-years, yeah. (IMO the choice of words is okay, even though it could have been clearer; 10 years = 10 animal-years is is the only reasonable interpretation, so I don’t think there was any intent to mislead.) I’m not sure it’s quite right, though; it’s actually an underestimate, according to the Lewis Bollard quote that it seems to be based on, but on the other hand Bollard seems to be referring to the costs and benefits of one specific campaign, rather than to anything that could reasonably be taken to apply to ‘every dollar donated’. So I’m not sure if it’s just a rough ‘averaging out’ of those two factors, or if it’s based on more details that I missed when I looked at the transcript.
In the transcript of the podcast, the relevant section is at around 32 minutes. The specific claim seems to be that they spent <$200 million on a lobbying effort that directly caused reforms that so far have spared 500 million hens (and are continuing to spare 200 million per year) from battery cages and have improved the lives of billions of broiler chickens (>1 billion per year), over lifetimes that aren’t exactly specified but that result in “a ratio that is far less than one to 10 of a dollar per year of animal well-being improved”.
edit: a quick search suggests that the lifespan of a battery hen is a little under a year and a half, and the lifespan of a broiler chicken is a month to a month and a half. So I’m not sure exactly how those numbers work out; maybe the <1:10 ratio depends on the assumption that the benefits will continue into the near future.
In the transcript of the podcast, the relevant section is at around 32 minutes. The specific claim seems to be that they spent <$200 million on a lobbying effort that directly caused reforms that so far have spared 500 million hens (and are continuing to spare 200 million per year) from battery cages and have improved the lives of billions of broiler chickens (>1 billion per year), over lifetimes that aren’t exactly specified but that result in “a ratio that is far less than one to 10 of a dollar per year of animal well-being improved”.
Right, my understanding had been that there weren’t obvious ways to spend dollars to prevent factory farming, and that the most cost effective interventions are about increasing the welfare of animals within the factory farming system via eg corporate campaigns to remove battery cages.
This is part of why I’m unimpressed by offsets for eating meat, which seem to rely on apples to oranges comparisons, that don’t fly in my personal deontology. (It’s a bit like if I directly owned slaves, acknowledged that was an immoral thing to do, but “offset” that by spending some money each year to pay for better living conditions for many slaves somewhere else.)
(There are also interventions that use various methods to get people to go vegan, but I’m skeptical of those for other reasons.)
If there was a way to spend money to reliably and linearly delete years of factory farming, 1) I would be much more excited about offsets based on that mechanism, and 2) I would at least spend a fwer hours working through the details and considering rearranging my life to make “maximizing money going to factory farm-year deletion” as a primary priority (even with AI risk).
“a ratio that is far less than one to 10 of a dollar per year of animal well-being improved”.
If “a ratio that is far less than one to 10 of a dollar per year of animal well-being improved” is being summarized as “Every dollar donated stops about 10 years of factory farming”, that seems very disingenuous? Stopping a year of factory farming is not the the same as stopping an animal-year of factory farming, which is not the same as “improves one year of chicken life, from torturous to extremely bad.”
It refers to animal-years, yeah. (IMO the choice of words is okay, even though it could have been clearer; 10 years = 10 animal-years is is the only reasonable interpretation, so I don’t think there was any intent to mislead.) I’m not sure it’s quite right, though; it’s actually an underestimate, according to the Lewis Bollard quote that it seems to be based on, but on the other hand Bollard seems to be referring to the costs and benefits of one specific campaign, rather than to anything that could reasonably be taken to apply to ‘every dollar donated’. So I’m not sure if it’s just a rough ‘averaging out’ of those two factors, or if it’s based on more details that I missed when I looked at the transcript.
In the transcript of the podcast, the relevant section is at around 32 minutes. The specific claim seems to be that they spent <$200 million on a lobbying effort that directly caused reforms that so far have spared 500 million hens (and are continuing to spare 200 million per year) from battery cages and have improved the lives of billions of broiler chickens (>1 billion per year), over lifetimes that aren’t exactly specified but that result in “a ratio that is far less than one to 10 of a dollar per year of animal well-being improved”.
edit: a quick search suggests that the lifespan of a battery hen is a little under a year and a half, and the lifespan of a broiler chicken is a month to a month and a half. So I’m not sure exactly how those numbers work out; maybe the <1:10 ratio depends on the assumption that the benefits will continue into the near future.
Right, my understanding had been that there weren’t obvious ways to spend dollars to prevent factory farming, and that the most cost effective interventions are about increasing the welfare of animals within the factory farming system via eg corporate campaigns to remove battery cages.
This is part of why I’m unimpressed by offsets for eating meat, which seem to rely on apples to oranges comparisons, that don’t fly in my personal deontology. (It’s a bit like if I directly owned slaves, acknowledged that was an immoral thing to do, but “offset” that by spending some money each year to pay for better living conditions for many slaves somewhere else.)
(There are also interventions that use various methods to get people to go vegan, but I’m skeptical of those for other reasons.)
If there was a way to spend money to reliably and linearly delete years of factory farming, 1) I would be much more excited about offsets based on that mechanism, and 2) I would at least spend a fwer hours working through the details and considering rearranging my life to make “maximizing money going to factory farm-year deletion” as a primary priority (even with AI risk).
If “a ratio that is far less than one to 10 of a dollar per year of animal well-being improved” is being summarized as “Every dollar donated stops about 10 years of factory farming”, that seems very disingenuous? Stopping a year of factory farming is not the the same as stopping an animal-year of factory farming, which is not the same as “improves one year of chicken life, from torturous to extremely bad.”