How effective are the best chicken charities per dollar? I know that there have been different estimates over time--anyone know the most current ones.
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Hi there! I work for Sinergia Animal. Sinergia was just recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators for the seventh year in a row, and as part of that assessment, ACE supplied the following figures:
Every $1 donated to Sinergia Animal =
- 53.5 hens freed from cages, or
- 21 mother pigs (or 354 piglets) spared from brutal confinement and painful procedures, or
- Three animal-based meals replaced with plant-based options.
I believe this is the first year since 2019 that ACE has supplied quantitative cost effectiveness estimates like these as a part of their reviews. So only charities that were evaluated in 2024 have these figures. Of the 2024-reviewed charities, Sinergia appears to help the highest number of hens per dollar spent. But that cohort doesn't include THL or other charities that were last evaluated in 2023.
It's also worth mentioning that, of course, cost-effectiveness can be highly influenced by many factors, like different costs of living in different countries, countries where there is more momentum and a stronger movement, etc. I am saying this because there might be charities doing outstanding work who have lower cost-effectiveness than Sinergia, and we truly admire their efforts and don’t want to position ourselves as being more effective / 'better' than they are.
More information on Sinergia Animal can be found here if you're interested.
I'm sure someone from ACE can provide a more thorough response to your question, but I hope what I've written is helpful.
Hi Omnizoid,
I have recently posted a cost-effectiveness analysis on corporate campaigns for chicken welfare. I used Saulius Šimčikas’ estimates from 2019, Open Philanthropy's adjustment from 2023, and some others I added in my own analysis. I conclude broiler welfare and cage-free campaigns are:
- 168 and 462 times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities, i.e., way more.
- 0.261 % and 0.718 % as cost-effective as Shrimp Welfare Project’s Humane Slaughter Initiative, i.e., way less.
I thought it'd be helpful to improve comparability with LChamberlain's answer on Sinergia Animal by being a bit more object-level:
- Saulius previously estimated that a dollar donated to support corporate cage-free commitments historically helped free somewhere between 9 to 120 hens from cages, with a mean of 42 hens; since their average lifespan is 1.1–1.5 years that's 54 years of improved life per dollar. Vasco then discounts this by -80% going forward to incorporate Open Phil's thinking that "we’ve covered many of the strongest opportunities in this
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Vasco Grilo🔸
Thanks, Mo! I had actually made that comparison, but had not yet seen LChamberlain's answer.
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Mo Putera
I missed that, thanks for pointing it out Vasco! And always appreciate the thoroughness and transparency of your estimates.
Hi LChamberlain,
You may be interested in my quick analysis of the estimates you mentioned from Animal Charity Evaluators. I estimate your cage-free program is more than 935 times (= 0.00107) as cost-effective as your meal replacement program.