Sinergia Continues to Make False Claims About Helping Millions of Animals

I've written about this elsewhere, but it is far less constructive when you come at everything with a mindset where you assume malicious intent and find corroborating evidence.

Again, native English speakers sometimes make grammar/spelling mistakes. Grammar in your non-native language is harder for a variety of reasons. One thing to at least consider is that words such as "in, by, on, until" don't often translate perfectly, or kinda mean different things depending on context. I speak English native/fluently. When I speak in French or Spanish (where I'm proficient-fluent), I definitely make mistakes all the time, precisely because I am doing a lot of translating to/from English and not thinking in the language. Here's a simple example I came up with in English-Spanish

See how "in" and "by" both get translated to "en". I probably would use different phrasing than Google Translate, but it wouldn't shock me if Sinergia people are using Google Translate (or similar), frequently. It's exhausting to speak/work in your non-native language, and there are all these tiny phrasings that are difficult. Now multiply this by every row/column in the Google Sheet and every claim, etc.

It's good that you are reviewing this work, and my offer still stands to pay you for future reviews you want to do in good faith. We need far more rigor on cost-effectiveness analyses, and EA often has a culture where we are too nice to each other to call things out and get defensive about object-level criticism. I think they have gotten better in the last couple of years, but I was fairly unhappy with ACE's cost-effectiveness methods a few years ago, and so I want their work reviewed, checked, and questioned, and perhaps even re-done. But for criticism to be taken well and without defensiveness, you can't come out fully on the offensive, accuse people of lying and malicious intent everywhere.

ACE clearly made a mistake by leaving column W published in the public view. I'm sure they would actually give you everything unredacted if you asked and were nice about it! But you need to get out of the mindset of doing a charity "takedown" as opposed to a charity review. It wouldn't surprise me if many organizations are slightly optimistic in taking credit for things or are a bit generous in their counting. Correcting this is great. It gives us better info/data from which to make decisions. If it does turn out that some charities are way off the mark, I'm sure some will be a bit defensive but others will actually want to switch their work. 

Here is an example of @Vasco Grilo🔸 doing a pretty good critique of Sinergia that they should be trying to focus on their cage-free campaigning as opposed to meal replacement. That is extremely useful. It's particularly useful because it's something that @Carolina Galvani - Sinergia Animal can engage with, doesn't assume Sinergia is lying, and additional reasons can then be given for why Sinergia might still want to do something etc.

Sinergia continues to be deeply concerned about Vetted Causes’ misrepresentation of our intentions. Rather than engaging in a fair and constructive dialogue, giving us the right to explain ourselves before accusations of falseness are published, Vetted Causes makes inflammatory statements, selectively presents information, omits key context, and unfairly implies bad faith on our part, something that violates the norms of this forum.

Selective Quoting and Misrepresentation

It's noteworthy that Vetted Causes chose to highlight a “small snippet” of our full response first, using an accusatory title to create a separate post rather than commenting and engaging with all involved in the previous discussion. This omission excludes the parts where we raise concerns about their mistakes and misinterpretations when accusing us of false claims and taking credit for non-existent or old commitments. We urge Vetted Causes to work with longer texts that can better inform readers by addressing all matters fairly, instead of selecting segments to produce new and short posts that accuse us of “false claims”. False usually carries the meaning of “not true, but made to seem true in order to deceive people”, and Sinergia strongly refutes this accusation.

The Alleged “False Claim”

Vetted Causes claimed that Sinergia falsely reported a JBS commitment to banning ear notching. Now that it has been well explained that this accusation of Vetted Causes was mistaken, Vetted Causes fails to acknowledge that they were responsible for unfair accusations of falseness towards Sinergia. Instead, Vetted Causes decides to release new accusations of bad faith against us.

The Spreadsheet Error: An Honest Mistake, Not Deception

Sinergia acknowledged that a mistake was made in our spreadsheet in our first response. We appreciate Vetted Causes for pointing out that our spreadsheet stated, “JBS published in 2023 the commitment to banning ear notching by 2023.” We didn’t notice this when preparing our first reply. This information is accurate, as it was indeed written by Sinergia’s team.  Initially, when we didn’t see this information, we believed the most plausible explanation was that this was a translation error. However, upon reviewing the context, the most plausible explanation is that Sinergia unintentionally typed the wrong deadline—2023 instead of 2027– and continued to fill out other parts of the spreadsheet with the mistaken deadline. Given that this spreadsheet was prepared several months ago, we were unable to recall every detail of its compilation, but we take responsibility for the oversight. 

That said, we want to emphasize again that this was an honest and unintentional mistake, not an act of bad faith, as implied by Vetted Causes. We are sad to see that Vetted Causes, however, has escalated this into a text that suggests dishonesty, which is both unfair and unsubstantiated.

The Removal of Cell W10: Addressing Confidentiality Concerns

Vetted Causes suggests that we deliberately deleted information to obscure evidence. This is not true and again implies we act in bad faith. Cell W10 was removed due to confidentiality issues, and ACE will be providing further clarification on this matter. We invite Vetted Causes to please note that this cell is not available on our hens spreadsheet either. There, it was deleted before publication by ACE because it contained confidential information too. It is irresponsible for Vetted Causes to speculate and present this as evidence of wrongdoing without having conclusive proof of it and waiting for a full explanation.

A Pattern of Unfair Accusations

Instead of assuming good faith, as is the norm of this forum and other spaces for constructive discussions, Vetted Causes continues to use inflammatory language such as “false claims” and “downplaying.” These accusations are not only misleading but also undermine the integrity of reasonable debate. We urge them to reconsider their approach and engage with organizations in a manner that is fair and collaborative.

A Call for Improvements

We once again invite Vetted Causes to uphold the basic principles of fairness and integrity, and their own promises of ‘honest and accurate charity evaluations’ by:

1. Increasing transparency about their research and analysis resources and methods, such as language skills, and previous experience in the field of analysing animal welfare interventions. Although Vetted Causes uses the term ‘we’ in this text, so far it has only revealed the identity of one person behind its work. We are saying this because Sinergia is concerned that Vetted Causes’ current methods and resources may be failing to understand the many complexities of securing animal welfare commitments and different wording used to describe common industry practices.
2. Ensuring accuracy by conducting primary research and consulting country specialists instead of relying on secondary research with the use of Google Translate for complex technical translations.
3. Providing charities with the opportunity to address concerns before publishing public criticisms, especially if they imply bad faith.
4. Avoiding selective presentation of information that can manipulate and mislead readers with strong wording such as ‘false claims’.
5. Assuming good faith rather than jumping to conclusions.

Sinergia remains committed to transparency, acknowledging mistakes, respectfully interacting with other stakeholders, and creating a real and meaningful impact for farmed animals. We will continue our work despite any attempts that seem to aim to discredit us. We hope Vetted Causes will reflect on their approach and choose a path that fosters constructive discussion rather than divisive rhetoric.

Note: this comment has been posted in response to both Vetted Causes’ first and second posts about Sinergia, as it addresses points raised in each.

ACE welcomes rigorous external evaluations of our work, as such feedback strengthens our ability to provide high-quality recommendations to donors and, ultimately, helps us maximize our impact for animals. To this end, we engage with external experts on a) our methodology for evaluations and grantmaking and b) on evaluations and grant reviews themselves. For instance, we interact with the EA and FAST forums and the Hive Slack channel, taking advantage of both solicited and unsolicited feedback. The strongest example of our commitment to engaging with feedback lies in GWWC’s evaluation of our programs. 

The recent post by Vetted Causes is no exception. However, to balance the opportunity cost of engaging with this feedback with its potential to increase the quality of our work, we will first address the content of the concerns raised. We will then offer some suggestions for improvement of future reviews by Vetted Causes.

Regarding Vetted Causes’ specific claims about Sinergia, most of those claims have been addressed by Sinergia directly. We’d also like to note that while Vetted Causes refers to “ACE/Sinergia”, we’d prefer that we be treated as separate entities. Therefore, there are several notes we’d like to add that refer to ACE’s work specifically:

Issue 1

Alleged Commitment 1: Vetted Causes states, “in 2024, JBS stated that they still use ear notching due to ‘Difficulty in finding alternatives that ensure process traceability.’” 

This report came out after ACE’s evaluation of Sinergia was completed, so it did not inform any part of our evaluation. Sinergia addressed the specifics of this claim in their response.

Issue 2

Alleged Commitment 2: Vetted Causes states, “Sinergia claims that in 2023, JBS published a commitment to not use gestation crates in all new projects, with a ‘Transition deadline’ of 2023.

As evidence for this claim, Sinergia provided a link to one of the JBS's animal welfare pages. However, the gestation crate policy that the alleged commitment references was already listed on JBS's website in 2020, and has been in effect since that point.”

In their second post about Sinergia, Vetted Causes also states, “Although Sinergia downplays this as a ‘minor mistake,’ it results in Sinergia receiving credit for helping millions of JBS's pigs who were not impacted. This is not a ‘minor mistake.’ Further, Sinergia claims that this mistake has been corrected, but all that was fixed was changing the phrase ‘by 2023’ to ‘in 2023’ in Cell K10. The impact calculations were not fixed, and still incorrectly credit Sinergia for helping millions of JBS's pigs who were not impacted.”

As Sinergia notes in their response, the number of sows reported for JBS includes those whose welfare may be impacted by the enforcement of the previous commitment. 

In the process of double-checking our calculations with Sinergia, we noticed the same miscommunication that would have caused changes to our calculations. 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 are currently opting not to spend the time refreshing these calculations, as the changes could be quite involved.

Issue 3

Sinergia Claims That With $1 They can "Liberat[e]" 354 Piglets from "Brutal Confinement"

Vetted Causes states that, “ACE gave Sinergia credit for helping over 30 million female piglets through surgical castration commitments that Sinergia allegedly secured.” 

Out of the two figures that ACE publishes for Sinergia’s pig welfare program (SADs averted per dollar and piglets affected per dollar), the former is correct because Ambitious Impact’s SADs calculations already take into consideration the "prevalence" of castration (which only occurs in male piglets). However, the latter indeed requires the same prevalence discount. 

We have adjusted the estimates in the CEA spreadsheet for Sinergia’s pig welfare program. As a result, the impact estimate has been reduced from 354 piglets affected per dollar to 285 piglets affected per dollar. We have updated our review of Sinergia to reflect this change. 

We would like to acknowledge that the difference in the cost-effectiveness of one of Sinergia’s programs (representing ~9% of expenditures) would not have had a determinative impact on our decision to recommend Sinergia. In fact, we believe we were conservative elsewhere in our estimates. For example, because Sinergia wasn’t able to provide estimates for the number of animals affected by three major commitments from food retailers and processors (Ceratti, Dia, and Habib’s in rows 7–9), we conservatively assumed that the number was zero. We remain proud to recommend Sinergia to donors and thank them for their excellent work. 

Deletion of Column W

In their second post about Sinergia, Vetted Causes states, “Unfortunately, Sinergia/ACE deleted all of Column W right before Sinergia posted their response, and did not add any note stating that this column was deleted.”

During ACE’s evaluations of charities, we often redact information that charities provide us before publication on our website. In this particular instance, Sinergia had requested that we remove this column last year during their evaluation for confidentiality reasons related to their work, but we missed it in this particular case. This was not related to Vetted Causes’ review of Sinergia, but it was something that we noticed recently when double-checking our spreadsheet. We are not trying to hide any information; cell K10 states the change we made related to issue 2 above.

Improving Collaboration for Better Collective Results

We would like to take this opportunity to raise some questions about Vetted Causes' approach to evaluations and the publication of their reviews, as well as provide our perspective on them.

1. Approach and intent: ACE aims to identify where additional donations are likely to reduce animal suffering as much as possible and drive counterfactual funding toward effective animal advocacy. Understanding Vetted Causes’ theory of change and mission would help clarify their aims and how to best collaborate moving forward. Are Vetted Causes focusing their evaluations solely on animal charities and/or ACE Recommended Charities? It’d be valuable to understand how they prioritize causes and organizations, and why.
2. Avoiding undue harm: Evaluation relies on nuances about program implementation (which, as noted by numerous commenters on this post, are notoriously challenging in animal advocacy, especially for those unfamiliar with the space). Furthermore, some types of work require confidentiality, so an evaluator would not get all the relevant context solely from looking at a charity’s website or external reviews. As such, we believe that it is important that Vetted Causes shares their reviews with charities before publishing them so that any factual errors can be corrected and knowledge gaps can be filled before making claims that can lead to reputational harm (e.g., Sinergia Makes False Claims About Helping Millions of Animals, Sinergia Continues to Make False Claims, etc.). This is not just ACE’s opinion—many others share our perspective. Furthermore, publicly responding point-by-point requires significantly more time than privately sharing context or clarifying misunderstandings directly. As such, our willingness to fully engage with future posts will depend on how Vetted Causes chooses to engage moving forward, to minimize further disruption to our work.

We believe that if Vetted Causes were to take a more collaborative approach, this would better serve our shared goal of reducing animal suffering as effectively as possible. We welcome continued discussion about how we can collectively improve our evaluation methods and maintain high standards of evidence while also acknowledging the complex realities of animal advocacy work.