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:
- 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.
- 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.
- Providing charities with the opportunity to address concerns before publishing public criticisms, especially if they imply bad faith.
- Avoiding selective presentation of information that can manipulate and mislead readers with strong wording such as ‘false claims’.
- 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.
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.
Great points, Marcus!
Thanks for noting that! For readers' context, in that comment I made 4 months ago on a post from Caroline, I estimated based on Animal Charity Evaluators' (ACE's) cost-effectiveness analysis of Sinergia that their meal replacement program in 2023 was 0.107 % as cost-effective as their cage-free campaigns, which suggests it would be good to move funds from the former to the latter. I also shared the comment 3.5 months ago with @LChamberlain (Sinergia's senior development manager), and Lúcia Perreira (Sinergia's impact and strategy director), and reminded LChamberlain about it 2.5 months ago. Both LChamberlain and Lúcia said 3.5 months ago they were going to have a look, but they have not followed up. I think posting about it, sharing a draft with Sinergia before the publication, would have led to a reply, or at least a faster reply. This could have been good if it had caused Sinergia to reflect on their prioritisation earlier, and eventually change their allocation of funds.
Hi @Vasco Grilo🔸
Many thanks for your reminder. We have replied to your previous comment here.
Thanks, Carolina. I have followed up there too.
Hi Marcus,
Many thanks for your message and important reflections. We replied to Vasco Grilo here.