Cost-effectiveness of the fish welfare interventions recommended by Ambitious Impact, and Fish Welfare Initiative’s farm program

Vasco Grilo🔸

Cost-effectiveness of the fish welfare interventions recommended by Ambitious Impact, and Fish Welfare Initiative’s farm program

Vasco Grilo🔸

15 min readJan 24, 2025

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New & upvoted

Tom Billington

Hey, Tom from Fish Welfare Initiative here.
We really appreciate the time and thought given to evaluating FWI and the fish welfare space more generally from a current cost-effectiveness lens. Of course, we are aware that FWI's programming as it currently stands is not as cost-effective as cage-free or broiler campaigns, we understand that this is the prioritization of some donors, and so we think this is something that is important for potential supporters to understand (see our best arguments against donating to FWI).

Our general stance on the value of Fish Welfare Initiative is that we are a project with both high levels of learning for the movement and overall promise to become significantly more cost-effective in the future. We believe that working in low and middle income countries like India is critical for the long-term success of our movement, and thus having research and action firmly rooted in the field is necessary. We, therefore, find comparing our work at this stage to the estimated effectiveness of some of the biggest successes of our movement to only be a small negative update.

The broader point of the post, however, is also that aquatic animal welfare projects like FWI may struggle to become as cost-effective as other projects when discounted for fishes' "welfare range". We find this valid as a concern for some to have. However, we also feel that welfare ranges are a relatively nascent field of study, that true success in the animal movement likely involves significant work for fishes, and that the learnings from FWI's work cross-apply beyond just fishes. So again, we find this only a small negative update.

Also to note, FWI does not endorse the numbers used by IPA or this review as to the magnitude of suffering alleviated by FWI's programming. These numbers are based on Ambitious Impact's original cost-effectiveness calculations, which are a far-cry from our actual work. Real numbers on how much suffering we alleviate on average per fish is something we are working on building a process for (see our welfare assessment protocol), but the in-field complexities mean that we do not believe it can be assessed through secondary research.

FWI, of course, is a biased opinion on all this (although we do believe we have a very intimate understanding of the ground situation), and so it would be reasonable to take our opinion with some salt. We are always open to feedback, and thank you again to Vasco for putting this together.

Fwiw, one area where we do strongly agree with you is on your assessment of Shrimp Welfare Project. They're awesome, and we encourage people to support them.

Aaron Boddy🔸

Aaron from Shrimp Welfare Project here :)

I just wanted to add that FWI likely significantly accelerated SWP’s impact, probably by more than a year (maybe longer, it’s hard to know for sure).

For example, two of our big pivots towards what is now our primary intervention are a direct result of engaging with FWI:

In our first month, having a discussion with Haven who convinced us to take demand-side work seriously, rather than a purely supply-side approach as we had initially planned.
About six months in, when we were able to visit India (we were delayed due to COVID) and saw a shrimp harvest for the first time, which convinced us to think much more about pre-slaughter stunning (we could have visited India without the help of FWI, but being able to benefit from their living situation, and their on-the-ground expertise while we were there was hugely valuable).

Additionally, our first hire in India was through a recommendation by FWI, and has been instrumental to our farmer engagement program in India (likewise, I don’t think he would have heard of SWP, or trusted us enough to leave his previous job for SWP, if not for the recommendation from FWI).

There are probably a bunch of other examples I could give, and similar to Tom I want to highlight my own biases here (SWP and FWI are very close friends, professionally and personally), but it seems hard to separate the impact of individual organisations from the wider ecosystem they operate in (at least for animal advocacy, I don't really have experience with other cause areas).

Vasco Grilo🔸

Thanks for the great context, Aaron! Strongly upvoted.

I think the impact from FWI you are alluding to falls under their 3rd and 4th best arguments to donate to FWI, "Tackling some of the animal movement’s hardest questions", and "Movement building in Asia" (see details below). FWI rates these as less significant than their "future potential for impact" and "current impact", which I assessed in my post, so my conclusions would hold if FWI is right about which arguments for donating to them are more significant. I assume the 3rd and 4th best current arguments used to be more important earlier on when there were fewer organisations working on aquatic animals, and fewer organisations working in Asia.

On the one hand, FWI's historical influence on SWP seems like a good argument for their cost-effectiveness not to differ astronomically. On the other, I tend to agree with FWI's ranking of their best arguments for donating to FWI. I believe donating to SWP is more cost-effective than donating to FWI with the goal of increasing the cost-effectiveness of SWP. SWP's funds can always be used to leverage FWI's position in a targeted way that would be most informative to SWP, whereas FWI's funds would also necessarily go towards activities which are not optimally informative to SWP.

What are the best arguments for donating to FWI?
The following are some arguments in favor of donating to FWI, roughly in descending order of our view of their significance:
FWI’s future potential for impact: About 67% of our current budget (specifically our R&D, exploratory programs, and China budget items) goes towards developing more cost-effective interventions in the future rather than having a direct impact. We conduct this intervention research in what we believe is an unusually rigorous and ground-proofed way. For examples, see our recent studies focused on developing interventions on satellite imagery and feed fortification.
FWI’s current impact: We currently estimate that we’ve improved the lives of over 2 million fishes. This makes FWI one of the most promising avenues in the world to reduce farmed fish suffering, and likely the most promising avenue in the world to reduce the suffering of farmed Indian major carp, one of the largest and most neglected species groups of farmed fishes.
Tackling some of the animal movement’s hardest questions: If we are ever going to bring about a world that is truly humane, we will need to focus on the more neglected groups in animal farming, particularly including farmed fishes and animals farmed in informal economies. We believe that FWI’s work is demonstrating some avenues of helping these groups, and will thus enable other organizations to work more effectively on them. For instance, some of the lessons we learned in implementing our own farmer-centric work later inspired the model that Shrimp Welfare Project is pursuing in their Sustainable Shrimp Farmers of India.
Movement building in Asia: Almost 90% of farmed fishes, as well as the majority of farmed terrestrial animals, are in Asia. We thus believe it is critical to launch movements in Asian countries to address the suffering these animals face, and to expand the animal movement by bringing in new people. We are proud to have hired a local team of about 20 full-time equivalent staff in India as well as contractors in China and the Philippines. We are also proud that most of these people did not work in animal protection previously, and are now more likely to have careers helping animals even after they leave FWI.

Michael St Jules 🔸

I would probably think of donating to FWI as supporting them to develop a more cost-effective program. Most of their budget is spent on R&D, IIRC.

Vasco Grilo🔸

Hi Michael,

I discuss that from the following sentence on.

FWI says “most additional funding right now supports our R&D [research and development] work [not their farm program], which will enable us to become more cost-effective in the future”. [...]

Michael St Jules 🔸

FWIW, it seems a bit too buried in text. I think this would be something to say upfront, e.g. in the summary, if you're critiquing an org, because readers will often just skim, like I did.

Vasco Grilo🔸

Thanks, Michael. I have added 2 sentences to the start of the last bullet of the summary.

FWI says “most additional funding right now supports our R&D [research and development] work [not their farm program], which will enable us to become more cost-effective in the future”. Moreover, FWI highlights its future potential as the best reason for supporting them. [...]

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Vasco Grilo🔸

Thanks for the great context, Aaron! Strongly upvoted.

What are the best arguments for donating to FWI?
The following are some arguments in favor of donating to FWI, roughly in descending order of our view of their significance:
FWI’s future potential for impact: About 67% of our current budget (specifically our R&D, exploratory programs, and China budget items) goes towards developing more cost-effective interventions in the future rather than having a direct impact. We conduct this intervention research in what we believe is an unusually rigorous and ground-proofed way. For examples, see our recent studies focused on developing interventions on satellite imagery and feed fortification.
FWI’s current impact: We currently estimate that we’ve improved the lives of over 2 million fishes. This makes FWI one of the most promising avenues in the world to reduce farmed fish suffering, and likely the most promising avenue in the world to reduce the suffering of farmed Indian major carp, one of the largest and most neglected species groups of farmed fishes.
Tackling some of the animal movement’s hardest questions: If we are ever going to bring about a world that is truly humane, we will need to focus on the more neglected groups in animal farming, particularly including farmed fishes and animals farmed in informal economies. We believe that FWI’s work is demonstrating some avenues of helping these groups, and will thus enable other organizations to work more effectively on them. For instance, some of the lessons we learned in implementing our own farmer-centric work later inspired the model that Shrimp Welfare Project is pursuing in their Sustainable Shrimp Farmers of India.
Movement building in Asia: Almost 90% of farmed fishes, as well as the majority of farmed terrestrial animals, are in Asia. We thus believe it is critical to launch movements in Asian countries to address the suffering these animals face, and to expand the animal movement by bringing in new people. We are proud to have hired a local team of about 20 full-time equivalent staff in India as well as contractors in China and the Philippines. We are also proud that most of these people did not work in animal protection previously, and are now more likely to have careers helping animals even after they leave FWI.

^{^}

This means 1 h of hurtful pain plus 1 h of fully healthy life is neutral.

^{^}

IPA only uses the term “cost-effectiveness analysis” for estimates which involve more credible sources for the benefits and cost.

^{^}

This is not made explicit in IPA’s analysis. However, their point estimate of 18 WPs gained per fish-year improved is the mean between AIM’s estimates of 14.75 and 21.5 which are conditional on a welfare range of 1. I again wanted to link to the cells in AIM’s sheet with these values, but Vicky said they do not want to make such an old analysis public. You can ask Vicky for the sheet.

^{^}

Haven commented:

FWI decided pretty early on that paying for aeration equipment would probably never be a significant strategy of ours. The reason for that is that it seems that providing aeration to farms would mean that farmers ended up intensifying (e.g. increasing the stocking density), and thus potentially causing more suffering. This was illustrated to me in my first visit to India, when I asked a farmer how he’d feel if my non-profit were to buy him aerators for his farm. “Great!” he said. “Then I could farm twice as many fish!”.

^{^}

Vicky commented a key aspect of FWI’s impact is “figuring out how to improve the welfare of fish farmed by poorer farmers in informal markets which make up a large % of the fish market. Currently we don’t know what works there, and so there is lots of suffering we don’t know how to avert”. Filip Murár, research analyst at AIM, commented the value of information is potentially very high. I assume FWI were categorising that under “FWI’s future potential for impact”.

^{^}

I listed the names alphabetically.

Cost-effectiveness of the fish welfare interventions recommended by Ambitious Impact, and Fish Welfare Initiative’s farm program

What are the best arguments for donating to FWI?

What are the best arguments for donating to FWI?

Cost-effectiveness of the fish welfare interventions recommended by Ambitious Impact, and Fish Welfare Initiative’s farm program

Summary

Fish welfare interventions recommended by Ambitious Impact

Context

Calculations

Discussion

Influencing European Union fish welfare policy through strategic work in Greece advocating for electrical stunning before slaughter

East Asian fish welfare

Improving water quality on fish farms

Fish Welfare Initiative’s farm program

Context

Calculations

Discussion

Acknowledgements