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).

I would probably model it with https://www.getguesstimate.com/ to give a range of uncertainty in the numbers. But yeah it wouldn't surprise me if the number was ~100%

Something in the ballpark of a few hundred thousand dollars.

This is a slightly tricky question to answer as:

• We don't have a specific funding gap for 2025
  • i.e. our overheads are covered, as well as the costs for our target number of stunners
• However, it could be the case that we get unexpected momentum next year, and can give away more stunners than we'd planned for
  • We've run into this situation before, where we had an unexpected string of wins, and had to rapidly fundraise in order to pay for them
• So effectively we're trying to build up our war chest so that we're able to deploy it when the opportunities present themselves

So all of that doesn't lead me to be confident in saying any specific number, but I think something in the ballpark of a few hundred thousand dollars seems reasonable

Thanks Angelina :)
In our Guesstimate model, the overhead costs to date are included in the bottom right (something like cell L15 if it were a spreadsheet) - between the total cost of the stunners, and the final overall cost titled SWP Total Expenses.

So the cost-effectiveness we report on our website factors in this cost, but when we're fundraising for marginal dollars, we often try to highlight the fact that marginal dollars are more cost-effective than the average dollar (which is unusual for an animal charity). But I agree that this is something of a judgement call, and the complex reality of marginal dollars is somewhere between those two numbers.

Hope that's helpful!

Good question Michael!

Our current estimate is that we’ll buy 50 stunners, but I’d take that number with a huge pinch of salt, as there are a number of factors that could influence how many stunners we ultimately need to buy (probably the most important one is that we want to focus on getting retailer commitments as our goal going forward (rather than a specific number of stunners), and it’s not super clear to us what the adoption curve will look like for retail commitments as we work with retailers outside of the UK).

We regularly evaluate our HSI program, and update our estimates if we think it’s appropriate. It could turn out we need fewer than 50, it could turn out that we need more. I guess a message I would like to emphasise is that we will use marginal funding in the most cost-effective way we can, whether or not the marginal funding goes towards a specific stunner, or towards more general corporate engagment work to reach commitments.

Thanks Angelina :) Yeah just to confirm The Navigation Fund (TNF) plans to fill SWP's funding gap left by OP, at least through the end of 2026. Our OP grant was set to end at the end of 2025, so the TNF commitment equates to approximately 1 year of funding for us.

OP is SWP’s biggest funder, representing 80-90% of our overall funding. So this grant covers SWP’s overhead expenses, in addition to a few electrical stunners.

We're keen on diversifying our funding, in order to not continue relying on a single funder, as well as to raise more money in order to deploy more stunners through our Humane Slaughter Initiative (SWP is in the unusual position in the animal movement that marginal dollars are often more impactful than the average dollar donated to SWP - as this funding can go directly to expanding the HSI program).

Hey Vasco! Interesting question, unfortunately I don't know the answer...

My sense is no, as you say, the intervention increases costs without an increase in productivity for the producers. But ultimately an incentive here is continued market access, which I'm sure an economist could model whether or not this could lead to an increase in the number of shrimps (over time).

Another point to emphasise though - it's my sense that the intervention should be modelled as electrical stunning replaces air asphyxiation, rather than (perfectly implemented) ice slurry. Ice slurry slaughter is just a very difficult thing to do correctly in practice (and I’ve not seen it happen) - as even if at some point the shrimps are submerged in ice for a short period of time, it's often not long enough to kill them (~30seconds).

Hey Angelina! Sure - happy to answer :) 
Yes we were affected by the Good Ventures announcement, and our current funding update is actually very similar to that of Wild Animal Initiative, as in:

• The Navigation Fund (TNF) plans to fill SWP's funding gap left by OP, at least through the end of 2026.
• We're keen on diversifying our funding, so as not to continue relying on a single funder

However we differ in that our budget is smaller than that of WAI, and the majority of it is put toward a single program (HSI)

Thanks so much Vasco for your work on this! As with MHR in the past, we really appreciate folks doing in-depth analyses like this, and are very appreciative of the interest in our work :)
 

In the spirit of this week’s Forum theme, I wanted to provide some more context regarding SWP’s room for more funding.

Our overheads (i.e. salaries, travel/conferences) and program costs for the India sludge removal work, are currently covered by grants until the end of 2026. Meaning that any additional funds are put towards HSI. (For context, our secured grants do also cover the cost of some stunners, but HSI as a program is still able to absorb more funding).

Each stunner costs us $55k and we ask the producers we work with to commit to stunning a minimum of 120 million shrimps per annum. This results in a cost-effectiveness of ~2,000+ shrimps helped / $ / year (i.e. our marginal impact of additional dollars is higher than our historical cost-effectiveness).
 

We’re having our annual team retreat (which we call “Shrimposium”) next week, during which we hope to map out how we can deploy stunners in such a way as to catalyse a tipping point so that pre-slaughter stunning becomes the industry standard.

We’ve had some good indications recently that HSI does contribute to “locking-in” industry adoption, with Tesco and Sainsbury’s recently publishing welfare policies, building on similar wins in the past (such as M&S and Albert Heijn).

This has always been the Theory of Change for the HSI project. Although we’re very excited by how cost-effective it is in its own right, ultimately we want to catalyse industry-wide adoption - deploying stunners to the early adopters in order to build towards a tipping point that achieves critical mass. In other words, over the next few years we want to take the HSI program from Growth to Scale.

I would be surprised if post-Shrimposium our targets regarding HSI required less funding than our current projections. In other words, though I don’t currently have an exact sense of our room for more funding, I’m confident SWP is in a position to absorb significantly more funding to support our HSI work.
 

If anyone wants to reach out to me directly, you can contact me at aaron@shrimpwelfareproject.org. You can also donate to SWP through our website, or book a meeting with me via this link.