My apologies, and thanks for clarifying. I’m thinking in terms of impact-per-animal relative to alternatives like corporate campaigns. From your side, the emphasis seems to be that this could operate as a profit-making business and avoid relying on philanthropy.

In real-world execution terms, here are the barriers your proposal would face:

Industry incentives

• Mexico is a net importer, not exporter, of poultry. USDA FAS (2023) states that Mexico imports ~20% of its poultry consumption, mainly from the U.S.
• Mexican producers make more money domestically. Firms like Bachoco and Pilgrim’s Mexico face strong domestic demand, where consumers eat ~70 lbs of chicken per capita per year. There’s no surplus incentive to export north.

Politics and lobbying

• U.S. producers (Tyson, Pilgrim’s Pride, Perdue) lobby heavily to protect domestic market share. Tyson alone spends about $2 million per year on lobbying. This is modest compared to tech or pharma but enormous relative to the rest of the poultry industry, giving it disproportionate influence over USDA trade and labeling rules (OpenSecrets). Even if Mexican poultry were eligible, U.S. trade policy has historically limited poultry imports (see anti-dumping disputes with China, Russia, etc.).
• As mentioned before, Bachoco dominates poultry production in Mexico across Sonora and Sinaloa. It has been sanctioned for price-fixing collusion (COFECE, 2015) and maintains deep ties through government contracts and social programs (COFECE ruling, DIF Sonora)   

That’s why I’ve kept my focus on the practical barriers. Big poultry on both sides shapes the rules.

Cheaper Labor, Humane Labels, and the Counterfactuals We Overlook at the Border

As a Mexican-American who has lived in Sonora and engages in cross-border business, I read the proposal about importing “humane” chicken from Mexico with interest and curiosity.

From an Effective Altruism lens, we should evaluate not just whether something sounds cheaper, but whether it meaningfully reduces suffering relative to the counterfactual. A few reflections:

1. Regulatory reality. It’s not as simple as “just import from Mexico.”

• FSIS only allows processed poultry from Mexico, and only if the raw chicken was slaughtered in the U.S. or another eligible country. Mexico does not currently have equivalence for raw poultry slaughter FSIS Import Library – Mexico: https://www.fsis.usda.gov/inspection/import-export/import-export-library/mexico
• APHIS rules technically allow poultry from Sonora and Sinaloa under Newcastle disease restrictions   but that’s only one piece of the puzzle. 9 CFR §94.30, U.S. APHIS: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-9/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-94/section-94.30 

This nuance alone changes the business case.

      2. Labor savings are real but capped

• Feed makes up 60–70% of broiler costs (USDA ERS – Poultry Sector: https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-esmis/files/g445cd121/6395z2696/sj13bz31x/LDP-M-367.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com
• In small- or mid-scale pastured/humane systems, extension budgets suggest labor can account for 15–25% of total costs, depending on wage assumptions. 
  https://ucanr.edu/sites/default/files/2017-12/275180.pdf 

• Mexican minimum wage in 2025 is MXN 278.80/day (~US$13–14/day) (CONASAMI, Gobierno de México: https://www.gob.mx/conasami compared to U.S. farm wages of ~$18/hr (USDA NASS Farm Labor, May 2024: https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-esmis/files/x920fw89s/gt54kx978/s1787g66r/FarmLabor-05-23-2024.pdf 
  
  This can cut maybe 15–20% off costs in best cases, but if you pay truly “humane” wages (retention, safety, compliance), the gap narrows. So the promise is “marginally cheaper humane”, not “competitive with conventional.”

  
  3. The local political economy matters 

  In Sonora, Bachoco dominates poultry production. They are vertically integrated across Sonora and Sinaloa and have been sanctioned for price-fixing collusion in the past (COFECE ruling, 2015 – Spanish: https://www.cofece.mx/cofece-sanciona-a-bachoco-y-tyson-por-practicas-monopolicas-absolutas 
  Their fortunes are also tied to government contracts and community programs (DIF Sonora social support programs: https://difson.gob.mx which makes this less a “neutral market opportunity” and more a case study in moral entanglement.
  
  4. Counterfactual impact 

  EA tools stress counterfactuals: would this intervention actually displace conventional chicken, or just increase total chicken consumption?

• Poultry own-price elasticity is ~–0.68, so lowering humane chicken prices boosts demand significantly (Andreyeva et al. 2010, meta-analysis: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20048671
• Cross-price elasticity between organic and conventional chicken has been estimated at ~0.15 (Vukina & Oh 2018, Agricultural & Applied Economics Association: https://ideas.repec.org/a/fan/ecaqec/vhtml10.3280-ecag2018-001005.html
• This means cheaper “humane” chicken partly replaces conventional, but also increases total birds consumed.
  
  5. Values trade-offs
• Using “cheap Mexican labor” to create “humane U.S. chicken” is not neutral. It risks offloading welfare concerns for animals while ignoring welfare concerns for workers. From an EA perspective, we should not treat human dignity as an externality. Actual impact requires both animal and human welfare standards.

I don’t dismiss the instinct here, entrepreneurs should explore new levers. But when you run the counterfactual math, the idea of a Mexican humane chicken export sector seems:

• Less cost-effective
• Legally blocked (at least for raw product)
• Politically entangled (Bachoco, government contracts)
• Ethically fraught (animal vs. human welfare trade-offs)

If we want to help chickens, there are cleaner, higher-leverage ways than arbitraging low wages and complex trade rules, like corporate welfare reform or policy change (think OWA).

Note: I deleted my initial comment because I was experiencing formatting problems. This is the exact post with formatting fixes. 

Appendix: Fuentes en Español

Para lectores hispanohablantes, aquí están algunas de las fuentes institucionales clave que sustentan el análisis:

• Salario mínimo en 2025 (México): Comisión Nacional de los Salarios Mínimos (CONASAMI) – https://www.gob.mx/conasami
• Resolución COFECE contra Bachoco y Tyson (2015): Comisión Federal de Competencia Económica – https://www.cofece.mx/cofece-sanciona-a-bachoco-y-tyson-por-practicas-monopolicas-absolutas/
• Regulación sanitaria de importación (Sonora y Sinaloa): Diario Oficial de la Federación / USDA APHIS – https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-9/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-94/section-94.30
• Programas sociales en Sonora (ej. DIF Sonora): https://difson.gob.mx/ 

Estas referencias muestran que el tema no es solamente comercial, sino también legal, político y social.

It is possible to rationally prioritise between causes without engaging deeply on philosophical issues

The best cause isn’t the one that wins the argument. It’s the one that survives contact with the world.

Hi Max and team 
Thank you for this beautifully framed and data-rich piece. As someone new to the EA community, I found the structure of “The world is much better. The world is awful. The world can be much better.” both emotionally honest and strategically motivating.

I have a question about using the European Union’s child mortality rate (0.41%) as an aspirational benchmark. I found it inspiring to see what’s already possible in real-world conditions, and it powerfully illustrates the scale of preventable child deaths globally.

That said, I was curious if you’ve considered how this benchmark might be interpreted in light of demographic differences. The EU has a relatively small and aging population, with significantly lower birth rates compared to regions like Sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia. So while matching that mortality rate globally is desirable, achieving it would require disproportionately larger systemic improvements in more populous, high-birth-rate regions.

I would love to hear your thoughts, or if there are existing posts or models that explore this demographic nuance in greater depth. 

Thanks again for your work

Thank you for this thoughtful and comprehensive piece.

After reading it, I was grateful for the authors' presentation of the prioritization landscape. It got me thinking: 

What if some of the challenges they describe aren’t just analytical, but reflect more profound questions of governance and institutional design?

As someone new to Effective Altruism but with a background in operations and systems governance, I found the framework of “types of prioritization” helpful and surprisingly familiar in a different context.

What stood out most was the idea that prioritization functions not only as analysis but also as a form of governance. In organizational settings I’ve worked in, prioritization often acts less like a single decision point and more like an ongoing structure, shaping whose voices are heard, what counts as valid evidence, and how (or whether) feedback loops are built in. In that sense, prioritization becomes embedded in institutional infrastructure: it influences how systems adapt, not just what they focus on.

So I wondered: How much of the prioritization in EA is a design question about institutional learning, decision rights, and oversight?

From that angle, the current emphasis on within-cause work doesn’t just feel like a strategic imbalance; it may also reflect what’s easier to operationalize within existing organizational structures. This raises the question of how cross-cause or cause-level prioritization could be scaffolded intellectually and institutionally through clearer decision ownership, more deliberate feedback systems, or periodic governance reviews.

I don’t have a strong view here; I'm just curious from a governance perspective: If prioritization were treated as infrastructure, not just analysis, how might that reshape how EA allocates resources and decision-making power?

Grateful for the clarity of this post, and looking forward to learning more.

Note: I’m still relatively new to EA, and I’m sharing these reflections from a systems and governance lens. They’re offered with curiosity and I welcome clarifications from those thinking deeply about these dynamics.