Re: Litigation: It sounds like your read of "much of our current efforts involve policy advocacy and litigation, which we keep confidential" was something akin to "we are actively engaged in one or more already-filed lawsuits," which is not how it was intended. What we meant was that litigation as a general strategy is one of our current efforts (as opposed to some other strategy, for example), and that confidentiality is important to us in that strategy. At this stage, this practically means things like researching issues and causes of action, searching for plaintiffs,  consulting with potential witnesses, and other tasks performed in preparation for litigation. With that said, in the interest of disambiguation, we will edit the original post for clarity and note how it has been edited. 

Thank you for fixing it.

Re: Confidentiality: As for why confidentiality is important, this is because opposition could take more effective countermeasures to lower the effectiveness of our interventions if they knew exactly what we were doing or preparing to do.

We’ve openly stated that in many circumstances, confidentiality is appropriate or even necessary. If you’re preparing for a lawsuit, we don’t object to keeping specific legal strategies or related information confidential. Our concern has never been about the existence of confidentiality—it’s about how confidentiality was used rhetorically to deflect criticism, and to suggest more progress and impact than the facts supported. 

You asked us not to mention that SPI's work is confidential, claiming it “could raise suspicion from industry.” This reason doesn’t make sense. Simply knowing SPI has some form of confidential work does not provide any meaningful information; everyone does work that could be self-labeled as confidential. Industry does not care about a charity that filed zero lawsuits, litigated zero cases, and operated with $0 in expenditures in their most recent fiscal year.

Further, there is no way for any opposition to develop “more effective countermeasures” in reaction to simply knowing SPI has some form of work that’s been self-labeled as confidential. 

Re: Pending cases: As others have noted in this thread, there are multiple reasonable interpretations of the phrase "pending cases." We thought it understandable from the context of the post, but again, to be as clear as possible, we will edit the original post and note how it has been edited. 

When you say: "Much of our current efforts involve […] litigation, which we keep confidential for operational reasons - sharing details publicly would compromise pending cases." 

there’s a good chance many people will reasonably interpret that to mean:

1. You’ve actually done litigation, and
2. You have legal cases that are currently pending.

Since neither of those things is true, the statement was materially misleading.

Invoking confidentiality here discouraged additional inquiry, and furthered the false impression that SPI was engaged in sensitive, ongoing litigation, despite no cases having been filed.

Re: Policy advocacy: The types of policy advocacy actions we engage in range from organizational outreach, public outreach, and legislator/regulator outreach. These are ongoing initiatives and not yet fully realized outcomes. We do not think that having the words "Reform Pesticide Use" on our website next to our other initiatives implies that we have already finished the initiative.

Above is an image from SPI's website. 

“We try to reform pesticide use” and “We do reform pesticide use” are two completely different claims—just like saying “We try to discover aliens” versus “We do discover aliens.”

You can’t honestly claim to reform pesticide use until pesticide use is actually changing as a result of your work.

Thanks for the comment, Hugh.

Yes, we think both of those wordings would have been acceptable. Ideally, though, the organization would also clarify what it's actually doing to try to reform pesticide use—whether that's creating content, conducting research, or something else.

Hi Eevee, thanks for the comment. 

Also, is there really no information you can share about SPI's work so far? This doesn't match my impression of the work they were up to.

We searched for publicly available information about SPI's work, and also reached out directly to SPI. We shared multiple drafts of the review with SPI and, between drafts, specifically asked for information about their work. However, SPI told us there wasn’t any work we could include in the review. 

Shrimp Welfare Projects' impact page (which says they have helped 3.3 billion shrimp per year; 

The 3.3 billion shrimp per year estimate reflects the total projected impact if all planned stunners are deployed. As of April 2025, Shrimp Welfare Project has agreed to distribute 17 stunners, but less than 40% have actually been deployed so far (see Section "How it Works"). 

It typically takes 6 to 8 months to distribute a stunner and have it operational once an agreement has been signed (see Citation 6). The remaining stunners should be operational shortly. 

Thank you for your comment, Allison. 

In our evaluations, we prioritize outcomes over processes (assuming the processes are not unethical/illegal). 

If you prefer to donate to organizations whose internal focus more closely aligns with your values, there are legal charities like Legal Impact for Chickens that focus exclusively on farmed animals. However, in terms of impact per dollar for farmed animals, we believe ALDF is  the stronger choice.

Ultimately, it’s your decision as a donor how to weigh those factors, and we fully respect that.

Is their lack of transparency acceptable for a recommended charity? 

Could you explain what you mean by a lack of transparency? From our perspective, ALDF's transparency is well above average for a non-profit:

• Cases are public: ALDF's cases are well-documented and typically accompanied by easy to read summaries. Here are 199 of ALDF's active and past cases.
• ALDF releases numerous press releases describing their work: Here are over 500 press of ALDF's press releases.
• ALDF responds to donor inquiries: In our experience, ALDF has been more than willing to interact with donors. 

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback, Vasco—it’s very much appreciated!

To clarify a few things:

1. We looked at a lot of charities, and in our opinion, these three were the best. That said, we don’t want readers to donate just because we called them “top” charities. Our goal is for people to read our reviews, understand what each charity is doing, and make their own decision based on their values and priorities.
2. It’s possible there are large differences in cost-effectiveness between our recommendations, but we don’t know if this is true, and we also don’t have a strong intuition as to what the ranking between the three would be. We also think that trying to rank the three in terms of cost-effectiveness would be somewhat misleading (like trying to say a banana is more cost-effective than a hammer). Each solves a different problem, and which one is “better” depends heavily on what the donor values.
3. We only estimated total cost-effectiveness for SWP. For FWI, we cited their historical cost-effectiveness calculation, but didn’t attempt to calculate their total cost-effectiveness. It’s entirely possible FWI is the most (or least) cost-effective of the three. For example, FWI is currently attempting to use satellites to monitor water quality. If this succeeds, this could make it much cheaper to monitor water quality on fish farms. However, it remains speculative whether or not this will happen. 

Thanks again for engaging with our work—we really value this kind of discussion

Thank you for your comment, Vasco. 

Our goal at Vetted Causes is to provide unbiased, accurate information to help readers make their own donation decisions. While we include cost-effectiveness estimates when feasible, we hope that donors consider other factors, such as: 

• How much the animals are helped: Stunning improves a shrimp’s experience for a few minutes, while improving water quality may help a fish every day of their life. Which matters more, and to what degree?
• Species: How much (if at all) do we prioritize the suffering of larger or more cognitively complex animals—such as pigs, cows, or fish—over that of shrimp?
• Helping future animals vs. current ones: Animals are suffering today, and it's valuable to relieve that suffering. But should we focus on immediate change (which may just be a temporary fix), or prioritize long-term structural improvements?

We see cost-effectiveness analysis as a valuable tool, but in some cases, it requires so many uncertain assumptions that it risks obscuring more than it reveals. In certain cases, two reasonable models can differ so much that one suggests a massive impact, and the other little to no impact.

Our hope is that donors to use cost-effectiveness estimates as one input, rather than treating them as final scores. Our goal isn’t to say which charity is “best,” but to offer high-quality information that empowers donors to make informed decisions.