All good, happy to clarify things! 

Hi Akash, thank you for your reply.

In the comment we were responding to, we were asked two questions by @MichaelStJules.

Question 1. Do you think Sinergia and ACE almost certainly have no information you don't that could lead to different conclusions or interpretations of claims, in ways more favourable to Sinergia and/or ACE? 

There are two possible answers to this question:

• Yes, we do think Sinergia and ACE almost certainly have no information we don't that could lead to different conclusions or interpretations of claims, in ways more favourable to Sinergia and/or ACE.
• No, we do not think Sinergia and ACE almost certainly have no information we don't that could lead to different conclusions or interpretations of claims, in ways more favourable to Sinergia and/or ACE.

We answered "No." Could you explain how this suggests we are pre-committed to the belief "Sinergia bad."?

Question 2. Do you think there's no room for reasonable disagreement about whether the claims you call false are actually false?

There are two possible answers to this question:

• Yes, we think there’s no room for reasonable disagreement about whether the claims you call false are actually false.
• No, we do not think there’s no room for reasonable disagreement about whether the claims you call false are actually false.

We answered "No." Could you explain how this suggests we are pre-committed to the belief "Sinergia bad."?

Finally, if we had answered "Yes" to both of these questions, would you no longer believe we are pre-committed to the belief "Sinergia bad."? We are confused on what you believe an appropriate response to the questions would have been. 

Hi Rebecca, thank you for your reply.

If this was a "typo" as you suggest: 

• Why did Sinergia say the “Transition deadline” for JBS’s alleged ear notching commitment is 2023 in Cell R10?
• Why did Sinergia say JBS “Committed to banning ear notching by 2023” in Cell K10?
• Why did Sinergia take credit for helping millions of JBS’s pigs that they did not (i.e. JBS pigs who have their ears notched from 2023 to 2026)? ^[1]
• Why did ACE not catch this “mistake” when making their calculations and evaluating Sinergia’s work?
• Why did Sinergia not catch this “mistake” when validating ACE’s calculations? In their response, Sinergia claims they validated ACE’s calculations.
• Why is Sinergia now indicating this “mistake” has been fixed, when it has not?
• And most importantly, why did Sinergia/ACE delete Column W (where Sinergia stated that “JBS published in 2023 the commitment to banning ear notching by 2023”) right before publishing their response, and not add any note stating that this cell had been deleted?^[2] Sinergia/ACE added notes for every other edit that was made to  Sinergia's spreadsheet after February 20th, 2025, and this was by far the biggest edit (Column W contained more text than any other column in the spreadsheet, and was completely deleted).

We believe these pervasive issues point towards this not being a typo. 

Finally, we’d like to clarify what we think the biggest issue is here. Sinergia’s response states:

• "Sinergia’s Brazilian team, which is native in Portuguese but not English, made a minor mistake in the spreadsheet shared with ACE. It stated “Committed to banning ear notching by 2023,” when it should have said “Committed to banning ear notching in 2023.”"

Right before Sinergia published their response, Sinergia/ACE deleted Column W from their spreadsheet, in which Sinergia claimed: "JBS published in 2023 the commitment to banning ear notching by 2023."^[2] This evidence that was deleted suggests that Sinergia’s “mistake” was not a translation issue like they indicate. 

It is completely inappropriate for Sinergia/ACE to delete this evidence right before Sinergia published their response, and not note that this evidence was deleted. Sinergia/ACE added notes for every other edit that was made to  Sinergia's spreadsheet after February 20th, 2025, and this was by far the biggest edit (Column W contained more text than any other column in the spreadsheet, and was completely deleted). 

Destruction of evidence is completely inexcusable. 

JBS clearly states in Brazilian Portuguese on its website: “100% da mossa abolida até 2027,” which translates to “100% of ear cropping will be abolished by 2027.”

[...]

Sinergia’s Brazilian team, which is native in Portuguese but not English, made a minor mistake in the spreadsheet shared with ACE. It stated “Committed to banning ear notching by 2023,” when it should have said “Committed to banning ear notching in 2023.” Sinergia acknowledges that this mistake shifts the meaning of the sentence and it has since been corrected.

Although Sinergia downplays this as a “minor mistake,” it results in Sinergia receiving credit for helping millions of JBS's pigs who were not impacted (i.e. JBS pigs who have their ears notched from 2023 to 2026)..^[1] This is not a “minor mistake.” Further, Sinergia claims that this mistake has been corrected, but all that was fixed was changing the phrase “by 2023” to “in 2023” in Cell K10.^[2] The impact calculations were not fixed, and still incorrectly credit Sinergia for helping millions of JBS's pigs who were not impacted.^[1]

Sinergia/ACE (meaning Sinergia or ACE) also deleted evidence that suggests this was not a mistake/translation issue. Sinergia’s original spreadsheet contained a cell that included the following statement: “JBS published in 2023 the commitment to banning ear notching by 2023.” This was in Cell W10, but it was deleted right before Sinergia responded. ^[3]

If this was a mistake/translation issue, why did Sinergia know how to use “by” and “in” in Cell W10, but not in the Cell with the alleged mistake? Additionally, why did Sinergia/ACE delete Cell W10 right before you published your response, and not make any note stating Cell W10 was deleted? Column W is the only part of the spreadsheet that has been deleted, and all other changes in the spreadsheet have been explicitly noted in the spreadsheet. 

Note: Cell R10 of the spreadsheet further suggests this was not a mistake/translation issue, as it states the “Transition deadline” for the JBS’s alleged ear notching commitment is 2023.

Sorry if it came across like this post was intended to be feedback for you specifically -- your post was just one of the most recent examples that came to mind of charity evaluation being done publicly. I have no idea if anything I'm saying here applies in the case of Sinergia. 

No worries! The reason we thought you were saying this applies to Sinergia (and our review of them) is because your post says:

people have criticized charities for having publicly facing messages that don't always align with what the critic thinks is right. This group Vetted Causes (example) is just one recent example of this sort of pattern.

Could you clarify what you meant when you said Vetted Causes is an example of this pattern?

If you think it is always unacceptable to provide false information to the public, even if that's a part of an organization's theory of change, I do disagree. 

What we asked was if you think it is acceptable for Sinergia to provide the false information that they did about Alibem's surgical castration practices. Could you please clarify this specific point before we move on to broader points?

Hi Dan, thank you for your reply.

Alegra's rating in Pigs in Focus changed from one to three points between 2022 and 2023, so it seems at least plausible that Sinergia helped persuade them to end grinding. 

Page 40-41 of Pig Watch 2024 indicates Alegra has not banned teeth grinding, and plans to follow Normative Instruction 113 (which allows teeth grinding in certain circumstances). Alegra is legally required to follow Normative Instruction 113. 

Additionally, we noticed that you reference Sinergia’s Pigs in Focus quite a lot, and wanted to caution you that from what we’ve found, Pigs in Focus is not a reliable source. 

For example, on page 30 of Alibem’s Sustainability Report, Alibem states they will “Maintain immunocastration instead of surgical castration – a procedure that was voluntarily eliminated from the Company’s protocols in 2010.”

However, on page 20 of Pigs in Focus 2023, Sinergia indicates that in 2022 Alibem had not banned surgical castration, but in 2023 Alibem had banned surgical castration. Further, Sinergia took credit for getting Alibem to ban surgical castration “by 2023” (see Cell K4).  

Thanks for your input David!

If it's true^[1] that some of their figures come from commitments they should have known do not exist and laws they should have known were already changed it would be absolutely fair to characterise those claims as "false", even if it comes from honest confusion

We would like to clarify something. Sinergia wrote a 2023 report that states "teeth clipping is prohibited" under Normative Instruction 113/2020. Teeth clipping has been illegal in Brazil since February 1, 2021^[1]. In spite of this, Sinergia took credit for alleged commitments leading to alleged transitions away from teeth clipping (see Row 12 for an example).  

We prefer not to speculate about whether actions were intentional or not, so we didn't include this in our report. We actually did not include most of our analysis or evidence in the review we published, since brevity is a top priority for us when we write reviews. The published review is only a small fraction of the problems we found. 

Thank you for your response Johannes! We really appreciate it when people take the time to read our analysis, and question specific points. We encourage everyone to do the same. 

I think there might be a misunderstanding in the analysis regarding the number of piglets and the slaughter figures. A 25% pre-slaughter mortality rate is quite common in pig farming. 

We actually did account for pre-slaughter mortality rates in our analysis, but we used data specific to Brazil since that is where PPA is located. According to the study Swine Mortality and Productivity in Brazil – Benchmarks and Nutritional Solutions, the average pre-weaning mortality percentage is 8.91%, and the average growing-finishing mortality percentage is 3%. 

This means it’s entirely possible that 1,000,000 piglets are born each year, and 25% (250,000) die before reaching slaughter age, leaving 750,000 to be slaughtered.

We acknowledge it is possible over 1,000,000 piglets could be teeth clipped each year at PPA. However, based on the available data, we think it is questionable (as we stated above). 

Our main point in bringing up the slaughter numbers was to show that Sinergia’s estimate for the alleged commitment’s impact appears to rely on the assumption that without this commitment, PPA would have immediately started using teeth clipping on 100% of their piglets, but that with the commitment they will use teeth clipping on 0% of their piglets. This seems implausible given that PPA had already stated they don’t use teeth clipping prior to the alleged commitment, and teeth clipping was already illegal in Brazil prior to the alleged commitment.    

We’d also like to note that there are cases where Sinergia’s estimates are likely more than 100% of the pigs that could be affected. In the JBS example we used in our article, Sinergia estimates that a commitment to not use gestation crates in new projects impacts 290,000 sows per year (see Cell L10). To justify this, Sinergia cites Alianima's 2023 report, which states JBS has total 290,000 sows (see Cell P10). However, it seems very unlikely that JBS has 290,000 sows that are a part of new projects. We also checked the Alianima's 2024 report, and it states JBS has 297,000 sows. This leads us to believe JBS is starting new projects at a much lower rate than Sinergia estimated. 

With that being said, as we noted in our review, "the gestation crate policy that the alleged commitment references was already listed on JBS's website in 2020, and has been in effect since that point." In spite of this, Sinergia claims that JBS published a commitment for this in 2023 with a "Transition deadline" of 2023 (see Row 10). 

We can provide other examples of estimates from Sinergia that we suspect are inflated if you’d like. The critique we published contains only a small fraction of our full analysis, because brevity is a top priority in our reviews.