VettedCauses
Posts 14
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We posted a critique of Sinergia's 354 piglets per dollar metric on February 21, 2025. Sinergia responded by admitting the metric was wrong[1], but wouldn't stop advertising it.
On April 21, 2025, we posted that Sinergia is committing fraud (this was a legal opinion from an experienced attorney).
Less than 24 hours after the fraud post, Sinergia removed the 354 piglets per dollar metric from their main donation page, and replaced it with a new claim: 285 piglets per dollar.[2] However, this updated metric is still based on knowingly false information.
For example, the 285 figure relies on Sinergia being credited for securing a commitment from JBS to stop ear-notching pigs by 2023. But JBS never made that commitment—and both ACE and Sinergia have acknowledged this.[3] This issue alone leads to Sinergia being credited with helping over 10 million JBS piglets they did not help.[4]
We pointed this out months ago[5], and the EA community sided with ACE and Sinergia. At this point, even when metrics are acknowledged to be false, they remain in use[6] and are defended. There is little we can do about that.
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Sinergia Comment - Key Quote: "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,”"
ACE's Spreadsheets for Sinergia, Recording from November 6, 2025 - Cell K10 Quote: "The second comment previously read “Committed to banning ear notching by 2023" but was updated in March 2025. Because of this miscommunication, although it would have been ideal to apply discounts at both the “number of animals affected” and the “SADs averted per dollar” levels, our SADs estimates were already conservative, and the magnitude of the change would not affect our decision to recommend Sinergia. Therefore, we have not refreshed the calculations for the number of animals impacted by the commitment."
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November 6, 2025 - Sinergia's Main Donation Page. It has now been over half a year, and Sinergia is still using the 285 piglets per dollar metric that is based on knowingly false information.
ACE/Sinergia only used 1 row for each company, regardless of how many commitments they made.
This resulted in the wrong deadlines being used for numerous commitments. For example, for Alibem in row 4, 2031 is used as the transition deadline and 2045 as the legal deadline for all of the commitments, even though the commitments have different transition & legal deadlines.
Overall, this results in Sinergia being credited for helping millions of additional pigs who were not helped.
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:
- You’ve actually done litigation, and
- 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.
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.
In our view, it is unacceptable to:
ACE and Sinergia have done exactly that, and are continuing to do so as of this writing.[2]
[2]
Our values do not align with the values EA practices.
Sinergia March 21, 2025 Statement - Key Quote: "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,”"
ACE's Spreadsheets for Sinergia, Recording from April 11 , 2025 - Cell K10 Quote: "The second comment previously read “Committed to banning ear notching by 2023" but was updated in March 2025. Because of this miscommunication, although it would have been ideal to apply discounts at both the “number of animals affected” and the “SADs averted per dollar” levels, our SADs estimates were already conservative, and the magnitude of the change would not affect our decision to recommend Sinergia. Therefore, we have not refreshed the calculations for the number of animals impacted by the commitment."
ACE's Spreadsheets for Sinergia, Recording from November 6, 2025 - Cell K10 Quote: "The second comment previously read “Committed to banning ear notching by 2023" but was updated in March 2025. Because of this miscommunication, although it would have been ideal to apply discounts at both the “number of animals affected” and the “SADs averted per dollar” levels, our SADs estimates were already conservative, and the magnitude of the change would not affect our decision to recommend Sinergia. Therefore, we have not refreshed the calculations for the number of animals impacted by the commitment."
Note that this is only one of the pieces of knowingly false information being used by ACE, and it results in Sinergia being credited for helping over 10 million JBS piglets that they did not help.
November 7, 2025 - Sinergia's Main Donation Page. It has now been over half a year, and Sinergia is still advertising the 285 piglets per dollar metric that is based on knowingly false information. Sinergia began advertising this metric on April 22, 2025.