This is a crosspost from my Substack: https://themarginalhour.substack.com/p/welfare-maxxing-donations-or-high

I found this draft sitting in the depths of my Obsidian vault, and thought I’d finish it up and post it!

Epistemic status: low, uncertain if this is accurate. Keen to hear feedback.

Introduction

If you can’t/don’t want to be vegan, is it better to eat the cheapest, potentially most unethical animal produce and donate what you save, or is better to buy expensive, potentially higher welfare animal produce. I’ll focus on broiler chickens in this post.

I’ll explore:

• The average chicken consumption
• The welfare standard we are aiming for
• Lower quality supermarkets (UK based)
• Higher quality supermarkets (UK based)
• The money you can save, and the impact that can have

The Average Meat Eater Diet

FarmKind estimates per year:

• 33 Chickens
• 0.37 Pigs
• 0.11 Cows
• 7.95 Fish
• 228 Shrimp

33 chickens/year = 8.5 servings/week * 52 weeks/year = 442 servings/year

Side note on CO2

Interestingly, this amounts to 4,820kg of CO2 emissions. If you’re interested in the tradeoffs between choosing more environmentally friendly meat, and ‘suffering friendly’ meat (as in less suffering, not really friendly at all), then Which meat to eat: CO₂ vs Animal suffering is good^[1]. This extract summarises it quite well:

For those of you who are having trouble weighing the two against one another, consider this: When choosing between, e.g, chicken and beef, you’re effectively choosing between creating the equivalent of 89 kg more CO₂ (with beef) or the equivalent of 26 days more torture (with chicken). To put this into context, a campfire produces about 10 kg of CO₂. Would you rather make 9 campfires or start torturing for 26 days? Are people who have a hearth morally equivalent to people who torture every day? Or what about a candle? It produces 0,01 kg of CO₂. Is lighting a candle worse than torturing an animal for a couple minutes?

The Better Chicken Commitment

The Better Chicken Commitment is a policy that pushes for slower growing breeds, lower stocking density, and better welfare in general.

Some of the things it pushes for are:

1. Compliance with all EU animal welfare laws and regulations, regardless of country of production.
2. Maximum stocking density 30kg/m2 or less.
3. Adopt specific breeds with higher welfare outcomes^[2]
4. Environmental standards
   • 50 lux of light, including natural light
   • two metres of usable perch space
   • no cages
   • better air quality
5. Controlled atmospheric stunning, or effective electrical stunning without live inversion

Side note: recently 18 brands dropped their BCC, including popular restaurants such as Burger King, KFC, Nandos, Wagamamas, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Frankie & Benny’s, Wingstop, Popeyes, and more. They claim to have a Sustainable Chicken Forum, but this is welfare-washing.

Lower Quality Supermarkets

E.g. Lidl, Aldi

Aldi’s policy:

• Hasn’t signed BCC
• Doesn’t use slower growing breeds
• Reduced it’s stocking density to 30kg/m2 as of 2024.

Costs

Aldi: 650g = £4.49 -> £6.91/kg. This provides around 4-5 servings. So, approximately 2kg of chicken bought per week, which is £13.82.

Higher Quality Supermarkets

E.g. Waitrose, M&S

M&S policy:

• Signed the BCC
• Uses the Hubbard breed
• Oakham Gold

Costs:

M&S: 650g = £9 -> £13.85/kg. So for 2kg a week, this is £27.70.

Outcome

By going to Aldi instead of M&S, you save £13.88.
Animal Charity Evaluators estimates that per dollar you can help 12 chickens (if donating to The Humane League). In GBP, this is 16 chickens per pound.
So by saving £13.88 per week, you can help 222 chickens every week.

Caveats, uncertainties, etc

1. Most people shopping at Lidl/Aldi probably can’t afford to shop at M&S, given that it is around double the price.
   1. But, you don’t need to donate £13.88 every week, you can donate what FarmKind recommends – only £17/month ^[3]. And maybe a bit more for good luck ;).
2. Those who do shop at M&S probably enjoy the higher quality of food.
3. Maybe those who shop at M&S tend to have more disposable income anyways, so they can donate as well as buy higher produce.
   1. But maybe they won’t feel a need to donate, as M&S is one of the highest welfare supermarkets anyway, so there will be less of a need to ‘offset’.
4. The whole thing about offsetting your consumption. (See numerous hyperlinks)
5. I haven’t explored middle tier supermarkets, e.g. Sainsburys, Tescos, but to my knowledge, they haven’t taken the BCC either, and are probably closer in price to Lidl and Aldi, than Waitrose and M&S. But, maybe these people would have more disposable income, and would therefore be more likely to donate.

Oh no! This is too much to think about

Simple. https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge, or, https://www.farmkind.giving/compassion-calculator to work out the exact amount needed to ‘offset’ your diet.

1. Genuinely a good read, I come back to it frequently.↩︎
2. Hubbard Redbro, and some other slower growing broiler breeds↩︎
3. This is less than the cost of Claude Pro!↩︎