To echo some of the other comments, I also think this kind of detailed, external "red teaming" of cost-effectiveness calculations is great in general, and I'd like to see more of it. As someone who has supported Sinergia in the past, I was concerned about some of the claims, and took a few hours to do some shallow research of my own. Tl;dr, my personal opinion of Sinergia hasn't changed much, pending their response.
To address the specific criticisms:
I
Sinergia claims that "JBS published in 2023 the commitment to banning ear notching by 2023." As evidence for this claim, Sinergia provided a link to one of JBS's animal welfare pages.[12] However, the link does not state JBS committed to this. We also checked every archived version of the link and could not find this commitment. Further, in 2024, JBS stated that they still use ear notching due to "Difficulty in finding alternatives that ensure process traceability."
After the impacts of Pigs in Focus rank 1st edition and dozen of meetings, JBS published in 2023 the commitment to banning ear notching by 2023
Subsequent calculations assume that this commitment went into effect in 2023, well in advance of Brazil's legal deadline of 2030. However, Pig Watch 2023 states that JBS intended for this commitment to take effect in 2027, and Pig Watch 2024 updates this to "no longer has a defined deadline".
Depending on the timing, this could tell a consistent story in which JBS committed to the 2023 deadline, then changed it to 2027/undefined after Sinergia published the Committed Companies 2023 sheet. However, I would have expected the 2024 edition of Pigs in Focus to reduce JBS's ear notching ranking, but they still receive the full three points (which may suggest that Sinergia is not closely monitoring all of their existing commitments).
II
Sinergia claims that in 2023, JBS published a commitment to not use gestation crates in all new projects, with a "Transition deadline" of 2023.
As evidence for this claim, Sinergia provided a link to one of the JBS's animal welfare pages. However, 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.
Sinergia's claim in Committed Companies 2023:
JBS already had the commitment to banning the continuous use of gestation crates in all units and adopt mixed system by 2025 and after the impacts of Pigs in Focus rank 1st edition and dozen of meetings, JBS published in 2023 the commitment to adopt crate-free system for the new units.
In 2015, Seara made a commitment to carry out the transition from individual to collective gestation in its pig production. Even before 2015, the company already had females in collective gestation. However, since formally assuming the commitment, it has invested in new initiatives and adjustments. New projects or extensions are already built according to this standard and, in addition, the company has supported its integrated suppliers in fulfilling this commitment, so that its entire chain is adapted to the collective gestation system, progressively, until 2025.
I admit to not totally understanding the nuances here, but I read this as: Sinergia acknowledges that JBS already had a commitment to transition from individual to collective gestation (they refer to this as a "mixed system", I think because it still involves some use of gestation crates?) by 2025, and is not taking credit for this change. They do claim partial responsibility for JBS's commitment to adopt crate-free systems for all new units starting in 2023.
While this does sound like a distinct policy, I don't understand exactly how it relates to the "Para novos Projetos de Unidades de Produção de Leitões" (For new Piglet Production Unit Projects) section on JBS's current animal welfare page.
III
Sinergia claims credit for getting Alegra, Alibem, Master Agroindustrial, and Pif Paf Alimentos (all Brazilian meat processors) to end their use of teeth clipping on pigs. However, teeth clipping pigs was already illegal in Brazil prior to the alleged commitments.
In Committed Companies 2023, Sinergia does include claims about teeth clipping from these four companies, usually as part of a broader list of "Multilations banned" (including surgical castration and ear notching).
Regarding the teeth of piglets, it is more important to confirm that clipping is already prohibited by the NI 113, and that grinding is allowed only when necessary. Alegra reported that it has not yet banned the procedure and that it has not set a deadline for it, in order to avoid injuries to the sows’ teats. Aurora pointed out that they do not recommend this handling as a routine practice on the farms, only in cases of extreme need, such as in cases of injuries to the sows and piglets, which compromises their welfare.
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. And indeed Pig Watch 2023 confirms:
In the 2022 edition, only BRF, JBS (Seara) and Pamplona had reported the end of teeth grinding. This year, Alegra also claimed to have banned the practice.
Note: the company appears to have backtracked on this commitment in 2024, which (unlike #1 above) is reflected in the latest Pigs in Focus (though I'm not sure what happened with the 2022 column).
IV
Sinergia claims credit for getting Aurora to end their use of surgical castration on pigs, but the company's website already indicated they don't use the surgical castration on pigs prior to the alleged commitment.
Sinergia says:
After the impacts of Pigs in Focus rank 1st edition and dozen of meetings, Aurora published in 2023 the commitment to banning surgical castration in pigs
Sinergia's criteria for full points on its "Criterion 4: Banning surgical castration" Pigs in Focus metric:
Instead of surgical castration, which involves cutting the scrotum and removing the testicles without the use of anesthesia or analgesia, companies can commit to adopting, for example, immunocastration, which involves the injection of a vaccine, thereby significantly reducing the pain and stress of the animals. If surgical castration is chosen, it must always be performed with proper pain management, meaning the use of anesthesia and analgesia.
In the 2022 version of Pigs in Focus, Sinergia says of Aurora:
Aurora states that immunological castration (vaccine) is recommended, but there is no deadline to adapt 100% of operations. The company also states that when surgical castration is performed, it must be done with anesthetic. However, there is no plan to include analgesics before 2030, an excessively long timeline.
And then in the 2023 edition:
Aurora meets the criteria for the end of surgical castration
So the way I read this, Aurora already had a policy recommending immunocastration prior to 2022, but still allowed surgical castration with anesthesia (but not analgesia) to be performed in some cases. I'm not clear what Sinergia claims changed in Aurora's 2023 commitment, but it plausibly could be either a complete ban on surgical castration, or the introduction of analgesia?
V
Sinergia claims credit for getting BRF to end their use of gestation crates in new projects, but BRF had already implemented a policy requiring this prior to the alleged commitment.
From Sinergia in Committed Companies 2023:
BRF already had the commitment to banning the continuous use of gestation crates in all units and adopt group housing systems by 2026. After the impacts of Pigs in Focus rank 1st edition and a dozen of meetings, JBS [sic] published in 2023 the commitment to adopt crate-free systems for all the new units.
Note: assuming "JBS" here is just a copy-paste error, but it could be something more fundamental.
From Pigs in Focus 2023:
BRF has evolved in its commitment to the gestation crates criterion with a transition deadline to a group housing system by 2026. The company recently announced its commitment to implementing the 'crate-free' system for all new projects starting in 2023. However, the company has not yet set a deadline for the complete phasing out of gestation crates in all its operations.
Like #2 above, Sinergia seems to be making a more limited claim that BRF is transitioning to crate-free (not just group housing or collective gestation) for new units starting in 2023. This at least seems consistent with BRF's 2019 commitments (prior to Sinergia's involvement), translated:
We have made a public commitment to transition from the traditional sow housing system to the collective gestation system where animals are kept in pens with larger spaces and have group living. Since 2013, the collective gestation system has been mandatory in all Company expansion projects.
Hey Pat, thanks for the heads up. You're right that, despite working on desktop and via the LinkedIn mobile app, the search link doesn't seem to work on mobile browsers.
One quick workaround is to request the desktop site on the mobile browser, which seems to load properly on my side.
Excited to see this is returning for another year! A few notes:
- This year's match is (currently) "only" for up to $50,000 (for reference, last year a total of $620K was matched), and might not last very long - See e.g. my Every.org profile for a list of ~75 EA-aligned orgs on the site (as of Nov. 2021) - Note that you can fund your Every.org account straight from your DAF - Here's last year's post, with some helpful info in the comments too
Ah! Ctrl+Enter does work in the Playground. I was doing most of my development in VS Code--not sure if it's also supposed to work there, but I don't see it in the keybindings.json.
Re: settings persistence in Playground, do they also come along with the share links? The critical ones for me would be Sample Count and the Function Display Settings.
Calculating up to annually_averted_health_dalys_time_discounted was taking me well over a minute in v0.3.0, but is down to ~5 seconds in v0.3.1--a big improvement!
I originally had to comment the actual model output (dollars_per_daly_equivalents_averted(20)) because it wouldn't return at all in v0.3.0, but now it's ~2 mins in v0.3.1.
For reference, the whole Causal model takes ~5 seconds to update.
This is interesting, thanks for writing it up! I recently did an analysis of US cities (mostly looking for a wintering location, not a full move), and Tulsa ended up scoring relatively low, which was disappointing since I know there's a growing EA community there.
I'm really curious in your biking experience in particular, since that's the category where it fared the worst. I looked at bike commuter data, but I guess that's just a proxy for good commuter infrastructure, which is what I probably care about. Why do you think so few Tulsans bike at the moment?
I've been thinking about relocation recently too, though mostly through the lens of finding a better wintering location in the US. This post inspired me to at least upload (if not exactly document) my analysis to date. See here:
(Scores are log2 where 0 is Chicago, and total is the average of each row.)
Of the factors mentioned above, this focuses almost entirely on (my) "Personal fit" via considering things like weather, bike-ability, vegan-friendliness, etc. But I'm also keen to explore the "Coordination with other EAs working on shared cause areas and projects" and "Opportunities for movement-building in non-saturated EA hubs" points via new community Schelling points (hence the name).
Originally I made a digital SSC podcast (feed) so that I could listen through the back catalog of posts (the human reader version didn't start until ~2017). I ended up getting used to the robot narrator, so I just kept it running on ACX. One small upside is that the digital versions get created within minutes of new posts.
To echo some of the other comments, I also think this kind of detailed, external "red teaming" of cost-effectiveness calculations is great in general, and I'd like to see more of it. As someone who has supported Sinergia in the past, I was concerned about some of the claims, and took a few hours to do some shallow research of my own. Tl;dr, my personal opinion of Sinergia hasn't changed much, pending their response.
To address the specific criticisms:
I
Sinergia's claim in Committed Companies 2023:
Subsequent calculations assume that this commitment went into effect in 2023, well in advance of Brazil's legal deadline of 2030. However, Pig Watch 2023 states that JBS intended for this commitment to take effect in 2027, and Pig Watch 2024 updates this to "no longer has a defined deadline".
Depending on the timing, this could tell a consistent story in which JBS committed to the 2023 deadline, then changed it to 2027/undefined after Sinergia published the Committed Companies 2023 sheet. However, I would have expected the 2024 edition of Pigs in Focus to reduce JBS's ear notching ranking, but they still receive the full three points (which may suggest that Sinergia is not closely monitoring all of their existing commitments).
II
Sinergia's claim in Committed Companies 2023:
From the (translated) link to JBS's 2020 policy:
I admit to not totally understanding the nuances here, but I read this as: Sinergia acknowledges that JBS already had a commitment to transition from individual to collective gestation (they refer to this as a "mixed system", I think because it still involves some use of gestation crates?) by 2025, and is not taking credit for this change. They do claim partial responsibility for JBS's commitment to adopt crate-free systems for all new units starting in 2023.
While this does sound like a distinct policy, I don't understand exactly how it relates to the "Para novos Projetos de Unidades de Produção de Leitões" (For new Piglet Production Unit Projects) section on JBS's current animal welfare page.
III
In Committed Companies 2023, Sinergia does include claims about teeth clipping from these four companies, usually as part of a broader list of "Multilations banned" (including surgical castration and ear notching).
Re: Alegra specifically, from Pig Watch 2022:
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. And indeed Pig Watch 2023 confirms:
Note: the company appears to have backtracked on this commitment in 2024, which (unlike #1 above) is reflected in the latest Pigs in Focus (though I'm not sure what happened with the 2022 column).
IV
Sinergia says:
Sinergia's criteria for full points on its "Criterion 4: Banning surgical castration" Pigs in Focus metric:
In the 2022 version of Pigs in Focus, Sinergia says of Aurora:
And then in the 2023 edition:
So the way I read this, Aurora already had a policy recommending immunocastration prior to 2022, but still allowed surgical castration with anesthesia (but not analgesia) to be performed in some cases. I'm not clear what Sinergia claims changed in Aurora's 2023 commitment, but it plausibly could be either a complete ban on surgical castration, or the introduction of analgesia?
V
From Sinergia in Committed Companies 2023:
Note: assuming "JBS" here is just a copy-paste error, but it could be something more fundamental.
From Pigs in Focus 2023:
Like #2 above, Sinergia seems to be making a more limited claim that BRF is transitioning to crate-free (not just group housing or collective gestation) for new units starting in 2023. This at least seems consistent with BRF's 2019 commitments (prior to Sinergia's involvement), translated:
Please consider using
starscore (or approval) voting next year instead of RCVHey Pat, thanks for the heads up. You're right that, despite working on desktop and via the LinkedIn mobile app, the search link doesn't seem to work on mobile browsers.
One quick workaround is to request the desktop site on the mobile browser, which seems to load properly on my side.
Excited to see this is returning for another year! A few notes:
- This year's match is (currently) "only" for up to $50,000 (for reference, last year a total of $620K was matched), and might not last very long
- See e.g. my Every.org profile for a list of ~75 EA-aligned orgs on the site (as of Nov. 2021)
- Note that you can fund your Every.org account straight from your DAF
- Here's last year's post, with some helpful info in the comments too
Ah! Ctrl+Enter does work in the Playground. I was doing most of my development in VS Code--not sure if it's also supposed to work there, but I don't see it in the keybindings.json.
Re: settings persistence in Playground, do they also come along with the share links? The critical ones for me would be Sample Count and the Function Display Settings.
Looking forward to auto-formatting as well!
Calculating up to
annually_averted_health_dalys_time_discountedwas taking me well over a minute in v0.3.0, but is down to ~5 seconds in v0.3.1--a big improvement!I originally had to comment the actual model output (
dollars_per_daly_equivalents_averted(20)) because it wouldn't return at all in v0.3.0, but now it's ~2 mins in v0.3.1.For reference, the whole Causal model takes ~5 seconds to update.
FYI this link gives me an "Access Denied" error.
This is interesting, thanks for writing it up! I recently did an analysis of US cities (mostly looking for a wintering location, not a full move), and Tulsa ended up scoring relatively low, which was disappointing since I know there's a growing EA community there.
I'm really curious in your biking experience in particular, since that's the category where it fared the worst. I looked at bike commuter data, but I guess that's just a proxy for good commuter infrastructure, which is what I probably care about. Why do you think so few Tulsans bike at the moment?
I've been thinking about relocation recently too, though mostly through the lens of finding a better wintering location in the US. This post inspired me to at least upload (if not exactly document) my analysis to date. See here:
https://github.com/danwahl/schelling-out/blob/main/schelling-out.ipynb
And the current top 10:
(Scores are
log2where0is Chicago, andtotalis the average of each row.)Of the factors mentioned above, this focuses almost entirely on (my) "Personal fit" via considering things like weather, bike-ability, vegan-friendliness, etc. But I'm also keen to explore the "Coordination with other EAs working on shared cause areas and projects" and "Opportunities for movement-building in non-saturated EA hubs" points via new community Schelling points (hence the name).
Originally I made a digital SSC podcast (feed) so that I could listen through the back catalog of posts (the human reader version didn't start until ~2017). I ended up getting used to the robot narrator, so I just kept it running on ACX. One small upside is that the digital versions get created within minutes of new posts.