E-mail exchange between Bailey Norwood and Simon Knutsson

July 2013, by Simon Knutsson with minor edits
Bailey Norwood is an Associate Professor at the Department of Agricultural Economics, Oklahoma State University. Bailey approved of publishing this exchange

Simon, July 28, 2013:

Dear Professor Norwood,

My name is Simon Knutsson, you don’t know me but we emailed once in 2011. I’m writing to ask for a few details on how to understand the table of US farm animal welfare scores in your book Compassion by the Pound, p. 229. I really appreciate any help.

The background is that in 2012, Brian Tomasik and I wrote a Wiki Felicifia page on the cost-effectiveness of animal charities. In the section on factory-farmed animals, I included the table from your book (with only minor clarifying edits, the numbers should be yours), pasted below from the Wiki Felicifia page:

Norwood’s estimates of US farm animal welfare (-10 is worst, 10 is best)^[2]
Product (animal raised conventionally unless otherwise noted)	Welfare of one breeder animal	Welfare of one market (non-breeder) animal
Beef (animals raised for beef, not beef from dairy cows)	8	6
Chicken meat	-4	3
Milk	Not relevant	4
Veal	Not relevant	-8
Pork	-7	-2
Crate-free pork^[3]	-5	-2
Shelter-pasture pork^[4]	4	4
Egg from cage system	3	-8
Egg from cage-free system	3	2

I know you didn’t mean these scores to be the end all answer to the status of farm animal welfare, but you have an informed view so I’d really like to understand your estimates better.

So, my questions about what you had in mind when making the scores:

Did you weigh in slaughter and transportation to slaughter?
Are the scores for only those animals that survive to slaughter or did you weigh in also those who die for various reasons before slaughter?
Are the scores for kind of the “median” animal or did you weigh in that some animals may get e.g. malfunctioning stunning leading to slaughter while conscious, or experience the kind of abuse that makes headlines e.g. a case where employees impaled a pig with sharp objects seemingly for fun?
Do the egg scores exclude male chicks being killed soon after hatching?

If it’s OK with you, I’d like to post this email exchange to my website http://www.simonknutsson.com/ as a reference. Please let me know if that’s OK.

Many thanks!

Bailey, July 28, 2013:

Hello Simon,

My answers are below. You are welcome to post them anywhere and in any form.

So, my questions about what you had in mind when making the scores:
Did you weigh in slaughter and transportation to slaughter?

The scales are little more than judgment calls on my part, and when making these judgments I focused on the emotions I think they feel throughout their life. Slaughter happens only once and compared to the animals’ whole life happens quickly. If even if very painful, the pain ends quickly. For this reason slaughter probably didn’t affect the scales much, if at all. It is also the case that I have been to numerous processing facilities and thought they handled slaughter rather well, so I’ve never had much motivation to focus very much on it.

For the same reason (regarding layers) beak trimming only affects the scales much if it causes lasting pain (I looked into this but can’t remember what I decided at the time).

Things like gestation crates and the quasi-starvation of broiler breeders counted against hogs and broilers considerably because those are forms of suffering that lasts throughout most of the animals’ life (though because broilers breeders are a very small percentage of all broilers it didn’t affect the final score for breeders much).

Transportation? I’ve seen all kinds of animals transported and I have never been impressed with any of the livestock industries in this regard, so transportation probably reduced the scale for all animals about the same. But because that is such a small part of the animals’ life it doesn’t affect the final scores very much. If they were transported every month that would be a different story.

Are the scores for only those animals that survive to slaughter or did you weigh in also those who die for various reasons before slaughter?

I did consider mortality. The higher mortality rates reduced the scores for cage-free eggs relative to cage eggs.

Are the scores for kind of the “median” animal or did you weigh in that some animals may get e.g. malfunctioning stunning leading to slaughter while conscious, or experience the kind of abuse that makes headlines e.g. a case where employees impaled a pig with sharp objects seemingly for fun?

That’s hard to say, but I’d tend more towards the median than the worst cases. Back to the quasi-starvation of the broiler breeders, that was something that really bothered me but because their life is so different from the average or median broilers the final welfare scores weren’t much affected. And again, slaughter just didn’t really matter much because it was one brief moment in the animals’ lives.

Do the egg scores exclude male chicks being killed soon after hatching?

It did matter, though its hard for me to say how much. I know that it is possible that the male chicks hardly suffered at all: hatch, breathe a few breaths, and then a quick death. But, I wasn’t so sure that it was always a quick death–I know in at least some cases it is a slow painful death. Moreover, there is something about the practice of killing all the male chicks that just seems barbaric and is hard for me to swallow. Even if the male chicks never experienced a moment of pain it would count against eggs, even if I couldn’t explain exactly why.

I hope this helps. Those are great questions. Please reach out if you have any more.

Bailey

Simon, July 29, 2013:

Dear Prof. Norwood,

Thank you for your reply, very helpful, and thanks for letting me publish. I have four follow-up questions.

Re. broiler breeders, you replied: “Things like gestation crates and the quasi-starvation of broiler breeders counted against hogs and broilers considerably because those are forms of suffering that lasts throughout most of the animals’ life (though because broilers breeders are a very small percentage of all broilers it didn’t affect the final score for breeders much).” I don’t understand. You separated breeder and non-breeder animals when scoring so quasi-starvation of broiler breeders should affect the chicken meat breeder animal score but not the chicken meat non-breeder score, regardless of what percentage of broilers are breeders vs non-breeders, right? Was that the case for your scores?
Another thing about the chicken scores that I hadn’t noticed before: On the page before the table (228), it says “Breeder chickens are given a very low score (−7, better off dead); Bailey believes they suffer greatly from the feed restrictions.” I assume this refers to meat chicken breeder animals, not egg breeders. But this score in the text doesn’t mach the table on p. 229. In my copy of your book and on the book’s website the table says you estimate chicken meat welfare score of one breeder animal to minus four, not minus seven. Do you mean minus four or minus seven?
Re. the third question I posed, whether your scores were for the median animal or whether they weigh in unusually bad cases, I phrased it poorly. Other try: If you had the median animal in mind but I’m interested in more like an “average” type measure weighing together both typical and unusual cases, then it seems I should adjust down your welfare scores to some extent considering that some animals are e.g. slaughtered without stunning or played with to death using horrible torture (or one could adjust them up if one thinks the unusually good cases have more weight than the unusually bad in the “average”). So my question is if you had in mind a) the “median” animal, or b) made a rough “average” considering the typical but also the unusually bad cases?
Re. transportation, you replied that “because that is such a small part of the animals’ life it doesn’t affect the final scores very much. If they were transported every month that would be a different story.” But broiler chickens typically only live 1 to 2 months, so from the perspective of the broiler, it is in a sense transported to slaughter and slaughtered every or every second month. Is that reflected in your chicken meat scores? Another way to get at the same question: Imagine that a broiler chicken hypothetically

Lived 10 to 20 months instead of 1 to 2, all else equal.
Experienced the slaughter and transportation to slaughter every or every second month, in the same way actual broilers do, but survived and started as a newly hatched chicken again.
The periods between the transportations and slaughters were on the same welfare level as actual broilers during the 1 to 2 months before slaughter and transportation to slaughter. I.e. assume no trauma or injuries would persist from the transportations and slaughters to the next cycle.

That is, in this scenario the cycles would just repeat identically as the life of an actual broiler but several times over for a single individual. Would you give these hypothetical broilers a lower score than in your book (where you gave a 3 for non-breeder broilers)?

(Source of broiler life span: Compassion by the Pound p. 129, “A broiler’s life is short: most live less than two months. Depending on how the meat will be used the broilers are harvested at four to ten weeks of age.”)

Best / Simon

Bailey, July 29, 2013:

No problem. See answers in red below.

Dear Prof. Norwood,

Thank you for your reply, very helpful, and thanks for letting me publish. I have four follow-up questions.

Re. broiler breeders, you replied: “Things like gestation crates and the quasi-starvation of broiler breeders counted against hogs and broilers considerably because those are forms of suffering that lasts throughout most of the animals’ life (though because broilers breeders are a very small percentage of all broilers it didn’t affect the final score for breeders much).” I don’t understand. You separated breeder and non-breeder animals when scoring so quasi-starvation of broiler breeders should affect the chicken meat breeder animal score but not the chicken meat non-breeder score, regardless of what percentage of broilers are breeders vs non-breeders, right? Was that the case for your scores?

Yes, but both scores (for breeders and non-breeders) are used to determine the impact of eating a pound of chicken, as in the equation on page 235. Like, I can eat half a broiler in one sitting, so that eating experience is responsible for half of the negative and positive emotions experienced by the non-breeder. But that chicken I ate could not have existed without the breeder, so eating half a chicken is responsible for some of the misery of the breeder bird, but only a very small portion as one breeder can produce many offspring. Again, see the EEAT Score on page 235 if that is hard to understand.

Another thing about the chicken scores that I hadn’t noticed before: On the page before the table (228), it says “Breeder chickens are given a very low score (−7, better off dead); Bailey believes they suffer greatly from the feed restrictions.” I assume this refers to meat chicken breeder animals, not egg breeders. But this score in the text doesn’t mach the table on p. 229. In my copy of your book and on the book’s websitethe table says you estimate chicken meat welfare score of one breeder animal to minus four, not minus seven. Do you mean minus four or minus seven?

-4 is supposed to be the correct number, so when it says -7 it should say -4 on page 228. There are many such errors throughout this book.

Re. the third question I posed, whether your scores were for the median animal or whether they weigh in unusually bad cases, I phrased it poorly. Other try: If you had the median animal in mind but I’m interested in more like an “average” type measure weighing together both typical and unusual cases, then it seems I should adjust down your welfare scores to some extent considering that some animals are e.g. slaughtered without stunning or played with to death using horrible torture (or one could adjust them up if one thinks the unusually good cases have more weight than the unusually bad in the “average”). So my question is if you had in mind a) the “median” animal, or b) made a rough “average” considering the typical but also the unusually bad cases?

Definitely tried to make it the average, not the median. I tried to make the score such that any suffering or any positive emotions felt by only a few animals would change the scales. But of course, because I use whole numbers (because they are simply my judgment calls using decimals seemed silly) it may be the numbers unintentionally represent the median better than the average. It is hard to do all the calculations in your head for an average, but easy for the median. I know that doesn’t answer your question well. All I can say is what I intended (the average) and what actually resulted (might be median or average).

Re. transportation, you replied that “because that is such a small part of the animals’ life it doesn’t affect the final scores very much. If they were transported every month that would be a different story.” But broiler chickens typically only live 1 to 2 months, so from the perspective of the broiler, it is in a sense transported to slaughter and slaughtered every or every second month. Is that reflected in your chicken meat scores? Another way to get at the same question: Imagine that a broiler chicken hypothetically

Lived 10 to 20 months instead of 1 to 2, all else equal.
Experienced the slaughter and transportation to slaughter every or every second month, in the same way actual broilers do, but survived and started as a newly hatched chicken again.
The periods between the transportations and slaughters were on the same welfare level as actual broilers during the 1 to 2 months before slaughter and transportation to slaughter. I.e. assume no trauma or injuries would persist from the transportations and slaughters to the next cycle.

Yes, I did take into account the number of times they were transported relatively to their lifespan. It is hard for me to say exactly how much it influenced the scores, because they are just my judgment calls, but it is something I tried to account for, and something I definitely thought of.