This is a very elegant idea, but I am doubtful about whether it will work.
Suppose humane egg producers switch over to doing this. Initially, I bet few people will buy the certificates, because they’ll be new and unfamiliar and most people mostly default to not doing new things. So, to whatever extent raising chickens humanely is more expensive than raising them inhumanely, the humane egg producers will only be able to afford to do what they do if the certificates are really expensive. Which will mean that few people buy the certificates even once everyone knows about them. Which probably means that the system doesn’t work.
So, to make it work, there shouldn’t be that sort of sudden switchover. Instead, humane egg producers start selling some of their eggs on the generic-egg market and procuring certificates for those. Now the certificates are not only new and little-heard-of, they aren’t even the main way the humane egg producers are making money. So not many will get sold, so either again they’re super-expensive and demand is low or the humane egg producers continue mostly selling their eggs separately rather than commingling them with everyone else’s and getting certificates.
Maybe a bigger problem is that I suspect many many people who currently buy humanely-produced eggs will not be satisfied with offsets. Imagine that (for the same cost) you can buy (1) an egg that was probably produced inhumanely, plus a thing that is somehow supposed to indicate that you’ve arranged for another egg to be produced humanely instead of inhumanely … or (2) an egg that you know was produced humanely. If you’re an explicitly-calculating utilitarian who trusts Economics 101, then #1 is just as good as #2. Most people aren’t. I’m an explicitly-calculating utilitarian who’s generally pretty positive about economics, and I would prefer #2, because with #1 there is extra uncertainty about whether the certificate-issuing process is careful enough, whether the economic incentives really work out to have the effects they’re alleged to, etc. Even if you’re confident that those things work out OK, #2 just feels more as if you’re doing good than #1 does, don’t you think?, and for a lot of people that will make a big difference.
People who currently buy humanely-produced eggs usually also buy non-humanely-produced eggs because those are ingridients in various other products they buy.
You’re suggesting that even though (as my last paragraph argues) those persons would prefer to buy individually-humanely-produced eggs, there are situations where that isn’t a realistic option and they would buy inhumaneness-offset certificates as the best available alternative? Maybe. I still can’t see that being terribly popular, though. Would they go out for a meal, get home, make an estimate of how many eggs were used in the production of the meal, and go and transfer $5.50 to Humane Egg Offsets, Inc.? I mean, maybe they would but I’m guessing that would be rare. More likely is that they estimate how many eggs they consume “indirectly” and make a donation once a year, or something like that. But then the direct association between consuming inhumanely-produced eggs and buying offsets isn’t there, which means the system is less responsive to changes in how many eggs people consume, which seems like it makes it work less well.
How many people buy carbon offsets when they do polluting things, and make any sort of serious effort to match their offset-buying to their polluting activities? (I don’t know how good an analogy this actually is; my guess is that carbon offsets are less demonstrably effective offsets than these inhuman-egg offsets are intended to be. But they are a thing, and my impression is that to an excellent first-order approximation no individuals buy them, and that seems like it’s relevant.)
For example, carbon offset vendors offer direct purchase of carbon offsets, often also offering other services such as designating a carbon offset project to support or measuring a purchaser’s carbon footprint. In 2016, about $191.3 million of carbon offsets were purchased in the voluntary market, representing about 63.4 million metric tons of CO2e. In 2018 and 2019 the voluntary carbon market transacted 98 and 104 million metric tons of CO2e respectively.
Aren’t those $191.3M of carbon offsets almost all being purchased by businesses that do directly CO2-emitting things? That’s my impression, though I don’t have any actual numbers to back it up or anything. The equivalent of the inhumane-egg-production offsets being proposed here would be carbon offsets bought by consumers.
(Also, although 100M tons of CO2-equivalent sounds like a lot, that’s about 1⁄500 of total annual emissions.)
This is a very elegant idea, but I am doubtful about whether it will work.
Suppose humane egg producers switch over to doing this. Initially, I bet few people will buy the certificates, because they’ll be new and unfamiliar and most people mostly default to not doing new things. So, to whatever extent raising chickens humanely is more expensive than raising them inhumanely, the humane egg producers will only be able to afford to do what they do if the certificates are really expensive. Which will mean that few people buy the certificates even once everyone knows about them. Which probably means that the system doesn’t work.
So, to make it work, there shouldn’t be that sort of sudden switchover. Instead, humane egg producers start selling some of their eggs on the generic-egg market and procuring certificates for those. Now the certificates are not only new and little-heard-of, they aren’t even the main way the humane egg producers are making money. So not many will get sold, so either again they’re super-expensive and demand is low or the humane egg producers continue mostly selling their eggs separately rather than commingling them with everyone else’s and getting certificates.
Maybe a bigger problem is that I suspect many many people who currently buy humanely-produced eggs will not be satisfied with offsets. Imagine that (for the same cost) you can buy (1) an egg that was probably produced inhumanely, plus a thing that is somehow supposed to indicate that you’ve arranged for another egg to be produced humanely instead of inhumanely … or (2) an egg that you know was produced humanely. If you’re an explicitly-calculating utilitarian who trusts Economics 101, then #1 is just as good as #2. Most people aren’t. I’m an explicitly-calculating utilitarian who’s generally pretty positive about economics, and I would prefer #2, because with #1 there is extra uncertainty about whether the certificate-issuing process is careful enough, whether the economic incentives really work out to have the effects they’re alleged to, etc. Even if you’re confident that those things work out OK, #2 just feels more as if you’re doing good than #1 does, don’t you think?, and for a lot of people that will make a big difference.
People who currently buy humanely-produced eggs usually also buy non-humanely-produced eggs because those are ingridients in various other products they buy.
You’re suggesting that even though (as my last paragraph argues) those persons would prefer to buy individually-humanely-produced eggs, there are situations where that isn’t a realistic option and they would buy inhumaneness-offset certificates as the best available alternative? Maybe. I still can’t see that being terribly popular, though. Would they go out for a meal, get home, make an estimate of how many eggs were used in the production of the meal, and go and transfer $5.50 to Humane Egg Offsets, Inc.? I mean, maybe they would but I’m guessing that would be rare. More likely is that they estimate how many eggs they consume “indirectly” and make a donation once a year, or something like that. But then the direct association between consuming inhumanely-produced eggs and buying offsets isn’t there, which means the system is less responsive to changes in how many eggs people consume, which seems like it makes it work less well.
How many people buy carbon offsets when they do polluting things, and make any sort of serious effort to match their offset-buying to their polluting activities? (I don’t know how good an analogy this actually is; my guess is that carbon offsets are less demonstrably effective offsets than these inhuman-egg offsets are intended to be. But they are a thing, and my impression is that to an excellent first-order approximation no individuals buy them, and that seems like it’s relevant.)
Yes, people would likely do bulk offsets and not buy them day by day. At something like 4$ per dozen eggs few single meals would amount to $5.50.
According to Wikipedia:
Aren’t those $191.3M of carbon offsets almost all being purchased by businesses that do directly CO2-emitting things? That’s my impression, though I don’t have any actual numbers to back it up or anything. The equivalent of the inhumane-egg-production offsets being proposed here would be carbon offsets bought by consumers.
(Also, although 100M tons of CO2-equivalent sounds like a lot, that’s about 1⁄500 of total annual emissions.)