Summary

Swap out regular (factory-farmed) eggs with good (humane, positive welfare) ones; generate an “egg offset” for doing so and sell offsets to people who care about animal welfare.

Suggested by Paul Christiano: https://sideways-view.com/2021/03/21/robust-egg-offsetting/

MVP

You need 3 parties to buy in:

1. Someone who produces good eggs
   1. Vital Farms? — hard to negotiate with, but you could buy directly out of Whole Foods and pay retail prices, to start. Also some verification problems
   2. The farms that sell to Vital Farms?
2. Someone who uses good eggs instead of regular ones, and forgoes the credit
   1. Relabel good eggs as regular ones (Paul’s proposal) — could be at wholesale level? egg packaging level? or Whole Foods
      1. Hardest to negotiate with, but best replaceability argument
   2. Restaurants/bakeries who are currently using regular eggs
   3. Individuals who are currently using regular eggs? Easiest to start with but not many offsets available
3. Someone who wants to buy the offsets
   1. Individual EA folks?
   2. ?

Numbers

• 1 dozen eggs from Vital Farms at Whole Foods costs $10. So ballpark, $1/egg
• 1 dozen large eggs at wholesale prices is like $3-$4?
• A US citizen goes through ~280 eggs a year. Ballpark 1 egg a day
  • https://www.statista.com/statistics/183678/per-capita-consumption-of-eggs-in-the-us-since-2000/
• One bakery goes through ~1000 eggs a week
• Egg usage in the US, https://unitedegg.com/facts-stats/

Other thoughts

• “Happy egg credits” would be particularly good for an impact cert/prize structure, because verification of impact is much easier, compared to xrisk-reduction. Could encourage other people to sign up with their ideas for providing egg offset certs.
• Could create a direct-to-consumer brand, or certification for this
  • Restaurants could be motivated to get the “Happy Hen seal of approval”, which we then market in SF and encourage EA folks to order from them
    • Extension from Justin on LW: “Or, imagine if this were a service available to restaurants such that they could have an option on menu items: +$1 for ethically sourced eggs. Now, the service is transparent for them (maybe integrate with a payment provider willing to facilitate the network for free marketing) and they don't have to deal with buying two sets of eggs or taking supply risks.”