Hi @taus thanks for your comments. The methodology is still a work in progress. I made a start by looking at how human life has been valued. These values are reasonably subjective with quite a range of values. For this video I used the environmental protection agency values. Then I needed to find a way to calculate the value of the life of an animal. I could not assume the same value as that of a human so I investigated adjusting for intelligence and life expectancy. Valuing a life based on intelligence certainly does not sound perfect but the potential of a higher intelligence cannot be dismissed, so for now I will run with that. Life expectancy was simple to obtain and work with, intelligence not so. I experimented with the encephalization quotient. It can be argued that it is not that accurate and a perfect example are pigs. They have a small brain weight to body weight ratio. At this point in time I cannot find a better approach of determining intelligence. Overall, I think value of life of each animal is somewhere close in relation to human life. I think based on my calculations a human life is worth almost 50 times that of a cow's.
Valuing cruelty is even more difficult. Is to live and suffer worse than dying? I have assumed dying as the ultimate worse case scenario. Think of it like comparing a life prison sentence with a death sentence. Many activists would argue differently. For the sake of this first experiment I have assumed a life in captivity to be worth half a life of freedom. I agree this number is rather arbitrary but I did not want to appear to be padding the numbers at this stage. As I progress further with my research I will be able to provide evidence to support a final number. The next part of multiplying by the life expectancy in captivity was reasonable intuitive. The longer an animal is alive in captivity the longer the suffering.
At the moment I am leaning away from linking suffering to the value of life of each animal as I might be understating the cost of cruelty. There are many more factors influencing pain and suffering tolerance than intelligence. This is something I plan to revisit.
Anyway, the general gist of the video was to point out that not all costs are factored into the price of meat and if they were, the costs would be ridiculous. People are blinded and do not see the costs from all angles, especially from the perspective of the animals that are killed for the meal.
RE: Vegan Story Video 2