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This spreadsheet is part of ACE’s 2025 evaluation of Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira and contains our cost-effectiveness analysis of one of their programs. Because this type of analysis has inherent limitations, the results should be interpreted with caution. Where we felt we could make reasonable and defensible assumptions, we included them in our analysis. However, when estimates would have required less justifiable assumptions that could lead to dramatically different results, we chose not to include them.

This approach reflects one of ACE’s guiding principles: to follow a rigorous process grounded in logical reasoning and empirical evidence. While speculative guesses can sometimes be useful as thought experiments, we did not consider them a sound basis for charity evaluations.

We also attempted to independently verify many of the values in this spreadsheet, particularly when estimates were provided by the charity. In cases where we encountered differing credible sources, we adjusted our estimates to fall between the upper and lower bounds.

"SADs averted per dollar"
To facilitate comparisons across interventions, we aimed to express cost-effectiveness estimates in terms of animal suffering averted per dollar. We adapted Ambitious Impact's Suffering-Adjusted Days (SADs) metric, which roughly represents the number of days of intense pain experienced by an animal, adjusted for:
- Suffering intensity
- Likelihood of sentience of the species
- Welfare range (i.e., relative capacity for suffering and pleasure, following Rethink Priorities’ ‘Welfare Ranges’ report)

Please note that we use our own 2025 SADs values, which are not directly comparable with 2024 SADs values or SADs from other organizations. The spreadsheet containing our calculations are available upon request.

If readers have any questions or comments, please contact ACE's Evaluations Manager, Vincent Mak: vincent.mak@animalcharityevaluators.org
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Limitations
This analysis only includes meals replaced through Meatless Mondays. It doesn’t include meals replaced through incorporating veg*n options.

Next, it only includes meals replaced by institutions that started the program in 2024, the costs of the work for those achievements in 2024 and before, as well as estimated future costs needed to support this program. It excludes impacts (and costs adding up to 25% of the total program cost) of supporting institutions that have previously implemented the program but that SVB are still working with to expand their programs (e.g., by providing technical support, recipe adaptation, and educational resources).

Finally, it only includes direct short-term impacts in terms of animal-based meals replaced, excluding more indirect or secondary impacts such as normalizing plant-based diets and exposing diverse populations—often with limited food choices—to healthier and more sustainable meals, and helping position plant-based meals as viable public policy solutions for food insecurity and environmental goals, increasing political and institutional support.

Our estimates of animals spared and SADs averted rely on ACE’s figures for animals spared per meal replaced and SADs averted per meal replaced, both of which have additional limitations:
- They are based on Brazil consumption data covering major animal products but excludes dairy, fish oil, shrimp paste, and other byproducts (likely making them underestimates).
- SADs are only available for a few species, so we created averages for broader animal groups (e.g., farmed mammals, fishes, shrimps) based on global production, which may not reflect the species consumed in the U.S.
- The production data used to construct these averages are from 2017–2018, which may not accurately represent current conditions (likely making them underestimates).

Most importantly, we think 2024 results are not fully representative of this program's cost-effectiveness and is likely to be an underestimate. For example, SVB replaced 11x to 12x more meals in 2023 compared to 2024, and there is reason to believe that this number may be even higher in 2026 if considering expansions to existing institutions.
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