Farmed animal welfareHow can we most improve the wellbeing of farmed land animals?
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This profile is tailored towards students studying agricultural science, biological sciences, economics, law, political science and sociology, however we expect there to be valuable open research questions that could be pursued by students in other disciplines.
Why is this a pressing problem?
Over 70 billion land animals (more than 9 times the global population of humans) are killed every year for food.
This number doesn’t include animals killed in the egg and dairy industries, where billions more animals are killed each year – for example during chick culling or when their profitability declines. Even in countries with welfare laws relating to slaughter, methods can be highly distressing and error-prone, leading to slow and sometimes agonising deaths.
While this is a major cause of suffering in itself, the severe suffering of farmed animals does not begin at slaughter. The vast majority of farmed animals spend their lives in extreme confinement; the Sentience Institute estimates that in 2019, 99% of all farmed animals in the US were raised on factory farms. Animals on these farms are particularly likely to experience untreated injuries, chronic infections, separation from their offspring and other severe constraints on their natural behaviours.
These conditions also pose risks to humans. Poor conditions lead to a higher prevalence of disease among farm animals, which in turn increases the likelihood of pathogens passing from animals to humans and causing pandemics. Unhealthy animals require more antibiotics, potentially contributing to rising antimicrobial resistance in humans (although more research is needed to establish the size of this effect). Antimicrobial resistant infections in humans were directly responsible for the deaths of 1.27 million people in 2019 and implicated in the deaths of millions more.
The animal agricultural sector is responsible for about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. It also causes land degradation, increases water shortage problems and reduces biodiversity. Growing crops to feed them to farm animals rather than growing crops directly for human consumption is also vastly inefficient. By 2050, there will be nearly 10 billion people in the world to feed, and demand for animal products is expected to rise significantly. To produce enough food by 2050, we will need a more efficient system.
The scale of animal suffering within the animal agriculture industry is huge, and further research is needed on how to improve farmed animal welfare as effectively as possible. There are many other ways that research could improve animals’ lives; see the ‘related research directions’ listed at the end of this profile to learn more.
See the talk below for an introduction to the importance of this area, or read a transcript of the talk here.
Explore existing research
- Grandin, Temple (2018) Welfare Problems in Cattle, Pigs, and Sheep That Persist Even Though Scientific Research Clearly Shows How to Prevent Them, Animals
- Rowe, Elizabeth & Siobhan Mullan (2022) Advancing a ‘Good Life’ for Farm Animals: Development of Resource Tier Frameworks for On-Farm Assessment of Positive Welfare for Beef Cattle, Broiler Chicken and Pigs, Animals
- Norwood, F. Bailey & Jayson L. Lusk (2011) Compassion, by the Pound: The Economics of Farm Animal Welfare, Oxford University Press
- Animal Ask: researches the expected impact of corporate campaigns or public policy for improving animal welfare.
- Rethink Priorities: produces research on opportunities for – and cost effectiveness of – farmed animal interventions.
- Animal Welfare Foundation: funds veterinary research into diagnostics and treatments for farm animals.
- The Humane League: conducts research into animal welfare, as well as on advocacy, diet-change and plant-based alternatives.
- Humane Society International: conducts research on animal welfare, and the human and environmental costs of animal agriculture.
- Faunalytics: produces research on animal welfare and advocacy as well as research summaries of papers in this area.
- Mercy for Animals: carries out research into animal welfare, effective messaging and protein alternatives to inform advocacy.
To learn about animal welfare law specifically you could explore:
- The Animal Law Fundamentals, a series of presentations and papers from the Brooks Institute.
- The Coller Animal Law Forum, a database of laws and policies that impact farmed animals globally.
- The Animal Legal and Historical Center, a repository of information about animal law.
Find a thesis topic
If you’re interested in working on this research direction, below are some ideas on what would be valuable to explore further. If you want help refining your research ideas, apply for our coaching!
Animal Ask suggests exploring the willingness of stakeholders in the animal agriculture industry to adopt welfare improvements (here is an example of similar research) and carrying out qualitative research on different stakeholders’ perspectives on animal welfare and the reasons for these differences (an example of relevant research is here).
The Global Priorities Institute (a research institute conducting foundational research on how to do the most good) suggests some questions in their 2020 research agenda.
As well as trying to improve the wellbeing of animals as they currently are, another possibility is editing the genes of livestock to decrease their susceptibility to pain and stress. See the research papers below for an introduction.
- Shriver, A., Knocking Out Pain in Livestock: Can Technology Succeed Where Morality has Stalled?
- Shriver, A., and McConnachie, E., Genetically Modifying Livestock for Improved Welfare: A Path Forward
The Tiny Beam Fund suggests these directions for research on farmed animal welfare (collected from experts in this area) and also offers funding to students who are at an advanced stage in their PhDs.
More work in animal welfare science is needed to understand how best to improve farmed animals’ experiences.
You could investigate different methods for evaluating farmed animal welfare, either by applying existing metrics to new contexts, or by trying to develop new metrics. You could also study the strength of preferences that farmed animals of different species have for different welfare improvements. There are a variety of other indicators you could use to research the welfare effects of improvements, including operant tests, growth rates, and primary biological indicators including adrenal activity and cortisol. See this report from Animal Ask for more detail.
Another possibility is editing the genes of livestock to decrease their susceptibility to pain and stress, or to improve their welfare in other ways. See the research papers below for an introduction.
- Shriver, A., Knocking Out Pain in Livestock: Can Technology Succeed Where Morality has Stalled?
- Shriver, A., and McConnachie, E., Genetically Modifying Livestock for Improved Welfare: A Path Forward
The Global Priorities Institute (a research institute conducting foundational research on how to do the most good) suggests some questions in their 2020 research agenda.
- ‘To what extent, and on what scales, do various shocks to supply and demand (e.g. increased levels of vegetarianism/veganism, bans on battery cages) affect the number of animals farmed for food (in total and/or under given welfare conditions)?’
- ‘Economic models typically represent animal welfare, if at all, only to the extent that it is represented in human preferences. Can we develop a rigorous economic model that embraces anti-speciesism, and work through how much difference this makes to the important conclusions such models are used to support, for example within agricultural economics?’
Animal Ask suggests questions could also explore the impact of taxation and subsidy policies on demand for animal products (see this report for potential research questions), and the effect of undercover investigations or corporate campaigns on market capitalisation of firms.
Below are some ideas from the Legal Priorities Project’s research agenda. The Legal Priorities Project is a research organisation focused on conducting legal research to help solve the world’s most pressing problems. See the section on animal law in their agenda for more ideas and further reading.
- ‘What legal mechanisms, including regulations by government agencies, statutes, constitutional provisions, and treaties, have the biggest positive impact on animals and why? How can successes in these areas in certain countries be replicated in other countries (see, e.g., Stilt, 2018), and how can shortcomings be overcome (see, e.g., Blattner, 2019a)?’
- ‘Animal cruelty laws have existed for centuries (see, e.g., Massachusetts Body of Liberties, 1641) and continue to represent some of the animal-related laws with which the public is most familiar in many countries. Yet they tend to be enforced disproportionately in settings in which animal suffering is comparatively mild and in which costs for defendants are disproportionately high (e.g., Marceau, 2019). Theorizing about and designing more effective animal cruelty laws can help focus enforcement where the potential benefits are highest. For instance, such laws could criminalize particularly cruel food-production methods like gestation crates and battery cages.’
- ‘How can we increase representation for nonhuman animals in human-administered political systems? One option is to increase informal representation of animals, for instance by including animals in impact assessments (see Stawasz, 2020) or by creating public assemblies that can advise the state on matters concerning animals. Another option is to establish formal representation for animals, for instance by creating a legislative house to represent the interests of animals (as well as other non-voting stakeholders), and by creating mechanisms to ensure that this house does this work faithfully. Legal research could develop, evaluate, and, possibly, implement these or other options for representing animals (Cochrane, 2018).’
You could also explore these ideas:
- Researching the right to rescue farm animals from extreme suffering.
- Contributing to the legislation for a specific political group (e.g. for the Netherlands’ Party for the Animals).
- Researching false advertising and animal agriculture – e.g. conducting a survey on what people think ‘natural’ or ‘humane’ means and what the courts have said about these kinds of issues in the past. If you’re interested in exploring this further, see this talk for a closer look at false advertising lawsuits as a way of advancing animal welfare.
The Tiny Beam Fund suggests these directions for research on farmed animal welfare (collected from experts in the area) and also offers funding to students who are at an advanced stage in their PhDs.
Animal Ask suggests investigating base rates of success for lobbying for welfare reforms and other forms of political influence in different countries. This could help animal advocates to prioritise interventions. Looking at counterfactual timelines – e.g. trying to ascertain the extent to which lobbying speeds up welfare reforms – could also be useful.
The Tiny Beam Fund suggests these directions for research on farmed animal welfare (collected from experts in this area) and also offers funding to students working who are at an advanced stage in their PhDs.
Research could use surveys, interviews, case studies, focus groups and literature reviews to better understand how different stakeholders and cultures view animal welfare and what the barriers and opportunities are connected with implementing high animal welfare practices.
For example, Animal Ask suggests exploring the willingness of stakeholders in the animal agriculture industry to adopt welfare improvements (here is an example of similar research) and doing qualitative research on different stakeholders’ perspectives on animal welfare and the reasons for these differences (an example of relevant research is here).
The Tiny Beam Fund suggests these directions for research on farmed animal welfare (collected from experts in this area) and also offers funding to students working who are at an advanced stage in their PhDs.
Further resources
Effective animal advocacy resources from Rethink Priorities links to many suggestions for further reading, research repositories, blogs, conferences and more that can help you get started in this area.
Summer schools and fellowships
- The International Farm Animal Welfare Fellowship is a fellowship program that offers mentorship, support and connections in the field to individuals who want to improve the welfare of farm animals in China.
Find supervision, mentorship and collaboration
Apply for our coaching and we can connect you with researchers already working in this space, who can help you refine your research ideas. You can also apply to join our community if you’re interested in meeting other students working on this research direction.
Apply for our database of potential supervisors if you’re looking for formal supervision and take a look at our advice on finding a great supervisor for further ideas.
Once you’ve clarified your area of interest (for example, if you’re interested in working on the welfare of a particular species), we suggest you identify supervisors and universities known in that area. Finding out which universities publish the most animal welfare related research, as shown in this paper, could also help you get started.
Our funding database can help you find potential sources of funding if you’re a PhD student interested in this research direction.
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If you’re interested in other research directions that could help farmed animals, take a look at our profiles focused on increasing the appeal of alternative proteins, changing attitudes towards animals and developing alternative proteins.
Contributors
This profile was last updated 16/12/2022. Thanks to Courtney Dillard, Chen Maria, Saulius Simcikas and George Bridgwater for contributions to the profile. All errors remain our own. Learn more about how we create our profiles.
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