High-impact causes we recommend supportingAnimal welfareAdvocating for farmed animals

Advocating for farmed animals

There are roughly 31 billion animals currently in factory farms, suffering immensely from practices designed to maximise production at almost any cost to the animals' welfare. They live in highly confined spaces and have been selectively bred to produce as much meat, milk, or eggs as possible — causing severe suffering through both acute and chronic health conditions.

In recent years, some animal advocacy organisations have improved the welfare standards on factory farms by:

  • Securing commitments from companies to change their farming practices — such as banning the use of battery cages for egg-laying hens. Even if only half of the companies who made these commitments stuck to them, billions of animals' lives would be improved.
  • Enshrining improved animal welfare standards in law.

This page focuses on improving the welfare of animals living in farms (including invertebrates and fish). See our page on reducing demand for animal products for an alternative approach to addressing the problem of farmed animal suffering.

Why is improving farmed animal welfare important?

We think improving farmed animal welfare is a high-priority cause because its scale is so massive and recent successes indicate that we can make immense progress with further resources. While funding has increased significantly in recent years, this cause is still very neglected relative to its scale.

What is the scale of farmed animal suffering?

We can consider the scale of farmed animal suffering using three factors:

  • The number of animals affected
  • The capacity they have to suffer
  • The amount of suffering they endure

Numbers of farmed animals

The numbers of farmed animals vary a lot depending on the animals. Farmed fish, chickens, and invertebrates make up the vast majority of farmed animals.1

Figure

Estimated number of animals slaughtered annually

Of all farmed animals, it is estimated that:

Farmed animals' capacity for suffering

When we think other beings are suffering, we want to help. All sentient beings can suffer — but are farmed animals sentient?

It's widely accepted by experts in neuroscience (and related disciplines) that mammals and birds are sentient, and thus have the capacity to suffer.3 Fish sentience has been studied less, but evidence suggests they are comparably sentient, as they show many similarities in neurology and behaviour.4

The situation for invertebrates is more complicated. The category of invertebrate includes a vast range of animals with large differences in the complexity of their brains and nervous systems. Given the lack of available evidence, and the difficulty of understanding the subjective experience of others, it's difficult to draw conclusions. That said, the number of animals affected is so large that it may make sense to use the precautionary principle, and assume that those animals have some level of sentience until proven otherwise.5 This is especially true as new evidence continues to emerge for sentient-like behaviours in some invertebrates.

Suffering on factory farms

Undercover investigations into factory farms have revealed the horrific suffering that animals endure when raised in intensive systems. Chickens raised for meat have been bred to grow very quickly, which increases the risk of bone fractures, as they cannot support their own weight. They are kept in overcrowded conditions that are rarely kept clean, and the resulting ammonia buildup can cause lesions and respiratory issues.

The situation is similar for egg-laying hens. They have been bred to produce large numbers of eggs, which depletes their calcium levels and can lead to brittle bones. Their beaks are trimmed to prevent them from pecking other birds. If they are confined in battery cages, they have space smaller than a sheet of A4 printer paper — not even enough to spread their wings.

Fish welfare is poorly understood, as there is less available welfare science. Fish are also a very broad category of animals, and their welfare needs vary substantially depending on the species. That said, there are some common issues in aquaculture farms including overcrowding, poor dissolved oxygen levels, and suppression of natural behaviours such as migration.

These are only some examples to illustrate the types of suffering experienced in factory farms.

Is improving farmed animal welfare neglected?

Compared to other animal cause areas (such as shelters), funding for farmed animals (including both welfare reform and reducing animal product consumption) is much lower — especially when we consider this funding relative to the astonishing number of farmed animals.

Based on estimates using US data from 2015, 99.6% of domesticated land animals used by humans are farmed animals, yet organisations working specifically on farmed animals receive 0.8% of funding going to animal cause areas. However, this may have changed in recent years, given that improving welfare for farmed animals has been a rapidly expanding cause — recent estimates have found around $170 million USD is spent globally each year.

Figure

Animal Charity Evaluators' comparison of the scale versus spending for different groups of animals in the US.

In particular, regions outside of the US and Western Europe receive disproportionately little funding compared to the number of animals farmed there.

Figure

Founders Pledge's estimate of the number of current spending on animal advocacy.

When compared with other cause areas, such as global health and development, funding for farmed animals is at least 130 times less — in 2019, state funding alone for global health was $22.4 billion USD.

Is improving farmed animal welfare tractable?

Making improvements to farmed animal welfare appears to be tractable for some animal groups, through efforts targeting companies and legal reform.6 However, there is some doubt about how many companies will follow through on their commitments to improve animal welfare.

Little work has been done on invertebrate farmed animal welfare so far, and so the tractability of those efforts is much less certain.

What are potential solutions to improve farmed animal welfare?

To date, there have been two main approaches to improving farmed animal welfare:

  1. Securing commitments from companies to improve their welfare practices
  2. Improving the legal standards of welfare protection.

(For approaches aimed at reducing demand for animal products, see here.)

Corporate campaigns

Over the last 10 years, animal advocacy groups have successfully campaigned to secure higher welfare commitments from companies in the food supply chain. Typically, this involves a company committing to changing their business practice by a certain date — for example, they might commit to only sourcing eggs from cage-free farms by 2025.

This approach started with a focus on ending the use of cages for egg-laying hens, followed by breed requirements and environmental improvements for chickens raised for meat. It has been estimated that corporate campaigns so far have affected 9 to 120 years of chicken life per USD spent.

More recently, some initial work has been done on farmed fish.

Lobbying for legal reforms

There are a few examples of legal reform work resulting in improvements to farmed animal welfare. In the US, these have happened at the state level, most notably with Proposition 2 and Proposition 12 in California, which legally require that farms provide enough space for caged animals to be able to turn around and stretch their limbs. Most successes have taken place in states that allow ballot initiatives, in which petitions with enough signatures can be put forward for vote by the electorate.

While this approach is more challenging than securing corporate commitments, enshrining welfare standards in law is likely to be more future-proof. This is because farming practices resulting in poor welfare emerged because they maximise profitability, so it's possible that the industry could return to poorer welfare conditions without continued pressure from animal advocacy organisations — legal reform makes this much more difficult.

Why might you not prioritise improving farmed animal welfare?

You are uncertain whether companies will follow through on their commitments

The vast majority of cage-free commitments made by companies are due to come into effect by 2025. This means that the impact of the campaign work will only be realised if companies follow through on those commitments.

After evidence emerged that some companies were not upholding their commitment, some charities have pivoted to focusing on compliance work to address this. There are some indications that the egg industry does not expect that they will be fully cage-free by 2025. This reinforces the importance of pursuing legal change, as that would likely have a higher level of compliance.

You believe we should focus on ending farmed animal suffering, not reducing it

The welfare improvements for egg-laying hens and chickens raised for meat will improve the lives of future animals raised in those systems at a very low cost per animal. But the lives of those animals will still be very undesirable and full of suffering. It's not yet known whether the animal agriculture industry will accept further campaigns to make new improvements, or whether such improvements will affect the demand and supply of animal products.7

You may conclude from this that focusing on ending the use of farmed animals rather than improving their welfare is a better long-term goal. For more information on this, see our cause area page on reducing consumption of animal products.

You may have other reasons not to prioritise animal welfare in general, which we briefly discuss in our cause area profile on improving animal welfare.

What are some charities, organisations, and funds working to improve farmed animal welfare?

You can donate to several promising programs working in this area via our donation platform. For our charity and fund recommendations, see our best charities page.

How else can you help?

Charities working on corporate and legal campaigns often utilise their volunteer base to apply pressure or spread awareness of the campaigns on social media. In particular, The Humane League has a volunteer network called the Fast Action Network that we would recommend signing up for. You could also contact any of the charities above working in your area to see how you could support their work.

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Our research

This page was written by Jamie Spurgeon. You can read our research notes to learn more about the work that went into this page.

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