Farmed animal welfare
How can we most improve the wellbeing of farmed land animals?
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.
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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.
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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.
