Future Animal Welfare Challenges: Preparing for What's Coming

Anticipating emerging animal welfare challenges enables proactive rather than reactive welfare governance, avoiding the lock-in of poor practices.

Key Facts

Insect farming at trillion scale will be the defining welfare challenge of the next decade
Climate change will create new and intensified welfare challenges for wild and farmed animals
Alternative protein technologies will transform food systems with welfare implications across supply chains
Gene editing creates both welfare opportunities and welfare risks requiring regulatory attention
AI monitoring of animal welfare creates both data privacy and welfare quality assessment opportunities

Welfare Considerations

Proactive welfare governance that anticipates emerging challenges creates conditions for better outcomes than reactive approaches that address problems after practices become entrenched. Insect farming welfare, climate adaptation, alternative protein impacts, and gene editing governance all require welfare frameworks before practices scale rather than after. Building welfare consideration into emerging industry governance from the start is far more effective than retrofitting welfare after scale-up.

What You Can Do

Engage with emerging animal welfare policy areas including insect farming and gene editing
Support organizations anticipating and preparing for future welfare challenges
Advocate for welfare assessment to be required in novel food and biotechnology approval processes
Donate to research into emerging welfare challenges across new and scaling industries