Applying economic frameworks to animal welfare quantifies the scale of suffering and identifies the most cost-effective interventions. This approach underpins effective animal advocacy.
Welfare economics applied to animals reveals that the scale of animal suffering is almost incomprehensibly large, and that relatively small amounts of money can prevent enormous quantities of suffering. This has profound implications for how we prioritise charitable giving and advocacy. The most cost-effective interventions tend to be corporate campaigns affecting many animals, policy changes in high-consumption countries, and research that improves farmed animal conditions at scale. Individual behaviour change is valuable but less leveraged than systemic interventions.