People working to improve animal welfare — as professionals, volunteers, or advocates — face high rates of compassion fatigue and burnout. Sustaining effective advocacy requires attending to human wellbeing too.
The suffering of animal welfare workers is real and documented. Moral injury from repeated exposure to preventable suffering, or from participating in legal killing of healthy animals, requires active support. Healthy advocates are more effective advocates — creating structures that sustain people in this work is itself a welfare intervention.