Decades of research on farm animal cognition, emotion, and sentience have profoundly changed our understanding of what these animals experience — with significant implications for how we should treat them.
Farm animals are not simple stimulus-response machines — they have social bonds, emotional states, preferences, fears, and capacities for suffering that go far beyond physical pain. A cow separated from her calf is not merely inconvenienced — she may vocalise and search for days. A socially isolated pig experiences measurable psychological distress. The science demands a more expansive welfare concern.