Investors can incorporate animal welfare into their investment decisions through ESG criteria, impact investing, and shareholder engagement with food companies.
Investment capital shapes the food system and can be directed to support animal welfare improvement. ESG investing frameworks increasingly include animal welfare criteria, recognizing that poor welfare practices represent reputational, regulatory, and operational risks for food companies. Shareholder engagement campaigns by welfare-focused investors have driven welfare policy changes at major food companies. Impact investing in alternative protein companies directs capital toward technologies that could eliminate the welfare problems of animal agriculture entirely. For individual investors, choosing funds with animal welfare screens or divesting from companies with poor welfare records connects financial decision-making to welfare goals.