Animal welfare impact assessment is a developing tool that can integrate animal welfare considerations into government policy, planning and regulatory decisions that affect animals.
Animal welfare impact assessment offers a systematic way to ensure that policy decisions take animal welfare into account before adoption rather than attempting to remediate harms after they occur. The UK Animal Sentience Committee model — requiring government ministers to publish statements explaining how their policies consider animal welfare — is an important institutional innovation. However, impact assessment is most effective when it is mandatory, applies early in the policy development process, uses validated welfare assessment methodologies, and is backed by independent review rather than self-assessment by the policy-making department. The development of welfare impact assessment as a standard policy tool represents a significant advance over ad hoc consideration, but the quality of assessment varies enormously and requires continued development.