Animal welfare research is chronically underfunded relative to the scale of animal suffering it addresses. Understanding the funding landscape helps advocates support the most impactful research.
The funding gap in animal welfare research means that scientific uncertainty about animal sentience and welfare needs persists longer than it should. Fish pain research remained marginal for decades because no major funders prioritised it, leaving welfare policymakers without the evidence base needed for regulatory action. Wild animal suffering research receives essentially no institutional funding despite affecting billions of animals. Farmed animal welfare research is better funded but still dwarfed by production research. Effective altruism-aligned funders including Open Philanthropy have begun to address this gap for specific priority areas, but the overall welfare research landscape remains underresourced. Individual donors to research organisations have outsized impact given the small size of the research community.