Effective altruism applies evidence and reason to identifying the most impactful ways to improve animal welfare. This approach has produced surprising insights about where donations and advocacy time generate the most benefit per unit of effort.
The effective altruism approach to animal welfare has produced counterintuitive findings. Shrimp and fish welfare — covering tens of billions of individuals kept in conditions that may involve significant suffering — are dramatically underfunded relative to companion animal welfare, which affects far fewer individuals. Farmed insect welfare is even more neglected, with the potential scale of insect farming growing rapidly. The most cost-effective welfare interventions identified to date involve corporate campaigns that change welfare standards for millions of animals at once, rather than individual rescue or care. This does not mean rescue work lacks value, but that the marginal impact of additional funding is often higher for systemic advocacy than for direct care.