Public understanding of farm animal sentience — the capacity to feel pain, pleasure, and emotions — is foundational to welfare improvement. Closing the gap between science and public perception is a key advocacy challenge.
Sentience recognition is the foundational step from which all welfare improvement flows. If animals are not understood as capable of suffering and positive experience, welfare legislation, consumer choices, and farm practices have no moral grounding. Bridging the sentience gap — between what science knows and what the public, policymakers, and producers believe — requires accessible, evidence-based communication that goes beyond abstract claims to concrete demonstrations: pigs solving puzzles, cows running and jumping when released to pasture, fish showing conditioned fear. This communication, done well, motivates both individual behaviour change and systemic policy reform.