Animal Welfare Progress: Measuring What Matters

Measuring progress in animal welfare requires looking beyond legal reforms to actual outcomes for animals. Welfare science is developing better tools to assess whether animal lives are genuinely improving.

Key Facts

Welfare outcome measures — prevalence of lameness, mortality rates, behavioral indicators — give a clearer picture of welfare than input measures (cage sizes, stocking densities alone).
The Welfare Quality Assessment Protocol provided species-specific, outcome-based welfare scoring for farm animals for the first time.
Global farmed animal numbers have continued to rise even as welfare standards have improved in some markets — net welfare may be declining globally.
Welfare science indicates that meaningful progress requires both better standards in high-income countries and addressing the rapidly growing intensive sector in lower-income countries.
Consumer demand shifts — plant-based food growth, higher-welfare certification uptake — provide measurable signals of social progress on animal welfare.

Welfare Considerations

Measuring progress in animal welfare honestly requires holding two realities simultaneously: welfare standards in some production systems and some countries have improved meaningfully over the past 50 years; and the total number of animals living in conditions that welfare science would identify as inadequate has likely increased, driven by global population growth and rising meat consumption. Progress in standards without progress in numbers is progress that is being outpaced. Meaningful welfare improvement at global scale requires both better practices in existing systems and systemic changes — in food systems, in policy, and in consumption patterns — that change the total calculus of animal welfare in the world.

What You Can Do

Support organizations that track welfare outcomes, not just standards, in farming systems.
Advocate for mandatory welfare outcome monitoring and public reporting by farm sector.
Use your purchasing choices to support higher-welfare systems and reduce demand for the lowest-welfare products.
Engage with the evidence on global animal welfare trends and share it to build informed advocacy.