Animal welfare science research receives a fraction of the funding allocated to production efficiency and disease research, limiting the evidence base needed to drive regulatory and industry welfare improvements.
Welfare research funding creates the evidence that justifies and guides welfare regulation and industry improvement. The chronic underfunding of welfare science relative to production science means that welfare standards often lag behind what evidence-based practice would support, and that welfare regulations are sometimes challenged by industry for insufficient evidence even when the evidence strongly favors improvement. Redirecting even a small fraction of agricultural research funding toward welfare science would produce regulatory and industry improvements that benefit millions of animals. Both government funding agencies and private philanthropic funders can prioritize welfare research as a high-impact investment.