Transformative technologies including cultivated meat, precision fermentation, and AI-based welfare monitoring are creating unprecedented opportunities to improve animal welfare at scale in coming decades.
The long-term trajectory of animal welfare improvement may be significantly shaped by technological transformation of protein production. If cultivated meat and precision fermentation scale successfully and achieve cost parity with conventional animal products, they could eliminate the welfare harms of animal agriculture for billions of animals annually — not through behavioral change alone but through system replacement. The welfare potential of these technologies is transformative in scale, though timelines remain uncertain and current market penetration is small. In the interim, AI-based welfare monitoring systems are beginning to enable real-time, continuous assessment of large animal populations that was previously impossible. The convergence of technological and conventional welfare improvement pathways — better farming conditions now alongside longer-term technology transitions — represents the most comprehensive approach to maximizing animal welfare improvement across different time horizons.