Welfare science research is essential for evidence-based improvements, but funding for farm animal welfare research is dramatically lower than for other agricultural research.
The gap between the scale of farm animal suffering and the research investment in understanding and reducing it is striking. While agricultural productivity research receives billions in public and private funding annually, welfare science — the discipline that could produce the largest reductions in animal suffering — receives a fraction of a percent of that. This underfunding has policy consequences: welfare legislation is often held back not by opposition in principle but by lack of evidence for specific practices. Philanthropic funding from organizations committed to animal welfare has begun to fill some of this gap, but systematic public research investment is needed.