Applying cost-benefit analysis to animal welfare policy provides tools for comparing interventions and making the economic case to policymakers. The field is developing rapidly with implications for regulatory impact assessment.
Economic analysis of animal welfare provides tools for making the case to policymakers who respond primarily to economic arguments. When welfare improvements can be shown to pay for themselves through productivity gains or avoid costs that fall on public budgets through antimicrobial resistance or zoonotic disease, the policy argument is significantly stronger. Developing the methodological tools of welfare economics and applying them to specific policy questions is an important contribution to evidence-based welfare advocacy.