Precision fermentation - producing animal proteins without animals using microorganisms - offers potential to dramatically reduce farm animal suffering while meeting protein demand.
Precision fermentation's potential welfare impact is enormous. Each litre of milk or egg white protein produced without animals represents the elimination of the welfare costs of the animals that would otherwise produce it - the suffering of dairy cows through mastitis, lameness, and repeated pregnancy cycles, or laying hens in inadequate housing. At scale, if precision fermentation products can cost-competitively displace conventional animal products, the welfare implications would be historic. The animals most immediately impacted are those in the highest-volume, lowest-welfare production systems - dairy cows, laying hens, and potentially pigs - where precision fermentation has the most direct substitution potential.