The effective altruism movement has made farm animal welfare a priority cause area, directing significant funding and talent toward evidence-based interventions.
The effective altruism approach to animal welfare has demonstrably increased the resources and strategic sophistication available to the movement. By asking which interventions improve the most welfare per dollar, EA has helped funnel resources toward corporate campaigns and policy advocacy that affect millions of animals. Criticisms of the approach - including insufficient attention to systemic change and overconfidence in quantitative estimates - offer useful correctives to purely technocratic welfare activism.