Putting economic values on animal welfare improvements enables cost-benefit analysis and policy comparison - methods are advancing but face fundamental conceptual challenges.
Welfare economic valuation is important because it enables rigorous comparison of welfare interventions and their costs. Without economic valuation, welfare decisions default to intuition or political convenience. Methodological challenges are real - how do we compare reducing severe pain in 1,000 fish to mild discomfort in 1 million chickens? - but the attempt to address them systematically is more defensible than ignoring the question. Progress in welfare economics informs effective altruist giving, policy cost-benefit analysis, and farm assurance standard-setting. Investment in this research domain has high expected welfare impact.