Welfare economics provides tools for valuing animal wellbeing in policy analysis. Applying these tools to animal agriculture enables better cost-benefit analysis of welfare reforms.
Incorporating animal welfare into economic analysis is essential for honest policy evaluation. When the suffering of billions of farm animals is excluded from cost-benefit calculations, welfare-harmful production systems appear artificially beneficial. Welfare economics researchers are developing methods to assign monetary values to animal welfare states, enabling comparison with human welfare impacts in policy analysis. This approach has the potential to fundamentally change how governments evaluate agricultural subsidies, planning decisions and food system regulation when animal welfare costs are made visible.