Plant-based food system transitions offer enormous potential to reduce farmed animal suffering, but require careful policy design to avoid unintended welfare consequences.
The potential welfare benefit of food system transition toward plant-based diets is the largest available opportunity for reducing suffering across the animal kingdom. Eighty billion land animals are farmed and slaughtered annually — a transition to plant-based systems would eliminate this suffering. Policy must support farmers through transitions, address invertebrate welfare in crop production, and maintain momentum across decades-long change processes.