Mainstream economic analysis rarely includes animal welfare costs, but economists and welfare scientists are developing frameworks to incorporate animal suffering into policy evaluation.
The failure to include animal welfare costs in economic analysis systematically undervalues welfare improvements and obscures the true cost of intensive animal agriculture. When externalized costs — animal suffering, public health impacts from antibiotic resistance, environmental harms — are excluded from prices, market signals incorrectly favor production systems that impose these costs. Developing robust welfare economics frameworks, including validated animal welfare metrics with economic shadow prices, would allow better policy analysis and truer market signals. This is an area where collaboration between economists, welfare scientists and policymakers could have significant practical impact on policy and regulation.