Animal Welfare
Our Animal Welfare Department pioneers evidence-based, reason-driven change to accelerate the end of factory farming and reduce wild animal suffering.
We combine rigorous research with strategic engagement to drive evidence-based solutions for farmed and wild animals. Through collaboration with partners across policy, philanthropy, and advocacy sectors, we ensure that our research translates into positive change for trillions of animals globally.
Our Work
Currently we focus on projects addressing critical knowledge gaps and strategic needs to drive long-term progress across five areas:
1. Fish Welfare: Coordinating efforts to develop or refine a scalable intervention that affects a sizable fraction of a farmed fish’s lifespan.
2. Crustaceans: Uncovering levers and pathways for current and future shrimp interventions.
3. Insects: Exploring new opportunities or levers for helping insects used for food and feed, and piloting a novel intervention to test its effectiveness.
4. Wild Animals: Identifying and advancing near-term interventions that could unlock promising impact while growing the wild animal advocacy community.
5. Animal Movement: Aligning advocacy organizations and funders around higher impact and forward-looking strategies for priority farmed animal issues.Â
We developed these plans by outlining the key steps, milestones, and resources required to create real-world solutions for the most neglected animals. Each project is designed to facilitate progress toward the next, ultimately leading to meaningful outcomes.
Strategy
Our strategy is driven by three pillars:
Research
By generating evidence, we help advocates and funders make informed decisions, prioritize welfare issues, and identify impactful opportunities to meaningfully improve the lives of animals worldwide.
Stakeholder engagement
By connecting key players with research insights, and facilitating collective strategy-setting and coordination, we foster informed decision-making and strategic collaboration across the movement.
Infrastructure development
We address the risks and uncertainties of untested but promising ideas. This allows us to create infrastructure that accelerates high-impact solutions with long-term potential.
Theory of Change
To better understand how we create impact, please review our theory of change diagram:
Our Research
Our research activities aim to provide a better understanding of animal welfare as a cause area and to seek evidence-based and reason-driven insights that can contribute to better-informed decision-making of those driving change for animals. Through research, internally conducted or in partnership with external collaborators, we aim to help in:
- Prioritization of animal welfare issues: We drive a better understanding of the scope and the severity of animal welfare problems.
- Scoping high-level opportunities: We explore available and novel paths that can meaningfully improve animal welfare worldwide or facilitate greater impact in the future.
- Tackling specific critical bottlenecks: We generate robust evidence to address specific obstacles of concrete interventions for helping animals.
Stakeholder engagement
Our stakeholder program seeks to foster the capabilities of advocates, charitable organizations and others driving positive change for animals. We do this by:
- Connecting key players with relevant evidence: We provide critical insights that can inform and foster the strategy of key advocacy leaders, policymakers, and funders.
- Coordination: We run strategy and coordination forums to increase the collaboration and strategic decision-making of effective animal advocacy leaders.
Infrastructure development
When paths to impact for promising ideas do not exist, we build them. Our infrastructure development program supports and broadens the capacity of those changing the world for animals by:
- Incubating innovative projects: We aim to accelerate the implementation of promising yet neglected ways to improve animal welfare and strengthen the pro-animal community.
In the future, funding and capacity allowing, we expect to launch and support new projects, enabling us to experiment and test the viability of novel approaches and grow the community of those tackling high-priority animal welfare issues.
Impact highlights
Advancing shrimp welfare globally
We identified shrimp production as a major welfare concern. Our work has influenced the launching of shrimp-focused campaigns by Mercy for Animals, the work of the Shrimp Welfare Project, and laid the foundations for legislative changes in the UK and global advocacy efforts. Learn more.
Advancing EU-wide animal advocacy through strategic insights and grants
We provided data-driven strategic insights to inform advocacy efforts focused on EU animal welfare policy. This led to improved coordination and the launch of a re-granting initiative, distributing $1.9M to 25 organizations across 16 EU countries. Learn more.
Leading insect welfare research and program development
We pioneered research in insect welfare and identified critical issues in insect farming. This research led to the launch and fiscal sponsorship of two insect-focused initiatives.
Informing and coordinating the global animal advocacy movement’s strategy
We host strategy forums and other annual gatherings that unite leaders to align strategies and drive action. So far this has led to the launching of five new projects addressing key movement challenges.
Influencing philanthropy and providing strategic guidance
We have provided strategic advice to major institutions like Open Philanthropy, Tilt Collective, and The Builder’s Initiative. Our insights informed decisions of 80,000 Hours, ACE, Founders Pledge, Giving What We Can, The Humane League, and others. We recently proposed a new funding circle that aims to shift $1-3M toward neglected farmed animals.
Meet the team
Latest Research Highlights
Contact Us
If you have any questions about our work, specific research reports, or want to connect with our department, contact us at: animalwelfare [at] rethinkpriorities [dot] org
Sign up for a donation reminder
Thank you for your interest in Rethink Priorities and for considering supporting us.
Signing up for the reminder email does not constitute a pledge. The above form is only for the reminder email. If you would also like to sign up for our newsletter, which includes updates about our work, you are welcome to do so here.