Cost-benefit analysis and social welfare functions are two closely related methods to evaluate impacts of policies on humans (producers, consumers etc.) and animals. In cost-benefit analysis, the impacts on animals are currently either disclosed as intangible impacts or monetised from the human...

Public support is critical for the incorporation of farm animal welfare (FAW) standards into national food policies. Multiple pathways, e.g., market-based policies, political mandates, and donations to animal charities, exist for the public to influence these standards. The challenge often...

We seek to understand the welfare of dairy cattle in Denmark from 1750 to 1900, a period marked by significant agricultural development and industrialization. By applying contemporary animal welfare metrics to historical data, we uncover a detailed picture of how bovine welfare evolved. Our...

Industry stakeholder requests for improved animal welfare practices in German meat production have steadily increased in recent years. A transformation of German animal husbandry systems would almost certainly result in higher production costs. Against this background, producers and the meat...

Dairycalf welfare is receiving increasing public attention. To ensure optimal practices, farmers need to engage and be mindful of unethical behavior. However, avoiding information on animal welfare is common and often driven by willful ignorance. We conduct an exploratory analysis on survey data...

Supplying monogastric livestock with amino acids is a key challenge in animal husbandry. In organic farming, the challenges are even higher due to legislative restrictions on the use of high-quality protein feed and especially synthetic amino acids, the latter being common practice in...

Concentration on elite breeding lines has endangered a number of traditional dairy breeds. Although several of those breeds are known for superior functional traits such as robustness, they are increasingly replaced by Holstein cows. A discrete choice experiment with 159 breeders revealed the...

The Commission is currently performing an assessment of the animal welfare, economic, social and environmental impacts of envisaged changes, based on a very extensive consultation process and supported by a series of external studies. This assessment includes the goal to propose the phasing out...

Animal welfare assumes a certain relevance within a farm context in the European Union through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). In the face of a wide range of animal welfare legislation enacted in Europe since the 1970s, also following ambitious public and private debates sometimes...

We study a simple model of animal consumption where consumers are altruistic towards animals. Consumers can choose the quantity of meat they consume as well as its quality in terms of animal welfare. This model induces a public good problem: at the market equilibrium, quality is too low, and...

Effective altruists (EAs) want to do as much good as possible with the charitable resources available to them. That is, if EAs want to do the most good per dollar spent—that is, they want to maximize cost-effectiveness—they need a common currency for comparing very different interventions....

Cost-benefit analysis lacks the appropriate tools to economically value animal well-being. I propose an easily-implementable framework to evaluate the social gains from policies regarding animals. The model considers both the welfare of animals and the utility that humans derive from animal...

Feeding the world’s growing population in ways that are effective, ethical and socially just, and protect the natural systems on which all life depends is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. It forms the theme of this book of papers of the 2022 Edinburgh conference of the European...

In many western countries, rising public concern for the welfare of agricultural animals is reflected in the adoption of direct regulatory standards. The United States has taken a different path, preferring a "market regulation" approach whereby consumers express their preference for...

This paper explores the impact of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) listing on observed bird abundance, based on about 700 million individual birdwatcher records over 60 years in the U.S. Among the 50 listed species investigated, we find that 28 species experience a decline while 22 species...

Within a general equilibrium model, this paper identifies a novel animal welfare externality that occurs if the private animal friendliness in a market economy falls short of the social animal friendliness used by the social planner when determining the efficient allocation. The animal welfare...

Within a general equilibrium model, this paper identifies a novel animal welfare externality that occurs if the private animal friendliness in a market economy falls short of the social animal friendliness used by the social planner when determining the efficient allocation. The animal welfare...

Due to the negative impacts of meat consumption, finding ways to reduce individual meat intake is an urgent issue. The present study tested whether daily mobile-phone text message reminders about the animal welfare, environmental, and health consequences of meat would reduce peoples' meat...

Corporate social responsibility initiatives have become increasingly popular to address animal welfare issues. Over the last decade, hundreds of companies globally have committed to source cage-free eggs to improve welfare for laying hens. In many cases, these commitments were made following...