January 5, 2026
Beyond ethics: the business logic driving progress in animal welfare
For decades, animal welfare in food production has largely been presented as a moral imperative and perceived as separate from commercial realities. In Europe and the United States this ethical framing - driven by NGO pressure, public sentiment and regulation - has helped mobilise consumers and policymakers to think differently. However, in other key food producing regions of the world, moral appeals alone have limited influence.
“Animal welfare is not a moral add-on,” argues FAI’s Director, Kelly Watson. “It’s a strategic investment in supply chain reliability, risk mitigation, product quality and market access. We’ve seen time and time again good welfare is good business.”
“If welfare improvement is to accelerate globally, the conversation must evolve,” continues Kelly. “In certain areas of the world, we must be conscious of different attitudes towards welfare and what to focus on when trying to promote it. This does not weaken the ethical case but provides new ways of approaching welfare that work when faced with the day-to-day realities, needs and economic forces that shape modern food systems.”
FAI’s work with global supply chains shows welfare is increasingly understood not as a standalone obligation but as part of building efficient, reliable and high-performing systems. Independent consultant Ken Opengart of 3Birds Consulting who works for FAI on poultry welfare projects in the United States has seen this shift gather pace.
“When I speak with teams working in the broiler sector they’re focused on consistency that can be maintained throughout the production process, covering everything from flock uniformity, predictable weights, stable volumes, and product quality,” says Ken. “Welfare directly supports all of that.”
“Supply security is very important and poor broiler welfare introduces volatility in the form of higher mortality, slower growth and more disease pressure. Those issues ripple through the chain. When you invest in welfare, you’re reducing risk and improving consistency.”
Welfare can also impact quality and efficiency, with stress and poor handling undermining animal carcass yields, trim loss and meat consistency.
“Better welfare produces better product,” adds Kelly. “And we’re seeing this clearly in the laying hen sector. Farms using FAI’s BirdBox system - which tracks real-time welfare and management indicators - have achieved an average 3.5% increase in eggs per hen housed and a 1.8% reduction in mortality after BirdBox has been installed compared to previous flocks not using the system.”
“When hens are healthier and less stressed, they convert feed more efficiently, require fewer interventions and sustain more consistent production. It means producers get more saleable product from the same inputs, providing a direct and measurable return on better welfare.”
But it’s also important business reputation isn’t overlooked when brands and supply chains are pushing for better welfare.
“Welfare-related incidents within a supply chain can scale rapidly,” Kelly explains. “A single exposé or investigation can move from social media to global news in hours, and the fallout can cause long-term damage to a brand’s credibility.
“Companies with clear, proactive welfare strategies are far better positioned to withstand scrutiny. When you demonstrate robust welfare practices, supported by data and transparency, you reduce the risk of reputational shocks, and you also show supply chain partners you’re committed to responsible, future-focused production.”
Cultural context is critical
Understanding why it’s important to go beyond an ethical framing of animal welfare requires recognition of cultural and economic realities in different countries.
Attitudes toward animal sentience and welfare vary across cultural and social settings. Economic security, food affordability and historical practices sometimes shape behaviour more strongly than ethical sentiment.
Dr Amanda Deakin, Science and Technical Lead at FAI, highlights findings from International Perceptions of Animals and The Importance of Their Welfare (Sinclair et al. 2022), which surveyed attitudes towards animal welfare across 14 geographically and culturally diverse countries.
“This study found strong agreement everywhere that animal welfare matters,” Amanda explains. “In several low and middle-income countries, people rated the welfare of farmed animals as more important than companion animals. That could reflect both closer day-to-day relationships with livestock and the vital role these animals play in producing food, thus being seen as having higher ‘utility’ than companion animals.”
The study also found that respondents in countries such as Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Sudan were less willing to pay more for higher-welfare products than respondents from high-income countries, despite saying welfare was important.
“But that doesn’t mean welfare is less valued. It may link to the fact that welfare is understood in terms of utility - healthy animals are productive animals - rather than as a standalone ethical or consumer choice. It is also possible that inhabitants of low and middle income countries are less likely to be able to imagine themselves in a position where they have the luxury to pay more. This is why framing welfare through performance, safety and reliability is so important in these contexts.”
The moral outrage felt in some Western markets does not necessarily translate in settings where food safety, income stability and access to protein dominate daily concerns.
“This complexity is one reason welfare advocacy based solely on ethics often struggles to make progress in some regions,” says Øistein Thorsen, CEO of FAI. “We believe welfare is a win-win opportunity. When we frame welfare as an indicator of good management, and a driver of productivity, safety and quality, the concept becomes not only culturally acceptable, but more meaningful and directly relevant to producers and consumers alike.”
Nowhere is the need for pragmatic welfare framing clearer than in China, where FAI is at the forefront of supporting the adoption of cage-free egg production to improve hen welfare, and has just organised the 7th Annual China Cage-Free Egg Summit with IQC.
A speaker at the event, FAI consultant Ashleigh Bright says: “Unlike Europe, where cage-free adoption has been driven largely by public demand for higher welfare, China’s early cage-free momentum is rooted in concerns about food safety, trust and product quality.
“Food safety is the lens through which many Chinese consumers evaluate eggs. ‘Better for humans and better for animals’ will have more cut-through with Chinese consumers than welfare positioning alone.”
For Chinese egg producers, this creates opportunities to align higher-welfare, cage-free systems with local safety and quality priorities, and all supported by transparent, credible production practices, which offer better, consistent returns for farmers.
“Corporate sourcing commitments are also reshaping the landscape,” continues Ashleigh. “More than 2,700 global companies have pledged to source 100% cage-free eggs, and these commitments apply to their business operations in China.
“So, the opportunity for large farms - those over 100–200,000 birds - is to meet the cage-free sourcing commitments of multinational companies wanting eggs in large quantities.”
The economic need is likely to help drive the adoption of better, welfare-focused practices, and conversations around welfare need to reflect this.
“Increasing cage-free in China only works if it’s recognised and valued by the people who buy the eggs,” adds Ashleigh. “That’s about associating better welfare for hens with food that is safe and high quality.”
Welfare as a productivity driver
FAI sees the same pattern across species and the globe; improving welfare improves performance. In aquaculture, the link between welfare and performance is just as strong, but the conversation often needs a different entry point.
“Because welfare as a standalone topic is not well understood in aquaculture, we decided to target our approach and interventions through the management of key areas we know farmers already care about, like health, nutrition, environment – things like water quality - and behaviour,” explains Øistein.
“This framing helps move the conversation beyond potential controversy around animal sentience, to practical concerns about managing for improved outcomes for fish, farmers and their business.”
In sub-Saharan Africa, tilapia production is projected to expand by around 20% in 2025, with Kenya as one of the growth leaders. In a fast-scaling sector welfare assessments are a critical tool to help farmers enhance fish health and survival in a context where water quality, disease pressure and pond conditions can quickly undermine productivity.
Underpinned by the mobile-based FAI Tilapia Welfare App, the Kenya Fish Welfare Project is helping farmers monitor health, behaviour, water quality and feeding practices in real time and training them to implement welfare improvements in response to the assessment scores.
In Egypt, FAI and partners have deployed the same performance-led approach at national scale:
The Tilapia Welfare Project in Egypt reached a major milestone in 2024, assessing and improving welfare for more than 120 million fish
This represents around 10% of Egypt’s Nile tilapia
The programme combines app-based assessment with training and has already supported rollout across thousands of farms in the main production regions
Importantly, Egypt is also embedding welfare into the sector’s future workforce. For example, Kafr El Sheikh University has incorporated FAI Academy’s free tilapia welfare e-learning courses and App into its curriculum, helping equip the next generation of aquaculture professionals and veterinarians with the knowledge and tools that translate better fish welfare to better production outcomes.
Across this region, producers adopt welfare improvements when they see them as drivers of productivity, not solely moral obligations.
Another recent example of welfare’s economic power is in shrimp farming, as witnessed by Pau Badia, Project Manager and Consultant working for FAI in Southeast Asia.
“In just a few years we’ve gone from shrimp welfare being virtually unheard of to awarding the first ever shrimp welfare assessment certificate in Thailand,” he says. “Producers adopting welfare-focused practices are consistently seeing better survival rates, faster growth, fewer treatments and higher-value products.”
By providing conditions in which shrimp can grow faster and deliver higher quality meat, shrimp farmers embracing welfare are driving positive economic outcomes.
This insight led FAI Academy to launch the Shrimp Welfare Hub, a global learning platform designed to help the industry scale welfare rapidly. The Hub’s core message is firmly economic, with better welfare equating to better business. It equips farms, hatcheries and processors with training, digital assessments and scientific protocols that turn welfare into a performance metric, not an abstract principle.
“In the shrimp industry we can hope to achieve in six years what terrestrial livestock took sixty years to achieve,” argues Øistein. “Terrestrial agriculture led the way in gradually building the science, the standards and the practical lessons the rest of the food system can now draw on.
“Aquaculture has the chance to leapfrog this learning process and adopt welfare as standard practice early, using modern tools and clear outcome measures, rather than spending decades reinventing what we already know works.”
How do you measure welfare?
As well as conversations about the value of welfare, it’s also important the accuracy of welfare measurement isn’t overlooked. If producers are to gain the most economically from prioritising welfare, they need to ensure changes made on farm impact welfare and in the right way.
Welfare outcome measures (WOMs) are animal-based indicators that record what animals actually experience
Rather than focusing on inputs such as feed type, space allowance or housing design, outcome measures reveal an animal’s lived reality
They include aspects like mortality, lameness, disease incidence, body condition and behaviour
These indicators make welfare measurable, comparable and transparent, and are directly linked to production performance by showing where improvements will have the biggest impact.
FAI emphasises outcome measures provide a clear, credible picture of welfare across complex supply chains, helping brands understand performance trends, engage suppliers constructively and align with emerging regulatory and ESG pressures.
Welfare as a cornerstone of future food systems
Across all these cases, welfare improvements deliver tangible commercial benefits, including healthier animals, more predictable production cycles, reduced losses, lower reliance on antibiotics and enhanced product consistency.
Companies gain reputational protection, improved supplier partnerships and better preparedness for regulatory and ESG expectations. Consumers receive safer, higher-quality products they can trust. And animals benefit from systems designed around their needs, which provides a moral outcome supported by hard economic logic.
Global growth in animal livestock production will continue to occur in regions where welfare has historically been less visible. Working to ensure this growth is sustainable and good for people, animals and the planet requires making the economic value of welfare impossible to ignore.
“When producers and companies view welfare as a positive, strategic asset and not a burdensome cost, it becomes possible to build more positive food systems,” concludes Øistein. “The ethical case for welfare remains fundamental, but it is the economic reasons that will accelerate progress in specific regions of the world and it’s vital this isn’t overlooked.
“Welfare is not a peripheral consideration but a central component of resilient, profitable and future-ready food systems.”
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