Monthly Spotlight: Welfare Footprint Institute

This month, Animal Charity Evaluators spoke with Dr. Cynthia Schuck-Paim and Dr. Wladimir J. Alonso, Co-Founders of the Welfare Footprint Institute (WFI), a non-profit research organization dedicated to developing and disseminating scientifically rigorous methods for quantifying animal welfare.

With backgrounds in evolutionary biology, epidemiology, and animal welfare science, Cynthia and Wladimir co-founded WFI to advance the science of animal welfare and developed its central innovation—the Welfare Footprint Framework. Through research, training, and consulting, they apply this framework worldwide to provide standardized, scientifically rigorous metrics for quantifying and comparing welfare.

In this interview, they share the vision behind the Welfare Footprint Institute, how their framework is helping integrate animal experience into policy, industry, and advocacy, and their hopes for shaping a more compassionate future for animals.

What is the “Welfare Footprint Framework,” and how does it work in practice?

The Welfare Footprint Framework (WFF) is a scientific methodology for quantifying animal welfare in terms of lived experiences. It translates evidence from physiology, behavior, neurology, and pharmacology into standardized measures of time animals spend in negative (Pain) and positive (Pleasure) affective states, at varying intensities. These metrics—Cumulative Pain and Cumulative Pleasure—allow direct comparison of welfare impacts across species, systems, animal-sourced products, practices, and interventions.

In practice, the method follows a transparent analytical chain: description of living circumstances → mapping of their biological consequences and respective prevalences in the target population → inventory of resulting affective experiences → calculation of metrics of cumulative welfare impacts. This evidence-to-judgment process makes welfare impacts auditable and comparable, enabling any stakeholder (advocates, funders, producers, policymarkers, regulators, investors) to weigh animal welfare alongside costs, productivity, environmental and social outcomes.

How do you decide which animal welfare reforms or species to focus on?

Our selection is guided by a combination of:

Magnitude of potential welfare gain: reforms that can prevent the longest time of animal pain, particularly intense pain.

Decision relevance: contexts where metrics can inform policy, industry, or advocacy choices that are under discussion.

Feasibility of evidence synthesis: species or practices where data availability allows robust quantification.

Stakeholder demand: funders, advocacy groups, and industry actors often request analyses of specific reforms they wish to promote, and we aim to respond to those requests when they align with our analytical standards and potential for impact.

What are some of the key findings or “big wins” you’ve had so far?

• Quantification of fish pain during slaughter. We estimated that rainbow trout experience an average of up to 22 minutes of intense pain during air asphyxia, with effective stunning potentially averting 1-20 hours of moderate to extreme pain per dollar spent in capital costs. This research reached over 100 media outlets and an estimated 200-300 million people globally, indicating that these concrete welfare metrics generate far more public engagement and media traction than abstract welfare claims.
• Evidence that higher welfare systems are not prohibitively expensive. Our Nature Food study showed that switching to slower-growing broiler breeds could prevent 15-100 hours of intense pain per bird while adding only about $1/kg of meat. When environmental costs are monetized, the welfare gains cost mere ten-thousandths of a dollar per hour of pain prevented–effectively debunking claims that welfare improvements are too costly or environmentally damaging.
• Finding that barren environments amplify pain intensity and delay healing. Our research on “The Pain Echo Chamber” with leading pain researchers shows that pain is perceived as more intense and takes longer to heal in the barren, intensive environments typical of modern animal agriculture–meaning welfare problems in these systems are worse than previously understood. A review demonstrating these effects is expected for 2026.
• Discovery that early-life conditions shape lifelong welfare in salmon. Our work on Atlantic salmon in RAS hatcheries revealed that early-life conditions permanently shape welfare outcomes later in life. The work identified three priority interventions for the hatchery phase, with various organizations and certifiers with plans to incorporate these recommendations into future welfare standards. The work should be published soon.
• Development of the first comprehensive Welfare Footprint of a product. The Welfare Footprint of the Egg (publishing 2026) quantifies 125 different affective experiences across all egg production systems and assesses the impact of multiple interventions and reforms. This work, co-authored by over 60 academics, provides the first complete welfare assessment of an entire production chain.
• Widespread adoption of the framework. Over 50 organizations are now using the Welfare Footprint Framework and our estimates for intervention prioritization, with various groups integrating it directly into their cost-effectiveness models.
• First major industry partnership. A major South American meat producer adopted the framework across its entire beef supply chain (~1,200 producers), using it to identify cost-effective welfare improvements like shade provision to reduce heat stress, phasing out of practices such as dehorning, and improvements in terms of transport duration, provision of enrichment, among others.
• Integration into government decision-making. Some working groups are incorporating our estimates into welfare valuation models, and some national agencies are using the framework for animal cruelty litigation.

What are the biggest challenges you face in quantifying animal welfare, and how are you addressing them?

Subjectivity of affective states: We mitigate this by grounding estimates in explicit, multi-disciplinary evidence, by using transparent notation systems (Pain-Track, Pleasure-Track) and by incorporating uncertainty and variability in all estimates.

Interspecific differences: we are currently developing a framework for integrating differences in hedonic capacity across species, as well as for measuring differences in the distribution of suffering across populations.

Scaling adoption: We are limited in terms of how many species, systems, and practices we can analyze directly with our research capacity. To address this, we’ll continue training academics, advocates, policymakers and other stakeholders in the method, improve existing AI tools and develop new ones that can facilitate the analytical process, as well as launch new programs (e.g., an elite certification program to intensively train individuals on the WFF) to expand our research capacity.

Looking ahead, what’s on the horizon that excites you most about your work?

Looking ahead, what excites us most is the possibility of helping transform how society addresses animal welfare. This is an ambitious goal, but we believe that when you measure animal welfare in concrete and relatable terms–for instance, hours of intense pain rather than abstract concerns–people respond. Media outlets disseminate the findings. Consumers understand the impacts. Policymakers can justify regulations. Courts accept rigorous evidence. Retailers can set procurement standards. Funders can optimize their impact. Companies can differentiate genuine improvements. Advocates strengthen their campaigns with undeniable data. We’re just getting started and we’re seeing positive impacts we had not anticipated. Looking at our roadmap for change and future plans, here’s what excites me most:

Reaching a tipping point for systemic change: we believe that when we have full Welfare Footprints for core animal products (e.g., eggs, chicken, pork, fish, beef, dairy) the estimates can become transformative.

The consumer app going live: we’re developing a mobile app to let shoppers scan products and instantly see their welfare impacts. Imagine millions of consumers suddenly able to see that one product causes 50 hours of intense pain while another causes 5.

Helping end the era of misleading welfare claims: with quantified welfare metrics, “humane-washed” products will be exposed. With welfare impacts quantified, the market can reward genuine improvements rather than marketing

AI acceleration of our work: our Pain Atlas project using AI to map and quantify thousands of welfare challenges could reduce assessment time by 50%. This means we can expand coverage exponentially – from hundreds to potentially thousands of welfare assessments per year.

Industry transformation: with a major meat producer already using our framework and a certifier potentially incorporating our recommendations, we’re seeing early signs that welfare quantification can become standard practice.

An Elite Certification Program creating independent capacity: training experts who can conduct assessments independently means our impact can multiply beyond our team’s capacity.

Most fundamentally, we’re excited about making animal experiences undeniable—transforming welfare from a subjective concern into objective, measurable reality that demands action.

If you had to share a final message with the ACE audience, what would it be?

Animal welfare is often sidelined because it seems “immeasurable.” By expressing it as time in Pain and Pleasure, backed by undeniable scientific evidence, we make animal experience scientifically quantifiable, directly comparable, and decision-relevant. This turns moral concern into operational knowledge that can shift policy, markets, and consumer behavior toward reducing animal suffering at scale.

Animal Charity Evaluators awarded the Welfare Footprint Institute a $50,000 Movement Grant to support their project Improving Farmed Fish Welfare at Slaughter by Reforming Pre-Slaughter Operations. This research will help inform legislation, advocacy, and industry practices to drive more effective welfare interventions. To learn more about the Welfare Footprint Institute and how they’re making vital change for animals, visit their website.