As part of a recent Effective Altruism career exploration process, I’ve been thinking carefully about animal welfare—particularly farmed animal welfare—as a potential focus area for my longer-term impact. I’m sharing these reflections not as a settled conclusion, but as a provisional hypothesis that I’m actively testing and refining, in line with EA’s emphasis on epistemic humility and learning by doing.
Animal welfare appears compelling when evaluated against the standard EA cause prioritisation framework of scale, neglectedness, and tractability, as discussed across resources like 80,000 Hours and Probably Good.
Scale:
The number of sentient animals affected by human decisions is vast. Tens of billions of land animals, and far more aquatic animals, are farmed and slaughtered annually, many living under conditions that cause significant and prolonged suffering. From a moral standpoint that takes sentience seriously, even modest improvements to average welfare conditions can translate into very large reductions in total suffering. This scale is discussed clearly in several 80,000 Hours career reviews on animal advocacy (https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/).
Neglectedness:
Despite the scale, farmed animal welfare remains relatively underfunded and under-prioritised compared to many human-focused causes. This is especially true outside North America and Europe. In many Global South contexts—including much of Africa—animal welfare is rarely framed as a policy priority or professional career path, suggesting that marginal resources and talent could go a long way. Animal Advocacy Careers highlights this gap explicitly in several of its career path guides (https://animaladvocacycareers.org/career-path-guides/).
Tractability:
Unlike some cause areas where feedback loops are very long, animal welfare has a track record of relatively concrete, evidence-based wins. Corporate welfare commitments, improved husbandry standards, alternative protein development, and policy advocacy have all shown measurable progress within years, not decades. Probably Good’s career profiles helped me see how diverse roles—beyond frontline advocacy—contribute to this progress (https://probablygood.org/career-profiles/).
One thing that surprised me during this exploration is how many impactful roles in animal welfare do not involve direct campaigning. Through Animal Advocacy Careers and 80,000 Hours, I’ve become increasingly interested in:
These roles seem particularly important for helping smaller or newer organisations scale responsibly, avoid duplication, and make better evidence-based decisions. I’m especially interested in how these functions could support animal welfare work in under-resourced regions, where institutional capacity is often a binding constraint.
A key takeaway from EA career advice especially the “think like a scientist” framing from 80,000 Hours https://80000hours.org/career-guide/summary/ is the importance of testing hypotheses cheaply rather than committing prematurely. I’m trying to follow that advice by:
At this stage, animal welfare looks like a cause area where careful reasoning, empirical evidence, and professionalised approaches can plausibly reduce a very large amount of suffering. That said, I’m still actively comparing it against other potential focus areas and remain open to being wrong.
Some uncertainties I’m particularly keen to learn more about:
I’m sharing this partly to clarify my own thinking, and partly to invite feedback. If others have navigated similar exploratory phases especially those working on animal welfare from non-traditional angles or in underrepresented regions I’d be very grateful to hear your perspectives, recommended readings, or critiques of the assumptions above.
