Animal Welfare Fund
Billions of lives. A fraction of the funding.
Our Animal Welfare Fund backs exceptionally cost-effective interventions to reform and replace factory farming. Whether you care about reducing animal suffering, reducing pandemic risk, or both, join us in funding solutions for one of the most neglected causes in philanthropy.
What we do
Reform the world's most harmful food systems
Over 91 billion land animals are slaughtered for food each year, often using methods that cause extreme suffering.
Despite the scale, less than 0.1% of global philanthropy addresses factory farming. The entire global movement of animal welfare advocates operates on less funding in a year than a single major meat company earns in two days.
That gap between the size of the problem and the resources dedicated to solving it is what makes this one of the most impactful places to give.
Our Animal Welfare Fund directs donor capital toward interventions with the strongest evidence of impact per dollar:
- Corporate welfare campaigns
- Humane technology
- Regulatory reform
- Alternative proteins
Why choose the Animal Welfare Fund?
Many of our members focus on global health and development, global catastrophic risks, or climate change. The animal welfare cause area sits across all three, as industrial animal agriculture is a major, and largely unaddressed, driver of many other downstream risks.
This fund supports interventions that prevent large-scale animal suffering. Second-order effects include reducing pandemic and public health risk, fighting climate damage, and preventing biodiversity loss and environmental degradation.
Prevent animal suffering
Chickens and pigs suffer in the same way as dogs and cats. The scientific consensus is that conscious experiences are not unique to humans. If we care about reducing preventable suffering, the sheer number of animals affected and the intensity of their suffering makes factory farming one of the largest moral problems in the world.
Reduce pandemic and public health risk
Intensive animal agriculture is one of the highest-risk vectors for the emergence of novel infectious diseases. Factory farm conditions create ideal breeding grounds for pathogens and accelerate the spillover of emerging infectious diseases from animals to humans.
Fight climate damage
As demand for animal products rises, livestock production will contribute even more to global greenhouse gas emissions.
Prevent biodiversity loss and environmental degradation
Animal agriculture is identified as a leading driver of habitat destruction, monoculture expansion for animal feed, and waterway pollution from nutrient runoff.
Our Grants
Grant decisions are guided by an Advisory Panel of trusted animal welfare evaluators. Our grants include:
Supporting Innovate Animal Ag's work championing the use of technology to promote animal welfare, including the adoption of in-ovo sexing machines in chicken hatcheries.
Supporting Wild Animal Initiative's work conducting research to understand the basic facts about wild animal welfare and investigate potential interventions to improve the lives of wild animals.
Supporting Fish Welfare Initiative's programs to improve the welfare of farmed fish, with co-benefits for disease control, food safety, and ecosystem health.
