Our Approach

For many animal welfare problems, a better solution already exists. The obstacle is rarely the science. It is cost, coordination, regulation, market acceptance, and trust. Pro Animal Ag Foundation concentrates its effort where a high-welfare practice is feasible but under-adopted — and tries to close the gap between what is possible and what is practiced.

What we do

1. Research and landscape analysis

We conduct research and landscape analyses on emerging animal welfare technologies. For a given problem we map what is technically possible, who is already working on it, how mature the technology is, what it costs, and — most importantly — where the real barriers to adoption lie. This is how we decide where additional effort can do the most good.

2. Expert and stakeholder engagement

We engage with experts, producers, researchers, and nonprofit organizations to evaluate welfare-improving interventions. Talking with the people closest to production keeps our analysis honest: it surfaces the operational, economic, and commercial realities that determine whether an intervention can actually scale, not just whether it works in principle.

3. Partnerships that facilitate adoption

We explore partnerships that can facilitate the adoption of higher-welfare practices within animal agriculture. Adoption usually requires several actors to move together — technology developers, producers, processors, retailers, funders, and sometimes regulators. We work to connect those actors and help align the incentives that let a better practice spread.

How we choose what to work on

We prioritize interventions that tend to share a few features:

• Scale of impact. The practice affects a large number of animals, or a particularly severe welfare problem.
• Tractability. A credible technology or method already exists, so progress depends on adoption rather than invention.
• Neglected leverage. The specific bottleneck we can address is not already being solved by others.
• Realism. There is a plausible path to adoption that fits commercial and regulatory reality, not only the welfare case.

Our current portfolio — immunocastration in pigs and in-ovo sexing in chickens — reflects these criteria. As our research continues, we expect to evaluate further opportunities across animal agriculture.

We are less interested in being the inventor of a solution than in being the reason a good solution reaches the animals it can help.

Work with us

We collaborate with researchers, producers, technology developers, funders, and other nonprofits. If our work overlaps with yours, we would like to hear from you.