Animal Welfare and Benefit Cost Analysis

SBCA Professional Development Workshop
October 2025

Animal welfare is increasingly recognized as a critical consideration in policy-making. However, traditional benefit-cost analysis methods often fail to capture the value of animal welfare adequately, as data on Americans' willingness to pay for animal welfare are often unavailable on decision-relevant timescales. Accordingly, this workshop brings together experts from various disciplines to explore innovative approaches to integrating animal welfare into benefit-cost analysis.

The workshop begins with an overview of the current challenges in quantifying animal welfare impacts, highlighting the limitations of existing methodologies. It then delves into cutting-edge research and emerging techniques that offer promising avenues for principled valuations of animal welfare in decision analyses.

Throughout the sessions, we emphasize the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration, bringing together economists, ethicists, animal welfare scientists, and policy experts to develop holistic approaches. The workshop also highlights the critical role of partnerships between governmental agencies and academic institutions in advancing these methodologies and ensuring their practical application in policy-making.

Key topics include:

• Theoretical foundations for valuing animal welfare in economic analyses
• Novel methodologies for quantifying animal welfare impacts
• Ethical considerations in weighing animal welfare against other societal benefits and costs
• Case studies demonstrating the application of new techniques across various policy areas

This workshop is designed for policy analysts, researchers, government officials, and anyone interested in the intersection of animal welfare and policy analysis. Participants will gain a deeper understanding of the complexities involved in incorporating animal welfare into benefit-cost analysis and leave equipped with knowledge of the emerging tools that can help address these challenges.

Instructors

Mark Budolfson is Associate Professor of Geography and the Environment, and of Philosophy, at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is Co-Founder of the Population Wellbeing Initiative. His work integrates knowledge from environmental science, philosophy, economics, geography, animal welfare science, public health, and other disciplines, and introduces methods to weigh competing values along ethically important dimensions. He has published in venues including Science, PNAS, Nature Climate Change, Nature Communications, Social Choice and Welfare, and World Bank Economic Review.

Nicolas Treich is a research associate at Toulouse School of Economics and INRAE in Toulouse, France. His publications span diverse areas such as decision theory, environmental economics and behavioural economics. His recent research focuses on an emerging field: the economics of animal welfare.

Monica Saavoss is the Deputy Chief of the Economic and Policy Analysis Staff at the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Monica oversees regulatory cost-benefit analyses on a variety of topics including animal welfare, plant and animal disease prevention and management, agricultural imports, and wildlife services. Monica runs an interdisciplinary monthly working group to explore methods for valuing animal welfare in the regulatory context. In addition to animal welfare valuation, Monica is active in USDA One Health initiatives and has a particular interest in the valuation of agricultural biosecurity measures for public health and pandemic prevention.

Jonathan McFadden is a Research Economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. His research concerns the adoption of technologies and management practices that increase U.S. agricultural productivity and sustainability. Topics include digital agriculture, genetic engineering, and emerging technologies, including those relating to animal welfare. Some of his recent work focuses on the economics of cellular agriculture and use of gene editing to improve farm animal wellbeing. He currently represents the U.S. on the OECD’s Farm-Level Analysis Network.

Bob Fischer is Professor of Philosophy at Texas State University, Senior Researcher at Rethink Priorities, and a director of the Animal Welfare Economics Working Group. His research focuses on animal welfare with a special focus on strategies for incorporating animal welfare into quantitative decision-making. His books include Weighing Animal Welfare: Comparing Well-being Across Species, Wildlife Ethics: The Ethics of Wildlife Conservation and Management, and Animal Ethics: A Contemporary Introduction.

Romain Espinosa is a French economist working on animal welfare at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). His research focuses on integrating animal welfare concerns into public decision-making, which includes the development of quantification and valuation methods and the elicitation of human altruistic preferences for animal welfare. He has also led works investigating behavioral factors related to animal welfare, particularly the role of selected ignorance, reactance, and emotions.