New analysis links low-cost path to reducing chicken suffering: slower-growing breeds could cut pain hours at pennies per hour

A new Nature Food commentary argues that preventing a large share of animal suffering in the poultry industry could be achieved at a remarkably low cost by switching to slower-growing chicken breeds. The paper, produced by the Welfare Footprint Institute and written with researchers from the Stockholm Environment Institute and the University of Colorado Boulder, translates animal welfare into a measurable footprint and argues that paying a tiny price to reduce pain is both feasible and overdue.

The Welfare Footprint Institute estimates that the average factory-farmed chicken experiences about 700 hours of pain across its lifetime, a span that begins when the bird is hatched and ends at slaughter. The researchers break that total into several categories: roughly 50 hours of disabling pain, defined as pain severe enough to significantly limit normal activities; about 334 hours of hurtful pain, a moderate distress; around 325 hours of annoying pain, a mild but distracting discomfort; and a brief period of excruciating pain lasting roughly 30 seconds. Taken together, these hours amount to tens of thousands of minutes of pain spread over a chicken’s brief life, which averages about 1,100 hours of waking time (roughly 45 days) before slaughter. The paper describes this collection of experiences as a “welfare footprint.”

“[As] consumers, producers, policy-makers, investors and advocates, we are able to easily find out the prices of products, and we now also have carbon footprints to understand environmental impacts,” said Kate Hartcher, a senior researcher with the Welfare Footprint Institute and a co-author of the Nature Food paper, in an email. “So, why not have the same for animals?” Hartcher’s question frames the analysis as a step toward quantifying and, potentially, reducing animal suffering in policy and business decisions.

Raising chickens that grow more slowly rather than at a rapid, conventional pace is the central policy lever discussed in the paper. Over the past decade, welfare groups have pushed for the Better Chicken Commitment, which calls for slower-growing breeds and additional welfare measures such as more space and humane slaughter methods. The Welfare Footprint Institute’s analysis contends that adopting these standards would reduce the average chicken’s total pain by about 33 hours of disabling and excruciating pain, versus conventional fast-growing birds. The institute notes that poultry producers have pushed back on slower-growing breeds because they typically take about two weeks longer to reach a marketable weight, increasing production costs.

The authors argue that the cost of switching to slower-growing breeds is tiny relative to the welfare benefits. In their base estimate, the change could prevent at least 15 to 100 hours of disabling and excruciating pain per bird, at a cost of about 45 cents per pound of chicken produced. Put another way, the analysis says an hour of intense pain could be averted for as little as half a cent to three cents, depending on the scenario and the baseline practices being replaced. Hartcher characterized this as a striking contrast to the conventional view that animal welfare improvements are prohibitively expensive for producers and consumers alike. “Instead of focusing on the ‘costs’ of improving animal welfare, we show that the cost of preventing pain is tiny, and the benefits are enormous,” she said.

For the last decade, animal welfare advocates have argued that the Better Chicken Commitment would deliver meaningful improvements in chicken health and welfare, with slower-growing birds showing lower rates of lameness, heart and lung disease, heat stress, and other problems. The new paper reiterates that point and quantifies it in a way that ties welfare outcomes to production economics. However, the industry’s response has been mixed. The National Chicken Council, the trade group for the sector, contends that replacing fast-growing breeds with slower-growing ones would require far more birds—roughly 4.5 billion more per year, a 50 percent increase—which would demand more land, feed, and inputs with possible climate trade-offs. The NCC did not respond to a request for comment on the Nature Food paper.

Environmental considerations also complicate the debate. The paper notes that estimates of how slower-growing breeds affect greenhouse gas emissions vary. A 2022 study suggested that emissions could rise by about 16 percent under slower-growing systems, while a separate 2022 trial by Perdue Farms found emissions increasing by roughly 9 percent to 13.4 percent. An industry group representing European chicken producers has indicated that combining slower growth with welfare reforms could raise the climate footprint by as much as 24 percent. The authors acknowledge that exact numbers depend on breed, feed sourcing, and farming practices, but the authors urge policymakers to weigh welfare outcomes alongside climate considerations rather than using climate concerns alone as a justification for inaction.

Experts emphasize that consumers often report valuing animal welfare nearly as much as, or more than, sustainability. Still, some policymakers and environmental groups have historically prioritized climate and efficiency concerns more heavily. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, in a 2023 road map on feeding a growing population while meeting climate targets, suggested that the livestock sector “requires intensified productivity via improved genetics”—a reference to faster growth and larger animals. Hartcher argues that this framing overlooks the disproportionate harm inflicted on animals and only marginal environmental gains in some cases. “The intensification of animal production, including faster growth rates, can be justified by environmental considerations alone, given the disproportionate and severe animal welfare harms and only minimal variations in environmental indicators,” she said.

The switch to slower-growing chickens does present a dilemma for animal advocates: should the focus be on reducing the total number of birds or on reducing the intensity of suffering per bird? Some researchers and advocates advocate a “less but better” approach, which means eating less meat while improving welfare for the animals that are raised. Cleo Verkuijl, a senior scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute and a co-author of the Nature Food paper, said the project is about enabling better decision-making rather than prescribing a single solution. “Almost in all of these cases, you’re never going to land on the optimal thing,” she noted, but the analysis provides a framework for accounting for animal suffering in business and policy decisions.

As policymakers and industry players weigh the options, Hartcher said the paper’s central premise remains: the price of preventing pain is small, and the potential benefits are substantial enough to merit serious consideration in food policy, corporate procurement, and investment decisions. With the welfare footprint now quantified, proponents argue, stakeholders can begin to compare animal welfare to other factors historically used to appraise meat production and policy choices, including cost, yield, and emissions, and to pursue reforms that are both humane and practical.

The paper concludes with a pragmatic call for integrating welfare metrics into consumer labels, corporate supply chains, and public policy. Hartcher and her colleagues say their work is not a condemnation of farming but a challenge to reframe the debate around animal welfare in quantifiable terms that can inform decisions at multiple levels of society. Verkuijl emphasized that while trade-offs exist, the overarching goal should be to reduce suffering while preserving essential food security and livelihoods. “This is about enabling more humane choices without surrendering the realities of global food systems,” she said.