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.

Why animal welfare stands out from an EA perspective

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/).

Moving beyond advocacy: where I’m especially curious

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:

• Operations, systems-building, and organisational effectiveness
• Research, monitoring, and evaluation
• Policy analysis and institutional engagement
• Strategy, coordination, and capacity-building across organisations

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.

Treating this as a hypothesis, not a commitment

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:

• Learning by reading: Skimming career reviews and role profiles across 80,000 Hours, Probably Good, and Animal Advocacy Careers to understand the landscape.
• Learning by writing: Drafting structured notes explaining my current views (inspired by Holden Karnofsky’s “Learning by Writing”: https://www.cold-takes.com/learning-by-writing/) and seeking feedback from peers.
• Learning by doing: Exploring small, low-cost projects or contributions that could test my fit for this space before pursuing formal roles.

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.

Open questions I’m still exploring

Some uncertainties I’m particularly keen to learn more about:

• Where are the highest-leverage opportunities for animal welfare work outside the US/EU context?
• How transferable are skills from operations, policy, or consulting-style backgrounds into animal advocacy organisations?
• Which interventions currently look most promising when evaluated on cost-effectiveness and long-term impact?
• How can animal welfare organisations better coordinate globally while remaining sensitive to local contexts?

Closing thoughts

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.