Bailey Norwood pauses, choosing his words carefully when discussing the hidden cost of animal suffering. “All researchers are humans,” he says. “And humans? We tend to be a bit tribal.”

A gentle speaker with a courteous South Carolina twang, the professor of agricultural economics is a natural diplomat. It might have something to do with his unique professional niche. Norwood’s chair at Oklahoma State University is funded by the owner of a John Deere dealership. He raises chickens in his backyard and kills them himself for dinner. And yet he is a forefather of a new field whose conclusions challenge a pillar of modern-day animal agriculture.

That field doesn’t yet have a catchy name. It might be called “animal-inclusive welfare economics.” Its main premise is deceptively simple:  the welfare of farmed animals ought to factor into economic tallies of societal costs and benefits.

While this idea aligns with most people’s intuitions, it is somewhat far-fetched in conventional economics. After all, farmed animals aren’t your typical market participants. They don’t bring home paychecks. They don’t buy or sell goods. And unlike humans, they could be said to contribute most to the economy with their death. But a growing contingent of researchers believes that, just as the field of economics can too often overlook environmental harms, ignoring animal welfare fails to capture important costs of industrial farming and the overall hidden cost of animal suffering.

Over the past few years, this research has inched into the mainstream. In July 2022, Stanford University hosted one of the first-ever major conferences on the economics of animal welfare. The American Economic Association also acknowledged the growing field by adding a new categorization for published papers: “Q18 / Animal Welfare Policy.”

While most researchers in the field are animal welfare advocates, its roots lie in conventional agricultural economics. Norwood’s interest in the topic began in the mid-2000s, when the rise of farm animal documentaries gave new life to the animal welfare movement. He was frustrated by certain activists’ complaints, such as the allegation that hormones in meat and dairy pose health risks. But he was equally troubled by the farming industry’s outright denial of legitimate criticisms, and by economists’ “knee-jerk” defense of the industry.

Read the full article about the hidden cost of animal suffering by Laura Gersony at Sentient.