Walk into any supermarket and you’ll see rows of cheap chicken. But behind those plastic-wrapped breasts and drumsticks is an invisible ledger — one that tallies not just dollars, but hours of suffering. A new study argues we can finally calculate that hidden cost, and the math may change how we think about food.
Researchers have developed a way to calculate how many hours of suffering each bird endures under today’s industrial farming system, and how much it would cost to prevent it. Their conclusion: for about one extra dollar per kilogram of meat, we could spare chickens at least 15 to 100 hours of intense pain. It costs less than one-hundredth of a cent to prevent each hour of intense pain.
Measuring Pain Like Carbon Emissions
Policymakers are used to talking about the price of meat in terms of land, water, and greenhouse gases. What’s been missing is a way to measure what the animals themselves go through.
That’s where the Welfare Footprint Framework comes in. Published this week in Nature Food, the method gives animal welfare a number—expressed in hours of pain or pleasure — that can sit alongside metrics like dollars spent or kilograms of CO₂ emitted.
The researchers tested it on the European Chicken Commitment (ECC), a voluntary pledge urging companies to use slower-growing chicken breeds and improve welfare standards. They found that adopting ECC guidelines could prevent at least 15 to 100 hours of intense pain per bird, at a cost of just $1 more per kilogram of meat.
“These are not abstract values. They allow us to put animal welfare on the same footing as other policy priorities,” said Dr. Kate Hartcher from the School of Veterinary Science at the University of Queensland, one of the study’s authors.
The Hidden Life of Chickens
Fast-growing chickens dominate the global meat market. More than 70 billion are raised each year, making them the most populous land vertebrates on Earth. But decades of breeding for rapid growth left them with bodies that can’t keep up. Since the 1950s, chickens have tripled in size. Many suffer from lameness, heart failure, or heat stress, often enduring disabling or excruciating pain.
And the suffering doesn’t stop at the birds we eat. Parent flocks — chickens used to produce those broilers — are genetically primed to gain weight fast. To keep them alive long enough to breed, farmers must severely restrict their feed. That means mother hens spend most of their lives in chronic hunger.
“Few people are aware that the pain and distress behind chicken meat production begins even before a chick is born — with the life of their mother,” said Dr. Cynthia Schuck-Paim, the study’s lead author.
The ECC pushes for slower-growing breeds, like Ranger Gold, which live longer and avoid many of these health issues. Compared to standard broilers, they endure 33 fewer hours of very intense pain per lifetime, according to a conservative estimate.
Rethinking Costs and Benefits
One of the most striking insights from the study is how cheap it is to prevent suffering. Using European carbon pricing as a benchmark, the researchers calculated that avoiding one hour of intense chicken pain costs less than one-hundredth of a cent — about the same as the emissions from driving a car for 15 meters.
This challenges the idea that animal welfare improvements are too costly or environmentally harmful. Yes, ECC-compliant chickens may emit up to one extra kilogram of CO₂ per kilogram of meat. But the trade-off looks trivial when compared with the welfare gains.
The authors argue that intensive farming can no longer be defended as “green” if it produces only marginal environmental savings while inflicting enormous suffering.
Why This Matters
Animal welfare has long been sidelined in global food policy. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals don’t mention it. Most food system models exclude it. Even debates about protein alternatives — plant-based or lab-grown — tend to focus on nutrition and climate, not the animals’ suffering.
By turning suffering into a measurable unit, the Welfare Footprint Framework could change that. It gives governments, companies, and consumers a yardstick to compare trade-offs clearly: dollars, carbon, and now, hours of pain.
As Dr. Hartcher put it, “the numbers speak for themselves.”