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![How much does it cost to improve the welfare of farmed chickens, so they experience less ‘pain’ and more ‘pleasure’? That is the question researchers at the Welfare Footprint Institute, in the US, set out to answer, writes David Burrows.
“What fundamentally matters for any sentient being is how good or bad they feel, for how long, and how intensely,” the institute’s Cynthia Schuck tells Wicked Leeks. A brief moment of severe pain has a different welfare impact to discomfort lasting weeks [and so] by quantifying these dimensions – valence (positive or negative), intensity, and duration – we capture what animals actually experience rather than what we assume about their welfare based on external conditions,” she adds.
There is a lot of attention on poultry pain at the moment: intensification of production has the potential to reduce carbon and costs for example, but at the expense of animal welfare standards and extension of other forms of environmental pollution.
Read David's full feature on Wicked Leeks, via the link in our bio.](https://wickedleeks.riverford.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)