On June 30, 2021, animal advocates across Europe celebrated a landmark moment: E.U. Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Stella Kyriakides announced that the European Commission would ban cages in animal farming and revise all E.U. animal welfare legislation by 2027. The pledge was the result of the End the Cage Age European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), a rare instance where citizen voices appeared to break through decades of political inertia.

Fast forward to the beginning of 2026, the Commission has proposed only limited measures. Concretely, ongoing efforts involve updating the 2005 regulation on live animal transport besides the notable introduction of the first welfare rules to better regulate the breeding and sale of cats and dogs. The broader revision of the E.U. farmed animal welfare legislation has been delayed but is again on the horizon. A call for evidence launched in the summer of 2025 gathered 690 unique responses, and the public consultation on the modernization of the legislation, including a phase-out of cages from animal production, closed in December with a staggering 236,520 submissions. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) produced a series of new or updated scientific opinions that should guide the revision of the legislation taking into account the latest available scientific evidence. We are at a critical moment in the history of farmed animal welfare in the E.U., and the effects of the efforts we will put in in the coming years will have far-reaching consequences.

The hesitancy of the Commission to take bold steps in favor of animal welfare is a reflection of the titanic battle that is happening behind closed doors to protect economic interests. It demonstrates that while citizen mobilization can successfully place issues on the agenda, only a sustained, professional, and well-funded advocacy presence can defend those gains against entrenched industry influence. Now more than ever, this demands a serious reflection on how we can scale up the political advocacy power of our movement, and on the concrete steps needed to realign our priorities and resources towards this essential goal.

Why Political Advocacy Matters

While few scholars have systematically compared advocacy strategies within the animal protection movement, some have laid crucial groundwork. For example, the broader political turn in animal ethics shifts the focus from individual moral duties towards animals — common in traditional animal ethics — towards systemic, structural, and political dimensions of human-animal relationships. Rather than centering personal choices, this turn asks how laws, policies, and institutions can and should be transformed to advance justice for animals.

This aligns with the views of Kim Stallwood who argues that lasting progress depends on embedding animal rights within political institutions. In The Politics of Animal Rights Advocacy, he critiques the movement’s over-reliance on personal ethics and calls for better connecting advocacy tactics and investing more in legislation and enforcement as drivers of long-lasting change.

Political advocacy cannot function in isolation of other methods. Side by side with corporate campaigns pushing individual (or clusters of) industry actors to voluntarily adopt higher animal welfare standards, political advocacy leads to sweeping animal welfare laws that apply to entire animal production industry segments. Animal welfare legislation may take years or up to a decade to secure and is typically slower and more restrained than market-based governance/commitments. However, once enacted, and if enforcement is strict, it establishes standards that cannot easily be rolled back.

From our decade of work in the E.U. lobbying lawmakers, bridging science and policy, and mobilizing public-facing campaigns, we know this process is slow, nonlinear, and often frustrating. Yet it remains a fundamental pathway to large-scale, enforceable protections for animals.

The E.U. As A Case Study

The European Union demonstrates how consistent advocacy can reshape animal policy, often with far-reaching consequences, a spillover effect often referred to as the “Brussels Effect.” The E.U.’s influence on animal welfare standards extends globally. Today, at least 35 countries have adopted bans or announced phase-outs of conventional (“barren”) battery cages for laying hens — this includes the E.U.-27 and the U.K., as well as Switzerland, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, Israel, Australia, and Canada. While there is no definitive global count of countries that have adopted battery-cage bans because of E.U. policy, several non-E.U. nations (such as New Zealand, Australia, and Switzerland) have enacted full bans or phase-outs following the E.U.’s 2012 prohibition. And there are many other areas where the Brussels Effect was felt globally when it comes to animal welfare, such as bans on cosmetic testing, improved meat chicken and pig rearing standards, or bans on veal crates.

The Brussels Effect also extends to corporate advocacy, as legislation has spurred significant shifts in business practice. In a conversation with Philip Lymbery, Global CEO of Compassion in World Farming, we explored how policy change has influenced corporate behavior. Lymbery noted that few people realize it was political momentum that laid the groundwork for many of today’s corporate advances. In the past, companies were hesitant to act without regulatory pressure or major changes in consumer demand. Today, however, supermarkets and other businesses are proactively removing entire categories of low-welfare products from their shelves, a transformation made possible by that foundational legislative framework.

Over the past 35 years, farmed animal welfare has gained remarkable policy legitimacy and public visibility, beginning with landmark legislation in the 1990s. The U.K. banned veal crates in 1990, followed by sow stalls in 1992, and the E.U. soon adopted similar measures, including bans on veal crates, sow stalls, and barren battery cages. In 1997, animals were legally recognized as sentient beings in the E.U. Treaty, and by 2004, caged eggs had to be labelled as such, bringing the issue directly to supermarket shelves. Thanks to indefatigable political lobbying coupled with strong scientific evidence and advocacy, the E.U. is now about to adopt its first dog and cat welfare legislation imposing, among others, mandatory identification and registration criteria as well as a ban on extreme breeding practices. It is important to note that the legislation also includes import requirements and a historic reference to the Five Domains, thus acknowledging the importance of positive welfare. Political change has consistently proven essential to driving progress in animal welfare: it legitimizes the issue, incentivizes action from other sectors, and helps phase out the most harmful practices.

Democratization & Citizen Power

Political advocacy does more than protect animals: it strengthens democracy. In the E.U., two of the three main institutions (the Commission and the Council) are not directly elected. This makes participatory tools like ECIs, public consultations, and civil society lobbying even more critical.

Three recent ECIs — End the Cage Age, Save Cruelty Free Cosmetics, and Fur Free Europe — mobilized millions of citizens and successfully placed animal welfare at the heart of E.U. policymaking. All three were led by animal advocacy organizations and driven by the efforts of millions of committed Europeans. It was those citizens who placed animal welfare on the E.U.’s political agenda. Yet citizen mobilization alone is not enough. Without skilled advocates translating grassroots energy into enforceable laws, political will dissipates. The responsibility to ensure that those voices are not just heard but translated into action falls on political advocates. That work is often uphill, unglamorous (as vividly described by Johnny Stengel in a recent blog post), riddled with setbacks — and for these reasons, all the more urgent.

Countering Industry Influence

Lobbying in Brussels often evokes images of corporate backrooms and exclusive events. For groups who do not represent economic interests, such as animal welfare NGOs, the reality couldn’t be more different. Industry groups still dominate these spaces, framing narratives and shaping legislation in ways that undermine public interest. Suffice it to say that the E.U. Transparency Register lists 79 animal welfare organizations with a combined annual budget of €705.6 million. In contrast, 304 pro-animal exploitation entities report a total budget of €6.7 billion.

Civil society needs to professionalize its presence. Animal welfare NGOs can learn from initiatives such as The Good Lobby, founded by professor Alberto Alemanno, which aim to empower nonprofits to navigate policymaking with the same sophistication as corporations, but with democratic accountability. Lobbying, when democratized, can be a force for good: a way for citizens and organizations to hold power accountable and bring evidence-based voices into policymaking spaces too often monopolized by moneyed interests.

Are We Prioritizing The Areas Of Greatest Suffering?

Many factors limit the effectiveness of our movement’s political advocacy, and one of the most critical is the choice of primary focus. A large share of resources in the animal protection sector continues to be directed towards rescue work and public education — primarily on companion animals. For example, one Eurogroup for Animals member reported allocating 80% of its budget to companion animal work. At the moment, in Europe, there are 4,138 animal protection organizations in 44 countries of which approximately around 1,000 engage in some kind of advocacy work.

The imbalance is even starker when considering funding patterns. Animal Charity Evaluators has documented that in the U.S., about 95% of donations to animal charities go to companion animal organizations, 2% to laboratory animals, and only 3% to farmed animals, despite the fact that farmed animals represent the overwhelming majority of exploited animals in the world.

These activities are nevertheless valuable: companion animal work builds public empathy that can spill over to other species and institutional capacity that can be leveraged for reforms for all animals. However, rescue work fails to address the structural systems driving large-scale suffering, particularly in agriculture. In Germany, for example, an average of around €1,000 is spent per dog or cat between admission to an animal shelter and rehoming. By contrast, even large animal welfare movements that work intensively for farmed animals often only have a budget of just a few cents per animal (Deutscher Tierschutzbund, personal communication).

Organizations working to improve the welfare of farmed animals, the single area where most animal suffering occurs, operate on a shoestring, something that has been vividly exemplified in a blog by Lewis Bollard: the entire yearly international budget for farmed animal advocacy is smaller than what Harvard University spent renovating one of its residential buildings.

Locking In Progress: Integrating Corporate Wins With Political Advocacy For Lasting Change

While legislation provides the most durable form of protection, corporate campaigns are a powerful and often necessary engine for progress. When strategically aligned, they do more than secure voluntary pledges; they create the political space and industry precedent required for successful legislative advocacy.

Corporate campaigns have secured impressive gains over the past decade. From global cage-free pledges to meat chicken welfare improvements, some of the world’s largest companies have made commitments that affect billions of animals every year. These campaigns are attractive because they deliver visible wins on short timelines, with progress being relatively easy to measure. In regions where legal reform is politically blocked, voluntary pledges may indeed be the best available option. Corporate commitments are not only helpful but often necessary precursors to binding animal welfare legislation, and the two approaches are most powerful when pursued in tandem.

But corporate wins often prove fragile. Companies can delay, dilute, or quietly abandon commitments, forcing advocates into costly cycles of monitoring and pressure. Some experts caution that corporate reforms alone risk increased public complacency or positive PR for industry without fundamental change, so legislative action is needed to ensure lasting and enforceable protection. Without the backing of law, progress depends on consumer attention and brand reputation.

Take the case of laying hens in the E.U.: despite years of corporate pledges, around 180 to 185 million hens remain in cages — roughly half of the E.U. flock. Most eggs are hidden in processed foods, where consumer choice has little influence because, by law, only shell eggs must be identified by method of production.

Meat chickens are another case in point. The European Chicken Commitment (ECC) could improve the lives of 1.1 billion birds by 2027, but this still represents only about 18% of the E.U.’s total production. Furthermore, compliance is uneven: nearly a third of signatories of the ECC have provided no progress updates, and many others report under 20% implementation on key criteria (CIWF ChickenTrack 2024). Without legislation, the majority of chickens remain unprotected.

To change this, animal advocates must see corporate and political engagement as two sides of the same coin. A corporate pledge for better chicken welfare should be immediately leveraged as a proof point in lobbying for legislative mandates. When economic arguments carry the most weight, businesses that already support our cause should be encouraged to speak out at the policy table. Brussels is full of influential companies and trade associations, yet too few raise their voices for animals. Conversely, the threat of legislation can be the single most powerful tool for bringing corporations to the negotiating table. By coordinating these efforts, we can create a powerful feedback loop where market-based wins fuel policy change, and policy change solidifies and expands market-based wins.

Our main limitation remains capacity. Ideally, organizations who engage in corporate campaigns should join the policy arena so that corporate pledges are leveraged to book long-lasting legislative change. Achieving such rebalancing or resources will require sustained human and financial effort and a change in the way we measure political success for animals.

Metrics Matter

Some funders are beginning to reflect publicly on how to measure political advocacy for animals, but the field is still catching up. For example, Open Philanthropy’s Farm Animal Welfare program shares grant reports that track legislative and regulatory progress across Europe. Evaluators like Animal Charity Evaluators have also begun mapping “menus of outcomes,” including intermediate indicators that help track progress towards systemic change.

These efforts show that it is possible and necessary to make political advocacy more legible to donors. Without stronger, standardized metrics, particularly to measure intermediate goals, political advocacy risks remaining underfunded compared to corporate campaigns simply because its outcomes are harder to measure.

The animal protection movement should also become better at measuring its impact, and philanthropy needs to accelerate this shift: funders and NGOs must co-create transparent, credible frameworks that capture both incremental progress and ultimate systemic outcomes. Only then will political advocacy receive the sustained investment it needs to deliver justice at scale.

Hard Questions, Urgent Answers

To secure durable protections for animals, the animal protection movement and its philanthropic partners must act on three strategic imperatives:

1. Realign resources with the epicenter of suffering. We must consciously shift human and financial resources from the heavily saturated companion animal sector to areas of work where we can achieve the greatest impact on the largest number of lives.
2. Commit to building enduring political power. We must treat political advocacy as a core, long-term infrastructure investment, not a short-term campaign expense. This means funding the talent, data, and lobbying presence needed to counter industry’s immense influence.
3. Professionalize our donor communication. As a movement, we must develop and adopt robust metrics for political work, communicating our (short, medium, and long-term) progress, challenges, and successes with the same sophistication we apply to our programs. This builds donor trust and unlocks the sustained investment required for systemic change.

If the movement does not ramp up its political advocacy and the professional and soft skills that it requires, industry actors will gladly fill the vacuum. By investing more in policy and legislation — especially in regions like the E.U., where reform is within reach — we can ensure that protections for animals are not voluntary promises, but binding obligations.

Conclusion

Political advocacy is rarely fast and glamorous. It is often messy, tortuous, and, quite frankly, sometimes discouraging. Yet even very recent history shows it is a strategy that delivers binding, durable protections. We need a larger, more professional animal protection movement, one capable of speaking the language of politicians and industry lobbyists, leveraging science and evidence, and countering misinformation with credibility and clarity. We need to become better at advocating for the importance of this work towards our donors, and at accounting for it, as challenging as this is. Only through smart, strategic political engagement can we ensure that public concern translates into meaningful policy. That’s how we make democracy work not only for people, but for animals too.