Votos Pelos Animais: How Farmed Animal Policy Wins Votes In Brazil
Background
Brazil is at the center of industrial animal agriculture. Every year, roughly 6.5 billion chickens, 58 million pigs, and 40 million cows are slaughtered in Brazil. It is also home to the world’s largest meat company, JBS, and is one of the largest exporters of animal products in the world. The scale of this industry is reflected in the political weight of the “Bancada Ruralista,” a powerful caucus in Brazil’s Congress that is tightly aligned with agribusiness interests. Brazilians in every region of the country consume more meat than recommended, despite health concerns noted by the Ministry of Health, likely driven by the cultural significance of meat in Brazil. The impact of animal agriculture in Brazil also has major environmental implications. Large-scale animal agriculture, and the beef industry in particular, is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation of critical ecosystems such as the Amazon rainforest.
The animal agriculture industry is deeply embedded in Brazil. Individual choices such as diet change are an important part of creating change for animals, but this is not the only avenue animal advocates can explore. Political change is one of the most powerful levers available, but it requires having policymakers in key positions who can champion farmed animal issues. However, politicians may be hesitant to voice support for policies that could benefit farmed animals if they are unsure how these stances will be perceived by the public. If their image — or worse, their vote totals — could be harmed by taking these positions in a country known for its meat, potential allies may remain silent.
Faunalytics’ 2025 report Political Animals? How U.S. Voters Respond To Candidates Making Farmed Animal Policy Proposals demonstrated that voters in the United States may reward candidates who take positions that support farmed animals. Whether this is true in Brazil, which has a different culture, political system, and animal agriculture landscape, is an open question. This report aims to answer it by exploring which policies Brazilians may support with their votes, as well as how these policies shape Brazilians’ opinions of candidates.
Research that identifies which policies are popular or unpopular with the public can provide important insights for advocates about where there is already support for farmed animal welfare policies and where more advocacy is needed to improve messaging, campaigning, and advocacy. Alternatively, if certain policies that benefit the meat industry are unpopular, advocates and pro-animal politicians can use this information to shape campaign messaging against opponents who have promoted the expansion of industrial animal agriculture.
This study explores how nine specific farmed animal-related policy proposals affect the Brazilian public’s vote choice and perceptions of hypothetical candidates running for office. We conducted an experiment using a choice-based conjoint method to isolate the effects of these policy proposals on candidate preferences, while also considering a number of other candidate and participant characteristics.
Key Findings
- Brazilian voters reward candidates who pledge to protect the Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savanna, and they punish poor treatment of farmed animals. Looking at survey participants as a whole, the candidates in our simulated voting exercise who received the highest vote share were those who proposed banning the destruction of the Amazon and Cerrado for the expansion of industrial animal agriculture (69.5%) or creating stronger punishments for poor treatment of farmed animals (66.8%).
Dots show how much more or less support a candidate gets when proposing each policy, compared with the average proposal (dashed line), on a 5-point scale from “Strongly oppose” to “Strongly support.” Lines show 95% confidence intervals. Hover or tap a row for details, including the significance test against the average. Both the intervals and the p-values are adjusted for multiple comparisons.
- Voters punish candidates who support the spread of industrial animal agriculture. Candidates who proposed any of the four policies that would support the animal agriculture industry in this study received less than 50% of the vote. Candidates who proposed reducing animal health and safety regulations on large farms performed the worst (34.2%). Other unpopular policies included protecting the animal agriculture industry’s ability to conduct its own health and safety inspections (43.2%), removing environmental regulations limiting the expansion of industrial animal agriculture (44.6%), and increasing government financial support to meat companies (45.3%). Candidates who support these types of policies — and possibly even those who don’t explicitly oppose them when they are on the agenda — could see their vote shares suffer.
- Cage-free policies and candidates who propose them are viewed positively, but this doesn’t translate into votes. All else equal, a policy proposal aimed at banning the use of cages on farms didn’t make voters any more or less likely to vote for a candidate. Given the widespread efforts to make cage-free practices more prevalent, this finding is important. However, participants viewed candidates who proposed this policy as likable, competent, and compassionate. After they completed simulated elections that included policy positions, we asked participants if they supported a candidate’s policy rather than if they would vote for the candidate. In this scenario, the cage-free policy performed well. However, when directly asked, that policy support didn’t always translate into votes for candidates who proposed the policy. Brazilians may view this type of change as something that should be industry-led rather than driven by the government. Alternatively, additional advocacy efforts may help convert positive feelings about this policy into votes for candidates willing to run on it.
Dots show the estimated share of the vote a candidate receives when proposing each policy; lines show 95% confidence intervals. The dashed line marks 50% (a coin flip). Hover or tap a row for details, including the significance test against 50% (adjusted for multiple comparisons).
- Protecting critical ecosystems and cracking down on farmed animal welfare violations won over voters across several groups. Residents of the South, Lula supporters, and women/non-binary voters were all among the groups most likely to support candidates proposing either of these policies, suggesting that these could be key targets for politically-minded animal advocates to engage. But those policies weren’t only popular among those groups. Candidates who proposed these policies received increases in vote totals across nearly every segment of the population we analyzed.
- Candidates don’t have to choose between helping animals and looking good to voters. At the population level and across numerous demographic subgroups, candidates who proposed policies that would help farmed animals were rated as average or better in terms of competence, likability, and compassion. In other words, proposals that help farmed animals appear unlikely to harm candidates in the eyes of voters and may even help them. Candidates who proposed policies that would harm farmed animals were seen as average or worse on these same perception metrics. Supporting industrial animal agriculture could make candidates seem less competent, less likable, and less compassionate.
Applying These Findings
Additional Faunalytics resources related to farmed animal policy advocacy and political engagement in Brazil include:
- Promising Strategies For Improving Animal Welfare In Brazil
- Political Animals? How U.S. Voters Respond To Candidates Making Farmed Animal Policy Proposals
- Reforming Animal Agriculture Subsidies: A Guide For Advocates
- Joining Forces: Collaborative Opportunities Between The Animal Protection And Environmental Movements
- Domination And Exploitation: Understanding Industry Costs For Chicken, Egg, And Fish Products In The United States, Brazil, And China
- Attitudes Towards Chickens & Fishes: A Study Of Brazil, Canada, China, & India
- Attitudes Toward Farmed Animals In The BRIC Countries
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Behind The Project
Research Team
The project’s lead author was Zach Wulderk (Faunalytics). Dr. Allison Troy (Faunalytics) reviewed and oversaw the work.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the staff of Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira (SVB), who provided invaluable support throughout the design of this study. Sparsha Saha’s research and guidance on the research underpinning this study were critical. We would like to thank our funders for their generous support of this research. We are grateful to the EA Animal Welfare Fund for its support.
Research Terminology
At Faunalytics, we strive to make research accessible to everyone. We avoid jargon and technical terminology as much as possible in our reports. If you encounter an unfamiliar term or phrase, check out the Faunalytics Glossary for user-friendly definitions and examples.
Research Ethics Statement
As with all of Faunalytics’ original research, this study was conducted according to the standards outlined in our Research Ethics and Data Handling Policy.
Generative AI Statement
The survey instrument was translated using AI and reviewed by professional translators at Smartling, as well as native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese.
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Citations:
Wulderk, Z., & Troy, A. (2026). Votos Pelos Animais: How Farmed Animal Policy Wins Votes In Brazil. Faunalytics. https://faunalytics.org/votos-pelos-animais-brazil-voters/
