This piece from Works in Progress challenges the comforting assumption that economic maturity automatically solves the cruelty of industrial agriculture. It argues that while wealth has cleaned our air and reformed our cities, the suffering of billions of farm animals may be following a different, darker trajectory—one that only bends when technology makes welfare improvements cheaper than the status quo.
The Kuznets Curve of Cruelty
The editors frame the central question by invoking the Kuznets curve, an economic theory suggesting that environmental degradation and social ills worsen during early industrialization before improving as nations get richer. "For many of modernity's worst problems, a combination of affluence, maturity, and political pressure has created self-correcting mechanisms over time," the piece argues. It draws a sharp parallel to historical precedents, noting how London's soot-filled skies eventually cleared and how global deforestation rates peaked in 1980 before declining as farming efficiency improved.
However, the article posits that animal welfare is a unique case where this curve has not yet turned. "The question is whether animal suffering is closer to child labor, and will decrease as we grow richer, or to waste generation, meaning animals will continue to suffer in ever-greater numbers." This distinction is crucial. While we have seen a plateau in meat consumption in wealthy nations like Germany and Denmark, the total number of animals slaughtered has often risen because the diet has shifted toward smaller, faster-reproducing species. "From a welfare perspective, that makes a tremendous difference," the editors note, highlighting that beef implies perhaps a day of suffering per kilogram, whereas chicken implies dozens of days, and farmed fish hundreds or thousands.
The sheer growth in the number of animals consumed, particularly chickens and fish, swamps the gains from better treatment.
Critics might argue that focusing on the number of animals ignores the moral weight of reducing suffering per individual, but the piece effectively counters that the aggregate suffering is the metric that matters most for a utilitarian calculus. The historical context of gestation crates—confining mother pigs in spaces too small to turn around—serves as a grim reminder of how standard these practices have become, yet the article suggests we are finally seeing the first cracks in this system.
The Economics of Empathy
The coverage pivots to the mechanics of change, arguing that welfare improvements are not driven primarily by moral awakening, but by the alignment of cost and technology. "Animal welfare improves fastest when the technology is already cheaply available," Works in Progress reports. The piece details how battery cages, once ubiquitous, are being phased out in places like California and Switzerland not because of a sudden surge in altruism, but because cage-free systems have become economically viable. "Hens get two to three times as much floor space, which means each egg costs one or two cents more to produce. Richer consumers are willing to absorb those small costs."
This pragmatic approach is bolstered by the rise of specific technologies like in ovo sexing, which allows farmers to discard male chick embryos before hatching, sparing them the fate of being gassed or ground up on their first day. "The practice has already spared hundreds of millions of chicks from that fate in Europe, and has only just started spreading in the US." The article suggests that without such technological levers, moral pressure alone is insufficient to bend the curve.
Income needs to reach a certain level before things can start to change... What changes with wealth is willingness to pay.
Yet, the piece acknowledges a stubborn reality: high income does not guarantee progress. Countries like the United States and South Korea have surpassed the income thresholds seen in New Zealand or Sweden, yet they continue to see rising meat consumption and slower welfare reforms. "There are many countries that have surpassed these income levels and still have increasing meat consumption and less stringent farm animal welfare reforms than their peers." This suggests that culture and policy, not just GDP, are the missing variables in the equation.
The Long Road Ahead
The editors conclude with a sobering look at alternative proteins, noting that despite the hype, plant-based and lab-grown meats have failed to make a dent in the industry. "The entire alternative meat industry has yet to reach more than 2 percent market share for meat overall." The piece compares this to the slow decline of leaded gasoline, which took decades to phase out despite the clear dangers. "Those curves began to bend when the problem became undeniable at the same time as a workable substitute existed."
The argument implies that we are currently in the long, painful middle of the curve, where the scale of suffering is at its peak. "If indeed there is a Kuznets curve for animal suffering, it may take a tremendous amount of time and effort before we see the other side. What we see now is only a glimpse." The piece leaves the reader with the sense that the self-correcting mechanism of the market is real, but it is agonizingly slow and requires a specific convergence of wealth, technology, and political will.
Bottom Line
The strongest element of this analysis is its refusal to rely on moral platitudes, instead grounding the argument in the hard economics of efficiency and the specific mechanics of the Kuznets curve. Its biggest vulnerability is the assumption that technology will inevitably drive down the cost of high-welfare systems fast enough to offset the rising global demand for meat. The piece is a vital reminder that without active policy intervention, the market's natural tendency is to maximize volume, not minimize suffering.