Leverage Points: strategic prioritisation for Animal Advocacy in India
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Updated: 2 hours ago
India has the world’s second-largest egg industry, one of its largest shrimp sectors, and its largest dairy cattle herd. Per-capita consumption of animal products remains low by global standards, but it is rising with incomes, and production is industrialising fastest in poultry and aquaculture. Whatever happens to farmed animals in India over the coming decades will happen on a scale few other countries can match.
The movement working on that problem is small. An estimated 90% of organised animal welfare groups focus on stray and companion animals, which leaves farmed, wild and liminal animals severely under-resourced. Advocates and funders in India therefore face an unusually sharp version of a familiar question: with limited money and people, where should effort go?
This report is our attempt to answer it. Our methodology involved a comprehensive evaluation of animal demographics and welfare standards throughout the subcontinent, paired with an extensive, iterative request for feedback. To ensure our recommendations were grounded in practical reality, we engaged in deep consultation with a diverse network of domestic stakeholders, including veteran advocates, academic researchers, commercial industry leaders, and policy experts. This iterative process was anchored by two workshops: an initial scoping session to align our research agenda with the movement's needs, followed by a collaborative results workshop, hosted alongside Good Growth, to stress-test our conclusions and address implementation challenges with the Indian advocacy community. We identify seven priority areas and set out what a promising ask looks like in each.
It is written for funders deciding where to direct resources, for organisations planning their next programme, and for advocates entering the Indian context who need a map of the terrain.
Acknowledgements
This report would not exist without the advocates, researchers, and industry and policy experts across India who gave us their time and their candour, nor without the funders who backed the work. They challenged our assumptions, corrected our errors, and pointed us to realities on the ground that we, as a team working from outside India, would very likely never have thought to ask about. Whatever is useful here owes a great deal to them. Any errors that remain are ours.
Download the full report
The complete report, including all tables and references, is available as a single PDF:
The same file is attached to each of the three parts below. If you intend to cite this work, the PDF is the version of record.
Summary
Each year in India billions of non-human animals begin and end their life cycles, with the overwhelming majority being animals in factory-farm conditions. Due to India’s size, almost everything is experienced on a mass scale. The country has the world's second-largest egg industry (1), one of the world's largest shrimp producers (2,3), is home to large populations of stray animals (4) and the world's largest dairy cattle herd (5). Per-capita consumption of animal products is currently low by global standards but is rising steadily with incomes (6), and the industrialisation of production, particularly in poultry and aquaculture, is increasing. This trajectory matters as much as the present: without intervention, India's factory farming footprint is likely to grow significantly over the coming decades.
This picture stands in contrast to India's long held traditions of concern for animals, rooted in principles of ahimsa across Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism (7). This continues to be reflected in public support and concern for animals (8) that far surpasses the on the ground reality. It also has some of the most progressive animal welfare statutes, including constitutional provisions recognising animal suffering, a Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act dating to 1960, and landmark Supreme Court rulings affirming that animals have legal standing. Yet there is a stark gap between what the law promises and what animals actually experience.
The animal advocacy movement in India is growing but remains small relative to the scale of the problem. The vast majority of organised animal welfare activity, an estimated 90% of groups (9), focuses on stray and companion animals. Even here these groups can struggle to make headway due to constraints but this still leaves other animal welfare issues even more severely underfunded and understaffed.
There is significant scope to improve the lives of terrestrial and aquatic farmed animals, liminal animals and wild animals. Some effective work is already underway but given the scale of the problem there are still significant gaps and under-resourced areas. Some high priority areas warrant direct investigation into exploratory interventions while others are already more well established. We identify the following priority issues as areas that most warrant focus:
Shrimp aquaculture. India produces ~1 million MT of shrimp annually (21–94 billion individuals slaughtered) (10). Potentially high-leverage asks are grow-out improvements (water quality, stocking density) delivered through producer and potentially certifier engagement or enforcement; humane slaughter commitments beginning with working with export oriented producers or through domestic retailers; and potential future development of enhanced feed formulation implemented through the highly concentrated feed sector where five firms hold 80–85% share (11).
Fin-fish aquaculture. 10+ billion individuals per year (12), and the weakest evidence base of any major farmed species group. Priorities for exploratory work are grow-out improvements (water quality and stocking density), hatchery welfare, and research into species-appropriate humane slaughter methods that could be implemented in the Indian context. Closing the primary-research gap is itself the highest-value intervention here as we are yet to identify scalable or high leverage routes for improving the lives of farmed fish.
Layer hens. There are approximately 627 million hens alive at any time in India, with over 85% from commercial farms where cages are widespread (13). These will continue to be widespread because of the softening of the recommended battery cage ban into the 2023 PCA Layer hen standards. Corporate engagement remains valuable even though the formal retail and hospitality market represents a minority of the market, these companies still represent millions of hens confined to cages. We should expect commitments are more difficult to hold in this context though there are efforts to patch this with credits and other market mechanisms.
Male chick culling. Extrapolating from previous years, approximately 320 million are killed per year. This practice can be completely resolved through in-ovo sexing, and several state animal husbandry departments have already committed in principle. Engagement with policy makers to expand and strengthen these commitments would be greatly complemented by developing locally tailored equipment implemented in hatcheries to prove commercial viability. The combination could greatly accelerate in-ovo sexing adoption.
Broiler chickens. 3.4 billion slaughtered annually (14). Fast-growing breeds represent 97.6% of commercial production (14). A shift away from these breeds represents the single largest available welfare improvement but it’s difficult to transition, and the welfare impact of shifting to indigenous or slower-growing alternatives requires additional research and development. To achieve some initial change, a tractable starting point may be working with livelihood-focused NGOs and government poultry development schemes to establish slow-growing breeder flocks and model farms. We will be conducting additional research on the trade offs between these breeds and rearing systems.
Rodent control. A neglected issue affecting billions of individuals annually. Rodents are killed using a variety of poisons but Bromadiolone likely causes the majority of rodent deaths and involves several days of acute unnecessary suffering (15). Glue trap bans are already secured in 32+ states (16) which provides a template for further restrictions. Emerging contraceptive alternatives also deserve regulatory support.
Enforcement of existing law. Given the huge gap between the animal welfare legislation in theory and practise in India, this is arguably this would be the highest-leverage systemic reform if it could be achieved. However, the path to reforms is difficult and potentially requires coordination between several different interventions. An essential first step is policy advocacy for amendments to the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act to make offences cognizable and raise penalties. Ideally reforms to the PCA act would also expressly authorise SPCA inspectors to impose monetary penalties for violations. If successful, depending on the scope of reform this alone may have limited enforcement effect. Instead it may require additional work with state governments to, for example, establish functional SPCAs with small teams of farmed animal welfare focused staff who act as investigators to detect and then refer cruelty cases to Animal Husbandry officers from the DAHD for corrective action. Animal cruelty enforcement as a whole is a multifaceted problem in India but its resolution is important for future progress across almost all issues.
Other key takeaways
The formal market is smaller in relative terms, but the opportunity is still large. Classical corporate campaigning reaches only ~20% of Indian retail in absolute terms. Even so, that slice is comparable to many whole countries. It is worth pursuing but we shouldn't expect it to be the whole picture, and practitioners report that securing commitments in India has been significantly slower than comparable work in other markets.
Framing is a strategic variable, not a cosmetic one. Indian stakeholders consistently report that asks framed around animal welfare alone face structural resistance, while the same underlying reform framed around farmer livelihoods, child nutrition, food safety, public health, employment, or environmental protection travels much further. Many of these interventions have positive effects on all these aspects and these effects warrant consideration for campaign planning and strategy. The religious and caste dimensions of food politics make this especially acute: asks that read as Western, Hindu-vegetarian, or implicitly anti-Muslim come with substantial risk.
Aquatic animals dominate for the number of individuals and suffering but have the weakest evidence. Shrimp and fish account for the overwhelming majority of suffering but have a tiny fraction of the welfare-science base of chickens or cattle. Funding primary research on Indian-farmed species (Catla, Rohu, Clarias, whiteleg shrimp, tiger shrimp) unlocks campaigns and policy asks that otherwise remain unsupported by evidence. Subsequent work is needed to refine key calls for proposals for animal welfare science in cooperation with advocacy groups who will ultimately see this implemented.
Welfare credits, producer cooperation, and model farms are our best attempts to work within the informal context. In fragmented markets, these tools can deliver counterfactual change where commitments without transparent supply chains cannot. Integrators and export-oriented producers warrant specific attention as they are the most formalised, centralised, and reputationally exposed actors in otherwise fragmented value chains.
Litigation has overpromised and underdelivered; future public-interest litigation should be recalibrated. Judgments have arrived before social, market, and political alignment existed to sustain them. Future strategy should either target (a) lighter-lift reforms with less entrenched opposition such as preemptive bans on emerging practices like broiler cages or (b) symbolic rights recognition wins that can be built on over decades. Although the impact of the latter is at significant risk of sustaining the previous pattern.
Enforcement reform is a multiplier. Every welfare law, from cage provisions to slaughter standards to tethering, is currently constrained by issues with enforcement, detection, inspection, and penalty gaps. Donors seeking systemic leverage should weigh PCA amendments, SPCA funding, and farm-inspection infrastructure as an investment that compounds the value of all other future policy work.
Alternative proteins, movement building, and institutional meat reduction are important but earlier-stage. Indian consumer attitudes are unusually favourable toward alternative proteins, and R&D for cost-competitive products using local staple crops is a differentiated bet. Movement-building investments, demographic and linguistic diversity, specialised skills pipelines, tactical innovation, compound over time even though their impact is hard to measure year-to-year.
Neglected species and issues deserve a small share of portfolio attention. Rodenticide reform, insect welfare (silk, shellac, black soldier fly larvae), and wild/liminal populations are areas where modest funding can establish the evidence base or policy foothold needed for larger future impact.
Limitations
This prioritisation synthesises the best available data at the time of writing, but substantial evidence gaps remain particularly for aquatic animals, insects, and wild/liminal populations. Several of the interventions described are exploratory, and their cost-effectiveness will sharpen as programs are piloted and evaluated. Readers should treat the key areas as a starting framework rather than a fixed hierarchy, and weigh their own organisational comparative advantage alongside it. They should also consider how their worldview may affect the relative importance of different campaigns. For each of these campaigns:
shrimp welfare reforms look most promising if you view moral weight as equal between all animals and value immediate cost-effectiveness;
fin-fish welfare is more promising for those that want to invest in building the knowledge and groundwork for important reforms, which may even generalise outside of India;
layer hen campaigns look strongest to those who want to invest in work that has evidentiary support and established track record of cost-effectiveness in other countries;
chick culling advocacy is stronger if you weigh completely sparing animals from a painful death rather than incremental improvements and want to accelerate technological adoption - though this will likely involve directly working with hatcheries;
broiler welfare engagement with livelihood-focused NGOs and government poultry development schemes if building cross-movement connections and exploring new approaches in informal markets is a priority for regional and global movement building;
rodent control looks more promising if you view more intense forms of suffering as most important and want to push policy advocacy forward to more neglected less charismatic animals; and
enforcement of existing law if building regulatory or movement infrastructure for longer term reform is a key goal of your work.
We also note that as a group working internationally, we will lack some relevant local knowledge and understanding of the context. This is particularly relevant for the differences and complexities of animal advocacy in India. We have tried to account for this through extensive stakeholder consultation, especially on issues for which those factors are particularly relevant. Nevertheless, we hope that our experience with a wide variety of contexts and the broader movement will provide a valuable perspective.
Finally, readers should be aware that the Indian advocacy environment is in an unusually turbulent time. Ongoing Supreme Court proceedings on stray animal management, shifts in the judiciary's posture on public interest litigation, and the post-pandemic rise of health and nutrition-driven consumer narratives are all reshaping what is politically possible. We have engaged with experts and advocates through the process to try to gather information on local context and the viability of certain campaigns. However, as researchers this always somewhat remains a limit of our work. Changing economic and political realities of the context can shift which interventions or campaigns are tractable. This is especially true in policy, where policy windows can emerge on issues that can briefly increase the probability of success for improving conditions or regulations for a group of animals. In these instances otherwise non-priority issues can briefly look more cost-effective to work on, and identifying this is only possible for those engaged in ongoing advocacy.
How this report is published
At roughly 46,000 words, the report is too long to sit comfortably on a single page. It is published here in three parts, which can be read in sequence or consulted individually. Each part carries the full PDF, and the contents below link directly into the relevant section.
Part 1: The scale of animal use in India
Population estimates and years of life lived across the major species groups, followed by conditions and anthropogenic harms for each: shrimp, fin-fish, layer hens, broiler chickens, bovines, sheep and goats, stray dogs, cats and cows, wild and liminal populations, animals in experimentation, and insects. It closes with what is known about Indian consumer behaviour and how it is shifting. Start here if you want to understand the problem before the proposed responses.
Contents
Part 2: Strategies, and asks for aquatic animals
An assessment of the strategic options open to advocates and what each has delivered in India so far: corporate engagement and campaigns, welfare credits, cooperative work with producers, policy advocacy, strategic litigation, movement building, welfare science, and exploratory work in informal markets. It then sets out the criteria and methodology we use to compare interventions, and applies them to shrimp and fin-fish aquaculture. Start here if you are deciding what kind of work to fund or run.
Contents
Part 3: Asks for land animals, policy and food systems
Priority asks for layer hens (cage confinement and male chick culling), broiler chickens, and rodent control. It then makes the case for reforming enforcement of existing animal welfare law, which we consider the highest-leverage systemic reform available, and closes with earlier-stage opportunities in alternative proteins and institutional meat reduction. Start here if you already know which species or policy area you work on.
Contents
Read the report
Overview and executive summary (you are here)
References
References are not reproduced here for length. All 419 sources cited across the report are listed in full in the PDF, which you can download above.
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