Welfare impact calculator
The Welfare Footprint Framework expresses welfare impact as the time spent in affective states of different intensities. This calculator combines values you have obtained elsewhere, or which you assume (Pain-Tracks and Pleasure-Tracks, prevalence, occurrences, Life-Fates, mortality and productivity) into Cumulative Pain and Cumulative Pleasure for a Baseline and, optionally, one or more Alternatives.
Method: Alonso, W. J., & Schuck-Paim, C. (2025). Download PDF
What this tool does
The Welfare Impact Calculator expresses welfare impacts as Cumulative Pain and Cumulative Pleasure. It does this for a current situation, the Baseline, and optionally for one or more Alternatives, such as a change in housing, breed or handling.
You enter values obtained elsewhere: from studies, an expert elicitation or assumptions. For each experience you fill in the information for its Pain-Track or Pleasure-Track (segments, their durations and the likelihood of each intensity), the share of animals affected (prevalence) and how often it happens (occurrences). Life-Fates such as breeders, mortality and productivity are optional. Values should be entered as an uncertainty range (you can train your uncertainty estimates in our Calibration tool).
The calculator reports Cumulative Pain and Pleasure per episode, per affected animal, per average animal in the population and, if productivity is given, per unit of product, with a breakdown by Life-Fate and Life-Phase. For the alternative scenario: values from Baseline are imported, which you can then modify in the alternative scenario.
Results depend entirely on the values entered. Totals are additive: they are not adjusted for experiences that occur at the same time. Ranges are treated as independent of each other. Results are not WFI estimates, and nothing is stored on WFI servers.