A recent study, the Causes Americans Care About, has placed animal welfare as the number-one cause of interest to Americans followed by children’s education, hunger, disease research and disaster relief. In this third year of the study, environment was displaced to sixth place. While it is recognized that saying one cares and real action are not always correlated, the survey still serves as a barometer. For all three years of the survey, animal welfare has remained in the top three American interests.

Even when measured by effort expended online, what Americans indicate they care about versus where they put their effort may not correlate. The latest Elanco Pulse Institute Quarterly Report indicates eggs are an important topic, accounting for 65 percent of the social media poultry activity between January and March 2018. During online conversations about eggs, animal welfare (17 percent) came in a distant second to food safety (57 percent).  This data is before the recent egg recall, so next quarter animal welfare is almost certainly to be an even smaller percentage. Though Food Safety did not make the top “Causes Americans Care About” in this study, it is clearly an important issue for consumers.

Similar findings are observed in a recent report released by The Center for Food Integrity in 2018. In this survey, more U.S. consumers rank affordable food (63 percent) and food safety (59 percent) as a top concern, while only around 50 percent of consumers identify Animal Welfare.