A pure rights model is currently politically and economically unfeasible globally. However, the rights framework has successfully pushed welfare standards upward by challenging the moral baseline. For example, the demand for “cage-free” eggs started with rights rhetoric but resulted in measurable welfare gains.

Surveys consistently show that most people are in practice but have rights-leaning intuitions . For example, a majority of Americans oppose hunting for sport (a rights-leaning view) but eat meat (a welfarist view). This is sometimes called the meat paradox —the cognitive dissonance between loving animals and consuming them.

Furthermore, AI-driven protein folding (like AlphaFold) is reducing the need for animal testing in drug development.