Despite the fact that US academic Jerry Anderson compares welfare of animals in large-scale farming operations to the plight of child workers in the 1800s, on the face of it animals have many more rights than they did two decades ago. So the phrase "animal welfare" is no longer an oxymoron to the mainstream public and we now recognise the plight of industrially farmed animals (apposite given that two in three animals born on this planet are now factory farmed).