9 actually good things that happened to animals this year

The world we’ve built is an unrelentingly cruel one for animals. By 2025’s end, millions of animals will have been locked in tiny cages and violently killed for their fur . Hundreds of millions will have been drugged, prodded, or sliced up in painful experiments. And close to 1 trillion animals will have been farmed for their meat, milk, or eggs, with the vast majority reared in factory farms . 9 actually good things that happened to animals this year It wasn’t all bad in 2025. Kenny Torrella is a senior reporter for Vox’s Future Perfect section, with a focus on animal welfare and the future of meat. Meanwhile, countless animals are caught from the wild, or bred in captivity, to be put on display in zoos, aquariums, and circuses, or sold as pets. Even though most people oppose these cruelties to a degree, the industries that exploit animals for profit are economically powerful, politically connected , and culturally entrenched, making it incredibly difficult to win animals legal protections. The global animal advocacy movement is growing, but remains tiny in light of what it’s up against. So too are startups developing animal-free technologies. But despite the odds, a number of incremental and transformative campaigns were won this year to chip away at the immense suffering experienced by animals. Here’s an incomplete list. 1) Poland banned fur farming as the global industry continued to collapse Weeks ago, Poland - the world’s second biggest fur producer - banned fur farming . Polish President Karol Nawrocki called it a decision that “reflects our compassion, our civilizational maturity, and our respect for all living creatures.” The move followed a decade of industry collapse; from 2014 to 2024, the number of animals farmed for their fur plummeted from 140 million to 20.5 million . 2) America’s cage-free egg trend accelerated Most egg-laying hens in the US are still forced to live in tiny cages for their whole lives. Cage-free eggs are far from cruelty-free - the hens still suffer from a number of painful practices and likely don’t spend any time outdoors - but they’re a big improvement from cages. And this year, a lot of hens were spared from cage confinement. In the US, the share of cage-free eggs jumped from 38.7 percent in December 2024 to 45.3 percent in September 2025 - saving about 20 million hens from life in a cage, which is the fastest shift since animal advocates began campaigning to ban cages in the early 2000s. The trend is accelerating globally , too. But progress on the cage-free issue has to be protected; US industry groups have tried to repeal state cage-free laws in Congress and the courts, and fortunately, those efforts failed in 2025. 3) Over 25 US jurisdictions banned the sale of dogs, cats, and other animals Each year, Americans buy millions of dogs and cats from pet stores and breeders. Most of them come from puppy or kitten mills, where animals are raised in small, unsanitary enclosures...

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