Perhaps we need both. The provides the moral compass—the North Star. It tells us where we should eventually go: a world where animals are not commodities. The welfare philosophy provides the map for the journey. It stops the worst abuses today: gestation crates, debeaking, and bear bile farming.
However, the reality of these pledges has been messy. Supply chain bottlenecks, cost issues, and lack of legal enforcement have led to missed deadlines and accusations of "greenwashing"—where companies market an illusion of ethics without fundamentally changing their business models. Perhaps we need both