Animal welfare for production and working animals: evidence and need for action

The Animal Welfare Action Network of the Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock (GASL)has published a new paper, Animal welfare for production and working animals, evidence and need for action. This technical paper examines the importance of animal welfare and how it connects to wider social, environmental, and agricultural topics. It explores how animal welfare improvements within farming systems can lead to other benefits, as well as benefiting the animals themselves. The examples throughout this paper show how sustainable livestock systems can benefit when animal welfare is incorporated as a priority. The paper also suggests that many more opportunities for welfare and sustainability gains exist. To identify these, and to mitigate situations that create trade-offs, system changes need to be grounded by science, evidence of improvements and include animal welfare assessment.

The paper was written by Action Network Leader Rebecca Doyle (University of Edinburgh; International Livestock Research Institute) with contributions from a number of members of the GASL Animal Welfare Action Network, including DSF’s Brian Lindsay.

Members of the DSF Animal Care Community of Interest will remember Dr Rebecca Doyle from when she spoke to the group last year about why improving cow welfare can help sustainability. Implementing, Aggregating & Stage 1 members can view the recording of the meeting in the DSF Members Area.