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No sustainability without animal welfare

Last changed: 13 May 2019

Animal welfare science and animal welfare policy-making need to find new ways of entering global debates over food security and sustainability. How to achieve this is the topic of a paper by researchers from The Centre of Excellence in Animal Welfare Science, coordinated by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. They argue that improved animal welfare should be a significant component of the global drive towards a more sustainable agricultural development, with animal welfare science as a base in driving that development.

They also recommend that animal welfare science and policy must better articulate the concern for the relationship between human and animal health and welfare. Representatives of the animal welfare community need to be integrated in the governance structures associated with sustainable agricultural development. There is also a need for international, robust ways of comparing the welfare of farmed animals across different production systems, and science must continue to respond to development and policy changes in an experimental and innovative way. Applying these recommendations would contribute to the goal of feeding the multispecies world in a healthy and sustainable manner that matters to humans and animals alike.

Link to publication

https://doi.org/10.3390/ani8060081

Reference

Henry Buller, Harry Blokhuis, Per Jensen and Linda Keeling. 2018. Towards Farm Animal Welfare and Sustainability. Animals 25:8 (6)