What is animal welfare?

Animal welfare is what guides and legislates the standards of care for animals used by humans for companionship, research, and food.

Nobody wants to see an animal suffer, but it's a fact that the majority of people in the UK eat meat and dairy and enjoy visiting the zoo or aquariums.

So it's vital that, if animals are to be used for these purposes, they are given the best protection possible. This is where animal welfare comes in.

Why is animal welfare important?

Animals deserve a life free of suffering, and every improvement in welfare moves them closer to that goal.

The trouble is that welfare considerations are widely different for some animals compared to others.

For example, dogs and cats have more protections than animals raised for food. Often thought of as little more than machines, farmed animals are actually smart, sensitive, and unique individuals. And just as you wouldn’t want your dog locked in a cage for their entire lives, or standing in their own faeces all day, farmed animals should have the same legal protections.

Many laws on how to treat animals are based on the principles of animal welfare. Without that precedent, investigations uncovering animal abuse on farms would have less legal standing.

What are the five animal welfare needs?

Animal welfare is often organised around the Five Freedoms. Though there has been some debate around whether this is the best way to approach animal welfare, the system endures. The Five Freedoms are:

Freedom from hunger or thirst

Animals should have access to nutritious food and clean water. Unfortunately, during transportation between farms and to the slaughterhouse, farmed animals often suffer through many hours without either.

Freedom from discomfort

Animals should live comfortable lives. In the UK, however, millions of chickens are confined to cages. These cramped and stressful conditions often cause the birds to injure themselves and each other.

Freedom from pain, injury, or disease

Animals should not be injured intentionally and, if they do fall ill, should receive prompt treatment. And yet, numerous investigations have revealed farm workers abusing animals in their care, as well as injured or dying animals receiving no care.

Freedom to express normal behaviour

Animals should have the freedom to behave naturally. On broiler chicken (chickens raised for meat) farms, though, birds often can’t even stand due to how fast they’ve been bred to grow. They cannot engage in natural behaviours as they are too big to move.

Freedom from fear and distress

Animals shouldn’t be scared or distressed, whether from their treatment or surroundings. But while science has established that fish feel fear and pain, they are often left to bleed to death or are gutted alive by the fishing industry.

What is the role of animal welfare in society?

Animal welfare can be shaped by the socially accepted minimum standards for the treatment of animals.

For example, it’s socially unacceptable for people to beat their dogs or engage in dogfighting. However, the socially acceptable minimum standards of care vary depending on species. For example, horse racing is still an extremely popular sport, despite the suffering it causes horses. In 2022, 178 horses died on racing courses in the UK.

On factory farms, millions of animals are suffering. But because these atrocities take place outside the public’s view, many people don't question how their food arrives on their plate.

Sometimes, legislation doesn't keep up with what is socially acceptable. For example, the majority of people would find hens in cages socially unacceptable, but the law has not caught up yet.

What is the difference between animal rights and animal welfare?

The concept of animal rights is typically synonymous with abolitionism - the belief that animals should not be used by humans at all. For example, replacing traditional battery cages with enriched cages improves animal welfare marginally. And getting rid of cages on factory farms altogether improves welfare a bit more, by providing hens more freedom.

Ultimately though, animals on a free-range farm are still being used and exploited by humans. From an abolitionist perspective, egg farms of any kind should be altogether abolished.

At The Humane League UK, our long term vision is of an end of the abuse of animals raised for food. To achieve this, we take an incremental approach to reducing the suffering of animals on factory farms, fighting for improvements to animal welfare. For as long as consumers continue to demand animal products, protecting the welfare of those animals is essential.

What are the current challenges in animal welfare?

Nearly anywhere that animals are being used by people, there are welfare concerns. Below are some of the areas with especially problematic animal welfare issues.

Intensive animal agriculture

The food system accounts for some of the most glaring animal welfare violations. Farmed animals lack many of the protections enjoyed by companion animals, and many of the standards that are afforded to farmed animals are frequently violated.

The scale of intensive animal agriculture is a big part of the issue. In order to meet high demands for meat and other animal products, farms have ballooned in size, prioritising efficiency and profits over welfare.

Animal testing

Cosmetic animal testing has been banned in the UK since 1998. However, in 2019 the UK started issuing licences for animal testing for some cosmetic ingredients. Once that came to light, animal advocacy organisations sued. Unfortunately, the High Court ruled in favour of the Government, taking a big step backward for animal welfare. In late 2023, the UK Government officially announced a return to animal testing for cosmetics in the country.

As part of these tests, lab animals such as rats, mice, and rabbits are exposed to chemicals, often for an extended period of time, causing incredible suffering. This is despite there being more effective and humane ways to test cosmetics that don’t involve animals.

Wildlife trafficking

Trafficked animals endure tortuous capture and transport, and poor housing conditions, while some are then slaughtered to make goods.

For example, in 2022, airport personnel in Thailand recovered 109 animals – including turtles, snakes, and a porcupine - from the luggage of two women attempting to transport them to India. Inside the luggage, the animals were stuffed into containers and stacked on top of each other in buckets.

Companion animal welfare

Of all animals, companion animals enjoy some of the strongest legal and social protections. But their welfare too can be neglected or violated.

The illegal puppy trade, for example, in which sellers breed puppies in filthy conditions and then sell them online to people across Europe causes suffering to both puppies and the females that are forced to give birth over and over.

Lack of awareness and understanding

One of the biggest challenges to animal welfare is a lack of knowledge. Many people simply don’t know how their cosmetics are tested, where eggs come from, or their pooch’s origin story.

Making matters worse, the industries that profit from animals in these ways do their best to maintain that consumer ignorance. Looking at a package of eggs, a bottle of milk, or the meat display in a supermarket, you’re likely to see animals enjoying sunshine in a rolling pasture.

This is a form of humanewashing – or the industry working to convince consumers that their animals have high welfare when they actually don’t.

What does the law say about animal welfare?

The principal law protecting the welfare of animals is the Animal Welfare Act of 2006. In addition to this Act, there are other laws both domestically - such as The Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981 and Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 - and internationally - the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora - that prevent animal suffering, even if they are not explicitly animal welfare laws.

Animal Welfare Act 2006

The Animal Welfare Act of 2006, introduced by the Department for Environment, Food, and Royal Affairs (Defra), outlines the minimum welfare standards for animals in the UK, replacing the Protection of Animals Act of 1911.

Among its provisions are bans on certain procedures for farm animals and penalties for noncompliance. Unfortunately, some wild animals, invertebrates, and research animals are exempt from protection under the law.

The bottom line

Animals deserve lives worth living, even if we’re going to continue to use them for our convenience and enjoyment. Currently, laws in place to protect them aren’t good enough.

Join us as we fight for improved and consistent animal welfare standards.