Animal Welfare Factsheet

Background

A legal definition of animal welfare can be found in the International Animal Health Organization (OIE)’s Terrestrial Code, which defines animal welfare as “the physical and mental state of an animal in relation to the conditions in which it lives and dies.” This definition is derived from animal sciences, where animal welfare is a parameter measuring “the attempt of an individual animal to cope with its environment.”Animal welfare as a law and policy concept was developed in 1965 in the United Kingdom (U.K.), following the publication of Ruth Harrison’s Animal Machines, a book which sparked public concern over the suffering of farmed animals in industrial animal agriculture. In response, the U.K. government created an independent advisory body, the Farm Animal Welfare Council, which in 1979, formalised its recommendations to the government of Great Britain via a concept called the “Five Freedoms.” The Five Freedoms refer to the most basic levels of protection for animals:

1. Freedom from hunger or thirst by ready access to fresh water and a diet to maintain full health and vigour ;

2. Freedom from discomfort by providing an appropriate environment including shelter and a comfortable resting area ;

3. Freedom from pain, injury or disease by prevention or rapid diagnosis and treatment ;

4. Freedom to express (most) normal behaviour by providing sufficient space, proper facilities and company of the animal's own kind ;

5. Freedom from fear and distress by ensuring conditions and treatment which avoid mental suffering.

The “Five Freedoms” then provided the conceptual basis for E.U. animal welfare legislation, which, though initiated in the 1970s, only began addressing on-farm treatment of animals in the early 1990s.

Today, the concept of the Five Freedoms and the resulting E.U. animal welfare legislation is criticised for failing to identify positive experiences as a fundamental need for animals. In practice, the Five Freedoms model has not entailed significant change for animals, since E.U. animal welfare legislation still allows inhumane common industry practices, such as extreme confinement, the use of cages, and mutilations. When limitations on common industry practices exist, they typically contain broad exemptions. A new concept, the “Five Domains,” is considered more adequate to account for the welfare of animals in law by enlarging the scope of the assessment of animal welfare levels to include the animals’ mental state and their ability to interact with the environment in which they are kept. The Five Domains also entails a change in approach when assessing and improving animal welfare by measuring positive experiences in addition to negative ones.

Other jurisdictions, apart from the E.U. have also adopted laws and regulations pertaining to the treatment of farmed animals throughout the second half of the 20th century – with similar limited effects. India and New Zealand have passed most of their legislation at the federal level, whereas the United States of America, Canada, and Australia have opted to regulate farm animal welfare partly at federal and state levels. However, animal welfare legislation in these countries typically contains the same limitations as E.U. legislation, allowing for similar exemptions which subject farmed animals to inhumane industry practices.

Key Considerations

When evaluating, drafting or comparing farmed animal welfare laws and policies, local context, political feasibility and the regulatory environment all influence what one considers “Better Practice.” With that caveat in mind, when all else is equal, the following considerations indicate better and worse practices for laws and policies.

1. Countries and Animals Covered in the Scope of the Legislation

Animal welfare standards in the legislation should apply to all farmed animals, including animals farmed for fibre and food purposes, and also invertebrates, such as insects, crustaceans, and cephalopods. An example of a better practice that moves closer to encompassing all farmed animals is Article 2 of the EU General Farming Directive, which includes all “animal[s] (including fish, reptiles or amphibians) bred or kept for the production of food, wool, skin or fur or for other farming purposes” in its scope.

Another important element of a better practice is to ensure the scope of the provision includes animals raised outside of the jurisdiction, but sold in the relevant jurisdiction. One example of legislation that accomplishes this is California’s Proposition 12, which bans the sales of eggs, pork, and veal from animals raised in cages, including those raised in other U.S. states and overseas. This ensures the ban does not merely increase the purchase of animal products from animals raised in cages outside of California.

2. Prohibition of Cruel Practices

To ensure a minimum level of animal welfare, animal welfare legislation should prohibit cruel practices such as the use of cages, mutilations, and high density levels on farms and during transport; speed limits should be placed on lines at slaughter as well.

An example of legislation which can lead to cruel practices would be the EU Egg Laying Hens Directive, which allows the use of cages and, in doing so, denies animals the ability to express natural behaviour, starting with spreading their wings without constraint. The EU Broiler Chickens Directive also permits extreme density levels, up to 42kg/m2, when animal protection organisations recommend a maximum density level of 30kg/m2 to guarantee animals have enough space to satisfy their physiological needs. The EU Regulation on slaughter also permits cruel methods of slaughter, such as CO2 stunning for pigs and water bath stunning for poultry, both of which are against the recommendation of the European Food Safety Authority, which has determined such methods generate unnecessary pain in animals.

An example of a better practice is California’s Proposition 12, which prohibits the use of cages for egg-laying hens.

3. Narrow-Scope Exemptions

Exemptions to animal welfare standards should have a narrow scope so as to avoid undermining the protective effects contained in the standards.

An example of a bad practice can be found in the EU General Farming Directive, which contains a general prohibition on the mutilations of animals, but also provides that any species-specific legislation might provide exemption to this general principle. As a result, the Pigs Directive contains all sorts of exemptions allowing for painful mutilations of piglets (castration without anesthesia, tail docking, and tooth clipping).

An example of a better practice is California’s Proposition 12, which provides exemptions to the use of cages only in cases where an animal needs medical treatment or for research purposes.

4. Inclusion of Engineering Standards

Standards contained in animal welfare legislation should contain quantifiable, measurable engineering standards, as opposed to performance standards, which only require that operators comply with objectives.

For instance, the EU Broilers Directive sets mortality rate objectives to be followed by operators who keep stocking densities higher than 33kg/m2. This provision could be considered as a bad practice since it only requires that operators comply with an objective of minimum mortality rate, instead of regulating on-farm practices that cause animal suffering. A better practice is California’s Proposition 12, which provides specifications on the minimum space allowance per individual animal, and so imposes operators to comply with practice standards rather than objectives.

5. Enforcement Mechanisms

Animal welfare legislation should provide enforcement mechanisms, such as ‘penalties’ in cases of non-compliance with animal welfare standards. Such penalties should be deterring enough to ensure high levels of enforcement.

6. Policy Coherence

Other key policy areas should be consistent with animal welfare legislation, such as:

• Agricultural policy: agricultural subsidies should not reward farms that rely on industry practices that undermine the welfare of animals, such as extreme confinement practices, or routine mutilations. Instead, the agricultural policy should subsidise operators who show a high degree of compliance with animal welfare legislation and go beyond minimum legal standards.

• Environmental policy: environmental regulations should apply to all farms, and no exemption should be provided to farms whose practices contradict the spirit of the animal welfare legislation, by confining animals in extreme conditions for instance.

• Labor regulations: labor regulations should apply across the whole food production chain, including on farms, during transport, and slaughter, and no exemption should be provided to operators who produce high volumes of meat and implement high line speeds.

One example of a good practice when it comes to ensuring policy coherence can be found in EU Regulation on the Direct Payments in the Common Agricultural Policy, which penalises pork and veal producers under the form of reduced subsidies in cases of breaches with the Pigs and Calves Directives.

References

References

Roger Brambell, Report of the Technical Committee to Enquire Into the Welfare of Animals Kept Under Intensive Livestock Husbandry Systems, Great Britain Parliament, H.M. Stationery Office (1965).

Donald D. Broom, Animal Welfare Defined in Terms of Attempts to Cope with the Environment (1996).

David J. Mellor, Updating the Animal Welfare Thinking: Moving beyond the “Five Freedoms” towards “A life Worth Living,” Animals, 6:21 (2016).

Farms Initiative, Responsible Minimum Standards for Chickens Raised for Meat (2020).

World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), Terrestrial Animal Health Code (2019).

Further Readings

Donald M. Broom, Animal Welfare in the European Union, Study for the European Parliament’s Committee on Petitions (2017).

Alex Bruce, Animal Law in Australia: An Integrated Approach (2018).

Deborah Cao and Steven White, Animal Law and Welfare - International Perspectives (2016).

Danielle Duffield, Regulation, Regulatory Capture, and Reform: The Case of New Zealand’s Bobby Calves, Animal Law Review (2020).

Elaine L. Hughes and Christiane Meyer, Animal Welfare Law in Canada and Europe Animal Law Review (2000).

FARMS Initiative, Responsible Minimum Standards.

Clare Palmer and Peter Sandøe, “Welfare” in Critical Terms for Animal Studies (ed. Lori Gruen) (2018).

Marcelo B. Rodriguez Ferrere, Codes vs Regulations: How Best to Enforce Animal Welfare in New Zealand?, Alternative Law Journal (2018).

Bernard E. Rollin, Farm Factories, the End of Animal Husbandry in The CAFO Reader, The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories (ed. Daniel Imhoff), 6 – 14 (2010).

Delcianna Winders, The Animal Welfare Act at Fifty Conference at Harvard Law School, Animal Law Review (2019).

Delcianna Winders, Animal Welfare Act Enforcement, Animal Law Review (2019).

World Animal Protection, Animal Protection Index.