Nutritional adequacy is a fundamental welfare requirement for all farm animals, with deficiency causing chronic suffering that is often normalized in intensive systems.
Nutritional welfare problems in livestock are often invisible because they manifest as chronic disease rather than acute distress. Metabolic disorders, bone problems, and immune suppression from nutritional imbalance cause significant suffering that is frequently regarded as a normal cost of production. Evidence-based nutritional management that prioritizes animal health over production efficiency reduces this suffering substantially.