Improving welfare in beef cattle production requires attention to housing, health management, transport, and slaughter across diverse production systems.
Beef cattle welfare varies enormously between production systems. Extensive grass-based systems allow natural grazing behavior, exercise, and social interaction that feedlot systems cannot provide. However, extensive systems can have welfare challenges including poor disease monitoring, difficult access to veterinary care, and harsh weather exposure. Feedlot systems provide controlled nutrition and health monitoring but prevent natural behavior expression and impose chronic stress from confinement. Across all systems, transport to slaughter is a high-risk welfare event requiring careful management of loading, journey duration, conditions, and pre-slaughter handling.