Publicly available data on farm animal welfare outcomes would enable accountability, consumer choice, and evidence-based policy — but remains largely inaccessible.
Welfare data transparency is both a practical and ethical imperative. Consumers making welfare-conscious purchasing decisions have no way to compare farms within certification tiers. Regulators relying on self-reported data have limited enforcement capability. Researchers cannot access farm-level data to evaluate intervention effectiveness. Open data models from Denmark (antibiotics) and the Netherlands (welfare outcomes) demonstrate that transparency is technically and practically achievable, while creating accountability that drives improvement.