Climate change is creating new and intensifying existing welfare challenges for farm animals, while livestock production itself is a major driver of the warming that threatens them.
The relationship between livestock welfare and climate change is bidirectional: intensive livestock production contributes significantly to the emissions driving climate change, while climate change creates increasingly severe welfare challenges for the animals themselves. Extreme heat causes physiological stress across all livestock species. Flooding can trap farm animals in submerged buildings. Drought reduces forage quality and availability. Each extreme weather event is a potential acute welfare crisis affecting thousands or millions of animals simultaneously. The most fundamental welfare response to this emerging reality is rapid reduction in livestock production through dietary transition.