Livestock genetics is the deepest lever in animal welfare — breeding decisions made by a handful of companies affect the experience of billions of animals globally.
The concentration of livestock genetics in a small number of global companies creates both a risk and an opportunity. A risk because welfare-negative selection decisions (maximum yield, extreme growth rate) affect billions of individual animals with no market mechanism to prevent them. An opportunity because incorporating welfare traits into breeding objectives — through regulatory requirement, purchaser demand or voluntary commitment — would propagate through every commercial animal of those lineages globally. The leverage is extraordinary: a single decision by Ross or Aviagen to include welfare traits in broiler selection criteria would improve the lives of billions of chickens across their productive lifespans.