Cattle feedlots — concentrated facilities where animals are finished on grain before slaughter — raise significant welfare concerns around space, substrate, and behavioral restriction.
Feedlot conditions create multiple concurrent welfare challenges. Concrete and hard-packed earth cause lameness and joint problems. Grain-based diets cause subclinical ruminal acidosis in a significant proportion of animals — a painful condition. Confinement prevents normal ranging and social choice behaviors. Shade is frequently inadequate for summer heat. The trade-off is feed efficiency: feedlots convert grain to beef faster than pasture systems. But the welfare cost — chronic pain and behavioral restriction — is substantial and increasingly subject to regulatory and consumer attention.