Animals at the intersection of wildlife, domestic, and human health face unique welfare challenges related to disease surveillance, culling, and habitat encroachment.
Disease-driven culling is one of the largest-scale welfare harms in modern animal management. Foot-and-mouth outbreaks lead to mass killing of animals, many healthy. Avian influenza triggers preemptive flock killing in densities that cause extreme suffering. The root conditions — factory farming density, live markets, habitat loss — that create zoonotic disease risk are the same conditions that compromise animal welfare, making pandemic prevention and welfare reform natural allies.