Rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV) has caused devastating mortality in wild rabbit populations globally, raising significant welfare concerns about the mass suffering and death caused by this emerging infectious disease.
RHDV causes a rapid but extremely painful death — affected rabbits die from internal bleeding and liver failure typically within 48 hours of infection. The scale of mortality events during RHDV outbreaks — affecting thousands of animals in localised areas simultaneously — represents a welfare catastrophe that receives little public attention because it occurs in wild populations. The ecosystem effects of rabbit population collapse indirectly harm other species that depend on rabbits for food or on rabbit-grazed habitats for their own ecological needs. Rabbit welfare is thus both a direct concern and an indirect welfare issue for predator and habitat-dependent species throughout the food web.