Natural disasters including floods, wildfires, and earthquakes pose acute welfare threats to farmed animals, and emergency planning that includes livestock is essential for preventing mass suffering during and after disaster events.
Livestock welfare in disasters suffers from the same invisibility problem that affects farmed animal welfare generally: the scale of suffering is enormous but occurs outside of public view. During disasters, farm animals may be abandoned, left in flooded buildings, or unable to reach food and water for days. Emergency planning that includes livestock as explicitly as it includes people and companion animals saves thousands of animal lives per event. Welfare obligations during disasters include pre-planning for evacuation or shelter-in-place, emergency feed and water provision, identification systems that allow ownership verification after displacement, and humane euthanasia capacity for animals that cannot survive their injuries.