Farmed rabbits are one of the least welfare-regulated species in European agriculture, with millions kept in conventional cages without the social housing and environmental enrichment their biology requires.
Farmed rabbits occupy a troubling position in European animal welfare — a species with well-documented behavioural needs and significant capacity for welfare-relevant suffering kept under some of the least regulated conditions in commercial farming. Rabbits are social, active animals that run, jump, hide and engage in social behaviour in natural conditions; conventional cage farming denies all of these behaviours. The welfare research showing the impact of barren cage housing — bone fragility from inactivity, stereotypies, social stress — is well-established but has not yet driven the regulatory reform that poultry and pig welfare have seen. Consumer reduction in rabbit meat consumption and the growth of welfare labelling create market pressure that supports the transition to park-housed systems where they exist.