The majority of the world livestock population lives in lower-income countries where veterinary access, welfare knowledge, and regulatory infrastructure are limited, creating distinctive welfare challenges.
Livestock welfare in lower-income countries presents a fundamentally different challenge from high-income country contexts. Welfare problems here are primarily driven by resource limitations, lack of veterinary access, traditional management practices, and absence of welfare-specific knowledge rather than deliberate indifference. The connection between animal welfare and productivity is particularly important in subsistence and smallholder contexts: healthy, pain-free animals produce more, work harder, and reproduce more successfully. This alignment of welfare and livelihoods provides the most effective entry point for welfare improvement programmes. Community-based animal health worker programmes that train local people in basic veterinary care and welfare monitoring have demonstrated significant welfare improvements at very low cost.