One Health: Connecting Human, Animal and Environmental Wellbeing

The One Health framework recognizes the interconnection of human, animal, and environmental health. Understanding these connections reveals how animal welfare improvements often simultaneously benefit human health and ecological sustainability.

Key Facts

One Health is formally endorsed by WHO, FAO, OIE and UNEP as the framework for addressing complex health challenges
75% of new infectious diseases affecting humans emerge from animals — zoonotic disease prevention requires animal welfare attention
Antimicrobial resistance developing in livestock threatens human medical treatment — antibiotic stewardship links animal and human health
Reducing factory farming would reduce pandemic risk: crowded, stressed animals in intensive systems amplify pathogen emergence and evolution
Environmental degradation from intensive animal agriculture — water pollution, biodiversity loss, climate emissions — affects both animal and human welfare
Working with Indigenous communities on One Health approaches has proven more effective than top-down interventions
The COVID-19 pandemic, originating at the human-animal interface, catalyzed significant new investment in One Health surveillance systems

Welfare Considerations

The One Health framework provides perhaps the most powerful conceptual bridge between animal welfare and human welfare, demonstrating that improving conditions for animals often simultaneously improves human health, reduces pandemic risk, and protects ecological systems. The zoonotic disease pathway is the most direct: animals kept in crowded, stressed conditions with inadequate veterinary care and compromised immune function are more susceptible to infectious disease and provide conditions for pathogen evolution and interspecies transmission. The pandemic risk reduction case for improving farm animal welfare is direct and quantifiable: reducing stocking densities, improving ventilation, reducing stress-induced immunosuppression, and providing veterinary care all reduce the probability of novel pathogen emergence at the human-animal interface. The antimicrobial resistance pathway similarly connects livestock welfare to human medicine: reducing prophylactic antibiotic use in livestock (itself a welfare improvement in the direction of treating disease rather than masking its symptoms with medication) reduces the selection pressure for resistant organisms. One Health thinking reveals that the siloed treatment of human, animal, and environmental health as separate concerns misses the most important intervention opportunities at their intersections.

What You Can Do

Support One Health policy frameworks that integrate animal welfare considerations into public health planning
Reduce consumption of factory farmed animal products to reduce pandemic risk factors at the human-animal interface
Advocate for zoonotic disease surveillance programs that include animal welfare assessment as a component
Support agricultural policies that align economic incentives with both human health and animal welfare outcomes
Learn about One Health through resources from WHO, FAO, and OIE to understand the interconnection of human and animal wellbeing