One Health Approach to Animal Welfare

The One Health framework recognizes the interconnection of human, animal, and environmental health. Applying this lens to animal welfare reveals powerful shared interests and policy opportunities.

Key Facts

One Health is formally endorsed by WHO, FAO, OIE, and UNEP as the framework for addressing health challenges at the human-animal-environment interface
Zoonotic diseases — those that transfer between animals and humans — emerge most frequently from wildlife-livestock interfaces with poor welfare standards
Intensive livestock farming with poor welfare conditions creates the disease pressure that generates pandemic risk, as demonstrated by influenza and coronavirus spillover events
Antimicrobial resistance, driven substantially by livestock antibiotic use, is a One Health crisis with direct implications for both human and animal welfare
Environmental degradation from intensive agriculture harms wild animal welfare through habitat loss, pollution, and climate change
One Health policies that improve livestock welfare simultaneously reduce disease spillover risk, antibiotic pressure, and environmental damage

Welfare Considerations

The One Health framework provides a powerful argument for animal welfare that goes beyond ethical concern for animals alone: improving animal welfare improves human health outcomes. Reducing the disease pressure in livestock systems reduces pandemic risk; cutting prophylactic antibiotic use reduces resistance; improving wildlife welfare reduces zoonotic spillover. These interconnections mean that investment in animal welfare yields co-benefits for human health and environmental sustainability that strengthen the case for policy action.

What You Can Do

Support One Health policy frameworks that explicitly include animal welfare alongside human and environmental health
Advocate for pandemic preparedness strategies that address the livestock welfare conditions driving disease emergence
Reduce meat consumption from intensive systems to lower the One Health risks associated with high-density animal farming
Follow One Health research to understand the connections between animal welfare, human health, and environmental sustainability