Rabbits farmed for meat are typically housed in wire battery cages that prevent running, jumping and social behavior, with alternative systems including parks and enriched cages offering substantially better welfare outcomes.
Farmed rabbit welfare occupies a peculiar regulatory blind spot — rabbits are protected as companions in most European countries yet farmed under conditions that would be illegal for companion rabbits if applied to pets. Wire battery cages prevent jumping — the defining locomotor behavior of rabbits — and allow no social behavior in a species that lives in social groups in the wild. The resulting welfare outcomes are severe: stereotypic bar-gnawing, muscle atrophy from inactivity, bone fragility from lack of exercise and the psychological consequences of barren, isolated confinement. Park systems and enriched housing that allow natural behavior are technically available and commercially viable, as demonstrated by producers that have voluntarily adopted them. Regulatory reform extending welfare standards to farmed rabbits is long overdue.