Modern farmed animal genetics have been optimised for production traits at the expense of health and welfare. Reforming breeding programmes to include welfare traits is essential for long-term sustainable improvement.
The genetic foundation of modern farm animal production is itself a welfare problem. Decades of selection for single production traits — growth rate, milk yield, egg numbers — have created animals that are chronically ill-suited to their own bodies. Fast-growing broilers suffer leg pain. High-yield dairy cows cycle through metabolic disease with each lactation. These are not management failures — they are the predictable consequence of breeding programmes that excluded welfare from their selection criteria. Reform requires including health, longevity, and behavioural indicators in breeding indices, giving welfare traits genuine economic weight, and supporting commercial adoption of breeding lines developed with welfare as a primary goal.