Animal hoarding causes severe welfare harms to large numbers of animals and requires coordinated intervention.
Animal hoarding creates welfare crises of a distinctive character: severe suffering across large numbers of animals, combined with an owner who is unable or unwilling to recognize the harm they are causing. Animals in hoarding situations often suffer chronic malnutrition, untreated injuries and disease, and psychological deterioration from crowding and lack of appropriate care. The welfare response requires simultaneous attention to the animals suffering and to the mental health needs of the hoarder — intervention without mental health support has very high recidivism rates. The scale of suffering in individual hoarding cases can equal or exceed that of facility-level agricultural welfare failures.