While welfare attention focuses on major species, dozens of other farmed animals including ducks, turkeys, rabbits, and various fish suffer in systems with little regulatory protection.
Welfare protection disproportionately favors the most economically significant species, leaving hundreds of millions of other farmed animals with minimal standards. Ducks cannot engage in normal water-related behaviors essential to their wellbeing. Rabbits in barren cages cannot perform normal locomotion or exploration. Turkeys bred for rapid growth suffer leg problems and cardiovascular disease. Addressing farmed species diversity in welfare advocacy means looking beyond the major species to the full range of animals raised in industrial systems.