Selective breeding in livestock has created animals with extreme production traits that often compromise health and welfare. Reforming breeding goals is essential for long-term animal welfare improvement.
Livestock breeding has prioritized production efficiency over animal health and welfare for decades, creating animals whose extreme productive capacity comes at significant physiological cost. This represents a deep structural welfare problem because it affects every individual of the selected genotype for their entire life. Reforming breeding goals to include welfare traits alongside production traits is technically feasible and increasingly practiced. Slower-growing poultry, lower-yielding but healthier dairy cattle, and dogs bred for functional anatomy rather than extreme appearance all represent breeding reform in practice. Consumer demand for products from welfare-considered breeds, and regulation of breeding practices that cause severe welfare deficits, drive genetic progress toward animals that can live well.