Commercial rabbit farming confines highly active, social animals in small wire cages, creating welfare problems that are largely invisible to consumers despite the scale of production.
Rabbit meat production operates largely beneath public awareness despite confining hundreds of millions of animals in conditions that would be considered unacceptable for dogs or cats. Rabbits are prey animals that instinctively hide distress, making welfare problems invisible without systematic assessment. The small body size that makes individual welfare seem trivial to observers actually enables enormous suffering at scale. Enriched park housing that provides adequate space for locomotion, social interaction, and behavioral repertoire expression is technically and economically feasible and should become the industry standard through regulatory reform.