Intensive lamb production involves welfare challenges throughout the production cycle. Understanding the key welfare issues helps consumers evaluate the standards behind lamb products.
Lamb welfare encompasses challenges from birth through to slaughter. The neonatal period is particularly challenging as lambs are vulnerable to hypothermia, starvation, and infection in the first days of life. Ewes experiencing dystocia suffer significant pain and lambs delivered by assisted birth have elevated mortality. Routine procedures including castration and tail docking cause pain that UK regulations require to be managed with local anesthesia for older lambs but which is routinely performed without analgesia on young lambs. Higher welfare production focuses on reducing painful procedures, improving maternal health to reduce dystocia, and excellent neonatal husbandry.