Farmed rabbits are among the least welfare-protected farm animals, with the vast majority kept in barren wire cages that deny their social, spatial, and behavioral needs throughout their short lives.
Farmed rabbit welfare represents one of the most egregious gaps between animal sentience and welfare protection in agriculture. Rabbits are cognitively complex, emotionally sensitive animals whose fear response, social needs, and behavioral repertoire are entirely incompatible with barren individual wire cage production. The foot lesions endemic in conventional production indicate chronic physical pain affecting every animal in the system. Colony enriched housing that provides social contact, space to move, and behavioral outlets exists and is commercially viable. The welfare gap persists because rabbit welfare regulation lags far behind public knowledge of rabbit cognition.