Global farm animal welfare standards vary dramatically across countries. International organizations are developing frameworks to track progress, drive improvement, and create transparency in welfare practices worldwide.
Global farm animal welfare is simultaneously improving in leading jurisdictions and worsening in aggregate as global production scales faster than welfare standards improve. The challenge is that welfare leadership from countries like Sweden and Norway represents a small fraction of global production - most animals are produced in systems with minimal or no welfare standards. International trade can undermine domestic welfare improvements when higher-welfare domestic producers compete with lower-cost imports from lower-welfare systems. Effective global welfare progress requires not only advancing domestic standards but also using trade policy to create incentives for welfare improvement globally. Consumer information systems that communicate welfare conditions transparently at point of sale are a necessary component of market-driven improvement.