Transitioning to more sustainable food systems requires integrating animal welfare as a core consideration alongside environmental and health dimensions.
Food system transformation is an opportunity to address animal welfare at the scale required to make meaningful improvements for billions of animals. The current food system locks animal welfare failures into infrastructure, economics and dietary patterns that are resistant to individual action alone. Systemic change - through policy reform, certification and standards development, alternative protein investment, and consumer education - can shift the default from high-welfare-cost to lower-welfare-cost production and consumption. Animal welfare advocates increasingly work within food system frameworks to ensure welfare is not sacrificed in the pursuit of purely environmental sustainability goals. The welfare movement needs to engage with food system transformation processes rather than treating them as separate conversations.