Climate change represents an escalating threat to both wild and farmed animal welfare, while the animal agriculture sector is itself a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.
Climate change creates a complex welfare feedback loop in animal agriculture. The sector contributes significantly to climate change, which in turn increases welfare challenges including heat stress, disease, and feed shortages for farmed animals. Wild animals face climate-driven welfare impacts including forced range shifts, disrupted migration timing, and increased extreme weather events causing mass mortality. Reducing the scale of animal agriculture through dietary shifts reduces emissions while simultaneously improving the welfare of billions of animals currently in intensive systems.