As poultry consumption grows rapidly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, welfare conditions for billions of chickens in developing nations are under increasing scrutiny. Improving welfare in these systems requires context-appropriate approaches.
The welfare of chickens in developing nations is an enormous and underaddressed issue affecting billions of individual birds. The rapid intensification of production in countries with limited regulatory capacity is creating welfare problems at scale without the frameworks needed to address them. Solutions must be context-appropriate - capital-intensive Northern hemisphere approaches are not transferable without adaptation. Supporting local animal welfare organisations, breed selection for welfare-relevant traits, and market mechanisms that reward better practices are more tractable interventions than direct regulation.