The One Health framework recognises the interconnection of human, animal, and environmental health, providing a powerful context for integrating animal welfare into public health policy.
One Health provides a strategic framework for advocating animal welfare improvements to audiences who may be primarily motivated by human rather than animal interests. Higher animal welfare standards reduce crowding, stress-induced immunosuppression, and the disease transmission dynamics that generate zoonotic spillover events. Antibiotic stewardship in livestock, which benefits animal welfare by reducing preventive medication use, simultaneously reduces the development of antimicrobial resistance that threatens human medicine. Framing animal welfare as a component of public health security creates policy pathways that might not exist through welfare advocacy alone.