Biosecurity measures that prevent disease introduction and spread between livestock farms are among the most effective welfare interventions - preventing disease protects welfare more effectively than treating it.
Biosecurity is fundamentally a welfare intervention: diseases prevented through biosecurity do not cause suffering. The welfare case for strong farm biosecurity is therefore identical to the welfare case against the diseases it prevents. Disease outbreaks cause pain, distress, reduced production and premature death in millions of animals; mass culling required to control notifiable disease outbreaks (as in FMD 2001 and HPAI 2021-22) causes additional welfare harm. Investment in biosecurity is welfare prevention at scale - and the evidence that biosecurity investment is cost-effective relative to disease losses makes it an unusual case where welfare and economics are strongly aligned.