Farm Animal Welfare

Farm Animal Welfare Climate Smart

Climate-smart farming approaches that reduce emissions often align with welfare improvements, creating convergent benefits.

Key Facts

Reducing livestock density reduces both emissions and welfare-compromising crowding stress
Improving health reduces both mortality (an emissions metric) and animal suffering
Feed efficiency improvements reduce emissions while reducing the amount of time animals need to spend eating
Rotational grazing improves carbon sequestration while providing pasture access welfare benefits
Welfare-positive approaches often have lower environmental footprints than intensive low-welfare systems

Welfare Considerations

Climate-smart farming and animal welfare improvement share many goals and interventions. Recognizing and exploiting these convergences creates policy and commercial opportunities where welfare and environmental advocates can collaborate effectively.

What You Can Do

Support farming policy approaches that explicitly address both welfare and climate outcomes
Learn about the convergences between climate-smart and welfare-positive farming practices
Advocate for integrated assessment of farming systems that includes both welfare and environmental metrics