Selective breeding has transformed farm animals over decades, creating animals whose bodies are optimized for production at the expense of health and welfare. Understanding the welfare implications of breeding decisions reveals choices embedded in animal agriculture.
Selective breeding is arguably the most fundamental welfare intervention available in animal agriculture, because it determines the baseline biological capacity for welfare of every individual in a breed. Decisions made by breeding companies, breed associations, and genetic selection programs shape whether animals are genetically predisposed to health problems or resilience. The incorporation of health and welfare traits into breeding value indices — alongside production traits — represents real progress in some sectors. However, production trait economic weights typically still dominate selection decisions. The welfare science community has increasingly documented the welfare costs of extreme production-focused selection, building the evidence base for requiring welfare trait inclusion in breeding programs as a regulatory or certification requirement rather than a voluntary addition.