Animal welfare: the five freedoms and five domains
What animal welfare means, the Five Freedoms and Five Domains, assessing welfare on farms, common problems, standards, and a stocking density sum.
On this page
How an animal feels matters to the animal, to the people who care for it, and increasingly to consumers, retailers and governments. Good welfare is also good husbandry: healthy, calm, well-fed animals grow, breed and produce better, and need fewer medicines. Animal welfare science has developed frameworks and practical tools to describe, measure and improve the welfare of farm animals, from the classic Five Freedoms to the newer Five Domains model.
Animal welfare principles, assessment and standards are core topics in veterinary, animal science and livestock management courses.
What is animal welfare?
The World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) defines animal welfare as the physical and mental state of an animal in relation to the conditions in which it lives and dies. Three overlapping views have shaped the field:
- Biological functioning: health, growth, reproduction and freedom from disease and injury.
- Affective state: how the animal feels: pain, fear and frustration, or comfort and pleasure.
- Natural living: the ability to perform behaviours important to the species, such as rooting in pigs, dust-bathing in hens or grazing in cattle.
The Five Freedoms
After public concern over intensive farming, including Ruth Harrison's book Animal Machines (1964), the UK's Brambell Committee (1965) recommended that animals should at least be free to stand up, lie down, turn around, groom themselves and stretch their limbs. The UK Farm Animal Welfare Council later expressed this as the Five Freedoms:
- Freedom from hunger and thirst: ready access to fresh water and a diet for full health and vigour.
- Freedom from discomfort: an appropriate environment with shelter and a comfortable resting area.
- Freedom from pain, injury and disease: prevention or rapid diagnosis and treatment.
- Freedom to express normal behaviour: sufficient space, proper facilities and company of the animal's own kind.
- Freedom from fear and distress: conditions and treatment that avoid mental suffering.
The Five Freedoms have shaped laws, codes of practice and assurance schemes worldwide.
The Five Domains model
Developed by David Mellor and colleagues from 1994 and updated several times since, the Five Domains model focuses on the animal's experiences, including positive ones.
It recognises that good welfare is not just the absence of suffering but the presence of positive experiences, such as comfort, play, exploration and social bonding, often summarised as giving animals "a life worth living".
Assessing welfare on farms
- Resource- or input-based measures: space allowance, feeder and drinker space, bedding, ventilation, housing design and management practices.
- Animal- or outcome-based measures: what the animal shows, such as body condition, lameness, injuries, skin lesions, hair loss, cleanliness, disease, mortality, and behaviour, including fear tests and qualitative behaviour assessment.
Outcome-based measures reflect welfare more directly. The European Welfare Quality® protocols (2009) combine measures for cattle, pigs and poultry under four principles: good feeding, good housing, good health and appropriate behaviour.
Common welfare problems
- Lameness in dairy cows, broilers and sows.
- Mastitis and metabolic disease in high-yielding cows.
- Leg and heart problems in fast-growing broilers.
- Confinement: sow stalls, farrowing crates and conventional cages restricting movement.
- Painful procedures: castration, tail docking, dehorning and beak trimming, especially without pain relief.
- Heat stress, poor air quality and overcrowding.
- Transport and slaughter: long journeys, rough handling, poor stunning.
- In extensive systems, hunger, thirst, disease and predation during droughts or poor management.
Standards, laws and markets
- WOAH standards in the Terrestrial Animal Health Code cover transport, slaughter, and welfare in production systems for several species.
- National and regional laws, such as European Union directives on calves, pigs, laying hens, broilers, transport and slaughter.
- Private standards and certification used by retailers and food companies, such as cage-free egg pledges and higher-welfare broiler commitments.
- Religious and cultural traditions of care for animals in many societies.
Stocking density and lameness
Stocking density. EU rules generally limit broiler stocking to 33 kg of live weight per square metre, with higher limits of up to 39 or 42 kg/m2 only where extra conditions are met. A house has 1,000 m2 of floor and birds are slaughtered at 2.2 kg.
- Maximum live weight = 33 × 1,000 = 33,000 kg.
- Birds = 33,000 ÷ 2.2 = 15,000 birds at slaughter weight.
Lameness prevalence. In a herd of 200 dairy cows, locomotion scoring on a 1 to 5 scale finds 50 cows scoring 3 or more (lame).
- Prevalence = 50 ÷ 200 = 25 per cent.
If each lame cow costs the farmer about 300 dollars in lost milk, treatment, fertility and culling, the herd's lameness costs about 50 × 300 = 15,000 dollars, showing that better welfare, through improved floors, foot trimming and cow comfort, can also be good economics.
Key points
- Welfare is the animal's physical and mental state; views focus on biological functioning, feelings and natural living.
- Five Freedoms (Brambell 1965; FAWC): from hunger and thirst, discomfort, pain, injury and disease, and fear and distress; and to express normal behaviour.
- Five Domains (Mellor): nutrition, physical environment, health, behavioural interactions, mental state; includes positive experiences.
- Assessment uses input-based and, preferably, animal-based measures, as in Welfare Quality protocols.
- Key problems: lameness, confinement, painful procedures, heat stress, transport and slaughter.
- Standards come from WOAH, national laws, private certification and markets.
What the exams ask
- School-leaving and entrance papers: what animal welfare is, and the Five Freedoms.
- Degree and research-fellowship entrances: welfare concepts, Five Domains, welfare assessment methods, behavioural indicators, and welfare in different production systems.
- Veterinary and professional examinations: welfare legislation, auditing, pain management, transport and slaughter standards, and the economics of welfare.
Described in general terms: the kind of examination, not a past paper. Laisha never reproduces exam questions.
Questions people ask
Is welfare only about intensive farms?
No. Animals in extensive systems can suffer from hunger, thirst, parasites, predators and lack of veterinary care. Welfare depends on management in every system.
Can animals have positive welfare?
Yes. Play, exploration, comfort, social contact and calm are signs of positive welfare, and the Five Domains model explicitly aims to promote them.
Does better welfare cost more?
Some changes, such as more space, cost money. Others, such as better handling, pain relief or comfortable resting areas, often pay for themselves through better health and productivity.
Sources
- World Organisation for Animal Health. Terrestrial Animal Health Code, Section 7: Animal welfare. WOAH, updated annually.
- Brambell, F. W. R. Report of the Technical Committee to Enquire into the Welfare of Animals Kept under Intensive Livestock Husbandry Systems. HMSO, London, 1965.
- Mellor, D. J. et al. "The 2020 Five Domains model: including human–animal interactions in assessments of animal welfare." Animals 10, 1870 (2020).
- Welfare Quality®. Welfare Quality Assessment Protocols for Cattle, Pigs and Poultry. Welfare Quality Consortium, 2009.
- Council Directive 2007/43/EC laying down minimum rules for the protection of chickens kept for meat production. European Union, 2007.
More in animal science and veterinary
Discussion
Questions, corrections and notes from readers on this article. Every comment is checked before it appears: keep it on the topic, and do not share phone numbers, links or contact details.