Farm Animal Welfare and Climate Change: Methods of Assessment and Mitigation

Climate change is probably the most important environmental issue, and major stressors on livestock production of our time. In a changing climate, more farm animals across a wider area will be subject to heat related illness and associated negative affective states including thirst, frustration and discomfort. At the same time, climate change will affect livestock production through competition for natural resources, quantity and quality of feeds, livestock diseases, heat stress and biodiversity loss. Therefore, heat stress has been described as one of the most pressing challenges facing animal agriculture. Farm animals, particularly rapidly growing and high-producing livestock, are vulnerable to the effects of climate change in part because their internal heat load is already high. Moreover, some of these changes will impact the welfare of farmed animals. Given that, climate change is expected to exert an overwhelming negative effect on livestock health and welfare, several studies suggest that the expected increase of air temperatures might reduce the risk of death and improve health and welfare of livestock living in areas with very cold winters. However, there is a dearth of scientific information on adapting livestock production to the changing climate; as such, well-founded reference material on sustaining livestock production systems under the changing climate scenarios in different agro-ecological zones of the world is essential.

The purpose of this Research Topic is to highlight the potential impact of climate change mitigation strategies on animal welfare, and to promote understanding, scientific and technical progress, and recent knowledge in the animal welfare and climate change. By methodically and extensively addressing all aspects of climate change and livestock production, this Research Topic offers a valuable tool for understanding the hidden intricacies of climatic stress and its influence on livestock production and animal welfare. The most significant feature of this Research Topic is that it addresses in detail the different adaptation strategies and identifies targets for different stakeholders in connection with climate change and livestock production. This Research Topic requests to fill these gaps and aims to highlight in detail the various strategies used to mitigate livestock-related GHG emissions, and those which can reduce the impacts of climate change on livestock welfare. To this end, this Research Topic will collect contributions on descriptive technologies, strategies, and technical synergies that rely on Farm Animal Welfare and Climate Change. We, therefore, invite scientists, veterinary and engineers in the field of farms animal welfare and sustainable livestock production from the worldwide community to submit case studies, technical developments, research papers, and reviews that are relevant to this context. The Research Topic is geared to a wide audience range, including farmers, scientists, veterinarians and consumers. It provides a succinct overview of methods and strategies to maintain and, where appropriate, improve animal welfare.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

- Animal behavior, stress physiology, immunology, neurophysiology, and cognition
- Developing novel approaches and/or technologies to evaluate animal welfare
- Development and application of methods linking climate data with disease occurrence should be implemented to
prevent and/or manage climate-associated diseases
- Quantitative assessment of animal welfare trade-offs in climate change mitigation scenarios
- Mitigating climate change through animal welfare improvement
- Improving animal feeding and genetics as effective mitigation measures.
- Applying scientific advances in measuring farms animal welfare
- Indicators of welfare of individual species of livestock to develop scientific measures of animal well-being
- Strategies for greenhouse gas mitigation and their implications for animal welfare