The Economics of Farm Animal Welfare

The number of ways one can be nice or nasty to animals is legion. This article will consider only one very specific aspect of farm animal welfare, namely, those systems of intensive animal production in which the system itself, irrespective of the quality of the stockmanship within the system appears to restrict the normal behavior of farm animals to an unacceptable degree. The systems that were considered by the House of Commons Select Committee on Agriculture (1981) include egg production from hens in battery cages, production of veal from calves deprived of solid food and isolated in wooden crates, and the most intensive aspects of pig production, namely, cages for weaners and stalls, with or without tethers, for dry sows