Regardless of where you live animal welfare is an important issue for most people. There are many ways you can help protect animals from donating to shelters and rescue groups to advocating for animal rights and laws that protect animals.

In the United States, we have animal cruelty laws at the state level as well as the federal Pet Act and Endangered Species Act. These laws prohibit certain types of animal abuse including the use of animals for entertainment purposes which often involves cruel training methods and near-constant confinement.

Wild and exotic animals used for entertainment often suffer their entire lives are taken from their families at a young age, and endure abusive training methods that include restraints, bullhooks, chains, clubs, whips and electric shock devices. They also can endanger public health and safety.

Although the animal industry is one that generates a lot of concern from the public and there are many ethical arguments to improve farm animal welfare, there is often a lack of support amongst livestock producers themselves for addressing these concerns. This is particularly true in Asia where a greater degree of power distance exists between citizens and the industry as a whole.

Benefits that yield financial gains were generally perceived by livestock stakeholders to be most important, but regional differences in these benefits were apparent. For example, leaders in India and Bangladesh were more concerned with human and community focussed benefits of improving animal welfare, whereas those in China, Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand were more focused on the business-focused.

Leaders were largely positive in their perception of the potential financial benefits that can be achieved from addressing animal welfare, and cited a number of measures that they believed would improve their businesses in the long term. These included reducing economic losses (reduction of treatments and antibiotic usage) enhancing product quality and enabling better promotion of their products.

Some of the most popular benefits were those that had a direct link with animal welfare and human-based social benefits such as mitigating environmental despoliation and preventing the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in research. These are considered one welfare measures and are an extension of the One Welfare concept which posits that animals and humans should have the same values, treatment and consideration.

In addition to a range of specific benefits leaders were also mostly positive in their perception of the existence of overall benefits to addressing animal welfare. These included avoiding negative media, reducing costs through treatments and stock loss, allowing for better product promotion, facilitating export to new markets and allowing the possibility of a greater return on investment in higher animal welfare systems.

While these are only a small selection of the more widely identified benefits to addressing animal welfare they demonstrate the importance and strength of this issue across the world, as well as the willingness of individuals to advocate for it. It is therefore important that stakeholders in the animal industry consider these potential benefits and deem them worth exploring.