The veterinary voice for animal welfare: reflecting on BVA’s updated Animal Welfare Strategy

Good lives for animals

Recognition of animal sentience – that animals can consciously experience feelings that matter to them, such as fear and enjoyment - underpins a veterinary and broader societal aspiration that animals used for human benefit should experience a good life and a humane death.

Yet, for its simplicity, the pursuit of this ethical aspiration marks a significant departure from the status quo of animal use globally, where animals routinely experience harms such as close confinement, painful ‘management’ procedures and being bred for looks or productivity over health.

Veterinary access to animal-using industries

The veterinary profession, with its direct access to all areas of animal use – for sport, food, companionship and so on – should be able to use its trusted, collective voice, backed by evidence and ethics, to raise public consciousness of these harms and facilitate the varied, necessary measures to address them. But the commercial relationships that exist within animal-using industries can also bring tension and competing interests. As a dog breeder who disliked veterinarians advocating welfare-focused breeding reforms once publicly grumbled, “don’t bite the hand that feeds you”.

Consequently, there is a risk that clear and effective veterinary animal welfare advocacy can become muted or tempered.

Vets speaking up for animal welfare

Society expects the veterinary profession to safeguard animal welfare and veterinarians aspire to be leading advocates for animals.

In clinical veterinary practice, individual veterinarians work hard to deliver appropriate, high-quality care in the face of regular ethical dilemmas, often accompanied by moral stress. Such practitioners, through a combination of their own frustrations with persistent animal welfare issues and their awareness of growing societal scrutiny, look to their representative bodies to speak up for animals on their behalf.

To provide such societal engagement and challenge was a clear call from BVA members, providing the signal and mandate for BVA to launch its inaugural Animal Welfare Strategy Vets Speaking Up for Animal Welfare in 2016.

In Spring this year, under the banner ‘a decade of welfare wins’, the Association’s refreshed Strategy was published. It reaffirms BVA’s commitment to purposeful animal welfare advocacy and guides next steps.

Informing and structuring the approach

In 2016, BVA set out to answer ‘what does effective veterinary animal welfare advocacy look like’ by consulting over 40 relevant interested parties, both within and out of the profession. Consultees included species-specialist veterinary associations, farming bodies, government bodies and charities. Their responses led to commitments structured around six priority areas: Animal welfare assessment, Ethics, Legislation, Advocacy, Education, International.

Under 'Assessment', for example, BVA promoted the use of welfare assessment frameworks and tools to ensure full consideration of both physical health and mental wellbeing. 'Ethics' acknowledged the tensions arising from competing veterinary interests but reasserted the profession as being unambiguously animal welfare-focused. 'Advocacy' committed BVA to working with species-specialist associations on a rolling programme of position statements and campaigns relating to high-priority animal welfare issues. 'Education' highlighted the need for under- and postgraduate veterinary training in animal welfare science, ethics and law (AWSEL). 'International' placed animal welfare, as a pressing social issue, in the context of other global issues, calling for international collaboration and the embedding of animal welfare within the global sustainable development agenda.

Progress and impact

BVA has progressed in each of these areas since 2016, with the many impacts and successes laid out in the renewed strategy document.

At a high level, the Association in its 2021 policy position on animal welfare clarified the veterinary profession’s dual duty: to advocate the best interests of animals under the care of individual veterinarians, as well as to advocate for changes and solutions to address the root causes of animal welfare problems.

The same position also conveyed the essential principle that veterinary support and involvement with animal-using activities is conditional; there is a limit to acceptable animal welfare compromises associated with each area of animal use. If these limits are reached and cannot be adequately addressed, it says, the veterinary profession will oppose that use or practice.

In its visionary position on UK sustainable animal agriculture, BVA spelled out the need to move away from harmful, routine practices such as mutilations and close confinement systems. For the first time, it put necessary demand-side measures on the veterinary agenda, calling for ‘less and better’ consumption of animal-derived foods.

The latest strategy document lays out how BVA mobilised its members to successfully lobby, in partnership with others, for the legal recognition of animal sentience. Other influential positions have been published on topics including aversive training devices, social housing for pet rabbits, and surplus male animals in agriculture. An updated policy on the welfare of ‘exotic’ pets placed an expanded focus on fish welfare, including calling for a move away from the wild capture of fish for the pet trade.

On the 'International' section, BVA’s animal welfare advocacy has dovetailed with the Association’s leadership activities on sustainability, such as its Green Team Vet campaign, Net Zero report and being awarded Investors in the Environment accreditation at the highest level. BVA’s strategic approach has had international impact, influencing, for example, the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe (FVE)’s first animal welfare strategy The Veterinary Voice for Europe’s Animals, adopted in 2021.

Next steps

The latest BVA document further emphasises the importance of attaining positive welfare for animals and champions the Five Domains framework to put a clear focus on animals’ mental states. It reflects on changes and disruption in the operating environment – for example, Brexit, Covid-19 and the cost-of-living crisis – and their effects on animal welfare, and emphasises the importance of human behavioural science for securing lasting change for animals. Ensuring animal welfare is safeguarded during trade deals, exploring the ethical incorporation of technology and AI into veterinary work, and developing informed views on emerging ethical concepts are all laid out. As I write, BVA is energetically lobbying government for the passing of the Puppy Smuggling Bill.

The veterinary voice for animal welfare is becoming a chorus, as it must in the face of society’s growing demands for humane animal care and professional accountability. In recent years, high profile scrutiny has followed protests at the Grand National steeplechase, undercover footage of punitive horse training by an Olympian, and philosopher Peter Singer’s accusation that the complicity of the veterinary profession in some of today’s abusive practices is ‘most shocking’.

In response, having built its strategic foundation, BVA with its specialist divisions are now fully engaged in addressing high priority welfare issues affecting billions of animals. For example, the Association is developing policies on the use of animals in performance sports and the welfare of chickens bred for meat, while in May 2025, together with the Pig Veterinary Society, BVA announced its call for an end to the use of farrowing crates for pigs.

BVA’s determined work provides a global exemplar of veterinary animal welfare advocacy, in an area of public policy that is ethically contested and contentious. Through clarifying our overriding professional responsibilities, and supporting delivery in policy and practice, BVA is securing the profession’s ongoing standing and relevance in a world where ensuring good lives for animals is an imperative.