WOAH (World Organisation for Animal Health) Terrestrial Animal Health Code, Chapter 7.1 — Guiding Principles for Animal Welfare

Chapter 7.1 of the WOAH Terrestrial Animal Health Code was first adopted in 2004, and the version held here is the update adopted in 2019. It is not a treaty that states sign one by one. It is a formally adopted international standard issued by an intergovernmental organisation, and the distinction matters for how much weight it carries.

WOAH is not an advocacy body. It was founded in 1924 as the Office International des Epizooties, after 28 nations united against a cattle plague that was destroying livelihoods worldwide. It renamed to the World Organisation for Animal Health in 2003 while keeping the OIE acronym, and rebranded fully in 2023 for its centenary. It has 183 member countries, is headquartered in Paris, and since a 1998 agreement is formally recognised by the World Trade Organization as the reference standard-setting body for animal health in international trade. When a country's trade policy on livestock or animal products is challenged, WOAH's Codes are what a WTO dispute panel looks to. The Codes are technically recommendations rather than a ratified treaty, but that trade recognition makes them binding-adjacent in practice. This is the closest thing that exists to an official, adopted, universal statement of animal-welfare principles.

Article 7.1.1 defines the subject. Animal welfare means the physical and mental state of an animal in relation to the conditions in which it lives and dies. An animal experiences good welfare if it is healthy, comfortable, well nourished and safe, is not suffering from unpleasant states such as pain, fear and distress, and is able to express behaviours that are important for its physical and mental state. Good welfare requires disease prevention and appropriate veterinary care, shelter, management and nutrition, a stimulating and safe environment, humane handling and humane slaughter or killing. Welfare refers to the state of the animal; the treatment the animal receives is covered by separate terms such as animal care, animal husbandry and humane treatment.

Article 7.1.2 sets out eight guiding principles. They tie animal health to animal welfare; endorse the internationally recognised five freedoms, being freedom from hunger, thirst and malnutrition, from fear and distress, from physical and thermal discomfort, from pain, injury and disease, and freedom to express normal patterns of behaviour; endorse the three Rs for the use of animals in science, being reduction in numbers, refinement of methods and replacement with non-animal techniques; and require that the value-based assumptions involved in weighing welfare evidence be made as explicit as possible. They also state plainly that the use of animals in agriculture, education, research, companionship, recreation and entertainment makes a major contribution to human wellbeing, and that this use carries an ethical responsibility to ensure the welfare of those animals to the greatest extent practicable. Two further principles note that better farm animal welfare often improves productivity and food safety, and that welfare standards should be compared on equivalent outcomes measured against performance criteria rather than on identical system designs.

The rest of the chapter turns those principles into measurement. Article 7.1.3 records that the scientific assessment of welfare has progressed rapidly and forms the basis of the recommendations, and describes the three families of measures used: impaired functioning associated with injury, disease and malnutrition; animals' needs and affective states such as hunger, pain and fear, often assessed through the strength of their preferences, motivations and aversions; and physiological, behavioural and immunological responses to challenge. Article 7.1.4 says the standards should emphasise favourable outcomes for the animals so they can apply globally, should prefer animal-based measures, should define explicit targets or thresholds based on relevant science and expert experience wherever possible, and should treat resource-based and management-based measures as valid only where clearly linked to a welfare outcome.

Article 7.1.5 gives eleven general principles for livestock production systems. Genetic selection must take health and welfare into account. Animals introduced to new environments should suit the local climate and be able to adapt to local diseases, parasites and nutrition. The physical environment, including the substrate, should minimise the risk of injury and of disease and parasite transmission, and should allow comfortable resting, safe and comfortable movement and the performance of natural behaviours the animals are motivated to perform. Social grouping should allow positive social behaviour and minimise injury, distress and chronic fear. For housed animals, air quality, temperature and humidity should support good health, should not be aversive, and should not prevent natural thermo-regulation. Animals should have sufficient feed and water to prevent prolonged hunger, thirst, malnutrition or dehydration. Disease and parasites should be prevented and controlled through good management, with seriously ill animals isolated and treated promptly or killed humanely where treatment is not feasible. Where painful procedures cannot be avoided, the resulting pain should be managed as far as available methods allow. Handling should foster a positive human-animal relationship and should not cause injury, panic, lasting fear or avoidable stress. And owners and handlers should have enough skill and knowledge to treat animals in accordance with all of the above.