What Animal Welfare Really Means: A Wider Perspective
Animal welfare is often depicted in stark, distressing images, the emaciated dog rescued from a life of neglect or the battered horse saved from cruel conditions. While these are critical welfare issues that deserve attention, the scope of animal welfare extends far beyond cases of outright abuse. Welfare also includes more subtle, everyday issues: the overweight pet whose excess weight leads to severe health issues, the horse ridden with an ill-fitting saddle causing chronic pain, or even the outdated training practices that ignore scientific evidence in favor of tradition.
To challenge conventional perspectives on animal welfare, we reached out to equine welfare experts to explore their views on what welfare means and the most pressing concerns within the industry today. Their answers illustrate a nuanced understanding of animal welfare, one that goes beyond simply preventing suffering and toward ensuring a ‘good life’ for animals.
Defining Equine Welfare: Expert Perspectives
We asked several Animalweb Experts two specific questions:
Q1. What does the term “equine welfare” mean to you? Q2. What do you perceive as the three most important current welfare concerns?
Dr David Marlin
David is Animalweb’s founder, one of the equine world’s leading scientists, President of the UK National Equine Welfare Council and the President of the internationally established Sport Horse Welfare Foundation.
Q1. What does the term “equine welfare” mean to you?
For me, good welfare is about more than meeting the horse’s basic needs of food, water, shelter, good health, and freedom from pain/illness/abuse. It is also about ensuring the horse’s mental health is taken care of. So, good welfare comes down to good quality of life.
Q2. What do you perceive as the three most important current welfare concerns?
There are so many things that I could choose from. Injuries and deaths in racing, tendon firing, obesity, the “other 23 hours” for stabled horses, abusive training practices, medication abuse, extreme and prolonged hyperflexion, etc. As I can’t pick three, I think I will go with ignorance (“I didn’t know”), arrogance (“I know best”, I’ve always done its this way”, “My way is the best/only way”) and self-interest (people who gain from things continuing the way they are).
Dr. Marc Pierard
Marc is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Lancashire. Marc teaches on topics related to animal behaviour and welfare and has been a scientific expert on horse welfare in multiple working groups of Belgian councils.
Q1. What does the term “equine welfare” mean to you?
To me personally, equine welfare is about providing the horse with a good life, which no only includes meeting their physiological and mental needs, but also taking their individual personality and physical limitations into consideration to optimise the subjective experience of that particular horse over their lifetime. A good life does not mean, in my opinion, that a horse can only experience positive emotional states at every moment of their life. That is not realistic and we must remember that positive emotions are positive because they are different to neutral or mildly negative emotional states. When making decisions on what we ask of our horses, it does imply that we prioritise the horse’s health and welfare over our goals and ambitions.
Q2. What do you perceive as the three most important current welfare concerns?
My most fundamental welfare concern is that horse owners/trainers/riders are not making evidence-based decisions about their horses and still rely to a large extent on traditional and unsupported information, especially when that information leads to decisions that are directly contradicting available evidence and risk serious damage to the horse. False pseudo-scientific information is also on the rise and can undermine the trust in real scientific evidence. My second welfare concern is the reluctance to apply the precautionary principle in equestrian sports. When solid evidence is missing or inconclusive for the time being, absence of evidence should never be taken as evidence of absence. Common sense and expert opinion on potential issues that need to be ruled out, should lead to decisions that put the horse first until a technique/equipment has been shown to have no negative impact. My third concern is the widespread attitude that horses owe their owners some kind of work or compensation for the care those owners provide. The human’s decision to buy a horse and invest in their care does not mean the horse is under an obligation to repay this cost with performance of some kind. This can easily become a justification for pushing horses beyond their limits and causing chronic stress or pain.
Dr Gillian Tabor
Gillian is a Chartered Physiotherapist who has been working as an ACPAT Veterinary Physiotherapist for 20 years, and she is now a Senior Lecturer for the MSc in Veterinary Physiotherapy course at Hartpury University.
Q1. What does the term “equine welfare” mean to you?
Equine welfare – the minimum level of care for a horse, just meeting their physical needs can be enough to say their welfare is ok. I’d like people to understand that we should be providing horses with a life worth living, which is more than just physical survival.
Q2. What do you perceive as the three most important current welfare concerns?
Three concerns (just three??!). 1) the lack of understanding that horse behaviour happens for a reason and the cause of behaviour needs to be understood from an ethnological perspective. 2) the use of force and fear in horse training
Professor Michael Weishaupt
Michael is Head of Equine Sports Medicine Division, Vetsuisse Faculty, University of Zurich, Switzerland.
Q1. What does the term “equine welfare” mean to you?
Living Animal/Equine Welfare. A blend of -Mindfulness (care, attentiveness), Carefulness, Respect with a profound sense of responsibility, Considering individuality, Weighing of interests, Honesty and self-criticism, Knowledge (evidence based, science, horsemanship) and Attentive and striving for continuous improvement by reforming standards and values.
Q2. What do you perceive as the three most important current welfare concerns?
Lack of horsemanship (riding skills, knowledge in husbandry & training)
Dr Kieran O’Brien
Kieran is an FEI Official Veterinarian and has been a team vet for British and Irish teams.
Good ‘Equine Welfare’ means ensuring horses can live their lives as close to their natural state as possible, while still being domesticated and used for sport.
Q2. What do you perceive as the three most important current welfare concerns?
The three most important current welfare concerns a) the unphysiological movements dressage horses are required to perform, and the training methods used to achieve them b) obesity c) the attrition rate in racing
Roly Owers O.B.E.
Roly is the Chief Executive of World Horse Welfare.
Q1. What does the term “equine welfare” mean to you?
Equine welfare is based on an equid’s own perception of what they are experiencing and encompasses both their physical and mental health. Welfare is a spectrum that we can assess on a scale from poor to excellent by examining animal-based indicators. The frequency and intensity of positive and negative experiences influences how equids feel, thus influencing their welfare state.
Q2. What do you perceive as the three most important current welfare concerns?
Global overarching welfare concerns, Lack of appropriate owner knowledge, Cultural issues/differences and Inability to make changes/lack of availability of resources to improve welfare.
Key Welfare Issues and Challenges
While severe neglect and cruelty make headlines, many of the most pressing welfare concerns exist in everyday horse ownership and management. From the expert insights, we can identify four major areas of concern:
1. Misinformation and Resistance to Change
One of the biggest challenges in equine welfare is the persistence of outdated, traditional practices over evidence-based methods. Pseudo-science and misinformation can undermine trust in legitimate research, delaying progress. Resistance to change, whether from ignorance or arrogance, further exacerbates welfare issues.
2. Training and Performance Pressures
Competitive equestrian sports introduce significant welfare concerns, particularly when horses are required to perform unnatural movements or endure intensive training. The expectation that horses must ‘repay’ their owners through performance can push them beyond their physical and mental limits, leading to stress and chronic pain.
3. Equine Obesity and Management Issues
Obesity is an often-overlooked welfare concern. Overfeeding and under-exercising are common, yet obesity can be just as harmful as malnutrition. A lack of understanding regarding proper weight management and the consequences of obesity contributes to long-term health problems.
4. A Broader Perspective on Animal Welfare
Equine welfare serves as a lens through which we can reconsider broader animal welfare issues. Just as horses suffer from poorly fitted saddles, forceful training, and outdated practices, so too do companion animals face issues such as obesity, isolation, and welfare decisions driven by human convenience rather than animal well-being.
Are We Truly Giving Our Animals a Good Life?
Animal welfare is not simply about preventing extreme cases of neglect—it’s about ensuring that animals have the best possible quality of life. Achieving this requires self-awareness, scientific literacy, and a willingness to challenge traditional practices in favor of evidence-based improvements.
The next time we consider animal welfare, we should look beyond the most visible cases of suffering and recognize that welfare is impacted by every decision we make as caretakers.
Are we truly providing the animals in our care with the life they deserve?
