Improving Animal Welfare: A Key Factor in a Shift Towards More Sustainable Animal Agriculture—2nd Edition
A special issue of Animals (ISSN 2076-2615). This special issue belongs to the section "Animal Welfare".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2026 | Viewed by 224
Special Issue Editor
Interests: animal welfare; stress physiology; welfare assessment; animal based-measures; pork quality; pig production; One Welfare
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Animal welfare science has evolved rapidly in recent years, moving beyond descriptive assessments toward integrated, data-driven, and technology-enabled approaches. In parallel, livestock production systems are facing increasing pressure to improve sustainability, production efficiency, and social acceptability while maintaining high standards of animal welfare. In this context, integrating animal welfare into production systems has become a key component of sustainable animal agriculture.
From a scientific perspective, animal welfare assessment provides a functional framework to understand how animals respond to environmental, management, and climatic constraints and how these responses affect health, productivity, and efficiency. In this context, animal welfare indicators serve not only as benchmarks but also as early-warning and decision-support tools to mitigate production losses and improve system resilience.
Our objective with this Special Issue is to advance evidence-based, measurable, and transferable approaches to animal welfare assessment and management that can be applied under commercial production conditions. Topics of interest include objective welfare assessment methods, strategies to reduce antimicrobial use, improvements in production efficiency, genetic selection, animal health, husbandry management, and enhancement of lifetime performance. We also welcome contributions on emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, automation, precision livestock farming, sensor-based monitoring, and data modelling approaches supporting welfare-related decision-making across the production chain, from farm to slaughter.
We invite original research articles and reviews demonstrating how animal welfare can be integrated into production performance, economic outcomes (including meat quality), and knowledge transfer. Contributions addressing technology adoption, field validation, cost–benefit analyses, and practical implementation strategies are encouraged, as they support the transition toward more sustainable and resilient animal production systems.
Dr. Luiene M. Rocha
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- animal welfare assessment
- animal-based measures
- stress physiology
- animal behaviour
- decision-support tools
- precision livestock farming
- artificial intelligence
- One Health
- One Welfare
- sustainability
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