Ireland’s Animal Welfare Strategy 2021-2025

The Ireland’s Animal Welfare Strategy 2021-2025 is a national sectoral strategy. Its main objectives provide for ‘One Health, One Welfare’ which recognise the inter-relationship between human wellbeing and animal welfare, for the benefit of both animals and society; ensuring that all stakeholders are engaged with the guiding principles of this strategy and committed to resulting actions; creating a dialogue around principles for action, involving all relevant stakeholders in that dialogue, and where appropriate, in developing and coordinating actions; building on the successful collaborative model of the Farm Animal Welfare Advisory Council to provide for a similar approach in respect of other animal species; building synergies to improve welfare, whether through positive reinforcement, for example by marketing and labelling of food products with high animal welfare provenance, or through regulation and enforcement; further advancing the evidence base to support the development and implementation of policies on animal welfare; further development of a comprehensive, holistic capacity for objective monitoring and assessment of animal welfare; broadening the dissemination of knowledge concerning animal welfare through education and other means of knowledge transfer; agreeing on priorities to be advanced within the time frame of the strategy; setting SMART targets for advancing the strategy and clearly reporting against these targets; and ensuring cohesion between the strategic principles and activities currently under way.