Image credit: Isabel Rodrigo.
The effects of trade as well as population growth, economic develop-
ment, and increasing consumption and production together with waste
handling are all important indirect drivers of change in ecosystems and eco-
system services. Biodiversity is impacted by the intensification of agriculture,
for example by direct biodiversity losses in monocultures, but it is also
impacted by intensification due to land fragmentation and loss of habitat
(MA Board, 2005). The connections to human, animal and environmental
well-being cannot be omitted when discussing such matters and future
change and policies should aim for a balanced outcome for all. Handling of
waste is another indirectly related area.
Discussion and work is already taking place around the conceptual inte-
gration of food, sustainability and health management (de Boer and Aiking,
2017), under frameworks such as ‘ecological public health’. This principle
encourages multidisciplinary work to ensure that public health helps ad-
dress the entire biological, material, social and cultural dimensions of the
human, living and physical world. One Welfare complements this work,
aiming to ensure that animal welfare and the well-being of people and the
planet have an active presence in future work (Lang and Rayner, 2015).
5.2 Conservation and Animal Welfare
Animal welfare (concern mainly for individual animals) and animal conser-
vation (concern mainly for species preservation) have different priorities,
and while on first thought the two might seem to be complementary, at
times one can be in conflict with the other.
