Can Animal Welfare Serve as a Climate Adaptation Tool? The EU Law Barriers to Integrated Regulation

Climate change poses severe risks to livestock systems through increased thermal stress, disease pressure, and extreme weather events. Empirical evidence demonstrates that measures improving animal welfare, such as enhanced ventilation, appropriate stocking densities, and environmental monitoring, simultaneously strengthen climate resilience. This article examines why EU legal frameworks do not systematically recognize this welfare-climate nexus. It demonstrates that the separation between animal welfare law and environmental law is not merely accidental but reflects the asymmetrical design of horizontal integration clauses in EU primary law. Animal welfare regulation developed as an ethically oriented regime aimed at protecting individual animals, establishing minimum husbandry standards without reference to environmental resilience. Environmental law, by contrast, evolved to protect ecosystems and natural resources through a holistic, system-oriented approach. Climate adaptation frameworks, situated within environmental law and grounded in Article 11 TFEU, do not systematically incorporate individual animal welfare, which remains governed by the more limited integration clause in Article 13 TFEU. The consequences extend beyond conceptual inconsistency. Regulatory practice does not systematically integrate welfare measures into climate adaptation planning,even where such integration would enhance both animal welfare and environmental resilience. This produces a coordination deficyt that is partly shaped by the asymmetrical structure of EU primary law, rather than by policy choice or implementation deficits alone. The article argues that addressing climate risks in livestock systems requires moving beyond the current separation of regulatory frameworks. Without rethinking the relationship between animal welfare and environmental integration, climate adaptation frameworks will continue to overlook welfare-based measures that function as effective tools of resilience.