On 25 July 2025, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) published a new Scientific Opinion on the welfare of beef cattle. The aim of the report is to provide a scientific basis for possible future legislation, as currently, beef cattle welfare is generically regulated by Council Directive 98/58/EC, but no specific EU-wide laws on the on-farm welfare of beef cattle exist.  

The verdict is damning: improper management of cattle kept at pasture or in outdoor feedlots; inappropriate diets; barren, hard-floored housing without bedding; insufficient environmental enrichment and space; painful procedures like dehorning and castration without adequate pain relief; compromised feeding and water access; abrupt weaning; exposure to harsh weather; the use of certain breeding strategies pose serious risks to the welfare of beef cattle in the EU and cause great pain and distress. 

Beef cattle face a wide range of welfare problems under current farming practices, especially when they are kept in intensive farming systems. Among the main issues identified by EFSA: 

• Not enough comfort and space: Cattle often lack soft bedding, space to move freely, limiting their ability to express their natural behaviours. 
• Poor nutrition and feeding: Diets based on concentrate can lead to digestive problems and even diseases like subacute rumen acidosis (SARA). 
• Heat stress: Cattle kept in hot environments without proper shade or cooling systems can suffer serious welfare consequences due to heat stress. 
• Lack of stimulation: Without enrichment like brushes, roughage, or outdoor access, cattle can become stressed, frustrated and even experience metabolic disorders. 
• Painful practices: Procedures like castration, dehorning, and tail docking are still carried out, often without anaesthesia and pain relief. 
• Abrupt weaning: Calves are most often separated from their mothers too early, causing stress for both mothers and calves, prolonged hunger and digestive problems in calves and inability to express maternal behaviour in cows. 
• Breeding issues: Selective breeding for high productivity traits like extreme muscularity harm cattle and leads to several health complications and difficult births. 

EFSA has put forward clear recommendations to improve welfare: 

• Give cattle more space and access to soft, dry resting areas consisting of straw bedded solid floors.
• Provide outdoor access including pasture and shaded areas for animals kept outside.
• Ensure constant access to clean drinking water in large, open troughs instead of nipple drinkers.
• Keep cattle in stable groups and avoid mixing unfamiliar animals as much as possible.
• Avoid painful mutilations altogether – but if they must happen, ensure both anaesthesia and pain relief are always guaranteed.
• Avoid early weaning of calves (before six months).
• Breeding practices for harmful traits like double-muscling should not be used.
• Regularly monitor cattle welfare using animal-based measures (ABMs)¹ collected at slaughterhouses, during transport and post-mortem.

FOUR PAWS advocates for science-based, future-proof and enforceable animal-welfare standards. EFSA’s conclusions reinforces the need for new species-specific legislation for beef cattle and specifically support our demands:

1. Establishing species-specific legislation for beef cattle. 
2. Guaranteeing proper living conditions for beef cattle, including soft bedding, adequate space, and enrichment that supports natural behaviours.  
3. Ensuring constant access to clean water and appropriate diets.  
4. Providing outdoor access and protection to shield cattle from heat, cold, and other environmental hazards. 
5. Banning routine mutilations without pain relief and transitioning to management practices that eliminate the need for such procedures altogether.  
6. Ending breeding practices that compromise animal health. 
7. Defining animal-based measures to be collected then recorded at slaughterhouses—during transport and post-mortem—in order to assess cattle welfare on farms. 

The scientific evidence is clear: beef cattle in the EU deserve better than outdated practices and inadequate protections. EFSA’s scientific opinion leaves no room for delay—welfare standards must evolve to reflect both science and society’s expectations. The suffering due to transport of unfit animals, barren housing, painful procedures, and lack of proper care and management is not an inevitable by-product of farming but the result of political inaction and weak legislation. Policymakers now have the scientific knowledge needed to inform adequate, future-proof, animal-welfare friendly legislation.  

¹The ABMs selected by EFSA as most suitable for collection at slaughterhouses to monitor the level of welfare on farm for fattening cattle are carcass fat levels, carcass condemnation, post-mortem lung lesions and post-mortem skin lesions.