One Health – One Welfare: two evolving concepts put into perspective

Abstract

The concepts One Health and One Welfare are frequently used to label various political and scientific initiatives, but how did they emerge? By the end of the 1980s, it was clear that protecting human health from infectious and chemical risks involved protecting the health of animals and their interactions with the environment. The One Health concept recognizes this interdependence and advocates a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach to meeting the health challenges posed by global change. The One Welfare concept has developed similarly to consider interactions between the human, animal and environmental compartments and the need for interdisciplinary thinking. It seeks to encompass the various societal challenges for the preservation of the environment and biodiversity, the sustainability of livestock farming, and animal and human welfare in order to improve the human and animal conditions on an international scale. This article illustrates these two concepts using examples involving ruminants in livestock production systems in developed countries. The final section looks at the complex interactions that arise when we seek to improve one or the other separately. While the two concepts share common ambitions, the approaches deployed to date to make them operational are distinct. In particular, developments have focused on different scales of action, while questions have arisen as to how closely they are intertwined.