Abstract
Abstract Animal welfare has been an issue of ever-growing interest worldwide over the last decades. It is discussed in connection with pets, stray population control measures, animals used for entertainment, and in great part with agricultural animals. As vast multidisciplinary research demonstrates, the welfare of agricultural animals is tightly connected with human health. Poor conditions on farms and intensive farming, low transportation standards, and certain husbandry and slaughter practices negatively affect the quality of products of animal origin. Many countries increase their demands towards animal welfare for the sake of food safety. While Members of the WTO follow the sanitary standards established by the organization, there are countries that set their own stricter rules of animal welfare in addition to these standards. Some Central Asian countries, such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan are members of the WTO. Others (Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) have the status of observers. The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the WTO documents regarding animal welfare, both in their content and in their nature, and to determine to what extent these standards are obligatory for countries which are members of the organization and those which are not. The chapter discusses the issue of how animal welfare standards may influence international trade and vice versa to see if international trade may help to improve animal welfare standards for agricultural animals in the world. The author argues that the WTO needs to set higher standards of animal welfare, while Kazakhstan, as an important participant of international trade in products of animal origin, needs to adjust its internal legislation to meet international legal animal welfare standards.