Breeding contributes to a sustainable animal production Connecting data on animal health and welfare from the various links of the animal production chain should be combined in order to optimise the production chain and improve health and welfare of animals. Breeding organisations play an important role in improving this chain. This is the main conclusion of recent study of Animal Breeding and Genomics Centre/Wageningen UR Livestock Research about the impact of breeding on welfare of broilers. The research was conducted for the European Commission (DG SANCO). Breeding stands at the beginning of the animal production chain. Breeders are responsible for providing healthy and good quality livestock to the farmer. By improving the exchange of data along the animal production chain, breeding organisations can use this data in their breeding programmes to provide animals with improved health and welfare, and for providing data to accompany the animal or product along the production chain. Increasing transparency of animal production chains and getting a handle on improving animal health and welfare of farm animals is of utmost importance. Routinely collected data on animal health and welfare from the various links of the animal production chain should be combined in order to optimize the production chain and allow benchmarking. Full report