Despite the societal and market attention, to our knowledge, there is no breeding program for
outdoor pig production in which improvement in animal welfare is emphasized. In this study, a
dam-line selected for an outdoor production system was simulated. The purpose was to
investigate the opportunities for improving welfare through traditional selection methods. The
genetic gain from simulated breeding programs was compared for three alternative scenarios: 1)
a conventional scheme that improves production and reproduction traits (litter size, piglet
mortality (PM),mean pigletweight atweaning, weaning-to-mating interval (WMI), average daily
gain (ADG) frombirth to 20 kg, ADG from20 to 100 kg, and lean content); 2) extension of the first
scenario with welfare considerations including leg condition of sows after first lactation (LEGw)
and additional non-market values on PM and WMI; and 3) a breeding program for welfare in
which genetic progress of traits important for welfare (mothering ability and sow longevity) was
obtained by increasing the non-market values of LEGw, PMandWMI. The simulation showed that,
compared with weights found in the literature, greater weights on LEGw, PM and WMI
(approximately 3, 2 and 7 times higher, respectively) were required to avoid deterioration of
these traits. The improvement of traits important to welfare was realized with a reduction in the
genetic gain of production traits. Thus, the implementation of a breeding program for welfare in
outdoor production requires other prerequisites than the market value of the genetic progress
only.