Widely reported, broadly affective, persistent labour shortages within Australia’s agricultural industries have continued for over two decades, and mirror the scope, effects and occupational demographics of poor rural/regional health and wellbeing statistics. Both issues significantly impede agribusiness sustainability and progressive advancement, and are risks to fresh food security, international commodity trading and domestic economic sectors. The separate research disciplines have identified factors contributing to each problem – including some factors in common - and several initiatives have been introduced, e.g., increased skilled worker visa numbers, diet and exercise promotion campaigns and generation of rural/regional-specific counselling services; all of which represent remedial strategies. Yet for the last six centuries, our cultural and medical philosophy has been ‘prevention is better than cure’. Examples of initiatives which seek to prevent occupational attrition and poor wellbeing are less apparent. This is likely to be an effect of the lengthy timeframes required to experimentally validate prevention initiatives, which also affects researcher, institutional and political careers, and funding perpetuity. This review seeks to explore common factor associations between low occupational retention rates and poor health and wellbeing statistics in animal agriculture. Specifically, have prevention initiatives been developed or are any currently in place, how successful have such prevention initiatives been, and what opportunities exist to improve both wellness and career longevity in animal agriculture in the long term?