OneKind has partnered with Compassion in World Farming to produce a new report, which aims to clarify the wide range of animal welfare labels appearing on food products.
Consumer concerns around the welfare of animals bred for food have increased in recent years, but with so many labels claiming high welfare standards how can the public be sure what they are buying really is ethically produced food?
Download the Executive Summary
The standards set by farm assurance schemes can vary a great deal in terms of where the animals live, how they are treated and the food production process itself. The joint report looks in detail at the welfare standards of the main farm assurance schemes in Scotland and England, and not only compares them with each other but also with the minimum welfare standards agreed within the UK farming industry.
The report, entitled “Farm Assurance Schemes & Animal Welfare” compares schemes including Red Tractor, Lion Code, Quality Meat Scotland, The Soil Association and RSPCA Freedom Food and analyses their written standards based on a range of criteria, grouped into five sets comprised of:
- Environment (the animal’s living conditions)
- Husbandry
- Stockmanship, handling, transport and slaughter
- Genetics and breeding
- Auditing
While the report found that there was significant room for improvement across all the schemes (no scheme achieved a gold rating overall for any animal) some of them were found to offer significant welfare benefits compared with the minimum legal requirements and standard industry practice. The Soil Association came out best overall in the analysis, as did the Scottish Organic Producers Association and RSPCA schemes.
However, Red Tractor, Quality Meat Scotland, Lion Code and the Scottish Finfish Code schemes were found to offer little welfare benefits beyond meeting the UK minimum legal requirements and standard industry practices. It should be added that those UK minimum legal requirements do still offer much better welfare standards than those in other countries.
Both Compassion in World Farming and OneKind hope these findings will encourage the originators of the various farm assurance schemes to incorporate the welfare assessments from the report into their standards.