Food Labelling and Assurance Schemes

OneKind recommends looking for independent assurance schemes that require animal welfare standards above the legal minimum.

In theory, both individual consumers and large-scale purchasers should be able to gain information by way of a number of popular branding and quality assurance schemes.

However, it can be extremely difficult to work out the implications of most labelling schemes, whether they are intended to promote healthy eating, local produce or animal welfare.  Some labels on animal-derived products can be positively misleading.

Most food labels confirm compliance with minimum legal regulations but do little or nothing to address serious welfare problems such as confinement in cages, high stocking densities, fast-growing breeds and mutilations. 

Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), a specialist farmed animal welfare organisation, warns against undue reliance on industry assurance schemes.  For example, CIWF says:

“beware of the Red Tractor logo. The Red Tractor scheme, run by Assured Food Standards claims to promote good farming practices but in reality often offers little assurance to consumers beyond simple compliance with minimum legal requirements.”

Similarly, the Lion Mark is important for food safety, ensuring that eggs are safe to eat, but is not a guarantee about the conditions in which the eggs were laid.  Most battery eggs carry the Lion Mark.

Quality Meat Scotland standards focus primarily on compliance with legislation and government codes, rather than enhanced standards of welfare.

The main quality standard for meat chickens, Assured British Chicken, allows a considerably higher stocking density (38 kg/m2) than the current government recommendation (34 kg/m2).

Freedom Food

Freedom Food is the RSPCA labelling and assurance scheme dedicated to improving welfare standards for farmed animals. The scheme covers both indoor and outdoor rearing systems and ensures, among other things, that space allowances and provision of bedding material are greater than the legal minimum.

Free-range

In free-range systems, animals have access to the outdoors for at least part of their life and generally have a longer lifetime, since they are reared less intensively.  EU regulations define the requirements for eggs and poultrymeat products marketed as ‘free range’, in terms of space allowance, outdoor access and age at slaughter.  However it is important to check these details when specifying for purchasing as there are currently no legally defined free-range standards for other species, such as pigs.

Organic standards

Organic farming is a land-based system which avoids chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Organic systems place emphasis on high standards of animal health and welfare.  For example, animals are reared with outdoor access and lower stocking densities. There are currently nine different organisations who can give organic certification.

The Soil Association Organic Standard provides the highest welfare certifiable standards in the UK, such as smaller flock sizes for chickens and no live exporting of dairy calves.

The popularity of the organic sector is growing.  Recently published figures (Soil Association) showed that in 2006, there was a 110% increase in the amount of land being converted to grow organic food in Scotland.  There was also an 8% increase in the number of organic producers between 2006 and 2007 – from 636 to 686.

Aspects of animal welfare are enshrined in all organic livestock standards. Organic farming is the only farming system in the EU defined by regulation (Regulation 2092/91, which will be repealed by Regulation 834/2007 from 1 January 2009). The regulation lays down minimum rules for organic livestock production. For example, livestock must have access to the outdoors and the number of animals per unit area must be limited. Medicinal inputs and feed supplements are restricted and much of the food that the farmed animals eat must be provided on the farm itself.

The UK government department DEFRA interprets the EU regulations and set the standards which govern organic production in the UK (including Scotland). These standards are the legal minimum to which certification bodies in the UK must certify organic foods.

All organic certification bodies have to meet the minimum requirement but some, like the Soil Association, exceed the minimum in a number of areas. For example, weaning and separation from the sow are known to be very stressful for young piglets, but under Soil Association standards, piglets are not weaned until the age of eight weeks.

Further information on organic standards

http://www.soilassociation.org

Further information on labelling

Farm Animal Welfare Council Report on Welfare Labelling, June 2006 

Further information on farm assurance schemes

Farm Assurance Schemes and Animal Welfare – Can we trust them?