Here in the UK, the government is consulting on mandatory animal welfare labelling (closing 7 May 2024). People may wish to respond if they want to express their support or share thoughts and evidence that could shape the outcomes.
I think such labelling has the potential to significantly improve animal welfare, not just through changing individual choices but by encouraging companies to stop selling the lowest welfare tiers entirely, and through raising labelling standards over time. Higher standards will probably also mean higher prices, lower consumption and 'fairer' competition with alternative proteins. What happens in the UK may also influence future reforms in the EU and elsewhere.
To summarise the proposals:
- Mandatory labelling would apply to chicken, eggs and pig products (with the suggestion that beef, lamb and dairy could follow later)
- At least initially, this would not apply to restaurants etc., but to food from retailers like supermarkets
- At least initially, it would only cover unprocessed and minimally processed foods, so e.g. beef mince and probably bacon, but not meaty ready meals or meringues
- There would be five tiers "primarily based on method of production", covering types of confinement, enrichment, mutilations, breed and more. Full draft standards can be seen here.
- The tiers might be referred to by numbers, letters or stars, potentially also with names, colours and pictures (see their mock-up, which I think needs improvement)
- The 2nd lowest tier would simply match UK minimum legal requirements, while the lowest tier would be for "products that are not verified as meeting baseline UK welfare regulations". I hope that a lot of retailers, with or without encouragement, will not sell the lowest tier products – reducing the prevalence of low welfare imports.
- There is no explicit draft timetable but it suggests an 18 month implementation period after legislation. Speculatively, I would be surprised if legislation gets through before the general election, so potentially this could become law in 2025 and take effect in 2026 or 2027.
On your comment about Part A: “it’s not the most relevant to animal welfare”, I think there are some questions which are relevant, such as:
18. If we did not use a list approach, please describe any alternative approaches you would propose to define which minimally processed meat products are included?
All products derived from animals should be included, irrespective of the extent of processing after slaughter. The criteria for labeling should be based on how the animals are treated during their lives, rather than on how much the industry transforms the meat after slaughter.
I don’t see how processing more or less the meat has any influence to the wellbeing of the animals used.