The Business of Farm Animal Welfare

Nicky Amos, Rory Sullivan, Nicky Amos, Rory Sullivan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351270021
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Globally, nearly 70 billion animals are farmed annually for meat, milk and eggs. Two-thirds of these are farmed intensively. The views held by food companies on animal stewardship, and the management practices and processes that they adopt are, therefore, of critical importance in determining the welfare of these animals.

Yet, despite the scale of the food industry's impact, farm animal welfare remains a relatively immature management issue. There is a lack of consensus around the specific responsibilities companies have for farm animal welfare, and around how companies should treat the animals in their or in their suppliers' care.

This book, The Business of Farm Animal Welfare, provides an extensive, authoritative analysis of current corporate practice on farm animal welfare. It critically reviews and assesses the ethical and business case for action. Through a series of practitioner case-studies, it describes how companies have addressed farm animal welfare in their operations and supply chains. It analyses the key barriers to companies adopting higher standards of farm animal welfare, and offers a series of practical recommendations to companies, consumers and policy makers on the role that they might play in raising farm animal welfare standards across the food industry.

As the first comprehensive account of business and farm animal welfare, this book is an essential resource for researchers, practitioners and general readers looking to understand and influence corporate practice on farm animal welfare.

1
Introduction

Rory Sullivan

University of Leeds and Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare, UK

Nicky Amos

Nicky Amos CSR Services and Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare, UK

Globally, nearly 70 billion animals are farmed annually for meat, milk, eggs and other products. Some two-thirds of these animals are farmed intensively. The gradual intensification of animal production systems over the past century, in response to market demands for higher production yields at lower cost, means that many of these systems are responsible for significant and widespread negative impacts on animal welfare. Practices such as the selection and manipulation of animals for rapid growth, and the use of confinement mechanisms, such as cages and crates, which severely restrict animal movement and behaviour, are pushing animals to their physical and mental limits. Moreover, these practices are starting to have a detrimental effect on the business case for intensive animal production, with many consumers unwilling to accept food that embodies poor welfare, and its association with poor quality.

Yet, animal welfare is just one of the many social and environmental challenges facing food companies. With the global population projected to reach 9 billion people by 2050, rising incomes in many regions, wider economic and climate-related issues affecting food pricing, security and supply, and changes in consumer preferences for more protein-rich diets, food companies have a critically important role to play in influencing what we eat, how that food is produced, and the social and environmental impacts of food production. Within the context of farm animal welfare, the views that food companies—producers, processors, retailers and other consumers of other animal-derived products—hold about the welfare of animals and the management practices and processes that these companies adopt are of vital significance in determining the welfare of billions of farm animals.

Farm animal welfare is not just about the ethics of using animals to provide food. Nor is it just about the responsibilities that humans owe to the animals used in this way. Farm animal welfare is increasingly recognized as an important commercial issue for companies across the food industry. Various factors have contributed to this, including: tightening farm animal welfare-related regulation (in particular within the European Union); growing consumer and, more recently, investor concern about animal welfare issues; high profile media stories (such as the 2013 European horsemeat scandal); the costs of product recalls; concerns about the human health effects of antibiotic use in food supply chains; and the damage to company brands and reputation as a result of allegations about poor farm animal welfare practices.

The reasons for food companies to be concerned about animal welfare are not just about reducing costs and avoiding or minimizing downside risks. There are many positive reasons for companies to take a proactive approach. These include the potential to improve efficiency, margins and profits through reduced wastage, the potential to access new markets and customers, the potential to produce higher quality products, and the ability to grow existing markets as a result of adopting higher welfare standards ahead of competitors. To take just one example, many retailers have made commitments to offer higher welfare products, such as cage-free eggs and antibiotic-free meat, creating market opportunities for producers that are able to meet or exceed these demands.

Despite the business, ethical and societal arguments for companies to engage with these issues, relatively little is known about how food companies, either individually or as a sector, manage farm animal welfare. For example, how do food companies define their responsibilities for the animals in their care? How do food companies define their responsibilities for the animals in their supply chains? What practices do food companies adopt to ensure the welfare of animals in their care or in their supply chains? How effective are these practices at protecting or enhancing the welfare of animals? What is the business case for action? What are the implications of farm animal welfare for capital expenditure, operating costs, profit margins, revenues, assets, brand or reputation? How large are the opportunities for companies that adopt higher standards of farm animal welfare? How quickly can companies expect to receive returns on their investments?

These questions are not just about the practices of today’s food businesses but need to be analysed and interpreted in the context of the changing world within which food businesses operate. Food companies need to think about the implications of, for example: public and media scrutiny of corporate practices and activities in an increasingly transparent world; the pressure to keep prices low while ensuring that workers operate safely and are paid decent wages; competition for market share; the potential impact of technology and innovation; alternatives to animal proteins (protein diversification); changes to lifestyles and dietary preferences; the changing social, ethical and environmental expectations of customers and consumers, and the extent to which these influence purchasing practices and behaviours.

About The Business of Farm Animal Welfare

This book, The Business of Farm Animal Welfare, aims to provide a rounded account of current corporate practice on farm animal welfare in the context of the wider strategic and structural challenges faced by the food industry. It explains why animal welfare is, and will continue to be, an important commercial issue for food companies. It provides practical examples and analysis of how companies manage farm animal welfare in their own operations and in their supply chains, and of the practical challenges that they encounter. It offers suggestions on the actions—management processes, stakeholder engagement and communications, alternative production systems, new business models—that might be taken by companies to effectively manage the risks and opportunities associated with farm animal welfare.

We have divided the book into five parts. In the first, we set out some of the core principles that need to inform and structure thinking on how companies can and should manage farm animal welfare. In Chapter 2, Tracey Jones explains that the concept of good animal welfare requires us to pay attention to the individual animal, and to recognize that good welfare is not just about the absence of suffering but about allowing animals to satisfy both their functional and cognitive behavioural needs. David Grumett (Chapter 3) then sets out the ethical and the religious case for companies and other stakeholders to be concerned about farm animal welfare, and explains how ethical and religious traditions influence, or have the potential to influence, the treatment of animals in modern society.

Part II focuses on the reasons why companies need to be concerned about farm animal welfare. Heleen van de Weerd and Jon Day (Chapter 4) describe the evolution of animal welfare legislation, with a focus on the leadership role that has been played by the European Union (EU) in introducing legislation to address some of the most widely practised inhumane animal husbandry practices. They explain how EU legislation has evolved, why this evolution has been closely linked to changes in societal views and attitudes, and how this legislation has influenced global farm animal welfare standards and legislation.

In Chapter 5, Sally Healy discusses the role of consumer pressures, followed by Jemima Jewell (Chapter 6) discussing the role of civil society pressures. Both point to the influential roles played by the media and by non-governmental organizations in shaping and informing consumer views, and how this then manifests itself in purchasing decisions and in the pressures on companies to strengthen their approach to farm animal welfare.

Companies increasingly point to investor expectations as a key influence on their management of social and environmental issues. Chapter 7 (by Rory Sullivan, Kate Elliot, Abigail Herron, Helena Viñes Fiestas and Nicky Amos) provides a high-level overview of how investors analyse the business risks and opportunities associated with farm animal welfare. This is supplemented by three investor case studies, in which Kate Elliot (Rathbone Greenbank Investments) (Chapter 8), Abigail Herron (Aviva Investors) (Chapter 9) and Helena Viñes Fiestas (BNP Paribas Investment Partners) (Chapter 10) describe how they analyse farm animal welfare-related investment risks and opportunities, and how this analysis influences their investment decisions. These chapters point to growing investor interest in farm animal welfare, albeit with a greater focus on the risks associated with poor performance rather than on the opportunities associated with better performance.

We conclude Part II with two chapters focusing on strategies for changing understanding of and attitudes towards animal welfare. Chapter 11 (by Minna Autio, Jaakko Autio, Ari Kuismin, Brigit Ramsingh, Eliisa Kylkilahti and Anna Valros) discusses the potential role of product labelling, and how the success of such labels depends on factors such as consumer understanding of the relationship between animal welfare and meat, consumer views on the ethics of farming animals for food, and consumer ideas of place, location and landscape. Chapter 12 (by Emily Patterson-Kane and Cia Johnson) discusses the relationship between knowledge and humane agricultural practices. They argue that improved knowledge of the science of animal welfare is not, of itself, sufficient to change animal-based agriculture, and that there is a need to introduce the ideas and insights from other disciplines (e.g. relational psychology) if we are to “… continue to move agriculture towards providing conditions that honour the nature of the animal while allowing for its responsible use for human purposes such as the production of fibre, meat, milk and eggs”.

Part III focuses on corporate practice. It starts with Chapter 13 (by Nicky Amos and Rory Sullivan) which presents a high-level assessment of how global food companies are managing farm animal welfare. It then presents seven corporate case studies (Chapters 14 to 20) from Barilla (Leonardo Mirone), BRF (Géraldine Kutas), COOK (Richard Pike), Greggs (Malcolm Copland), Marks & Spencer (Steven McLean), The Co-op (Rosemarie Barraclough and Ciara Gorst), and Unilever (Bronwen Reinhardt). In each case study the authors set out the reasons why farm animal welfare is an important business issue, describe how farm animal welfare issues have been addressed in operations and supply chains, and discuss some of the challenges encountered and how these were addressed. The case studies confirm that companies face multiple pressures—from consumers, from clients, from the media, from animal welfare organizations—to strengthen their approach to farm animal welfare. They also highlight the challenges of making an effective business case, in particular where significant capital investment is required. A recurring theme is that uncertainty about the future (e.g. customers’ willingness to purchase higher welfare products, clients’ willingness to pay a premium for higher welfare products, whether legislation will be adopted and enforced) is a major issue. Companies need to balance the certainty of capital investments with uncertainty about whether they will see some or all of the commercial and other benefits from developing higher standards of farm animal welfare.

In Part IV, we return to the specific question of the business case for action. The core theme of many of the chapters in this book is that the actions taken by companies are critically dependent on what is commonly referred to as the “business case for action”. This is shaped by the external drivers for action (for example, legislation, consumer concerns, the media, industry and civil society pressures), the financial costs and benefits of taking action, and companies’ views on the importance of farm animal welfare to their business over the short, medium and long term. In Chapter 21, we analyse each of these elements and, while we acknowledge the commercial and other pressures on companies, we conclude that there is much that can be done to drive higher standards of animal welfare across the food industry. We also argue that raising standards of farm animal welfare is clearly in the interests of companies that aspire to be successful and sustainable over the long term.

In Part V (Chapters 22 to 24), we present a series of short technical briefing notes on key animal welfare-related issues, namely those associated with different farm animal production systems (Heather Pickett and Inês Ajuda), the impacts of antibiotic use in animals on human health and animal welfare (Inês Ajuda, Vicky Bond and Jemima Jewell), and welfare issues in aquaculture (Martin Cooke). Each note describes the issue in question, explains the sources (or underlying causes) of the issue and discusses the actions that could be taken by companies to address or alleviate the issue. We also provide in Chapter 25 (by Rory Sullivan and Nicky Amos) practical guidance on corporate reporting on farm animal welfare, describing the information that companies are expected to provide on their policies, practices, processes and performance, and presenting examples of good corporate practices.

Part I
Core principles

2
The key issues in farm animal welfare

Tracey Jones

Compassion in World Farming, UK

Introduction

The concept of animal welfare is still widely not understood in its holistic sense or catered for fully in modern agricultural systems. This chapter, therefore, has four objectives. The first is to provide a working definition of animal welfare, building on the widely cited Five Freedoms model. The second is to explain why farm animal welfare is important. The third is to identify the main welfare concerns in agriculture, and the fourth is to explain how to make meaningful improvements in animal welfare through changes in production system and husbandry practices.

What is animal welfare?

The apparent lack of a universal definition of animal welfare, the differing philosophical and religious viewpoints underpinning our ethical concerns in the use and treatment of animals, and the question of whether we can really measure animal welfare, all contribute to confusion in the definition of what animal welfare actually is. A practical starting point is that animal welfare is something that belongs to the individual animal and can range from very poor to very good.

The Five Freedoms and provisions

Awareness and concern for the welfare of intensively farmed animals, in confined and barren systems and dimly lit sheds, was raised as early as the mid-1960s by Ruth Harrison in her book Animal Machines (1964). In response, the British Government commissioned a report into the Welfare of Animals Kept under Intensive Livestock Husbandry Systems, commonly known as the Brambell Report (1965). Its definition of animal welfare embraced both the physical and mental wellbeing of the animal and recognized the need to take account of the feelings of animals derived from their behaviour as well as their structure and functions. The report stimulated the concept of the Five Freedoms (see Box 2.1) and, along with the setting up of the Farm Animal Welfare Council in 1979,¹ the beginning of the science of animal welfare.

The Five Freedoms outline an acceptable state (outcomes) for animal welfare. They apply to all stages of the animal’s life-cycle—on-farm, transit and slaughter—and include elements of health, emotional state, and physical and behavioural functioning. The provisions, added later, indicate the sort of practical measures required to secure the freedoms, providing a logical framework for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• 1 Introduction
• Part I Core principles
• Part II Why should companies be concerned about farm animal welfare?
• Part III Corporate practice
• Part IV Wider reflections
• Part V Technical briefings