The Farm Animal Welfare Forum believes in collection action to improve the well-being of farm animals and ensure that our food is assured to the highest quality and provenance. Our aim is to mobilise all parts of the food chain, from consumers to producers, from retailers to manufacturers and regulators, to bring about much need reforms and to ensure transparency and higher welfare in the food chain for the benefit of all involved.
In 2008, the Farm Animal Welfare Forum published a long-term strategy for improving farm animal welfare in the UK. It identified laying hens, meat chickens, pigs and diary cows as the top four priorities for action.
The new strategy for farm animal welfare ‘Progressing Farming Tomorrow: Improving farm animal welfare in the UK’ details progress in these areas and outlines new objectives and a series of strategies that will be pursued to achieve these over the next five years. Whilst still focusing on the above species, the report outlines four priority areas for action:
- To strengthen implementation and enforcement of legislation that effectively protects animal welfare.
- To encourage public procurers and the food industry to source from production systems that ensure higher welfare standards.
- To campaign for mandatory method of production labelling across the EU underpinned by robust outcome measures, to enable consumers to make informed purchasing choices.
- To encourage the farming industry to engage with and embed policies of continuous welfare improvement.
More detailed background on the actions recommended for policy-makers, public purchasers, food businesses and consumers in the UK to help achieve long-term improvements in these areas can be found in the Forum Report Progressing Farming Tomorrow: Improving farm animal welfare in the UK (PDF)