Food Labels Could Stop Factory Farming
Perhaps the most effective way to stop factory farming in Europe would be for consumers to stop buying the meat and dairy products that come from these operations. So why is it not easier to do it?
After all, a special Eurobarometer survey published in 2007 found “animal welfare is seen as a matter of great importance” among Europeans, with 72% of respondents saying farmers should get financial help to meet higher standards and 90% saying the same standards should apply to imported foods as well. Mad cow disease, bird flu, foot-and-mouth disease, swine fever and other livestock ailments have been traced to industrial farming practices. Consumers understand that unsafe, unhealthy animal husbandry can result in unsafe, unhealthy food, and 63% are willing to change their buying behaviour if they get better information.
Yet despite this public understanding and concern for farmed animal welfare, 54% said food labels do not enable them to make welfare-friendly purchases.
Europeans need and want mandatory labels on meat and dairy products to show them where and how foods were produced. This would permit consumers to choose products from places and methods they prefer and avoid places and methods they know to be unacceptable.
Such labels should be based on the “Five Freedoms”:
• Freedom from hunger, thirst, and malnutrition.
• Freedom from physical, and thermal discomfort.
• Freedom from pain, injury, and disease.
• Freedom to express normal behaviour.
• Freedom from fear and distress.
Labels should also clearly tell customers the country where animals were born, reared and slaughtered, not just packaged.
Despite consumers’ growing awareness and demand for reform, the Five Freedoms are often ignored, and labels currently disguise where meat and dairy really comes from, especially in processed foods.
If more consumers bought food from farms that avoid these practices and respect the Five Freedoms, small-scale, family operations would enjoy soaring demand for their products, animal welfare would improve overall and water, air, and soil pollution commonly caused by industrial farms would be reduced.
The political process to get the information they need has been slow. Since 2004, consumers have been able to avoid factory-raised eggs thanks to rules to regulating labels claiming eggs are “free range,” “barn eggs” or “eggs from caged hens.”
But it wasn’t until October 2009 that the European Commission adopted a report outlining options for new overall animal welfare labeling in order to move the discussion forward. They say their “overall policy goal in this area is to make it easier for consumers to identify and choose welfare-friendly products, and thereby give an economic incentive to producers and EU citizens to improve the welfare of animals.”
There is a push on now to have new country of origin labels in force by 2013. Currently foods must be labelled with their country of origin only if it would be “misleading” to omit this information, but is compulsory for beef, honey, olive oil and fresh fruit and vegetables. In 2010 the European Parliament voted to make such labelling mandatory for all meat, poultry and dairy products, including for processed foods, and to require labels to say where the animal was born, reared and slaughtered. The discussions now move to the Council before hopefully coming back to the Parliament for a further vote in 2011.
This transformation is possible. We need better labelling of our meat and dairy to help us do the right thing.
You can help by writing to your MEP and demanding fairer labelling for meat showing clearly where the animals were born, reared and slaughtered – not just packaged. MEPs have supported moves to get make these labels mandatory, including on processed foods, so we need to show them we want them to keep the process going. To find your local MEP, go to the European Parliament website.