Animal welfare

The UN projects global consumption and production of meat to rise as population and incomes increase in poorer countries. By 2050, it expects meat demand to be twice the 229 million tones the world ate in 2000.

A 2007 report by Compassion in World Farming pointed out that the vast majority of the sixty billion animals farmed for food worldwide every year are intensively reared.

Ethical Argument

Such modern factory farming raises many ethical concerns, particularly for animal welfare and working conditions, but also regarding food safety, with imported meats from countries where welfare and safety standards are low.

Industrial animal production’s main concern is maximizing productivity and profit. Selective breeding and genetic engineering, along with poor conditions and mistreatment (including confinement, overcrowding and over-feeding) causes great suffering to animals throughout their short life span.

Measures to reduce GHG emissions in the meat and livestock industry can also come at a cost to animal welfare.

One way to tackle the problems surrounding industrial meat production is to eat less meat. But this raises ethical problems of a different sort - the livelihoods of 1.3 billion rural people around the world depend intimately on their animals.

It has been argued that the answer lies in producing and consuming ‘better meat’, and heading towards a more sustainable system that combines high animal welfare with good environmental performance.

Priorities

• We have a duty to treat farm animals in ways that respect their welfare and 'intrinsic natures', and the environment that we share with them.
• Consumers in the developed world can signal their support for high animal welfare by choosing meat from farms where animals are extensively reared and their needs met.
• The EU can be a powerful force for good, by enforcing its animal welfare standards on all imports.
• Stronger regulation on free trade would also help to improve global standards of animal welfare.