MPs have also been calling for the change.

Sir Roger Gale said: ‘Brexit has presented us with the opportunity to reform our farming systems.

WAV Comment – For a very long time, welfare campaigners in the UK have been calling for this. ALL food should be clearly labelled to show production methods, nation of origin, and how the animal was slaughtered is clearly identified on the packaging. We very much welcome this decades (far too late) late legislation, but are hugely supported by the fact that so many Brits are demanding to see how their food is produced – and that animal welfare is a ‘high up the chain’ concern.

If you personally wish to get involved with, and submit to the consultation, then please go to;

https://consult.defra.gov.uk/animal-welfare-market-interventions-and-labelling/labelling-for-animal-welfare/

The consultation closes on 6/12/21.

Regards Mark

Welfare labels on meat to say how animal was killed: New law is in pipeline after campaign on halal and kosher livestock that isn’t stunned before slaughter

• It currently not compulsory to label meat as halal but new bill could change that
• Campaigners argue shoppers concerned with animal welfare should be able to make the choice to buy meat killed in a more humane way
• The Bill is in the early stages and is currently the subject of a public consultation 

Welfare labels on meat to say how animal was killed | Daily Mail Online

Halal and kosher meat will have to be labelled in a victory for animal welfare campaigners.

As part of the proposed law, all meat will have to be marked with how the animal was killed.

Animals slaughtered to be compliant with kosher and halal rules are often killed without being stunned first and have their throats slit.

At the moment, it is not compulsory to label meat as halal, so campaigners have argued that those who eat the products and care about animal welfare should be able to make the choice to buy meat killed in a more humane way.

The Bill is currently in the early stages and is the subject of a public consultation. But ministers have privately said they aim to bring in the law – and that it is supported by the majority of the British public.

Victoria Prentis, minister for farming, fisheries and food, said: ‘As a nation, we care enormously about animal welfare and increasingly about environmental standards.

‘Consumer information and labelling are part of the toolbox that we have when it comes to creating a better food system for people and the planet. It is something that we will be considering in detail with industry and stakeholders in the weeks and months ahead.’

The Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation (CAWF), which the Prime Minister’s wife Carrie Johnson has long been a patron of, has been calling for this policy change for years.

Lorraine Platt, chairman of CAWF and a friend of Mrs Johnson, welcomed the news: ‘With the exception of whole eggs, there are currently no legal requirements to label products with information on how the animal was reared and slaughtered.

‘But the fact is the British public do care about these conditions – over 80 per cent of UK consumers are in favour of food labelling.

‘Where labelling does currently exist, consumers have been able to identify higher welfare products and subsequently many farmers have been rewarded with increased demand. It is our hope that through extending labelling to all farmed produce, we can help the growth of higher welfare farms in the UK.’

MPs have also been calling for the change. Sir Roger Gale said: ‘Brexit has presented us with the opportunity to reform our farming systems.

‘Transparency with consumers must be at the heart of these reforms and implementing labelling for animal welfare represents a critical step forward. In doing so we can empower consumers to make informed decisions about which farming systems they want to support – or avoid supporting.

‘There is an overwhelming democratic mandate for such a move, with around eight in ten British consumers stating animal welfare is an important consideration for them when shopping.’

Under new laws, there will also be stricter animal welfare labelling requirements – with how the animal was reared and cared for prominently displayed on the packaging.

This is part of a raft of legislation under the Animal Welfare Bill including plans to ban boiling lobsters alive and outlawing the sale and import of ‘cruel’ animal products such as fur and foie gras.

Halal meat is worth around £2.6billion a year in the UK, according to the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB).

It accounts for around 20 per cent of all lamb and mutton sold, despite Muslims only comprising around 5 per cent of the population.

This is because ‘halal consumers eat more meat per capita than the general population’, says the AHDB.

About 42 per cent of all halal meat is not stunned before slaughter, according to the Food Standards Agency.

Slaughter of kosher livestock – the method is known as shechita – is a small percentage of all animals killed accounting for only 0.5 per cent of all cattle, 0.1 per cent of sheep, 0.3 per cent of chickens. 

Enjoy

Regards Mark

Vegan Meat Price Parity: Why Cost Not Kindness Will End Animal Agriculture

‘It’s likely that ‘price parity’ between plant-based and animal-derived meats will see the quickest changes made to our food system’

by Dr. Alex Lockwood

It will be cost not kindness that ends animal agriculture – but when will we achieve vegan meat price parity?

As much as we care for animals, it’s likely that ‘price parity’ between plant-based and animal-derived meats will see the quickest changes made to our food system

We love cheap food. When asked, we nearly always say we prefer to buy products that are ethical, sustainable, and healthy. But research shows time and again that what actually drives most of our food choices are cost, convenience, and taste.

Most of all, it’s the price. 

Vegan meat price parity

That’s why the question of ‘price parity’ is a hot topic in plant-based food. With price, especially a cheap price, such a driving force in our food choices, the cost of plant-based meats really matters.

Right now, supermarket customers are paying almost 200 percent more for plant-based products in comparison to meat alternatives. 

It’s also why the European dairy lobby is trying to stop plant-based products being sold in ‘dairy’ packaging. If plant-based providers have to use different packaging, this could make plant-based alternatives more difficult to produce and, critically, more expensive to buy.

But lessons from other industries (such as electric cars) show that as technology develops and demand increases, price parity will arrive. But for plant-based meat products, when will that be? Can it really bring an end to the slaughter-based meat products that are currently cheaper and purchased more often?

‘Cheap food paradigm’

We love cheap food. As the UK government’s Behavioral Insights Team wrote in their report ‘A Menu For Change’, price (alongside convenience and taste) is the most important factor for people when shopping. This includes for healthier alternatives.

This isn’t our fault. Supermarkets, advertising, and government policies have spent 70 years creating what food expert Professor Tim Lang calls our ‘cheap food paradigm’. 

This is especially in the UK and US. Along with Singapore, these are the three cheapest food markets in the world. In the UK, we spend only 8 percent of our household budget on food. This is the cheapest in Western Europe. Greeks spend 16 percent, Peruvians 26 percent, and Nigerians 59 percent.

But when you learn that the UK also has the highest food poverty in Europe in terms of people being able to afford a healthy diet, you know something is wrong.

This cheap food paradigm emerged during World War 2. Farmers were asked to grow more food, quickly and cheaply. They were the heroes feeding a country at war, and rebuilding afterward. 

Farmers were doing what they were asked. They began using heavy chemicals and pesticides. They abandoned rotation farming and replaced them with monocultures. Food got increasingly cheap. There were supermarket price wars (continuing today). We lost touch with the true cost of food.

But at what cost?

The true cost of cheap food is a ‘spiraling public health crisis and environmental destruction’ – according to the RSA’s Food, Farming and Countryside Commission. 

Last month’s Chatham House/UN report drove home the point: “Cheap food is driving destruction of the natural world.” The constant demand for economic growth has ‘sustained vicious circles’ of agricultural efficiency, coupled with ‘increased economic competition through the liberalization of trade’.

Cheap foods also tend to be more processed. In the UK, we eat the most ultra-processed foods in Europe, nearly 50 percent of our diets. Compare this to around 11 percent in Italy or 16 percent in Portugal. This massively increases the incidence of Type-2 diabetes and other serious health epidemics.

A price transformation

It’s obvious we need a food transformation. And that includes the price we pay for it. 

What we should do is ask those who can afford more to pay more, while supporting those currently in food poverty to be able to buy better. But that’s another article!

We also know that a whole-foods plant-based diet can be much cheaper than a heavily processed, animal-based diet.

Right now, most meat-eaters overestimate the price of plant-based meat products. And they’re not wholly wrong. 

So if we want to see change happen quickly, we have to get people off the slaughter-based meats and into the plant-based aisles. The quickest way to do that is through pricing.

So when will that happen? It will arrive in three stages.

By 2023: Plant-Based Proteins

Back in 2019, the independent think tank Rethink X launched its report on the future of agriculture. 

Their analysis suggested that price parity between existing plant-based meats (for example, the Impossible Burger) and animal-derived meats would arrive sometime between 2021-23. 

When this happened, they wrote, adoption of more plant-based eating “will tip and accelerate exponentially.”

It is why companies such as Impossible Foods keep slashing their prices to drive demand, knowing that ‘price parity’ will increase not only sales but awareness and acceptability. 

Are we close to the tipping point?

At the moment, buying a vegan supermarket product twice a week would cost an additional £35 a year, a spokesperson for Insure4Sport, who produced research on cost comparisons, told The Times.

Right now, the early-adopter vegan and vegetarian or adventurous meat-eater will pay the premium price for the new plant-based alternatives. That won’t last.

The plant-based producers know they need to compete on price. Demand is growing. In 2019, demand for plant-based meats grew by 18 percent and 11 percent for the plant-based category overall, according to a study from The Good Food Institute.

More people than ever now support improved access to plant-based options. New research last week from The Vegan Society showed one in three (32 percent) believe the government should be promoting vegan and plant-based diets to address the current climate emergency.

Bill Gates recently urged people to buy plant-based products and drive down the price. “You can also send a signal to the market that people want zero-carbon alternatives and are willing to pay for them,” he told the BBC.

The supermarkets will drive this difference. If Tesco’s is setting a target for a 300 percent rise in vegan meat sales, they’ll still want to compete on price.

So perhaps Rethink X’s prediction that we will reach price parity for existing products by 2023 isn’t far off.

But what about the new world of cell-cultured meat, grown in a lab?

Continued on next page

The World’s Largest Restaurant Chain Commits to Improve Chicken Welfare

Subway has announced the commitment to improve chicken welfare in its European supply chain by 2026.

August 12, 2021

HISTORIC PROGRESS: On Wednesday, August 11, Subway announced the commitment to improve chicken welfare in its European supply chain by publicly committing to the European Chicken Commitment (ECC). This was not an easy feat, it took 22 non-profit organizations from 16 European countries and 1.5 years of campaigning to push the company to this end. Subway had already committed to the North American version of the ECC, the Better Chicken Commitment, for all its US and Canadian stores.

THE COMMITMENT: Subway now joins the growing list of hundreds of companies that have pledged to improve chicken welfare in their supply chains by adopting the European Chicken Commitment. Other prominent brands include Burger King and Popeyes. The ECC requires companies to provide chickens more space, natural light, enrichment such as perches and pecking substrates, and bans the use of fast-growing breeds, which can cause painful deformities and heart attacks.

Protest in Verona, Italy

THE FORCE BEHIND IT: Animal Equality played a major role in this campaign along with other coalition members of the Open Wing Alliance. We sent campaigners to Amsterdam to protest and attempted to meet with Subway’s leadership, held protests in Italy, Spain, and the UK, and activated our social media networks where thousands of animal advocates from all around the world took part in highly impactful digital actions. Subway couldn’t ignore the importance of raising their animal welfare standards any longer.

THE IMPACT: As of June 2021, Subway has approximately 37,500 locations in 104 countries and territories, and an annual revenue of around $10 billion. This policy commitment not only will positively alter the lives of millions of chickens used in Subway meals, but this commitment also sets a strong precedent for future campaigns to improve farmed animal welfare in the restaurant industry.

WHY IT MATTERS: Chickens raised for meat are among the most abused animals on the planet. Bred to become much larger than normal, at an alarmingly unnatural rate, fast-growing chickens suffer from broken bones, organ failure, and even death from not being able to reach food and water. They are kept in filthy conditions, crammed by the tens of thousands in dim barns that have no enrichment for the chickens to engage in natural behaviors. At the end of their shortened lives, chickens are forced to endure live-shackle slaughter, a horrific practice where birds are forcibly hung upside down and slammed into metal shackles, a process which sometimes breaks their bones. The ECC aims to address these major abuses faced by chickens used for food.

HOW YOU CAN HELP: This major step in animal protection happened because of the actions of passionate animal lovers and those who believe in progress in animal welfare. Animal Equality’s volunteers, the Animal Protectors, played a significant role in achieving this move forward for hens, as well as other corporate policies. Would you like to be informed of easy online actions you can take for animals? Sign up to become an Animal Protector today!

Regards Mark