Know your labels

Food labelling should be simple but it is not. Virtually every product on the supermarket shelf has its own unique set of colour codes or logos claiming to be  healthy or free from one harmful thing or another. It can be a minefield  working  out which product is healthier to buy and labelling for animal welfare
is no  different. In fact, some labels you will find on meat products are positively  misleading!

 What to beware of
The Red  Tractor scheme, run by Assured Food Standards  offers few welfare benefits compared with standard industry practice and  generally only ensure compliance  with minimum legislative requirements (the interpretation of which is considered  inadequate in some cases).


The Lion Mark is  important for food safety, ensuring your eggs are safe to eat, but generally only ensures compliance with minimum legislative requirements.

 Both these schemes offer free-range production certification standards, so  their logos may appear on free-range meat and eggs.

 What do these labels mean?

   These food labels mostly ensure compliance with minimum legislative  requirements for both standard and free-range production (in terms of animal  welfare provision) 

• Most, but not all, British meat, eggs and milk are certified to these standards
  
• The standards do little to prevent the serious welfare issues of confinement in cages, high stocking densities, fast-growing breeds and many mutilations
  
• Some of the standards do not enforce minimum legislative requirements adequately e.g prohibition of routine tail docking in pigs and the provision of appropriate manipulable material for pigs
  
• Some of the standards are higher than minimum legislative requirements e.g. castration of pigs is not allowed and sows have not been kept in stalls since  1999; maximum permissible stocking densities for broiler chickens are lower than  both EU and national legislation.

Beware clever marketing
Beware terms like "Farm Fresh." They are nothing more than a marketing ploy
  and mean nothing in terms of animal welfare.

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