You have 24 hours to tell the government you care about animals
Defra — the UK’s department for the environment and, in some sense, the ministry that affects more lives than any other, as the body which regulates the farming of over a billion farmed animals in England — is currently considering the most impactful animal welfare regulation in years. This is your last day to tell the government that you care about animals and support this regulation.
Here’s what you need to know: the government is considering introduce animal welfare labeling. This would support consumers who still eat meat to make better informed choices about the animals they eat, whether that means helping you find the higher welfare product, or nudging you to recognise the suffering you’re enabling by buying low welfare meat.
As an animal advocate, I know that farmed animals endure intolerable conditions and I’m pleased to see the government using regulation to help them live better lives. Supporting animal welfare policy can sometimes set me against other stakeholders, like consumers and farmers, but this proposal is exciting because it has something for everybody.
British consumers don’t want to buy low welfare animal products, but they’re largely kept in the dark about how much misery is behind their meat. When the public are polled, they’re overwhelming against common farming practices. Welfare labeling could collapse some of the information asymmetry that’s keeping welfare-sensitive consumers from purchasing in line with their stated preferences.
Why do domestic farmers benefit? Partly because, much as consumers would rather be eating higher welfare products, farmers would rather be rearing animals in higher welfare conditions. Right now, the meat supply chain is a Moloch trap. Farmers don’t feel they can improve welfare standards without raising prices, customers won’t feel they should pay more until they see the welfare benchmarks, and nobody is getting what everybody wants: better lives for farm animals.
But farmers also benefit because, as it stands, the lowest tier welfare label would be reserved for imported meats made from animals reared below the UK’s minimum standards. The government isn’t actively considering an import ban, but anything to discourage consumption of ‘worse than British’ meat products would be a rare win-win for farmers and animals.
This isn’t to say that animal advocates don’t have a fight ahead.
The domestic farming lobby, which has incredibly strong influence over UK agricultural policy, may want some welfare improvements and may want that last, lowest welfare category, but they’re still incentivised to keep hidden much of the brutal, unstomachable realities of factory farming.
The risks include:
The benchmarks for the different welfare categories haven’t been decided yet. We know that an overwhelming majority — 85 to 95% — of the UK disapproves of common farming practices like caging and debeaking chickens. But the farming lobby might try to misrepresent these fundamentally unacceptable practices as being reasonable or even high-welfare.
The current proposal is for a five-tier label (four tiers for British products). The farming lobby, which has incredibly strong influence over UK agricultural policy, may want to push for a reduction down to three or four tiers. If the welfare label is more coarsely grained, consumers will have a harder time understanding whether or not products meet their standards.
The current proposal only affects “minimally processed meat products”. But that excludes the majority of meat products in the UK, and especially the worst welfare products like ultra-processed chicken nuggets.
So: what should you do if you want to help?
This is your last day to submit your thoughts to Defra’s open consultation on the welfare labeling proposal. With support from others in the animal policy space, I’ve written some suggested responses at this link. Completing this is a 30 minute exercise with potentially huge benefits to the animals.
I’m hopeful that, if effective altruists and animal advocates can rally in support of this policy, then we can reduce short-term suffering of farm animals by incentivising consumers to buy better products, work towards the abolition of factory farming by raising the salience of animal suffering, and build political momentum for the animal movement by securing a clear win.
This has been a quick take on an urgent issue! But I’m planning to publish again next week, with a longer discussion about what the farmers’ protests have meant for the animals. And, as we enter an exciting few months of the political agenda, I’ll keep writing regularly with thoughts on animals, AI, and anything else that’s EA-adjacent.