Food labelling systems aim to communicate animal welfare standards to consumers, but the proliferation of schemes and the complexity of welfare makes effective labelling challenging to design and implement.
Food labelling for animal welfare is critically important for empowering consumer choice but currently fails to deliver reliable, comparable information to most shoppers. The proliferation of schemes with different standards, audit methods and species coverage makes it effectively impossible for ordinary consumers to make informed welfare-based choices across product categories. Greenwashing - welfare claims without meaningful standards or independent verification - is widespread. Mandatory labelling for pigs, cattle and poultry equivalent to the EU egg labelling system would provide a baseline of transparency that would transform consumer ability to choose by welfare standard. The development of harmonized, independently-audited, outcome-based welfare labels represents a significant policy goal for organizations working on farm animal welfare.