Shoppers would pay more for better animal welfare, says stufy

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Two piglets on an English pig farm.

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If it means better lives for animals people are prepared to pay a premium, according to a new study, despite rising prices and the cost of living crisis

Calls for government legislation on higher-welfare meat labelling have increased as a new study has shown consumers support the move.

A new study led by Professor Amitav Chakravarti, marketing academic at the LSE, found that 85% of consumers reacted positively to a welfare rating system and 97% found it informative.

Additionally, more than 80% said higher welfare labels would positively influence their chicken purchases.

Chakravarti put Defra’s proposed five-levelled labelling system for pork, chicken and eggs to the test with a survey of 260 people conducted in September. The Defra system would show that meats with a rating of ‘1’ indicated the highest-welfare domestic products and ‘5’ the lowest, including imported meat that fails to meet UK standards.

The study found in a ‘shelf test’ experiment that welfare ratings accounted for 49.3% of the weight in shoppers’ decisions, more than double the influence of price (23.5%) and far ahead of origin (16%).

“When clear information is available, consumers use it,” Chakravarti said. “Nearly half of the shoppers’ decision weights in our study were based on the labels, far outweighing price.

“This shows that standardised labelling could have a major impact on the market and significantly improve animal welfare.”

The study also found that 71% of shoppers confirmed that they would prefer to purchase chicken meat from an animal that was not reared in an indoor factory farm conditions, even if it was more expensive. Over 80% said they were concerned about the conditions in which chickens were raised.

According to the government’s assessment, projected mandatory labelling would boost farmers’ profits by £40m per year and deliver a net gain of £140m to British society over 10 years. Defra calculated that it would cost just 40p per consumer to introduce the scheme.

Waitrose has already brought in welfare rating labels across its own-label chicken and pork lines and called for strengthened labelling legislation.

“This study shows clearly that consumers want reliable, standardised information about how animals are farmed,” said the executive director of Animal Equality UK, Abigail Penny. “A clear, consistent label would give the public the tools to make informed choices at the point of purchase.”

Penny added that currently voluntary schemes were “patchy and inconsistent”, whereas a mandatory system would “provide a level playing field”.

Calls to bring in mandatory method of production labelling were echoed by Compassion in World Farming head Anthony Field, who said the measure would “not only benefit animal welfare but also empower shoppers and support higher-welfare farmers”.

He called the lack of legislation on this ”unfair on consumers who simply don’t have the information they need to avoid factory farmed products, unfair on farmers who use higher-welfare systems but are not rewarded for doing so, and unfair on the millions of farmed animals who suffer in low welfare systems”.