Cornish et al. (2020) on Animal Welfare Labels

Amelia Rose Cornish, Donnel Briley, Bethany Jessica Wilson, David Raubenheimer, David Schlosberg, Paul Damien McGreevy, “The Price of Good Welfare: Does Informing Consumers About What On-Package Labels Mean for Animal Welfare Influence Their Purchase Intentions?” Appetite 148: 104577, 2020. 

•  Most people care about the welfare of the animals that we eat  

• It's even possible that people think that more “humane” products taste better 

• The “Heuristic-Systematic Model,” a version of System 1 and System 2 (Thinking, Fast and Slow); System 1 decision making might mean you just buy what you always have bought 

• Food labels can be confusing; there's “…a proliferation of new and unfamiliar on-package labels [p. 2]” Are industry-provided labels reliable? 

• Online survey with some 1600 Australian respondents, almost ¾ female 

• The respondents are asked about their purchase intentions for meat and eggs, given different labels and prices; some of the labels provide more detailed information about animal welfare than the others

• The purchase intention questions are followed up by an “animal attitude” survey 

• Young people and females are more sympathetic to animals 

• Older people (and males) think the current level of farm animal welfare is better than what other age groups think -- and interest in buying higher welfare products wanes as views of current welfare improve 

• Lower income people are less likely to buy (more expensive) higher welfare meat 

• People who grew up in the city, and highly educated people, are more likely to buy the higher welfare versions 

• The main result: more detailed label info leads to an increased intention to purchase higher welfare products 

Lades and Nova (2022) on the Ethics of Nudging Folks Away from Meat

Leonhard Lades and Federica Nova, “Ethical Considerations when Using Behavioural Insights to Reduce People’s Meat Consumption.” University College Dublin, Geary WP2022/09, October 25, 2022 (pdf). 

• Food choices depend on the choice architecture, so nudge-style, demand-side policies like instituting plant-based meals as defaults can reduce meat consumption

• Examples of food nudges include: vegan or vegetarian defaults; positioning of plant-based items at compelling locations; providing “sustainability” labels; and conveying information about growing low-meat social norms 

• Nudges sometimes present ethical questions; the authors recommend using the FORGOOD method to systematically consider potential ethical issues 

• FORGOOD: Fairness (distributional impacts); Openness (avoiding manipulation, with graphic warning labels or very persuasive defaults as examples of nudge-style policies that could  be ethically problematic); Respect (for autonomy, freedom of choice, non-stigmatization…); Goals (overcoming internalities? externalities?); Opinions (public acceptability, before or after the nudge?); Options (policy alternatives to nudges); and, Delegation (can choice architects use their power wisely?)

• "In short, the paper suggests that choice architects should apply behavioural interventions to reduce meat consumption only when these interventions are FORGOOD [p. 14]."

Sullivan (2013) on Animal Welfare Labels

Sean P. Sullivan, “Empowering Market Regulation of Agricultural Animal Welfare Through Product Labeling.” Animal Law Review 19(2), 2013. 

• The welfare of (so-called) agricultural animals receives little legal protection in the US.

• Two sources of federal animal protection, the Humane Slaughter Act and the Twenty-Eight Hour law, exclude poultry -- and the Slaughter Act excludes fish, too. Even these federal rules are underenforced.

• State-level laws specifying better animal welfare standards (than what federal law calls for) might be ruled unconstitutional as a violation of the Dormant Commerce Clause. [In April 2023, we are awaiting a Supreme Court decision that will (presumably) directly address this issue.]

• The US relies significantly on “market regulation” (consumers voting with their wallets) to provide animal welfare. Under this approach, some firms will cater to consumers who are not very interested in animal welfare, while other firms will provide higher animal welfare (meat and other products) aimed at consumers who are willing to pay for enhanced animal welfare. [Of course, it is asking a lot for market regulation to produce "socially optimal" levels of animal welfare, even if you accept the nearly-always-unspoken-but-there premise that it is only human preferences that count for social welfare.]

• In practice, there seems to be very little consumer willingness-to-pay for higher animal welfare products (at least when this article was published in 2013 – has this situation changed?) People say they are interested in providing better welfare to farm animals, but food purchases provide little evidence of such an interest.

• One “resolution” of the paradox is that consumers do not have an easy means to actually purchase enhanced animal welfare products.  The problem is that the information of how animals are treated is hard (or impossible) to judge when making purchasing decisions – so producers lack an incentive to devote resources to higher animal welfare.

• A credence good or characteristic is one where consumers are not sure of the “quality” of that characteristic even after they have purchased and consumed the product (as opposed to search or experience goods). If you consumed a food item earlier today with a dairy or egg ingredient, do you know the welfare provision for the animal who supplied that product? [My students admit that they don't.]

• Part of the problem is that labels on consumer animal products often lack credibility and clarity.  Current rules forbidding false or misleading labels are rendered pretty toothless when the actual animal welfare conditions are not monitored. Widespread absence of third-party auditing implies that animal welfare claims lack credibility. 

• The voluntary provision of credible labels can be crowded out by a plethora of not credible labels (muddying the waters or signal jamming) – even labels are a credence characteristic! For instance, “free range” does mean something about the living conditions of poultry (though not other animals, and not even egg laying hens) – but it doesn’t mean, for instance, that most chickens ever spend any time outdoors. "Pasture-raised," "grass-fed," "natural" – these terms (and others) lack standardized definitions.

• If animal welfare is a credence attribute, producers will only provide the minimum level of welfare that is consistent with profit seeking. 

• Credible labels could convert animal welfare into a search good, as opposed to a credence good.

• Making labels credible will require some level of harmonization, standards to earn a label like "high-animal-welfare-certified." But what level of animal welfare should be required to earn such a designation?

• And credible labels require that the conditions they certify are subject to verification. Is the USDA the right entity to engage in such verification, given its dual role in both regulating agriculture and promoting it? 

• A fairly coarse label like "high-animal-welfare-certified," could be integrated with less coarse supplements (like "enhanced and diverse outdoor environments").

• So, moving towards a credible system of labelling could help market regulation result in something closer to the levels of animal welfare people really desire. But we still are only talking about consumer preferences, not the preferences of the animals themselves.

Maes et al. (2019) on Intensive Pig "Farming"

Dominiek G. D. Maes, Jeroen Dewulf, Carlos Piñeiro, Sandra Edwards, and Ilias Kyriazakis, "A Critical Reflection on Intensive Pork Production with an Emphasis on Animal Health and Welfare." Journal of Animal Science 98(Suppl. 1): S15–S26, 2019. 

• As the title suggests, both health and welfare are examined in this article, though the bullet-point "summary" here will focus primarily on the welfare discussion.

• "Improved animal nutrition, feed efficiency, health management, environmental control, reproduction management, genetic selection for better performance, and consistency of product quality and delivery to the marketplace have been the main objectives in the development of intensive livestock production [p. S15]."

• Intensive (indoor) pig farming brings many health benefits for the pigs relative to alternative husbandry methods, though often with the excessive use of antimicrobials. Early weaning of piglets, however, heightens stress and also contributes to health problems. 

• The assessment of pig welfare has made significant strides in recent decades. The authors employ the EU-initiated Welfare Quality® assessment [pdf here; 21-minute video here]. 

• Among the pig welfare problems that occur with intensive production are painful tail docking and teeth clipping; little room (indeed, sometimes confinement in tiny crates), little environmental stimulation, little opportunity to engage in normal behaviors such as rooting or nest building; and flooring that is slatted or concrete and contributes to lameness and other health problems.

• The authors offer many suggestions to improve the health and welfare of pigs, such as improving the flooring and enriching the environment, and reducing the painful (and non-anesthetized) surgical procedures. More space per animal (and fewer crates) are high-priority needs.

• How about more transparency?: "informing the public properly about the health and welfare of the animals, and providing greater transparency in farming operations, eventually by providing (digital) visual access to the animal facilities, might be required [p. S22]."

Off-the-Farm Transparency

The promotion of transparency is a rather general issue, not one that is relegated to the animal farming industry alone. Policing and the justice system writ large are areas where there have been significant reforms in the direction of transparency in recent years. Something on the order of half of the law enforcement agencies in the US, it seems, have adopted police body camera requirements, and such cameras typically are supported by the police and by the public. (Where cameras are not required, it often is the cost -- much of which derives from the need for data storage -- that presents the major barrier.) Police interrogations now are filmed in 26 states. So in the last decade, we have witnessed a major increase in transparency in the justice system, and one that seems poised to continue. Federal and state grants, for instance, are available for easing the adoption of police body cameras, and similar types of subsidies are available for recording interrogations. It is nice to see the government promoting transparency instead of impeding it.

More on Farm Transparency: The Glass Walls Videos

The North American Meat Institute has sponsored a series of videos featuring Professor Temple Grandin that aim to show how animal slaughtering works in practice. The videos are intended to offer transparency: they are entitled Glass Walls videos. They show (to at least some extent) all the stages of operations in slaughterhouses -- slaughterhouses that are working properly, that is, as legal and industry standards require. These videos are hard to watch, but the fact that they exist indicates that the meat industry itself wants transparency, or at least wants to be seen as wanting transparency. So why not make the cameras permanent and the video public, a' la what Fair Oaks Farms has committed to?

Promoting Farm Transparency

The recent New York Times article by Matt Richtel that provoked the previous blog post notes the difficulties that researchers and health officials face in attempting to learn about farm conditions, even when there is evidence that those conditions are exacting a huge human toll in disease and death. There seems a lot to be said for full transparency on large-scale farms (or concentrated animal feeding operations, CAFOs). Why should the public have to rely on undercover footage (the collection of which is often illegal) to know what is happening on farms and slaughterhouses and other elements (e.g., transport) in the meat supply chain?

The recent exposure of activities at Fair Oaks Farms (a dairy) brought a pledge (see the 2:15 point of the founder's video response) to provide full video surveillance (with public access to the videos) of all farm areas where humans and non-human animals interact. A further pledge has been made (4:30 mark) to solicit frequent, unannounced visits to the farm by an animal welfare expert. Fair Oaks Farms is documenting their ongoing response here.

While it is too soon to know the long-term effectiveness of the reforms at Fair Oaks Farms, and while it may be that the dairy industry descends from unpardonable and ongoing original sins, why can't the video and unannounced audit reforms adopted by Fair Oaks become standard? Even if the only motive is to protect human health (as opposed to protecting the welfare of the farm animals themselves), there is a strong case for transparency in CAFOs.

Although a legal requirement for such transparency does not seem to be on the horizon in many places in the US -- witness those ag-gag laws -- private actions might spur the requisite reform (as in the Fair Oaks Farms case). Certification programs can add enhanced transparency requirements into their standards. Foundations or NGOs could subsidize the acquisition and maintenance of monitoring equipment. Other sorts of agricultural subsidies or benefits could be made contingent on farm transparency. Pressure could be brought on major purchasers (fast food outlets, grocery chains) to only deal with transparent suppliers. There's tons of room for a more radicalized transparency in the food system.

No one enjoys seeing the video evidence of cruel treatment of farm animals; but the easier it is to see it, the less there will be to see.