This guest post comes to us from Beth of Compassion in World Farming. Thank you!
The food you choose has a direct effect on how farm animals live.
Sixty billion animals are farmed for food worldwide every year – the vast majority of them reared intensively in systems that seriously impact on their welfare. Compassion in World Farming are here to show you how simple it is to make their lives better through the food you eat. You can make a start by downloading the Compassionate Shopping Guide so that you can take this information with you when you shop.
Eggs: The simplest thing you can do to help the hens that lay your eggs is to buy free-range.
Meat & Poultry: The simplest thing you can do to help is to buy free-range chicken and poultry, free-range pork and grass-fed beef and lamb.
Dairy: The only way to guarantee male dairy calves have not been shot or exported to continental veal farms is to buy Soil Association milk and dairy products.
Fish: Buy sustainable or organic fish – look for the Marine Stewardship Council logo to ensure fish is sustainable.
The Chicken Out! campaign
Compassion in World Farming is calling for clear and honest labeling as to farming method. The Chicken Out! campaign has been seeking creative skills in designing a new label for Tesco’s standard intensively reared chicken. Following a Chicken Out! poll, 76% per cent of the almost 10,000 votes found Tesco to have the most misleading chicken label out of five leading UK supermarkets.
Supporters were asked to design a label they think Tesco should be using in order not to mislead its customers. A panel of judges included Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Compassion in World Farming scrolled through the many entries, all highlighting the public’s need for clear labelling.
The winning design has been taken to Tesco urging them to end the use of misleading labels and provide clear and honest information for its customers.
Compassion are now asking the public to write to their MP to ask them to sign the Early Day Motion 581 which calls for clear and honest labeling on chicken meat. There’s more information about that here: http://www.ciwf.org.uk/what_we_do/meat_chickens/take_action/honest_label_edm
