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“If you have something to say about
the RSPCA or any issues connected with animal welfare, we
would like to hear from you,” invites the RSPCA (Animal
Life, Spring 2001, page 4).
Vets warn that using high protein feeds to boost milk
yields can cause liver disease and mastitis, or give cows
udders so enlarged that they kick themselves as they walk
A reader had taken the opportunity to put some questions:
“I am a vegetarian and am considering eating meat,
but only if it conforms to the highest level of animal welfare.
How do the animal welfare standards of Freedom Food compare
to organic meat? How frequently are individual organic meat
farms checked with farms carrying the Freedom Food label?
I presume Freedom Food does not have to be organic—is
this the case?”
She received this reply:
“Freedom Food is concerned primarily with farm animal
welfare with standards specific to individual species. Organic
schemes are developed with environmental sustainability as
the central requirement - the need to balance production against
maintenance of the land. Freedom Food farm animals are covered
by the welfare standards at every stage of their lives—on
farm, in transport, and at the abattoir. The RSPCA standards
for each species are highly detailed and are all mandatory.
Members of the scheme are inspected annually by Freedom Food-appointed
assessors and are subject to random spot checks by the RSPCA’s
farm livestock officers. Freedom Food can accredit organic
systems, as long as they fulfil all the welfare requirements.”
This reply is deplorable on several counts. For a start it
overlooks schemes by organic monitoring schemes, such as the
Soil Association’s and by independent suppliers, such
as the Real Meat Company, which are more rigorous on standards
of farm-animal welfare than the RSPCA’s Freedom Food
scheme. Further, there have been serious shortcomings in the
scheme’s supervision.
Most importantly we have here an example of the RSPCA abetting
in a defection from an individual stand more effective than
resorting to Freedom Foods in the mistaken belief that the
RSPCA asserts the “highest level of animal welfare.”
The Freedom Food standards are constrained by price limitations
to provide meat, milk, eggs, and fish without reducing consumption.
The evidence provided voluminously to the BSE Inquiry and
the Curry Commission on farming and food throws doubt on the
RSPCA’s accommodation of these aims and emphasizes that
any welfare organization worthy of the name would strengthen
the resolve of the wavering veggie with advice acknowledging
an expression of kindness to farm animals worthier than the
RSPCA’s.
VEGA and other members of the RSPCA need continuing support
in their long-standing efforts—and now so topical—in
committing the Society to Green Planning agricultural policies
with far-reaching and laudable reforms for human and animal
welfare and the care of the countryside, as well as the probity
of the farmer and manufacturer and vendor of food and drink.
VEGA’s supporters have collaborated with and supported
RSPCA officials, initiatives, and rescue work. The same issue
of Animal Life (which was published just as the enormities
in the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease were surfacing)
carries an account of the rescue from a canal of a “stranded
calf” in which, with assistance from the fire brigade
and rescue services, an RSPCA inspector was pleased to reunite
the rested calf with “its grateful owner, a local farmer”
(and, possibly even restore its value as future meat to be
slaughtered and butchered for Freedom Food’s beef). The
Government is trying to improve the law for consistency in
its relevance to animal welfare. In offering its advice the
RSPCA must accept that turkeys aren’t just for Christmas
nor cattle just for the butcher.
(The RSPCA AGM and Animal Welfare Conference will be held
this year on Saturday, 29th June, at the Queen Elizabeth Conference
Centre, London.)
Freedom with Licence
Robert Persey, a Tesco shareholder and member of the recently-formed
Westcountry Consumers for Honest Labelling, who is also a
farmer in Devon, has accused the RSPCA and Tesco of allowing
chicken to be sold for 6 months under the Society’s Freedom
Foods label when the supplier, Moy Park, was not appropriately
credited by the RSPCA. Complaining at the RSPCA’s lack
of action and authority, Mr Persey said if the Society doesn’t
act, “the credibility of Freedom Foods will be gone”
(Farmers Weekly, 15 March 2002).
Moy Park, who are based in Northern Ireland, dismissed the
6-months of wrong labelling as a “non-story”. A
spokesman said that “as soon as this mistake was pointed
our by the RSPCA, Moy Park put its hands up straight away
and all the chicken concerned was cleared from Tesco’s
shelves. All 3 parties recognized it was human error, not
intent to defraud.” Tesco confirmed that the mistake
occurred through a breakdown of communications within Moy
Park. “We understand they were accredited for another
product, hence the confusion. We had initially asked for assurance
that they were accredited and were given it in writing,”
a spokeswoman said.
The RSPCA has refused to say what action, if any, it will
take against Moy Park and Tesco for misusing the label.
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