This week we are left searching for good news on bad days for animals in the foodservice chain.
March presented a fowl day for foodservice as the likes of Compass, Elior, KFC, Pizza Hut and Sodexo struggled to stick to the Better Chicken Commitment. Targets will be missed – and by some way.
This week we had April fools’ and another fowl set of results for foodservice on animal welfare. “Too many food companies still provide limited evidence that they are managing animal welfare effectively,” said Nicky Amos, executive director of the BBFAW as she launched the latest Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare.
The benchmark assesses 150 companies, across farm animal welfare policies, practices and performance based on 51 criteria spanning five pillars; firms are then ranked in one of six tiers.
No company managed tier one, though four (Greggs, Marks and Spencer, Waitrose and Premier Foods) are in tier two. More generally, progress is slow. Very slow. Some 118 companies (79%), including Nestlé, McDonald’s, Tyson Foods and Cargill, are in the bottom two tiers (Tiers 5 and 6) – meaning they provide limited or no evidence that they have policies or processes in place to manage farm animal welfare effectively.
‘Restaurants and bars’ have the lowest overall average score at 16%; though if you are clutching at straws (a bit like some of those housed animals) that’s better than the 14% in 2023. Five of the 14 restaurant and bar companies also moved up a tier ranking in 2024. Significantly, the majority of the foodservice companies assessed stayed in the same tier as the previous year.
In her social media post, Amos offered a ‘well done’ to Greggs (which broke into tier two), as well as JD Wetherspoon, Mitchells & Butlers and Whitbread, who all moved from tier five to four. “Championing animal welfare at a time when there are so many competing sustainability priorities may be challenging but your efforts highlight the important need to ensure that the welfare of animals farmed for food is an intrinsic part of a future sustainable food system,” she wrote.
BBFAW also includes an ‘impact rating’, which grades companies (from ‘A’ to ‘F’) on their tangible welfare impacts. Grades are based on the performance impact questions which, for example, measure the percentage of cage-free laying hens in a company’s supply chain (see our other stories this week), the proportion of dairy cattle free from disbudding and dehorning, and the proportion of pigs free from tail docking.
Across foodservice, Greggs came out top with a C. Next best was Whitbread (E). Aramark, Compass, Domino’s, Elior, Ikea, JD Wetherspoon, McDonald’s, Mitchells and Butlers, Papa John’s, RBI, Sodexo, Starbucks and Yum! all scored an F.
Also noteworthy is the benchmark’s analysis of companies reducing reliance on animal-sourced foods: “A transition to higher welfare production for all animals used for food requires a reduction in the numbers of livestock produced if animals are to be farmed sustainably and within planetary boundaries,” the final report notes. The average score across the ‘reducing reliance on animal sourced foods’ pillar is 11% (up from 9% in 2023), reflecting the “immaturity of this issue in company reporting”.
And finally some good news: UK companies lead the way on this (particularly important) pillar with an average score of 28%; by comparison the Asia Pacific region scored the lowest (0.4%). This trend continues in the sub-sector analysis, with UK restaurants and bars scoring highest in the section with an average score of 36%.
And a final word on chickens. Across all companies assessed by BBFAW, six reported marked progress on using those slower growing breeds (compared to none in 2023). However, the proportion of companies reporting on this aspect of animal welfare fell from 20% to 19%. Read into that what you will.
Elsewhere in Footprint news this week:
- The ESG bubble has burst – but that’s a good thing because the masks will come off (see here)
- Supermarket chain Iceland is dubbed “the UK’s worst supermarket for caging hens” (see here)
- Some 3,000 businesses now support a change to corporate law to prioritise long-term responsibility over short-term gains (see here)
