The importance of animal welfare standards is growing among investors and customers, including major food companies such as Coles Group and Woolworths Limited.
Launched by World Animal Protection and Compassion in World Farming, the eighth Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare (BBFAW) provides a review of the world’s leading food companies – assessing how they manage and report their farm and animal welfare practices.
“With the annual BBFAW, we expose who’s leading the way on animal welfare, and who’s lagging and showing little concern for animal cruelty,” says CEO at World Animal Protection, Steve McIvor.
“The BBFAW provides a robust and objective analysis of corporate disclosure on farm animal welfare, and it provides a reliable indicator of those companies that are effectively managing supply chain risks and those that are not.”
The report states that the number of companies that have farm animal welfare as an integral part of their business strategy has grown significantly from 3 (out of 68) in 2012, to 22 (out of 150) in 2019.
Additionally, 30 of the 150 global food companies assessed in 2019 improved by at least one Tier since the 2018 Benchmark.
Rankings
The BBFAW ranks companies across six tiers: Tier 1 is at the top, demonstrating leadership on farm animal welfare, and Tier 6 is at the bottom, indicating that companies have yet to acknowledge animal welfare as a business issue.
Coles Group and Woolworths Limited, achieved a Tier 3 ranking, sitting a tier ahead of global supermarket brands Carrefour, Costco and Walmart.
For more information, please visit worldanimalprotection.org/BBFAW