Animal welfare standards & guidelines – the role of science and ethics in public debates

Public consultation is due for completion in February on the next animal welfare standards and guidelines for the poultry industry. Practically and importantly, these new standards and guidelines will take the industry from a voluntary specification based model code, to an outcomes-based set of legally enforceable standards. For farmers, this is a paradigm shift. We’ve traditionally supported voluntary codes whilst making a commitment to the community that we will always improve. At the commencement of this standard-setting process, egg farmers indicated their support for the mandating of these standards. This was viewed as an appropriate recognition that community expectations had risen and that part of our compact with the community required support for a firmer regulatory hand. It was also an expression of our view of animal welfare – central to who we are and what we do; we welcome the imposition of legal requirements. If a farmer doesn’t care for their animals, then they’re in the wrong profession.

This formal support for mandatory standards may be slightly technical, but it is significant, and we continue to engage with the community on its importance. However, increasingly we have found the communication challenge of that engagement to be difficult and frustrating. Incremental reform is cast as insincere; the distinction between voluntary codes and legal standards framed as of no consequence; and what started as a consultation has turned quickly into a fierce campaign. Campaigns aren’t the best place for a conversation of nuance or an engagement on the gradual, technical process of improving. Campaigns aren’t the place to talk about context, like the joy of achieving improvement while still producing 15 million eggs every day.

The complexity of this operating environment is challenging enough for farmers – how do we explain the multi-faceted process of trading off certain natural behaviours for a better welfare dividend in health? And if we manage to even do that what’s our catchy hashtag campaign to make it cut through the noise in 140 characters? Of course, animal welfare isn’t unusual in this regard. Campaigning is an important part of cultural expression and identity - farmers aren’t alone in their weariness of twitter. Thankfully, the campaign-based nature of public discourse has traditionally been protected by our ability to pivot to science as the independent arbiter of disputes; the bipartisan steward that we can all revert to when the slogans get too much. Right? Wrong.

The greatest casualty of the current consultation process has been the appropriation of science as a campaign tool and, as a result, the integrity of the discipline is now squarely in the frame. As farmers grapple to better engage with new areas of animal welfare science, it is timely to reflect on how our most sacred institution and discipline became a play-thing of a values campaign and what we need to do to restore its respected place as the bastion of evidence and independent thought.