Swiss food firms do well in global farm animal welfare assessment

Switzerland’s two largest supermarket chains achieve the highest rating in a benchmark for farm animal welfare, while food giant Nestlé moves up a category.  

Three Swiss companies made an appearance in the 2019 edition of Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare, which was released on Thursday. Food companies are assessed against 37 criteria, including overcrowding, humane slaughter and the use of growth promoters, as well as reporting, transparency and awareness raising. Based on their performance, firms are placed in six tiers, with tier 1 rated as the best and tier 6 the worst.  

Switzerland’s Coop group maintained its place in the first tier (Leadership) for the seventh year in a row. Rival Migros regained its tier 1 status after losing it last year. Only four other firms out of the 150 assessed managed the same feat: British companies Marks&Spencer, Waitrose, Noble Foods and Cranswick.  

Migros was praised for the introduction of a labelling scheme that lets customers know if their purchase has a positive impact on animal welfare. The company attributes its promotion from tier 2 last year to tier 1 this year to commitments it has made to improve animal welfare standards in its products. 

“We established various projects with defined goals and timelines – for example, our project to introduce only free-range eggs in Migros supermarkets by the end of 2020 or to stock only imported poultry produced to Swiss animal welfare standards,” a Migros spokesperson told swissinfo.ch. 

Swiss food multinational Nestlé was promoted to tier 2 (Integral to business strategy) after spending six years stuck in tier 3 status.  

“This recognizes our efforts to improve transparency and reporting on our progress. We will continue to work with others in the food industry to make further improvements,” said Magdi Batato, Nestlé’s Global Head of Operations. 

Some of the commitments made by the company include sourcing only cage-free eggs by the end of 2025 (end of 2020 for products sold in Europe and the United States) and improving the welfare of broiler chickens in its supply chain by 2026 in the US and Europe.