A framework for a comprehensive poultry welfare label: scientific, logistic and ethical challenges

The aspiration of animal welfare labelling (AWL) is to encourage consumers to buy animal-friendlier goods and potentially pay premium prices to compensate for higher production costs. AWL should reflect animal welfare status correctly, be cost-efficient, and align with consumer expectations, including price differentials.
Comprehensive animal welfare assessments aim to cover the main dimensions of welfare during the whole life of an animal. Consensus has grown that animal-based measures (ABM) are more directly linked to animal welfare than resource-based measures. The definition of animal welfare has also evolved towards emphasising emotions and positive experiences, which remain hard to document using ABM. Protocols solely based on ABM favour intensive vs extensive systems as they mainly document quantifiable physical and behavioural problems. This focus doesn’t match with consumer expectations which assume that high welfare labels reflect positive welfare rather than a mere reduction in welfare problems.
We therefore propose a novel framework for a graded poultry AWL consisting of 4 levels with maximum 3 stars. In the first instance, the level is determined by Method-of-Production requirements for all stages of the birds’ life. As Method-of-Production requirements determine the potential rather than actual welfare status, the birds are also screened for key ABM using farm records and (automated) at-slaughter monitoring. Poor scores for these indicators could result in an in-situ audit and/or loss of stars. For each slaughter batch, responsible parties in the production chain (incl. farmer, catching team, transporter, slaughterhouse) receive feedback including bench-marking, evolution in time, and warnings for loss of stars. A fair reward and penalisation system favours high potential and actual welfare status. One potential mechanism for verifying welfare status is via established farm assurance schemes. Criteria are also proposed for how retailers and governments may use AWL for improving farm animal welfare.