Considering how farm animal welfare concerns may contribute to more sustainable diets

Summary

This paper investigates how consumers can be guided towards healthy diets from sustainable and more animal-friendly food systems, in times when no single food system can be considered the best. It focuses on how farm animal welfare concerns can be translated into potential consumer goals, inspired by the "Three Rs" principles of Replacement, Reduction and Refinement, originally developed to systematically improve the welfare of laboratory animals. The three established goals are 1) to eat less meat, and/or 2) "less and better" meat, and/or 3) "less worrisome" animal protein. Consumer behaviour literature shows that eating less meat is relatively straightforward but needs to be made more prominent, whilst the goals of eating "less and better" meat or "less worrisome" animal protein require more nuanced consideration of trade-offs regarding species, production types and geographic locations.

Regional applicability

The framework is applicable to United Kingdom policy and consumer engagement contexts, where animal welfare concerns are relatively salient among consumers and could be leveraged to drive dietary shifts towards sustainability. However, the paper emphasises that the relative importance of health, welfare, climate, and biodiversity goals varies between countries and consumer segments, requiring country-specific adaptation of messaging and policy.

Key measures

Consumer dietary choice frameworks; alignment of animal welfare concerns with sustainability outcomes across health, climate, biodiversity, and food security domains

Outcomes reported

The paper translates farm animal welfare concerns into three consumer dietary goals: eating less meat, eating 'less and better' meat, and eating 'less worrisome' animal protein. It examines how these goals can integrate considerations of human health, animal welfare, climate change, and biodiversity.

Topic tags