Animal welfare: Good for the animals, good for business
From the 2023 Kemin Intestinal Health Symposium
By Krissa Welshans
The animal protein industry has been told animal welfare matters to consumers, and in recent decades, many companies have invested a lot of money to improve their reported benchmarks. Dr. Jennifer Walker, DVM, PhD, founder and chief animal welfare officer of Kinder Ground, speaking at the 2023 Kemin Intestinal Health Symposium, shared her thoughts on the future of animal welfare in agriculture. She explained that while some companies do have a direct line of sight into the animals that feed into their business, many do not. Yet, she said, many spend a lot of energy “trying to check one more box and tick one more thing to get one more point on some business benchmark so they can increase their rating compared to another business.”
She explained that public benchmarks, typically look at what is reported in surveys, published on websites or in policy statements, “but that a companies policy does not necessarily translate into or reflect performance when it comes to animal welfare.”
Animal welfare influencing the marketplace
In discussing the future, Dr. Walker first provided a history lesson in how animal welfare came to the forefront of the marketplace. While there is a long history of animal rights activists influencing the supply chain, it really came to a head in the late 1990s when an undercover video of a downed cow at slaughter was released. The video resulted in one of the largest food safety recalls in U.S. history and ultimately led to new policy, she shared.
From there, the activists began targeting states that use ballot initiatives to pass policy. However, not all states allow ballot initiatives, and Walker said animal rights groups began reaching out to food chain companies to force animal welfare commitments. With each undercover video released, the industry repeatedly used the “one bad apple” argument. At one point, though, Walker said several videos on several different farms were released in a period of about five weeks, “so we couldn’t say it was one bad apple.”
The result was the exclusion of the specific farms from some retailors, commitments were made, but the same cycle continued, she noted. It isn’t because the industry doesn’t want to follow through “but because there’s other dumpster fires to deal with.”
Today, Walker said the “animal agriculture abolitionists,”, look for any standard of care used on pack, or in marketing, demonstrate that the company is not living up to that language and then rightfully file suit.
While the brands seem to recover, it comes at a cost. to demonstrate corrective actions and some effort to address animal welfare, none of which have actually proven any actual demonstrable improvement in animal welfare, she said, adding that this will keep happening if the animal protein business stays on its current path. “How do we actually break this pattern that we seem to not be able to get out of, even though I wholeheartedly believe that every one of us in the animal agriculture business is highly invested in the animals in our care?”
This paints a pretty grim picture, but Walker believes there is hope. “I think the challenge is to get folks to understand the business case,” she said, meaning that animal welfare is truly the foundation of a sustainable enterprise for any business that has animal protein as a major product.
“We know that animal welfare is critical to quality and food safety as well as profit,” she said. “What I think we’re missing, and what folks don’t understand, is that animal welfare is uniquely positioned to support the business by increasing brand affection / consumer connection and supporting the foundational issue of sustainability.”
Walker explained that research has found, and the market has demonstrated, that the majority of consumers are not going to pay more for products with guarantees of better animal welfare. Consumer willingness to pay aside, Walker suggested that animal welfare can still help the business by driving brand affection. “When consumers go to the store and reach for something, if they have a connection to the brand, you can drive market share. When price has a ceiling as it tends to in food, market share matters!”
Beyond market share, how does animal welfare factor into sustainability? Walker reflected on agriculture’s historical rally cry to “feed the world.” She challenged that more emphasis needs to be placed on reducing food waste instead of on producing more food. “We already produce enough food to feed everyone; our problem is we waste 30% of it.” She also pointed out that the 30% waste figure does not even include waste due to animal disease.
Feeding the world with what we have can be done by setting “a compassionate table,” Walker said. This means advocating for the animal and focusing on optimizing rather than maximizing.
“We’ve long had a system that focuses on maximizing profit or production,” she stated. “I don’t think that’s gotten us in a very good place. I think we need to take a step back and look at the long game and start thinking about what optimizing looks like.”
This means it is necessary to think beyond “sustaining.”
Walker asked, “If we sustain, are we really any better than we were 10 years ago? We need to recognize that this goes beyond the welfare and health of our animals and production systems. It extends to the health of the soil and planet. This is about restoring, regenerating and improving. That’s how we’re going to change the game.”
Rules for the discussion
Embarking on the animal welfare journey requires following certain rules, according to Walker. These include:
Moral judgment is suspended. “This is not and cannot be a debate about whether animal agriculture is okay,” she said. She noted that she is fine with folks wanting to bring an end to animals in production continuing to advance their agenda. “That is fine,” she said, “but as long as animal production systems exist, it is our duty job to optimize their welfare wherever possible.”
Moral honesty is required. “We need to be honest in that morality and agree that we don’t get to pretend that our use of animals does not impact them in some negative way,” she explained.
Acknowledge and accept that animals matter. This, Walker said, “means accepting that while we grant permission to benefit from animals, we are not granting permission to exploit them.”
Acknowledge that what animals want matters. “This is critical,” she stressed. “We need to listen to what animals want and prefer.” Animal behavior science has figured out ways to ask animals questions to learn their preferences. Respecting those preferences means that we work to incorporate those preferences into our systems.
There are no bad systems (sort of). Things like gestation stalls for sows, spending too much time on concrete for dairy cows and feeding management that result in liver abscesses in beef cattle are examples of things that challenge good welfare. No matter the size of the farm, “the biggest impact to animal welfare is the management of the system,” Walker said.
Better is better. When it comes to critics of our systems, “There are folks who just want to burn it down” she said, but she also argued “there’s also a group that’s happy to slap a coat of paint on it and call it good. I don’t think that serves anybody.” Effectively addressing animal welfare in our production systems is going to require some hard conversations, and it may take time to develop solutions.
Walker further suggested that a change takes foresight. A business with animals or animal protein core to its business must be willing to think 15-20 years or more ahead. “If we want to continue managing the businesses worried about this quarter and the next, worried about what everyone’s annual bonus is, we’re just going to be in the cycle again and again,” she said.
Further, Walker urged that honest conversations need to happen around animal welfare certifications. While some certifications out there certainly do the business world of good, “when it comes to animal welfare, there is not a single certification that I am aware of that has ever demonstrated that they have improved the welfare of animals.” She highlighted the need to understand “that there is a huge difference between policy and a program,” explaining that “an animal welfare audit generally does these two things: 1. Mitigate risks and 2. Try to gain a market advantage.” It’s important to understand that certifications “are just an audit, and in many cases, audits have merely created a habit and culture of checking boxes and making sure we get enough points to pass.”
While many companies create or use an audit, few have a well developed and supported animal welfare program she offered, explained that a program is what is needed to actually elevate the welfare of animals in production systems. She emphasized that the audit is simply the tool to measure progress, a well-designed program addresses the process and practicality if creating sustained change on farm.
Being transparent about the progress and challenges associated with the journey adds another layer of complexity and vulnerability for companies. While few companies have actual programs, she said fewer are reporting the nitty gritty of how they’re doing.
Game plan
According to Walker, having a game plan is key, and page 1 of the game plan is remembering, “it’s a book and not a page.”
“There are many paths to success,” she said. “I’ll use dairy as an example. From pasture-based to organic to conventional, cows inside, cows outside. For each one of these systems, I could list 10 things that I love about them and 10 things that I don’t like about them. There’s no perfect system. How do we take the systems we have and make them better?”
The reality is that animals have to be raised in all kinds of geographies and in all kinds of environments, so “we need to figure out how to make it work there,” she explained. “In many instances it’s really hard to just enforce one way of doing things.”
Page 2 of the book must focus on the boots on the ground. “It’s important to understand that boots on the ground drive change,” she said. “Audits don’t improve welfare; people do. The audits are just the measuring stick. We need to hire a staff of trained professionals that are compassionate, that are empathetic cow, chicken and pig champions that understand that change happens through people.”
Change doesn’t happen because of SOPs or paper checklists, she added. “We need champions that understand how we make program and policy come to life, and that takes a huge investment from a company.”
Page 3 highlights the need for practice. “Creating a habit of compassion takes time. Repetition and practice deliver results. You can’t run the playbook the day of the Super Bowl,” Walker said. “This is what makes sure that better practices we implement on farm sustain when management changes. The people, the boots on the ground, that are working our cows, pigs and chickens every day have to develop a habit of thought in how we interact with animals in the production system.”
How do we know if it’s working? Walker said the things she checks every time that will generally tell her how things are going are “bathrooms and barn cats.” When those two things fail, “oddly enough, the rest of the system reflects that.” Walker added that these two checks are a great example of how “compassion is contagious,” it extends to the employee and everything on the farm beyond the production animals.
The ultimate goal is creating the habit of thought: Do what’s best for the animal in front of you. “If compassion is at the core of everything we do, employees will make the right decision,” she said. Page 6 is about making the system “CEO-proof.”
“The game plan has to sustain as coaches and owners rotate, because they are going to. We can’t keep having it come from the top down. We really have to start thinking about how we build it from the bottom up,” Walker said.
What does this look like? Every company, big or small, in the animal protein business should have a Chief Animal Welfare Officer with a voice in leadership.
During her master’s program, Walker said she found that there were two barriers to making sustained improvements in animal welfare: (1) when animal welfare is based in the procurement or sustainability part of the business and (2) when animal welfare doesn’t have an informed voice in the boardroom.
Watch the full presentation from Dr. Walker and access all 2023 Kemin Intestinal Health Symposium content at www.kemin.com/symposium.