In writing this, I was reminded of the possibility of a pretty different corporate ask: pressuring large food companies to invest in animal welfare research or alternatives to animal-derived foods. I’m curious if there’s been any recent thinking or doing related to this idea. Procter & Gamble is an example of this outside of the food industry, pressured in part by Henry Spira. In Peter Singer’s biography of Henry Spira, Singer catalogues P&G’s subsequent efforts to progress non-animal safety testing, which were quite extensive and successful. I don’t really understand why P&G kept that going and invested so much into it. Inertia? Pride? Predicted efficiency gains? I don’t know, but it seems like it could be good to have in food.
Working with many food companies on their commitment to transition to a cage-free egg supply. I have seen the following happen, staff gain internal buy-in, publicly state it on their website, in some cases the first time the company has a tangible stated animal welfare position.
I’ve rarely encountered people at a company who don’t care about animal welfare, I think the challenge for them is understanding how they can operationalise it. I think the cage-free work has helped many companies, and staff within them, to move forward and builds inertia.
An example I like of this is Carrefour’s work on cage-free for chickens and then moving forward to create cage-free systems for quail.
In writing this, I was reminded of the possibility of a pretty different corporate ask: pressuring large food companies to invest in animal welfare research or alternatives to animal-derived foods. I’m curious if there’s been any recent thinking or doing related to this idea. Procter & Gamble is an example of this outside of the food industry, pressured in part by Henry Spira. In Peter Singer’s biography of Henry Spira, Singer catalogues P&G’s subsequent efforts to progress non-animal safety testing, which were quite extensive and successful. I don’t really understand why P&G kept that going and invested so much into it. Inertia? Pride? Predicted efficiency gains? I don’t know, but it seems like it could be good to have in food.
Working with many food companies on their commitment to transition to a cage-free egg supply. I have seen the following happen, staff gain internal buy-in, publicly state it on their website, in some cases the first time the company has a tangible stated animal welfare position.
I’ve rarely encountered people at a company who don’t care about animal welfare, I think the challenge for them is understanding how they can operationalise it. I think the cage-free work has helped many companies, and staff within them, to move forward and builds inertia.
An example I like of this is Carrefour’s work on cage-free for chickens and then moving forward to create cage-free systems for quail.