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Consumer's Guide to Humanely Produced Food
Eggs Pork Beef and Lamb Foie gras Veal
Farming is big business today, and many farm animals are reared using intensive farming practices that confine the animals in cramped conditions in a factory production line. These are unnatural conditions that cause immense suffering and deny farm animals their rights to the RSPCA’s Five Freedoms.
With community support, RSPCA Qld is working to change consumer attitudes and behaviour towards farm animals, and is lobbying for bans on intensive farming practices and the live export of animals, calling for their replacement with humane alternatives.
Farmers justify intensive farming through demand for their products. Intensive farming will continue until consumers choose humanely produced food products over intensively farmed products.
Please buy humanely produced food. Look for free range or organic foods at your supermarket or butcher’s shop.
More than 92% of eggs sold in Australia come from battery-caged hens. Forced to live in a space no bigger than an A4 sheet of paper, the welfare of the battery-caged egg producing hen is the most compromised of all farm animals.
· Don’t buy eggs labelled “cage eggs”.
· Choose eggs labelled as “barn laid” or “free range”. If unsure, look for the RSPCA logo on RSPCA accredited eggs.
· If unavailable, ask your supermarket to stock barn laid and free range eggs.
· Beware of misleading labels such as “vegetarian eggs”. If the box contains the label “cage eggs” there is no welfare benefit.
· Remember: If it does not have the RSPCA logo, there is no guarantee that eggs labelled free range or barn laid meet the animal welfare standards set by the RSPCA.
To learn more about battery-caged egg producing hens, click here.
Intensively farmed breeding sows spend most of their life in 200 cm x 60 cm metal-barred crates. With barely enough room to stand and lie down, these social and intelligent animals suffer from debilitating physical, mental and emotional stress.
The RSPCA has developed a set of accreditation standards for the production of pork, and is working towards the replacement of metal crates with straw yards.
· Buy only organic or free range pig products. Gooralie Free Range Pork is Queensland’s first RSPCA-accredited pork producer. If unavailable, ask your supermarket or butcher to stock this range of pork.
· Pork products that are not labelled free range or organic have been produced by intensive pig farming methods.
· Remember: If it does not have the RSPCA logo, there is no guarantee that a free range product meets the standards set by the RSPCA.
To learn more about dry sow stalls and intensive pig farming, click here.
Stockists of Gooralie Free Range Pork
Allsop & England Organic Butchers
297 Old Cleveland Road
Coorparoo (Brisbane)
Tel/Fax: (07) 3397 4117
Stuartholme Quality Meats
15 Stuartholme Rd
Bardon (Brisbane) QLD 4065
Tel: (07) 3369 3118
Because of Australia’s vast landscape, many cattle and sheep endure the suffering associated with long distance transport before being slaughtered. RSPCA Qld advocates that all livestock should be humanely slaughtered as near as possible to the point of production.
· Buy only free range or humanely produced meat through your local butcher or supermarket. If unsure, ask your butcher if the meat was produced locally.
· If unavailable, ask your supermarket or butcher to stock humanely produced food products.
To learn more about long distance animal transport, click here.
Foie gras is a delicacy produced from duck or goose liver that involves the cruel and inhumane practice of force-feeding ducks and geese until their liver expands to an abnormally large size. Although not produced in Australia, it is imported from Europe, particularly France, Hungary and Bulgaria.
· Please do not purchase foie gras.
· If you find foie gras on a restaurant menu, ask the restaurant manager to remove it from the menu or write to the manager.
To learn more about foie gras production, click here.
Veal is the meat produced from young male calves born to dairy cows. Veal calves live for only 4 to 6 months, and in many countries throughout the world they suffer immensely as they spend their short lives in wooden crates that are so narrow they cannot turn around.
In Australia, there is a Code of Practice that advocates the housing of veal calves in small groups in open pens.
· Purchase veal that has been humanely produced. If unsure, ask your butcher.
· When ordering veal at a restaurant, ask if it has been produced locally to meet the Code of Practice.
To learn more about veal production, click here. |
