Customers at Belgian supermarkets will at the end of this year notice a new label on products: the animal welfare label Better for Animals. It aims to give people the information to make more animal-friendly choices.
The uniform animal welfare label, launched by Flemish Animal Welfare Minister Ben Weyts (N-VA), will appear on shop shelves from the end of this year. The logo is bilingual, with producers usually supplying the entire Belgian market, meaning the Flemish label will also appear in Wallonia and Brussels.
More consumers want to make animal-friendly choices when shopping, so the label is designed to help people choose the right product. "For many Flemings, animals are something defining in life, and they also want their purchasing choices to be co-determined by animal welfare," said Weyts.
"The Better for Animals label makes this possible and even easy. At a glance, you will be able to see which producer is making extra efforts for animal welfare – and thus also who is not."
Fragmented animal welfare
Several different labels are already being used for this purpose, but the animal welfare requirements are often difficult to compare. Only producers making special efforts to ensure animal welfare – on top of legal requirements – will receive the uniform Flemish label.
Free range chicken in Zingem. Credit: Belga
Specifically, this could include products that avoid unnecessary transport, offer extra enrichment or give animals extra space. The label ranges from one + sign on the label for limited extra efforts to 3 + signs for producers who pull out all the stops on top of the legal requirements.
The label will first appear on pork, followed by chicken products (such as chicken meat and eggs) and then the other animal species.
"In time, this label will ensure that the entire range in the shops will become more animal-friendly. After all, consumers will more often choose more animal-friendly products and the big chains will have no choice but to follow the demand."
