With the holiday season fast approaching, many of us are in the middle of plans to celebrate with family and friends. Whether it’s roast lunch, family dinner, or scraping together leftovers for Boxing Day, to help keep welfare front of mind we’ve compiled some helpful tips to make your celebration memorable, while also supporting better lives for Australia’s farm animals.
Choosing higher welfare when you shop helps drive demand for those products, which in turn encourages more producers to shift to higher welfare farming practices. It’s through the choices of compassionate Australians like you, who choose products certified to the RSPCA Approved Standards, that over 5 billion animals have lived a better quality of life – including when it comes to two of the most traditional choices for Christmas tables, pork and turkey.
Sowing a Higher-Welfare Christmas
Pigs are intelligent, social animals, and need the freedom to express their natural behaviours to have their needs met. They love to forage and explore their environment, and having adequate space is important so that they can be active and express these natural behaviours. In conventional farming systems, sows and boars are kept in restrictive stalls, with little space or opportunity to perform natural behaviours that are essential to their wellbeing. While there have been some positive steps in the farming of pigs such as the phase out of sow stalls, in intensive indoor housing systems, sows are still commonly confined to farrowing crates just prior to giving birth up until their piglets are weaned.
Pigs on farms with RSPCA Approved certification are raised so they are free to perform natural behaviours, with space to roam they can exercise, socialise, and forage. Good quality bedding is provided so that all pigs have a comfortable area to rest and sows can build nests for their piglets. Sow stalls, boar stalls, and farrowing crates are not permitted under the RSPCA Approved Standard for Pigs. Painful procedures such as teeth clipping, tail docking, and castration are also not allowed. Producers with RSPCA Approved certification must meet the 377 stringent requirements in the Standard, and adhere to rigorous, regular assessments by specially trained RSPCA Assessors, to maintain this certification.
You can find RSPCA Approved pork at Coles.
Better Turkey Welfare – No Gobbledygook
Over a decade ago the detailed RSPCA Approved Standard for Turkeys was released. Developing this Standard provided the opportunity for RSPCA Approved to work with farmers and brands that wanted to go above and beyond what’s legally required, to give turkeys a better life. The RSPCA Approved Standards consider current animal welfare science, leading farming practices in Australia and what’s challenging but possible to achieve in the Australian farming context.
Turkeys are confident and inquisitive; they are big birds with BIG personalities! Like other poultry, they enjoy dust bathing, exploring their environment, pecking at interesting objects, and socialising with each other. Due to their intelligent and curious nature, it’s important that turkeys are reared in environments that provide them with enrichment, space to move about and places to perch to strengthen their bones and muscles. If provided with outdoor access, it’s also important the area is inviting with vegetation and protection from the elements. Unfortunately, the reality is that most turkeys raised for meat in Australia are farmed in conventional systems, which do not allow them to express natural behaviours.
Producers with RSPCA Approved certification prioritise the behavioural and physical needs of the birds. This means turkeys have access to perches to help build stronger legs, and interesting objects to peck at including balls, hay bales, plastic chains or shiny discs!. The RSPCA Approved Standard for Turkeys also includes specifications for the provision of quality litter floor covering, allowing birds to dust bathe which helps them clean and maintain their feathers.
RSPCA Approved turkey can be found in Coles, Woolworths, and now ALDI.
Good Tide-ings, Consciously
For the welfare conscious looking for seafood such as salmon, you’re in luck. Salmon raised on farms with RSPCA Approved certification are provided with a nutritious diet and swim in oxygen-rich water with space to swim and perform natural schooling behaviours. Due to the lack of legal requirements for farming salmon in Australia, RSPCA Approved certification means salmon have a better quality of life with consideration of husbandry procedures, low-stress handling and slaughter.
Producers with RSPCA Approved certification rear their salmon on aquaculture farms with a focus on welfare for the entire lifecycle. Salmon, like any vertebrate animal, are sentient and experience pain, fear and distress. Not only is it important that they’re reared with welfare in mind, but when the time comes, salmon are stunned prior to slaughter. While sadly, wild-caught salmon may not always have a humane death, the RSPCA Approved certification indicates that the salmon have been reared, as well as slaughtered, with welfare as a priority.
Catch RSPCA Approved farmed Atlantic salmon in Woolworths, Coles and independent grocers.
Being on Santa’s ‘nice’ list takes dedication and hard work!
Assessment of farms against the standards is a critical aspect of maintaining RSPCA Approved certification.
Certified farms are assessed by a specially trained RSPCA Assessor two to four times per year, as well as unscheduled visits, to check they are consistently meeting the standards. Assessors are well versed in farm animal behaviour and check handling and husbandry processes along with all areas where animals are reared. As a humane death is equally as important, abattoirs are also assessed annually.
Remember, as a consumer, your voice can influence decision makers. You can make a positive difference to how animals are treated with the choices you make and by asking the question and expressing your views to brands and retailers. They are listening, so now has never been a better time to make your voice heard and support better animal welfare.
From the team at RSPCA Approved, we wish you a safe and happy holiday season.
