Most Compassionate Supermarket - CC / Flickr
Big name companies, celebrities and guests packed into London’s St Paul’s Cathedral last night to celebrate the businesses that are making a real difference for farm animals. Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Marks & Spencer, The Co-operative Food, Pret A Manger and Virgin Trains were amongst the big name companies receiving our first ever ‘Good Chicken’ Awards for pledging to dump factory farmed chicken in favour of higher welfare chicken. In total, the pledges of the ten companies recognised on the night will benefit a projected 174 million chickens!
The Good Farm Animal Welfare Awards is the public face of our flagship programme working with the business community. We talk with companies in the UK and across Europe and inspire them to do great things for farm animal welfare. The awards event is where we showcase those companies leading by example by committing to animal-friendly policies. For the first time, we brought together our coveted Supermarket Awards with our ‘Good Egg’ Awards, and publicly unveiled our work with companies on higher welfare chicken meat too.
Waitrose won our Most Compassionate Supermarket Award, whilst Morrison’s picked up our ‘Most Improved Supermarket’ Award, and Sainsbury’s were awarded best of the ‘big four’, as gauged by our recent retail survey on animal welfare.
So, why do we see our work with commercial companies as so important? Because, working with progressive companies, we can drive huge changes. To me, we are building a dream, a vision. A vision where businesses buy only cage-free eggs, instead of those from the confines of the battery; where the food quality benefits of better welfare shine through; and where those companies who lead by example are truly rewarded with the positive riches that doing the right thing should surely bring.
It’s been a radical departure from the way Compassion has often worked in the past. And together with our work with local authorities, the success of our approach speaks for itself:
• Nearly 100 local authorities have become ‘cage-free councils’, denouncing battery eggs in favour of higher welfare and free range eggs in their buying policies;
• 25 million laying hens are benefiting Europe-wide, thanks to Good Egg Award-winning companies who have committed to switching to cage-free eggs;
• 174 million broiler chickens will be living better lives, thanks to the actions of our Good Chicken Award-winning companies!
That’s a lot of change. When I look out of my window and see our three adopted hens, it brings it back to me how important these strides really are. I see how important it is to them to feel the earth under their feet, the sun on their backs, and to be able to stretch their wings. And then I imagine what the 25 million laying hens might look like that are living better lives, thanks to the ‘Good Egg’ companies over the last four years. If all those 25 million hens stood wing-tip to wing-tip, they’d stretch half way round the world.
Congratulations to all those companies that are making such profound change possible! To read how The Independent newspaper covered the evening, click here. And thank you to everyone who is supporting Compassion’s work to help more businesses make better lives for farm animals.
[...] celebrate the businesses that are making a real difference for farm animals. It was our now annual Good Farm Animal Awards. Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Marks & Spencer, The Co-operative Food, Pret A Manger and Virgin [...]