The market for welfare-friendly foodstuff

Work package 1.2 is a study of the current and potential market for welfare-friendly foodstuff. We began by studying the current retail market. So far the analysis shows that the retail market is becoming increasingly concentrated, with fewer and fewer retail companies dominating national markets. The nature of this concentration varies. In the UK retailers use their power to source from various places thus weakening domestic producers. Whereas in Norway retailers are still forced to use Norwegian products so power lies with producer co-operatives. In France and Italy people eat locally grown produce far more than in other countries; this protects domestic producers despite the growth in retailer concentration. Competition between retailers is intense across all countries and is exacerbated by the arrival of hard discount stores.The level of service that retailers offer customers is an important variable and focus of competitive strategies. Food labelling plays a key role in communicating information beyond price to consumers. In the UK the retailers Waitrose and Marks and Spencers explicitly use ethical considerations as part of their marketing strategies. They both focus on animal welfare as one key aspect of their ethical approach. Not only is there great variation in relations between animal welfare and retailing but also between retailers within countries.

Recent work in the retailing work package has involved carrying out a market audit in each country of welfare-friendly products found on sale. The products found demonstrate that there are a whole variety of products bearing some relationship to animal welfare but defining this relationship is far from easy. In some countries animal welfare is easily equated with ‘tradition’ (e.g. Norway). In other countries animal welfare is linked to tradition in terms of a propensity to buy national foods but this is increasingly crosscut by food assurance schemes. In yet other countries animal welfare is associated mainly with food quality, which is then tied to (local, regional, national) territories (e.g. Italy and France).

In some countries animal welfare is a competitive issue (e.g. UK and Italy), in others it is a non-competitive issue (e.g. The Netherlands); in some supermarkets it is a competitive issue (e.g. Waitrose and Marks and Spencer’s), in others it used to be a competitive issue but is no longer (e.g. Tesco).

The amount of information given about animal welfare is also highly variable between products with some making explicit claims (e.g. Animal welfare dedicated assurance schemes) while others leave animal welfare implicit (e.g. ecological schemes). Also some products have implicit information on the outside but explicit information on the inside.

In sum, the communication of animal welfare through the market is confusing and if it becomes a competitive issue this confusion may increase. Where animal welfare is a non-competitive issue, consumers may know little about it.

Jonathan Murdoch and Emma Roe

Cardiff University, United Kingdom