Visit Animal Welfare Labels today. Consumer awareness of the ethical, environmental and health considerations involved with factory farming production methods is growing, and consumers are increasingly wanting to make informed choices on the animal-derived food products they purchase.

Despite demand and growth in awareness, animal derived food products are still labelled with a confusing and incoherent abundance of poorly defined and unregulated labelling terms. A suite of such voluntary standards and third party certification schemes of varying regulation have resulted in the big producers redefining the terms to suit themselves, and have left consumers with a spectrum of products produced under a range of conditions. This ambiguity does not facilitate the ability of consumers to make informed product purchases.

The AWL guide has been developed to help take the confusion and guesswork out of all the terms and labels that consumers are faced with by presenting common conditions in standards for welfare focused cattle, sheep, pig, and poultry certification schemes.

How the consumer guide was produced

The guide has been produced with support from all standards or certification schemes.

Humane Society International (HSI) developed a survey based on common conditions presented in standards for welfare-focused cattle, sheep, pig, and poultry product certification schemes. Also taking into consideration common public concerns for animal welfare in method of production for animal products, HSI developed a set of questions relating to standards for animal welfare certification schemes.

The survey was given to all major certifiers to complete. Any information not provided was obtained from information provided on certifiers' websites. Data was then developed into a form which clearly presented responses in a way so that they could easily be compared against each other.

Visit www.animalwelfarelabels.org.au today and make the best choice when your choosing to buy food.