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Supermarket farm animal welfare policies
Supermarket retailers are vital to improving farm animal welfare in the food supply chain. The influence they have over the welfare standards adopted by food producers is enormous due to their buying power, the number of shoppers they attract, and their ability to promote one product over another.
Our Supermarket Survey forms the central focus of our engagement work with retailers. We have been conducting the survey biennially since 2001 and 28 retailers participated in the last survey in 2022.
Survey Questionnaire
The survey involves retailers completing a detailed questionnaire about their farm animal welfare policies and practices and their use of key welfare indicators.
The survey is split into six separate sections: overall approach to farm animal welfare; laying hens; broiler chickens; dairy cows and calves; sows and meat pigs; and farmed fish.
The 2022 iteration of the survey introduced 2 levels of questions: core and in-depth. The core questions are a reduced set of questions focusing on key animal welfare topics. The in-depth questions are more comprehensive, covering a wider range of topics. Participants can choose which set of questions they answer.
The results of the questionnaire are used to produce a comprehensive gap analysis report, scoring and ranking supermarkets anonymously against their peers and includes general recommendations.
Participants answering the in-depth questions will receive more bespoke recommendations in their report, so we encourage participants to complete as much of the survey as possible in order to get the most value from the benchmarking.
The names of the retailers taking part in the survey are not disclosed publicly, nor privately to the other participating retailers.
All data in the feedback reports is presented anonymously, typically showing the highest and lowest scores achieved for each area of performance, in order to maintain confidentiality.
The Supermarket Survey is open to all major European supermarkets and is provided free of charge to all participants.
Further instructions and web links for entering the survey will be sent out to interested retailers closer to the opening date.
If you have any questions about the survey, please do not hesitate to contact your Food Business Manager.
Retailer Awards
Our biennial Retailer Awards form part of our Good Farm Animal Welfare Awards programme and are based on the Supermarket Survey results.
They are awarded in the following categories:
- Best Retailer Award – awarded to the top-performing retailer in the Supermarket Survey
- Best Retailer Marketing Award – awarded to the retailer that provides the best example of delivering a successful consumer marketing campaign to communicate farm animal welfare, higher welfare products and/or communicating the need to reduce meat, eggs and dairy consumption. (This is a panel-based award.)
- Best Retailer Innovation Award - awarded to the retailer that provides the best example of a successful project or innovation that has delivered measurable benefits to the lives of farm animals. (This is a panel-based award.)
Companies participating in the Supermarket Survey are automatically considered for the biennial Retailer Awards. Find out more about some of our previous winners.
