Supermarkets 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 and the number of shoppers they attract, and their ability to promote one product over another.

We have been working with leading UK supermarkets since 2001, to recognise industry leaders in ethical food through our biennial Supermarket Survey.

The Survey scores and rates supermarkets on their policies, performance and overall approach to farm animal welfare. It provides companies with a tailored, gap analysis tool to enable them to manage welfare in their supply chains more effectively.

The current survey reviews the welfare standards for laying hens, broilers, pigs, dairy cows and calves. Retailers are benchmarked anonymously against their industry peers using the highest and lowest percentage scores for each area of performance to maintain confidentiality.

Retailer Awards

Our biennial Retailer Awards are driven by the Supermarket Survey results and in 2022 we awarded companies on their performance in 3 key categories:

• Best Retailer Award – based on the highest overall score of all five surveys for broilers, laying hens, pigs, dairy cows and calves, and overall approach to welfare.
  

• Best Retailer Innovation Award – the retailer that provides the best example(s) of work to improve farm animal welfare within their supply chain.

• Best Retailer Marketing Award – the retailer that provides the best example(s) of work to communicate farm animal welfare to the consumer.

Our latest Retailer Awards were presented at the 2022 Good Farm Animal Welfare Awards held in London on 15 June.

Carrefour became the first major retailer in Brazil to be awarded for driving better standards for laying hens. They not only received a Good Egg Commendation for their cage-free egg commitment but also scooped this year’s Best Retailer Marketing Award for their in-store marketing campaign promoting the welfare benefits of cage-free eggs.

Waitrose & Partners was presented with the Best Retailer Innovation Award for developing and implementing the first Qualitative Behavioural Assessment App to measure the emotional wellbeing of animals in the drive to continually improve their quality of life. They also achieved the overall Best Retailer Award for the fourth consecutive year.

Find out more about of Retailer Award winners here.

Compassion will celebrate its ‘Retailer Awards’ again in 2024.

Find out more

• To find out more about the Retailer Awards visit the Compassion in Food Business website.
• Together, we can make a real difference to our food and farm animals. Please donate today.