Last week, the UK’s leading animal welfare charity, the RSPCA, announced it had removed all recipes from its website.
It may be surprising to some that an organisation that claims to advocate for “all kinds” of animals would also tell people how to cook and eat them, but the 200-year-old charity offers a range of recipes on its site that call for pork, chicken, beef, fish, eggs and dairy.
READ MORE: RSPCA-certified farm under investigation after ‘very tragic’ pig shooting
All of the recipe ingredients are “RSPCA guaranteed” animal products. These products are sold in supermarkets across the UK and are said to come from farms that maintain a set of “high welfare” standards. These standards include no cages, “humane” slaughter, more living space and “enriched” living conditions.
RSPCA Assured’s reputation falls
But the RSPCA Assured scheme came to prominence earlier this month. The Sunday Times It outlined serious allegations of animal cruelty at several farms certified under the program.
Vegan group Animal Rising visited 45 farms in the UK, all of which it said had animal cruelty. Investigators published a report detailing 280 breaches of legislation and 94 violations of animal welfare regulations. Examples included salmon with missing eyes and body parts, live chicks pecking at dead chicks, and pigs with severed tails – all apparently routine abuse.
The investigation sparked outrage and the RSPCA came under heavy pressure to drop the scheme, including from its chairman, Chris Packham. Plant-Based News (For individuals) said it launched an “immediate and urgent” investigation after receiving the report, and claimed that it had subsequently found several farms to be not RSPCA insured. (It’s worth noting that Animals Rising’s investigation is not the first to uncover abuse on RSPCA-insured farms; numerous exposés by various organisations have revealed animal welfare breaches over the years.)
RSPCA removes recipe
Following the Animal Rising investigation, the RSPCA appears to have removed all online recipes on Monday 10 June.
A statement has been posted on the section of the site where the recipes previously appeared: “The RSPCA and RSPCA Assured have decided to temporarily remove all plant-based and meat-based recipes from the RSPCA Assured website. We are conducting an internal review of how to most effectively share the Eat Less, Eat Better message across all platforms and part of this review process will include analysing existing recipe content.”
Read more: RSPCA-certified ‘high welfare’ Scottish salmon linked to animal cruelty
The statement added that the organisation actively campaigns for people to “eat fewer and better quality animal products” and “strongly encourages consumers to ‘choose higher welfare options’ when purchasing animal products”.
Nathan McGovern, a spokesman for Animals Rising, said: For individuals He said the charity’s decision to scrap the recipes was a “great first step” but that it “must then move away from the Assured scheme and tell the truth about how its animals are cared for”.
“This starts with calling for a significant reduction in meat consumption as part of the transition to a plant-based food system,” he added.
The RSPCA has not stopped promoting meat on its website, and another page continues to advertise meat from RSPCA animals in UK supermarkets.
What’s next for the RSPCA?
There is currently no indication as to whether the recipes will be reinstated or whether meat, dairy and egg products will continue to be promoted on the website.
The charity continues to refuse to leave RSPCA Assured, despite numerous campaigns from both Animals Rising and another vegan organisation called the Animal Justice Project calling for them to do so.
Previously The Sunday Times Abandoning the plan, it warned, “would put millions of livestock at risk of becoming even more unprotected”. For individuals Asked earlier this week whether there had been an update to the decision, a spokesman said that if the investigation revealed “indications of systemic issues” then “a review would be carried out to ensure the integrity of the system”.
“While we agree that even one welfare failure is too many, we are confident we are doing the right thing by working with the agricultural industry to continually raise standards and improve the lives of more than 100 million farmed animals,” he added. He added that he was “working to make a dramatic difference for farm animals in the future” by “encouraging people to eat less animal-based foods and, when they do, to choose higher welfare.”
The Problem with “Higher Welfare”
Despite widespread cruelty on farms over the years, the RSPCA continues to tout the importance of “high welfare” meat, but Animals Rising and the Animal Justice Project are among the organisations that question whether high welfare animal products can actually exist.
“Years of undercover filming by the Animal Justice Project have revealed that pain, suffering and death are commonplace in the animal agriculture industry,” said Claire Palmer, Founder and Director of the Animal Justice Project. For individuals“Many of these are deliberately hidden behind cleverly promoted product and guarantee labels such as RSPCA Assured.”
The Animal Justice Project, an animal rights organisation that aims to remove all animals from the food system, recently launched a petition calling on the RSPCA to end Assured after its investigation earlier this year found that chickens on the farm had “serious health problems” and lived in “poor conditions”.
“‘High welfare’ agriculture is an oxymoron: you can’t ‘humanely’ raise animals and then kill them for consumption,” Palmer added. “In fact, ‘high welfare’ is harmful because it appeases the public, who want the status quo to continue. That’s why, as animal rights organisations, we “We will never promote ‘high welfare’ agriculture as the solution. Instead, we remain committed to our mission to show consumers the reality of animals, regardless of welfare label.”
“High welfare farming is just a pipe dream,” Mr McGovern added. “There is no gentle way to rear animals that we don’t want to die and schemes like RSPCA Assured and Red Tractor are completely lying to the British public.”
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