Published 09/06/2017

Following the results of yesterday’s general election we know now that whilst the Conservatives remain the largest party, there is now no overall majority within Parliament.

What does this mean for farm animal welfare?

The Conservative Party manifesto made some promising commitments in relation to farm animal welfare. These include taking steps to control live animal exports for slaughter, making CCTV mandatory in slaughterhouses and developing a ‘new agri-environment’ scheme (the details of this are yet to be revealed). We urge the new Government to quickly implement these commitments.

Other parties’ manifestos also included policies that would benefit farm animals, such as the Liberal Democrat commitment to ban enriched cages for hens, the Labour Party policy of promoting cruelty-free animal husbandry, or the Green Party’s pledge to end factory farming. In the new Parliament parties will have to work closely together. We hope all these policies will be given time to be debated by MPs.

Key pledges

Prior to the election we contacted all major UK parties encouraging them to ensure that farm animals are included in their policies for the new Parliament. These pledges can be found here.

We firmly believe that if these five pledges were implemented by the new Government, we could once again show the UK as a world leader on animal welfare, improve the quality and standards of our food sector and also improve human health.

It is vital that the new Government should recognise the need for a fundamental rethink on food and farming, including a policy approach which genuinely integrates health, diet, environment, food security, farmer livelihoods and animal welfare.

Giving farm animals a voice

For now, we eagerly await to see who is appointed to the various Government departments, and look forward to working with them in order to further strengthen farm animal welfare in the UK.

We’d like to thank every supporter who took the action to email their local candidates in order to give farm animals a voice this election.