The European Union (EU) has been a pioneer in adopting farm animal welfare legislation directed to ensuring minimum standards in the absence of an animal welfare policy. Subsequent regard for the welfare of animals as sentient beings, situated in the EU Treaties, leans towards the integration of animal welfare in EU agricultural policy and promotion under the EU Common Agricultural Policy.
In its external relations, the EU plays an influential role in animal welfare standard-setting within the World Organisation for Animal Health, adopted in the International Terrestrial Animal Health Code. Animal welfare remains a complex issue, with societal, trade and policy dimensions, and a legal framework forging the assurance of high standards of farm animal welfare endures as a focal objective.
Private farm assurance schemes have evolved and co-exist with public standards. Private standards are adopted outside the framework of legal principles applicable to States and, potentially, provoke regulatory challenges. Equally, higher private thresholds of animal welfare may pose opportunities to be exploited. A comparative analysis of selected leading private standards is overdue, engendering transparent information and private animal welfare labelling which will assure the credence consumer of agri-food of higher welfare standards practised on the farm.
The relative nature of public and private standards of assurance and the relationship between the standard-setters are uncertain in law. Yet the emergence of hybridity is evident and the extent to which there should be regulation or market freedom is central. This thesis explores interrelations between the major public and private animal welfare standard-setters based on mutual interests and reciprocity of obligations. Through recourse to soft law in a proposed hybrid model of governance, applying concepts of legitimacy and the theory of institutional commensalism, it endeavours to promote the prospects of elevated welfare for food-producing animals in EU agriculture and the agri-food chain.
