UK supermarkets will face competition from European retailers in a leading animal welfare award, it was announced on Tuesday.

Animal welfare campaign group Compassion in World Farming will extend its supermarket animal welfare survey and accompanying retailer awards to create a pan-European benchmark of welfare.

The survey takes the form of analysis of the retailer’s policies, performance and overall approach to welfare for a wide range of animals. Participating retailers receive bespoke, free, comprehensive and confidential feedback to help them track their welfare performance. Retailers are benchmarked anonymously using the highest and lowest percentage scores for each criterion.

Every retailer taking part in the survey is automatically entered for the retailer awards, part of the annual Good Farm Animal Welfare Awards. As well as the best overall retailer award, there are prizes for marketing, innovation, and performance.

“Compassion’s Supermarket Survey is an important tool that helps us drive our standards forward and achieve our welfare commitments” - Mark Atherton-Ranson, Mars & Spencer

The survey has taken place in UK every other year since 2001. Many retailers claim to find the survey feedback vital to remaining at the forefront of welfare practice. “Compassion’s Supermarket Survey is an important tool that helps us drive our standards forward and achieve our welfare commitments,” said Mark Atherton-Ranson, agriculture and animal welfare manager at Marks & Spencer, which has taken part in every survey since 2001.

“The feedback we receive steers the development of our health and welfare improvement programme, and enables us to maintain our leading welfare standards by providing a benchmark to gauge against our competitors,” he added.

Compassion in World Farming sees retailers as vital to their campaign. “Retailers are the main link between the farm and the food that goes into our shopping trolleys,” said Compassion’s director of food business Dr Tracey Jones. “The influence retailers have over the farm animal welfare standards adopted by food producers is enormous due to their buying power and ability to promote one product over another.  Therefore, encouraging them to place greater focus on farm animal welfare standards is vital.”

The survey will be conducted throughout the year, with the awards ceremony to be held in October in Paris. In 2011, the Supermarket Award was given to Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and The Co-op.

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