If you knew what the pig that went into your sausages or the cow that produced your glass of milk had gone through to end up on your table, wouldn’t it make you think twice about your food choices – even your life choices?
Switzerland is helping its citizens with that painful calculus this month as a new law comes into force that obliges food producers and restaurants to spell out to shoppers and diners how their food was produced. From steak, bacon and chicken nuggets to milk, yoghurt and butter, if the source of their meal experienced a “painful procedure” without anaesthesia then a label must let Swiss consumers know.
Those procedures include castrating or dehorning cows; castrating, docking the tails or clipping the teeth of pigs; clipping the beaks of chickens; removing frogs’ legs; and force-feeding ducks or geese to make foie gras (which is already banned in Switzerland but is still imported).
If simply reading that list of horrors on a web page is enough to make you lose your appetite, imagine the kind of impact it will have when shoppers see them emblazoned on the packaging in their shopping trolleys.
The new rules, which were introduced by the country’s governing Federal Council and came into force on July 1, will apply to all businesses that sell the foods, including restaurants. While Switzerland prides itself on having some of the most stringent animal welfare laws in Europe, it may be that shoppers and diners exposed to the reality of industrial farming techniques don’t choose “better” meat but no meat at all. Now who was it that said “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian”…?
The Swiss have had a good year so far in the meat free stakes. Last year the country launched a new nutrition strategy to encourage more people to choose delicious, nutritious, planet-friendly plant-based options. It’s going to be exciting to watch what they come up with next.