Animal welfare labelling: is the market the right governance structure to meet people’s moral concerns?

Abstract

The introduction of an animal welfare label is intensively discussed in Europe. The political debate is dominated by the technical question how to develop the label, while the fundamental question whether a market based approach is the right governance structure to deal with public moral concerns is nearly neglected. However, the decision to turn states of different animal welfare level via labelling into a process quality of meat is based on normative assumptions that are not without controversy. Following the school of social constructivism one can assume value articulating institutions as a social construct that determines what kind of values can be expressed and also influences the formation of values. Markets as institutional settings imply assumptions on the understanding of rationality, preferences formation and making choices. Therefore, it is the aim of this paper to disclose the normative implications associated with commodifying moral concerns regarding animal welfare and to induce a discussion whether markets are the appropriate institutional frame for animal welfare problems. The paper focus’ on the following questions: Who’s moral concerns can be articulated and who’s are excluded on a market? What kind of ethical value system regarding animal welfare is implicitly assumed by a market approach? What does the interpretation of moral concerns as individual preference for process quality imply for dealing with ethical conflicts? It can be shown that only the moral concerns of compassionate carnivore consumers are taken into consideration. This group must also have a utilitarian belief systems that allows for trade-offs between animal well-being and other material goods. Deontological systems are not compatible with the assumptions of neoclassical economics. Lexicographical ordering of preferences is here not assumed as rational. Finally, by interpreting animal suffering as a problem of market failure, the normative discussion of how should we deal with animals is reduced to a technical question of making individual preferences explicit. Preferences themselves are not under discussion.