BBFAW 2025 report: what the farm animal welfare benchmark means for food

Our Agriculture, Welfare & Sustainability specialist, Charlotte Maddocks, analyses what the latest farm animal welfare benchmark means for food businesses.

BBFAW 2025 in a nutshell

The Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare (BBFAW) 2025 report, released in Paris this week, presents a mixed picture for food businesses: average scores have nudged up from 16% to 18% since 2022, but no company has broken into Tier 1, and the majority remain clustered in Tiers 5 and 6. Our Agriculture, Welfare & Sustainability specialist Charlotte Maddocks analyses what the results mean — and what Tier 4–6 companies should do with the two-year window before the next assessment in 2027.

The Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare (BBFAW) 2025 report was released in Paris this week. Positive messaging around One Health and how farm animal welfare needs to be pursued alongside environmental stewardship, human health and social responsibility framed the launch.

In previous years there had been bold, but justifiable claims about progression – moments where you could draw a fairly direct line between the benchmark’s persistent questioning and companies genuinely moving through the tiers. This year, that narrative has been harder to sustain.

BBFAW at a glance

UK retailers, in particular, have largely stayed where they are. But there are exceptions. ASDA have moved up from Tier 5 to Tier 4 owing to their improved public disclosure on approaches to farm animal welfare.

The BBFAW assessment methodology has also shifted slightly, but not in ways that fully explain the lack of movement. So, what is going on? Are companies reaching a limit on how they report on animal welfare or have the assessors themselves tightened their criteria? Or is there a third option – brands are doing the work but not sharing their results, making it challenging for BBFAW to accurately benchmark them? Whatever the reason, no company has broken into Tier 1 and the majority remain in Tiers 5 & 6.

"UK retailers, in particular, have largely stayed where they are. But there are exceptions. ASDA have moved up from Tier 5 to Tier 4 owing to their improved public disclosure on approaches to farm animal welfare.

Charlotte Maddocks

Agriculture, Welfare & Sustainability specialist

A benchmark at a crossroads

There are good news stories. Average scores have nudged up from 16% in 2022 to 18% in 2025 . But some companies – no matter how many assessment cycles pass – remain firmly in the low-performer bracket with no visible movement. When you do see a single company make a step up a tier, the ripple effect matters. It raises the bar for the companies around it and demonstrates that movement is possible.

The real issue is that the companies who have done the work – who have invested in supply chain relationships, built governance structures, and committed to reporting – may now be approaching the limits of what they can achieve within the current framework. Meanwhile, the majority of assessed companies are still clustered at the lower end. So, while a shift from Tier 5 to Tier 4 is significant and shouldn’t be dismissed, the top of the table looks frustratingly static.

Part of the challenge is structural. The companies being assessed aren’t always the companies doing the implementing. A retailer can set a policy on farm animal welfare, but the actual impact happens several links down the supply chain – at farm level, with suppliers who may not share the same reporting infrastructure. Evidencing welfare outcomes across complex, multinational supply chains is genuinely hard, and I think this is where the benchmark’s measurement capability is still catching up with its ambition.

"The real issue is that the companies who have done the work – who have invested in supply chain relationships, built governance structures, and committed to reporting – may now be approaching the limits of what they can achieve within the current framework.

Charlotte Maddocks

Agriculture, Welfare & Sustainability specialist

The ambition-action gap

When looking at the data around cage-free targets and the fact that only 17 of the businesses benchmarked could report 100% cage-free eggs, I asked my colleague Helen Clarke-Ferridge, who worked in agricultural governance before joining Foods Connected, for her insights.

Helen said, “Changing from a caged system to cage free is a significant adjustment in infrastructure, which can only take place when businesses are profitable and have a secure long-term future.

“Suppliers will have been bombarded in recent years with challenges in their supply of birds. This is due to Avian Influenza outbreaks, the cost of building materials increasing and fundamentally if the demand for free range isn’t there on the consumer side because of cost drivers due to sustained food inflation costs, then companies will not be in a position to absorb these costs and pay a premium to source them.

“It is also challenging when supply regions are having to shift due to political, bird health and availability issues to secure free range across the breadth of the larger businesses reporting in BBFAW.”

She also had an opinion on the fact, that of the 39 companies signed up to the Better Chicken Commitment, only four reported substantial compliance. She dug down into whether there were real barriers to implementation at scale.

“As with any initiative, bedding it into the long term will have its challenges. The agri-food landscape is constantly changing due to pressures of supply, production costs, and the size of the consumer purse which has been substantially hit in recent years. The Better Chicken Commitment now that it has had the opportunity to run for several years, has also raised concern around consistent sourcing of slower growing breeds, and an inability to successfully demonstrate that there are not unsustainable increased environmental impacts of this type of production.

As with any initiative, bedding it into the long term will have its challenges. The agri-food landscape is constantly changing due to pressures of supply, production costs, and the size of the consumer purse which has been substantially hit in recent years.

Helen Clarke-Ferridge

Head of Implementation - Agriculture, Welfare & Sustainability

“This will all lead to investment and commitment waning. Several influential stakeholders in the sector have publicly talked about their concerns in supporting a programme that is driven by those seeking to remove meat from the consumers table, and ultimately, the retail sector has to be able to successfully sell the product at the right price.

“What we have seen recently is several high profile brands withdrawing from the commitment, and moving towards the launch of theSustainable Chicken Forum, not because they aren’t wishing to drive forward chicken welfare, but that they see the opportunity to do this via different methodologies and on their own terms – a true industry led approach.”

The alternative protein tension

One of the more nuanced dynamics I’ve observed in recent assessment cycles is the tension created by the introduction of questions around alternatives to animal protein. That shift came in roughly two to three assessment cycles ago, and it created a real conflict.

The individuals within businesses who are responsible for BBFAW performance tend to be people who are passionate about farm animal welfare. They’re in the industry specifically because they want to improve conditions for animals within the food system. Being asked to demonstrate progress on reducing reliance on farm animals altogether feels, to some, like a contradiction – even an implicit criticism of the work they’ve dedicated their careers to.

The answer is to try and reframe the question. The alternative protein push isn’t being driven solely by BBFAW – it’s also coming from consumer demand, by business diversification and by market growth. Most of these businesses are already moving in that direction. The issue isn’t that they’re not doing it; it’s that they haven’t been signposting it in the places BBFAW looks. Sustainability reports, YouTube content, annual reports – the activity is there, it just needs to be made visible to the benchmark. That’s fixable.

Low welfare breeds: A signal the industry should have seen coming

Most of the 2025 criteria is largely unchanged from 2024, but there is one notable development: Q10, covering low welfare breeds, now counts towards overall scores for the first time. This includes fast-growing broiler breeds that fail the Better Chicken Commitment requirements, sows producing more than 16 live-born piglets per litter, and double-muscled beef breeds such as Belgian Blue and Piedmontese.

Should businesses have seen this coming? Yes – and most did. The language around “high welfare potential breeds” has been present in the assessment framework for a while. But anticipating it and being able to act on it are two different things. Genetics takes time. Whole industries have been built around a handful of breeds over decades. Asking those systems to pivot – halving sow litter rates or switching to slower-growing poultry breeds – cannot happen overnight without threatening the commercial viability of the businesses expected to make the change.

To give a concrete example from my sector: in salmon, a “BBFAW defined” high welfare production model requires stocking density below 10 kg per cubic metre. The UK and Norwegian industry average is closer to 18. You can’t halve that figure in three years without fundamentally restructuring business models built on entirely different assumptions. The same logic applies to pig and beef production.

I do think BBFAW is right to set the ambition. It needs someone to be pushing the extreme end of what’s possible. But the companies trying to respond to it have to sustain their livelihoods at the same time. That tension deserves more acknowledgement.

In salmon, a “BBFAW defined” high welfare production model requires stocking density below 10 kg per cubic metre. The UK and Norwegian industry average is closer to 18. 

Charlotte Maddocks

Agriculture, Welfare & Sustainability specialist

BBFAW are taking the same tack by signposting the forthcoming 2026 requirement on farrowing crate disclosure. But Helen says it is going to be problematic for many businesses.

She explains, “BBFAW is looking to drive industry to provide specific disclosure on what types of farrowing crate they have in their supply chains. But the challenge with this is that there aren’t any industry or legislative frameworks for how we describe different types of sow farrowing accommodation.

“This area is still in its infancy, innovators are constantly redesigning, researchers are working hard to evaluate each type of system that emerges, but what is apparent is that there is no clear answer on what set up is best. There are different opinions on the size of the pen, how it is laid out, whether walls should be upright or slanted.

“What BBFAW needs to be careful of is not to extinguish this activity by pigeonholing, because it means industry is open to change and companies should be encouraging diversification in thought where the ultimate outcome is improved sow AND piglet welfare.”

BBFAW is looking to drive industry to provide specific disclosure on what types of farrowing crate they have in their supply chains. But the challenge with this is that there aren’t any industry or legislative frameworks for how we describe different types of sow farrowing accommodation.

Helen Clarke-Ferridge

Head of Implementation - Agriculture, Welfare & Sustainability

Antibiotics: A systemic problem that can’t be solved by buyers alone

According to the BBFAW report, Only 40% of companies have committed to ending routine antibiotic use, despite growing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) risks. That figure reflects a genuine complexity, not simply a lack of will.

The challenge is that antibiotic use at farm level is ultimately a veterinary decision. A retailer or buyer cannot simply mandate “antibiotic-free” across a supply chain without understanding the health and welfare contexts that make certain antibiotic interventions necessary. And the sector-specific variation is significant, especially when some sectors span global production systems.

The RUMA (Responsible Use of Medicines in Agriculture) guidelines and task forces are doing important work here, and I’d point any retailer or manufacturer trying to make progress on this to get closer to what RUMA’s task forces are doing. The path forward isn’t a buyer unilaterally setting a restriction. It’s all stakeholders – farmers, vets, pharma, government, buyers, and retailers – building a shared understanding of what minimising routine use looks like in practice, sector by sector.

Regional performance: the UK’s edge and its limits

UK companies remain the strongest regional performers in the benchmark, and I think that reflects two things: a strong legislative baseline, and a real cultural momentum behind animal welfare. The UK has leaned into the narrative that it leads on welfare standards – and BBFAW, as a UK-born benchmark with the RSPCA Assured scheme built into its higher-welfare tiering – both reflects and reinforces that.

The report also called out Latin American companies as surpassing some European peers on governance and performance impact. That’s worth watching. Whether it reflects stronger supply chain governance, or simply narrower, more easily evidenced supply chains, is something I’d want to look at more closely.

The picture in Asia Pacific is a different challenge. Nearly half of companies in the region lack a basic animal welfare policy. In some cases, BBFAW simply may not be on their radar – though I understand the benchmark does communicate directly with every assessed company. Part of this is about how welfare is culturally framed. When I was working in Southeast Asian aquaculture supply chains a decade ago, the question “what does welfare mean?” was a genuine one – not a deflection, but an honest starting point. If we want to bring those companies and regions up, we need to ask whether we’re communicating in ways that actually reach them.

The report also called out Latin American companies as surpassing some European peers on governance and performance impact. That’s worth watching.

Charlotte Maddocks

Implementation Manager - Agriculture, Welfare & Sustainability

What the move to biennial assessment means in practice

One of the most significant announcements from BBFAW’s recent report was the shift to biennial assessment. There will be no assessment in 2026; the next one will be towards the end of 2027.

The breadth and rigour of the assessment is significant and sustaining that every year is a substantial undertaking – I also think it’s a more appropriate fit for how progress actually happens in this space. BBFAW has always tracked performance against prior years’ reporting; the shift to a two-year cycle formalises what was already implicit in that approach.

There’s another dimension to it too, though. The tone coming out of the report was clear: the extended timeline is not an invitation to relax. NGOs, activists and investors are not standing down in the interim. Companies that use the two-year window to genuinely make progress will be in a stronger position come 2027. Those that treat it as a free pass will find themselves exposed.

What Tier 4–6 companies should do right now to achieve a better benchmark

For companies currently in the lower tiers, the two-year window is an opportunity to get the house in order. Where do I suggest starting?

First, map your supply chain

Know who your high-volume suppliers are and what their baseline looks like on animal welfare. Use the BBFAW assessment criteria as a ready-made questionnaire framework – it tells you exactly what’s being looked for.

Second, publish what you’re already doing

This is critical and consistently underestimated: BBFAW only scores what is publicly available. If a company has a genuine commitment to animal welfare but hasn’t articulated it in a sustainability report, on their website, or in any accessible format, it won’t count. Activity without visibility scores zero.

Third, engage with the investor angle

A $3 trillion investor group is now actively using BBFAW performance as part of portfolio guidance. That’s no longer a niche ESG consideration – it’s a mainstream capital markets signal. Companies that acknowledge their current position, explain the roadmap, and demonstrate a credible trajectory are increasingly the ones that retain investor confidence, even if they’re not yet at the top of the benchmark.

BBFAW remains the most visible tool available to NGOs and investors when it comes to driving transparency and accountability in farm animal welfare across global supply chains. The 2025 results are sobering in places — but the direction of travel, and the two years now available to act on it, represent a real opportunity.

At Foods Connected, our team and agriculture and animal welfare specialists work with food businesses to help them identify, improve and publish the good they are doing, so that reports like BBFAW can assess them accurately. If you’d like to find out more about how they can help your business, request a demo today.