Independent Review into RSPCA Assured

The RSPCA exists to inspire everyone to create a better world for every animal.

The RSPCA has been involved in farmed animal welfare since it was founded in 1824.  For two centuries we have campaigned to improve the lives of all farmed animals. This includes driving critical legislative change, such as ending barren battery cages for hens, banning sow stalls for pigs and veal crates for calves, introducing CCTV cameras in all slaughterhouses, and ending live exports of animals for fattening and slaughter. 

We continue to campaign to end the use of cages in farming, for imports of foie gras to be banned, for retailers to sign up to the Better Chicken Commitment, and to move away from fast growing chicken breeds, for the government to commit to an ambitious food strategy with a clear commitment to significantly reduce the consumption of meat, including fish, eggs and dairy, and for people to ‘eat less, eat better’ - to reduce the amount of animal products they eat and if they do, to choose higher welfare.

Alongside this campaigning and behaviour change work, the RSPCA introduced Freedom Food in 1994, which later became RSPCA Assured, as a critical and pioneering initiative to help improve the welfare of farmed animals. It was the first assurance scheme focussed entirely on welfare. The idea was to drive better welfare through consumer choice and there are now 4,000 members who follow the RSPCA’s strict welfare standards.

There are over 1.2 billion animals farmed in the UK every year and the vast majority are in lower welfare farming systems. RSPCA Assured is today the only assurance scheme which enforces minimum welfare requirements on all member farms. 

RSPCA Assured is designed to drive up animal welfare on farms, requiring members, which include farmers, hauliers, hatcheries and slaughterhouses, to meet an average of 500 welfare standards per species. Member farms have to meet these standards before gaining accreditation, and are regularly assessed, at least once a year, to ensure they are meeting them. We require members to continuously drive up welfare, and RSPCA Assured is the only scheme to fully review and update animal welfare standards approximately every two years.

RSPCA Assured exists because no one else is doing this work. There is a lack of legal protection for farmed animals, and the legislation that does exist is poor, and often poorly enforced.  There is currently no specific legal protection for salmon, trout, turkeys, dairy cattle, beef cattle and sheep, and without our standards and assurance scheme, many millions of farmed animals would live worse lives.
Improving farmed animal welfare is tough and progress is slow. While we continue to campaign to radically transform the lives of animals in the future, RSPCA Assured is making a material difference to animals on farms right now - whether by ensuring no animals are kept in cages, that chickens do not grow so fast they struggle to stand, or that these sentient animals have enrichment and can carry out their natural behaviours. It makes a difference to millions of animals every year. It also gives us the experience and insight to support our advocacy efforts with the government and the food and farming industry, which has helped to drive critical changes to legislation and raised the bar for the whole farming industry.

Our research shows that the public understands that RSPCA Assured means animals have had a ‘better life’, reared to standards that are significantly higher than standard industry practice. We know there is still more to do which is why we continually drive up standards, but whilst the majority of the public consume animal products RSPCA Assured is there to make higher farmed animal welfare the better choice. We have to take both the public and the industry with us. If we stepped back from this work, no one would be doing it and we risk a race to the bottom for farmed animal welfare.

RSPCA Assured and the RSPCA take any welfare concerns on farms very seriously and will always take action when standards are breached. We understand our supporters, partners and the public need confidence that RSPCA Assured is consistently delivering and enforcing better welfare than standard farming practices, which is why we commissioned an independent review as well as undertaking our own internal investigation.

We recognise the challenges facing RSPCA Assured. In 2021 we commissioned an independent report, carried out by the respected independent consultancy firm Clarasys, into our welfare and monitoring standards. This review endorsed the merits of the RSPCA Assured scheme, concluding that it made a difference to the lives of millions of farmed animals every year. It made a number of recommendations to improve the scheme.

That work is already under way. A new executive leadership team and strengthened Board of Trustees at RSPCA Assured was appointed this year and an ambitious modernisation programme is being carried out, which looks at, among other things, improving governance and oversight, data collection, reporting and assessments.
In June this year, animal rights activists raised fresh concerns about welfare standards and called on the RSPCA to drop the Assured scheme. We take any allegations of poor welfare extremely seriously and we immediately launched our own investigation and commissioned a second independent review of the scheme, this time undertaken by Crowe LLP, the leading forensic accountancy and auditing firm. Crowe’s review was rigorous and comprehensive. It was carried out over several months, and included conducting unannounced visits to more than 200 members of the scheme.

This report has now been completed and shares similar findings to the Clarasys review and our own investigations. Both independent reports have concluded that the RSPCA Assured scheme continues to operate effectively. The reviews have also highlighted some improvements that can be made to the RSPCA Assured scheme and we have already started the process of implementing these recommendations.

We are now publishing the conclusions of our internal investigation and the Crowe review, and highlighting the actions that we will take to address the recommendations for further improving the scheme.

RSPCA and RSPCA Assured are dedicated to improving the lives of farmed animals. Any allegation of systemic failing of the scheme is of paramount importance and concern. As such, RSPCA Assured’s highly trained and skilled assessors launched an immediate investigation and visited all the farms identified as being members of the scheme in the activists' footage and report. Out of the 45 farms it was established that eight were not members of the scheme. Through further analysis of the report and footage, we identified an additional three member farms which were a result of misidentification from the activists. In total we investigated 40 farms.

RSPCA Assured’s findings did not reveal widespread suffering and distress of animals raised at RSPCA Assured farms or numerous legal breaches as was alleged. The majority of allegations made were not evident on investigation. 

 

Key findings from our internal investigation:
In total there were 90 non-conformances across 22 of the 40 farms, with an average of two per farm overall. There is an average of over 500 standards per species that members are required to conform to, ranging from record keeping, farm maintenance and enrichment through to direct animal health and welfare. 

Overall, 90%, 36 of the 40 farms investigated had between 0 and up to 5 non conformances, leaving 4 farms which had 6 or more non conformances on investigation. On average two non conformances were found per site.

Following our investigation process, where breaches of our standards required further action with our members this was taken immediately, with three members being withdrawn from the scheme and nine sanctioned.  This was according to the nature and severity of the noncompliance, including advice, formal warnings, unannounced visits and  additional measures such as providing RSPCA Assured with key farm information over a period of time. 

In addition to our own investigation into the allegations across the 40 RSPCA Assured farms, to provide a deeper and broader understanding, we commissioned a comprehensive independent review of the scheme as a whole. More than 200 members across different species were randomly selected for unannounced visits by Crowe. They weren’t chosen due to specific animal welfare concerns. We commissioned this review as we want to give our supporters, partners and the public confidence that RSPCA Assured is consistently delivering better welfare than standard farming practice.

It’s important to note that independent auditor Crowe did not visit any of the farms featured in the initial allegations. The findings of our own  internal investigation were, however, shared with the independent auditor.

* Updated on 22.11.24

The RSPCA is reassured that the Crowe review finds that “the Scheme is operating effectively to provide assurance that animal welfare standards are being met across members.” 

Crowe has identified some areas for improvement, and we will be fully implementing the 20 detailed recommendations that the Crowe Report has made, to ensure RSPCA Assured remains transparent and robust and continues to fulfil its mission to improve the lives and welfare of farm animals. 

The Crowe Report summary has been published on our website and the primary conclusions from the review are as follows: 

• In total, 225 farm sites were randomly selected for unannounced visits, with 200 unannounced assessments completed.   
• Across the 200 farms assessed, 93% had less than five non-compliances out of a minimum of over 500 welfare standards per species. There were 294 total non-compliances across those sites. Many of these non-compliances were for minor or administrative issues and our team is working with these farms to remedy these areas.   
• On the farms reviewed by Crowe there were approximately 22.5 million individual animals on site at the point of inspection.

 

While Crowe’s conclusion that the RSPCA Assured scheme is driving  improvements in animal welfare is reassuring, we will implement its recommendations as part of the ongoing improvement programme for the scheme. 

The Crowe Review was conducted in addition to the ongoing auditing of welfare standards that we undertake as part of the RSPCA Assured scheme, which included around 3,700 visits in 2023 and more than 3,000 visits so far in 2024 to members. We also monitor welfare standards using CCTV recording (at slaughter plants), unannounced visits, and investigations into any complaints on member sites. The findings from our own assessments and data, are consistent with the findings from the independent review.

On the back of recent scrutiny of farm animal welfare standards, and the role of the RSPCA Assured scheme as a guardian for better welfare, it has been critically important for us to review RSPCA Assured and ensure that it continues to deliver its mission.

We are pleased that the Crowe Review has concluded that RSPCA Assured improves the welfare of farmed animals and this gives us further confidence that this is the right thing to do for farmed animals right now. Those animals being reared today need our help and by changing standards today we are creating a better world for those that will be reared in the future. 

We acknowledge the huge challenges in this area and recognise that we need to do more to improve and modernise the scheme so we can continue to drive up welfare standards for all farmed animals. 

Commissioning the Clarasys and Crowe reports as two independent reviews of the RSPCA Assured scheme is an important step in ensuring the scheme continues to operate effectively and to reassure our supporters, the public and other stakeholders that the scheme is raising animal welfare standards, in light of recent criticisms about farming practices in the UK.

RSPCA Assured will be taking forward all 20 of the Crowe Report recommendations and has already started to implement changes as part of our ongoing improvement programme, including: 

• Significantly increasing the number of announced and unannounced visits to RSPCA Assured members. 
• Exploring the use of more technological aids, including additional CCTV and  using body worn cameras to aid identification of issues and  improved enforcement of standards
• Developing and applying a grading to all non-compliances identified to prioritise actions by members.
• Developing an approach to identify potential concerns regarding farmer and stockkeeper welfare and investigate how this may impact upon animal welfare. 
• RSPCA Assured has also developed a Target Operating Model (TOM) as part of its improvement programme to modernise the scheme. This provides a framework for managing the scheme effectively and the scope of the TOM will be broadened to encompass governance and culture within the scheme. 

 

The RSPCA will also commit to publishing an annual analysis of the impact of the scheme including data relating to visits to farms in the RSPCA Assured scheme. We recognise that it remains critical that farmers, the farming supply chain, retailers and consumers have confidence in the RSPCA Assured scheme’s ability to maintain those high standards.

We have now undertaken two independent reviews of the RSPCA Assured scheme which conclude that it is making a positive difference to farmed animals’ lives right now. We are absolutely committed to implementing the recommendations of this review alongside our ambitious modernisation programme, which is already underway. We are reassured that we have answered the concerns raised and we are confident that we are doing what is right for farmed animals. 

We want a world where RSPCA Assured is not needed but right now, RSPCA Assured is the last line of defence for some of the most exploited and vulnerable animals in our society. We will continue to campaign together with our colleagues in the sector for better legal protection, better enforcement of those protections, and a significant reduction in the number of animals farmed and animal products eaten.  We will now continue to focus on our work to strengthen the RSPCA Assured scheme as well as campaign on broader issues around the experience of farmed animals, inspiring everyone to create a better world for every animal.