The UK’s largest organic farming charity, the Soil Association, has been made to delete a tweet which suggested farming stemming from a non-organic background is bad for animal welfare.
The charity used Twitter to make the claim in a tweet to its 85000 followers: “Millions of animals are abused in pursuit of cheap food, but there is another way.”
The tweet was then linked to a page which contains a video arguing that 'low-welfare' is still the norm. Farmers consequently lashed out on social media, responding negatively to the tweet.
The Soil Association has since deleted the original tweet and issued an apology, a spokesperson said: “We apologise for the misunderstanding caused by a recent tweet.
“Animal welfare is an emotive subject and we were trying to convey a very complex message in a short space, and we didn’t do a good job.
“In the pursuit of cheap food, more than 80% of animals raised in the EU each year are factory farmed, where they can’t exhibit their natural behaviours.
“This is a problem with the system, not individual farmers. We recognise that most farmers, whether organic or not, care deeply for their livestock.
“The demand for cheap food means that the scale of these indoor, intensive farms is increasing, pushing out smaller family farms to make way for industrial systems that affect local communities and the environment as well as the animals themselves.
“We want farmers to be paid fair prices, which will allow all farmers to farm in ways where animals have a good life. This is why we’re campaigning for higher animal welfare.”
