Surry Hills baristas sell salvation on toast

When she quite politely explained to me they were free range, I asked for my poached eggs to be unethically sourced as I considered the mortality rate for free range egg production really challenged that production system's ethical credentials.

I explained, equally politely, that her inferred demonisation of the ethical behaviour of the cage producers on her menu was unwarranted and ultimately damaging for the birds.

With inner city animal welfare experts selling salvation on toast, it is not surprising the Labor government is rebooting the national Australian Animal Welfare Strategy.

The theory, no doubt, is that the animals will be systematically abused and psychologically tortured without the government saving them with a strategy.

But a Surry Hills inspired and driven document will last a heartbeat. Obviously, it must have a bipartisan "buy-in" so an apolitical approach may be useful to start.

An animal welfare strategy has to be about welfare of the animals. The last one was anything but animal focused.

The international definition of animal welfare is essentially an assessment of how the animal is coping with the situation it finds itself. CSIRO scientists have developed a clever method they called the Unified Field Index as a matrix approach to objectively assess different production systems' welfare credentials.

Activists are in a bit of denial as a critical part of the matrix is production. It is inconvenient to admit farmers have a vested interest in advancing welfare. The dark cutting assessment embedded in a Meat Standards Australia grading is a great case study that will struggle to find its way onto any welfare benchmarks.

The index gives a useful way of assessing free range against cages, or feedlots against paddock reared. It is interesting the improvement in animal health and mortality around intensification often trumps the freedom to roam.

Ultimately the consumer will have a view which will drive their choices, but the government has no role to validate or condemn a view with legislative imperatives. Nature can be quite ruthless, but I do think a well-informed public should have choice.

Legislated welfare laws should not have a single consideration of public opinion or expectations. Often indeed public opinion and welfare will be at odds. Animal welfare strategies being conflated with social licence, animal liberation or ethics will be doomed to fail.

I fear the scoping paper on this incarnation of a strategy is driven by a perception community is demanding the view of the Surry Hills baristas have to be bent to. It would be my advice; a mess will follow this approach.

The only concern a strategy must consider is the animals concern, not some perception of what is in its interests by some activist groups who are often driven by vegan agendas.