TODAY marks the start of Farm Animal Week and the RSPCA’s Freedom Food charity is calling on readers of Taste to switch one for welfare.

To mark the campaign, the charity has launched a Celebrity Recipe Collection which includes dishes by Jamie Oliver and a recipe from Dorset veal farmer, Ben Bayer.

GROCERY shopping used to be so simple. You might have had around 5,000 different products to choose from in your local supermarket.

Today, some of the larger supermarkets stock a staggering 40,000 different lines. And while you wade through this ocean of choice, you now need to weigh up the impact your choice has on the rest of the world.

Will buying this one help struggling coffee bean producers in Ecuador? Will choosing that one cut down on food miles – or will the fact that it was grown in a heated glasshouse in this country be even worse on the carbon footprint front than the food miles expended on flying it here from Africa? It really isn’t easy. Coffee beans, palm oil and ‘heavy footed’ veg aside, there is also farm animal welfare of course.

We are, after all, famously a nation of animal lovers.

Survey after survey shows that people really are concerned about the welfare of animals that end up on our plates.

But making decisions here can be just as tricky, when so much has conspired to distance us from the realities of livestock farming.

The RSPCA developed welfare standards for free range and indoor systems and, in tandem with leading academic specialists, identified the behavioural and physical needs of farm animals, whatever system they were reared in.

Hens, for example, must have a secluded place to lay their eggs in comfort and safety. They need to be able to dust, bathe and scratch, they need to be able to perch and roost. And they can, with proper stockmanship and the right environment, do all these things indoors as well as out. There were then however, and still remain now, types of indoor systems that the RSPCA welfare standards will not cover.

Overall, the RSPCA believes that whether an animal is born or reared indoors or outdoors, the key to good animal welfare is good farming – which includes good stockmanship, in an environment that meets the animal’s needs.

So when you shop, if farm animal welfare is one of your concerns – look for the Freedom Food logo. Whatever the system, the animal will have been covered by RSPCA welfare standards at every stage of its life – on farm, in transport and at the abattoir.

So, while you try to decide which brand of coffee, which packet of biscuits and whether you will opt for home-grown or imported vegetables, you at least have a clear steer when you buy meat, salmon, poultry and eggs.

By choosing higher welfare products, such as those carrying the Freedom Food logo, you can really make a difference to the lives of farm animals.

The more people who buy Freedom Food labelled products, the more retailers will be persuaded to stock them and the more producers will rear their animals to RSPCA welfare standards – so more farm animals will benefit.

Sainsbury’s will be donating 5p to the RSPCA to support its farm animal work, when shoppers buy selected Freedom Food labelled products until Sunday, July 21.

Last year, Sainsbury’s and its shoppers helped raise more than £45,000 for the RSPCA.