My impression was that this issues were covered by food standards and rather than being directed at farmers, would be a requirement of the food manufacturing industry.

I like and admire farmers but think they are ‘corrupted’ by government subsidies and those I have discussed the subject with (not many) have said that they would much rather not have them, providing their removal did not diminish their incomes.
It certainly seems a good idea for the government to run a rating system. But governments are wickedly subject to the lobbying system and I think it would be better if a public rating system was in competition with private systems. Debt ratings agencies, like S&P, Moody etc do a good job but were caught out by the 2008 banking crisis and found to be ignoring the bad practice of those who put a lot of business their way. For hotels, there are lots of competing ratings systems – and, despite people trying to rig it, I think it is the best.
Perhaps the best hope for food ratings systems is when online grocery supply becomes more widespread and the firms begin to follow Amazon in operating a respectable rating system. A particularly good aspect of Amazon ratings is the combination of a star system with individual comments.
My view of the government contribution is that it should concentrate on making information about tracability and ingredients available to consumers. This would have prevented the UK’s recent ‘horseburger’ scandal.

I am thinking that the certification would need to be independent for anyone to have confidence in it. Ideally it would be a government agricultural body with responsibilities for standards in domestic as well as export markets. Of course, it would be up to farmers to specify which level of certification they would like to meet (ie three, four or five star etc).

paddock to plate consumer information

One star = cruelty free
Two star = meets basic farming standards
Three star = gm and drug free farming
Four star = organic farming standards
Five star = premium production standards
Six star = luxury food standards

The costs could then still be determined by the farmer’s ingenuity and the market.

Assuming this system the lovable farmers would be three stars and above and the farmers that treat their animals like potatos would have difficulty meeting one star.

Some sort of consumer blog and consumer critic system as you suggest might not be a bad idea either.

Is Australian agriculture without financial support, like NZ agriculture, or is it financially supported, like EU agriculture?
The star rating system would be great if it worked but I wonder if it would work and whether it would be ‘official’ or user-generated. With hotels, the ratings agencies base it on things like the availability of room service and a 24-hour coffee bar. I find Tripadvisor ratings more useful, together with a figure for the room rate. For farm products, I think the primary requirement is transparency. Whatever information is available about the food ‘products’ needs to be accessible to the consumer.
Re farmers, my limited experience is that some of them are kindly animal-lovers and others have the calous habit of treaing them like old tractors.

I am sure most farmers would prefer to be compassionate – but as with Australian farmers are under such pressure due to a range of factors including climate – that it is sometimes them that come off worst in the equation.
[ http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2008/s2339998.htm ]

The parliamentarians need to be able to find a way of dealing with the complexity of the issues to arrive at a solution that assists both animals and farmers to thrive.

Every single cow in the UK now has a number and its movement from farm to farm and then to slaughterhouse and then to sausage, or whatever, are traced. So I think the future is in making this information accessible to consumers, like a parcel tracking system. At present there is a great lack of information for the consumer. We do not know if the beef in the sausage comes from a cruel drug-using farmer or from a compassionate farmer who avoids drugs where possible and lets his stock graze on a wide range of leaves (instead of stuffing the poor cows with corn and soya). Food labelling is also inadequate. Everybody knows this but when the matter comes before parliament the lobby groups advance and the politicians retreat.

It was once unnecessary to question how anything that you consumed was being produced within Australia. Now it is not the situation. Anything could have happened from ground to factory to plate(sow stall production), from ground to factory to shop – as the situation in Bangladesh illustrates.

This is not unlike the situation during the Industrial Revolution – but if everyone focuses on the profit equation and not the social consequences we will all continue to be worse off – if not strictly in the material sense, absolutely in the moral sense.

It would be great if the new generation of social entrepreneurs would emerge to lead the way both in the developed and developing world.

I am all in favour of legislating against unsafe foods and against cruelty to animals but I think Defra also needs some grounding in marketing. They need to take note of the fact that higher quality products (like Prada and Porche) command higher prices than lower quality products. British farmers would love to charge premium prices for premium products. I heard recently that British pig farmers are able to export pork to Australia. This is not because the Australians do not have any pigs. It is because constant pressure from the animal rights lobby, in the face of the bared teeth of MAFF and now Defra, have forced the enactment of animal protection legislation in the UK. Since the Australians are rich, they like to have the pork which results from high welfare standards. I do not think you need degrees in geography or economics to join Defra so the staff probably know nothing about the profit margins on luxury goods – and they certainly show no awareness of the fact that the British Isles are surrounded by water – so that we could be a GM-free zone selling luxury farm products to the world. Then, when all the world becomes rich, every country can move to what is now the luxury end of the food market. I have no idea whether GM foods are safe or not (they probably are) but I am confident ot their being a massive demand for GM-free products for the forseeable future.

Unlike militant vegetarians, I agree about the ‘food chain’ aspect of the relationship between man and the other animals. Most ecosystems would not work without carnivores. So I am very attracted to the Buddhist principle of ‘compassion for all living things’ as a solution to the problem. The photograph of factory farmed chickens is extremely non-compassionate. I do not think we should do it and I do not think we should eat animals raised in this way. I went of factory produced chickens about 40 years ago when I read that Brazillian boys who ate them were developing breasts (because of all the hormones pumped into the poor chicks).