The Food Safety and Media Platform (SAM), an initiative of the Catalan Food Safety Agency (ACSA) and the Observatory of the Centre for Scientific Communication of the UPF (OCC-UPF), have published the monograph entitled "Animal Welfare on the plate and in the media”, with the participation of Dr. Antonio Velarde, of the Institute for Agrofood Research and Technology (IRTA).

The document, available in Catalan, Spanish and English, contains the main contributions and conclusions of the roundtable organized by the SAM Platform on June 20, 2011, with the aim to debate the living conditions and welfare of animals that are used for food and people’s perception of the subject based on the information offered by the media.

The importance of animal welfare regulations has increased in recent years due to advances in understanding animal behaviour / suffering, the relationship between good management and stable and competitive animal production levels and increased awareness of abuse in animal suffering. However, perception of these issues is very emotional and people tend to "overreact" when animal welfare related food crisis arise, in part also motivated by the relationship between meat quality and health.

This monographic issue of the SAM platform suggests that a possible solution to increase consumer trust is that companies and government implement a policy to facilitate the dialogue with the media because, in a crisis situation, the response speed of informed sources in the sector is important.