On receiving their award, David Pendlington, Procurement Operations Director at Unilever, extended an invitation to other food companies to join their Knorr team on their journey and remarked: "We've received great support from Compassion but we need help to make transformative changes for animal welfare."

A first for 2015 was the presentation of awards to US retailer and food service companies. Whole Foods Market in the US picked up a Good Egg Award and a Good Sow Commendation and Pret A Manger was the first restaurant chain in the US to receive a Good Egg Award.

Elizabeth Fry, in charge of Global Quality Standards for Animal Products at Whole Food Foods Market said: "If we're going to use animals for meat and if we're going to use the reproductive energy of chickens for eggs and dairy cows for milk we're obligated to look after their welfare and we've been taking that very seriously since the beginning."

A total of 41 awards were presented this year and almost 15 million farm animals are set to benefit each year from this year’s winners’ higher welfare policies.

Tracey Jones, Director of Food Business at Compassion said “Every year I am so impressed by the commitment and drive of our Award winners to make genuine improvements to the lives of millions of farm animals. However, it also serves to remind me that there is still a huge amount of work to be done before a true market shift towards higher welfare food takes place. I’m confident the higher welfare message is spreading globally as more and more businesses realise that there is not just an ethical imperative to address farm animal welfare but a commercial one too.”

The messages from our winners this year were loud and clear - we're not perfect, but we want to continue to make improvements to the lives of animals in our supply chain - animal welfare matters. We can't do it alone - supply partnerships and know-how are needed and Compassion can help to facilitate these.

Click here to see the full list of winners.

China Delegation at Awards Ceremony

Compassion was also pleased to welcome back to the stage in Milan some of our Chinese Good Pig Production Award winners from 2014 in recognition of the great work they are doing to improve the lives of thousands of pigs in China.

Spotlight on Rabbits at Compassion’s 2015 Awards