{"id":40093,"date":"2021-01-19T01:00:05","date_gmt":"2021-01-19T09:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/civileats.com\/?p=40093"},"modified":"2021-01-15T13:08:24","modified_gmt":"2021-01-15T21:08:24","slug":"are-some-animal-welfare-labels-humanewashing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/2021\/01\/19\/are-some-animal-welfare-labels-humanewashing\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Some Animal Welfare Labels \u2018Humanewashing\u2019?"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/div>

If you\u2019ve bought meat or eggs in a grocery store recently, you\u2019ve probably seen a wide range of labels promising improved treatment of farm animals.<\/p><\/div>

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Many of these labels look similar and use the same words and imagery\u2014think cows on pasture or strong, healthy chickens pecking in the grass\u2014but they\u2019re not all the same. Some come from independent, third-party certifiers, and others are created by the meat and egg industries themselves.<\/p>\n

Now, a new report<\/a> from the anti-factory farming group Farm Forward seeks to outline the differences between independent and industry animal welfare labels and expose what it calls \u201chumanewashing\u201d among both types of groups.<\/p>\n

Like the now widely recognized practice of \u201cgreenwashing,\u201d Farm Forward says that companies use humanewashing to deceive consumers who care about animal rights, leading them to believe animals were raised according to their expectations of humane treatment even when they were not. And since some consumers have become savvy to unregulated labeling terms like \u201call natural\u201d and \u201cfree-range,\u201d organizations and industry are increasingly using certification schemes to formalize their standards.<\/p>\n\n

At the heart of the report is Farm Forward\u2019s criticism of the Global Animal Partnership<\/a> (GAP), a program created by Whole Foods CEO and co-founder John Mackey in 2008 to establish standards and labeling for meat sold in his stores and beyond. It was intended to encourage farmers to steadily improve their practices over time and has grown into one of the most recognized and respected animal welfare labels since, with more than 400 million animals covered by the program and more than 1,200 certified products.<\/p>\n

Now, after working in partnership with GAP for over a decade, Farm Forward is calling attention to the way GAP labels products that land at the bottom of their five-step system. Products at that low end of the scale can now don a generic label of \u201cAnimal Welfare Certified\u201d which Farm Forward says gives those products a halo effect from the higher-welfare products\u2014without making changes to their practices.<\/p>\n

\u201cWelfare certifications are designed, ostensibly, to help consumers identify animal products consistent with their ethical concerns,\u201d reads the report. \u201cBut many are intentionally deceptive, and all are problematic. They generally function to confuse consumers, lock truly high-welfare animal farmers out of important markets, and thwart the kinds of reforms necessary to phase out industrialized farming.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, some animal welfare experts and advocates say that even the smallest improvements can alleviate animal suffering at a large scale and that calling out certifications making incremental progress detracts from important changes they are making. Others say that food certifications almost always operate as marketing tools, and the report\u2019s findings merely reflect that reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we have concluded is that despite our best efforts . . . these certifications, like the industry label claims and unregulated claims before them, are now doing more to deceive and mislead consumers and are ultimately serving as a hindrance to progress on factory farming issues rather than a step in a better direction,\u201d said Andrew deCoriolis, Farm Forward\u2019s executive director.<\/p>\n

Findings on Animal Welfare Certifications<\/h4>\n<\/div>

The federal government does not regulate terms like \u201chumane\u201d or \u201cfree-range,\u201d so as concerns about animal welfare on farms have grown over the last decade, multiple certification programs<\/a> have emerged. Each has its own set of unique standards, and most require farmers to pay a fee to certify their operation and products.<\/p><\/div>

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The report analyzes several of the most popular labels. It calls out certifications produced explicitly by trade groups\u2014including UEP Certified<\/a>, created by United Egg Producers, and Farmers Assuring Responsible Management<\/a> (FARM), created by the National Milk Producers Federation\u2014identifying them as pure marketing tools that codify standard industry practices. It also details challenges with third-party certifications.<\/p>\n

American Humane Certified<\/a>, which works closely with large companies<\/a> like Butterball and Eggland\u2019s Best to make small tweaks within standard industry systems, has long been cited as among the weakest animal welfare standards by a range of groups, including the Animal Welfare Institute<\/a> and Consumer Reports<\/a>. Farm Forward says the certification \u201clargely fails to improve conditions beyond industry conventions.\u201d<\/p>\n

One Health Certified<\/a> is the subject of even more criticism. While its name suggests otherwise, the certification is not affiliated with the One Health Commission<\/a>, a consortium that works on food system issues with an emphasis on connections between human, animal, and environmental health\u2014although the commission\u2019s executive director, Cheryl Stroud, told Civil Eats the program \u201cshares a common goal\u201d with the commission.<\/p>\n

Instead, One Health Certified is administered by an institute<\/a> based at Iowa State University. But Mountaire, the country\u2019s sixth-largest poultry company and one that has been the target of animal rights groups investigations in the past, applied for the trademark<\/a> and is currently the only company using the certification. In a 2020 webinar<\/a>, Mountaire Director of Technical Marketing G. Donald Ritter was introduced as having worked on the certification. \u201cThe one thing you want a label to do is to reduce consumer concerns with buying your product,\u201d he said, while explaining the marketing power of certification.<\/p>\n

Brian Ronholm, the director of food policy at Consumer Reports, said he often points to One Health Certified as a good example of a certification that is meaningless. He describes it as \u201cessentially a participation trophy for normal [factory-scale] operations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Across the spectrum of certifications, the report points to the fact that none completely eliminate several practices consumers may find inhumane\u2014breeding fast-growing animals in a way that often impacts their health, immediately separating dairy calves from their mothers, and culling male chicks in the egg industry. (United Egg Producers pledged to eliminate<\/a> the latter practice in U.S. egg production by 2020, but has so far failed to do so<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Not even Animal Welfare Approved<\/a>, run by the independent nonprofit A Greener World, addresses those issues. However, it does stand out in the report (and in many other evaluations of welfare labels) as having the most rigorous standards by far. Most significantly, it is the only certification in the report that prohibits raising animals in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), where they are confined and in close proximity. DeCoriolis said that point is crucial, because consumers increasingly see CAFO production as anathema to animal welfare.<\/p>\n

\u201cPublic sentiment is shifting strongly against industrial animal agriculture, and at that same moment, at this critical juncture where this shift in public perception is happening, the [other] certifications are now playing a role in retarding that progress on the kind of reforms that would be meaningful for farms,\u201d said deCoriolis. \u201cThey’re telling the public, \u2018We are humanely raised. We know that you care about these issues\u2019 . . . and they’re further obfuscating the realities on their operations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Questioning Global Animal Partnership<\/h4>\n<\/div>

At a Whole Foods in Baltimore on a busy weeknight in January, refrigerated packages of store-brand turkey and chicken bore stickers marked with GAP\u2019s \u201cAnimal Welfare Certified\u201d logo, suggesting to shoppers that the birds had been treated better than conventional farm animals.<\/p><\/div>

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But GAP certification spans a broad, five-step spectrum<\/a>\u2014ranging from a \u201cbase\u201d level to a level at which animals spend their entire lives on a farm\u2014and the generic labels did not indicate at which level the meat was certified. That means it\u2019s possible the meat came from fast-growing birds confined in a CAFO\u2014and given slightly more space than non-GAP-certified birds, but no outdoor access.<\/p>\n

This loophole is a problem, says Farm Forward. And after years of participation on the GAP board, founder and CEO Aaron Gross publicly<\/a> stepped down last fall \u201cin protest\u201d of the way the organization had changed.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cGAP is no longer a tool for change, but is increasingly a marketing scheme functioning to benefit massive corporations,\u201d he wrote<\/a> on the organization\u2019s website at the time. The Farm Forward report followed at the end of December, and while many would expect its criticisms of many of the aforementioned certifications, its criticisms of GAP, long hailed as a stronger system for advancing animal welfare, are more surprising.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, change is always incremental, and if we thought that GAP\u2019s commitment to continuous improvement was meaningful . . . it might be different,\u201d deCoriolis said. He also referred to what the report calls the \u201chalo effect<\/a>\u201d created even by more rigorous, tiered standards like Certified Humane and GAP and pointed to a recent class action lawsuit<\/a> filed early this year against Diestel Turkey Ranch as an example.<\/p>\n

Diestel raises slower-growing turkeys on pasture at its Sonora, California Ranch using regenerative practices<\/a>. It was the first turkey producer to achieve GAP\u2019s highest level of certification, 5+, meaning that animals live on pasture year-round with no physical alterations. But less than 1 percent of the turkeys the company sells come from that ranch and meet that level of certification.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore than 99 percent of Diestel\u2019s birds are not GAP 5-rated and some are not GAP rated at all,\u201d the suit alleges, stating that the vast majority of the rest come from CAFOs that are not significantly different from the industry standard.<\/p>\n

However, Diestel won a prior lawsuit<\/a> brought by animal rights group DxE that accused the company of false advertising. The judge in that case found that the company provided significantly improved conditions for its birds at various GAP certification levels including the basic level.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Diestel\u2019s] turkeys [are provided] a level of care and attention the vast majority of turkey producers never attain,\u201d the judge stated. Turkey farmer and co-owner Heidi Diestel told Civil Eats that \u201cbirds that are not GAP Step 5 are clearly labeled with their corresponding GAP Step rating.\u201d<\/p>\n

GAP\u2019s leadership also strongly defends its certification system as resulting in meaningful, ongoing change. \u201cAs farm animal welfare science advances and practical solutions develop, GAP standards continuously evolve and improve over time, becoming more comprehensive and including additional requirements,\u201d Executive Director Anne Malleau told Civil Eats in an email.<\/p>\n

She pointed to a new initiative, called the Better Chicken Project<\/a>, that will affect 100 percent of GAP-certified broiler chickens and will address \u201cthe suffering of birds genetically selected for rapid growth in a way that has never been done before,\u201d by using welfare-specific research to inform breeding.<\/p>\n\n

She also disputed Farm Forward\u2019s claim that producers tend to come in at lower levels of certification and stay there, pointing out that the number of pasture-raised Step 4 cattle has increased from 38 to 70 percent of the total cattle the group certifies since 2012. That growth is partially due the introduction of a program that allows farmers and ranchers to feed cattle grain while keeping them on pasture.<\/p>\n

Finally, Malleau said that GAP created the generic label without a step number not to confuse consumers, but to support sellers who were concerned about the availability of raw materials and would be forced to update their packaging if a temporary shortage happened and they had to source meat from a supplier certified at a lower step.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy its very design, our 5-Step program is inclusive of a wide variety of production systems and has positively impacted the lives of hundreds of millions of animals at all steps,\u201d added Malleau.<\/p>\n

Contested Value of Incremental Change<\/h4>\n<\/div>

Not all animal rights groups see even the weakest welfare labels as promoting humanewashing. As some see it, lower standards allow more companies and farms to sign on, meaning more small improvements across the board.<\/p><\/div>

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Temple Grandin, a renowned animal scientist whose approach to welfare improvements fits into this realm, is on American Humane\u2019s board. The point of its certification, she told the New York Times<\/em><\/a>, is to \u201cwork with large-scale commercial producers so that they have at least some standards.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a written statement, a spokesperson for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals<\/a> (ASPCA), emphasized that many animal welfare certifications in the report do ban practices like caging and crating and provide third-party on-farm audits. The organization has its own food label guide<\/a> and endorses three certifications: Animal Welfare Approved, Certified Humane, and GAP\u2019s levels 2 and above.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no perfect welfare certification, they each have room for improvement, and we are working to help strengthen their standards, but the certifications we recognize do afford meaningfully better lives for vulnerable animals and clarity for consumers, when the industry currently offers neither,\u201d the statement read. \u201cTo criticize a small but growing group of farmers, businesses, and consumers whose efforts and investments are positively impacting hundreds of millions of animals, when billions are still suffering in truly hellish conditions, amounts to a trap named in Farm Forward\u2019s report: letting perfect be the enemy of the good.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeCoriolis acknowledged that challenge, and the report explicitly gives some of the certifications credit for relieving the suffering of many animals. It questions, however, whether the improved practices should be dubbed \u201chumane\u201d and if they prevent bigger changes from being made.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think that the marginally better is being entrenched in ways that will hinder, in the long-term, the opportunity for an alternative market to be developed, for a meaningfully different, non-factory farmed movement to be built,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Certifications as Marketing Tools<\/h4>\n<\/div>

While some consumers may feel duped, Amanda Hitt, the director of the Government Accountability Project\u2019s Food Integrity Campaign<\/a>, has never expected animal welfare labels to cause wholesale changes to modern agriculture.<\/p><\/div>

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\u201cAnyone who’s watched the organic movement or the environmental movement knows that this is exactly how it works,\u201d said Hitt. \u201cYou should be aware that the industry’s motivation is not to protect animals but to profit. Labeling is advertising. Certification is advertising.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the same reason, GAP was always going to be a marketing tool for Whole Foods, she added. \u201cGAP was an attempt to work with industry,\u201d she said. \u201cOnce industry signed on, that’s a sure sign that they’re going to profit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

That\u2019s not to say that corporations are filled with evildoers, that some aren\u2019t doing more than others to make real change, or that animals’ lives aren\u2019t improved along the way, Hitt emphasized. In fact, she says, producers and executives are doing what their employers require of them when they make as few expensive changes as possible to sell more products\u2014they\u2019re watching their bottom line. Hitt believes that certifications do start conversations and get the issue in front of the public in a new way, which can contribute to larger, long-term course corrections within the food system.<\/p>\n

So what should a shopper concerned with animal welfare do in front of the meat case?<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a rule, consumers should view these types of label claims with skepticism, and they should closely scrutinize them,\u201d Consumer Reports\u2019 Ronholm said. \u201cMost are trying to convey a value that doesn’t really exist while charging you a premium price.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rating systems like Consumer Reports\u2019 Food Label Guide<\/a> and the Farm Forward report can help consumers evaluate each certification on its own based on all of the available information. But in the end, careful consideration at the grocery store may not be the best tool to improve farm animals\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of this is a broader grappling of the American public with [the idea] that we can consume our way to the kind of country or world we want to live in. Personally, I don’t think that’s true,\u201d deCoriolis said. \u201cConsumer actions are critically important . . . but ultimately, changing industrial animal agriculture is a choice we have to make as a public, at a level of governance and regulation.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of these labels look similar and use the same words and imagery\u2014think cows on pasture or strong, healthy chickens pecking in the grass\u2014but they\u2019re not all the same. Some come from independent, third-party certifiers, and others are created by the meat and egg industries themselves. Now, a new report from the anti-factory farming group […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":740,"featured_media":40102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3256,4368,3262],"tags":[],"coauthors":[4440],"class_list":["post-40093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animal-welfare","category-business","category-labeling"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAre Some Animal Welfare Labels \u2018Humanewashing\u2019? | Civil Eats<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"While some advocates say animal welfare labels are helping change the industry, a new report points to a lack of rigor among widely adopted labels, prompting questions about whether consumer choice can be a lever for change.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/civileats.com\/2021\/01\/19\/are-some-animal-welfare-labels-humanewashing\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Are Some Animal Welfare Labels \u2018Humanewashing\u2019?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"While some advocates say animal welfare labels are helping change the industry, a new report points to a lack of rigor among widely adopted labels, prompting questions about whether consumer choice can be a lever for change.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/civileats.com\/2021\/01\/19\/are-some-animal-welfare-labels-humanewashing\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Civil Eats\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Civil-Eats\/56766540637\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-01-19T09:00:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/210119-humanewashing-animal-welfare-certification-labels-GAP-farm-forward-hsus-1-top.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"800\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Lisa Held\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@lisaelaineh\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@CivilEats\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Lisa Held\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"12 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/civileats.com\/2021\/01\/19\/are-some-animal-welfare-labels-humanewashing\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/civileats.com\/2021\/01\/19\/are-some-animal-welfare-labels-humanewashing\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Lisa Held\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/civileats.com\/#\/schema\/person\/981da1570dfae1a2f01ec1130cd7e919\"},\"headline\":\"Are Some Animal Welfare Labels \u2018Humanewashing\u2019?\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-01-19T09:00:05+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/civileats.com\/2021\/01\/19\/are-some-animal-welfare-labels-humanewashing\/\"},\"wordCount\":2613,\"commentCount\":1,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/civileats.com\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/civileats.com\/2021\/01\/19\/are-some-animal-welfare-labels-humanewashing\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/210119-humanewashing-animal-welfare-certification-labels-GAP-farm-forward-hsus-1-top.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Animal Ag\",\"Business\",\"Labeling\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/civileats.com\/2021\/01\/19\/are-some-animal-welfare-labels-humanewashing\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/civileats.com\/2021\/01\/19\/are-some-animal-welfare-labels-humanewashing\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/civileats.com\/2021\/01\/19\/are-some-animal-welfare-labels-humanewashing\/\",\"name\":\"Are Some Animal Welfare Labels \u2018Humanewashing\u2019? 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Since 2015, she has reported on agriculture and the food system with an eye toward sustainability, equality, and health, and her stories have appeared in publications including The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Mother Jones. In the past, she covered health and wellness and was an editor at Well+Good. 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