Humanewashing Hurts Animals

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Humane labels signal to consumers that such products were produced in compliance with high welfare standards and that the animals involved in the production process were treated humanely; that during each phase of a farmed animal’s life, they were shown compassion over cruelty, even when it means opting for alternative industrial practices.1.”

In most cases, this is patently false.

It’s not uncommon to see refrigerated packages of store-brand turkey and chicken bearing stickers marked with humane labeling at many supermarkets, suggesting to shoppers that the birds had been treated better than conventional farm animals2.

Animals slaughtered for these products still spend their entire lives on a farm—and may have never experienced a day outside a cage.

A report from the anti-factory farming group Farm Forward shows 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 not3. They play on the familiarity of terms like “all natural” and “free-range” by using certification schemes to formalize their own empty standards.

When companies misrepresent the way they raise and treat animals, it deprives consumers of the ability to drive the marketplace through informed purchasing decisions, and disadvantages competitors of more humanely produced food. This tricks conscientious consumers by hiding the factory farming origins of their meat, dairy, and eggs. It keeps more animals suffering in these facilities to meet the fraudulently inflated consumer demand4.

Rather than fight to prove their chicken coops offered any sense of “humane” comfort, Perdue, the third-largest chicken company in the country, and Kroger, the largest grocer in the country, both settled class-action lawsuits resulting in agreements to remove the word “humane” in reference to how their chickens are raised for their Harvestland (Perdue) and Simple Truth (Kroger) brands5.

There are rarely such win-win-win scenarios for producers, consumers, and animals alike. Humanewashing at best offers vague, unregulated, and unenforced statements with no meaningful content or oversight and welfare standards that do not (significantly) go beyond reiterations of the legally required minimum or reflections of standard agricultural practices6.

They are misleading and primarily amount to a marketing strategy that enable consumers to buy a clean conscience.

Sign the petition below and tell the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) to implement clear and standardized guidelines for advertising humane processes on food products.