How to read meat and seafood labels

How to read what your meat or seafood label is — and isn’t — telling you.

FAT scores every meat, poultry, and seafood label using the same three-step analysis. We never grade on a curve. Each step is assessed independently and surfaced for the consumer:

1. What is disclosed?
2. How credible is the disclosure?
3. Who stands behind the label?

1 — What is disclosed?

What does the label tell you, and what does it omit? FAT evaluates every meat, poultry, and seafood label across the same 16 transparency categories: USDA / FDA Required Basics, Species, Breed, Country of Origin, Farm, Supply-Chain Intermediaries (the backgrounders, feedlots, and contract grow-out operations between Farm and Processor), Age at Slaughter, Processor, Who, Brand, Feed, Animal Welfare, Medicine, Hormones, Quality & Palatability, and Organic. The full card-by-card description lives on the Understanding the 16 FAT Categories page; the rest of this page walks the three-step analysis through specific disclosure topics.

See also: the side-by-side meat ↔ seafood category cross-reference table on How FAT Scores Seafood Labels — every meat category mapped to its seafood counterpart.

2 — How credible is the disclosure?

Each disclosure carries a verification level. FAT distinguishes among:

• Third-party audited — independent inspection bodies with documented audit trails (USDA Organic, GAP, AWA, Certified Humane, MSC, BAP).
• USDA-reviewed — USDA-approved label language and Process Verified Programs.
• Producer-affidavit — documented at the producer level but without independent audit.
• Unverified marketing — allowed if not misleading, but not substantiated.

FAT assigns tiered, partial credit so a label with strong verification on one category is not flattened by weak verification on another. Each category is scored on its own merits.

3 — Who stands behind the label?

A label is only as credible as the entities that produced it. FAT surfaces the chain of accountability:

• The processor, identified by USDA establishment number (meat, poultry, catfish) or FDA registration (other seafood) — and the processor’s public enforcement record: recalls, residue violations, humane-handling actions, and FDA import alerts.
• The brand owner and the corporate parent — who actually controls the label.
• Beneficial ownership and foreign ownership — particularly relevant when foreign-controlled entities make claims about U.S. animals or seafood (for example, Smithfield is owned by China’s WH Group).
• Economic concentration — HHI and market-structure data for the relevant species and regulatory regime, because concentrated systems shape what gets disclosed and what gets standardized away.

Topics — the three steps applied

Each page below walks the same three-step analysis through one specific disclosure category.

Meat & Poultry

• Animal Welfare — what humanely raised, animal welfare certified, and pasture raised mean, what they don’t, and which programs verify them.
• Antibiotics — the difference between residue limits and on-farm use, what changed in 2017, and how to read claims like No Antibiotics Ever.
• Hormones — why hormone claims mean very different things on beef vs. pork or chicken.
• Grass-Fed — why USDA treats grass-fed as the stricter term and grass-finished as the weaker one (the opposite of consumer assumption).
• Country of Origin — what Product of USA meant before 2026, what it means after January 1, 2026, and the bipartisan mandatory country-of-origin labeling legislation now moving in Congress.

Seafood

• Domestic Fish — how the FDA actually regulates farm-raised and wild-caught fish, why the system differs from meat, and what required food-safety plan and voluntary grading do (and don’t) cover.
• Imported Fish — why 75 to 90 percent of U.S. seafood is imported, how the FDA oversees it, and the documented gaps in residue testing and country-of-origin enforcement.

Restaurant Menus

• How FAT Reads Menus — why a menu isn’t a label (restaurants are exempt from country-of-origin labeling), what menu words like grass-fed, Gulf shrimp and sustainably sourced mean and don’t say, the Gulf-state rules on imported seafood, and the questions to ask your server.