1. Purpose and scope
This document specifies how Farm Animal Transparency scores producer directory listings — the second evaluation surface in FAT’s two-stream methodology. Stream A scores retail labels under FSIS, AMS, and FDA labeling rules. Stream B scores producer profiles published on state agricultural directories, regional buying networks, and certifier rosters, plus the producer-owned websites those profiles link to. The 16 transparency categories, the Known / Partial / Missing scale, and the sourcing standards from Stream A are preserved without modification.
Source material in scope. Public producer-facing pages that meet two criteria: (a) the listing is on an operator-curated directory (state agency, regional nonprofit, or certifier), and (b) the listing is reachable from a publicly indexed root URL. Social-media profiles, paywalled trade databases, and producer Etsy shops are out of scope for Stream B.
Source material out of scope. Telephone interviews, FOIA productions, on-farm visits, lab assays, and any data the producer has not chosen to publish. Stream B is a published-disclosure rubric. The Stream A framework continues to govern any verification work that goes beyond what the producer publishes.
2. The 16-Category rubric for directory listings
Each category is scored Known / Partial / Missing. The standard for each score is the same across the two streams; what differs is what counts as evidence in a directory listing rather than a retail label.
2.1. Required basics
What Stream B asks: Does the directory listing identify the producer or seller, provide a reachable public contact channel, and identify the product type clearly enough that the listing can be evaluated?
Known: Producer or seller is named, reachable, and product type is clear. Partial: Some identity/contact information is present but incomplete. Missing: The listing is anonymous, unreachable, or too vague to evaluate.
Verification ceiling: Directory-verified where the directory operator verifies listing identity; producer-attested where the listing is self-published without directory verification.
2.2. Species
What Stream B asks: Does the listing identify the species the producer raises or sells?
Known: Species is named explicitly. Partial: Species is implied but not stated. Missing: Species not disclosed.
Verification ceiling: Producer-attested unless confirmed by a certifier, processor, or regulator.
2.3. Breed / strain / variety / stock
What Stream B asks: Does the listing identify the breed of cattle, hog, or poultry, or the strain, variety, or stock for seafood?
Known: Specific breed, genetic line, strain, variety, or stock named. Partial: Generic descriptor only. Missing: Not disclosed.
Verification ceiling: Producer-attested unless backed by breed association records, supplier records, registry records, or third-party certification.
2.4. Country of origin
What Stream B asks: Does the listing tell where the animal was born, raised, slaughtered/harvested, and processed?
Known: The relevant life stages are disclosed. Partial: One or more life stages are disclosed but the full chain is not. Missing: No origin/life-stage location given.
Verification ceiling: Producer-attested unless backed by regulator-confirmed or USDA-reviewed records.
2.5. Farm / ranch / source identity
What Stream B asks: Is the farm, ranch, grower group, vessel, fishery, or aquaculture farm named, located, and reachable?
Known: Source is named with location and working contact or directory profile. Partial: Source is named but location/contact is incomplete. Missing: Anonymous or generic sourcing.
Verification ceiling: Directory-verified or producer-attested depending on the source.
2.6. Age at slaughter / harvest timing
What Stream B asks: Does the listing disclose slaughter age, harvest date, production cycle, grow-out duration, or other timing that helps consumers understand the animal’s life stage?
Known: Specific age/timing disclosed. Partial: Approximate or narrative timing only. Missing: Not disclosed. N/A where the concept does not apply.
Verification ceiling: Producer-attested unless tied to processor, lot, or regulator records.
2.7. Processor identity
What Stream B asks: Does the listing or producer website name the FSIS-inspected establishment, FDA-registered seafood facility, state-inspected processor, or other processor used for the product?
Known: Processor named with establishment/facility identifier where applicable. Partial: Processor named without identifier, or generic “USDA-inspected” language only. Missing: No processor information.
Verification ceiling: Regulator-confirmed when an establishment or facility identifier can be matched to public records.
2.8. Who
What Stream B asks: Who is legally and economically accountable for the product? Stream B records the legal entity named on the listing and any parent, integrator, beneficial owner, foreign owner, or contracting entity.
Known: Entity and parent/integrator relationship are verifiable against public records. Partial: Entity is identifiable but parent/integrator status is asserted without independent verification. Missing: No traceable legal entity.
Verification ceiling: Regulator-confirmed when confirmed by public corporate, SEC, USDA Packers and Stockyards, EPA, FDA, or state records; producer-attested otherwise.
2.9. Brand
What Stream B asks: What consumer-facing brand or trade name is used, and does it match the legal entity or parent recorded in Category 8?
Known: Brand and owner relationship are clear. Partial: Brand is named but ownership is unclear. Missing: No brand or trade name is identifiable.
Verification ceiling: Producer-attested unless verified through trademark, corporate, label, or public records.
2.10. Feed / production method
What Stream B asks: Does the listing describe what the animals eat or, for wild seafood, the harvest/production method?
Known: Specific feed or production regime documented. Partial: Marketing-level claim only. Missing: Feed/production method not described.
Verification ceiling: Producer-attested unless backed by a Tier 1 or regulator-reviewed program such as USDA Organic, American Grassfed Association, AGW Certified Grassfed, Regenerative Organic Certified, MSC, ASC, or BAP.
2.11. Animal welfare / handling
What Stream B asks: Does the listing describe living conditions, outdoor access, stocking density, weaning age, handling, painful-procedure protocols, or aquatic-animal handling where applicable?
Known: Specific practices disclosed and verified by a Tier 1 welfare program. Partial: Specific practices disclosed without third-party verification. Missing: Generic “humane,” “happy,” or similar language only.
Verification ceiling: Third-party-certified for Tier 1 programs; producer-attested otherwise.
2.12. Medicine
What Stream B asks: Does the listing disclose antibiotic policy, vaccination policy, treatment protocol, residue testing, or chemical-treatment policy where relevant?
Known: Policy disclosed and backed by USDA Organic, AWA, Certified Humane, GAP, USDA PVP, or comparable verification. Partial: Policy disclosed without independent verification. Missing: No medicine policy stated.
Verification ceiling: Third-party-certified, USDA-reviewed, or producer-attested depending on substantiation.
2.13. Hormones
What Stream B asks: For beef cattle, does the listing disclose whether growth-promoting implants were used? For dairy, does it disclose rBST status? For pork and poultry, does any hormone statement include the required federal context?
Known: Meaningful hormone-status disclosure is made and substantiated. Partial: Disclosure is made without third-party or regulator verification. Missing: No hormone disclosure where relevant. N/A for species where the claim would be legally inapplicable or misleading without a disclaimer.
Verification ceiling: USDA-reviewed or producer-attested depending on records.
2.14. Quality & palatability
What Stream B asks: Does the listing disclose grade, lean percentage, marbling, aging method, air-chilling, processing method, tenderness, or other quality/palatability facts?
Known: Specific quality metric disclosed and substantiated. Partial: General quality language only. Missing: No quality/palatability information.
Verification ceiling: Regulator-confirmed for USDA grade or lab-backed claims; producer-attested for narrative or process claims.
2.15. Organic
What Stream B asks: Does the listing claim USDA Organic status, name the certifying agent, and match a current organic certificate where applicable?
Known: Current certificate and certifier are named or verified. Partial: Organic language appears but certificate/certifier is not confirmed. Missing: No organic claim or status disclosed.
Verification ceiling: Third-party-certified through a USDA-accredited certifier where verified.
2.16. Supply-chain intermediaries
What Stream B asks: Does the listing identify the intermediate custodians between the farm/source and the processor/final product — backgrounders, stockers, custom feedyards, captive feedyards, hatcheries, contract grow-out farms, nurseries, grow-finish sites, auction/order buyers where material, importers, brokers, cold-storage facilities, distributors, or repackers?
Known: Intermediaries are named or the producer affirmatively states that there are no intermediaries. Partial: Some stages are described but not named. Missing: The supply chain between source and processor is not disclosed.
Verification ceiling: Producer-attested unless confirmed by processor records, supply-chain contracts, CAFO/NPDES permits, state feedlot rosters, importer records, chain-of-custody certification, or other public records.
Note on traceability
Traceability remains a derived score across Categories 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, and 16. It is not a substitute for any one category; it is the reader-facing summary of how completely the public can follow the product from source through processor and brand.
3. The verification ceiling tiers
Every Known score in Stream B carries one of four annotations recording who is asserting the claim:
| Tier | Source | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Producer-attested | The producer’s own published assertion. | A directory profile naming the species, breed, or sales channels. |
| Directory-verified | The directory operator has checked the claim. | A state-agency directory verifies that the named farm exists at the stated address. |
| Third-party-certified | A certifier with a public roster has verified and audited. | American Grassfed Association cross-checks a “100% grass-fed” claim. |
| Regulator-confirmed | A federal or state agency has on-record evidence. | An FSIS establishment number disclosed by the producer maps to the FSIS establishment directory and a public enforcement record. |
The verification ceiling is what keeps Stream B honest. A producer can claim “humanely raised, regenerative, antibiotic-free” on a directory profile, and that claim might be entirely true — but absent a Tier-A seal, FAT records it as Partial · producer-attested. The score doesn’t promote to Known until a third party with a verifiable roster confirms it.
4. Traceability levels (0–4)
Traceability is a derived score that runs across both streams.
| Level | Stream B standard |
|---|---|
| Level 4 — full chain | Producer publishes batch IDs, processor establishment numbers, slaughter dates, AND the consumer can match a purchase to a specific batch. Rare; some on-farm processors do this. |
| Level 3 — lot/batch | Producer discloses processor identity and ties retail product to a batch or processing date. |
| Level 2 — farm-identified | Producer is named, located, and contactable. Default for any directory-listed producer. |
| Level 1 — brand only | Producer markets under a brand without farm identification. Rare in directories, common in Stream A. |
| Level 0 — generic | No producer-level identification. Effectively never seen in Stream B; common in Stream A for commodity meat. |
Stream B’s structural advantage is the floor: appearing in a state producer directory at all establishes Level 2. Stream A’s structural advantage is the ceiling: a retail label is the only artifact that can carry a batch identifier tied to a specific finished package, which is what Levels 3 and 4 require.
5. Cohort sampling, producer notification, and verification cross-check budget
Three methodology decisions that govern how the pilot is run.
Cohort sampling. Within each source directory, FAT scores a stratified sample (target: 20 producers per directory, with stratification on species and county) rather than every listing. Sampling enables a 50–100-producer pilot to ship on a credible timeline; full enumeration is a follow-on workstream. The pilot report discloses the sampling frame and the stratification keys so independent replication is possible.
Directory operator engagement. State-agency directories (Minnesota Grown, Kentucky Proud, Georgia Grown) receive a courtesy notification before scraping begins, with a one-page methodology summary. This is consistent with FAT’s research-grade ethic and reduces the chance of a directory operator changing their robots.txt mid-pilot.
Producer notification and right of reply. Producers scored Partial or Missing on any category receive a pre-publication notification with a 14-day window for a right of reply. Their reply is published alongside the score in the pilot report, even when it does not change the score. The score and the producer’s response are presented as parallel evidence, not as a dispute resolution.
Verification cross-check budget. Each Known certification claim must be verified against the certifier’s roster. The pilot of 50–100 producers with 5–8 certifications each implies several hundred manual verifications. The pilot uses hand-verification with a structured checklist; a small scraper for the major certifier rosters (AGW, Certified Humane, USDA Organic INTEGRITY, MSC) is on the post-pilot roadmap.
6. What gets published per producer
Each producer in the Stream B pilot dataset carries:
- A 16-Category score block — Known / Partial / Missing per category, with category 9 (Hormones) marked N/A for poultry and pork.
- A traceability level (0–4) — derived from categories 4, 5, and 15.
- A verification ceiling annotation for every Known score — producer-attested, directory-verified, third-party-certified, or regulator-confirmed.
- A scrape timestamp and source URL for the directory listing and the producer website.
- A “last reviewed” date so consumers and journalists know the freshness of the score.
This is the schema implemented in the FAT Stream B Pilot Dataset workbook. The pilot’s first public deliverable applies the schema to a 50–100-producer sample and publishes the result as a transparency report.
Sources
- 9 CFR Part 412 — USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service rules on generic labeling, including the 2024 “Product of USA” rule (effective Jan 1, 2026).
- FSIS Establishment Directory — public roster of FSIS-inspected establishments, used to verify processor identity claims and look up enforcement history.
- USDA Agricultural Marketing Service — Organic INTEGRITY database, the public roster used to cross-check USDA Organic claims.
- USDA Packers and Stockyards Division — corporate concentration and integrator-grower records, used for Category 2.14 (Who Stands Behind the Product).
- FDA Enforcement Report, FDA Warning Letters database, FDA OASIS, and FDA Inspection Classification Database — public records used for the FDA-side enforcement-history lookup (Category 2.13).
- EPA ECHO (Enforcement and Compliance History Online) — public records used for CAFO and processing-plant environmental enforcement lookup; covers NPDES, Clean Air Act NESHAP, RCRA, and EPCRA.
- 40 CFR Part 122 — EPA NPDES permitting rules for CAFOs; 40 CFR Part 412 — effluent guidelines for the meat and poultry products point-source category.
- SEC EDGAR — public filings (10-K, 10-Q, 8-K) used for parent-company verification under Category 2.14.
- A Greener World — public Certified Farms directory; Certified Humane — public product directory; Global Animal Partnership — public step-rated product directory; American Grassfed Association — public producer-member roster; Regenerative Organic Alliance — public ROC product directory; Marine Stewardship Council — public Chain of Custody database; Aquaculture Stewardship Council and Best Aquaculture Practices — public certified-facility rosters.
Last reviewed: May 2026