← FAT Research Library

📅 Prepared March 1, 2026  |  🔄 Revised May 2, 2026

✍️ Dirk Adams

⌛ 11 min read

FAT RESEARCH SERIES — ANIMAL WELFARE

FARM ANIMAL TRANSPARENCY — ANIMAL WELFARE ANALYSIS SERIES

Third-Party Animal Welfare Certification Programs

A Critical Analysis of Standards, Tiers, and Consumer Transparency

Prepared for the Farm Animal Transparency Project

farmanimaltransparency.com

Paper No. 7  •  February 2026

1. Introduction and Purpose

American consumers who wish to purchase meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products from animals raised under higher welfare conditions face a paradox: while dozens of labels, certifications, and marketing claims now populate grocery store shelves, the information these labels convey varies enormously in its reliability, rigor, and meaning. Terms that sound reassuring—“humanely raised,” “cage-free,” “free-range,” “natural”—often do not mean what consumers believe them to mean, and even third-party certification programs that appear to verify animal welfare practices differ dramatically in their actual requirements.

This paper provides a critical, program-by-program analysis of the major third-party animal welfare certification programs operating in the United States. Its purpose is to equip consumers with an honest assessment of what each certification actually requires—not what its marketing materials suggest—so that purchasing decisions can be made on the basis of verified facts rather than aspirational branding.

For the Farm Animal Transparency project, this analysis complements the FSIS Enforcement Data Series (Papers No. 1 through 6), which examine the federal government’s inspection and enforcement record for individual slaughter and processing establishments. The enforcement data tells consumers how a specific establishment performs under government oversight. This paper tells consumers what the animal welfare claims on a product’s label actually guarantee about how the animal was raised before it reached that establishment. Together, the two bodies of information provide a more complete picture than either does alone.

2. The Animal Welfare Certification Landscape

The proliferation of animal welfare labels reflects growing consumer demand. Surveys consistently show that a majority of American consumers say they are willing to pay more for products from humanely raised animals. The industry has responded with an array of certification programs, marketing claims, and label language—but the quality and rigor of these programs varies from genuinely meaningful to what critics have termed “humanewashing,” defined as efforts to market animal products by promoting the illusion of animal well-being while concealing the extent of animals’ illness and suffering.

The current landscape can be organized into four categories, each representing a different level of reliability for consumers:

Government-administered programs: USDA Organic (National Organic Program) and USDA Process Verified. These operate under federal regulatory authority with codified standards, though their animal welfare requirements have historically been inconsistent and, in the case of USDA Organic, are only now being substantially upgraded through the 2023 Organic Livestock and Poultry Standards rule.

Independent nonprofit certifications: Animal Welfare Approved (A Greener World), Certified Humane (Humane Farm Animal Care), and Global Animal Partnership. These are administered by organizations whose primary mission is animal welfare, though their standards and structural independence from industry vary significantly.

Industry-affiliated certifications: American Humane Certified and One Health Certified. These are administered by organizations with close ties to the conventional animal agriculture industry, and their standards generally reflect or only marginally exceed standard industry practice.

Unverified or minimally verified label claims: “Natural,” “humanely raised,” “cage-free,” “free-range,” “no hormones added,” and similar terms. These are either self-reported by producers without third-party verification, defined loosely or not at all by USDA, or—in some cases—legally meaningless for the species to which they are applied.

The sections that follow examine the major programs in each category. For tiered certification programs, each tier is evaluated independently, because the difference between the lowest and highest tier of a single program can be as significant as the difference between separate programs.

3. Certified Animal Welfare Approved by AGW

Administered by A Greener World (AGW), a nonprofit organization with ISO/IEC Guide 17065 accreditation, the Certified Animal Welfare Approved (AWA) program is widely recognized as having the most rigorous animal welfare standards of any certification program currently operating in the United States. The ASPCA, the Animal Welfare Institute, Consumer Reports, Farm Forward, and the Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT) have all identified AWA as the highest-welfare certification available to consumers.

Key requirements. AWA is limited exclusively to independent family farms where the farmer owns the animals. This structural requirement categorically excludes factory farm operations and contract growers. All animals must have continuous outdoor access on pasture or range, with housing provided as shelter rather than as a primary living environment. No cages, crates, or tethers are permitted. Growth hormones, beta-agonists, and subtherapeutic antibiotics are prohibited; antibiotics may be used only to treat diagnosed illness. Physical alterations such as beak trimming, tail docking, and dehorning are prohibited or strictly limited. Slaughter facilities used by AWA-certified producers must meet AWA’s slaughter standards, which are audited. AWA covers standards from birth through slaughter, including transport.

Auditing and verification. Independent trained auditors visit every farm in the program at least once annually, with unannounced inspections possible. A Greener World’s ISO accreditation through IOAS provides an additional layer of structural independence and impartiality that most other certifiers lack.

Limitations. AWA’s high standards and restriction to independent family farms limit its scalability. Products carrying the AWA label represent a small fraction of the meat, dairy, and egg market. Some critics note that even AWA cannot practically require elimination of all practices that cause animal suffering—such as the forced early separation of calves from dairy cows or the use of fast-growing genetic lines in poultry—because these practices are so embedded in modern animal agriculture that prohibiting them entirely would make the program unviable. Nevertheless, AWA’s standards in these areas are substantially more protective than those of any other major certifier.

Example: AWA Meat Chicken Standards

AWA meat chicken standards require continuous outdoor access with ranging and foraging areas; flocks are recommended to be no more than 500 birds; management must be focused on promoting health rather than treating disease; the premises of the standards is that animals must be allowed to behave naturally and are managed to meet the Five Freedoms and the Five Domains of animal welfare. Contrast this with industry standard: 20,000 to 30,000 birds per house with no outdoor access.

4. Certified Humane (Humane Farm Animal Care)

Certified Humane is administered by Humane Farm Animal Care (HFAC), a nonprofit organization that reports certifying nearly 500 million animals annually across 24 countries. Certified Humane is the most widely available independent animal welfare certification in the U.S. market and is frequently recommended by consumer guides, including the EWG Meat & Dairy Label Decoder, which places it in its “Most Reliable” tier.

Key requirements. No cages, crates, or tie stalls are permitted at any level. Animals must have sufficient space to engage in natural behaviors. Environmental enrichments are required (e.g., perches for laying hens, rooting materials for pigs). Growth hormones are prohibited. Antibiotics may be used only to treat illness. Slaughter facilities must meet HFAC’s slaughter standards and are audited—Certified Humane is one of only two major certifiers (along with AWA) that require slaughter audits.

Critical distinction: indoor vs. outdoor. The base Certified Humane label does not require outdoor access for most species. Poultry can be raised entirely indoors. Beef cattle need not be on pasture (feedlot finishing is permitted for beef). For consumers who equate “humane” with outdoor access, this is a significant gap. However, Certified Humane offers additional labeling tiers—“Free Range” and “Pasture Raised”—that do require meaningful outdoor access. Certified Humane Pasture Raised for poultry, for example, requires 108 square feet of outdoor space per bird with at least six hours of daily outdoor access.

Assessment. The base Certified Humane standard represents a real improvement over standard industry practice: the elimination of cages and crates is meaningful, space allowances exceed industry norms, and slaughter auditing adds accountability. However, the absence of an outdoor access requirement for the base certification means that consumers who see “Certified Humane” on a package of chicken should not assume the birds ever went outside. The additional “Free Range” and “Pasture Raised” designations, when present alongside the Certified Humane logo, do carry substantially stronger welfare guarantees. Consumers should look for these additional designations.

5. Global Animal Partnership (5-Step Program)

The Global Animal Partnership (GAP) operates a tiered certification system with steps ranging from 1 (lowest) to 5+ (highest). Created in 2008 in partnership with Whole Foods Market, GAP is one of the most recognized animal welfare labels in the U.S., with all fresh meat sold at Whole Foods stores required to carry GAP certification. The program covers more than 400 million animals and over 1,200 certified producers.

GAP’s tiered structure is both its distinguishing feature and its most significant vulnerability to criticism. The theory behind tiering is sound: by offering entry points at lower welfare levels, the program can engage a broader set of producers and encourage continuous improvement upward through the steps. In practice, however, critics argue that the lower steps function primarily as marketing tools that benefit large producers while misleading consumers about the actual conditions in which animals are raised.

Step 1: No Cages, No Crates, No Crowding

Step 1 prohibits cages and crates and sets minimum space allowances, but does not require outdoor access, environmental enrichment, or any deviation from indoor confinement systems. For beef cattle, feedlot finishing is permitted with no shade requirement, castration without anesthetic is allowed, and calves can be weaned months earlier than natural weaning age. For dairy cattle, indoor management systems are permitted, calves can be removed from mothers just six hours after birth, and continuous antibiotic administration to calves is allowed. Farm Forward, the ASPCA, and multiple animal welfare analysts have characterized Step 1 as “humanewashing” that represents conditions only minimally better than standard industry practice. The ASPCA endorses GAP only at Step 2 and above.

Step 2: Environmental Enrichment

Step 2 adds requirements for environmental enrichments (e.g., pecking objects for poultry, rooting materials for pigs) and extends the minimum weaning age. For beef cattle, feedlot finishing remains permitted but shade must be provided, and dairy calves must be provided two types of environmental enrichment. However, outdoor access is still not required, and most animals may still be raised in confinement. Farm Forward considers Step 2 to represent conditions only “minimally better” than standard industry practice.

Step 3: Outdoor Access

Step 3 introduces a seasonal outdoor access requirement. For poultry, this is a meaningful threshold—birds must have access to the outdoors, though they can be kept confined until four weeks of age, meaning that in practice, fast-growing meat birds may never actually go outside during their short lives. There is no Step 3 standard for beef cattle. For dairy, outdoor access is required but with continued allowances for painful procedures. Step 3 represents conditions genuinely better than industry standard but, according to multiple welfare analysts, still falls short of consumer expectations for animal welfare.

Steps 4, 5, and 5+: Pasture-Based and Highest Welfare

Step 4 requires pasture-centered production systems. Step 5 requires animals to spend their entire lives on a single farm with no physical alterations permitted. Step 5+ adds the requirement that slaughter occur on-farm, which is virtually unattainable under current food safety regulations except for small-scale poultry operations. These upper tiers represent genuinely high-welfare conditions comparable to AWA standards. However, products at Steps 4 and above are extremely rare at retail—even at Whole Foods, the vast majority of GAP-certified products are Step 1 or Step 2.

Example: The GAP Labeling Problem

A consumer at Whole Foods sees the “Animal Welfare Certified” label on a package of chicken. Without closely reading the specific step number, the consumer may reasonably assume the chicken was raised under high-welfare conditions. In reality, the product is most likely GAP Step 1 or 2—meaning the bird was raised indoors in a modified factory farm setting with no outdoor access. The existence of Steps 4, 5, and 5+ creates what researchers call a “halo effect”: the consumer’s favorable impression of the highest tiers elevates their estimation of the lowest tiers. A Farm Forward consumer survey found that Americans who purchase humanely labeled products more often were actually more likely to hold incorrect beliefs about what the certification guarantees.

Structural concern: industry ties. GAP’s Executive Director is an employee of Whole Foods Market. Farm Forward resigned from GAP’s board in 2020 after twelve years, citing concerns that GAP had become “increasingly a marketing scheme functioning to benefit massive corporations.” In 2022, Farm Forward testing of meat purchased at Whole Foods found antibiotic residues—including monensin, a growth-promoting antibiotic prohibited by both GAP and USDA Organic—in products labeled “no antibiotics, ever.” A corroborating peer-reviewed study published in Science found that over a quarter of GAP-certified cattle in their sample came from feedlots with residues of medically important antibiotics.

6. USDA Certified Organic

The USDA Organic label, administered by the National Organic Program (NOP) under the Agricultural Marketing Service, is a government-regulated certification with codified animal welfare requirements enforced through USDA-accredited certifying agents. Unlike the third-party certifications discussed above, violations of organic standards carry the force of federal law.

Historically, USDA Organic’s animal welfare provisions were vague and inconsistently enforced, leading to significant variation in actual conditions across organic operations. Large organic poultry producers, in particular, exploited ambiguities in the outdoor access requirements to raise birds in conditions that consumers would not recognize as meaningfully different from conventional operations. Over 26,000 public comments submitted during the rulemaking process referenced diminished trust in the organic label.

The 2023 Organic Livestock and Poultry Standards (OLPS)

The OLPS final rule, published in November 2023 and effective January 2024 with compliance deadlines in 2025 and 2029, represents the most significant upgrade to organic animal welfare standards in the program’s history. Key provisions include: specific indoor and outdoor stocking density requirements for poultry; a prohibition on the use of gestation crates and farrowing crates for pigs; limits on painful physical alterations including tail docking, debeaking, and face branding; environmental enrichment requirements; requirements for preventative health care practices and comprehensive parasite prevention plans; transport and slaughter requirements that integrate with FSIS humane slaughter standards; and a prohibition on using porches as outdoor space for poultry—closing a loophole that large producers had exploited.

Assessment. The OLPS rule brings USDA Organic substantially closer to the requirements of independent animal welfare certifications. By 2029, when all provisions are fully implemented, USDA Organic will require meaningful outdoor access for all species, prohibit the worst confinement practices, and establish specific stocking densities. However, significant gaps remain: indoor and outdoor space requirements for pigs and turkeys are absent from the OLPS rule, and the five-year compliance window for poultry stocking densities (to 2029) means that the most impactful provisions—affecting chickens and egg-laying hens, which constitute the vast majority of organic animals—are not yet in effect. The ASPCA recommends that consumers continue to seek products with additional meaningful animal welfare certifications even when buying organic.

7. American Humane Certified

American Humane Certified (AHC) is administered by the American Humane Association, which launched the program in 2000 as the first third-party animal welfare certification in the United States. By 2014, AHC reported certifying over one billion animals on more than 8,000 farms. The program certifies major conventional producers including Butterball, Foster Farms, and Eggland’s Best. Approximately 90 percent of cage-free eggs sold in the U.S. have been certified by American Humane.

Standards assessment. Despite its name, AHC’s standards are widely considered the weakest of any third-party animal welfare certification. Consumer Reports found that for broiler chickens, AHC’s space requirements are only slightly different from industry standards—less than one square foot per bird—with no outdoor access required. Perches and enrichments are “encouraged” but not required. For laying hens, battery cages (small wire cages) are prohibited, but other types of cages are permitted. For beef cattle and dairy cows, pasture access is not required and feedlots are allowed. For pigs, AHC permits the use of farrowing crates that confine mother pigs so tightly they cannot turn around. AHC allows farms to pass certification by meeting 85 percent of criteria at the time of inspection, meaning up to 15 percent of standards can be unmet, and consumers have no way of knowing which criteria were or were not satisfied.

Structural concerns. AHC relies on certification fees to fund its operations, creating a structural disincentive to raise standards above what its largest customers have already adopted. Farm Forward characterizes AHC as “a certification closely tied with the farming industry it claims to oversee” and considers it humanewashing. Consumer Reports, the ASPCA, and the Animal Welfare Institute have all rated AHC’s standards as inadequate. Mercy for Animals released undercover footage in 2015 from an AHC-certified Foster Farms facility showing workers treating chickens violently and using inhumane slaughter methods.

Example: The AHC Paradox

A consumer sees “American Humane Certified” on a package of Butterball turkey and reasonably infers that the turkey was raised humanely. Surveys show that most Americans expect a “humane” label to mean the animal had adequate living space (86%), went outdoors (78%), and was raised without cages (66%). The AHC standards do not reliably assure any of these conditions. The turkey was most likely raised indoors in a crowded house with no outdoor access, under conditions that differ only marginally from conventional production. The label’s value lies primarily in the marketing advantage it confers on the producer, not in the welfare improvement it delivers to the animal.

8. Other Certification Programs and Label Claims

American Grassfed Association

Limited to ruminants (beef and dairy cattle, sheep, goats, bison). Requires 100 percent grass and forage diet, continuous access to pasture, no confinement in feedlots, and no antibiotics or growth hormones. Standards do not extend to transport or slaughter and do not cover painful procedures. A credible standard for the specific claims it makes, but its welfare scope is narrower than AWA or Certified Humane.

One Health Certified

Despite its name, One Health Certified is not affiliated with the One Health Commission. It was created by Mountaire Farms, the sixth-largest poultry producer in the United States. Farm Forward considers it “widely considered to be humanewashing and greenwashing.” Its standards largely reflect existing industrial practices, and its creation by a major industry producer raises fundamental questions about auditor independence and the program’s incentive to impose meaningful welfare requirements on its creator’s operations.

Certified Naturally Grown

An alternative to USDA Organic targeted at small-scale, direct-to-consumer farms. Uses participatory guarantee systems (peer inspections among farmers) rather than traditional third-party auditing. Standards parallel USDA Organic requirements but with lower certification costs. A credible option for farmers’ market shoppers, but limited distribution in conventional retail.

Unregulated Label Claims

“Natural”: USDA defines this for meat and poultry as containing no artificial ingredients and being only minimally processed. All fresh meat qualifies. It says nothing about how the animal was raised, what it was fed, or whether it received antibiotics.

“Humanely Raised”: USDA does not define this term. Without an accompanying third-party certification seal, it is essentially meaningless. 

“Cage-Free”: Means only that birds were not kept in battery cages. Birds may be crowded indoors in sheds with no outdoor access and minimal space to move or engage in natural behaviors. 

“Free-Range”: USDA defines this only for poultry: birds must have been “allowed access to the outside.” There is no requirement for the size, quality, or duration of outdoor access, and no requirement that birds actually go outside. Does not apply to beef, pork, or dairy. 

“No Hormones Added” (on poultry or pork): Potentially misleading because federal regulations already prohibit the use of hormones in pig and poultry production. The claim is technically true but implies a distinction that does not exist. 

9. Comparative Summary

The following table compares the major certification programs across key animal welfare dimensions. For tiered programs, the most commonly available tier is assessed unless otherwise noted.

Requirement	AWA	CH Base	GAP 1	GAP 3+	Organic (2029)	AHC	OHC
Outdoor access required	Yes	No*	No	Yes	Yes	No	No
No cages/crates	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes**	Partial	Varies
No hormones	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Varies
No routine antibiotics	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Slaughter audited	Yes	Yes	No***	No***	FSIS req.	Yes	No
Limits physical alterations	Strong	Moderate	Minimal	Moderate	Moderate	Weak	Weak
Family farm only	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No
Industry independence	High	Moderate	Low	Low	High	Low	None

* Certified Humane offers separate “Free Range” and “Pasture Raised” tiers that do require outdoor access. ** Gestation and farrowing crates for pigs prohibited under 2023 OLPS rule. *** GAP requires use of a slaughter facility that has passed a third-party animal welfare audit but GAP itself does not conduct slaughter audits.

10. The Baseline Problem: When “Step 1” Means Industry Standard

The single most important insight for consumers navigating the animal welfare certification landscape is this: in most tiered certification systems, the lowest tier—which is the tier most commonly available at retail—sets its baseline at or only marginally above standard industry practice. This means that the most widely available “certified” products may represent little or no meaningful improvement in animal welfare over uncertified conventional products.

This is not a fringe critique. The ASPCA explicitly excludes GAP Step 1 from its endorsement. Farm Forward’s consumer survey research demonstrates that consumers systematically overestimate the welfare guarantees of lower-tier certifications, in part because the existence of higher tiers creates a halo effect that elevates consumer perceptions of the entire program. Consumer Reports’ detailed evaluation of American Humane Certified found that its space requirements, outdoor access provisions, and enrichment requirements were only slightly different from industry standards for most species.

For the FAT project, this finding is directly relevant to the information consumers need when scanning a meat label in a grocery store. A label that says “Animal Welfare Certified” or “Step 1” or “American Humane Certified” may create the impression of welfare oversight that the underlying standards do not support. Consumers deserve to know not just that a certification exists on a label, but what that specific certification, at that specific tier, actually requires.

11. Implications for the Farm Animal Transparency Project

The analysis in this paper informs two dimensions of the FAT project’s mission: the website’s educational resources and the FAT App’s consumer-facing label scanning functionality.

For the FAT website, this paper provides the reference framework that visitors need to interpret animal welfare claims they encounter in the marketplace. By presenting certification programs honestly—including the critical distinction between tiers within tiered systems—the FAT website can fill a gap that existing resources, including EWG’s otherwise useful Meat & Dairy Label Decoder, have left by treating complex tiered programs as monolithic entities.

For the FAT App, the certification analysis provides the knowledge base for a future feature: when the app’s OCR functionality detects a welfare certification logo or claim text on a scanned meat label, it can surface a brief, tier-specific assessment. Combined with the establishment-level FSIS enforcement data that the app already presents—Salmonella categorization, E. coli sampling results, chemical residue violations, QER enforcement actions, and humane handling noncompliance records—this would give consumers an integrated view of both the welfare claims on the label and the government’s enforcement record for the facility that processed the product.

No other consumer tool currently integrates these two dimensions of information. The combination is the FAT project’s distinctive contribution.

12. Conclusion

The animal welfare certification landscape in the United States is characterized by a fundamental asymmetry of information: producers and certifiers have detailed knowledge of what their standards actually require, while consumers largely do not. The proliferation of labels and claims—many of them misleading, and some of them deliberately so—has created an environment in which even conscientious consumers who actively seek out higher-welfare products are frequently deceived about the conditions in which the animals that produced those products were raised.

The hierarchy of certifications, when evaluated honestly, is clear. Animal Welfare Approved stands alone at the top, with the highest standards, the strongest structural independence, and the most rigorous auditing regime. Certified Humane, at its “Pasture Raised” tier, provides meaningful welfare guarantees that approach AWA’s level; at its base tier, it provides real but more limited improvements over industry practice, with the critical caveat that outdoor access is not required. USDA Organic, once the certification is fully implemented under the 2023 OLPS rule by 2029, will provide a meaningful government-regulated baseline for animal welfare—though significant gaps remain. GAP’s upper tiers (Steps 4 and above) represent genuinely high welfare, but the lower tiers that dominate the market represent marginal or no improvement. American Humane Certified and One Health Certified reflect industry standard practice under a misleading banner of welfare oversight.

The Farm Animal Transparency project exists to make information like this accessible. Consumers deserve to know what they are buying—not what a label’s marketing team wants them to believe.

References

[1] A Greener World. Certified Animal Welfare Approved by AGW Standards. https://agreenerworld.org/certifications/animal-welfare-approved/standards/

[2] American Humane. American Humane Certified Program Standards. https://www.americanhumane.org/humane-heartland/

[3] ASPCA. Meat, Eggs and Dairy Label Guide. https://www.aspca.org/shopwithyourheart/consumer-resources/meat-eggs-and-dairy-label-guide

[4] Animal Welfare Institute. Animal Welfare Standards: A Comparison. https://awionline.org/content/comparison-animal-welfare-standards

[5] Consumer Reports. Food Label Seals and Claims (American Humane Certified; Animal Welfare Approved). https://www.consumerreports.org/food-labels/

[6] Environmental Working Group. Decoding Meat and Dairy Product Labels. https://www.ewg.org/research/decoding-meat-and-dairy-product-labels

[7] Farm Forward. The Dirt on Humanewashing (December 2020). https://www.farmforward.com/publications/the-dirt-on-humanewashing/

[8] Farm Forward. Label Guide. https://www.farmforward.com/label-guide/

[9] Farm Forward. Humanewashing’s Effect on Consumers: Survey of Consumer Beliefs about Animal Welfare Certifications (November 2022). https://www.farmforward.com/issues/animal-product-labeling/survey-confusion-welfare-labels/

[10] Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT). Humane Food Labels. https://www.foodanimalconcernstrust.org/humane-food-labels

[11] Global Animal Partnership. 5-Step Animal Welfare Rating Standards. https://globalanimalpartnership.org/standards/

[12] Humane Farm Animal Care. Certified Humane Raised and Handled Standards. https://certifiedhumane.org/

[13] Humane Farm Animal Care. Comprehensive Animal Welfare Standards Comparison By Program (November 2013). https://certifiedhumane.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Comp.Standards.Comparison.Chart_.wappendix.11.26.13.pdf

[14] National Agricultural Library, USDA. Animal Welfare Audit and Certification Programs. https://www.nal.usda.gov/animal-health-and-welfare/animal-welfare-audit-and-certification-programs

[15] USDA Agricultural Marketing Service. Organic Livestock and Poultry Standards Final Rule, 88 Fed. Reg. 75394 (November 2, 2023). https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/11/02/2023-23726/national-organic-program-nop-organic-livestock-and-poultry-standards

[16] deCoriolis, A. “Are Some Animal Welfare Labels ‘Humanewashing’?” Civil Eats, January 19, 2021. https://civileats.com/2021/01/19/are-some-animal-welfare-labels-humanewashing/

[17] Whole Foods Market. “Whole Foods Market Expands Industry-Leading Standards for Animal Welfare and Third-Party Certifications.” Press Release, June 7, 2024.

Disclosure

This paper was prepared for the Farm Animal Transparency project (farmanimaltransparency.com). The analysis is based on publicly available certification standards, published research, and regulatory documents. The Farm Animal Transparency project has no financial relationship with any animal welfare certification program, producer, retailer, or advocacy organization discussed in this paper. The author has endeavored to present each program’s requirements accurately and to ground all assessments in documented standards and credible third-party evaluations rather than advocacy positions.

Additional References

1. Fraser, David. “Understanding Animal Welfare.” Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica 50, Suppl. 1 (2008): S1. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
2. Mellor, David J., and Ngaio J. Beausoleil. “The Five Domains Model of Animal Welfare.” Animals 10, no. 10 (2020): 1870. www.mdpi.com.
3. U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library. “Animal Welfare Act.” Accessed May 2, 2026. www.nal.usda.gov.
4. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Animal Welfare Act and Animal Welfare Regulations. USDA, 2025. www.aphis.usda.gov.
5. U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library. “Humane Methods of Slaughter Act.” Accessed May 2, 2026. www.nal.usda.gov.
6. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service. “Humane Handling.” Accessed May 2, 2026. www.fsis.usda.gov.
7. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service. FSIS Directive 6110.1: Verification of Poultry Good Commercial Practices. www.fsis.usda.gov.
8. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service. “FSIS Guideline on Substantiating Animal-Raising or Environment-Related Labeling Claims.” 2024. www.fsis.usda.gov.