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Conscientious consumers who don’t want to harm animals or support animal cruelty are left to decipher an array of deceptive marketing claims and can end up buying products that don’t align with their values. Read more from IDA here.
Third-party certifications and programs that claim to ensure humane treatment — such as Humane Certified, Animal Welfare Approved, American Humane, ASPCA Shop with Your Heart, Better Chicken Commitment, and Global Animal Partnership (G.A.P.) Animal Welfare Certified — lack consistent oversight, inspections are rare and pre-announced, and there is minimal enforcement, if at all. Air pollution from animal farms is linked to almost eight times more premature deaths than coal-fired power plants, a 2021 study from Johns Hopkins University found. Other research has found that living near a factory farm is positively associated with risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and leukemia, and people who live near them report higher rates of headaches, depression, anger, and respiratory symptoms, such as asthma.
The mega factory farm is the inevitable consequence of decades of federal and state agricultural policy that has incentivized growth at all costs, with few guardrails in place to protect the people who live near them, like Carolyn Bittner, many of whom feel their health and quality of life has been sacrificed for corporate profit and cheap meat, milk, and eggs. Read more here: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/395967/iowa-factory-farm-pollution-sacrifice-state Processing Meat is a biweekly newsletter written by Kenny Torrella and Marina Bolotnikova that analyzes meat and dairy production’s immense impact on human and animal lives. Check out more of their work on animal welfare here. Global Animal Partnership (G.A.P.) labels proclaim that animal body parts like hamburger and chicken breasts—as well as dairy and eggs—can be trusted to have come from sources with high “animal welfare” standards. But, as PETA (and others) investigations of G.A.P.-certified farms repeatedly show, the labels are a clever marketing ploy designed to hoodwink people who care about animals into thinking they’re doing the right thing, when they are actually paying to prop up factory farms where animals suffer incredible pain and misery. This is HumaneWashing.
Packing thousands or millions of animals together in one facility creates concentrated air and water pollution that harms rural Americans’ health and fouls US waterways. Slaughterhouse workers risk losing a finger or limb every day they go to work. The millions of pounds of antibiotics used to keep factory-farmed animals alive puts us all in danger by making these lifesaving drugs less effective. Certain practices, such as locking animals in cages for years or slicing off their body parts without anesthesia or even painkillers, are considered standard “animal husbandry” when done to farmed animals, but torture when done to pet dogs or cats. Read more from Kenny Torrella at Vox here: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/393738/factory-farms-meat-dairy-production
An overwhelming majority of Americans say they’re concerned about the treatment of animals raised for meat, and many believe they can help by simply selecting from one of the many brands that advertise their chicken or pork as “humane.” But such marketing claims have long borne little resemblance to the ugly reality of raising animals for meat.
Nearly all farmed animals in the US live on mega factory farms, where they’re mutilated without pain relief and fattened up in dark, overcrowded warehouses before being shipped off to the slaughterhouse. Only a tiny sliver of livestock are actually reared on the small, higher-welfare farms that many companies conjure on their packaging with quaint red barns and green rolling hills — and even those operations can be rife with animal suffering. Read more from Vox here: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/384740/foster-farms-usda-humane-story A new PETA exposé of Oakridge Dairy—the largest dairy in Connecticut, which purports to be “[w]here happy cows make great milk”—reveals that the factory farm perpetually confines thousands of cows on concrete and denies them access to the outdoors. Why? So their manure can be collected as part of a dubious “clean energy” scheme.
Update (January 10, 2025): Following a cease-and-desist letter from PETA, Oakridge Dairy LLC removed multiple false and misleading claims from its website about the welfare of the thousands of cows it keeps constantly confined on concrete. That the mega dairy is “[w]here happy cows make great milk” and that the cows there are provided “plenty of elbow room” and an “optimal living habitat” are just some of the false and deceptive claims that Oakridge has removed from its website following PETA’s letter. Oakridge also took down a video claiming that it “ensures the wellbeing” of the cows and creates a “haven” for them. Merit Food Products did what Whole Foods refused to do after they were first alerted it to this issue: compassionately resolved to be part of a big change for monkeys in Thailand. Together, PETA and Merit Food Products worked behind the scenes to eliminate monkey labor from the company’s supply chain.
After a vigorous campaign that included four damning investigations, dozens of demonstrations across the U.S., creative billboard campaigns, hundreds of phone calls, a heartfelt plea from singer Morrissey, and messages from over 100,000 supporters, Whole Foods’ 365 brand coconut milk no longer contains ingredients harvested by abused monkeys forced into labor. Despite knowing that meat companies are lying about their products being drug-free, they still won’t require them to test and prove the accuracy of their claims. The USDA has basically greenlit meat companies deceptively marketing products and continuing to lie to the public. Read more from Farm Forward Here: www.farmforward.com/news/usda-conspiring-with-meat-companies-to-humanewash-with-false-antibiotic-free-labels/
A Farm Forward investigation has uncovered ongoing and systematic animal abuse at arguably the nation’s leading Organic, Certified Humane, and “regenerative” dairy, Alexandre Family Farm. Given the many accolades that Alexandre has received, this is one of the most significant cases of humanewashing in the market today and suggests widespread problems throughout the dairy industry. At present, premium dairy producers have failed to provide a real alternative to factory farming. An independent investigation by The Atlantic confirms many of Farm Forward’s findings.
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