Whole Foods is knowingly deceiving consumers by selling meat raised with antibiotics under their “no antibiotics, ever” promise. An April 4th filing in a lawsuit against Whole Foods reveals that, based on USDA sample testing of “Raised Without Antibiotics” (RWA) beef, at least 13 of 27 (nearly half) of the establishments that tested positive for antibiotics supplied beef to  Whole Foods.1 As the company has continued to engage in false advertising of its beef products, it has profited significantly on RWA beef sales. For instance, in April 2025, the company was charging 32 percent more per pound for the same cut of conventional beef from a traditional retailer.2

In 2022, a consumer class action lawsuit was filed against Whole Foods for false marketing of meat claiming to be Raised Without Antibiotics (RWA).3 Whole Foods’ company-wide standard for meat is “no antibiotics, ever,” a slogan that appears in their stores and in online marketing materials. However, testing commissioned by Farm Forward in 2022 found that meat from Whole Foods, marketed under this promise, contained numerous drugs, including an antibiotic.

“Farm Forward’s findings were bolstered by a peer-reviewed study published in Science which presents empirical evidence that a significant percentage—up to 22 percent—of cattle within the Animal Welfare Certified program, which is used by Whole Foods, have come from feedyards where testing suggests antibiotics were administered routinely.”4

When confronted with the results of this testing, which proved the company’s marketing claims were false, and even after the lawsuit was filed, Whole Foods continued to market claims that all of the meat sold in their stores is raised with “no antibiotics, ever.”

The sheer number of Whole Foods suppliers selling RWA beef that is actually raised with antibiotics revealed by the USDA testing shows that this is not an isolated incidence of mislabeled beef, but rather a systematic failing of Whole Foods to ensure that the meat the company sells is truthfully labeled and marketed.

As a premier antibiotic-free meat retailer, Whole Foods has done nothing to substantiate their marketing claims about RWA. They have shown willful ignorance about the systematic problem of antibiotics in RWA meat supply chains. Drugs and antibiotics are commonly used to prop up animals who are raised in crowded cramped conditions that routinely cause illness and the industry is subsequently incentivized to misuse these drugs. Whole Foods is profiting from this misuse and misleading the public about antibiotics use in the products they sell. These profits are substantial. In April 2025, Whole Foods was selling filet mignon beef steak for $36.99 per pound, while a traditional retailer priced the same cut of beef at $27.99 per pound.5  The company’s false marketing has led to the widespread deception of consumers who are paying a premium for meat they’ve been made to believe is antibiotic-free.

FOIA documents expose which companies failed the United States Department of Agriculture’s 2023 antibiotics sampling project and what’s changed since they concluded the project in August.

In an investigation released today, Farm Forward revealed that trusted beef brands like Tyson, Cargill, and JBS have been deceiving consumers by continuing to sell products that are not antibiotic-free under Raised Without Antibiotics (RWA) labels. In an issue brief titled, “Is Antibiotic-Free Meat Really Antibiotic-Free?,” Farm Forward exposes how deceptive use of RWA marketing claims by several major beef companies persisted even after the USDA announced findings from a 2023 antibiotics sampling project, which revealed at least 20 percent of tested cattle samples labeled “raised without antibiotics” or “no antibiotics ever” contained antibiotics.

Farm Forward’s investigation was prompted by the USDA’s refusal to regulate and provide punitive action against bad actors or even disclose which companies’ products tested positive for antibiotics in their study. The agency’s inaction has prevented consumers from being able to make informed decisions about what they eat, what kinds of labels they support, and how much they spend.

Farm Forward Executive Director Andrew deCoriolis said, “The findings from this investigation underscore a pattern of the USDA leaving everyday people across this country to chance and prioritizing industry’s bottom line at our expense. Beef brands that many know and trust have been knowingly defrauding the public with claims that their products are free of antibiotics, and while they are certainly at fault, the USDA—the government agency responsible for regulating America’s agriculture—is at fault for not enforcing the standards they’ve set.

“The USDA claims to ‘keep America’s farmers and ranchers in business and ensure the nation’s meat, poultry, and egg products are safe, wholesome, and properly labeled.’ The data revealed that these products were not properly labeled, and the USDA did nothing about it, and it further proves that agribusiness is being protected, but the American people are not.”

Bill Niman, well-known California rancher, added, “The deceptive marketing of ‘antibiotic-free’ meat creates an uneven playing field that severely disadvantages truly humane and sustainable farmers and ranchers. While industrial producers make misleading claims with the USDA’s tacit approval, genuine small-scale producers who actually raise animals without antibiotics must compete against these false narratives. These ethical farmers invest significantly more in proper animal care, space, and preventive health measures to legitimately avoid antibiotics, resulting in higher production costs. When large meat companies can simply slap misleading labels on their products without actually changing their practices, they undercut honest producers on price while stealing their market share. This deception not only harms consumers who believe they’re making ethical choices but systematically undermines the economic viability of the very farming systems that could transform our food system for the better.”

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Certified Humane® label also sued after Farm Forward’s 2024 findings on inhumane conditions at Alexandre.

Furious consumers have filed a class action lawsuit against Alexandre Family Farm and the owners of the Certified Humane® label based on findings released last year in Farm Forward investigation of the farm’s routine animal abuse and neglect and selling of diseased animals for human consumption. The class action lawsuit, filed by Richman Law & Policy (RLP), alleges that Alexandre dairy farm and Humane Farm Animal Care—the entity behind the Certified Humane® label—humanewashed the farm’s practices, misleading consumers and falsely representing Alexandre products as “humane,” all while Alexandre engaged in shocking and systemic acts of animal cruelty.

The lawsuit relies on both Farm Forward’s investigation and new, previously unreleased evidence of cruel treatment to calves. The lawsuit describes how, despite the overwhelming evidence of abuse, Certified Humane allowed Alexandre Family Farm to market their products as “humane.” The suit details how the farm: 

• Poured salt into the eyes of hundreds of cows and glued denim patches to cows’ eyes
• Sawed off horns of more than 800 cows through tissue laced with nerves without any pain management
• Severed a cow’s teat with an unsanitized pocketknife
• Dragged a cow across concrete and gravel for 50 yards using a skid loader
• Failed to provide routine veterinary or hoof care management
• Transported of sick, injured, and lame cows to auction rather than euthanizing them

These allegations underscore Farm Forward’s investigation and report, which was originally featured in The Atlantic. Full details on the lawsuit and additional findings can be found here.

“Consumers are tired of paying more for a lie,” said Farm Forward Executive Director Andrew deCoriolis. “This investigation unfortunately reveals that even a dairy that has been touted as one of the most ethical operations in the country cannot be trusted by consumers to treat its animals humanely. It reveals that there is virtually no way for Americans to know if they are consuming higher welfare dairy, no matter how much extra they pay. And it reveals that voluntary labels like Certified Humane are inadequate for protecting consumers or providing any sort of public accountability for these companies. The USDA needs to set and enforce meaningful standards for terms like ‘humanely raised,’ ‘sustainably raised,’ and ‘antibiotic free.’ Without regulation, consumers can just get conned.

“This lawsuit sends a clear message: consumers will hold companies accountable for making false promises about animal welfare. When a dairy widely considered the industry’s gold standard for ethics fails to meet basic welfare standards—and their certifier fails to enforce them—it exposes a broken system. Today, there’s simply no way to guarantee your dairy purchases support better treatment of animals, regardless of price or certification. The most ethical choice is to opt out of dairy from cows.”

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Farm Forward is a team of strategists, campaigners, and thought leaders guiding the movement to change the way our world eats and farms. Learn more at https://www.farmforward.com/

The fraud, corruption, and systemic animal abuses of Alexandre Family Farm revealed by Farm Forward have resulted in the filing of a consumer class action lawsuit against the mega-dairy. Humane Farm Animal Care, the group behind the “Certified Humane” label, has also been sued as part of the action. This civil case follows a separate case enforcing California criminal statutes that prohibit animal cruelty, filed against Alexandre in late 2024, which indicts the dairy for serious and pervasive animal abuse.

The new civil case alleges that Alexandre and Certified Humane falsely represented Alexandre products as “humane” while Alexandre engaged in shocking and widespread acts of animal cruelty. For example, Farm Forward’s investigation found that Alexandre staff poured salt into the eyes of hundreds of cows, sawed off the horns of more than 800 cows through tissue laced with nerves without any pain management, cut off a cow’s teat with an unsanitized pocketknife, dragged a cow who was unable to walk across concrete, for years provided no routine veterinary or hoof care management, and transported sick, injured, and lame cows to auction rather than treating or euthanizing them.

If the court finds that Alexandre and/or Certified Humane engaged in false, fraudulent, misleading, unfair, deceptive, and/or unlawful conduct in their representations about the humane status of Alexandre products, the suit could result in Alexandre having to pay affected consumers more than $5,000,000. This lawsuit puts producers everywhere on notice that today’s consumers will hold them accountable for humanewashing—false promises of animal welfare. 

In addition to holding Alexandre accountable, the lawsuit builds on questions our investigative report raised “about whether the Certified Humane program adequately or effectively audits businesses approved to use their label” (“Dairy Deception” page 31). The suit alleges that, based on Certified Humane’s own representations, Certified Humane was aware of the conditions at Alexandre in the years leading up to our report, yet took no action to remove Alexandre from its certification program or prevent Alexandre from using the Certified Humane logo on Alexandre’s products or website.

Consumers in the class action suit will be represented by Richman Law & Policy (RLP), an experienced litigation firm that focuses on consumer protection and the domestic food supply. RLP has represented and/or co-counseled with groups including Socially Responsible Agriculture Project, Global Witness, GC Resolve, and Food and Water Watch. RLP served as lead counsel in Jones v. Monsanto (W.D. Mo.), which resulted in a $39.55 million fund for consumers, along with agreed-upon changes to Roundup weedkiller products labels. RLP was co-lead counsel in Goldemberg v. Johnson & Johnson Consumer Companies, Inc. (S.D.N.Y.), which resulted in a $7 million fund for consumers and agreed-upon changes to the marketing of Aveeno personal care products.

Lawsuit includes new findings of Alexandre’s animal abuses and Certified Humane’s complicity

While primarily relying on the evidence uncovered by Farm Forward, the lawsuit also reveals new findings of an independent investigator, previously unknown to Farm Forward, who visited Alexandre during the period covered by our investigation. 

The investigator found calves in barred hutches who were covered in feces, urine, and mud, many of them standing in pools of waste rising above the calves’ hooves, the slurry completely covering the only area where the calves could lie down. 

In clear violation of Certified Humane standards, calves in these hutches could not set one foot outside, had no access to an exercise area, and were left in hutches for a full month longer than the eight week maximum allowed by Certified Humane standards. One calf had an ear tag that appeared to show a birth date four months prior to the investigator’s visit, suggesting that the calf had been hutched for two months beyond Certified Humane’s eight week age limit. 

The investigator, who has observed many calf hutches on many farms, describes the hutches as the least sanitary the investigator had ever seen.

Certified Humane is incriminated by these conditions as much as Alexandre. Certified Humane assures customers that animal products bearing the Certified Humane Raised & Handled logo “come from operations that meet precise, objective standards for farm animal treatment.” Yet Certified Humane took no action to prevent Alexandre from using the Certified Humane logo on Alexandre’s products or website, despite Certified Humane’s standards requiring that the calves must be:

• kept clean
• isolated in individual hutches no later than eight weeks of age
• provided access “at all times” to an area for laying down that is bedded, comfortable, dry, and sloped to provide drainage 
• provided an outdoor exercise area when weather conditions permit 
• able to lie down and rest “without hindrance” 

A turning point for humanewashing

Together, the Farm Forward investigation, the Atlantic article, and now this class action lawsuit are a turning point in holding producers accountable for humanewashing—the common practice of marketing animal products with deceptive packaging, labels, and certifications to promote the illusion of animal well-being, while concealing the extent of animals’ abuse, neglect, illness, and suffering.

Animal agriculture’s worst animal abuses cannot be prevented by simply buying the animal products that farms and certifications themselves dishonestly claim are better. Ultimately, we need federal consumer protection laws that meaningfully define and enforce terms like “humane” and “sustainable” on products. Until we can secure those common sense regulations, we must use the legal system to hold companies and certifications accountable for humanewashing.  Since this case could begin a new chapter for both consumer protection and animal welfare, consumers, law firms, and meat, dairy, and egg companies across the country will watch closely how it unfolds.

Farm Forward is proud to announce the launch of a new nonprofit, the Center for Jewish Food Ethics (CJFE)—the culmination of our eight years of incubation and support for farmed animal advocacy in the Jewish community.

In 2016, Farm Forward launched our in-house program, the Jewish Initiative for Animals (JIFA) as the centerpiece of our religious outreach. Every day since, JIFA has advanced its first-of-its-kind mission to help Jewish communities align their food choices with their Jewish values. 

JIFA supported Jewish communities connecting animal welfare, food, farming, and advocacy with Jewish identity, values, and rituals. It started off with a bang in 2016, by training educators, reviving non-factory-farmed kosher heritage chicken for the first time in decades, and designing the animal welfare audit of the Hazon Seal of Sustainability, a LEED-style certification with animal welfare provisions that were adopted by institutions serving 17,000 individuals and an additional 2,000 families.

With Farm Forward’s help, JIFA continued to accomplish great things over the next eight years, including:

• Leading training programs for Hillel International—representing over 500 Jewish community campus centers globally—on serving plant-based food by default.
• Providing programming for 100+ Jewish camps, synagogues, youth groups, community centers, schools, college programs, affinity groups and conferences to spark inquiry into how Jewish values can influence how we treat animals. 
• Developing educational materials such as the Jewish Animal Ethics Community Study Guide, The Ark Project Service-Learning Workbook, and many Jewish holiday resources. 
• Supporting the first American Jewish organizations, including synagogues, in committing to serve plant-based foods by default at all of their events. 
• Co-organizing yearly interfaith webinars, the most recent drawing more than 400 participants from five countries. 
• Presenting on animal welfare and Jewish food justice to countless conferences, and shifting several of those conferences to serve higher welfare animal products and more plant-based foods.
• Providing educational resources used by 1,500+ educators and students, and delivering educational presentations to 5,000+ people.
• Placing content in leading Jewish publications including The Forward, Jewish Journal, JWeekly, Tablet, and Times of Israel, as well as major media outlets like Religion News Service and The Washington Post, on why kosher shouldn’t be factory farmed, reimagining our food practices, pandemic risk, and sustainable food choices. 
• Launching the Jewish Leadership Circle, supporting and recognizing Jewish institutions (including Yale University’s Hillel) shifting to higher welfare animal products and reducing animal consumption.
• Inspiring more than 250 rabbis and senior Jewish leaders and 20,000 individuals to call out kosher humanewashing of factory farmed animal products and urging institutions to adopt more sustainable food practices.
• Commissioning novel research on consumers’ perceptions of kosher certification, and unearthing new American misconceptions about what a kosher label means for animals, workers, and the planet.
• Posting 11 billboards, and social media reaching hundreds of thousands, directing viewers to JIFA’s “Is this Kosher?” website. 
• Influencing the Rabbinical Assembly to pass a resolution stating that “shifts to our institutional food practices, such as reducing factory-farmed animal product consumption, would help us to better achieve our values.”

The aforementioned resolution tasked the Rabbinical Assembly’s Social Justice Commission with creating a subcommittee that would “revisit [the RA’s] work in the area of ethical food consumption.” This led directly to forming JIFA’s Partnership for Sustainable Dining with the Rabbinical Assembly (RA), which has yielded the first-ever Jewish denominational cohort to establish plant-forward food policies and continues under the direction of CJFE. Not only have the cohort members immediately slashed their buying and serving of meat and dairy, but their commitment to upholding this practice as an expression of their religious moral values has wide-reaching cultural significance. Normalizing plant-based foods as the default among Jewish communities, while intensive work, shows that plant-based eating is, in fact, a resonant way for them to put Jewish values of compassion, justice, and repair into action.

JIFA’s stellar run over the past eight years validates Farm Forward’s commitment to movement building, and our approach to community-centered advocacy. Our theory of change assumes that advocates can be highly influential when they focus their advocacy within their own community, and ground their objectives in the unique cultural, political, economic, and overlapping social justice concerns specific to that community. This strategy is quite distinct from campaigns run by national organizations in which mainstream advocates target particular demographics with the aim of mobilizing that demographic to support the agenda of the larger movement. 

The value of JIFA’s authentically embedded, community-focused advocacy has been recognized as so significant that JIFA and its longstanding partner in this work, Jewish Veg, can now come together to create a new nonprofit to steward this work indefinitely. The new CJFE will continue to transform dining practices, and establish more sustainable and humane food sourcing, as the norm in Jewish spaces. 

Formerly the Director of JIFA, CJFE Executive Director Rabbi Melissa Hoffman writes, “Over the eight years Farm Forward incubated JIFA as one of its programs, culminating as JIFA’s partner and fiscal sponsor in this launch, our close work with Farm Forward made a deep impact both practically and philosophically on JIFA & CJFE. Practically, CJFE would not exist if not for the support and guidance JIFA received from Farm Forward. Philosophically, we continue to be proud to serve as a vehicle to bring Farm Forward’s values and experience transforming the food system to Jewish institutions, as a model for change for other religious communities.”

CJFE will carry on JIFA’s legacy of sparking inquiry into topics of food justice through the lens of long and evolving Jewish traditions and values, while strengthening communities in the process. We celebrate that CJFE’s three inaugural staff members are all former staff of JIFA (under the incubation of Farm Forward), that two of its Board members, Lisa Apfelberg and Ilana Braverman, are similarly former JIFA staff, and that a third Board member, Dr. Aaron Gross, is Farm Forward’s founder and CEO. 

This is not the first time that Farm Forward has spun off a new nonprofit organization. If the wild success of Better Food Foundation and Greener by Default are any guide, CJFE will be a force to reckon with in the years to come.

To learn more about CJFE and stay apprised of their work, head over to their website (check out that logo!) and add your info to the “Stay in the Know” form at the bottom of any page.

Three U.S. Senators, working closely with Farm Forward, have urged the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) to strengthen its guidelines on animal welfare and environmental labeling claims, citing widespread deception in food marketing that harms both consumers and independent farmers.

In a letter addressed to USDA Deputy Under Secretary Sandra Eskin, Senators Richard Blumenthal, Cory A. Booker, and Sheldon Whitehouse outlined serious concerns about the current guidelines. The letter notes that the guideline “falls short of what is needed to protect producers and consumers from the unfair misuse of animal welfare and animal-raising claims.” 

Farm Forward, which helped draft the letter, strongly supports these Senators’ efforts to reform labeling practices, and has additionally called for mandatory testing requirements for “antibiotic free” claims.

The Senators emphasized that 78 percent of consumers pay premium prices for products with higher welfare claims, while 85 percent believe the government should establish and enforce clear definitions for animal welfare labels. However, the current guidelines allow major agricultural corporations to exploit these labels without meaningful verification.

The letter quotes an Indiana turkey farmer’s statement to the New York Times of how higher welfare producers like him are disadvantaged by the prevalence of mega-corporations’ misleading labels: “Big Ag has co-opted and bastardized every one of our messages … When they use a fancy label with absolutely meaningless adjectives, there’s just no way we can compete.” Humanewashing labels undermine independent farmers who invest in implementing the actual animal-raising practices they advertise.

The Senators proposed three key recommendations, which Farm Forward endorses:

1. Mandatory third-party certifications for animal welfare claims like “humane” and “humanely raised”
2. Stronger definitions for terms such as “free-range,” “grassfed,” and “pasture-raised”
3. Prohibition of inherently misleading negative claims, such as “hormone-free” labels on poultry products where hormone use is already illegal

In addition, Farm Forward calls for mandatory testing of products labeled as “antibiotic free.” Currently, these labels often rely solely on producers’ unverified claims, which at times blatantly mislead consumers about antibiotic use in meat production. Perdue, which touts their leadership on antibiotic stewardship, vocally opposes both mandatory on-farm testing by the USDA and sensitive testing at slaughterhouses, raising serious questions about their commitment and transparency.

“At a time when our nation is losing independent farms at an alarming rate, we cannot allow mislabeled products to continue tipping the scales in favor of further consolidation,” the Senators wrote, emphasizing that major agricultural corporations cannot be trusted to self-regulate.

With Farm Forward, these senators find self-evident the importance of protecting the integrity of food labelling, ensuring fair competition in the agricultural sector, and providing consumers with accurate information about their food choices.

To supplement the Senators’ letter, Farm Forward—along with Consumer Reports, ASPCA, Compassion in World Farming, Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT), and George Washington School of Public Health Milken Institute’s Antibiotic Resistance Action Center—wrote a letter to USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) calling for the following actions, among others:

• FSIS should prohibit use of negative antibiotic use claims on products from animals that test positive for antibiotics
• FSIS should require regular testing for all negative antibiotic use claims, not only for new applications but also for companies already approved for these claims and selling in the marketplace
• FSIS should require producers whose product tests positive for antibiotics to demonstrate how they have adequately addressed the root causes of the problem before they are allowed to resume making the claim
• USDA should conduct and report publicly on its own testing for antibiotics on all food-animal species for all products labeled with negative antibiotic use claims
• Following a public comment period and participation from all relevant stakeholders, FSIS should codify minimum standards for all animal-raising claims, rather than continuing to employ incredibly vague definitions that allow a huge spectrum of systems to use the same raising claims, failing consumers and producers alike
• FSIS should require (not simply recommend) ongoing third-party verification to substantiate label claims concerning antibiotic, environmental/carbon, and animal welfare claims
• FSIS should provide financial and technical assistance to small producers to help them access meaningful third-party certification
• FSIS should set clear definitions of environmental-related claims such as “regeneratively raised”, “raised using regenerative agriculture practices”, “sustainably raised”, “carbon neutral”, “low-carbon” and “environmentally responsible”
• FSIS should prohibit the recently approved “Low-Carbon Beef” claim as inherently misleading, since conventional beef production emits more greenhouse gasses than any other food product

Farm Forward will continue to work alongside legislators and other stakeholders to advocate for essential reforms in food labeling practices. Label integrity for environmental, animal raising, and antibiotics claims will help not only the environment, animal welfare, and public health, but also consumers and independent farmers. Having labels that mean what the public believes they mean will be win-win for everyone—at least, everyone who’s not trying to scam the system. We’ve seen recent progress, with the USDA recommending voluntary verification for some label claims. It’s time for USDA to turn those recommendations into requirements.

This was originally a press release sent out on May 23, 2024

UPDATE: Farm Forward’s Investigation into Alexandre Farm Triggers Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department Investigation, Loss of Certified Humane Status, Changes from Organic Retailers; New Videos, Photos Released as Investigation Continues.

Pressure is building on Alexandre Farm a month after the release of Farm Forward’s investigation into their harmful and inhumane dairy farming practices as new alarming photos and videos emerge.

Since the release of an extensive investigation last month revealing Alexandre Family Farm’s animal abuse, selling of diseased animals for human consumption, and polluting farm practices, pressure has been building on the once widely endorsed “organic” dairy farm, with many businesses and organizations moving to withdraw their support:

• Whole Foods Market took down a major marketing campaign (archived here, current link is dead) featuring Alexandre Family Farm as a beacon for “restarting dairy” and referring to the Alexandres as “environmental stewards;”
• Alec’s Ice Cream, which relies on Alexandre dairy, apparently took down and removed the Our Impact page from its website, which claimed that Alexandre is “proving that cows actually help reverse climate change;”
• The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department opened an animal abuse investigation into Alexandre Farm, and Farm Forward has offered to provide eyewitness testimony;
• Certified Humane, one of the most widely available humane certifications, has pulled their certification of Alexandre Family Farm;
• Regenerative Organic Alliance suspended Alexandre’s certification after their own investigation found standards violations; and
• Providore Fine Foods in Portland, Oregon, ended their relationship with Alexandre Family Farm as a result of the investigation.

Portions of the report were included in a major story released by The Atlantic that corroborated many of Farm Forward’s findings. The article was one of the top shared stories on The Atlantic’s website for several days.

Today, Farm Forward has also released several new videos and photos that prove abuse and neglect of Alexandre Family Farm continued as recently as March 2024, the same month that Alexandre learned that Farm Forward planned to release a report alleging the farm’s widespread abuse. We hoped that Alexandre might acknowledge the harms it’s caused and make immediate structural changes to address their ongoing animal welfare issues. Instead, Alexandre continues to deflect, deceive, and mistreat cows. If Alexandre insists on moving ahead with no changes, the question becomes, how will other companies, certifiers, and advocates respond to their commitment to abuse and corruption?

Farm Forward Executive Director Andrew deCoriolis stated, “Alexandre Farm responding to our investigation by doubling down on their lies to consumers flies in the face of the values Alexandre claims to stand for. Despite its denials, we’ve received new evidence that Alexandre has continued the mistreatment, neglect, and abuse our report described. And at the same time, Alexandre has knowingly deceived consumers, continuing to market their products with logos claiming Certified Humane and Regenerative Organic Certified — certifications that pulled or suspended Alexandre. Unfortunately, this kind of ongoing humanewashing is both common and tolerated within the industry. While retailers’ quiet changes to marketing may mean fewer consumers purchase Alexandre’s products, we need retailers and food companies to take bolder action to hold companies accountable for abusing animals and misleading consumers. At this point, companies that continue to do business with Alexandre are supporting the mistreatment of animals and knowingly deceiving their own customers.”

Concerned consumers can continue to support Farm Forward’s push for change by signing up to join its campaign. Animal welfare certifications did not prevent these abuses, and most appear to be broken, so Farm Forward also asks conscientious consumers to consider rejecting dairy products altogether.

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(Photo by Justin Maxon for The Atlantic)

When we released our investigative report Dairy Deception: Corruption and Consumer Fraud at Alexandre Family Farm (Alexandre), and The Atlantic published their own article, we knew that Alexandre would have to respond.

We hoped that Alexandre might acknowledge the harms they’ve caused and make immediate structural changes to address their ongoing animal welfare issues. Instead, Alexandre has continued to deflect and deceive. And despite having been tipped off that the report was coming, new video evidence suggests they continued to mistreat cows.

First the Alexandres tried to undermine the credibility of Annie Lowrey, the journalist who wrote about our investigation in The Atlantic, characterizing her a “self-described radical vegan.” This smear seems to intentionally confuse her public comments critiquing radical vegans with her self-description of being “vegan, if an imperfect and non-strident one.” Along with getting basic facts wrong, the smear fails to address that Lowrey is a prolific journalist with a strong track record of economic and political reporting. Even if you believe the Alexandres’ smear that Lowrey is biased (and we don’t), the Alexandres still haven’t responded to the hard evidence—photographs, videos, affidavits, and whistleblower testimony, all of which point to systemic animal suffering. What does Lowrey’s diet have to do with photos of calves who were left to die isolated in dirty hutches? What does it have to do with the Alexandres gluing a patch over the eye of a cow with eye cancer so they can hide the illness and send her to auction? The answer is nothing.

The Alexandres point to the fact that they offer farm tours to claim that our allegations must be untrue. They fail to mention that they give tours of only one of their five farms, and don’t give people access to the entire farm. They also fail to mention that only one of their farms is certified regenerative, the smallest show farm  holds approximately 220 cows, while their other operations average five times as many.

How do tours of a small show farm disprove the dozens of specific incidents and conditions uncovered in our report? What does giving farm tours have to do with the photo of a cow being dragged on concrete by a skid loader, or the evidence that Alexandre cut off the horns of 800 cows with a Sawzall and no pain management, or any of the dozens of other claims we make about Alexandre’s abuse, neglect, and mistreatment of animals? Again, the answer is nothing.

Immediately upon finding out that Farm Forward planned to publish a report with allegations of abuse, Alexandre had their law firm send us an intimidating letter. So why then didn’t they instruct their law firm to send us a “cease and desist” to stop us from speaking about them? Or even sue us for defamation? Why have they still not, when more than a month has passed since we published the report? Simple—their lawyers have likely told them that to win a defamation case they have to prove that Farm Forward’s allegations are untrue.

Our report contained dozens of images and dozens of allegations of Alexander’s animal abuse and neglect. Tellingly, Alexandre has not publicly stated that any specific image or allegation in our report is staged, doctored, forged, false, untrue or inaccurate. Not one.

When Blake Alexandre was presented with evidence of animal abuse he explained to Annie Lowrey that “stuff happens.” It is dismaying to report that “stuff” at Alexandre—mistreatment that the Alexandres try to downplay or deflect—has continued.

New evidence shows ongoing abuse 

Alexandre’s abuses and deceptions have continued well into 2024, with no sign of abating. Even as we were writing the report, whistleblowers continued to video and photograph Alexandre cows in dismal conditions. These new videos and photographs show cows suffering from many of the same types of welfare issues that our report documents in detail going as far back as 2017. The videos show cows continue to suffer with maladies like:

• cows dehorned by someone cutting through innervated tissue, in one case still actively bleeding, which a large animal veterinarian who works in the dairy industry noted of the “flat faced bloody end” that “the flat face of the severed tip is typical of a horn that has been recently removed incompletely via saw;”
• lameness, sometimes severe;
• poor body condition, which a vet stated “could be due to chronic pain and lameness, malnutrition, or other unknown chronic disease.”

~ The following photos and videos contain material that audiences may find distressful. Viewer discretion is advised ~ 

On April 11th, Farm Forward released the results of a comprehensive investigation into Alexandre Family Farms, a leading certified organic, humane, and “regenerative” dairy company.

The investigation uncovered systematic animal abuse and likely violations of several certification standards. Farm Forward reviewed more than a thousand videos and photos, conducted extensive interviews with whistleblowers, and witnessed conditions on Alexandre farms firsthand. What emerged was a pattern of systematic welfare and environmental issues, driven from the top.

Our report was covered in detail in The Atlantic by political and economic reporter Annie Lowrey.

In the week following our posting the report, much happened, including:

• Annie Lowrey’s tweet about The Atlantic’s article received over 1 million views.
• The Atlantic’s editors selected and publicized the story as the “One Story to Read Today.”
• All Alexandre products had been removed from the ASPCA’s Shop With Your Heart.
• All Alexandre products had been removed from FindHumane.com
• Alec’s Ice Cream, which relies on Alexandre dairy, appeared to have taken down and removed from its site navigation its Our Impact page, which claimed that regenerative farming “improves the lives of animals,” that your eating Alec’s Ice Cream is “positively changing our planet for a better future,” and that Alexandre is “proving that cows actually help reverse climate change.”
• Whole Foods Market appeared to have taken down its Restarting Dairy page, which referred to the Alexandres as “environmental stewards,” proudly noted that “Whole Foods Market has been working with the Alexandres for over a decade,” and included a video showing hundreds of calf hutches in which Alexandre admits isolating baby cows for months—with no relief and no ability to set one foot outside—as its standard practice.

Farm Forward is heartened to know that so many in the public, in other advocacy groups, and even among major companies, are already taking our investigation’s extensive, detailed, and highly concerning findings seriously.

Stay tuned in and sign our petition to tell retailers that purchase Alexandre dairy to stop humanewashing.

Our investigation of fraud, deception, and animal welfare abuses at Alexandre Family Farm (Alexandre) revealed that Alexandre’s national reputation for high animal welfare is largely a mirage. It is highly likely that milk sold across the country—including in products like toddler formula and ice cream—came from abused, neglected, and mistreated cows who were allowed to linger in their suffering. Maddeningly, many of these products were sold under humane labels that ideally should signify something meaningful for animals.

This is a clear case of humanewashing: when marketing and certifications create an image of exceptional animal treatment meant to assuage consumers, despite the reality being far more grim.

It’s no secret that “ethical” dairies like Alexandre are used to market the entire industry to consumers, giving a halo of respectability and credibility to the very factory farm corporations that make cruelty and abuse endemic. But the corruption at Alexandre has spread further, as its lies rippled not only through the organic, higher welfare dairy market but beyond.

Alexandre’s “ethical dairy” status has been used to lend a veneer of respectability to natural food retailers like Whole Foods Market, food companies like Alec’s Ice Cream and Cheddies Crackers, and even baby and children’s food companies like Serenity Kids and Once Upon a Farm. All of these companies actively use Alexandre’s halo of respectability to entice conscientious consumers to buy their own products. Alexandre’s humanewashing stains a swath of companies and products that perpetuate Alexandre’s deceptive claims.

Whole Foods Market named Alexandre a “Supplier of the Year” in 2021, and markets its partnership with Alexandre as “Restarting Dairy”—likely an effort to leverage Alexandre’s reputation to improve the public image of dairy, which has been declining over the years. Whole Foods proudly showcases a video with Alexandre co-owner Blake Alexandre, who notes that seeing Alexandre’s products on Whole Foods shelves “gives us a tremendous sense of pride and it also highlights the fact that we’re making a difference. It’s a small difference, but what we’re doing here on the farm is contributing in a positive way to the betterment of our society and humanity.”1

Jarringly, that same flashy video can’t conceal some of Alexandre’s inhumane practices. The video inadvertently documents cows with extremely low body condition scores (suggesting disease and/or malnutrition), as well as hundreds of plastic calf hutches (widely seen as inhumane)2345 where Alexandre isolates calves from their mothers, other cows, and other calves. Alexandre’s hutches do not even include the standard patch of ground in front that would allow calves to go outside; a veterinary expert who reviewed our report noted that hutches were never meant to be used as cages, and “calves not able to step outside their hutches is a horrific perversion of use.” Even Whole Foods Market’s rosy portrayal of Alexandre unintentionally reveals systemic and unnecessary suffering.

Update! Following the release of our report, Whole Foods Market appears to have taken down its Restarting Dairy page that referred to the Alexandres as “environmental stewards,” proudly noted that “Whole Foods Market has been working with the Alexandres for over a decade.”

In addition to supplying cows’ milk to Whole Foods, Alexandre sells it to food manufacturers, including baby food and kids’ snack companies and leading organic cheese, cracker, and ice cream companies. Alexandre promotes a partnership with Serenity Kids, which sells baby food and “toddler formula” (and according to the Serenity Kids website its toddler formula “meets FDA nutritional requirements for infant formula”).6 Serenity Kids notes that its formula’s milk ingredients come from Alexandre, “which is known for its quality, ethical practices.” Serenity’s President and Co-Founder Joe Carr glowingly recounts in a video featured on Serenity’s YouTube,

At Serenity Kids we support American family farmers that treat their animals ethically … We are just super excited to have now created a product that proves that you can make formula … created in a way that’s great for the planet and great for the animals. -Joe Carr, President and Co-Founder, Serenity Kids7

Once Upon a Farm was co-founded by actor Jennifer Garner. A recipient of the Clean Label Project’s “Purity Award,” until recently Once Upon a Farm produced only completely plant-based foods for infants, toddlers, and children. In January 2024 it announced that it will incorporate Alexandre’s products into some of its foods marketed to kids 12 months and older,8 noting (correctly) that Alexandre is “the leading regenerative organic certified dairy farm in the U.S.” Once Upon a Farm products are sold at Whole Foods, Target and Costco.

Alexandre also supplies to Rumiano Cheese, which claims “a deep commitment to … animal welfare”9 and sells Organic cheese to thousands of grocery stores nationwide, including grocery giants like Safeway, Vons, Whole Foods, and Costco. Rumiano boasts that their cheese “benefits the animals and consumers by helping produce healthy and humane dairy products.”10 Rumiano Cheese buys milk from milk suppliers like Organic West that process milk from  Alexandre and resell it to a wide variety of outlets.

It doesn’t end there, but continues with prominent relationships with food companies like Alec’s Ice Cream, which markets “the first-ever regenerative organic ice cream—one that’s improving our world through the way it’s created” and that “improves the lives of animals.”11

Update! Following the release of our report, Alec’s Ice Cream appears to have taken down and removed from its site navigation its Our Impact page, which claimed that regenerative farming “improves the lives of animals,” that its products are “positively changing our planet for a better future,” and that Alexandre is “proving that cows actually help reverse climate change.”

Cheddies Crackers, which differentiates its products in large part by marketing them as Certified Humane and Regenerative Organic Certified. In addition to stating “Happy cows make the best milk,” Cheddies notes on its homepage,

Our cheese comes from regenerative farms, like the Alexandre Family Farm in California. These farms are like VIP clubs for cows – they get the royal treatment. -Cheddies Crackers website

All of these suppliers use Alexandre’s certifications and marketing to differentiate their products, trying to convince a public that is increasingly skeptical of cows’ dairy products because of their health, animal welfare, and environmental impacts that it’s acceptable—even beneficial—to eat their products. In the marketing language of one of Alexandre’s buyers, “Every time you enjoy Alec’s ice cream, you’re making a positive impact.”12

In other words, Alexandre’s deception is propagated in the market by the companies that use Alexandre’s products and reputation to hide the ubiquity of the ethically repugnant practices that are virtually unavoidable in dairy, given the present structure of the industry.13

Taking Action

Below is a list of companies that sell Alexandre products or source them for ingredients. Farm Forward asks these companies to cut ties with Alexandre and if possible reformulate to take cows’ milk out of their products. We will update you on how each company responds to our request.

• Whole Foods Market
  • Whole Foods Market stopped marketing Alexandre products.
• Once Upon a Farm
• Serenity Kids
  • A day after receiving our outreach in April, Serenity wrote to note that they had opened their own investigation as a result of our report and would take appropriate action based on what they uncover. Almost four months later, they still claim that their investigation is “ongoing.”
• Alec’s Ice Cream
  • Alec’s Ice Cream, which relies on Alexandre dairy, has taken down and removed from its site navigation its Our Impact page, which claimed that regenerative farming “improves the lives of animals,” that its products are “positively changing our planet for a better future,” and that Alexandre is “proving that cows actually help reverse climate change.”
• Cheddies Crackers
• Rumiano Cheese
• United Natural Foods (UNFI)
• Providore
  • The natural food store completely has dropped Alexandre as a supplier as a result of our investigation.
• Luke’s Local
  • The premium grocery retailer in San Francisco with three locations has cancelled its orders of all Alexandre Family Farm products.
• Walt’s Wholesale Meats
  • Walt’s, which specializes in slaughtering dairy cows for meat for human consumption, has stopped accepting all cows from Alexandre Family Farm.
• Gus’s Community Market
  • The California grocery with five locations has pulled its Alexandre promos and reduced Alexandre’s product lines and shelf space as a result of the investigation’s findings.

For more updates, including certifications that have delisted or suspended Alexandre, see our Timeline of Alexandre Dairy Investigation.

Farm Forward’s recent investigation and report describing humanewashing and fraud by what is arguably the nation’s leading certified organic, humane, and “regenerative” dairy, Alexandre Family Farms, suggests serious problems with USDA Organic dairy. Our report was covered in The Atlantic.

While the ideals of organic agriculture are undoubtedly positive, organic certifications of dairy and other animal products have often functioned as marketing tools that mask inhumane practices. Most consumers assume that organic products do not come from factory farms but almost all animal products certified as organic are produced on factory farms where animals suffer at least as much as they do on conventional operations. Disturbingly, there is reason to think that animals raised on organic dairies may in some ways actually suffer more.

Organic standards incentivize suffering

The abuse, neglect, and suffering documented on Alexandre farms isn’t just the result of failures to enforce Organic standards. The troubling reality is that some of the suffering we documented was a direct result of incentives created by the standards. In other words, suffering is a feature of the Organic program, not a bug.

“Organic standards are one of the biggest sources of animal suffering in the US today.” — Rancher whistleblower

One main driver of animal suffering is how the Organic program regulates the use of antibiotics. The USDA Organic program prohibits farmers from using antibiotics to treat illnesses. The intention of this standard is to prevent farmers from overusing antibiotics to compensate for crowded and unsanitary conditions, which are common on industrial farms. Instead, the Organic program requires that farmers use organic approved treatments. Unfortunately, many of the organic approved treatments, things like homeopathic remedies, aren’t effective at treating illnesses and injuries common in industrial dairy operations.  If organic treatments fail, the Organic program technically requires that farmers use any necessary treatment, including antibiotics, but with the caveat that any animal treated with antibiotics can’t be sold as organic.

And therein lies the incentive for suffering. Organic farmers receive a price premium for organic products and if they treat an animal with an antibiotic they lose that premium. In other words, it’s more profitable to allow a sick cow fester with illness and injury than it is to treat her.

It’s clear from our investigation that across the organic dairy industry, withholding antibiotic treatment to retain the price premium for organic milk and meat is commonplace, and that enforcement of the USDA’s provision that cows who require antibiotics should be treated with them is virtually nonexistent.

Conclusion

While our report notes how the organic dairy industry might be reformed, we are not confident that such reforms will meaningfully change the dynamics in the industry that are causing widespread suffering. What seems clear is that the structure of the modern dairy industry, including animals raised on organic farms, causes routine suffering that the certifications seem unable, or unwilling, to resolve. Given that reality, conscientious consumers should avoid cow dairy altogether.

This week Farm Forward published a new investigation and report describing humanewashing and fraud by a leading certified organic, humane, and “regenerative” dairy, Alexandre Family Farm. Our report was covered in The Atlantic.

For several years, Farm Forward has been sounding the alarm about the meat and dairy industry’s growing attempts to humanewash—using deceptive imagery and marketing to mislead consumers by creating the false appearance of high standards for animal treatment. Key to this humanewashing are certifications that market humane treatment and sustainable farming practices.

Our report exposes hundreds of likely individual violations of the USDA Organic and Certified Humane programs by Alexandre dairy. The fact that Alexandre remains certified by these programs and others raises serious questions about whether those programs are able to ensure even basic levels of welfare for farmed animals.

Our investigation suggests that leading certifications are being used to prop up a fundamentally inhumane and unethical agricultural sector—the factory farm dairy industry. Our position is simple: if this is the best the “humane” dairy industry has to offer, it’s time to ditch dairy.

Certifications failed to take action when notified

The intention of certifications like USDA Organic, Certified Humane, and Regenerative Organic Certified is, fundamentally, to convince consumers that they can trust that a product meets their values. Most consumers don’t have access to the kind of information or expertise necessary to make informed judgements about the practices of any particular farm. Even people who shop at farmers markets, where they can talk to a farmer and learn more about their practices, can’t really know what’s happening on the farm 24/7.

One of the primary functions of a certification is to fill that information gap. The most basic contract that certifications are fulfilling is to ensure farms follow the standards of the program.

Farm Forward’s investigation finds evidence that USDA Organic and Certified Humane are not meeting that basic function of a certification. Whistleblowers reported to Farm Forward multiple issues with the certifying agencies, describing how auditors would call ahead of time to tell farm staff they were coming, giving them enough time to move sick or injured cows and hide evidence that they were violating standards. One whistleblower got the impression from more than one auditor that they were there more as a tourist to enjoy the farm tour than they were there to ensure the farms followed the program standards.

More troubling is the fact that whistleblowers notified staff of both USDA Organic and Certified Humane of ongoing problems at Alexandre to no avail. Farm Forward staff reviewed documents provided by whistleblowers that confirmed that as early as 2022, senior investigators at the National Organic Program were given video evidence that Alexandre was violating Organic standards. The NOP staff confirmed for the whistleblower that the conditions of many Alexandre cows were disturbing and that it was against Organic regulations to withhold medical treatment from sick animals. Months after the whistleblower first reported the issues to the NOP, the investigation was closed, and as far as Farm Forward is aware, no action was taken. Farm Forward confirmed that the same issues reported to NOP—sick and injured cows being withheld medical treatment—are ongoing and continue as recently as January of 2024.

Whistleblowers made similar complaints to Certified Humane staff and as far as we are aware, Certified Humane never conducted an investigation nor took action to correct the ongoing issues at Alexandre.

Even worse, there is reason to believe that Organic standards actually incentivize animal cruelty, which you can read about in the second article in this series.

Protecting consumers from deceptive labels on meat products—i.e., humanewashing—should be a high priority for regulatory bodies and those tasked with protecting the public from unscrupulous marketing practices. As such, Farm Forward sent around a dozen state attorneys general a letter imploring them to encourage retailers in their state to improve antibiotic testing and accountability practices among their suppliers.

Over the summer, Farm Forward released the results of our collaboration with polling firm Data for Progress concerning the practice of humanewashing. The survey of 1,100 American adults revealed an escalating demand from the public for transparency and accountability in meat labeling and that meat companies that humanewash risk eroding the trust and support of their customers. Further revealed was the importance to Americans that companies ensure the accuracy and verifiability of their claims about animal welfare and antibiotic usage.

Our report with Data for Progress comes in the wake of a class action lawsuit against Whole Foods Market (WFM) alleging the national grocer falsely advertised its beef as “no antibiotics, ever,” after antibiotic residue was found in WFM’s beef supply chain.

Then, earlier this year, the USDA announced new guidelines for companies seeking to label their products as “humanely raised,” “free range,” and “raised without antibiotics.” These new guidelines include a recommendation that meat companies test animals who are going to be marketed as “raised without antibiotics.” Still, the USDA has not yet required meat companies to test their products (e.g., for antibiotic residue).

The USDA’s announcement is an important step in the right direction, but more needs to be done to encourage grocery retailers and meat companies to ensure their products are accurately marketed. To this end, in our letter to state attorneys general, we informed them of these developments, and—in order to protect consumers better—we asked them to encourage retailers in their state to improve testing for antibiotic residue in their meat products.

Specifically, we hope retailers will:

1. Require that their suppliers conduct regular testing on a statistically significant percentage of their meat products labeled “raised without antibiotics” for the presence of antibiotics, using reliable and independent laboratories, testing with a high level of sensitivity (i.e., parts per billion);
2. Implement corrective actions for suppliers who fail to meet “raised without antibiotics” standards and policies.

The time to implement these testing practices is perfect—the USDA just released the details of its new pilot testing program for beef marketed as “raised without antibiotics” in an effort to strengthen transparency and verification practices. Read the full text of the letter here.

In June, the USDA announced modest, but encouraging, reforms to the regulations around meat labeling, offering new  guidelines companies must follow if they want to label their products as “humanely raised,” “free range,” or “raised without antibiotics.” These changes are a promising development considering how widespread the phenomenon of humanewashing is across the meat industry. In fact, our recent collaboration with Data for Progress revealed that deceptive labeling of the meat industry is central to how the industry maintains public support; for example, the results showed that the majority of American consumers report that they would be more skeptical of meat companies upon learning that a company engaged in humanewashing.

While the new guidelines from the USDA are a step in the right direction, we think that much more needs to be done for meat labels to meet the public’s expectations. Specifically, we think that the current USDA proposal to “recommend” companies submit more evidence to verify their animal-raising claims and “encourage” third-party certifications to verify such claims, is not sufficient to protect consumers from misleading labels. We think, for example, meat labeled “raised without antibiotics” must be required to submit regular, high-sensitivity testing for antibiotics—something that our recent survey confirms the public already expects.

In response to the USDA’s announcement, Farm Forward sent a letter to Sandra Eskin, the Deputy Undersecretary of Food Safety at the USDA, sharing our concerns and offering actionable recommendations that would help ensure consumer trust in meat labeling. Specifically, we recommended that the USDA:

1. Require meaningful third-party certifications to verify animal raising claims like “humanely raised” and “pasture raised;”

2. Update labeling expectations to require a comprehensive written explanation of a producer’s interpretation of the claim and how their practices significantly surpass the minimum industry standards;

3. Strengthen the definition of “pasture raised” poultry to align it better with consumer expectations (i.e., slow-growing birds living their lives on vegetated pasture);

4. Require companies applying to label their meat as “raised without antibiotics” to verify that the claim is accurate through high-sensitivity testing.

We will continue to work with the USDA to ensure that animal raising claims on meat at least meet consumer expectations. You can read the full letter to the USDA here.

Humanewashing—the collection of marketing tools employed by meat companies that lead to widespread and foundational misunderstandings about animal welfare in animal agriculture—is an existential threat to efforts to move beyond factory farming. For the last few years, Farm Forward has commissioned large-scale surveys of American residents focused on consumer deception and its consequences. Consistently, the surveys’ results show that the expectations that consumers have about what certain labels signify—whether it be about animal welfare, antibiotic use, or environmental sustainability—are not aligned with the facts on the ground.

This year, we partnered with the research firm Data for Progress to test some of our hypotheses about consumer understandings of everything from “pasture raised” to Global Animal Partnership’s “Animal Welfare Certified” label. The results of our 1,100-person survey of American adults indicate that consumers have baseline expectations for meat companies and retailers that aren’t being met, and that companies risk eroding the trust of their consumers if they continue to humanewash.

Humanewashing

To get a deeper understanding of how Americans view animal product labels, we tested the appeal of different animal raising claims and certifications, including but not limited to “humanely raised,” “antibiotic free,” and “pasture raised.” Americans, by and large, viewed such labels favorably, often with at least 3 in 4 viewing them positively. This would be a fine result if such labels actually meant what they claim to; instead, they often lack meaningful substantiation and regulation. Third-party animal welfare labels that are also deeply flawed, like Animal Welfare Certified and One Health Certified, were perceived less favorably (likely due to less familiarity) but were still viewed positively by around 50 percent of American adults.

For another question, respondents were presented with an image of an actual Animal Welfare Certified (GAP Step 2) poultry farm: half said that the image matched their expectations either “not very well” (30 percent) or “not at all” (20 percent). This result aligns with the conclusion from our 2021 survey that significant numbers of consumers were incorrect about what labels like “cage-free” and American Humane Certified actually mean. For example, in that survey, nearly 40 percent of respondents thought that a cage-free label signifies that a chicken was raised continuously on pasture; it signifies nothing close to that.

These results exemplify one of the most common manifestations of humanewashing: the tendency of the reality behind animal welfare labels to clash sharply with consumer expectations.

Consumer Trust

Meat companies and grocery stores should take note of these results. We also directly tested levels of trust in response to the humanewashing phenomena: After reading the definition of humanewashing, a majority of adults (57 percent) said that learning that a company engaged in humanewashing would make them much or somewhat less likely to support their brand. Misleading consumers might work for a time, but it is unlikely to continue to succeed as consumers become more aware of standard industry factory farm practices.

We also thought it was important to test a specific, identifiable instance of humanewashing: Whole Foods’ “raised without antibiotics” marketing, the subject of a class action lawsuit. After learning that beef sold at Whole Foods and marketed as “raised without antibiotics,” Animal Welfare Certified and USDA Organic tested positive for an antibiotic, 71 percent of respondents said it would make them lose trust in their grocery store if they were discovered to be selling products treated with antibiotic drugs marketed as “raised without antibiotics.”

After being exposed throughout the survey to information about misleading labeling, respondents became increasingly skeptical about the accuracy of animal product labels with regard to their animal welfare claims; the percentage of respondents who were skeptical of these labels—and thought they were often misleading—sharply increased from 49 percent at the beginning of the survey to 65 percent by its end. Put another way, when consumers learn more about what meat labeling and marketing actually mean, they are less supportive of companies that humanewash. Consumer distrust may create pressure advocates can use to push companies to better meet consumer expectations.

Transparency and Accountability

As mentioned above, the USDA requires little, if any, verification or substantiation of the animal-raising claims it approves for use. (The USDA’s recent move to rethink labeling guidelines is a step in the right direction). Currently, someone purchasing a meat product—say, one labeled “raised without antibiotics”—can never be certain that this is actually the case.

Accordingly, we also wanted to test Americans’ support for increased accountability in the meat industry. An overwhelming majority would support stronger regulations on this front: 88 percent of respondents said that it is either very important (57 percent) or somewhat important (31 percent) for companies to provide independently verified information about how they treat animals. Additionally, 81 percent of Americans support increasing the rigor of regulations for animal product labeling; the survey also found that there is widespread support for increasing the transparency and rigor of antibiotic labeling on meat products in particular, with 87 percent of Americans in favor. These popular changes would likely both reduce animal suffering and weaken the profitability and stability of the factory farm model, which relies on weak regulation.

Conclusion

Our partnership with Data for Progress has provided further evidence for something we’ve suspected for a while: there is a significant disconnect between consumer expectations and the reality of animal treatment in the meat industry. Beyond that, our results also showed that the revelation of this deception erodes the consumers’ trust in some of their favored grocery stores. This fact, alongside widespread support for stronger transparency and accountability within the meat industry, should be a wake-up call for retailers and meat producers that humanewashing can backfire and damage consumer trust in not only products but in the producers and retailers themselves.

Farm Forward’s online survey was conducted by Data For Progress from June 23 to 25, 2023. The total sample size was 1,149 U.S. adults. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all U.S. adults (aged 18+).

On Tuesday, July 25th, a federal judge in California ruled that the consumer protection lawsuit alleging Whole Foods Market falsely advertised its beef as “no antibiotics, ever” can proceed. In his first ruling on the case, U.S. District Judge John W. Holcomb concluded that one of the consumer plaintiffs can move forward with their claims of fraud, breach of warranty, and unjust enrichment. The lawsuit is based in part on Farm Forward’s investigation that found an antibiotic in beef labeled as “antibiotic free,” Organic and Animal Welfare Certified. The judge also denied Whole Foods’ motion to stay discovery, which was their attempt to stonewall. The ruling opens the door to Whole Foods turning over key information about their suppliers.

As the largest natural food retailer in America, the case against Whole Foods could have wide ranging impacts for farmed animals. We believe that retailers like Whole Foods which advertise their meat as “no antibiotics, ever” should be required to test and verify those claims to ensure they are accurate, something that the majority of consumers believe is already happening. Ensuring transparency and accountability in Whole Foods’ suppliers will push meat companies to make husbandry and operational changes that could significantly improve conditions for animals.

The ruling is validation of our recent work to expose humanewashing by retailers like Whole Foods. Farm Forward has long contended that humanewashing represents an existential threat to the growing movement to end factory farming and that increased scrutiny and transparency is a critical step to protect consumers and improve the lives of farmed animals.

The consumer class action could have wide ranging legal implications, creating legal liability for retailers that fail to meaningfully verify their claims and mislead the public. Ultimately, creating liability for companies that engage in humanewashing is essential to drive change in the industry. We will continue to update our followers on the case as it proceeds.

In 2022, Farm Forward joined a consumer class action lawsuit alleging Whole Foods is deceiving the public by marketing their beef products as “no antibiotics, ever.” Farm Forward took this extraordinary step after our investigation found an antibiotic in meat we purchased from Whole Foods that was marketed as “raised without antibiotics” and Animal Welfare Certified.

The case is now underway. In April, we had our first hearing with the judge in federal court in Orange County California, and we’re waiting on the first ruling. The evidence in the case is strong and we’re optimistic that the case will proceed, but anticipate that the judge may ask us to amend the complaint or submit additional evidence.

In the meantime, Farm Forward and the consumer plaintiffs have begun to produce evidence supporting our allegations, a process known as “discovery.” To date, we’ve produced hundreds of pages of evidence supporting our claims.

We’ve asked Whole Foods for information pertaining to the case. Information like the names of their suppliers and what steps they’ve taken to ensure that meat from animals who’ve been given antibiotics don’t show up on their shelves.

And Whole Foods’ response? Stonewalling.

Whole Foods is objecting to proceeding with discovery. It’s not a good sign that the largest natural retailer in the country, which built a reputation on being honest and transparent, won’t share even the most basic information with the public about who supplies their meat or give assurances that they’ve taken steps to ensure their marketing claims are true.

Farm Forward is ready to be transparent. We’ve taken the extraordinary, and highly unusual, step of making our discovery materials available to the public. Now you can see for yourself why we believe Whole Foods is deceiving the public.

We’re challenging Whole Foods to do the same. If you have nothing to hide, respond to our requests for information and make those documents available to the public.

If Whole Foods won’t be open and transparent, the public will be left to wonder, what is Whole Foods hiding?

The USDA announced changes to the guidelines meat companies must follow if they want to label their products as “humanely raised,” “free range,” or “raised without antibiotics.” Farm Forward has long been concerned that most, if not all, animal raising claims confuse the public and humanewash meat company practices. Farm Forward’s own 2021 consumer survey showed that nearly half (45 percent) of Americans think that labels that “certify high welfare” should guarantee that animals are always raised on pasture. However, we know that—regardless of the label you see on the package—finding products from animals raised on pasture is nearly impossible.

As it stands, most animal raising claims have no formal definition, and meat companies simply define the terms, often describing practices that are barely different from standard industry practices. Earlier this year, Farm Forward, along with the Animal Welfare Institute, encouraged Senators Blumenthal (D-CT) and Booker (D-NJ) to take action on this issue, and as a result, they championed a letter urging the USDA to better define and regulate animal raising claims to protect consumers and small farmers.

The need for reform to labeling couldn’t be more urgent, especially when it comes to the “raised without antibiotics” claim. Last year, Farm Forward’s antibiotics investigation revealed that a cattle product that was Certified Organic, Animal Welfare Certified, and “raised without antibiotics” tested positive for a prohibited antibiotic. This was followed by a peer-reviewed paper (and subsequent public attention) which found that 26 percent of cattle labeled as Animal Welfare Certified, which prohibits animals from being treated with antibiotics, came from a feedlot where at least one animal tested positive for antibiotics. The Animal Welfare Certified program is widely used by Whole Foods Market.

The USDA’s announcement today signaled a willingness to require meat companies labeling meat as “raised without antibiotics” to prove, through testing, that the claim is true, but a lot depends on the details. The USDA intends to conduct its own research, and it may still decide not to require testing. Testing is essential to ensure the “raised without antibiotics” claim is truthful. In our 2022 survey, 49 percent of respondents—the plurality—incorrectly thought that the “raised without antibiotics” label means that the product was tested for antibiotic residue. We hope the USDA will require testing and meet consumer expectations.

The steps outlined in the USDA’s announcement—while encouraging—may not be enough to ensure that animal raising claims are meaningful. For example, USDA said they would “recommend” companies submit more evidence to verify their claims and would “encourage” third-party certifications to verify the claims. Neither of those are binding requirements, and given how widespread deception is on grocery store shelves today, anything less may end up missing the mark.

The USDA’s announcement encourages—but does not require—third-party certification, meaning that meat companies may be left to police themselves. Even if the USDA does require third-party certification, it’s critical that they disqualify industry-controlled humanewashing certifications like One Health Certified or American Humane as evidence that a company has indeed raised animals in more humane conditions. Until the USDA sets clear standards for claims like “humanely raised” that are meaningfully above industry standard, and those standards are verified by independent certifications, consumers should be wary when buying products with these labels.

Farm Forward will continue to fight humanewashing and push the USDA to better regulate meat labels to protect consumers and farmers. Join us to help us end humanewashing.

Last month, the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau (NAD)—an institution designed to bolster consumer trust in advertising by investigating claims made by businesses—recommended that One Health Certified (OHC) discontinue its animal welfare claims.

The NAD’s ruling is a major victory for our efforts to fight humanewashing from objectionable certifications created by the meat industry.

In a market bursting at the seams with misleading certifications, this ruling is a welcome step toward more accountability and integrity among meat producers.

What is One Health Certified?

One Health Certified is the brainchild of one the largest U.S. chicken companies and is the meat industry’s most recent efforts to greenwash, humanewash, and healthwash factory-farmed products. OHC is one of several certification schemes at the center of Farm Forward’s humanewashing campaign since late 2020. OHC uses the language of the legitimate One Health concept to assert its ostensible superiority for animals, health, and the environment. However, OHC enshrines bottom-of-the-barrel industry practices, particularly concerning animal welfare. Contrary to the welfare practices consumers expect from such a certification, OHC allows high stocking densities for poultry, provides no environmental enrichment, and utilizes fast growth for poultry. By any reasonable definition, an OHC farm is still a factory farm.

Farm Forward’s 2021 consumer survey shows that consumers mistakenly believe OHC ensures higher welfare conditions than factory farming norms. We found that 30 percent of Americans incorrectly think that the OHC label signifies that birds are raised on pasture. And 42 percent incorrectly believe that the label signifies that animals were subject to no physical modifications.

Unsubstantiated Animal Welfare Claims

The NAD’s recommendation that OHC discontinue its animal welfare claims aligns with Farm Forward’s view that OHC was created to confuse conscientious consumers. According to the NAD’s analysis, OHC “provided no evidence that its animal welfare standards meet or exceed the highest industry standards for animal care….”

This isn’t the first time OHC has been called out for its dubious claims: in late 2021, national grocer Giant Eagle announced that it would phase out OHC chicken from all of its stores following a dialogue with Farm Forward and after a coalition of dozens of interested groups came together to produce a multi-sector critique of OHC’s standards.

Grocery stores across the U.S. are awash with misleading labels that prevent consumers from making choices at grocery stores that align with their values. Help stop this deception by signing our petition to ALDI, urging the chain to drop the deceptive OHC label.

Read the full Better Business Bureau ruling here.

Today, Senator Blumenthal (D-CT), along with Senators Booker (D-NJ), Warren (D-MA), and Whitehouse (D-RI), sent a letter to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) asking them to review the integrity of animal welfare claims like “humanely raised” and “sustainably raised” on meat products. The letter cites a recently published Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) report documenting the USDA’s failure to regulate animal-raising claims on meat found in grocery stores. Over 80 percent of the animal-raising claims on meat and poultry products that AWI requested information about from the USDA had no, or inadequate, information submitted to the USDA for the approval of the claim. Farm Forward and AWI consulted with Senator Blumenthal’s office to make them aware of the findings of the study and to encourage them to take action with the USDA to protect consumers from humanewashing.

The USDA Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) is responsible for regulating all labels on meat and poultry products. FSIS is charged with ensuring label accuracy taking action when systemic mislabeling is uncovered. AWI’s report, along with Farm Forward’s own investigation into “raised without antibiotics” last year, highlight major failures by the USDA to protect the public.

AWI also uncovered documentation that producers submitted—purportedly to substantiate claims of “humanely raised” or “sustainably raised”—indicating that producers may not have gone beyond (dismal) industry standards. Many consumers would find this troubling, given the high expectations they have for meat and poultry products with animal welfare labels.

Farm Forward has long been critical of the USDA’s regulation of terms like “humanely raised” and “free range.” Since many animal-raising claims have no legal definition, producers create their own definitions. The new findings by AWI deepen our concern that the USDA’s failure to define animal-raising claims, and their apparent failures to regulate even the minimal standards that do exist, contribute to consumer confusion, harm higher welfare farmers, and ultimately harm farmed animals.

Accordingly, we’re calling on the USDA to define terms like “humanely raised,” “sustainably raised,” and “raised without antibiotics,” to ensure that, at minimum, those terms require companies to meet standards meaningfully higher than conventional industry practices. Labeling reform must also require that standards be verified through on-farm auditing and residue testing. Standardizing label terms and evaluating common animal-raising claims would make it more difficult for meat companies to use humanewashing tactics to sell their products.

Sign up today to help us continue the fight for better regulation of factory farms.

People commonly believe that kosher production is different from the rest of conventional industrial farming, and that animals raised and slaughtered for the kosher market are treated better than those destined for non-kosher markets. In reality, virtually all kosher products, including all those sold in grocery stores, come from factory farms with abysmal conditions. How do we know?

First, it’s important to understand that kosher certifications lack purview over how animals are bred, treated, and handled prior to slaughter. Second, kosher certification is a modern invention, created to respond to technological advancement in food production. Third, traditional kosher law existed in a different context with fundamentally different agricultural practices–kosher production today is part and parcel of the United States’ mainstream animal farming model, or CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations).

Most Animals Used in the Kosher Industry Live on CAFOs

Calculations from the USDA suggest that more than 99 percent of animals raised for food in the United States are raised on factory farms.((Percentage of confinement farms was calculated by the Sentience Institute.)) Broiler chickens, or birds raised specifically for meat production rather than egg-laying, account for over 90% of the land animals raised for food in the US.((The United States is the world’s leading chicken producer.)) Like the rest of the country, Jewish and kosher-keeping households that consume meat are mostly eating chickens—in quantities more than one hundred times what Americans ate per capita a century ago.((Striffler, Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favorite Food))

These are not your grandparents’ chickens; instead of breeding animals for resiliency outdoors, healthy immune systems, and strong bones and muscles, the trademark of factory-farmed chickens today is their highly manipulated genetics which cause them to grow unnaturally fast and so large that they struggle to support their own weight. There are no meaningful genetic differences between poultry raised for kosher and non-kosher markets. With the help of drugs, corporate-owned operations keep most birds alive long enough to reach market weight at 6-8 weeks–twice as fast as in the 1950s.

Kosher operations rely on industrial confinement systems that keep hundreds of thousands of birds indoors in filthy, crowded conditions—this is the only way companies can churn out the volume of meat they purvey on a regular basis. A steady supply of kosher chicken is made possible by companies like KJ Poultry, which slaughters 40,000 birds a day, Agri Star (formerly Agriprocessors), which slaughters 50,000 birds a day, and Empire Kosher, which slaughters 65,000 birds a day. And while the scale and speed at which workers process animals has real human health((For example, Iowa OSHA recently fined Agri Star for safety violations found after a February 2021 explosion injured two employees. Related hazards were cited in a reported worker injury just days before. )) and animal welfare costs, processing plants only represent a fraction of the production process. The jarring pace and scale of production begins with day-to-day operations at breeding houses and confined feeding facilities, over which kosher slaughter authorities have no direct supervision.

While kosher certification regulates slaughter, ultimately, it’s not how animals die that qualifies their lives as “factory farmed” but rather the conditions they lived in. The federal government defines a factory farm or CAFO based on the number of animal “units” living in a confined space for more than 45 days out of the year. Stocking density varies by species, but the cramped quarters of all CAFOs severely restricts animals’ freedom. While only 1,000 heads of cattle qualify as a CAFO, broiler chicken operations begin at 125,000—the human population of Hartford, Connecticut—and grow however large animal agriculture can manage, creeping ever closer to the one million mark. As dystopian as a poultry metropolis feels, the number of animals raised in densely populated cages, lots, and pens is only one troubling aspect of industrial animal agriculture.

This content was originally published by the Jewish Initiative for Animals (JIFA), a project of Farm Forward from 2016 through 2024. JIFA is now the Center for Jewish Food Ethics.

Jewish tradition has long regarded dairy as intrinsic to the definition of kosher law.

Dairy is symbolic of ethnogeographic roots (“a land flowing with milk and honey”) and connected to ritual on holidays such as Shavu’ot and Hanukkah. While the dairy source of our shepherd ancestors came primarily from small-scale herds of goats and sheep, most Jews now consume the most widely available commercial products from industrial dairies.

Like other farmed species, today most dairy cows do not become pregnant through natural mating; they’re forcibly impregnated through artificial insemination. After they give birth, they produce more milk than ever before due to intensive artificial selection enabled by DNA sequencing. Per capita milk production has doubled in the past forty years and continues to climb. If a dairy cow was producing just enough to feed her calf, she would only produce about one gallon of milk per day. Instead, the average American dairy cow now produces over 24,000 pounds of milk every year and averages more than 7.5 gallons of milk per day.

This unnaturally high milk load has created the dairy industry’s two biggest welfare issues, decade after decade: mastitis and lameness. These painful conditions are exacerbated by the living conditions inside factory farms where most American dairy cows live. Contrary to the happy pastoral scenes used in dairy advertising, over 90 percent of cows live almost exclusively inside barns on concrete floors slick with sewage, where their joints and hooves bear the weight of a full udder most of their adult lives. Mastitis is an udder infection, and factory farms’ high-humidity, low-ventilation environment promotes bacterial growth. Cows live in tie-stalls where they are tethered by the neck except when they are milked. This confinement severely limits opportunities for natural behaviors like exploring, socializing, and grooming. Industrial dairies are an animal welfare nightmare.

Convenience comes at a cost, both to cows and to the planet. Whether raised for meat or dairy, cows are leading greenhouse gas emitters. The processes required to raise them (e.g., alfalfa production for their feed) are very carbon-intensive, and the animals themselves generate methane and nitrous oxide in massive quantities. Milk’s water footprint hovers around 50 gallons for every cup, contributing heavily to droughts and dry-ups in the American West. Consider also that many gallons of milk are required to produce a finished dairy product such as cheese. Cheese consistently ranks as one of the worst foods for the climate, generating more GHGs than fish, poultry, or eggs.

In keeping up with our appetite for ice cream and asiago, dairy production shows no signs of slowing down. Just four months after giving birth, dairy cows are reimpregnated and will go through 4-5 pregnancies before being slaughtered, usually for ground beef around age four, though their lifespans would normally reach twenty years. Male calves are also sent to slaughter, as are about a quarter of female calves and any cows who exhibit infertility or whose milk production has declined. Given the stress, disease, and generally poor body condition of the average dairy cow, it’s little wonder that one in ten cows struggles to conceive. Those who do conceive don’t wean their young naturally because standard industry practice separates calves from their mothers within 24 hours of birth. Calves naturally wean at an average age of about eight months. Female calves become replacements, growing up to become the next generation of milk-producers.

From caring for animals’ well-being to protecting the Earth’s ecological balance, water resources, and climate, there are many Jewish values-based reasons to commit to alternatives to industrial dairy.

This content was originally published by the Jewish Initiative for Animals (JIFA), a project of Farm Forward from 2016 through 2024. JIFA is now the Center for Jewish Food Ethics.

From schnitzel to matzo ball soup, Jewish culinary tradition makes frequent use of chicken.

The birds have lived with Jewish communities for millennia, domesticated 4,000–10,000 years ago. Historically, however, chicken was never consumed in the quantities most people in the industrialized world eat today.

In 1948, the USDA and the US’s largest supermarket chain put on the ‘Chicken of Tomorrow’ contest. Their primary aim was to breed a chicken that grows faster while eating less feed, and they succeeded more than anyone expected. The winners of that contest went on to develop complex new “hybrid” breeding techniques never before used in the history of poultry production. Thus began an explosion in chicken production and popularity: the USDA calculates that chicken consumption has increased by 540 percent between 1910 and 2021.

Today, chickens raised for their meat are referred to as “broiler chickens” while those who produce eggs are “laying hens.” Although the two animals are technically the same—both G. gallus domesticus—each have different bodies with different issues due to bifurcation of the industries. Over the past 50+ years, factory farms have bred hundreds of generations of broiler chickens and laying hens, selecting genes so that the birds produce more meat or eggs, respectively.

Broilers have been aggressively bred for rapid muscle growth (“meat” being muscle), resulting in rampant lameness. Chickens have more than doubled in size over the past few decades, and deliberately breeding for high muscle-to-bone ratio means that chickens today are too heavy for their own skeletons to support. Organ stress is common, their hearts struggling to pump blood throughout such massive bodies. Birds normally suffer from degenerative joint disease, so they spend most of their time sitting or lying on waste-soaked litter. Factory farms don’t provide enrichment opportunities for the birds—let alone outdoor access—denying chickens the chance to perch or investigate as they naturally would. Broiler chickens are slaughtered around 7 weeks of age. Genetically healthy chickens, by contrast, can live out a natural lifespan of 10 or more years.

An estimated 10 billion broilers are killed in the US every year, and 70 billion worldwide. There is no legal limit to how large American chicken farms can be, and since agriculture favors economies of scale, a typical shed “houses” thousands of birds. With factory farms preferring to set up shop in rural areas, chicken populations normally outnumber neighboring human communities more than ten-to-one, leaving neighbors feeling powerless against industry interests. It’s not just birds who suffer from massive farms but nearby communities, waterways, and wildlife too. Moreover, the industry is rife with labor justice issues—from farmers who are coerced into indentured servitude to impoverished, primarily BIPOC and immigrant workers who endure some of the most dangerous jobs in slaughter and processing plants.

Factory farmed poultry also poses a public health threat to people everywhere, even though these chickens are produced far from the urban centers where they’re purchased by the millions. With hundreds of thousands of immunocompromised, genetically manipulated birds housed in filthy, crowded barns, industrial poultry farms are uniquely suited for generating new pathogens and potential pandemics. In fact, most of the influenza viruses with pandemic potential deemed “of special concern” by the CDC arose from commercial poultry operations. Scientists are keeping close watch on the current highly contagious H5N1 bird flu that has decimated egg production and hen populations (58 million birds have died or been euthanized to try to stop its spread.) Scientists are even developing vaccines for a potential human outbreak. Complicating health matters further, the chicken industry’s perpetual overuse of drugs, including antibiotics, is driving widespread antimicrobial resistance. As journalist Maryn McKenna reports, we may be turning back the clock on the pharmacological breakthroughs that revolutionized medicine and human health.

From animal welfare to labor justice to public health, there are many Jewish values-based reasons to commit to alternatives to industrial poultry.

This content was originally published by the Jewish Initiative for Animals (JIFA), a project of Farm Forward from 2016 through 2024. JIFA is now the Center for Jewish Food Ethics.

Perhaps few food items are more closely associated with Ashkenazi Jewish American culture than lox, bagels and cream cheese.

Whether brined or smoked, lox is, fundamentally, a cured meat. True lox (salmon) has fallen out of favor in recent decades due to its intense saltiness, and milder smoke-salt hybrids such as nova lox are now the preferred choice, but the Jewish taste for cured salmon is as strong as ever. In the past few years, American consumers have broken seafood consumption records, hitting 19 pounds per capita in 2019. Although much of the seafood category is treyf, or non-kosher to observant Jews, cured salmon is a significant part of those record-breaking numbers: Americans eat on average over four pounds of canned and cured fish alone per person every year. What most of these consumers don’t realize is where that fish comes from.

Just as we’re fed images of grass-fed cows, we’re led to believe that fish are taken from the ocean. Wild-caught salmon is no longer standard industry practice. What we think of as “fishing” is more accurately aquaculture. For a decade now, more fish globally have been farmed than caught, and in the case of salmon, the ratio sits at about 4:1, the three million farmed salmon far outnumbering their wild-caught counterparts. Norway and Chile raise about 80 percent of the world’s farmed salmon, with Canada, Britain, and the Faroe Islands rounding out the top five producers. Over two million metric tons of salmon are farmed every year. That’s a lot of lox.

But long before lox becomes lox, salmon roe are scooped a pitcherful at a time into freshwater incubator trays, and once hatched, they are moved from plastic tub to plastic tub until finally they become physiologically compatible with saltwater pens. The experience of a farmed fish is nearly devoid of opportunities for natural behaviors. Farmed fish don’t migrate, farmed fish don’t meet members of other species, and farmed fish don’t hunt. Normally predators in the wild, farmed salmon feed on pellets made up of ground-up fish also likely farmed at an aquaculture operation.

As with farmed land animals, farmed fish live in crowded and cramped conditions and may suffer from lesions and debilitating injuries. Stressful conditions cause disease and parasite outbreaks, like sea lice, that farmers respond to with pesticides and antibiotics. These treatment measures promote resistant strains of diseases that can harm both wild fish populations and public health. Given what we know about fishes’ capacity for stress and pain, aquaculture is abysmal for animal welfare.

That’s not to say “wild caught” fish is preferable to farmed. Overfishing has been an ongoing problem for decades. The North Atlantic cod fishery memorably collapsed in the early 1990s. Though the Canadian government put the kibosh on cod fishing back in 1992, populations still haven’t recovered. Perhaps the most significant problem with industrial fishing is bycatch: 40 percent of what fishermen catch in their trawlers is not what they mean to catch. Thirty-eight million tons of sea creatures are unintentionally caught every year, their corpses routinely dumped back into the ocean to make room in the nets for the next catch. This poses a threat not just to the millions of jellyfish, sharks, octopuses, urchins, skates, and unmarketable species of fish who are killed, but also to endangered species such as migrating loggerhead turtles, dolphins, and whales who can die from entanglement in fishing gear. The fishing industry is also a significant source of modern slavery, where people are trapped on remote fishing vessels in brutal conditions.

The true cost of fishing is always higher than it appears. From preserving wild habitats and species to caring for vulnerable workers, there are many Jewish values-based reasons to commit to alternatives to industrial fishing.

This content was originally published by the Jewish Initiative for Animals (JIFA), a project of Farm Forward from 2016 through 2024. JIFA is now the Center for Jewish Food Ethics.

For centuries, the question of what’s “fit” for Jewish communities has guided our daily actions and reflected our religious identities and moral values.

In a fraction of that time, industrial animal agriculture has transformed our food system and made intensive farming the norm for 99% of animals–even for animal products that certifiers label as kosher, or “fit to eat.” Jewish foods–as diverse as the community itself–are meant to help us celebrate holidays, mark important life events, nurture our bodies each day, and exemplify our values. Yet, many of the foods that embody Jewish comfort now come with uncomfortable truths.

A new norm is attainable; all that’s needed is our communal will to learn and take action. As a community, it’s time to reckon with the impacts of our food choices–on farmed animals, on people, and on the planet–and ask: is this way of farming and eating truly kosher?

Is This Kosher explores modern chicken, fish, and dairy farming practices

Major corporations cash in on so-called “humane” labels like “antibiotic free”, “natural”, and “organic”, even though their corresponding husbandry practices almost never match consumers’ expectations for animal welfare. To further uncover the impacts that this humanewashing has on our food system, we teamed up with the organization Farm Action and interviewed Colorado rancher Mike Callicrate, who sheds light on how today’s most popular industry certifications and labels affect small farmers.

Op-ed: Thanks to USDA, “No Antibiotics, Ever” meat actually means “Antibiotics, Sometimes”

Even as prices for other goods drop, Americans are still grappling with soaring grocery prices: A $100 cart of groceries last year now costs about 10 percent more, so shoppers could have a harder time spending a little more to bring home food that aligns with their values and support the farmers who produce it. As if this weren’t enough, farmers and consumers alike are contending with another growing problem: humanewashing. Consolidated corporations like Tyson and Smithfield use misleading labels and claims to sell generic factory-farmed products at a premium while retail conglomerates and the USDA look the other way. As a result, products from independent farms disappear in a sea of meaningless food labels, and shoppers with the means to spend a little more for higher quality meat may not get what they’re paying for.

I wasn’t surprised when recent research by Farm Forward, as well as a peer-reviewed study in Science, uncovered antibiotic residues in a significant percentage of beef labeled “raised without antibiotics” and Animal Welfare Certified by Global Animal Partnership (GAP), including meat sold at Whole Foods Market. Meat with GAP’s label can sell for 40 percent more than “conventional” meat—without upholding the promises it makes to consumers, who are now holding the grocer accountable in court.

Together with Farm Action and the American Grassfed Association, farmers like me are calling on the USDA to investigate and recall beef with these labels because of the widespread mislabeling documented by these investigations. Americans rely on our government to protect our food supply, but the USDA itself only tests a small number of meat products for drug residue (in 2019, that figure was 0.003 percent of U.S. beef cattle), and only at levels that they deem dangerous—levels that have been called into question by the Environmental Protection Agency and many others. No federal agency enforces the accuracy of claims we see on store shelves. According to a recent survey, nearly half of Americans believe that welfare labels mean animals spend their whole lives on pasture, not on factory farms where drug use is the norm. Independent farmers work to meet these expectations, but it’s nearly impossible for us to break through the proliferation of deceptive labels when the deck is stacked against us.

The stakes of failing to fix our broken meat labels are high: shoppers can’t support independent farms that align with their values if they can’t distinguish between products. If we want a food system that raises animals according to our values, creates good jobs, reduces the risk of future pandemics, and promotes the flourishing of agricultural communities, accurate and transparent labeling is vital.

Author: Mike Callicrate is a Colorado rancher, rural advocate, and the owner of Ranch Foods Direct

Farm Forward has joined a consumer class action lawsuit against Whole Foods alleging that the retail giant is deceiving shoppers about beef products in its stores. Since 1981, Whole Foods has claimed that all of the animals within its supply chain are raised without antibiotics, but an independent laboratory found antibiotic residue in “antibiotic free” meat purchased from a California Whole Foods store. Antibiotic free meat can cost as much as 20 percent or more than conventional meat, and surveys show 75 percent of consumers are willing to pay more for it. The use of subtherapeutic antibiotics has implications for animal welfare and public health.

In April 2022, Farm Forward released results of a program that tested Whole Foods meat for antibiotic residues. Among other findings, Farm Forward found residue of an antibiotic that can be used to promote growth in cattle in a product labeled “Organic” and “antibiotic free.” Factory farms that provide meat to retailers like Whole Foods depend on antibiotics to keep animals alive in filthy, crowded conditions. Farm Forward’s findings were bolstered by a peer-reviewed study published in Science which presents empirical evidence that a significant percentage—up to 22 percent—of cattle within the Animal Welfare Certified program, which is used by Whole Foods, have come from feedyards where testing suggests antibiotics were administered routinely.

“We have hard evidence not only that meat on Whole Foods shelves could be marketed deceptively as antibiotic free, but that the problem extends to the entire industry,” says Andrew deCoriolis, Executive Director of Farm Forward. “Industry insiders know that meat is being marketed deceptively as “antibiotic free.” Rather than thoroughly test to ensure the accuracy of its own antibiotic claims, Whole Foods has profited while deceiving its customers.”

Humanewashing by Whole Foods has succeeded in persuading shoppers that Whole Foods sells nothing but the best, and that the farms supplying meat to Whole Foods provide significantly better living conditions than they typically do. Farm Forward wants Whole Foods to verify that subtherapeutic and growth-promoting antibiotics are not used in any aspect of its meat supply chain, and to be honest with the public about which claims the retailer can, and cannot, guarantee. Additionally, Farm Forward wants retailers implicated in profiting from consumer deception to fund an independent watchdog agency that will work in consumers’ interest to assist supermarkets in fighting meat industry misinformation.

Farm Forward has had close ties with Whole Foods in the past and attempted to address these problems collaboratively prior to launching our investigation. John Mackey, founder and co-CEO of Whole Foods, was a member of Farm Forward’s board of directors from our inception in 2007 until 2018, and Farm Forward Chairman, Dr. Steve Gross, was integral in the creation of Global Animal Partnership—the animal welfare standards setting body that Mackey conceived. After a decade of recommending select Animal Welfare Certified meat from Whole Foods as a better alternative to conventional, uncertified products found in typical grocery stores, Farm Forward raised concerns that the grocer was marketing factory farmed products deceptively as Animal Welfare Certified, humane, and antibiotic free. When no action was taken, Farm Forward resigned from GAP’s board and began testing products purchased from Whole Foods stores.

Apparently Whole Foods’ “no antibiotics, ever” marketing really means “antibiotics, sometimes.” Farm Forward recently exposed Whole Foods’ humanewashing after we uncovered drugs in the Amazon-owned retailer’s meat. Now, as Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting kicks off, the cities of Austin and Seattle have decided not to run Farm Forward’s new humanewashing public service announcement. We believe that the ad’s censorship by the two cities—where Whole Foods and its parent, Amazon, are headquartered—is unconstitutional, on First Amendment grounds.

In our appeal, we explain that placing the PSA on publicly operated spaces like the Seattle and Austin airports and public transit would provide an important public service. The ad informs consumers and shareholders about research by Farm Forward and research from George Washington University that uncovered prohibited antibiotics in Global Animal Partnership’s (GAP) Animal Welfare Certified program (the certification used by Whole Foods), including in meat sampled directly from the grocery chain’s shelves.1

Farm Forward found prohibited drugs at Whole Foods because factory farms depend on them to keep animals alive in filthy, crowded conditions—which are permitted in all but the highest tiers of GAP’s certification. Yet shoppers expect labels like GAP to ensure animals are raised on pasture, and a third of Americans actually believe—incorrectly—that this is the case when they see GAP’s label, according to a recent survey we conducted through YouGov.

Farm Forward’s censorship appeal references two previous successful legal challenges of local governments suppressing issue-based ads that were initially deemed controversial, with one federal appeals court writing, “The City, which owns the Airport, says the policy helps it further its goals of maximizing revenue and avoiding controversy. … Because the ban is unreasonable, it violates the First Amendment and cannot be enforced as written.” According to legal precedent, Farm Forward has just as much of a right to inform the public of this information in its totality as major companies have to display their latest products in airports and on buses.

Amazon has previously cast doubt on its own grocery chain’s humanewashing animal welfare certification by excluding GAP from Amazon’s online Climate Pledge Friendly store after conversations with Farm Forward. If GAP’s not good enough even for Amazon, why is Whole Foods, which prides itself as a leader in sustainable food, still using the GAP certification to deceive consumers about the factory farmed products on its shelves?

As Farm Forward awaits a decision on our appeal, we have taken steps to make sure the public learns the truth by deploying our ad to tens of thousands of cell phones within a 1-mile radius of both Amazon and Whole Foods’ headquarters, as well as the offices of Amazon’s top 10 corporate shareholders, to offer investors a glimpse into the factory farming practices permitted on Whole Foods’ shelves.

If Amazon and Whole Foods can’t be honest with their customers and shareholders about the truth behind their animal welfare labels, they need to ditch factory farmed products completely. Sign our petition today.

In response to the New York Times’ recent deep dive into the harmful realities of the modern poultry industry, Farm Forward’s executive director, Andrew deCoriolis, penned a letter applauding the video series for “laying bare the nightmare that is the U.S. chicken industry.” And in a historic first, the letter introduced the word “humanewashing” to the Times’ readers, spotlighting how, for years, the poultry industry has systematically exploited the goodwill of consumers with misleading labels and claims including “all natural” and “humanely raised.”

Sandwiched between Farm Forward’s response and another thoughtful letter calling for change was a brief diatribe from the National Chicken Council (NCC)—the largest trade association for the chicken industry and one of the most notorious humanewashers out there. The NCC complained that the Times piece was merely propaganda intended to increase the price of chicken, offering the rebuttal: “The proper care of our chickens is not only an ethical obligation, but also makes good business sense.”

That is a rather stunning claim, given the NCC’s track record of deceiving consumers: In 2017, it rolled out the “Chicken Guarantees,” a set of industry-wide standards meant to assure consumers that meat chickens raised in the U.S. are not confined to cages and have not been given steroids or hormones. While likely true, these claims are deceptive: cages are not used to raise chickens for meat in the U.S., and federal law prohibits administering steroids or hormones to chickens raised for meat. The Chicken Guarantees add a bold check-mark to meat packaging offering consumers a false sense that standard practices have been certified as humane. This is akin to a hypothetical paint company stamping a “verified lead-free” label on its cans to paint them as somehow cleaner and greener, despite lead having been banned in paints since the 1970s.

And then there’s the NCC’s connection to One Health Certified (OHC)—one of the most egregiously misleading labels found on grocery shelves today. OHC trumpets a holistic set of standards, but in reality, the label can adorn poultry products that merely meet the standards established by NCC—which are essentially bottom-of-the-barrel practices. And given that NCC’s members constitute 95 percent of all chicken produced in the United States, these practices are nearly universal. The mastermind behind OHC, Mountaire Farms—whose CEO is the current vice chairman of the NCC—uses the label to obfuscate its abysmal environmental record, like its recent $200 million settlement for polluting the water of thousands of Delaware residents. Further, Mountaire has faced ongoing fines and violations for its abhorrent and dangerous working conditions.

Not even Earth Day is off-limits for the NCC, which co-opted the holiday this year with a webpage and a slew of infographics proclaiming that chicken is “climatarian diet-friendly.” Big Poultry’s myriad ills, from its enormous water usage and pollution to its public health nightmares like antibiotic misuse and pandemic potential, were apparently not worth mentioning.

The NCC’s business isn’t in sustainability or animal welfare; it’s in marketing products to consumers who care about sustainability and animal welfare. So when NCC leaders assert that treating chickens humanely makes “good business sense,” closer scrutiny reveals that what they mean is that making us believe chickens were treated humanely makes good business sense. After all, poultry companies get to rake in the profits without changing factory farming practices.

According to Farm Forward’s recent findings, they have largely been successful in that endeavor. American consumers are widely confused about the true meaning of welfare labels; for example, 30 percent of Americans incorrectly believe that OHC indicates that the animal was raised continuously on pasture. The reality, however, is that today’s certifications and marketing claims largely mask factory farmed products. Yet consumers expect otherwise—45 percent of Americans believe that OHC should mean the animal was raised on pasture.

We’re working to unmask the deception and create a more transparent food system. Join the movement to end humanewashing by signing up for our newsletter below.

• October 2, 2020 — Farm Forward publishes a blog, “Why We Resigned from the Board of the Nation’s Largest Animal Welfare Certification,” explaining our April 2020 departure from the board of Global Animal Partnership (GAP), the certification used by Whole Foods Market, after more than a decade of service. In it, we explain that, despite years of effort, the certification had become a marketing tool for factory farming corporations instead of meaningfully raising the bar for animal welfare.
  (Posted to timeline 8/25/22)
• December 30, 2020 — Farm Forward’s report, “ The Dirt on Humanewashing,” reveals how the certified “better” meat dominating grocery shelves, including Whole Foods’ Animal Welfare Certified  meat, come from genetically modified animals who suffer in filthy, cruel conditions.
  (Posted to timeline 8/25/22)
• May, 2021 — Farm Forward receives a positive result from National Organic Program and Global Animal Partnership (GAP) Animal Welfare Certified beef purchased from Whole Foods Market for monensin sodium, a growth-promoting antibiotic ionophore prohibited by both programs.
  (Posted to timeline 4/20/22)
• September, 2021 — Farm Forward commissions a survey from YouGov of more than 1,000 U.S. consumers and their beliefs about meat labels. It finds that 25 percent incorrectly believe that “antibiotic-free” means animals are raised on pasture, and 32 percent incorrectly believe that “antibiotic-free” indicates high welfare. Additionally, nearly half of consumers expect GAP’s Animal Welfare Certified label to guarantee that animals are not given antibiotics.
  (Posted to timeline 4/20/22)
• February, 2022 — Farm Forward receives eight additional positive results for antiparasitic drugs in cattle and turkey products sold at multiple Whole Foods stores and chicken products from Trader Joe’s. Four GAP-certified beef products purchased from Whole Foods tested positive for fenbendazole; one GAP-certified turkey product from Whole Foods tested positive for clopidol; and two “antibiotic-free” chicken products from Trader Joe’s tested positive for fenbendazole. These antiparasitic drugs are banned by the National Organic Program, but not by GAP. In our testing, these antiparasitic drugs did not appear in Certified Organic products.
  (Posted to timeline 4/20/22)
• February, 2022 — Experts consulted to confirm the implications of each of the positive results for the claims made by the retailers and certifications implicated by the findings. Farm Forward shares its findings with a Washington Post reporter investigating antibiotic use in animal agriculture.
  (Posted to timeline 4/20/22)
• March 30, 2022 — Farm Forward’s blog, “Whole Foods’ ‘Better’ Chicken Isn’t What You Think,” highlights how GAP’s new genetic welfare standards, framed as “reinvent[ing] the modern day broiler chicken,” still allow genetic modification for fast growth in ways that are known to produce leg deformities, muscle myopathies, and weakened immune systems.
  (Posted to timeline 8/25/22)
• April 5, 2022 — Farm Forward publishes the results of its drug testing program and launches a consumer petition targeting Whole Foods. Emails on behalf of petition signers are sent to Whole Foods on a rolling basis.
  (Posted to timeline 4/20/22)
• April 5, 2022 — Farm Forward issues a press release about the results of its drug testing program.
  (Posted to timeline 4/20/22)
• April 7, 2022 — Science publishes a peer-reviewed study co-authored by researchers at George Washington University’s Antibiotic Resistance Action Center (ARAC) and an antibiotics testing company, FoodID, revealing that residues of medically important antibiotics are pervasive in animals marketed as “antibiotic-free” and certified by GAP.
  (Posted to timeline 4/20/22)
• April 7, 2022 — ARAC publishes a press release on Phys.org. Arizona radio station KJZZ is the first to cover the story.
  (Posted to timeline 4/20/22)
• April 7, 2022 — The Washington Post posts an article about the article published in Science, affirming Farm Forward’s findings. Though Farm Forward was interviewed extensively for the story, a decision was made by the paper just before the article’s publication to omit any mention of Farm Forward, including Farm Forward’s test results and its former role on GAP’s Board of Directors. The article included an inaccurate assertion from a Whole Foods representative that Whole Foods had “no reason to believe that the cattle tested in this study ended up in products in [its] stores.” Whole Foods’ leadership was informed that Farm Forward had found antibiotic residue in meat sold on its shelves prior to the story’s release.
  (Posted to timeline 4/20/22)
• April 7, 2022 — Farm Forward publishes a blog titled “More drugs found in ‘antibiotic-free’ meat certified by Global Animal Partnership,” discussing the Science study’s findings, which corroborate the results of Farm Forward’s own testing.
  (Posted to timeline 4/20/22)
• April 7, 2022 — Farm Forward submits a letter to the editor to the Washington Post including some of the data that was omitted from the article. The LTE is not run.
  (Posted to timeline 4/20/22)
• April 8, 2022 — Farm Action was joined by the American Grassfed Association in issuing a press release, calling on the USDA to investigate Whole Foods’ “antibiotic-free” claims in the wake of Farm Forward’s and the Science study’s findings.
  (Posted to timeline 4/20/22)
• April 8, 2022 — Articles appear in The Hill, Consumer Reports, and WebMD, calling into question “antibiotic-free” claims based on the Science data but excluding Farm Forward’s findings.
  (Posted to timeline 4/20/22)
• April 8, 2022 — Industry outlet AgWeb is the first to cover Farm Action’s request to the USDA along with Farm Forward’s data.
  (Posted to timeline 4/20/22)
• April 12, 2022 — Forbes covers the Science study, highlighting that “more than a quarter of the cattle sampled from the Global Animal Partnership welfare certification program, used by Whole Foods and hundreds of other retailers and meat purchasers, had at least one positive test.”
  (Posted to timeline 4/20/22)
• April 12, 2022 — Food Safety News writes about the Science study and Farm Forward’s findings, reiterating Whole Foods’ claim that “no retailer is identified by the study,” despite Farm Forward’s results coming from meat purchased at Whole Foods.
  (Posted to timeline 4/20/22)
• April 14, 2022 — Farm Forward’s petition reaches 1,000 signatures.
  (Posted to timeline 4/20/22)
• April 14, 2022 — Farm Forward publishes a blog titled “The Drugs Farm Forward Found Hiding in Your Meat,” detailing the methodology and implications of its drug testing results.
  (Posted to timeline 4/20/22)
• April 14, 2022 — Sentient Media publishes an article on Farm Forward’s data entitled “Antibiotic Residue Found in Antibiotic-Free Meat at Whole Foods.”
  (Posted to timeline 4/20/22)
• April 15, 2022 — Farm Forward’s Executive Director, Andrew deCoriolis, sends a letter to supporters and other stakeholders, including Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, about the drug testing results.
  (Posted to timeline 4/20/22)
• April 16, 2022 — Farm Forward’s video about the antibiotics found in Whole Foods’ meat was played 50,000 times between Facebook and Twitter.
  (Posted to timeline 4/20/22)
• April 20, 2022 — Farm Forward publishes a blog titled “How can “antibiotic-free” meat contain antibiotics? Simple: Nobody’s watching,” highlighting the absence of any testing to verify “antibiotic-free” claims, while companies charge premiums on factory farmed products with these labels.
  (Posted to timeline 4/20/22)
• May, 2022 — Farm Forward submits an ad calling Whole Foods’ “no antibiotics, ever” promise into question to Seattle and Austin airport and public transit agencies (hometowns of Whole Foods and its parent, Amazon, respectively) in advance of Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting. Officials (including Seattle’s Sound Transit, which maintains a financial relationship with Amazon) reject the advertisement because of its “controversial” nature.
  (Posted to timeline 7/5/22)
• May 24, 2022 — Farm Forward issues a formal appeal of the agencies’ decisions on First Amendment grounds, explaining that placing the PSA on publicly operated spaces like the Seattle and Austin airports and public transit would provide an important public service.
  (Posted to timeline 7/5/22)
• May 25, 2022 — Farm Forward runs its ad during Amazon’s shareholder meeting on cell phones in Austin and Seattle, as well as in the hometown cities of Amazon’s top 10 shareholders, reaching over 90,000 people, and publishes a blog entitled, “Censored: Ad Exposing Whole Foods’ Antibiotics Deception.”(Posted to timeline 7/5/22)
  
• March 30, 2023 — In collaboration with the Animal Welfare Institute, Farm Forward consults with Senator Blumenthal’s (D-CT) office to encourage them to take action with the USDA to protect consumers from humanewashing, leading to a letter being sent to the USDA by four senators asking to review the integrity of animal welfare claims like “humanely raised” and “sustainably raised” on meat products.
  (Posted to timeline 9/22/23)
• June 14, 2023 — The USDA announces changes to the guidelines meat companies must follow if they want to label their products as “humanely raised,” “free range,” or “raised without antibiotics.” Farm Forward praises this step in the right direction while acknowledging its limitations. (Posted to timeline 9/22/23)
  
• July 2, 2023 — Tyson Foods announces it will reintroduce certain antibiotics to its chicken supply chain and would drop the “no antibiotics ever” tagline from Tyson-branded chicken products. (Posted to timeline 3/21/24)
• July 25, 2023 — A federal judge in California rules that the consumer protection lawsuit alleging Whole Foods Market falsely advertised its beef as “no antibiotics, ever” can proceed. The judge also denied Whole Foods’ motion to stay discovery, which opens the door to Whole Foods turning over key information about their suppliers. (Posted to timeline 9/22/23)
• August 15, 2023 — Farm Forward sends a letter to the Deputy Undersecretary of Food Safety at the USDA, Sandra Eskin, recommending ways in which the USDA can further improve meat labeling and protect consumers from misleading claims and certifications. (Posted to timeline 9/22/23)
• August 25, 2023 — Farm Forward releases the results of a major new consumer survey conducted with Data for Progress. The survey underscores the reality that consumers have high expectations for animal welfare that meat companies and retailers are not yet meeting and that companies risk eroding the trust of their consumers if they continue to humanewash. The Data for Progress report is covered in Politico’s agricultural reporting. (Posted to timeline 9/22/23)
• September 7, 2023 — Agricultural research outlet Ambrook Research publishes a comprehensive article detailing the failures of antibiotic-free labeling. The piece quotes Farm Forward’s Executive Director, Andrew DeCoriolis, throughout. (Posted to timeline 9/22/23)
• Early 2024 — The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) completes its sampling program designed to assess antibiotic residues in cattle marked as “raised without antibiotics. The testing program was initiated after Farm Forward’s joint letter to the USDA was sent last year. (Posted to timeline 3/21/24)
• Late February 2024 —Panera Bread began removing in-store signs and artwork mentioning “No Antibiotics Ever,” among other animal welfare claims, as part of a policy shift ahead of its planned IPO. Loosening their animal welfare standards is estimated to save them $21 million. (Posted to timeline 3/21/24)
• March 25, 2024 — Chick-fil-A abandons its ‘no antibiotics ever’ chicken promise, and will shift to the ‘No Antibiotics Important To Human Medicine’ designation. (Posted to timeline 4/2/2024)
• August 29, 2024 – Farm Forward responds to a USDA testing program that found that at least 20 percent of tested cattle samples labeled “raised without antibiotics” or “no antibiotics ever” tested positive for antibiotics. USDA buries the findings and reports no punitive action. (Posted to timeline 9/10/2024)

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In 2020, Farm Forward began testing for antibiotic residues in samples of Global Animal Partnership (GAP) Animal Welfare Certified meat from Whole Foods Market. Our testing is ongoing, but the early findings are troubling: despite their claims, GAP and Whole Foods have failed to prevent animals treated with drugs from entering their supply chains, raising questions about all of the claims they make about their meat products. Our results were confirmed by the findings of an extensive antibiotic testing program, which revealed that a significant percentage of GAP-certified, “antibiotic free” cattle came from feedlots where animals tested positive for antibiotics. In this post we offer details about the nature of our testing program, the results of our investigation, and the implications of our findings.

Background

Due to their poor genetic health and the crowded conditions in which they’re confined, animals on factory farms are often given drugs in subtherapeutic doses to promote growth and keep them alive in conditions that would otherwise stunt their growth and even kill them. Consumers pay more for products bearing the Animal Welfare Certified mark in part because GAP prohibits the use of antibiotics for animals within its program, and for good reason—antibiotics are used to treat sick animals, and sick animals suffer.

After serving on GAP’s board of directors since its inception, Farm Forward resigned in April 2020 because of concerns that the vast majority of meat products certified by GAP still come from factory farms. Because GAP has shown a pattern of catering to the industry by welcoming modified factory farms into its program, we suspected that drugs may be present in the meat it certifies. In 2017, Farm Forward used its position on GAP’s board to push for antibiotic testing, but GAP’s leadership refused. Because nobody is testing meat to verify claims made by meat producers, the only way to determine whether GAP is living up to its promises was to begin testing products ourselves.

In 2020, Farm Forward began purchasing GAP-certified meat from Whole Foods locations in Chicago, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco for testing by Trilogy Analytical Laboratory and Health Research Institute, two state-of-the-art, ISO-accredited testing facilities. Meat samples are frozen immediately after purchase and shipped overnight to the laboratory, where they’re stored in lab-grade refrigerators until they can be tested, typically within days. To ensure samples aren’t contaminated, we follow strict operating procedures for our tissue sampling and shipping, and we keep detailed records along the way to guarantee the provenance of each product. Samples are tested using mass spectrometry, the same technique used by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other food safety agencies.1

Results

Our first positive result, for an antibiotic called monensin, came from a sample of ground beef purchased from a Whole Foods store in San Francisco. Monensin, which is in a class of drugs called ionophores, is a feed additive used widely as a growth promoter and prophylactic antibiotic for cattle raised for meat. Because it serves the dual purpose of increasing yield while also preventing illness, monensin is known to offer a return on investment of roughly $20 per animal.2 As a result, meat producers have a tremendous incentive to use drugs like monensin as widely as possible. The product that tested positive was USDA Certified Organic and Animal Welfare Certified by GAP—and monensin is prohibited by both certifications.

Our testing also discovered residues of two antiparasitic drugs, fenbendazole and clopidol, in multiple products. These and other antiparasitics are used routinely on factory farms, and while they are technically permitted within GAP’s Animal Welfare Certified program, their widespread use is worrisome.

The term “antibiotic” includes but obscures antiparasitic drugs as a discrete category of medication used within animal agriculture. The overuse of antiparasitics like fenbendazole and clopidol creates drug-resistant parasites in the same way the overuse of antibacterial antibiotics creates drug-resistant bacteria.3 The products we purchased from Whole Foods that tested positive for fenbendazole and clopidol were not Certified Organic, but the Certified Organic program has a blanket prohibition on synthetic antimicrobial drugs. GAP’s Animal Welfare Certified program, on the other hand, only prohibits a narrow range of specific drugs, which means producers have a great deal of freedom to administer a variety of medications on farms. As a result, these drugs are often used prophylactically to prevent densely packed animals on factory farms from falling ill instead of finding husbandry solutions to ongoing health and welfare problems. Nearly half (45 percent) of the cattle livers we tested contained traces of these compounds.

Implications

Without antibiotic and antiparasitic drugs, it would be less profitable to house cattle on feedlots, where they suffer in cramped, filthy conditions while being fed an unnatural diet that causes them discomfort.4 The stress of life on a feedlot compromises cows’ immune systems, making them even more susceptible to diseases that are abundant in crowded environments.5

GAP and other welfare certifications prohibit the use of drugs like monensin in part because they recognize that it is inhumane to use medications to address problems caused by the conditions in which animals are raised. The best way to address these issues is through husbandry techniques that have been used for centuries to keep cattle healthy, and by allowing them to spend their lives on pasture.

Although GAP and Whole Foods rightly prohibit the use of antibiotics (apart from animals who are diagnosed with an illness) within their supply chains, testing has revealed that they have failed to meet their promises. Unlike Whole Foods, conventional grocery chains like Kroger, Trader Joes, and Walmart do not prohibit the use of drugs within their supply chains, so they are used openly and abundantly. Whole Foods is supposed to be different. If premium retailers like Whole Foods won’t take steps to keep these drugs out of products on their shelves, no one will.

It’s time for GAP and Whole Foods to commit to phase out all factory farm practices for all of the operations they certify and sell, and to do more to promote plant-based alternatives until they can live up to their promises to shoppers. Sign our petition to stop Whole Foods’ humanewashing today.

Earlier today, the Washington Post published an explosive article reporting that beef certified by Global Animal Partnership (GAP), the animal welfare certification used primarily by Whole Foods Market, was found to contain antibiotic residue despite GAP’s and Whole Foods’ claims that their meat is “antibiotic-free.” While this news will come as a surprise to many, it simply confirms what our testing has revealed.

Prior to the release of this troubling new information, Farm Forward launched our own antibiotic testing program, purchasing Animal Welfare Certified meat from Whole Foods for analysis by two accredited, third-party laboratories. Farm Forward found residues of an antibiotic and other drugs in meat samples from Whole Foods, including one sample labeled “antibiotic-free,” GAP Animal Welfare Certified, and USDA Organic. The antibiotic, monensin sodium, is used to promote growth.1

We chose to investigate Animal Welfare Certified meat sold by Whole Foods because it is viewed by consumers as the gold standard. Whole Foods shoppers pay up to 20 percent more for products they believe are healthy and natural, so the retailer has a greater incentive than other grocers to ensure that its supply chain aligns with the claims it makes about its products. If shoppers can’t trust “no antibiotics, ever” meat sold by Whole Foods, who can they trust?

Farm Forward’s test results are a smoking gun affirming our suspicions that the presence of drugs in meat is an industry-wide problem. The peer-reviewed data released in Science provides confirmation: 15 percent of the total sample size, which represents 12 percent of all “antibiotic-free” beef produced in the United States, came from feedlots where at least one animal tested positive for antibiotics.2 Animal Welfare Certified products fared particularly poorly: 22 percent of the Animal Welfare Certified cattle tested came from lots where 100 percent of animals sampled tested positive. In other words, these were not isolated incidents affecting only individual animals but entire herds.

Farm Forward has long been concerned about the overuse of antibiotics in animal production because these drugs are often used to compensate for filthy conditions and unhealthy animals, or to accelerate animals’ growth to increase profits. The impact of these antibiotics on human health is also a serious concern. Most of the antibiotics identified by the study, primarily tetracycline, are medically important for use in humans. Tetracycline is used to treat illnesses like pneumonia and urinary tract infections, and its overuse on factory farms contributes to the rise of antibiotic resistant infections, known as superbugs. A recent study suggests that in 2019 alone superbugs killed 1.3M people.

Despite our long-running concerns about GAP and Whole Foods falling short of consumers’ expectations about animal welfare, their failure to prevent the misuse of antibiotics within their supply chain calls into question their ability to make guarantees about animal welfare. Whole Foods continues to use labels like GAP’s Animal Welfare Certified to humanewash, obscuring the truth that the vast majority of products on their shelves come from factory farms.

Join us in calling on Whole Foods to label their products truthfully. If it’s factory farmed, call it factory farmed. And if the truth is too troubling for shoppers to stomach, take factory farmed products off your shelves.

Be the first to get breaking results from Farm Forward’s antibiotic testing program when you sign up for our newsletter below.

Image Credit: Jo-Anne McArthur / Israel Against Live Shipments / We Animals Media

Farm Forward has found a variety of drugs, including an antibiotic, in meat certified as having “no antibiotics, ever” taken from products purchased from Whole Foods store shelves. The drugs, including fenbendazole, clopidol, and monensin, are used widely in conventional animal agriculture. The use of monensin is prohibited within the USDA Organic program and by Global Animal Partnership’s (GAP’s) Animal Welfare Certified program, which certifies all meat sold in Whole Foods stores.

“Sophisticated testing can reveal the truth about prohibited drugs fed to animals on factory farms, but these tests cannot reveal the extent to which these animals have suffered,” said Farm Forward executive director Andrew deCoriolis. “Whole Foods and GAP say that their products are humane and hope we’ll take their word for it; our test results should give consumers pause.”

Whole Foods relies on GAP’s Animal Welfare Certified program, one of the largest animal welfare certifications in the world, to ensure that the meat sold in its 511 stores is “humane” and contains “no antibiotics, ever.” GAP’s Executive Director is an employee of Whole Foods and, alarmingly, one of the products that tested positive for Clopidol, a drug prohibited by USDA Organic but allowed by GAP, was produced by a company whose CEO is a member of GAP’s board of directors, raising questions about GAP’s motivations for permitting specific drugs within its program. Clopidol is commonly used to treat parasitic infections found primarily on industrial farms.

Farm Forward served on GAP’s board of directors for 12 years but resigned in 2020 over concerns that the certifier was failing to live up to its promises to shoppers. GAP’s inability to enforce its standards was only one among several concerns. Another was its complicity in humanewashing: GAP and Whole Foods use confusing labels and images of animals on bucolic pastures that, a recent Farm Forward survey shows, trick customers into believing products may be better than they truly are. In reality, factory farmed products dominate Whole Foods’ supply chain despite charging customers up to 40 percent more for Animal Welfare Certified products.

Antibiotics and other drugs are used widely on factory farms to keep animals alive in cruel and filthy conditions that may otherwise kill them. Farm Forward’s findings should raise serious doubts in the minds of consumers about Whole Foods’ and GAP’s ability to prevent animals from suffering on factory farms and to keep products with drug residues from ending up on store shelves.

“Factory farms use antibiotics and other drugs extensively to ‘manage’ infectious diseases and parasites in crowded conditions,” said Dr. Jim Keen, a veterinary infectious disease epidemiologist with 30 years of research and field experience. “The conditions under which  animals are raised in factory farms make them easy breeding grounds for antimicrobial resistance and even future pandemics.”

Testing

The testing was conducted by two independent, accredited laboratories using industry standard mass spectrometry, which is capable of identifying compounds at low levels.

End Factory Farming

Demanding that retailers and third-party certifications test for drugs in products labeled “all natural” and “no antibiotics, ever” won’t eliminate the need for these drugs on factory farms. It’s time for GAP’s Animal Welfare Certified program and Whole Foods to commit to stop selling factory farmed products all together. Until they stop selling factory farmed products, the best way for consumers to avoid unwanted drugs in their food is to avoid animal products whenever possible. Sign our petition to tell Whole Foods to take factory farmed products off their shelves.

Who could argue with scientifically informed efforts to raise chickens with less suffering? Isn’t less suffering better? And isn’t better, well, better? The nation’s leading animal welfare certification, Global Animal Partnership (GAP), has made news recently by teaming up with animal welfare groups and large food retailers like Whole Foods Market to set genuinely better standards on chicken welfare. The new standards are said to be based on a multi-year study GAP commissioned from the University of Guelph. GAP and its allies have even focused on the most challenging welfare problem in farming today: the chronic disease and deformities faced by virtually all chickens because they have been genetically modified to grow fatter, faster than ever before. Aggressive hybrid breeding techniques over decades have transformed the chicken genome in disturbing ways, so it’s a good thing institutions like GAP are talking about this public secret.

But while some animal protection groups are celebrating GAP’s new standards alongside industry, those of us who have seen “how the standards were made” aren’t smiling. When is better not better at all? When the process of creating slightly improved standards is carefully controlled from soup to nuts to ensure that factory farming continues to be a thriving and globally expanding industry.

GAP’s “better chicken” is a pawn sacrifice. What has in fact occurred is that after decades of runaway genetic modification that have left virtually all of America’s chickens sickly and morbidly obese, the industry is asking the public to accept as “high welfare” these genetically miserable birds because they aren’t as bad as the newest and most widely used strains.

Let’s say you are suffering from chronic pain and you go to your doctor. You are really suffering, so any relief would be welcome, even if it’s modest. Your doctor gives you a medicine that makes you feel 10% better, and you are appreciative. But what if you found out the next day that the “medicine” that is reducing your pain also has addictive properties that ensure that your painful condition will continue forever? And what if you further learn that a complete cure was available for a few dollars more, but was deliberately hidden from you? That’s how I and others feel about the GAP standards (but, yes, they are better).

What the business interests that really control GAP have achieved with GAP’s new genetic welfare standards is a benchmark for “better” that is so low that even factory farms can embrace it—a standard for improvement that is so low, it ensures no real change will occur. Shoppers that can pay a premium get a product that is “better,” and all of us are worse off together.

As a new father, I feel especially passionate about the harm this humanewashing is doing. I believe it is preventing a better future from taking root. The product being washed clean here is perhaps the largest lever the American public has to address the future of infectious disease, pandemic risk, climate change, environmental racism, animal suffering, and more.

Despite the ongoing global growth of industrial farming, I have hope for my son’s generation because I see the signs all around me that the public is waking up to the reality of factory farming. The material conditions sometimes continue to worsen, but there is more will than ever to build a better, more sustainable future for farming. Change is coming. While no one really knows just how much an increasingly food-conscious public will demand, businesses are already bracing to deliver more. The plant-based and cultured meats that have made headlines since at least 2019 when Beyond Meat became the most successful IPO since 2008 are merely the most visible—and may not be among the more important—of these deep changes.

My hope for the future is not in these technologies as much as the ambition to create a more humane and sustainable future that is mixed up with them. My hope is most importantly in the hearts and minds of Americans as they farm, buy, and eat their way into the future of food.

It is precisely this source of hope that humanewashing seeks to attack. Humanewashing isn’t only consumer deception; it’s yet another attack on our better natures. Wanting to be humane is a core part of our humanity. To accept humanewashing, or to shrug it off as a necessary evil, may take more from us than we bargain.

Most Americans remain in the dark about how disastrous animal agriculture has become, and industry knows it needs to change minds fast before a tipping point of awareness is reached. Big Chicken is looking at what happened to Big Tobacco and realizing the case against industrial poultry, especially in an age of pandemics, could be far worse. As the public will to end factory farming is built, industry is proactively defending itself, and humanewashing is a linchpin of their strategy.

It is in this historical context that weak welfare standards like GAP’s are the perfect smoke screen for industry. Whole Foods Market, GAP, and others are blowing that smoke straight up consumers’ arses.

While GAP’s stated goal of at least doing better does set them above industry certifications, the much-hailed study it commissioned was a farce—a performance to justify with the veneer of science an already foreclosed decision to support the status quo. The scientists themselves are innocent. The answers the study provided are answers to the questions GAP asked, but, with few exceptions, GAP only asked questions that would help its industry allies frame as “higher welfare” the most recent genetic offerings from the cabal of genetics companies that control industrial chicken genetics, and thus, the poultry industry, globally.

The truth is that GAP and Whole Foods have so far chosen not to require standards that would significantly improve welfare outcomes—despite having the evidence from their own study that truly meaningful improvements are possible. It is for this reason that after serving on GAP’s board of directors for a decade, Farm Forward resigned in 2020.

There was reason for hope when GAP announced in 2016 that it would establish benchmarks for genetic health, but at the end of a years-long process we’re right back where we started: with chickens who suffer from a range of painful afflictions as a result of their unhealthy genetics. There is not even a whiff of a plan to end this absurd and unsustainable situation, but meanwhile, GAP is trumpeting that it is “reinvent[ing] the modern day broiler chicken.” It wouldn’t be the first time that “new and improved” really means more of the same.

Whole Foods Market and GAP’s humanewashing is leading consumers to believe that they can purchase chickens from Whole Foods who do not suffer because they have been genetically modified for fast growth in ways that are known to produce leg deformities, muscle myopathies, and weakened immune systems. The reality is that chickens within GAP’s program will still suffer in these same ways, just slightly less. By contrast, the factory farm corporations and the retailers that profit from their products are almost certainly earning much more, or at least deflecting criticisms that might have forced them to change. GAP’s “better chicken” is better for business, but consumers, public health, the environment, and, of course, the chickens themselves are not necessarily better off when factory farmed products are viewed more favorably. Sometimes, promising to be better is really just the lie someone tells when they aren’t yet ready for real change.

Lead image credit: We Animals Media

This content was originally published by the Jewish Initiative for Animals (JIFA), a project of Farm Forward from 2016 through 2024. JIFA is now the Center for Jewish Food Ethics.

Many American consumers, both Jewish and non-Jewish, purchase kosher animal products because they erroneously believe the label guarantees better animal treatment. According to the results of two national surveys released by Farm Forward, both the general population and Jewish Americans believe a kosher certification means products such as chicken, beef, dairy, eggs, and fish come from animals who were treated better over the course of their lives than non-kosher. Additionally, Jewish Americans are more likely to hold false beliefs about kosher-certified animal products than the general population of Americans.

The data confirms what JIFA has inferred from previous research that shows people think kosher food is inherently better: consumers, both Jewish and non-Jewish, extend this belief to the way farmed animals are bred and raised, despite the fact virtually all kosher and non-kosher meat, poultry, dairy, and eggs come from animal raised on factory farms. This phenomenon is called kosher humanewashing.

The two identical surveys asked people about their purchasing behaviors and understanding of kosher labels on animal products. Below is a summary of the key findings, including comparative findings of the two populations (1,500 adults in the general population and 500 Jewish adults).

Key findings:

• Nearly half of Jewish Americans falsely believe that animals in kosher production are better treated than non-kosher: 48% of Jewish adults nationwide said a kosher label on an animal product such as beef, chicken, fish, dairy products, or eggs means that over the course of an animal’s life, it was better treated than an animal raised for non-kosher products. In reality, nearly all animals used in kosher farming are bred and raised on factory farms.
• In some cases, Jewish consumers are more likely than the general population to believe untruths about kosher certification: In contrast to 48% of Jewish adults, identical research conducted of 1,500 US adults showed 34%, roughly two-thirds as many, said a kosher label meant an animal had been better treated. 53% of Jewish respondents agreed that a kosher label on an animal product guarantees that the animal “did not suffer much in its life,” and in the general population, 39% agreed with the same statement. Similarly, 48% of Jewish adults agreed that a kosher label guarantees an animal “was treated humanely during its life,” compared to 40% of all adults. Kosher certification does not ensure any of these claims.
• Many Americans have faulty notions about what kosher means for specific aspects of farmed animal welfare: For example, many shoppers think a kosher label on an animal product means the animal used was not treated with antibiotics except for therapeutic purposes (41% Jewish pop.; 44% general pop.), had healthy genetics (38% Jewish pop.; 40% general pop.), was not confined for much of its life, and lived its entire life on an outdoor pasture (36% Jewish pop.; 37% general pop). Jewish and general population respondents displayed similar beliefs about these topics, except that considerably fewer Jewish adults (26%) believe a kosher certification means animals lived their entire lives on pasture than the general population (34%). Kosher certification has no relationship to antibiotic use, healthy genetics, confinement, or access to pasture.
• 74% of Americans purchase kosher out of concern for food safety: Of the general population that buys kosher products, the majority of shoppers cite food safety as a key concern (previous research has shown that 34% of Americans believe kosher food is safer). A kosher certification in actuality does nothing to safeguard public health from the effects of common factory farming practices such as overuse of antibiotics. Antibiotics are often used in conventionally raised poultry, beef, and farmed fish to prevent rather than treat illness, and can give rise to antibiotic resistant bacteria. A 2013 study found that kosher chicken had the highest rate of antibiotic resistant E. coli, compared with organic and conventional chicken. Some people’s food safety concerns may pertain to allergens—kosher certification ensures, for example, no cross-contamination with non-kosher allergens such as shellfish, and also ensures no cross-contamination with dairy when a product is labeled Pareve or contains meat such as chicken or beef—while other people may associate a lower risk for food-borne illnesses from consuming kosher products. The health risks associated with the unregulated use of antibiotics and their virus-producing potential in intensively farmed animals is receiving increasing attention, particularly given their role in pandemic outbreaks in humans.
• There may be widespread misconceptions about what a kosher label means beyond animal welfare: In addition to animal welfare and food safety, consumers were asked how often they buy kosher products out of a concern for other values such as environmental protection, workers’ rights, and public health. More than half of all adult shoppers for kosher food are concerned about at least one of these three issues, with 66% saying they buy kosher animal products out of concern for the environment (compared with 58% in Jewish pop.), 65% out of concern for public health (59% Jewish pop.), and 54% out of concern for workers’ rights (48% Jewish pop.). Given shoppers’ high level of concern for practices around labor, environment, and health, it is possible that many Americans are confused or misinformed about what a kosher label guarantees, as a kosher certification does not dictate standards for these areas.

Kosher certifications in and of themselves wield significant humanewashing and healthwashing power among both Jewish and non-Jewish adults, whether or not companies intend to deceive consumers. Just as a high percentage of Americans trust kosher to mean that a product is of superior quality, many Jewish and non-Jewish Americans associate kosher certification with better overall treatment of farmed animals compared to non-kosher. Previous survey work demonstrates the majority of Americans are committed to broad anti-cruelty principles. Kosher-certified animal products, like ones that bear other humanewashing labels and claims, often fall short of consumer expectations such as regular access to outdoor pasture. Significantly, the Jewish community—which is best positioned to influence kosher production and educate consumers about the realities of the industry—is even more likely to hold false beliefs around whether a kosher certification ensures better animal treatment and prevents suffering during an animal’s life.

Over 200 Jewish clergy are already responding to the issue of kosher humanewashing by calling on Jewish institutions to adopt more sustainable and ethical food policies. View the full list of signatories and here.