Three years into the outbreak and amidst outrageous increases in egg prices, the United States Department of Agriculture continues to make dangerous payouts to big companies and delay corrective action.

Rate of destruction among egg-laying hens appears to be increasing

This press release was originally sent out on March 7th, 2025.

Farm Forward released a new report today detailing how the federal government’s multi-billion dollar payments to meat, egg, and dairy companies encourage the spread of bird flu, despite the growing risk of the virus mutating into a deadly human pandemic. Over $2 billion in taxpayer-funded payments have gone mainly to large, industrial meat and egg companies like Jennie-O, Cal-Maine, and Tyson, to mass kill birds that have been exposed to bird flu.

Titled “Are We Subsidizing the Next Pandemic?,” Farm Forward’s report finds:

• USDA compensation payments to poultry farms with infected birds actually increase human pandemic risk.
• USDA compensates repeat offenders.
• Current audits of bird flu safety measures are meaningless.
• Huge loopholes in bird flu safety requirements allow many farms to take no measures at all.
• Information blackout from the new administration leaves public health officials in the dark.
• Vaccine requirements lag far behind many other countries.

Nearly a year ago, it was reported that the USDA had paid out nearly $1 billion in what the industry calls “indemnity payments,” which are meant to encourage meat and egg companies to report cases of bird flu by compensating them for the value of the birds they kill off. Companies like Cal-Maine (the largest egg producer in the U.S.) are getting these bailouts even though they have seen record profits, attributed in part to skyrocketing prices for eggs.

In February, the Trump administration announced plans to spend another $900 million dollars in Big Ag bailouts. This brings the total taxpayer funded bailouts for the meat and egg industry to well over $2 billion since the beginning of the outbreak in February 2022. Approximately $400 million of the new funding would go to egg and meat companies to both indemnify losses and buy new flocks of birds to replace those killed (a “double payment” since these farmers were already paid by taxpayers for the value of the birds killed). Another $500 million would pay companies to increase so-called biosecurity measures—measures that have so far proven ineffective at containing the virus and which taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for.

As noted in the report, the only measure that has proven effective in other countries is vaccine mandates, which the USDA has refused to issue because of industry pressure. Farm Forward’s report documents how the USDA has admitted its own failings in oversight of biosecurity measures, with no meaningful audit system in place to ensure compliance. Despite this and the worsening of the pandemic, USDA response to the outbreak is likely to get weaker due to recent mass layoffs of regulators at the USDA and HHS, including dozens of federal employees who have provided critical testing and tracking information.

Additional Farm Forward research reveals the extent to which the bird flu outbreak has decimated the U.S. population of egg-laying hens, and the apparent acceleration in the rate of that destruction. According to a new analysis by Farm Forward consultant Dr. Gail Hansen, an expert veterinary epidemiologist, the current bird flu outbreak led to the death or intentional killing of at least 13 percent of the entire US egg-laying hen population in 2024. The rate of cullings appears to be increasing: approximately 39 percent of laying hens killed since the beginning of the outbreak have occurred in just the last few months, likely due to the emergence of a new strain of bird flu, D1.1. Following the spread of the D1.1 genotype and the resulting sharp spike in the killing of laying hens, egg prices increased rapidly through the fall of 2024, reaching an all-time high of an average $4.95 per dozen in January 2025. The D1.1 strain—now the predominant genotype in North American flyways—is also more dangerous to humans, having caused a Canadian teen infected after no known animal contact to become critically ill, the hospitalization of a patient in Wyoming, and the death of a Louisiana man—the first human death in the US from this bird flu outbreak.

“When you look at this data, it is 100% clear that the government’s response is not working, and is almost certainly part of why the pandemic is getting worse every day.” Andrew deCoriolis, Executive Director of Farm Forward said. “It’s insane for us to give away $900 million in new taxpayer handouts to meat and egg companies, on top of the $1.4 billion they’ve gotten already, without demanding changes to the very practices that put us at risk.”

A USDA testing program finds that at least 20 percent of tested cattle samples labeled “raised without antibiotics” or “no antibiotics ever” tested positive for antibiotics. USDA buries findings and reports no punitive action.

Last year, the United States Department of Agriculture launched a sampling project, to test food products labeled with USDA-approved voluntary marketing claims like “raised without antibiotics,” “no antibiotics ever.” The results are in, and the USDA has found antibiotics in at least 20 percent of cattle tested for drugs. Unfortunately, even after confirming that many cattle products are fraudulently labeled antibiotic-free, the USDA will not require meat companies to test and prove the accuracy of their claims. The USDA’s negligence allows large meat companies to profit off of consumers who pay a premium for a product they believe is healthier and more humane, all based on a lie. The USDA’s inaction will hurt farmers and ranchers who raise animals in more humane ways, without the routine use of antibiotics, and who can’t compete against meat companies who cheat.

While the USDA’s disappointing announcement is consistent with its long history of prioritizing big ag over the public, allowing this level of deception to persist in beef without even requiring testing surprised even us. Anything short of requiring testing is good for companies that are cheating and provides yet another example of the USDA’s toothless responses to factory farms’ failures to adhere to common sense standards.

“Increasingly, consumers are looking for products that align with their values, but it’s clear the meat industry is unable or unwilling to meet consumer expectations. Meat companies want to skate by on flimsy marketing claims like ‘sustainable,’ ‘humane,’ and ‘antibiotic free,’ without actually doing the work to ensure a product that meets those standards,” said Farm Forward Executive Director Andrew deCoriolis. “Humanewashing this flagrant usually is the domain of industry, but here the USDA is trying to sell us news that the US beef supply is compromised — and a meaningful percentage actually contaminated — as good news, and even evidence of their trustworthiness. Meanwhile, the USDA won’t even disclose which companies’ products tested positive for antibiotics in their study, so the public remains in the dark and doesn’t know who to trust. With no regulatory action in place to stop this harmful trend, the USDA has basically greenlit meat companies deceptively marketing products and continuing to lie to us.”

“Companies advertising RWA or antibiotic-free labels should implement transparent testing procedures with data made easily accessible to consumers. And the USDA must provide regulations for all findings. The government can’t pass that task off to the private sector because these findings reiterate that industries won’t voluntarily check themselves. It’s up to the USDA to decide that meat companies can’t jeopardize public health to turn a profit.”

Dr. Aaron Gross, founder of Farm Forward and Director of the University of San Diego Center for Food Systems Transformation, added, “Remembering that the USDA has an impossible dual mandate — to both protect consumers and promote Big Ag — helps explain its cowed response to massive deception in the beef industry. The USDA’s data suggests the need for transformation, but instead the agency is helping meat companies continue to deceive the public. Encouraging only voluntary testing amounts to a signal that deceptive labeling is an acceptable business strategy. The USDA’s response is pretending that this highly profitable mislabeling is happening by accident. The pattern suggests the mislabeling is by design.”

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This piece was written by Farm Forward’s Summer Intern, Molly Mulvaney.

As a result of the widespread use of antibiotics on industrial animal farms antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has emerged as a pressing global health issue.1 AMR both threatens the effectiveness of modern medicines and creates conditions for the rapid spread of deadly illnesses. The links between industrial animal farming and the antimicrobial resistance crisis, and the connection between deforestation and risk of new zoonotic diseases, are examples of how human health is inextricably linked to the health of nonhuman animals and to the health of the environment. The scientific and public health community have long recognized these connections and now describe the connections as “One Health.” The World Health Organization (WHO) defines One Health as “an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimize the health of people, animals and ecosystems. In the past decade the One Health framework has grown in prominence and is increasingly accepted by national governments and international bodies.

Antimicrobial Resistance is an increasing threat to human and animal health. Solving the problem requires significant reforms to agricultural policy and industrial animal farming practices. Yet, the largest international One Health programs largely fail to acknowledge industrial animal farming as a key threat to the One Health mission. While governments in low- and middle-income countries take the risk of AMR and zoonoses head on, high-income countries continue to dodge root causes and point their fingers elsewhere. To seriously address the AMR crisis, culpable nations must integrate agricultural reform into their One Health frameworks and public policies.

Today, over a dozen countries and international agencies have published variations of “One Health” policies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, India, the Netherlands, China , and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. The foci of One Health vary among countries and international agencies, but most are concerned with AMR, zoonotic diseases, food safety, public health, environmental degradation, and vector-borne illnesses. The growing number of One Health initiatives use the framework as a guide for public policy, but none adequately address any root issues of AMR, particularly industrial animal agriculture. The One Health framework must incorporate both systemic reform of animal agriculture and preventative measures in developed countries. Without both objectives One Health approaches fail to ensure a better future for humans, animals, and the planet.

Antimicrobial Resistance is a Factory Farming Problem

In 2019, AMR indirectly contributed to nearly 5 million deaths and directly caused over a million. Animal agriculture is a large contributor to AMR due to producers’ widespread use of antimicrobials to prevent disease and to promote animal growth. The WHO declared that “approximately 80% of total consumption of medically important antibiotics is in the animal sector” of certain countries.2 The United States is one of the largest contributors to antibiotic overuse, with consumption per kilogram of livestock almost twice as high than that of all of Europe in 2020. Despite the efforts of groups like the US and UN, however, One Health action plans have failed to take seriously the prevention of AMR within animal agriculture.

What Are Countries and International Agencies Doing to Address AMR? Not Enough.

One of the largest One Health programs is the One Health Quadripartite (OHQ), made up of the Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the UN Environment Programme, the World Health Organization, and the World Organization for Animal Health (formerly OIE). This consortium of international organizations has communicated strong goals for tackling AMR but misses the mark. The OHQ published a “One Health Joint Plan of Action” that dictates their plans for the years 2022-2026. Although the plan emphasizes preventive measures, it lacks any focus on problems stemming from the animal agriculture sector. The document acknowledges that “livestock and fish production systems are not specifically addressed” despite their importance in both preventing and solving AMR. In the OHQ’s lengthy AMR research agenda, they boast that their focus lies “at the interface between sectors that are most relevant to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs),” even though these countries are doing the least to contribute to the AMR crisis. The OHQ’s attitude resembles US remarks that other countries must work to solve climate change while not doing enough itself to reduce emissions. Mitigation and treatment of AMR in LMICs is important, but entirely overlooks causes of AMR attributable to massive meat companies in countries like the US.

The EU Commission on One Health (“Commission”) has similar goals to OHQ but focuses slightly more on the importance of animal agriculture in solving AMR. Animal agriculture reforms from the Commission are vague or unenforceable, leading to minimal or no changes in the production system. Their guidelines on antimicrobial use on animals read, “training courses and guidance materials given to farmers should include information on preventive measures that promote animal health, in particular, implementation of biosecurity measures, good farming practices and herd health planning.” Training courses and guidance materials are valuable but the Commission lacks specific standards, regulations, and rules to gain meaningful change. The Commission does describe some specific methods for addressing AMR, including supplying quality feed and water, improving housing, and using safe alternatives to antimicrobials. While these changes may begin to address the AMR crisis, they have not yet been translated into legislative policies or other regulatory actions.

In the United States, the One Health Federal Interagency Coordination Committee (OH-FICC), run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is the leading organization for One Health. OH-FICC works with numerous federal regulatory bodies including the USDA and FDA. Despite the extensive network of OH-FICC, the initiative lacks appreciable calls for animal agriculture reform or preventative measures. OH-FICC fails to take accountability for the massive amount of antibiotics used on animals within the food system. The organization contains a National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System, yet will not publicly acknowledge that most of the antibiotics used in the United States are on animals raised for food. In the last few years, OH-FICC has focused much of its resources on projects that evaluate livestock farming in LMICs and find alternative practices that reduce disease and AMR. Animal agriculture can surely use reform, but it is hypocritical of the CDC to ask LMICs to change small farming operations when the United States has some of the most unethical, disease-ridden, AMR-causing livestock practices in the world.

Although previous examples demonstrate One Health failures, Rwanda’s lengthy One Health framework displays thorough and promising initiatives against AMR. Rwanda has developed a report on their One Health plans through 2026 in addition to an entire action plan on AMR. Their AMR plan includes a focus on both animal agriculture and prevention and breaks down objectives including increased education, surveillance, sanitation, and hygiene. Perhaps their most important efforts include training for agricultural workers, veterinarians, and agronomists while also implementing biosecurity guidelines for farms, slaughter plants, and aquaculture facilities. Moreover, the Rwandan government seeks to “restrict broad or generalized use of antimicrobials as growth promoters or as feed additives” and “strengthen regulation and oversight for the supply chain and use of antimicrobials in agriculture and veterinary medicine.” Rwanda’s plan for preventing and treating AMR is highly sophisticated compared to other nations. The CDC, for example, includes minimal AMR prevention, despite the US having 72 times the amount of cattle as Rwanda. Rwanda’s work exhibits a strong start for combating AMR that other, more culpable countries must follow and augment.

Conclusion

Climate change and the intensification of animal production will continue to exacerbate AMR, zoonoses, and emerging health threats. Powerful countries and international organizations must take greater responsibility for public health and develop thorough, accountable One Health approaches.

More than 40 dairy herds in nine states have been infected with the latest strain of H5N1 bird flu. The virus has also infected at least two farmworkers, one in Texas and another in Michigan. We’re even seeing outbreaks in domestic cats and house mice.

The USDA and FDA maintain that dairy milk is safe to consume. Government regulators say pasteurization kills off the virus, though new research finds that commercial pasteurization doesn’t kill all live viruses in milk, meaning there may be live viruses in milk on store shelves. As for unpasteurized dairy products like raw milk, the FDA and USDA recommend not consuming them. Despite this warning, sales of raw milk are increasing. State laws on raw milk vary widely, and though the FDA is urging states to ramp up testing and restrictions, few states have limited the sale of raw milk meaning thousands of consumers are at risk of exposure to bird flu in dairy products.

The most upsetting part of the current bird flu outbreak is that it’s not a surprise. Farm Forward has been sounding the alarm for years that factory farms are petri dishes for zoonotic diseases. On factory farms—which account for 99 percent of animals raised for food—animals are overwhelmingly genetically uniform, immunocompromised, and crammed together by the tens of thousands. Following the emergence of COVID-19, Farm Forward board members Jonathan Safran Foer and Aaron Gross warned in an April 2020 op-ed in the Guardian of the need to end the industrial chicken industry as a measure to prevent future bird flu pandemics. Now that bird flu has spread to more than 200 wild animals, including seals, bears, and mountain lions, and has spread to domestic and farmed animals such as cats and dairy cows, further spread of bird flu seems inevitable. If the virus jumps to pigs, the chances of a wider human outbreak increase substantially.

So why isn’t more being done to protect the public from dangerous farming practices? Simple. Factory farm owners are incentivized by profits, and the simple-but-scary fact is that it’s more profitable to raise animals in ways that are dangerous to public health, harm animals, and pollute the environment. And government bodies are mostly unwilling to use their authority to meaningfully regulate industrial animal farming, instead seeing their role as protecting the financial interests of agribusiness.

Take testing. The federal government has mandated testing only of lactating dairy cows traveling across state lines. Funds have been allocated to pay farm owners to test dairy herds, but officials say they can’t mandate broader testing. And farmworkers who get tested are eligible to receive $75 each—but that’s hardly an incentive, as testing positive would require workers to visit a clinic, then stay home from work. Many of them can’t afford to do either.

Instead of getting at the root cause by better regulating farms, the federal government is scrambling to get ready for the now-inevitable spread of bird flu; they’re preparing 4.8 million doses of a bird flu vaccine for humans in case the virus jumps again.

Maddeningly, the federal government is also reimbursing giant farming corporations for cleaning up the mess they themselves caused. Farms kill animals en masse and get paid for it. Our own investigation found the USDA has paid $715 million to companies like Tyson and Jennie-O to compensate for losses from bird flu outbreaks that those very companies largely caused. “These payments are crazy-making and dangerous,” said Andrew deCoriolis, Farm Forward’s executive director. “Not only are we wasting taxpayer money on profitable companies for a problem they created, but we’re not giving them any incentive to make changes.”

The best treatment for a pandemic is preventing it before it starts—by decreasing the size of animal farms, reducing crowding, and improving the genetics of the animals. These steps are critical in addressing the underlying conditions that lead to pandemics like the one we’re now facing.

(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 ~ 

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.

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.

Bird flu is making global headlines. As an H5N1 outbreak ravages the U.S. poultry industry and egg prices reach record highs, scientists are ringing alarm bells that the virus could soon enter a new, more dangerous phase of its evolution. Recent evidence from a mink farm in Spain and the death of a young girl in Cambodia have governments scrambling to prepare for the possibility that bird flu becomes a human pandemic.  

Last week the UK Health Security Agency announced it will be looking into “the disease’s genetic mutations to reveal data about the increased risk to human health from avian flu.” The U.S. government has already stockpiled egg-based vaccines for avian flu, and the country has developed a secret chicken stockpile in undisclosed locations across the U.S. in case we need to make egg-based vaccines quickly—such as during a flu pandemic.

There’s broad consensus among scientists and public health officials that bird flu poses a real threat of becoming a human pandemic. Despite that consensus, most of the public discourse has been limited to how we might prepare for an eventual spillover event. Preparation seems prudent, but what about prevention? Why aren’t we asking the simple question: “What would it take to reduce the pandemic risk caused by poultry farming?”

I suspect the reason this question doesn’t get asked more often is because Big Meat would resist any of the changes that would reduce the risk of a pandemic. That should not deter our advocacy for healthier agriculture systems; we have recent precedent of countries shutting down entire animal agriculture industries because they posed too great a risk to public health.

During the early phases of COVID-19, it became clear that the virus was mutating on mink farms. Some countries took steps to shut down their mink industries rather than risk a more deadly outbreak. While chicken is seen as a more indispensable commodity than mink fur, societies could look carefully at the aspects of poultry farming that pose the greatest risks and outlaw or ban those practices.   

As Farm Forward has previously written, industrial poultry farming poses a unique risk because of its scale, density, geographic distribution, and the genetic uniformity of the animals. To prevent a bird flu pandemic, world governments should take steps to prohibit the specific practices of the industry that pose the greatest risks.

Preventing the next pandemic

To prevent bird flu from becoming a human pandemic, governments and international bodies like the World Health Organization (WHO) have to look at the aspects of the poultry industry that make it such a unique public health threat. The WHO recently began negotiating a global pandemic accord—which in its first draft failed to mention animal agriculture as the likely source of the next pandemic. Global and national health organizations including the CDC and the WHO recognize that industrial poultry farming poses a significant pandemic risk, so their failure to encourage countries to take steps to mitigate that risk is particularly frustrating. It seems crazy to have to say this, but public health agencies must be willing to name and address the biggest threats to public health.  

We don’t have to wait for national governments and public health agencies to act. We can take steps to protect ourselves from the next pandemic, including switching to more humane alternatives, removing animal products from supply chains, and supporting policies that would phase out industrial scale animal farming. We need to change the way we eat and farm—because the world isn’t prepared for the next pandemic. 

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.

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

Myq Kaplan of Comedy Central, The Tonight Show, and Letterman fame has narrated a thought-provoking new video produced by creative agency Kindvertising for a coalition of animal advocacy groups including Farm Forward to combat false advertising by massive meat, egg, and dairy companies. The newly-formed coalition’s first initiative is a satire of traditional commercials called “Don’t Look,” revealing marked discrepancies between industry claims and actual practices known as “humanewashing.”

Kaplan plays the persona of many food conglomerates, taking viewers through the various psychological tactics and framing used to convince consumers to purchase factory-farmed animal products. In just over one minute, the video breaks down the imagery, language, tone, and tempo common to mainstream advertisements, and juxtaposes them with undercover footage, concluding with a call to action.

“Corporations know that people really do care about animals and don’t want them to be mistreated,” said Animal Outlook’s Executive Director Cheryl Leahy. “So they often choose to tell consumers what they want to hear, rather than allowing them to know the truth. Currently, almost 99% of farmed animals in the U.S. live on factory farms and we hope this video gives people a glimpse into what we find time and again when we bring our hidden cameras into these places: cruelty is standard practice.”

Andrew deCoriolis, Executive Director of Farm Forward, adds, “Consumers are being deceived on an unprecedented scale. While the most basic humanewashing tactics take the form of ‘all-natural’ or ‘free-range’ labels, even independent welfare certifications have become embroiled in the dirty business of humanewashing. The reality is that the certified ‘better’ meat dominating grocery shelves is still cruel and overwhelmingly derived from genetically modified, unhealthy animals.”

While there are numerous organizations working to educate the public on the detriments of industrial animal agriculture, this is one of the few initiatives where several have joined forces to amplify a message. Animal Outlook, Factory Farming Awareness Coalition and Farm Forward are sharing the video to their collective followers and supporters using the hashtag #EndHumanewashing.

One of the nation’s largest animal welfare certifications, the Global Animal Partnership (GAP), recently signaled its commitment to continuing to use genetically modified “hybrid” chicken lines that create chronic animal suffering and increase public health risks.1, 2 More than in the past, GAP seems dedicated to passing off low welfare standards as the gold standard, thus helping the purveyors of factory farmed products deceive shoppers. Details of the latest chicken study by GAP are illustrative of how this certification scheme, which does offer animals some real protections, still often functions to deceive the public.

The, performed at the University of Guelph, was intended to help GAP establish breed criteria for its multi-tiered welfare program. However, the study included only growth-accelerated breeds known to have welfare problems, such as heart and lung stress, obesity, and musculoskeletal issues.3, 4, 5 The study failed to build in any meaningful control group, giving researchers no “baseline” of what a normal bird—that is, a non-hybrid, or “standard-bred,” bird—would look like. This leaves open the possibility that today’s allegedly high welfare chickens actually suffer more than chickens did in the first half of the 20th century.

Why would GAP omit a meaningful control group? The impression one gets is that before the study was conducted, GAP was committed to using only hybrid lines of birds that have a wide range of welfare problems, from reduced mobility to footpad lesions. GAP’s study was useful in establishing that faster growing birds suffer more than slower growing birds, but, strangely, it formally excluded the slowest growing birds that its own results suggest would have the highest welfare.

The omission of standard-bred breeds is telling. It appears that GAP’s forthcoming recommendations specifying which lines of birds can be considered “high welfare” will not seek to optimize welfare as consumers understand it, but rather will approach welfare as understood by industry. Instead of helping consumers identify products that meet their understanding of humane, GAP has committed to maximizing profitability by helping sell consumers on whatever industry has decided it wants to market as humane.

Reducing suffering is vitally important, especially given the limits of the change now possible. To disparage suffering reduction efforts is to forget what it is like to suffer. However, this does not give suffering reduction efforts license to deceive consumers. A tiered standard like GAP’s purports to reflect the full spectrum of what is possible, not a range that runs from bad to worse, but GAP seems to be content simply iterating on the bottom rung. To imply that GAP is doing more is to risk humanewashing.

Consider a metaphor. It’s as if GAP leadership is so afraid of finding an ace or a face card—the high welfare outcomes of a standard-bred bird—that they stacked the deck to ensure that any hands dealt would include only numbered cards. They then studied a number of rounds of poker play, watching for winning hands at the table and taking careful notes. Soon they will build their certification standards around the winning hands dealt from the numbers-only deck, as if they are the best hands in all of poker. Consumers are being dealt a pair of tens but being told it’s a royal flush.

Or think of it this way: If a doctor were to evaluate various treatment outcomes for patients with broken bones, you would expect them to begin by studying treatments that heal bones completely. If the doctor only studied treatments that heal bones partially, the doctor may conclude that patients who end their treatment with little pain but no flexibility, or full range of motion but bones too brittle for normal use, are actually achieving the best outcomes.

Analogously, the welfare improvements seen in the GAP study may amount to meaningful improvements in welfare outcomes, but without including a baseline for what is possible, we simply cannot know how meaningful the improvements truly are. The welfare gains documented for slower-growing hybrid strains that appear substantial when compared to the fastest-growing strains may be meaningful, but, put in context, they are also a clear case of attempting to make a small improvement to justify a larger injustice. Offering consumers concerned with welfare hybrid birds who suffer slightly less is the pawn sacrifice meant to preserve factory farming for generations to come.

The omission of genetically uncompromised birds is glaring and revealing. It suggests that GAP is unwilling to look at, and thus incapable of even describing, what high welfare farming looks like at all. GAP is apparently content to rank the dismal factory farm operations currently available. Consumers want to see an industry in line with basic ethical values, and GAP is offering them “the best of the factory farm,” functionally becoming an advertising agency for factory farmed products.

The announcement accompanying the release of the limited study data claims proudly that GAP is in the process of “reinventing the modern day broiler chicken.” The modern broiler chicken, however, is the problem! “The modern broiler chicken” is another way of saying growth-accelerated, hybrid birds. It pretends that this recent, strange, and cruel form of breeding birds (through growth-accelerated hybrid genetics) is all there is, which is highly deceptive. GAP is reinventing the problem rather than ending it.

The potential value of a certification like GAP’s is that it could use its multi-tier system to dismantle big poultry in a phased and incremental fashion. Instead, it’s shoring up the use of genetically modified hybrid birds who suffer immensely (even if some suffer less than others).

Without including an optimal standard, the Guelph study results only give us a narrow snapshot of low welfare strains of birds, which are now, in proper Orwellian fashion, being referred to as “high welfare” and “slow growth.” The study can provide no information about what optimal chicken breed health looks like. Without a standard for highest welfare, the results of the study are a farce. Any tiered certification built around them will be designed to deceive.

It’s past time for GAP to do better.

Take action: Tell GAP to truly raise the bar for broiler genetics with a quick tweet today.

Image credit: We Animals Media

In the wake of our recent report and video reaching over a million American consumers about the pervasiveness of humanewashing at the grocery store, Farm Forward has kicked off a campaign and ad blitz calling out the meat industry’s latest deceptive marketing scheme, “One Health Certified” (OHC), which now adorns Batavia, Illinois-based ALDI’s store-brand chicken. Peeling back the seemingly holistic OHC sticker exposes a sophisticated humanewashing, greenwashing, and healthwashing initiative by the sixth largest poultry producer in the U.S., Mountaire Farms—which just topped headlines after settling a $205 million class action lawsuit for allegedly polluting the drinking water of thousands of people in Delaware. 

One Health Certified claims to follow a rigid set of antibiotics, animal welfare, and environmental standards, but in reality, OHC only certifies standard factory farming practices, including permanent indoor confinement in crowded sheds, where birds cannot engage in natural behaviors like foraging and dustbathing. The genetically modified birds allowed under OHC are bred to grow so large, so quickly, that they often suffer from injuries and heart and lung stress, and many can no longer walk by the time they reach slaughter age. Further, despite touting “responsible” antibiotic standards, the OHC label allows repeated, perpetual use of medically important antibiotics for disease treatment and control without consequences. 

A scathing exposé in The New Yorker sheds light on why Mountaire needs a public facelift: “Between 2010 and 2016, Mountaire had twice the number of OSHA violations per thousand workers as Tyson—a company with a workforce twelve times bigger.” Mountaire has also settled lawsuits alleging racial discrimination, and in 2013, it was fined for abusing Haitian workers, in part by denying them bathroom breaks. And Mountaire is no stranger to environmental degradation and animal abuse. For decades, it has been cited for environmental violations, and a 2015 undercover investigation revealed birds being violently thrown and punched, as well as sick and injured birds being discarded into piles with the dead. 

Mountaire’s new label misleads consumers at the precise moment they’re seeking safer, healthier, and more humane products amidst a global pandemic by capitalizing on the legitimacy of the World Health Organization’s highly respected One Health framework. Ultimately, OHC does nothing to alleviate the crowded conditions within factory farms that facilitate the spread of diseases, infections, and parasites. 

Meanwhile, ALDI proclaims its commitment to “livestock products being produced to high industry standards and in an ever more sustainable way,” but it has refused to commit to any bare-bones animal welfare improvements like eliminating gestation crates for pregnant pigs and is now using the green OHC sticker to cover up these failures. Our new petition urges ALDI to follow through on its corporate sustainability pledge, starting with dropping the humanewashing OHC label and Mountaire as its chicken supplier. The petition is accompanied by geotargeted mobile ads reaching tens of thousands of cell phones within a mile radius of the grocer’s headquarters this month, online ads targeting ALDI executives, and ads on social media targeting ALDI’s millions of followers. 

Preceding the campaign launch, Farm Forward was joined by a national coalition of animal welfare, consumer, public health, and environmental organizations, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, Consumer Reports, and the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center at George Washing University, in calling on ALDI and other chains to steer clear of OHC, yet ALDI, Mountaire’s largest grocery customer, has yet to comment. 

Join us in urging ALDI to ditch Mountaire and its humanewashing OHC label today by signing our petition on Change.org. 

At first glance, a bold green label touting “Responsible Animal Care” might look like a panacea for consumers navigating the global pandemic in search of healthier, safer, and more humane foods. But today, Farm Forward joins a diverse coalition of more than 50 environmental, public health, and animal advocacy organizations, including the Center for Food Safety, Natural Resources Defense Council, ASPCA, and the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center at the George Washington University, in condemning the meat industry’s latest effort to deceive these very consumers through this legitimate-appearing “One Health Certified” (OHC) certification—and urging restaurants, retailers, and meat producers to steer clear of it. The warning comes on the heels of Farm Forward’s new report exposing the pervasiveness of humanewashing in the certification business.

Unlike more meaningful animal welfare certifications that at least attempt to raise the floor for animal welfare, OHC, which now adorns store-brand chicken at major grocers like ALDI and BJ’s, is merely the brainchild of, and a marketing vehicle for, the nation’s sixth largest poultry producer, Mountaire Farms. As a new public health framework called One Health has emerged to draw attention to the interconnections between human, environmental health, the meat industry, with Mountaire leading the charge, has coopted the One Health phrase to mislead consumers about the nature of its products—at a time when consumers are scrutinizing animal agriculture’s role in environmental degradation, antibiotic resistance, and chronic and infectious diseases more than ever.

In a statement, the coalition writes, “The industry-friendly OHC standards capitalize on borrowed, unearned legitimacy from over 15 years of national and international intergovernmental One Health work to promote interdisciplinary approaches to human, animal and environmental health.” OHC is administered by an apparently independent organization called the National Institute of Antimicrobial Resistance Research and Education (NIAMRRE), but, in reality, NIAMRRE is deeply entangled with the industry actors it is charged with regulating. Its relationship with Mountaire can be traced to the very beginning: Mountaire applied for the OHC trademark in 2017 and was the first (and so far only) meat company to adopt the program.1 Other producers must pay a substantial fee to join the program, creating a fundamental conflict of interest: NIAMRRE’s business model depends on industry dollars to grow the OHC program, so OHC can only aim its standards as high as producers are willing to go.

It’s already clear that they aren’t aiming high: G. Don Ritter, DVM, ACPV, the Director of Technical Marketing of Mountaire Farms, explained in a recent webinar that the primary purpose of a label is not to actually improve, but to “reduce consumer concerns about buying” a product.2 From Mountaire’s point of view, there’s no need to make costly improvements as long as you can trick shoppers into believing you have.

As the coalition’s statement reveals, behind OHC’s holistic-looking logo bearing checkmarks for biosecurity, veterinary care, antibiotic restrictions, animal welfare, and environmental impact, its standards are paltry. OHC’s animal welfare standards simply enshrine routine factory farming practices. Producers can choose between basic industry trade group standards (the National Chicken Council or the National Turkey Federation) or American Humane Certified (AHC), an older, more established industry humanewashing scheme. The standard factory farming practices condoned by the AHC label include crate confinement for gestating and nursing sows, permanent indoor confinement (except for AHC’s free-range or pasture-raised certifications for laying chickens), and dehorning of cows.3  The coalition elaborates, “Most importantly for poultry welfare, OHC does not encourage genetically robust birds demonstrating higher welfare outcomes, nor does it require reasonable stocking density limits, lighting schedules, or environmental enrichment, all of which are key components of meaningful poultry welfare certification and auditing programs.”

OHC’s antibiotic standards are almost as bad as its animal welfare standards. OHC allows repeated, perpetual use of medically important antibiotics for disease treatment and control without consequences, as long as veterinarian recommendations are followed and documented, as well as their use in the hatchery or in ovo under certain circumstances.4 While that may sound good, the standards fail to establish a limit on the duration for which antibiotics can be used and what measures must be taken to ensure animals do not get sick in the first place. Ultimately, OHC standards do nothing to alleviate the crowded conditions within factory farms that facilitate the spread of diseases, infections, and parasites.5 OHC also permits the routine use of antibiotics that are described as “nonmedically important” for human use. This means that drugs such as ionophores and bacitracin “may be used to maintain animal health and welfare.”6 In practice, these classes of drugs are often fed to animals continuously to compensate for unsanitary conditions.7

As an environmental certification, OHC’s standards are, unsurprisingly, mere greenwashing. While OHC producers must calculate their carbon footprint, there is no built-in expectation for them to meet a certain standard or actually reduce it over time. Additionally, OHC does not implement any form of monitoring for other environmental hazards, like antibiotic runoff, ammonia pollutants, pathogens, or the development of antimicrobial resistance. Producers must meet local and federal laws regarding waste disposal and nutrient management plans—but meeting a legal baseline for an industry that routinely, and legally, destroys critical habitat, contaminates freshwater, and is one of the country’s largest greenhouse gas emitters. As Farm Forward and the coalition conclude, “It is unclear what OHC certifies except lawful behavior, which hardly needs a certification.”

By offering consumers a false sense of security at the precise moment the public is waking up to the dangers of industrial animal farming, OHC hopes to improve upon the success of certifications like AHC to sustain and increase profits for the worst meat producers.

While OHC is in its infancy, if left unchecked, it could quickly evolve into the American meat industry’s next (and more sophisticated) generation of humanewashing. That’s why, in an accompanying consensus statement, the coalition outlines its vision for a true One Health framework that will encourage producers and retailers considering an OHC partnership to think beyond this thinly veiled marketing scheme to the possibility of transformational change in their supply chains:

Promoting animal health while minimizing the need for antimicrobials is integral to an authentic One Health framework … These holistic systems include, at a minimum, animal breeds and strains selected for health and resilience rather than for maximum growth, weaning practices that maximize animal health, preventive vaccinations, high-quality feed and nutrition, and health-optimized sanitation and living conditions, such as low-density housing to avoid overcrowding and consequent stress.

As Farm Forward continues to expose the dirt behind OHC’s humanewashing, we encourage its biggest partners, including ALDI, to peel this deceptive label off their products before any more consumers are duped.

Join the movement: Send a quick, polite message to ALDI today encouraging it to ditch the humanewashing OHC label.

On June 14th, the Chicago Tribune published an opinion written by Farm Forward’s Executive Director Andrew deCoriolis in response to their coverage of an undercover investigation at Fair Oaks Farm, an industrial dairy operation in Indiana. While the Tribune’s coverage sheds light on appalling abuse documented at Fair Oaks Farm, the Tribune failed to put the abuse into context of the structural cruelty and suffering found on industrial dairy farms. Below is the unedited piece that we submitted to the Tribune.  

“Perhaps the most troubling thing about the recent undercover footage released by Animal Recovery Mission (ARM) into conditions at Fair Oaks Farm is that, while appalled, I wasn’t surprised by anything I saw. If you’d asked me what I’d expect to see on a farm like Fair Oaks as a fly on the wall I would have described untrained and underpaid workers taking out their frustration on depressed and defenseless animals. I would have described the small pens (known within the industry as “hutches”) used to isolate young calves, who are separated from their mothers almost immediately after birth, in which a large percentage of calves become so distraught that they starve themselves. 

“The unbearable truth is that ARM’s undercover footage depicts the routine and systematic mistreatment of animals on industrial dairy farms. 

“In an apparently heartfelt recorded statement posted to YouTube in the days following the release of ARM’s undercover video, Fair Oaks’ founder and CEO Mike McCloskey expresses remorse for the animals being abused on his farms and pledges to prevent this sort of cruelty on his farms going forward. He outlines a series of new procedures and precautions which, while welcome, have much more to do with reassuring his customers than preventing cruelty to animals.  

“If McCloskey and Fair Oaks were sincere about preventing cruelty to animals they would be talking about things like transitioning to group housing for calves, providing pasture access for cows, and other husbandry practices which industrial-scale operations resist due to their added cost.

“Farms like Fair Oaks exist because, at least today, it’s cheaper to invest in savvy marketing and PR professionals than it is to commit to meaningful welfare improvements that can improve conditions for farmed animals, and farms like Fair Oaks will continue to exist until we reform the regulatory environments in which these businesses exist or until a critical mass of consumers make the shift to plant-based milks. Considering the ongoing deregulation of industries including animal agriculture, at least for now, preventing this sort of cruelty to animals is simply up to each of us.” 

My grandmother is in her nineties and my sister, who is only in her thirties, has an autoimmune disease, and works in medicine. I don’t need to spell out the risk they are in because of COVID-19. And I don’t need to know who is reading this to assume that you have a similar list of loved ones. It is more than reasonable in such times to limit our focus to simply making it through coming months. Yet it is precisely the precariousness of the lives of people we love that make it unconscionable to postpone taking actions that could dramatically reduce the risk of another pandemic. The magnitude of suffering our actions now could reduce is simply too great.

The CDC reports that 3 out of every 4 new or emerging infectious diseases come from animals.1  We’ve all heard about wet markets and their probable role in the emergence of COVID-19. Many are wisely calling for various forms of bans of wet markets and the Chinese government has already banned meat from wild animals at them. Yet an equally great, or possibly greater, risk factor for another pandemic well-attested in the scientific literature has received surprisingly little attention: the particularly striking role that industrial poultry plays. Commercial pig operations are also implicated with notable frequency, and other aspects of agricultural production figure as well, but industrial poultry is for pandemics what fossil fuels are for climate change.

The crux of the issue is that we know that most of the influenza viruses with pandemic potential considered “of special concern” by the CDC emerged from commercial poultry operations. Read that sentence twice.

We also know why industrial poultry is so efficient at producing novel viruses. Tens of thousands of genetically identical birds, along with their excrement, are packed in a single building creating an environment ideal for viral mutation.

Significantly, all these birds are immunocompromised. Novel “hybrid poultry” breeding techniques that became widespread in the 1970s created fast-growing genetic strains that are now the exclusive basis for the global industrial chicken industry, but these techniques simultaneously devastated the immune systems of the chickens and turkeys we eat. No other farmed animals have been so dramatically re engineered at the genetic level. Industry opts to keep these fundamentally diseased birds alive through controlled environments, constant use of antibiotics, or simply killing them before the full pathology of their genetics has manifested.

The modern poultry industry is a perfect storm for a pandemic plague: an ideal environment for pathogens, ideal almost-identical hosts with fragile immunity, ideal conditions of filth and feces, and on a mind-boggling scale.

Globally there are fewer than 100 million cattle, perhaps 2 billion pigs, but more than 23 billion of our food units are individual chickens (up from 14 billion in 2000).2

We are fortunate that scientists understand the viruses that cause pandemics as well as they do.  They can tell us, for example, that on April 9, 2020 the USDA identified a highly pathogenic H7N3 avian influenza in the U.S. for the first time since 2017—they can even tell us it was detected in a South Carolina commercial turkey flock.3  The CDC reports that H7N3 has “primarily caused mild to moderate illness in people.”4  It is strange to consider that good news, but it is.

Had they detected another virus on the watch list, H5N1 (bird flu), we would be facing the imminent possibility of a pandemic that would make coronavirus look mild. The CDC reports that H5N1 kills humans at roughly 30 times the rate that COVID-19 does—a 60% mortality rate.5  And unlike COVID-19, H5N1 does not spare children.

Thankfully, we can make ourselves and our families safer, far safer than if we limit our concern to the wildlife trade and wet markets. Eliminating the industrial poultry industry in favor of extensive farms or alternative proteins is literally in the best interests of every human being.

Banning industrial poultry does require, what some might call, a sacrifice: chicken and turkey would return to their historically higher price, which is closer to beef. Is more expensive chicken worth the sacrifice? There is a seesaw: on one side is the modern industrialized poultry industry and the likelihood of another pandemic, and on the other side is greater reliance on other protein sources, a return of actual poultry farming, and a guaranteed safer future. We are currently barreling toward another pandemic. The current White House is even likely to direct most of the $14 billion in much-needed aid slated for agriculture in the COVID-19 stimulus package to support the very forms of agriculture that make a pandemic more likely.6

By contrast, political leaders like Corey Booker, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren have started, quite sensibly, to speak about a moratorium on building new industrial farms. This would indeed be progress, for the growing poultry industry spells growing pandemic risk. But is maintaining the threat of another pandemic at its current high level the best we can do?

If the science really does show the poultry industry is a major risk factor for pandemics, as I suggest is beyond doubt, why would we hesitate to ban industrial poultry? If this pandemic risk were about how how we produce cars or computers would we hesitate to demand a change? The issue may very well be that it is not about chickens at all, but the industry their lives suffer to serve.

Our relationship with food is complicated, emotional, and intimate—perhaps with meat especially. Chicken soup is supposed to be soothing. Turkeys help us celebrate Thanksgiving. We make our food choices for complex reasons, but public health does not figure high on the list. Yet we cannot let our nostalgia over soup mislead us with stakes so high.

The production of any product through methods that menace the planet with another pandemic should be ended. Industrial poultry barely existed two generations ago and our generation should be the last to tolerate it. Building the political will to ban industrial poultry will be hard, even to imagine. Real change always is. Yet, if the present moment teaches us anything, it’s that everything can change. There is no exemption for industrial poultry from this immutable law. It is, simply and profoundly, our choice.

Reduce the risk. Pledge to End Big Poultry now.

Like many groups working towards a more sustainable global food system, we’re disappointed to learn that this year’s UN Climate Conference (COP25) won’t take place in Chile as planned, although we understand that the safety and well-being of the Chilean people must take priority over an international conference.  

As the conference organizers and international climate groups move forward with alternate plans, we want to alert them to one significant casualty of this change. COP25 Chile was set to become a historic first—the first global climate event to reflect agriculture’s role in climate change in the food served at the conference. Last year’s conference in Poland was criticized for serving a meat-heavy menu to its attendees, even as the same attendees and leading climate scientists advocate meat-reduction as one of the most important ways to slow climate change globally. If the people advocating for a change in how we eat aren’t willing to change how they eat, then how can the global community take them seriously? 

This year’s conference in Chile was set to be different. The conference organizers had agreed to recommendations put forward by the Food and Climate Alliance, a global coalition of food and climate organizations that Farm Forward is a part of, facilitated by a Chilean advocacy organization, Fundación Vegetarianos Hoy, and were in the process of seeking out caterers to serve a climate-friendly menu. The top recommendation was that the conference “default veg”—that is, that plant-based meals would be offered to all attendees, by default, unless they request meals with animal products. This recommendation was based on a behavioral economics concept that switching defaults is one of the most powerful ways to shift consumer behavior. 

In our experience and that of our partners, adopting a default veg menu typically results in an increase in people choosing the plant-based meal option by anywhere from 20-50%. For a conference of COP25’s size, this could result in a carbon savings of approximately 28,000 pounds of carbon. Moreover, it would be a way to model to thousands of global climate leaders how easy and delicious it can be to eat mostly plants. 

But just because the conference won’t take place in Chile doesn’t mean this opportunity is lost. We urge Spain to follow through with the commitment to serve food that reflects the UN’s own recommendations for climate action. 

A shift in how we understand food’s role in climate change is taking place and we’re proud to be part of the movement that is helping the world adapt to this shift. 

“Through thoughtful procurement policies, institutions like Harvard Business School meet growing consumer demands for more ethical and sustainable food. By making this commitment today, the school improves farmed animals’ welfare—at no increased cost.”
— Andrew deCoriolis, Farm Forward Executive Director

We’re excited to welcome Harvard Business School (HBS) to Farm Forward’s Leadership Circle. Business leaders from around the world look to HBS as the gold standard for business education. We hope that HBS’s policy prioritizing animal welfare will inspire many others.

HBS is the fourteenth institution to join the Leadership Circle, which includes other leading universities and businesses such as Bon Appétit Management Company, Burgerville, University of California Berkeley, and Villanova University.

As a member of the Leadership Circle, HBS has committed to buying 100 percent of its eggs—including both liquid and shell—from certified higher welfare farms aligned with our sourcing requirements. To implement these changes, HBS partnered with their on-site dining management company, Restaurant Associates (RA), a company of Compass Group, to identify higher welfare suppliers and to shift their purchasing. Restaurant Associates leveraged the expertise of Food Buy, the largest foodservice procurement organization in North America, to assess the impact of changing the egg supplies to operations on campus and found that switching to a higher welfare products did not increase costs to HBS. The change will impact more than 15,000 hens over the next ten years.

Farm Forward applauds HBS for adopting a kinder, more sustainable food policy. As HBS invests in this growing sector of the food economy, the school paves the way to making to higher welfare, more sustainable products readily available to other institutions and large buyers. Moving forward, HBS will explore other ways to sensibly incorporate highest welfare eggs and continue to integrate plant-based food options into their dining services, thereby improving the health and sustainability of our food system.

HBS and RA were inspired by the forthcoming Sustainable Healthful Food Standards developed by the Harvard Office for Sustainability in collaboration with Harvard’s Multidisciplinary Faculty Food Standards Committee and Council of Student Sustainability Leaders. Harvard’s Sustainable Healthful Food standards includes a recommendation that other Harvard schools work with Farm Forward to create a baseline of farmed animal welfare and to work with the Leadership Circle to develop and implement strategies to improve their dining operations. Farm Forward is pleased to support Harvard’s commitment to continuous improvement on these issues.

As Farm Forward’s new Executive Director, I want to tell you my story of how I became passionate about farmed animal welfare and share my goals for this excellent organization. I stepped into this new role because I’ve seen Farm Forward’s unique strategy, high-impact programs, and phenomenal team radically transform how people eat and farm. Helping lead this organization into its second decade is an honor and I’m excited to see what we will accomplish together to end factory farming.

My belief in the transformative power of food began more than a decade ago in college when I volunteered to cook in a student co-op, making a vegetarian dinner each week for more than a hundred of my peers. By sourcing food from dozens of local farms I got to know the foodshed of Northeast Ohio and learned that access to food—especially fresh food—depends on a complex set of social, economic, and geographic factors.

After I graduated my experiences at the co-op drew me to Chicago to work for several years with the Chicago Food Policy Council, a coalition of organizations working to create a more equitable, healthy and just food system for Chicagoans. Seeing the impact of our work firsthand is why, today, I am so optimistic about the ability of activists to work with communities to envision and build a better world.

Around the same time, I read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals, which made explicit the connections I had long felt between factory farming’s contributions to justice issues like climate change, food security, and animal suffering. I credit Eating Animals with my decision to focus my career on ending factory farming. It felt like serendipity when I applied for a position at Farm Forward, which had been so intimately involved in creating that book.

I began working for Farm Forward five years ago on projects to transform how animal products are sourced by consumers and institutions. I’ve seen Farm Forward grow from a scrappy (but astonishingly high-impact) staff of three to a team that is poised to alter the landscape of food production in the US and internationally. With your support, we can seize these opportunities and launch a new, more vibrant, and more impactful phase of the anti–factory farming movement.

Here are some of my goals for Farm Forward in the year to come:

• Build bridges between anti–factory farming and social movements (including climate activism and food justice) in order to build a broad and effective coalition to oppose factory farming;
• Continue to grow our impact on institutional food policies and practices through programs like the Leadership Circle, the Jewish Initiative for Animals, and our partnership with the Good Food Purchasing Program in cities around the US;
• Strengthen Farm Forward’s own capacity to disseminate knowledge, coordinate strategy and provide thought leadership in order to increase the overall capacity and effectiveness of the anti–factory farming movement;
• Develop platforms to empower underrepresented voices to implement new, diverse approaches to fighting factory farming and creating better food systems;
• Continue to improve Farm Forward’s policies and practices to foster a safe, inclusive, and healthy workplace that encourages our employees to thrive personally and professionally.

The opportunities that lie ahead for Farm Forward in the coming year to help reduce the impacts of factory farming and improve the lives of farmed animals are truly exciting and are the result of ten years of excellent executive leadership by Ben Goldsmith, the vision and strategy of our founder Aaron Gross, and the hard work and skill of our excellent team. I encourage you to take the time to read Farm Forward’s Annual Report, which includes a comprehensive summary of our first ten years. I feel honored to help lead this team as it embarks on its second decade, and I hope you will join us.

With Gratitude,

Andrew deCoriolis

To our supporters:

Farm Forward and our allies were concerned to learn that People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) published a video today containing footage allegedly taken at Frank Reese’s Good Shepherd Poultry Ranch, a farm we have often praised for their use of genetically healthy birds in contrast to the dominant practice in the poultry industry of using sickly “hybrid” birds. We still would praise Good Shepherd for being one of the only commercial poultry farms in the country to avoid the tremendous genetically-driven animal suffering that is the norm in the poultry industry. In the video PETA describes the conditions for turkeys at Good Shepherd as no different than what happens on factory farms. While we take these allegations seriously and there are real problems that the video depicts, we strongly disagree.

Both the birds themselves, and the conditions they live in at Good Shepherd, are dramatically different than the norm at industrial farms. Dozens of undercover investigations, including many by PETA, document truly atrocious conditions and abuse on industrial operations, including using genetically unhealthy animals whose very bodies condemn them to suffer, intense overcrowding with no outdoor access, and animals being kicked, stomped, and thrown aggressively. None of this cruelty is seen in PETA’s video of Good Shepherd. Unlike PETA, we think these are differences that matter. To pretend that reducing suffering isn’t important because problems remain is to forget what it is like to suffer.

That said, some of the scenes depicted in the video should give us pause. Sick birds should be euthanized. Catching and loading animals should be done in ways that eliminate crowding, stampeding or panic. Transporting animals long distances should be avoided and ultimately eliminated. It is true that smaller farms like Good Shepherd often have little choice but to transport animals long distances to slaughter but this should not make us pretend that long hauls are not miserable for the animals forced to endure them.

Our supporters who eat animals should know that even when you set high welfare standards and have high integrity farmers, like we continue to believe is the case at Good Shepherd, there remain profound structural limitations to treating farmed animals as most of us believe they should be treated. If your values are in tension with what you see on the video, or the reality that even on high-welfare farms some unnecessary animal suffering persists, Farm Forward encourages you to simply remove animals from your diet. Plant-based diets are one powerful way to fight the cruelty of the factory farm, but they are not the only way. For those who continue to eat animals, you can still resist factory farming by sourcing your animal products from higher welfare farms that at least avoid the worst abuses endemic to industrial farms. We encourage anyone who eats animal products to exclusively buy products from certified higher welfare farms. Eating less meat and better meat is also a powerful way to fight the cruelty of the factory farm.

Finally, we feel compelled to take this occasion to relate to our supporters that, regrettably and for reasons totally unrelated to PETA’s video, Frank Reese and Farm Forward have not worked together for several months (despite many years of previous collaboration). In August of 2018, Frank resigned from Farm Forward’s board after ten years of service and since that time we have not worked together. This has not changed our support for Frank’s longstanding advocacy on behalf of genetically healthy heritage birds. We are proud of the work we’ve done with Good Shepherd in the past and wish Frank the best as he continues to work to preserve healthy heritage birds. Farm Forward will continue to encourage consumers and companies to make food choices that reduce animal suffering, including choosing plant-based food, reducing the consumption of animal products, and choosing highest available welfare heritage poultry as a means of resisting industrial agriculture.

Due to demand from conscious consumers and pressure from organizations like Farm Forward and our allies, the food industry is changing. Blue Apron, the leading meal kit service, has announced an industry-leading animal welfare policy that has a strong focus on third-party animal welfare certification and public transparency. Blue Apron’s policy demonstrates the improvements to animal welfare possible in a large supply chain. Blue Apron’s changes will impact several million animals per year.

Farm Forward worked with Blue Apron’s supply chain team for more than two years to develop standards, source higher welfare animal products, and evaluate suppliers to confirm they could meet Blue Apron’s new standards. Our collaboration shows how food companies can work with animal welfare organizations to set forward-looking standards and push the envelope of what’s possible for farmed animal welfare.

Study1 after study2 shows that consumers care about how animals are treated. They are troubled, to say the least, by many of the practices of industrial animal production. Many companies have responded to consumer pressure over the last decade, especially the last five years, by eliminating some of their very worst animal welfare practices.

Most recently, in just the past year, dozens of companies—including Burger King, Starbucks, and Compass Group—have gone beyond eliminating their worst practices to improving their standard practices. Now Blue Apron, with Farm Forward’s support, has evaluated new possibilities for its beef and broiler chicken supply chains and committed to set an even higher standard.

Blue Apron’s Policy

Blue Apron’s animal welfare policy represents an important step forward in several respects:

• Meat from slower-growing chickens. Blue Apron has announced that more than 10 percent of the chicken in their meal kits is certified at GAP Step 4, which means that they are using slower-growing breeds raised with access to pasture. Blue Apron has also committed to source 100 percent of their chicken from slower-growing birds raised with environmental enrichments, more space, and improved slaughter by 2022.
• Eggs from pasture raised hens. 100 percent of Blue Apron’s eggs come from pasture-based farms verified by Certified Humane Pasture Raised, which requires that hens have continuous access to vegetated pasture. This is a tremendous improvement over cage-free, where most hens are raised in cramped conditions indoors.
• Beef from cattle raised entirely on pasture. By the end of 2019, 50 percent of the cows providing Blue Apron’s beef will be raised and finished on pasture.
• Commitment to verification and transparency. Blue Apron is the first U.S. company to commit to sell only those animal products that use Certified Humane or GAP animal welfare certifications, also by the end of 2019.

While most companies are raising the floor and eliminating the worst practices from their supply chains, Blue Apron is pushing the ceiling: setting a positive vision for a path forward that ensures meaningfully better conditions for all animals in their supply chain.

Learn more about our work to help institutions leverage their buying power to change the way animals are raised for food.

Farm Forward’s Leadership Circle champions a “less meat, better meat,” strategy for the schools, businesses, and other institutions that serve hundreds of millions of meals in the U.S. each year. Developed by Health Care Without Harm, the “less meat, better meat” framework can help institutions reduce their use of animal products overall (“less meat”), while at the same time sourcing the animal products they do serve from higher-welfare, more sustainable sources (“better meat”).

The Leadership Circle supports institutions sourcing “better meat” by connecting them with certified higher-welfare and environmentally sustainable farmers. By doing this, we help the growing network of certified higher-welfare farmers find markets for their products. For example, Farm Forward helped the University of Denver connect with and source Global Animal Partnership Step 5 chicken from Boulder Natural Meats. Although the Leadership Circle program only launched in October 2017, our “better meat” commitment has already improved the lives of more than three million animals raised for food.

Given these accomplishments, why focus on “less meat” as a critical component of the Leadership Circle’s approach? Part of the answer is economic: because animal products typically cost more than plant-based protein1, buying a lower volume of animal products allows institutions to save money. Those savings can be reinvested in better-quality animal products. Shifting dollars away from industrialized farms and toward higher-welfare farms supports small- and medium-sized family farms, which often struggle to compete in a market dominated by a handful of large agricultural companies. By shifting consumption to animal products raised by smaller, higher-welfare farms, we help build a sustainable farming movement that can be part of a solution to factory farms.

Reducing our consumption of animal products provides broader benefits for animal welfare, human health, and the planet. The U.S. raises over 9 billion animals for food each year2, and nearly 99 percent spend most or all of their lives confined in factory farms.3 Consuming fewer animal products usually translates to consuming fewer animals, which reduces overall animal suffering.4

Eating less meat and more plants is also recommended for better health and increased food security.5 Most American adults eat roughly twice the recommended amount of protein each day6 and consume more saturated fat and sodium—both present in conventional meat and poultry—than is optimal for health.7 Switching from a diet high in animal products to one featuring more plants is broadly recognized as better for human health.

Lastly, the high emissions of food animal production mean that reducing our consumption of animal products is critical if we are to limit the severe and irreversible consequences of climate change associated with a global temperature rise of  2° C or more.8

For animals, our health, and the stability of our planet, it is imperative that we eat less and better meat and other animal products. The effect of influencing meals eaten in institutions cannot be overestimated; more than 1/3 of every dollar we spend on food goes to foodservice establishments.9

Please support our efforts to reduce animal product consumption by donating to Farm Forward’s Leadership Circle program.

Farm Forward is proud to announce the launch of the Leadership Circle, a new institutional purchasing program that leverages the buying power of businesses, universities, and civic and religious institutions to change the way animals are raised for food. The program increases the public’s understanding of higher welfare farming, supports a network of third-party certified farmers, and meets American consumers’ demand for products bearing animal welfare certification labels with meaningful standards.1 Further, the Leadership Circle encourages institutions to adopt a “less meat, better meat” approach by sourcing higher welfare meat, poultry, and eggs while incorporating more plant-based proteins to lower costs and improve public health, the environment, and animal welfare.

Founding members of the Leadership Circle include Bon Appetit Management Company, Airbnb’s Portland office, Cal Dining at the University of California Berkeley, Dr. Bronner’s, and Hazon, the largest Jewish sustainability organization in North America. These institutions are leaders in ethical and sustainable dining and, through their purchasing, are driving progress in sustainability and higher welfare farming.

Members of the Leadership Circle have committed to purchase only products bearing a third-party animal welfare certification for at least one animal product category, like eggs, within two years. Members have also committed to support farmers raising animals under optimal conditions (for example, on pasture), and in doing so are playing a vital role in rebuilding a network of sustainable farms in America.

Bon Appetit Management Company (BAMCO)—a food service provider for companies including Google and dozens of colleges and universities—has committed to source 100% of its eggs from higher welfare sources. Through its partnership with the Leadership Circle, BAMCO’s food service customers will have access to resources and technical support from Leadership Circle staff who can help them source higher welfare meat and poultry. Another founding Leadership Circle member, Cal Dining, has also transitioned to purchasing higher welfare eggs and, additionally, purchases Global Animal Partnership (GAP) Step 3 chicken and grass-fed, grass-finished beef. Cal Dining has also introduced strategies to reduce overall meat consumption, including a “flipped plate” concept that features plant-based proteins, rather than meat, at the center of a meal. As the first tech company to join the leadership circle, Airbnb’s Portland office has made similar changes, sourcing eggs from a regional farm as well as eggs from heritage hens raised by a local educational farm. Dr. Bronner’s—the number one selling organic soap company in the U.S.—is the first to join the Leadership Circle for chicken and beef, purchasing GAP Step 4 chicken and sourcing and subsidizing grass-fed, grass-finished beef for the taco truck that serves its 120+ employees lunch daily. These institutions’ leadership on animal welfare helps build significant demand for higher welfare products and is an example of how companies and universities are taking the lead on higher welfare conditions as well as reducing demand for animal products.

Members of the Leadership Circle benefit from Farm Forward’s team of food systems professionals, who help institutions

1) evaluate their current suppliers of animal products,
2) connect with certified higher welfare producers of meat, poultry, and eggs, and
3) employ strategies for successfully reducing animal consumption, transitioning to higher welfare products, or both.

The technical assistance offered by the Leadership Circle helps institutions align their supply chains with their institutional values by providing a comprehensive set of tools and technical assistance, free of charge.

The Leadership Circle is an official partner of the Real Food Challenge, which works with colleges and universities to transition at least 20% of their food spending to local, fair, ecologically sound, and humane sources by 2020. As a Real Food Challenge partner, the Leadership Circle will provide colleges and universities that have signed the Real Food Campus Commitment with additional technical assistance toward meeting their humane spending goals—an area in which many colleges and universities have struggled.

Funded in part by the Open Philanthropy Project and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Leadership Circle is instrumental in building the demand and supply chain for higher welfare animal products, which will ultimately make such products more available and affordable for institutions and the general public. By developing the network of sustainable and higher welfare farmers and ranchers, and by driving consumer demand for their higher welfare products, the Leadership Circle will raise the bar for animal welfare—helping to eliminate the most inhumane practices—and move animal agriculture in a more humane and sustainable direction.

Colleges and universities all over the country have begun leveraging their purchasing power to build more sustainable food systems. The 23-campus California State University (CSU) system has joined the Real Food Challenge, committing to sourcing 20 percent of their food from sustainable sources by 2020. The Real Food Challenge also includes a commitment to source meat, eggs, and dairy from farms that raise animals in higher-welfare conditions. Like other Real Food Challenge members, the CSU campuses have made progress toward their 20 percent commitment, but goals and commitments in the abstract are no match for a first-hand view of where our food comes from. For this reason, many campuses with questions about animal welfare and third party certifications are taking a closer look at more humane farms.

Last month, Farm Forward led a group of CSU food service directors, sustainability coordinators, students, and regional staff from Sodexo on a tour of Mary’s Chicken, a certified higher-welfare poultry operation in Fresno, CA. Mary’s is a family-owned company that raises Global Animal Partnership (GAP)-certified chickens and turkeys and operates a hatchery and processing plant.

The tour allowed dining directors and students to see three different farms that raise birds in progressively higher-welfare conditions. The first was a GAP Step 3 farm, which raises fast-growing Cornish Cross birds (42 days to market weight) in large barns where they are given natural light, seasonal access to the outdoors, and approximately 25 percent more space than birds raised on conventional farms. (By comparison, birds on conventional farms receive no natural light or outdoor access.)

Touring Mary’s Chicken facilities in Fresno, CA

Next up was a stop at a GAP Step 4 farm, which raises slower-growing birds (approximately 60 days to market weight) and provides year-round access to pasture. Even at first glance, the most obvious difference was the birds themselves—they looked healthier and were more active, perching on hay bales and foraging outside on the pasture.

The slower-growing birds on Mary’s Step 4 farms are genetically healthier than the Cornish Cross birds, who suffer because of their rapid growth. Today, fast-growing Cornish Cross birds are raised on 99 percent of all chicken farms in the U.S, but a major shift is underway in the chicken industry. Because of pressure from consumers and advocates, dozens of companies, including Compass Group, Aramark, and Sodexo, have committed to buy chicken that comes exclusively from slower-growing birds by 2024.

“This tour provided me with a lot of enlightening knowledge about higher welfare poultry farming and further encouraged my efforts to increase the amount of humane products served on our campus,” Rebecca Pope, student researcher for the Real Food Challenge at CSU Monterey Bay. “The benefits of sourcing products like Mary’s are worth the effort it takes to make them available and I hope that other CSU students continue to work to get more sustainable and just food options offered on their campuses.”

The day ended with a tour of Mary’s new slaughterhouse, which processes over 150,000 chickens each day. Particularly noteworthy is how Mary’s stuns the chickens before they are slaughtered. Most processing plants in the U.S. hang live birds upside down by their feet and stun them in electrified water baths. Mary’s is one of just a handful of plants nationwide that uses a multi-stage, controlled atmospheric system to stun birds. One of the major advantages of these systems is that conscious birds are not handled by employees. Controlled atmosphere stunning is widely accepted to improve welfare for chickens at slaughter, and although many companies, including Sodexo, have committed to using controlled atmosphere systems, it will likely be many years before the technology is widely used throughout the industry.

“The tour offered us a chance to see the way chickens can be raised. I think the tour motivated everyone to learn more about the chicken that’s served in the dining halls and find ways to incorporate higher-welfare options,” Rosie Linares-Diaz, the West Coast Coordinator for the Real Food Challenge. “What’s great is that more humane products are available on a scale that can meet the demands of the CSUs. I hope to see these kinds of products on all of the CSU campuses in the near future.”

Farm Forward organized the tour as part of our outreach for the Leadership Circle—a new program that helps universities, companies, and institutional buyers improve animal welfare in their supply chains. The Leadership Circle provides technical assistance, resources, and free consulting to institutions that commit to sourcing animal products from farms with a third-party animal welfare certification.

CSU campuses tour Mary’s Chicken in Fresno, CA

The Leadership Circle also encourages members to support farms that raise animals in the best possible conditions. When it comes to poultry, the highest-welfare farms raise heritage breed chickens and turkeys. Heritage birds grow at a normal rate, can thrive outdoors, and are the only turkeys that can reproduce naturally. As it happens, Mary’s is one of the few farms in the U.S. that raises GAP Step 5-certified heritage turkeys. Chefs and culinary professionals have long recognized heritage birds as the best tasting, and we hope to see them appear on university menus in the coming years.

Farm Forward staff looks forward to working with schools in the CSU system to help them source higher-welfare products and meet their Real Food Challenge goals.

To learn more about the Leadership Circle and Farm Forward’s work with universities and institutions, visit our website.

Can the very people who raise animals for consumption also defend them against the abuses of factory farming? Not everyone agrees, but at Farm Forward our answer has always been an emphatic “Yes!”. Our unique approach is helping to create a united front where farmers, consumers, and animal advocates work synergistically to help end factory farming.

Animal advocacy groups fighting factory farming have traditionally had difficulty building trust with farmers; for most groups, farmer outreach primarily means managing tensions and asking certain segments of the farm community to support animal welfare legislation. We founded Farm Forward with a conviction that our movement needs to enhance our limited relationships with the people who raise animals for food by inviting higher welfare farmers to be both sources of strategic insight and full partners in the fight against the factory farm.

Our work with farmers is focused on three key areas:

1.  reestablishing highest welfare, heritage poultry as a viable alternative to the factory farm;
2. expanding market opportunities for higher-welfare farmers by helping them better reach consumers, retailers, and the foodservice industry through BuyingPoultry and other initiatives; and
3. authoring policy and research that creates an environment where an even greater expansion of the market for heritage and higher welfare poultry products is possible.

Reestablishing Heritage Poultry

Farm Forward is playing a pivotal role in rebuilding the market for heritage chickens and turkeys. In contrast with surface-level changes like “cage-free” and “free-range,” heritage poultry has the potential to go beyond mitigating the worst abuses of factory farming and could actually replace the current factory-farmed poultry industry. Because heritage chickens and turkeys are capable of the highest levels of welfare, a heritage poultry industry will mean that chickens and turkeys will once again be capable of having lives worth living. These birds thrive in outdoor environments and can breed naturally—and unlike hybrid genetics, which require farmers to get each new flock from large breeding companies, heritage genetics allow individual farmers to be completely independent of industrial-scale animal agriculture.

The vast majority of poultry farmers—including those raising free-range and organic birds—are victims of the same unjust practices that Monsanto has infamously used to control crop farmers. When farmers first started buying hybrid rather than heritage birds from breeding corporations, they didn’t realize that soon the birds they purchased would be incapable of reproducing healthfully, thereby forcing the farmers, year after year, to go back to those corporations if they wanted more birds. They became trapped. It is this model of mandatory dependence that has allowed the poultry industry to be centrally controlled by a few large corporations with no interest in animal health for its own sake, and the consequences for animal welfare, public health, and sustainability have been disastrous.

This is why better genetics are the key to rebuilding a more humane and sustainable poultry industry. Farmers must have access to genetics that do not force them to pay into the very system that created the current crisis.

In our efforts to support the rebirth of highest welfare, heritage poultry, Farm Forward helped renowned heritage turkey farmer Frank Reese expand his operation to include chickens. We also declared his farm, Good Shepherd Poultry Ranch, the first recipient of our Pay it Forward loan program, which enabled Frank to build an additional barn and expand his capacity to raise heritage poultry. Since we began working with Frank, his sales have more than doubled, and the only factor now limiting those sales is the capacity of his farm. And because people who buy Frank’s birds very often buy fewer or no conventional birds, every bird Frank sells is an indication of a significant reduction in suffering. As a result of our work with Frank, we estimate that we have already replaced the purchase of more than 100,000 conventional chickens and turkeys with heritage birds raised in some of the highest welfare conditions in animal agriculture. Finally, we’ve worked to ensure that Frank is spotlighted in the upcoming documentary Eating Animals, and are confident that his involvement with the film will dramatically demand for heritage turkey and chicken sales upon its release.

Farm Forward has also assisted two entrepreneurs in creating Emmer & Co., the first modern company to exclusively sell heritage chicken and commit to a stringent animal welfare policy. Farm Forward consulted with Emmer’s founders on the challenges and opportunities of creating a heritage business and helped forge a partnership with Frank Reese to breed and raise heritage chickens. Within a year of launch Emmer established relationships with major retailers like William Sonoma and VitalChoices.com as well as restaurants in San Francisco and New York. Emmer’s meteoric success has shown that consumers are ready and willing to pay a fair (and much higher) price for chicken that is genetically healthy and produced under optimal welfare conditions. Today, Emmer commands only a tiny fraction of the poultry market, but we believe that companies like it are the future of the industry. As models like Emmer’s demonstrate profitability and are replicated, the market share of highest welfare poultry will similarly grow. In addition, we’ve found that the existence of companies like Emmer appears to create some pressure on the industry to introduce lines of genetically healthier birds, even if they don’t alter most of their practices.

Seeing the power of heritage to improve lives for birds, we’ve also taken steps to help consumers better identify truly highest welfare heritage operations and more easily purchase their products. We’re especially proud to have collaborated with the American Poultry Association and the Livestock Conservancy to introduce the first-ever certification for heritage poultry. By creating a process to recognize flocks of heritage breeds, we can protect this important term from becoming as meaningless as phrases like “all natural.” And by making heritage more visible to consumers, we also make known how pervasive the problems are in the rest of the poultry industry (even the cage-free, organic segment), often inspiring reduction in meat-eating or even vegetarianism in addition to commitments to only buy non-factory-farmed meat.

Expanding Market Opportunities for Higher Welfare Farmers

From its inception, Farm Forward has worked to ramp up demand for higher welfare poultry products. One of our most exciting new projects in this area is BuyingPoultry, the first authoritative rating system and database of nearly every poultry product sold in the United States. BuyingPoultry helps consumers learn about higher welfare poultry products and discover where to find them locally. The response so far has been spectacular: Within months of launch, BuyingPoultry.com is already attracting thousands of monthly visitors who use the site to search for higher welfare chicken, turkey, and eggs.

Further building on this success, our Leadership Circle platform for persuading foodservice buyers to purchase higher welfare meat and eggs has seen several important victories. While still in its pilot phase, the Leadership Circle has already helped the University of California, Berkeley and Airbnb’s Portland office completely reimagine their supply chains. For example, UC Berkeley—which serves more than 5 million meals annually—has committed to purchase 100 percent of their beef and lamb from pasture-raised and grass-fed sources, and we helped connect them with high welfare ranchers to meet that commitment.

Farm Forward’s Leadership Circle is just getting started; as we expand its influence, we’ll continue working with visionary, compassionate farmers to meet the growing demand that our program will generate.

Authoring Policy and Research in Support of Higher Welfare Farmers

Farm Forward also collaborates with farmers to develop policies and research that support our shared mission. For example, working closely with higher welfare chicken farmers across the country, we recently completed a comprehensive cost analysis of raising genetically healthier chickens in higher welfare environments. This analysis will allow us to demonstrate to institutional buyers and the media that genetically healthier chickens are a viable product, thereby leading to increased marketing opportunities for these products and, in turn, paving the way for more farmers to switch to better genetics.

Farm Forward also provided guidance on the Jeremy Coller Foundation report, “Factory Farming: Assessing Investment Risk & Return.” The report makes the case that investing in factory farm businesses is much riskier than most investors think, and argues that the growing demand for completely antibiotic-free chickens could require a total restructuring of the chicken industry.1

One of the major limiting factors on the expansion of the higher welfare animal industry has always been the lack of sufficient funding. More and more financial analysts are beginning to question the status quo, and we believe that a growing number of savvy investors will shift their investments to higher welfare companies as they recognize the need to invest in smarter, safer, and saner methods of farming. This will further accelerate the growth of higher welfare animal agriculture as well as plant-based alternatives.

We can only continue this work with your support. Please consider making a donation today or learn more about our work by subscribing to our news updates below.

Over the past four years we’ve worked with poultry farmers and animal welfare experts to build a cutting-edge resource for consumers seeking higher-welfare poultry products and plant-based alternatives. These efforts have culminated in the launch of BuyingPoultry, our free online guide that not only shows you which products are best and worst nationally and in your local grocery store—it also enables you to easily ask retailers and poultry companies to offer higher-welfare products.

If you haven’t already, please take a few minutes to check out BuyingPoultry and share it with your friends and family via Twitter, and Facebook. We need your help to spread the word about this amazing website so that we can give even more consumers the tools they need to make more humane purchasing decisions.

Read on to learn about why we created BuyingPoultry, how it works, and who made it possible.

Why we created Buying Poultry

The Problem

Today, the story of American poultry is a sad one. Almost all chickens and turkeys in America are raised in dismal conditions on cramped factory farms, and confusing labels and marketing claims make it difficult to distinguish truly higher-welfare products. Both consumers and farmers are frustrated by a broken system that has destroyed the links that once made it possible for Americans to buy poultry from people they trusted. Animals have paid the biggest price, suffering from unprecedented levels of disease and deprivation. As Dr. Temple Grandin has put it, we’re experiencing “bad becoming normal.”1

The Solution

BuyingPoultry cuts through the confusion to reconnect conscientious consumers with higher-welfare poultry products. BuyingPoultry provides you with reliable information about how the products you buy are produced and what that means for animal welfare, empowering you to purchase products that align with your values. Ultimately, we want to stimulate the creation of a new, kinder poultry industry—an industry in which farmers lead the way by providing the highest level of welfare and consumers can find safer, more humane products for a fair price.

How it works

BuyingPoultry lets you search our exclusive database (which covers virtually every poultry product in America) to find higher-welfare eggs and poultry near you. It provides simple recommendations—either “Avoid,” “Better Choices,” or “Best Choices”—as well as a corresponding A-F grade for each product.

Creating the grading system was no simple matter, and we knew we couldn’t do it alone. At the very heart of BuyingPoultry is our Animal Welfare Advisory Committee, made up of leading farmers, animal advocates, and welfare experts—including some of the most respected and influential critics of industrial farming in the country. Rooted in the best available science, this committee has made the complex judgements that allow BuyingPoultry to provide simple, accurate buying advice. Every time you use BuyingPoultry, it’s like having this team of experts by your side.

Meet our Advisory Committee

Frank Reese

A fourth-generation Kansas farmer, Frank Reese is the nation’s preeminent expert on heritage poultry. His farm, Good Shepherd Poultry Ranch, has provided the model for the nation’s leading high-welfare certifications. He has received acclaim from, among many others, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Martha Stewart, and chef Mario Batali.

Bill Niman

Bill Niman is one of the most renowned ranchers in the United States. He is the founder and former CEO of Niman Ranch, a network of over 700 farmers, which provides much of the pork in Chipotle’s carnitas tacos. Alice Waters of Chez Panisse was an early fan of the beef he raised in Bolinas, California (as well as the company’s pork and lamb). In 2007, he left the company he founded and started over with a small herd of grass-raised cattle and some heritage turkeys. He has since started a new company called BN Ranch.

Nicolette Hahn Niman

Nicolette Hahn Niman is an attorney, livestock rancher, and author of the book Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms. She served for two years on the Board of Overseers of the Boston-based organization Chefs Collaborative. Much of her time is spent speaking and writing about the problems resulting from industrialized livestock production, including six essays she has written on the subject for the New York Times and pieces for the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Aaron Gross, Ph.D.

Aaron Gross has played a leadership role in a wide variety of national and international farmed animal welfare campaigns. Dr. Gross founded Farm Forward in 2006. He also serves as a professor of theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego and holds graduate degrees from Harvard Divinity School and the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Department of Religious Studies. He chairs the Steering Committee of the American Academy of Religion’s Animals and Religion Consultation and collaborated heavily with Jonathan Safran Foer on Foer’s book Eating Animals.

Bernard Rollin, Ph.D

Bernard Rollin, Ph.D. is a University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Professor of Philosophy, Professor of Animal Sciences, Professor of Biomedical Sciences, and University Bioethicist for Colorado State University. He introduced the first university course on veterinary ethics. Dr. Rollin was a member of the Pew Charitable Trust’s Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production.

Dr. Kat Miller

Dr. Kat Miller is the Director of Anti-Cruelty Behavior Research for the ASPCA’s Anti-Cruelty Behavior Team. She is a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist (C.A.A.B.). Her work involves addressing the behavioral needs of animals rescued from large-scale animal cruelty cases and natural disasters, and the collection, interpretation, and dissemination of scientific information on the behavior and welfare of companion and farmed animals.

Diane Halverson

Animal welfare expert Diane Halverson has quietly become one of the most influential animal advocates in the western world. In her three decades of experience working in the field of farmed animal welfare, she has developed husbandry standards for Niman Ranch Pork Company (the largest network of high-welfare pig farmers in America), helped rally Eastern European farmers to resist industrialized pig farming, and worked closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Waterkeeper Alliance to show how pollution is the inevitable result of animal mistreatment on factory farms. In 1998 she received the prestigious Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge Foundation’s Humane Ethics in Action Award alongside Dr. Temple Grandin. She is the co-director of the upcoming film An Eye for the Animal.

Who made BuyingPoultry possible?

You!

BuyingPoultry wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our many supporters, Kickstarter backers, and subscribers. Thank you!

ASPCA

Funding to make BuyingPoultry possible was provided by The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals® (ASPCA), the first humane society to be established in North America and one of the largest animal protection groups in the world.

BLT Helps

Our website and branding were developed on a shoestring budget thanks to BLT Helps, a unique non-profit foundation dedicated to providing graphic arts services to other nonprofit, charitable, and public service organizations in need.

Looking Forward

Now that you know all about BuyingPoultry, the best way you can help is by using it and sharing it with others.

Even as more and more individual consumers begin using BuyingPoultry to help guide their purchasing decisions, we’re finding that institutional food buyers think it’s useful too. You can read more about our work with institutions like the University of California, Berkeley, here.