Animal Welfare Claims

There are a number of animal welfare claims that appear on products including, but not limited to, the following: Animal Compassionate, Animal Friendly, Humanely Raised, Humanely Raised and Handled, Humanely Raised on Family Farms, Humanely Treated, Raised in a Humane Environment, Raised in a Stress Free Environment, and Raised with Care.

Although the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) approves these claims to appear on animal derived products, the terms "welfare," "humane," or "care" are not legally defined. This leaves third party certifying agencies to establish their own standards of care and serve as the enforcers of their standards. The following labels are used by third party organizations to indicate a producer has met their standards of animal welfare. The USDA Organic is the only government label that has specific standards for raising livestock. Visit the Organic page for more details. Click on a label to be taken to the organization’s website, where you can find detailed certification standards.

Three common commercial egg-production systems are in use around the world. These systems are:

Cages — Birds are in cages in either environmentally controlled or open-fronted sheds.

Free-range — Birds are loose-housed and have daily access to the outdoors. The range of housing can be highly variable but may be similar to that used for barn production.

Barns — Birds are loose-housed on litter but have no access to the outdoors. Barn houses also have nest boxes and a dust-bath area and may be single-tiered or multi-tiered (Botheras, Hemsworth, Coleman, & Barnett, 2015).

In 2007, the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service established their own standards for grass-fed but withdrew the program in 2016 due to confusion and lack of participation. Producers can make their own grass-fed claim approved by the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service or use a third-party certifying agency like the ones above. (USDA, 2016)

Like livestock, fish and other seafood have their own animal welfare advocates. The only government seafood label is dolphin safe, which was established by the United States Department of Commerce. There are a number of third-party organizations that focus on different aspects of raising and catching seafood. Many of these organizations also have sustainability standards and can be found on the environmental page as well.