Animal Welfare

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

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.

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.

Even as the seriousness of the bird flu outbreak increases, the government refuses to address the underlying cause: factory farming.

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

Alexandre’s abuses and deceptions have continued well into 2024, with no sign of abating.

Much has happened in the week since Farm Forward’s groundbreaking investigation into Alexandre Family Farms.

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

The timeline of our recent investigation into Alexandre dairy.

In anticipation of the 2024 Farm Bill, we are proud to play a part in introducing new federal legislation that would leverage billions of dollars of food spending by USDA to help build a more just, healthy, and sustainable food system.

Farm Forward submitted a comment to the CDC and HHS we consider critical for addressing zoonotic disease and public health preparedness: factory farming creates perfect petri dishes for endemic and emergent zoonotic diseases. Deintensifying existing poultry and pig farming—while placing a moratorium on new factory farm construction—is the public health measure that would most dramatically reduce the risk of the next pandemic virus. 

The Good Food Purchasing Program (GFPP) recently released Version 3.0 of its standards for food service institutions, which include important changes for animal welfare and meat reduction.

This year, we partnered with the research firm Data for Progress to test some of our hypotheses about consumer understandings of everything from “pasture raised” to Global Animal Partnership’s “Animal Welfare Certified” label.

Why has Costco kept its price for rotisserie chickens at $4.99 since they were first sold in 2009, despite inflation? Costco knows that cheap chicken helps to bring customers through the door, who then spend money on other products with greater profit margins. Costco capitalizes on this trend by selling rotisserie chickens in the back of the store. However, the low price point comes at a high cost for the welfare of the chickens, the environment, and public health.

People who consume dairy may believe they are not encouraging the slaughter of any animals by doing so. But industrial dairy production requires that cows must repeatedly be made pregnant to produce milk, bringing many calves into the world who the industry must either use productively or dispose of. One of the ways to use the male calves born as a “byproduct” of dairy production is to turn them into meat known as veal.

To call foie gras controversial would be an understatement. To produce foie gras, male ducks and geese are force-fed by poorly paid farm workers several times a day until their livers become fatty and diseased. The resulting pale white meat of the liver is then sold to high-end restaurants for a few wealthy people to enjoy. Few food items are so widely viewed as cruel, or so succinctly capture the dynamics of an inequitable food industry.

Chicken meat is a dietary staple for many millions of people worldwide, and eggs are a standard breakfast for many of us. However, the true cost of these proteins includes the suffering of billions of living beings. This suffering is largely due to intensive breeding programs that prioritize profit over the welfare of chickens, leading to genetic predispositions that plague birds with ill health and short lives.

Modern-day chickens raised for meat, called “broilers,” are a far cry from chickens just a few decades ago. They consume less food, grow more quickly, and reach a much larger size. As a result of all the ingenuity and invention that has gone into their genetics, chickens suffer immensely during their short lives, and today’s massive scale of chicken production wreaks havoc on the environment.

A federal judge struck down North Carolina’s “Ag-gag” law, ruling that several of its provisions are unconstitutional and violate the First Amendment.

Although pigs are recognized as one of the most intelligent species, most pigs are housed by the thousands in crowded conditions with very little to stimulate them mentally.

From the Jewish Initiative for Animals’ Is This Kosher? campaign—while the dairy source of our shepherd ancestors came primarily from small-scale herds of goats and sheep, most Jews now consume the most widely available commercial products from industrial dairies.

From the Jewish Initiative for Animals’ Is This Kosher? campaign—chickens have lived with Jewish communities for millennia, domesticated 4,000–10,000 years ago. Historically, however, chicken was never consumed in the quantities most people in the industrialized world eat today.

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

Findings from our recent survey show what American consumers understand about the farmed-animal industry; promising insights, and some troubling beliefs.

Major corporations cash in on so-called “humane” labels like “antibiotic free”, “natural”, and “organic”, even though their corresponding husbandry practices almost never match consumers’ expectations for animal welfare.

The National Chicken Council’s response to New York Times enlightening video misses the mark, and on purpose, for these reasons. Learn more.

GAP and Whole Foods have failed to prevent the use of drugs in their supply chains, raising questions about the claims they make about their meat. 

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.”

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

Bernard Rollin was one of the world’s leading animal ethicists and a fierce advocate for animal welfare.

You may be with the majority of Americans who rely too heavily on label claims by meat manufacturers but are we also duped by the certifiers?

Changing farming takes working with and learning from farmers directly. Internationalizing the fight beyond US borders ensures all farmers everywhere are heard and retain the right to farm according to their values.