{"id":201930,"date":"2021-12-27T12:00:17","date_gmt":"2021-12-27T12:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=201930"},"modified":"2021-12-22T05:36:58","modified_gmt":"2021-12-22T05:36:58","slug":"the-humanewashing-of-meat-and-dairy-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/12\/the-humanewashing-of-meat-and-dairy-explained\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u201cHumanewashing\u201d of Meat and Dairy, Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why you can\u2019t trust claims of humane treatment on meat and dairy labels.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Hogs at an Illinois farm in 2018. Scott Olson\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

21 Dec 2021- <\/em>Most meat, dairy, and eggs<\/a> sold in the US come from factory farms, where animals are tightly packed together in dark, unsanitary warehouses. But you wouldn\u2019t know it while browsing the meat, dairy, and egg aisles at the grocery store. A carton of \u201call natural\u201d eggs might bear an illustration of a rustic farm; packages of chicken meat are touted as \u201chumanely raised.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a few cases, these sunny depictions are accurate. But far too often they mask the industrial conditions under which these animals were raised and slaughtered.<\/p>\n

Animal welfare and consumer protection advocates have a name for such misleading labeling: \u201chumanewashing.\u201d And research suggests it\u2019s having precisely the effect that meat producers intend it to. A recent national survey<\/a> by C.O.nxt, a food marketing firm, found that animal welfare and \u201cnatural\u201d claims on meat, dairy, and egg packaging increased the intent to purchase for over half of consumers.<\/p>\n

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Want to eat less meat but don\u2019t know where to start? Sign up<\/a> for Vox\u2019s 5-day newsletter full of practical tips \u2014 and food for thought \u2014 to incorporate more plant-based food into your diet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The problem is that most of the feel-good terms that food companies place on their products and appear in their advertising, such as \u201chumane\u201d or \u201cethically raised,\u201d <\/em>aren\u2019t legally defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) or the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The USDA does require documentation to support the claims, but according to experts, those claims aren\u2019t closely scrutinized.<\/p>\n

And according to the data research company SPINS<\/a>, meat and dairy products sold with animal welfare claims are on the rise, while the USDA reported<\/a> that in 2019 alone, the agency received over 10,000 applications for animal-raising claims.<\/p>\n

Over the past two decades, undercover investigations into factory farms<\/a> have racked up hundreds of millions of views on social media, giving more people for the first time a glimpse into the barbarity of America\u2019s meat industry. Growing awareness of these conditions has led to higher expectations among a certain subset of consumers that animals raised for food should be treated better.<\/p>\n