A forthcoming report from advocacy group, Animal Welfare Institute has found that the US government was unable to provide proof to substantiate “humanely raised” and “sustainably produced” claims from a significant number of meat and poultry suppliers.
As reported by The Times, the Animal Welfare Institute spent three years requesting documents from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) that allegedly prove that companies who assert to employ high animal welfare standards are actually able to back up such claims.
According to the group, the USDA failed to supply such documents for 20 of the 25 products requested, suggesting that big gaps exist in regards to verifying claims and giving consumers access to such information.
“We’re not suggesting that all these claims are misleading or that the claims we reviewed were misused,” says Dena Jones, manager of AWI’s Farm Animal Program. “But that’s the problem—we don’t know,” she says. “That doesn’t give any assurance to the consumer.”
In the five cases that the group did receive information for, Jones says that the evidence was inadequate and generally only consisted of one or two sentences to back up their claims and often did not include information about animal cage size, feed or water quality. Jones adds that consumers pay premiums for products that carry such claims, so the suppliers should be required to have documents to back them up.
“To most people, these claims mean you are getting something above the standard of conventional industry,” said Jones.