(Beth Clifton collage)
Can “humane” farming standards ever actually be enforced?
LONDON, U.K.; BERKELEY, California––Two exposés broadcast in two days of “humane” farm certification failures in the United Kingdom put the spotlight on similar failures in the U.S. that so far have not drawn much mass media attention.
The question raised in each case: can animal farming on an economically significant scale ever really be “humane,” no matter whose animal welfare standards are purportedly in effect, and no matter who is entrusted with enforcing those standards?
Original “Red Tractor” logo.
Red Tractor-approved farm abused piglets
“The United Kingdom’s largest pork supplier has launched an independent review into its animal welfare policies and livestock operations after claims staff were abusing piglets at a farm run by the business,” the BBC revealed on May 19, 2025.
“Cranswick, based in Hessle in East Yorkshire,” the BBC explained, “suspended using Northmoor Farm in Lincolnshire after covert footage, filmed by the Animal Justice Project, appeared to show workers holding piglets by their hind legs and slamming them to the ground, using a banned method of killing the animals known as ‘piglet thumping.’”
Banned in the United Kingdom, that is, under the Welfare of Animals at the Time of Killing Regulation.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Routine & almost unchallenged in U.S. & Canada
“Piglet thumping” to kill runt pigs remains routine and almost unchallenged in the U.S. and Canada.
“According to the Animal Justice Project,” the BBC said, “other footage appeared to show the botched killing of a sow that left the animal screaming. Another sow was also apparently shown being beaten with metal bars.”
Agreed the Red Tractor certification program a week earlier, on May 12, 2025, “The footage shows unacceptable treatment of pigs. The farm’s Red Tractor certificate has been suspended while our independent investigation takes place.
“The disregard of the standards shown by the workers in the footage,” a Red Tractor media release continued, “does a disservice to an industry which works hard to uphold animal welfare requirements. The farm will remain unassured if Red Tractor is not satisfied these standards are met.”
But why did it take an undercover Animal Justice Project videographer to catch the gross violation of standards that the Red Tractor program itself supposedly polices?
(Beth Clifton collage)
Cruelty to salmon
Only two days after reporting the Red Tractor program failure to detect standards violations, the BBC on May 21, 2025 revealed that, “A fish farm on the Isle of Skye has been suspended from an animal welfare scheme,” in this case the Royal SPCA Assured project, “after campaigners filmed videos allegedly showing ‘systemic cruelty’ to salmon.
Explained the BBC, “Animal rights campaigners from the Green Britain Foundation said the footage from the Mowi farm at Loch Harport showed the fish being beaten and suffocated to death.
“They urged the RSPCA to suspend the company’s 54 other salmon farms in Scotland, which are still certified under the charity’s Assured labelling scheme.”
Mowi told the BBC that it is “fully co-operating with the RSPCA,” but contended the Green Britain Foundation video had been “misconstrued.”
The Green Britain Foundation responded that it had captured “more than 18 incidents of animal cruelty across multiple days in March 2025.”
Direct Action Everywhere founder Wayne Hsiung.
(Direct Action Everywhere photo)
“What if efforts have backfired?”
Mused Simple Heart blogger Wayne Hsiung on May 30, 2025, contemplating a U.S. failure of humane certification, “What if our efforts to improve animal welfare have backfired?” by creating a “humane certification” industry that really does little more than “greenwash” animal industry cruelty that increasingly appears to be both endemic and unavoidable.
“That is the question posed by the latest open rescue by Direct Action Everywhere,” Hsiung wrote, as a Direct Action Everywhere founder who is no longer part of the organization, “at a Certified Humane supplier of goat milk to Whole Foods, Vera Dairy in Stratford, California.
“The rescue found dead baby goats illegally piled up by the dozens at the farm,” Hsiung recounted.
But “When activists presented evidence of these abuses to the industry and government officials responsible for animal welfare,” Hsiung continued, “the officials’ response was to arrest five activists for rescuing two sick baby goats from the farm — and do nothing about the animal abuse.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Just the latest example”
“Vera Dairy,” Hsiung charged, “is just the latest example of a supposedly humane farm failing to live up to its own standards. Last year, Farm Forward found cows festering with cancer eye at one of California’s most prominent organic dairy farms.
“In 2021, PETA exposed workers stomping on injured turkeys at a Global Animal Partnership certified farm in Pennsylvania. And back in 2016, teams that I led found numerous egg farms raising hens in Certified Humane sheds where thousands of birds were being illegally caged and cannibalized.”
These were scarcely isolated cases. ANIMALS 24-7 has helped to expose many more.
“PETA and Animal Rising have chosen to protest animal welfare certification programs,” Hsiung acknowledged. “In the worst case, animal welfare programs are worse than ineffective. They actively cover up the cruelty.”
Adele Douglass
(Humane Farm Animal Care photo))
“We are wising up”
But Hsiung declared himself optimistic that “the enforcement problem in animal welfare is being fixed. We are wising up to the lies told by people like Adele Douglass of Certified Humane,” Hsiung said.
Hsiung thus indicted the founder of first the American Humane Certified program, and then, two years later, Certified Humane, after Douglass felt that American Humane had become too accommodating to factory farmers.
Both American Humane Certified and Certified Humane, which debuted in February 2003, were formed, Douglass recounted a decade later, after “I went to England and met with the Farm Animals division of the Royal SPCA to learn about their program. The Royal SPCA had written standards for farm animals and had created a separate organization, Freedom Foods, to find farmers who would meet those standards, then purchase the products from these farmers and label the product Freedom Foods, and sell the product at retailers in the U.K.”
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Inspection failures
The initial Freedom Foods approach failed, evolving into the RSPCA Assured scheme of today, which operates much like Certified Humane.
Certified Humane has from inception relied on unannounced independent third party inspection to enforce humane standards. But periodic inspections, no matter how frequent and how unannounced, cannot catch every violation.
When violations are discovered and exposed, certification schemes, including the RSPCA, American Humane Certified, Global Animal Partnership, Certified Humane, and similar entities tend to become the first line of public defense for the companies involved.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Cannibalism
“When we exposed mass cannibalism at a Certified Humane egg farm in October 2016,” charged Hsiung, “Douglass’s organization wrote there was ‘no evidence’ of aggression at the farm and that our video was ‘staged.’
“They never bothered to correct themselves when the company at issue admitted on the stand, and in documents they were compelled to disclose to us in court, that shockingly high mortality rates (20.3%) at their facility were driven by the animals pecking one another to death, i.e., cannibalism.
“The animal welfare movement for many years stood by Douglass and Certified Humane,” Hsiung recalled. “The Humane Society of the United States [now called Humane World for Animals] was listed as one of their most prominent supporters. But HSUS eventually dropped their endorsement. Now, animal welfare organizations are suing Certified Humane for fraud instead of supporting them.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Legal Impact for Chickens
Detailed Jessica Cejnar Andrews for Redwood Voice Community News of the first of two such cases, on October 10, 2024, “A Sacramento-based nonprofit organization,” Legal Impact for Chickens,” combating factory farming and animal abuse in the poultry industry, is suing Alexandre Family Farm alleging ‘rampant cruelty’ at their Humboldt and Del Norte County dairy operations.”
The Legal Impact for Chickens complaint, wrote Andrews, “contains the same cruelty allegations that another organization, Farm Forward, outlined in a report,” entitled Dairy Deception: Corruption & Consumer Fraud At Alexandre Family Farm, released on April 11, 2024.
John Millspaugh. (Farm Forward photo)
Farm Forward
Farm Forward filed a class action lawsuit against both Alexandre Family Farm and Certified Humane on March 10, 2025.
Explained Farm Forward director of education John Millspaugh, “The new civil case alleges that Alexandre and Certified Humane falsely represented Alexandre products as ‘humane’ while Alexandre engaged in shocking and widespread acts of animal cruelty.
“For example,” Millspaugh accused, “Farm Forward’s investigation found that Alexandre staff poured salt into the eyes of hundreds of cows, sawed off the horns of more than 800 cows through tissue laced with nerves without any pain management, cut off a cow’s teat with an unsanitized pocketknife, dragged a cow who was unable to walk across concrete, for years provided no routine veterinary or hoof care management, and transported sick, injured, and lame cows to auction rather than treating or euthanizing them.
Calf hutch. (Farm Forward photo)
“New findings of an independent investigator”
“The lawsuit also reveals new findings of an independent investigator,” Millspaugh continued, “previously unknown to Farm Forward, who visited Alexandre during the period covered by our investigation.
“The investigator found calves in barred hutches who were covered in feces, urine, and mud, many of them standing in pools of waste rising above the calves’ hooves, the slurry completely covering the only area where the calves could lie down.
“In clear violation of Certified Humane standards, calves in these hutches could not set one foot outside, had no access to an exercise area, and were left in hutches for a full month longer than the eight week maximum allowed by Certified Humane.
“The investigator, who has observed many calf hutches on many farms, describes the hutches as the least sanitary the investigator had ever seen.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“This lawsuit puts producers everywhere on notice”
Concluded Millspaugh, “If the court finds that Alexandre and/or Certified Humane engaged in false, fraudulent, misleading, unfair, deceptive, and/or unlawful conduct in their representations about the humane status of Alexandre products, the suit could result in Alexandre having to pay affected consumers more than $5,000,000. This lawsuit puts producers everywhere on notice that today’s consumers will hold them accountable for humanewashing—false promises of animal welfare. “
Merritt & Beth Clifton with Henry the rooster.
Pronounced Hsiung, “This is progress for enforcement. In a broken system, all efforts at change are difficult. Animal welfare campaigns are not perfect. No campaign is. But over the long term, the things we learn from them — as long as that knowledge is shared and refined — will be their most important success.”
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