Farm Animal Protection Is a Foundational ASPCA Priority
September 16, 2026
Throughout 2026, the ASPCA is sharing highlights from our organization’s rich and sometimes unexpected 160-year history.
ASPCA founder Henry Bergh’s concern for animal welfare is often traced to the mistreatment of horses, and his advocacy for farm animals was a natural extension of that work. Today, the ASPCA has a robust program to improve the lives of farm animals and help farmers and companies adopt more humane practices, with roots going back to the ASPCA's founding.
Throughout U.S. history, farm animals helped drive economic growth, sustain families and supply the nation's food, yet the cruelty they endure often remains hidden from public view. Determined to expose that suffering, Bergh personally investigated slaughterhouses under grim conditions, documenting abusive practices. Bergh was also troubled by the transport of sick and injured animals, who were often crammed into railcars for days without food, water or fresh air. He argued that such treatment was not only cruel, but also a public health concern.
Above: Farm animals crammed into wagons on their way to slaughter was a common practice before the ASPCA was founded. Top: A pig at the 80-acre, family-owned Whiffletree Farm in Warrenton, Virginia, which raises farm animals without chemicals, antibiotics or added hormones.
Following a series of exposés on New York City's slaughterhouses, he theorized that animals subjected to extreme stress and suffering produced compromised meat. In an 1868 letter to George T. Angell, founder of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Bergh linked animal cruelty to consequences for consumers, also citing diseases such as trichinosis. "It is safe to say," he wrote, "that one-half of the sufferings of mankind arise from the deleterious quality of the meat they eat."
The meat industry responded to Bergh’s reports by promoting a new approach: slaughtering animals closer to where they were raised, then shipping dressed carcasses in ice-filled refrigerator cars, an idea Bergh had previously endorsed.
ASPCA founder Henry Bergh protested slaughter practices that resulted in severe pain — including dislocated limbs — of farm animals.
After a lengthy legal battle, New York's highest court affirmed Bergh's position that the state's anti-cruelty law applied to private slaughterhouses. Bergh then turned his attention to Congress, helping secure the nation's first federal animal transportation law in 1873. The measure prohibited animals from being confined in transit for more than 28 hours without being unloaded for food, water and rest. Today, it is known as the Twenty-Eight Hour Law.
In that era, progress was slow; enforcement remained weak, and ASPCA agents lacked the authority to oversee interstate animal transports. Frustrated by the gap between the law's promise and its implementation, Bergh ultimately deemed the measure "inoperative."
Swill Milk
The 1860s ushered in the era of "swill milk": low-quality, tainted milk produced by cows who were force-fed grain mash, a byproduct of the distilling process. In a perverse example of industrial efficiency, distilleries diverted their waste grain mash (or "swill") to dairy cows confined in dark, overcrowded basement pens. These cows had short, painful lives, and the milk they produced — which contained not only alcohol, but often plaster, chalk or bleach to hide its sickly blue hue — was responsible for killing thousands of people, most of them children.
In 1869, Bergh fired off a letter to the president of the Metropolitan Health Board, describing the public health disgrace. Bergh did not mince words. An "atrocious wrong," he wrote, was being committed against the people of New York by men "whom it would be gross flattery to call brutes."
Left: The first paragraph of a newspaper article from 1867 that outlines a swill milk case. Right: Cows confined in tight spaces were force-fed byproducts of the distilling process that resulted in swill milk.
The consequences, Bergh warned, were devastating. The cows became desperately ill. Some were so diseased that, as he described it, "the poisonous mucus" was "actually dropping from their bodies." Yet even in that condition they continued to be milked, and the milk was sold to unsuspecting consumers.
What Bergh witnessed only grew more disturbing. The "dead-cart," which hauled away large animal carcasses, made daily stops at these dairies. In some cases, it stood waiting for the bodies of cows who were still alive but already dying, even as they were being milked. For Bergh, this was not simply an animal welfare issue: it was a human catastrophe unfolding in plain sight. "Not an hour should be lost!" he pleaded to officials.
Bergh's letter was both an indictment and a call to action. He proposed appointing one of his agents as an assistant inspector to help investigate and shut down the worst abuses. He insisted the issue deserved "every possible means for its correction." Bergh also launched an ongoing publicity campaign to alert people to the milk's source and its toxic nature. Over the next decade, the swill-milk industry was significantly reduced, leaving but a few hold-out producers.
Shaping Better Standards for Farm Animals
Bergh's diligence helped lay the foundation for future public awareness about the treatment of farm animals. Food animal production expanded alongside population growth in the first half of the 20th century, and most animals were raised on family farms before being transported to large slaughterhouses and meatpacking facilities.
The publication of “The Jungle” in 1905 helped draw attention to the meatpacking industry's cruel and dangerous practices.
Public concern about food safety grew after the publication of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," a shocking exposé of Chicago's meatpacking industry. The public outcry helped spur passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, one of the nation's first major food safety laws and a foundation of today's Food and Drug Administration.
Cruelty to animals during transport and at slaughterhouses remained widespread. In 1955, ASPCA general manager Warren McSpadden championed federal humane slaughter legislation, calling it "long overdue." Although the original bill failed, Congress later adopted a policy encouraging more humane slaughter methods. By 1960, the nation's first humane slaughter law required many food animals to be rendered insensible to pain before being shackled, hoisted or cut, though poultry remained excluded — a gap that persists to this day.
The ASPCA published this photo in 1939 promoting the careful transport of cattle to avoid injury.
While imperfect, more humane slaughter practices also proved beneficial for businesses, reducing injuries, improving worker morale, increasing efficiency, reducing waste and minimizing the costly bruising of animals before slaughter.
The ASPCA continued to play a leading role in farm animal welfare research and advocacy. McSpadden served on coalitions that brought together humane groups, veterinarians, farmers, meatpackers, railroad workers, agricultural agencies and others to improve animal handling, health, sanitation and transportation practices.
An advertisement from a 1956 issue of ASPCA Animal Protection magazine promoting safe hog transportation practices.
Following Bergh's tradition of encouraging innovation, the ASPCA recognized advances that reduced animal suffering. In the 1950s, the organization honored companies for using technologies that rendered animals unconscious before slaughter.
The ASPCA also helped drive practical improvements. In 1963, we patented a livestock holding pen that eliminated the need for shackling and hoisting before slaughter and made the design available worldwide on a royalty-free basis. Endorsed for kosher slaughter, the system was later adapted for smaller animals, and ASPCA-sponsored research explored additional higher-welfare slaughter methods compatible with religious requirements.
Supporting More Humane Farming
The ASPCA continues to advance more humane farming practices through policy, advocacy and industry engagement. In 2003, we backed the creation of Certified Humane®, a program of Humane Farm Animal Care that sets independent, science-based standards for the treatment of farm animals from birth to slaughter.
Additional farm animal welfare initiatives we’ve supported or initiated in recent years:
2011: The ASPCA established a Farm Animal Welfare division dedicated to inspiring more humane food choices and supporting policies that have the potential to create a better world for farm animals.
2011: The ASPCA fights a wave of state-level "ag-gag" bills designed to suppress investigations on farms and prevent whistleblowing about cruel treatment of animals, blocking over a dozen laws of this kind in states across the country over the next decade.
2012: The ASPCA publishes the first-ever whitepaper on the welfare challenges experienced by broiler chickens — who account for 9 out of 10 farm animals slaughtered each year for food — specifically identifying their genetic selection for rapid growth as a source of suffering.
2016: The ASPCA unveiled our Shop With Your Heart campaign, which included a host of online resources to inform consumers, farmers and food businesses about more humane food choices and certification programs that improve the lives of animals raised for food.
2016: The ASPCA rallied voters to pass Question 3 in Massachusetts, which requires cage-free housing for animals typically confined inside factory farms. It also prohibits the sale of pork, veal and eggs derived from prohibited confinement methods, even if produced outside of Massachusetts.
2017: The ASPCA began underwriting Food Animal Concerns Trust grants to help farmers transition to higher-welfare practices and adopt meaningful animal welfare certifications. The ASPCA continues to support this program today, improving welfare for hundreds of thousands of animals on hundreds of farms.
2018: The ASPCA rallied voters to pass Prop. 12 in California, which requires cage-free housing for animals typically confined inside factory farms and prohibits the sale of pork, veal and eggs derived from prohibited confinement methods, even if produced outside of California.
2019: With the support of the ASPCA, Vermont became the first state to pass a law providing state grants to farmers seeking to achieve or maintain animal welfare certifications.
2019: The ASPCA released the first-ever farmer and business guide to farm animal welfare certifications, in partnership with Vermont Law School’s Center for Agriculture and Food Systems.
2020: The ASPCA released a public opinion survey revealing that the COVID-19 crisis heightened public concern over industrial animal agriculture and factory farming human health risks.
2022: The ASPCA launched the Fund to End Factory Farming, an RFP grant program soliciting projects from diverse interest groups, academic institutions, and farmers to accelerate the transition to more humane farming practices. This program just celebrated its 5-year anniversary.
2022: The ASPCA worked with Congress to introduce the Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act, an ambitious federal bill that aimed to hold industrial agriculture accountable for the harm it causes animals, people and the environment, as well as offer solutions to improve farm animal welfare.
2023: The ASPCA launched the Pet Food Progress Initiative, working with the pet food sector to improve sourcing of animal ingredients, with 10 major pet food brands initially committing to more humane standards.
2023: The ASPCA launched our first Supermarket Scorecard, ranking 20 major food retailers on their cage-free, crate-free and chicken welfare commitments.
2023: After more than a decade of advocacy, significant involvement from the ASPCA and over 100,000 supporter comments submitted, the USDA updated its Organic Livestock and Poultry Standards Rule, which improves protections for hundreds of millions of animals raised annually on organic farms.
2023: The ASPCA published our first-ever Farm Bill policy platform, outlining critical reforms and ways the mammoth piece of federal legislation could improve farm animal welfare and build a more humane food system.
2024: The ASPCA worked with Congress to introduce the Industrial Agriculture Conversion Act, a first-of-its-kind piece of legislation that would help end factory farming for good by funding farmers’ transitions to more humane systems.
2025: With strategic support from the ASPCA, the first better-hatched eggs arrived on the U.S. market. After decades of male chick culling — the routine killing of male chicks born into the egg industry — American shoppers became able to buy the first eggs produced without this practice. These better-hatched eggs use a process called in-ovo sexing that identifies whether chicken embryos are male or female while still in the egg, so the hatchery can continue incubating only the females.
2026: The ASPCA partnered with the Food Animal Concerns Trust to support the launch of the FACE Ag Network (Farmers for Animals, Communities and the Environment), a coalition of independent, pasture-based livestock and poultry farmers from across the country who are urging federal and state lawmakers to support better farming practices. At a time when a handful of corporations and industry associations are dominating policy conversations in their efforts to prop up industrial farming, FACE is organizing farmers to ensure those who care for their animals, land and local communities have a real seat at the policymaking table.
2026: We built and introduced ASPCA ShopKind, an online tool that helps shoppers locate more humanely raised food from stores, farms and online retailers, no matter where they live.
ASPCA ShopKind invites users to find grocery stores that sell humanely raised food.
Better for Animals, Better for Farmers and Better for You: ASPCA ShopKind™
Today, more than 95% of meat, eggs and dairy in the U.S. is from factory farms. And, according to a 2026 national survey, nearly 7 in 10 Americans report not knowing where to find more humanely raised meat, eggs and dairy locally, with only 9% reporting that they feel confident knowing where to look locally for these products. This confusion leads to well-meaning consumers inadvertently supporting factory farming practices that do not align with their values.
Data shows that 9 out of 10 shoppers say they don’t know where to find humanely raised food.
In June 2026, we launched ASPCA ShopKind, afree, online tool that helps grocery shoppers avoid factory-farmed food and find better options locally. ASPCA ShopKind’s easy-to-use map uses geolocated data across more than 34,000 locations nationwide to help consumers identify certified and more humanely raised meat, egg, dairy and pet food products available from nearby stores, farms, farmers' markets and online retailers.
ASPCA ShopKind is the latest extension of our long-standing commitment to farm animal welfare, supporting both animals and the farmers working to improve their lives. Just as it did 160 years ago, our work today includes advocating for greater transparency in animal agriculture, stronger protections for farm animals and empowering individuals to be part of building a more humane food system.
You can play a role in stopping cruelty and ending factory farming. Visit ASPCA ShopKind and join our Factory Farming Task Force to help build a kinder, healthier, more sustainable food system.
