Our Impact & Latest Farm Animal News

2023 was a year of progress for farm animals! Read about our biggest victories here.

In 2016, the ASPCA launched Shop With Your Heart with the goal of informing and empowering consumers to make higher-welfare food choices and, in turn, influence the animal agriculture industry to end cruel factory farming practices.

Through Shop With Your Heart, we help compassionate consumers avoid making food purchases that support factory farms and replace those products with plant-based or welfare-certified alternatives when possible. We currently recognize Animal Welfare Approved, Certified Humane and Global Animal Partnership as the most meaningful welfare certifications that are widely available. These programs represent a range of more humane farming methods and all three ensure critical, basic protections for animals on farms.

As attention to farm animal welfare issues continues to grow, the ASPCA is helping animal advocates make change:   

• In 2021 alone, Shop With Your Heart’s online resources have had over one million views, with visitors exploring and using the campaign’s dynamic tools, such as our Label Guide and Grocery List, to identify and locate higher welfare products.
• Thanks to this demand for better options, in just five years the number of certified and labeled products on the market has increased nearly 350%, and the number of animals raised under meaningful certification standards has doubled to more than 600 million animals.
• This upward trend is likely to continue, as the ASPCA has secured over 200 additional public commitments from food companies to improve and audit animal welfare in their supply chains.

But the impact of Shop With Your Heart goes beyond the grocery store, as we’ve also inspired advocates to fight for key federal, state and local policies that would bring transparency, accountability and decency to our food system. Whether overturning ag-gag laws, demanding state bans on cruel confinement practices, calling for a moratorium of factory farms or advocating for funding for farmers with better welfare standards, caring Americans are taking their concerns from the supermarket to the statehouse and driving big change for animals.

The ASPCA is not alone in fighting to protect farm animals. Every person who takes the time to select a higher-welfare product, share information about food labels or write to their members of Congress deserves credit for the progress that has been made. With every individual action, we are closer to a food system that does not rely on animal suffering and is instead driven by respect for animals, people and the environment.