Certification and Label Guide

Routine feeding of antibiotics is common on factory farms to compensate for unhealthy confinement conditions and to promote growth. This overuse has led to the growth of antibiotic-resistant “superbugs,” which have serious impacts on public health. “Antibiotic-free” is not an approved claim because the USDA cannot verify that any product contains no antibiotic residue. “No antibiotics administered,” “no antibiotics added” and “raised without antibiotics” are claims allowed by the USDA if producers provide documentation showing that antibiotics were not introduced at any point in the animal’s life. Prohibiting antibiotic use on farms can indicate a healthier overall environment for animals, but there is no guarantee of that. Concerningly, using antibiotic-related claims may lead producers to withhold necessary treatment from sick animals.

On egg packaging, “cage-free” means that a farm did not raise their hens in battery cages. This is a minimum baseline for animal welfare, as raising hens in cages is a form of confinement that contributes to stress, and abnormal feather pecking and even cannibalism. Many states are moving to phase out or ban egg production that involves battery cages, in response to public demand for more humane products. Almost half of egg production in the U.S. is now cage-free, representing a strong movement away from conventional caged production.   

However, a cage-free claim on its own without a welfare certification provides no indication about the treatment of the birds raised outside of cages, so they may still be in extremely crowded conditions without necessary nestboxes, perches or basic enrichments for foraging. Note: Chickens and turkeys raised for meat (as opposed to eggs) are not raised in cages, rendering a cage-free label meaningless and misleading on poultry meat products.

“Crate-free” is an unregulated term that brands or farms may use to let consumers know that their pork may have been produced without the use of gestation and/or farrowing crates. On factory farms, female breeder pigs are kept confined in gestation crates throughout their entire pregnancy (almost four months). The crates are so small that the pregnant pigs can’t even turn around. Then each pig is moved to a farrowing crate (where she still does not have enough space to turn around) to deliver and nurse her piglets (around one month). Then the mother pig is re-inseminated and placed back in the gestation crate for the cycle to continue. Since “crate-free” is an unregulated term, it doesn’t guarantee that a mother pig never spent time in a crate, but it may convey that the pork comes from a farm that has a different system from one in a typical factory farm that relies less or not at all on crate confinement. For example, she may spend less time in a gestation crate but still be moved to a farrowing crate.

Most farm animals are housed entirely indoors. The USDA is responsible for defining free-range claims and regulating which brands and farms can use claims, if any. The USDA requires farms or brands using “free-range” or “free-roaming” claims to demonstrate that animals have “access to the outdoors,” but size, quality and length of access to that outdoor space is unregulated, so conditions vary greatly and are often subpar. For example, animals may be provided access to a barren dirt lot that can only fit a small portion of the animals at once, making it unlikely that many of the animals will ever gain access to it.   

Cattle naturally consume forage — such as grass — as part of their diet, but over the past several decades, the beef industry has switched to feeding cattle mostly grain (e.g., corn), which negatively impacts their health. The term “grass-fed” is welfare-positive on products from ruminants (cattle, sheep, goats, bison — it is meaningless on poultry and pork), but it only speaks to an animal’s diet, which doesn’t capture the range of practices that are meaningful to an animal’s care and treatment. Also note that feedlots are allowed in the final months for USDA “grass-fed” products, as are antibiotics and hormones. Products with the “100% grass-fed” label require that an animal was never in a feedlot and must be fed an entirely forage-based diet post-weaning and have continuous access to pasture or range during the growing season.   

Hormone use in milk- and meat-producing cattle to increase production and weight is associated with welfare problems. The USDA allows “no hormones added” or “no hormones administered” claims if producers provide documentation that no hormones were used during the animal’s life, but this does not indicate more humane farming methods. Hormones are legally prohibited from use in chickens and turkeys, so this label adds no value to products from those species. “Hormone-free” claims are not approved by USDA since all animals produce hormones naturally.

The USDA, the regulatory agency that oversees food labels, does not define “humanely-raised” or “humanely-handled,” instead allowing farms and brands to create their own definitions. The terms offer no assurance of animal welfare.   

“Natural,” as defined by the USDA, the regulatory agency that oversees food labels, only refers to how products are processed and what ingredients are added to them, not how an animal was raised. The USDA does not define “naturally-raised”, and any farm, even a factory farm, can use this term to describe their products, since they do not need to provide any assurances about the conditions in which animals were raised to use it.  

The terms “pasture-raised,” “pasture-grown” and “pastured” are only loosely regulated by the USDA, the regulatory agency that oversees food labels. To use the term “pasture-raised”, the USDA only requires that producers raise animals in environments that meet the USDA’s definition of free-range, meaning that mammals have continuous access to the outdoors throughout the grazing season, and birds have continuous access to the outdoors throughout their natural growing cycle. This vague reference to “access to the outdoors” results in widely varying farming systems all using the “pasture-raised” label. While access to pasture or range is preferable to confined, indoor systems, the term “pasture-raised” can still mean that the animals spent little or to no time on vegetated pasture or rangeland, or even outdoors, since USDA has no requirements for the size or quality of the outdoor space, and some regions' grazing season lasts only a few months.

The regenerative agriculture movement is focused on producing food, including meat, eggs and dairy, in a way that rebuilds soil health, increases biodiversity and promotes a more sustainable way of farming. However, the term “regenerative” itself does not have a single clear and regulated definition, so the label does not necessarily provide any assurances about how animals were raised and their level of welfare. There are a number of regenerative certifications, but they vary  on animal welfare standards.   

The USDA requires that producers using “vegetarian-fed” claims provide documentation about the animals’ diet. These claims do not have a significant impact on animals’ living conditions, nor are they inherently better for animals who are omnivores like chickens who would naturally forage for grubs and insects as well as grains.