Shopping with your heart means using your purchasing power to improve farm animals’ lives by rejecting factory-farmed meat, eggs and dairy. Opt for plant-based alternatives or animal products bearing meaningful animal welfare certifications: Animal Welfare Approved, Certified Humane and Global Animal Partnership Steps 2+.

Visit our Bring Your Store On Board page to see other ways to have a big impact and get your local market involved. You can drop off a request for certified items with your supermarket manager, tweet at your store asking for higher-welfare products or review it on Yelp. We also hope that you'll share information about this issue with friends and family. Every little bit helps.

One of the biggest offenders is the term “natural.” It’s almost comical how little that word means! “Natural” has nothing to do with where animals are raised, how they are treated or even what they’re fed.

“Cage-free” is another tricky label. The cage-free claim on eggs does mean that the hens who laid them did not spend their entire lives in inhumane wire cages, and that is a good thing. But it doesn’t mean they had any access to the outdoors, or even adequate space or enrichments in that indoor environment. To further complicate things, the term “cage-free” on a package of chicken or turkey meat adds no value because meat birds are never raised in cages. Learn more about other tricky claims on food packages in our label guide.

When we say "meaningful," we mean that a welfare certification 1) requires farms to meet standards high enough to address animals' basic physical, emotional and natural needs, and 2) has clear oversight protocols designed to ensure participating farms are actually meeting those standards. The ASPCA does not audit welfare certification programs or the farms they certify, but we believe that when these requirements are met they make a meaningful difference in the lives of farm animals.

The three programs that the ASPCA highlights for consumers as meeting these criteria are Certified Humane, Animal Welfare Approved and Global Animal Partnership Steps 2 and above. These programs vary in the level of welfare they require, but all have comprehensive, on-farm welfare standards developed by scientists and veterinarians; ban worst practices, including caging and crowding; require enriched environments that encourage natural behaviors; and require independent audits of farms for 100% compliance with standards that are available online for consumer transparency.

While other certifications offer some improvements for animals, they fall short by allowing certain unacceptable practices such as caging, or do not require 100% compliance with standards. Consumers expect more and animals deserve better.