CRIMES WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES - gpvec

10. Slaughter Standards under Animal Welfare
Labeling Programs
In the past decade, several humane certification food-labeling programs have been
developed in the United States. The purpose of these programs is to provide verification
of humane animal care to consumers. The country’s largest food certification scheme—
the National Organic Program—covers some animal care issues, such as feed, health care
practices and living conditions. Although slaughter is mentioned, the organic program
provisions are not specific to animal treatment. However, other food labeling programs
do address the treatment of animals at slaughter. These include the American Humane
Certified, Animal Welfare Approved and Certified Humane, which are briefly described in
this section.
For the most part, animal welfare labeling programs reference the guidelines of AMI
for the handling and stunning of livestock (cattle, pigs, sheep, goats) at slaughter, which
are viewed as generally adequate by animal protectionists. Animal Welfare Approved
adds a further restriction concerning the use of electric prods. Some of these programs
have specific standards for the handling and stunning of other animals such as birds and
rabbits. Following is a list of animals for which animal welfare labeling programs have
developed specific slaughter standards:
Chickens
American Humane Certified program (meat chickens)
Animal Welfare Approved program (meat chickens and laying hens)
Certified Humane program (meat chickens)
Turkeys
Ducks, Geese
Rabbits
Animal Welfare Approved program
Certified Humane program
Animal Welfare Approved program
Animal Welfare Approved program
10.1 American Humane Certified
American Humane Certified is administered as a voluntary, fee-based program of AHA
for producers of animals raised for food. . Its standards are similar to those of Certified
Humane, however, unlike that program, no revisions have been made to its standards in
the past several years. The program has an advisory committee comprised of one large
animal veterinarian and four academia-based members. Audits are conducted by an
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