Holding Companies Accountable: Humanewashing, Antibiotics, and Animal Welfare
By Grace Adcox, Kevin Hanley, Andrew deCoriolis, and Trevor McCarty
Amid increasing scrutiny of the meat industry for its impacts on climate change, animal welfare, antibiotic resistance, and public health, Data for Progress and Farm Forward conducted a survey investigating Americans’ views on their food and the actions of companies that produce it. This survey reveals that a significant portion of Americans are concerned about the accuracy of food marketing, particularly with respect to antibiotic usage in animal products.
Marketing and product labeling are two key ways the meat industry attempts to downplay its impacts and to convince the public that its products are more benign than they really are. This phenomenon, promoting the illusion of exceptional animal treatment and practices while masking the industrial conditions under which animals are raised and slaughtered, is called humanewashing. This report explores Americans’ knowledge of and expectations for meat labeling, support for transparency and regulation of meat industry marketing around issues like antibiotic usage, and the extent to which common industry marketing misleads the public.
Key Findings
These findings reveal that a significant portion of American adults are concerned about where their food comes from (69% “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned”).
Adults’ top concerns include companies misrepresenting their animal welfare practices (25%), overcharging consumers for products with misleading labels (25%), and engaging in inhumane animal welfare practices (19%).
A majority of respondents (62%) agree with the claim that grocery stores selling animal products with labels like “antibiotic-free” and Animal Welfare Certified should be subject to regular testing and reporting to ensure products meet the standards they claim they do.
Additionally, the overwhelming majority of adults support mandatory labeling of antibiotic usage (87%), while nearly three-fourths of adults (71%) would lose trust in their grocery store if they discovered that products marketed as raised without antibiotics actually contained antibiotic residues.
While animal product labels, like “cage-free” and “organic,” are generally viewed favorably, nearly half of Americans (49%) are skeptical about “humane” or “ethically raised” food labels on animal products, believing they are often misleading about companies’ practices around animal welfare.
After respondents learn more about food labeling in the meat industry, their skepticism around animal product labels increases to 65%.
After being shown a picture of a chicken farm marketed as Animal Welfare Certified (AWC), half of respondents say the operation either meets their expectations for the AWC label “not very well” (30%) or “not at all” (20%). Read the full details of the polling in the report below.