Eating humanely means considering how animals are treated when choosing what to eat. Practically speaking, it means eating vegan, vegetarian, and humanely-raised food. Incorporating a combination of vegan, vegetarian, and humanely-raised options into your diet allows you to eat humanely without giving up your favorite meals. Humane eating is a HUGE improvement over traditional factory farmed food, where cruelty is a customary practice.
What is Humane?
It’s self-explanatory that a vegan diet is humane, because it does not rely on animals. But what does humane mean when we talk about humanely-raised meat?
There is currently no definition of humane in this context. At first, the Humane Eating Project is including every restaurant that has a vegan/vegetarian menu or that mentions humanely-raised food on its menu or website. Similar terms such as “humane” or “humanely-treated” are allowed. Initially, we need to map out everywhere the term is being used and encourage restaurants to do the right thing.
In a future release, once we have achieved a critical mass of users and restaurants, we will indicate which restaurants are sourcing from humane-certified farms using third party certification organizations such as Certified Humane, Animal Welfare Approved, and Global Animal Partnership.
Global Animal Partnership, Animal Welfare Approved, and Certified Humane have the highest standards for animal welfare. Farms that are certified by these organizations are committed to ethical treatment of animals and are audited by a 3rd party to verify the standards are met.
What about other terms like “free range” and “organic”? Some of these terms have a marginal benefit to farm animals, but do not equate to a commitment of treating an animal humanely. Many of these terms address only one issue of animal welfare. For example, cage-free chickens may not be in cages, but will still face overcrowding and beak trimming in large, warehouse-like factories. There is no 3rd party auditing to verify many of these terms.
For a great guide on all animal product labels, visit the HSUS’s website:Meat & Dairy Labels
Egg LabelsÂ
Humanely-raised is not a panacea and does not solve every issue, particularly with eggs and dairy. Vegan is the only option that is completely cruelty-free, but eating vegetarian and humanely-raised food is significantly better than food produced by factory farms.
