"In hog factories, as you know, animals live their entire lives in huge, densely packed buildings suffused with the overpowering stench of liquefied hog manure. The atmosphere is laden with hydrogen sulfide and ammonia; the din often exceeds 90 decibels. Gestating sows stand on naked concrete slats in spaces so tiny that they are unable to even turn around. The natural life expectancy of a pig is at least ten years; sows in factory farms rarely live more than two and one half years. Vast numbers die of injuries and infections, even greater numbers are culled. Many still very young sows, slated for culling, are too crippled to even walk to their own deaths. In Sweden, such practices are outlawed on grounds of cruelty. It is against the law to confine animals in an area too small for them to move about and perform normal motor patterns."

- Tom Garrett, rural affairs advisor 

 




 

Our standards for farms exclude the cruel practices of industrial farming but also allow more than a tiny handful of farms to be included through an innovative, financially viable model. Factory farms can raise a small portion of their animals in a natural system at an economy of scale traditional family farmers are unable to compete with, depriving them of markets critical to their survival and driving them to bankruptcy.
 
Unlike other certifiers, we don't depend on farms to self-monitor and send reports in from computers. Nor will a farm wait months to be visited by us. We respond immediately to requests from farmers for help, and are deeply involved in working one on one with them. We believe that education and support are critical to a farmer's survival. It's a more complex world than ever before. Today's farmers need to have a practical understanding of business, politics and world events to be successful.
 
Our standards of social responsibility align with UN policy. This gives our food label a favourable position with farmers and markets. We not only integrate into our standards special care for animals, we ask farms to support values in the areas of human rights and labour standards. Workers must be at least 15 years of age or older, and farms need to comply with applicable child labour laws, including those related to hiring, wages, hours worked, overtime and working conditions. Forced labour cannot be used in any form, and employees must receive at least minimum wage.
 
We've changed the thinking about how farms can prosper, cutting three-quarters of the costs out. Industrially raised animals are high-end polluters. Our farmers have small overheads, reduced fuel and hydro costs.
 
Marketing and developing a marketing strategy are becoming essential tools for farmers and ranchers. We not only help farmers find an agricultural niche and provide a specialty product that is in high demand, we help them determine who to sell to and find retail markets for their products. We provide research on loans for sustainable farmers from the federal government and the private sector.
 
A cornerstone of our program is helping farmers to become sustainable. We help farmers understand the relationship between environmental protection and economic growth.

Industrially raised animals are polluters: Some studies estimate that feedlot beef require twice as much fossil fuel energy to produce as grass-fed beef. Producing one pound of feedlot beef results in the production of 8 pounds of carbon dioxide. Grass is the original solar technology. We're moving farms off oil.

It matters where the animals are from. A rough estimate predicts that 120 million tons of C02 emissions come from the transport of animals over long distances. International imports and exports are particularly ecologically damaging because air miles emit more C02 per ton-mile than any other form of transport. Locally grown food dramatically reduces C02 emissions. Natural local farms reduce energy use in the range of 30-50 percent while safely sequestering in the soil enormous amounts of greenhouse gases. Decades of research have shown that small farms produce far more food per acres than chemical farms, especially in the developing world.

By carefully managing grass-fed, naturally raised animals, our farmers join the growing number of ranchers who claim that responsible grazing can be used to heal land that has been degraded by concentrated livestock.

We integrate manure disposal practices that reduce pollution of land, air and waterways, and we educate farmers about husbandry practices that not only restore the dignity of animals but restore the ecology of farmland.
 
Industrial animals are increasingly genetically altered for unnatural growth rates and other characteristics: laying chickens that lay nearly more five times the number of eggs that their ancestors did, and chickens raised for meat that grow so rapidly in barren environments that they have difficulty walking, suffer from leg fractures, and can suffer from flipover disease, where young, healthy, fast-growing broiler chickens are afflicted with wing-beating convulsions. Many just “flip over” and die on their backs. Modern genetics have a dramatically objectionable toll not only on the quality of life of an animal, but on an animal's permanent ability to resist disease. Put an animal on pasture and he will quickly develop a natural immunity to infection and the upward spiral of ailments found in factory farms.
 
To ensure the integrity of the farm our food comes from, we're working towards DNA traceability from the farm of origin to the market. Eggs from factory farms, pigs in crates and intensely confined animals cannot enter the food system in false packaging, a standard practice. Retailers deserve the respect of a bona fide natural product - the real deal - and you deserve to go home from the supermarket with what you pay for, not a false imitation.
 
We are the first humane farm animal standards group to recognize the importance of working in the developing world -- and in growing economies. In India, we are developing relationships both with Canadian groups that work on agro-ecological villages and with other non-governmentals. We have begun certifying small to medium-size farms, developing markets for farmers in supermarket chains and natural food stores, and are helping them find an agricultural niche with high-demand specialty products.

Thailand presents a very different context from that of the North American meat industry. Much of the Thai agricultural industry (including the meat sector) is made up of a high proportion of small family farms that are affiliated with co-ops or rely on local brokers to market their products. The regionally significant Thai agricultural industry is in a state of flux, and is now more accommodating to systematic change than ever before. These factors suggest that if there ever was one, this is the time to implement change in Thailand. We are developing programs for Thai farms at a critical time.

We have accumulated experience in Southeast Asia by consulting with academics and activists like Vandana Shiva, author of over 300 papers in leading scientific and technical journals. Shiva argues for the wisdom of traditional practices and against further commodification, similar to current FAO policy on agriculture in India. She has fought for changes in the practice and paradigms of agriculture and food.