go into a supermarket and you'll see
labels like these plastered all over the
meat dairy and egg products that we buy
company names like the happy egg company
a company who advertise their products
with images of chickens in lush green
fields even though an investigation in
2021 into three farms that supply them
eggs revealed that the hens were packed
in industrial sheds their beaks had been
cut off and there were dead birds
rotting on the floor so just a little
different to the imagery the company
uses to sell their products in fact even
when we look at free range as an
industry-wide standard free-range
farmers can legally house sixteen
thousand birds in a barn which means
they can house nine birds per square
meter of space which gives each hen 11
square centimeters of space each inside
the barns not exactly the image of being
free that you would expect the happy egg
company and the term free range are both
examples of humane washing but wait what
is humane washing well to understand
what humane washing is let's first look
at greenwashing
and get ready to say goodbye to straws
at starbucks the java giant announced
today it will ban plastic straws it is
the largest food and beverage company to
make that move so far i think they're
kind of out of date we can just sip out
of cups
in recent years some of the biggest food
corporations in the world such as
starbucks and mcdonald's have ditched
plastic straws in response to growing
public concern about their impact on the
environment great news right well not
exactly this is an example of green
washing green washing is messaging put
into the world by a company or an
industry to downplay the companies or
the industry's environmental impact with
the aim of convincing consumers that
it's fine to buy this company or
industries products in the case of the
plastic straw this strawless lid that
starbucks introduced to replace the
straw actually contains more plastic
than the original lid and straw combo
did a mcdonald's well where do we even
begin selling food that is linked to
rainforest deforestation is probably a
good place not to mention the fact that
they don't recycle their new straws and
the drinks still come in the same
plastic lined cups as the old plastic
straws did the animal agriculture
industry also regularly greenwash their
products as well as a recent d smog
investigation revealed we conducted an
investigation of the meat industry's
climate pr over the last six months we
selected 10 meat industry players and we
found there's a pattern of narratives
they use across the world to
well downplay the environmental impact
of production many of the companies
we looked at claimed that yes there's a
climate impact but um grazing is good
for biodiversity so they're kind of
saying yes
it's not good for the climate but it's
also great for biodiversity and another
strategy we found involves downplaying
the effectiveness of plant-based diets
so they are saying plant-based diets are
not that effective so
everybody should continue eating meat
these are just two of the many false
narratives that these industries use to
try and greenwash their products you can
find out more about these false
narratives and also read detailed
analyses about the meat companies
analyzed by checking out caroline's d
smog report
but what has this got to do with humane
washing
well humane washing is basically the
same thing but instead of trying to make
you think that their products are
sustainable it's a tactic the meat dairy
and egg industries use to try and
convince you that their products are
ethically produced and good for the
animals they raise and kill free range
cage free high welfare humanely raised
responsibly sourced family farmed local
traceable and the list goes on yep
they're all examples of humane washing
and they are problematic in several ways
firstly they create false portrayals of
what farms actually look like take
laughing cow for example based on their
packaging what do you think their farms
look like something like this maybe
well in 2019 animal equality
investigated one of their suppliers and
found that they were hitting newborn
carbs performing painful mutilations on
them
and leaving them out to die in freezing
temperatures
or what about saint helens who described
themselves and their milk as gentle
well based on a 2020 investigation of
one of their suppliers it seems that
they have a really loose definition of
the word gentle
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supermarkets have even branded their own
brand animal products with fake farm
names such as tesco's woodside farm and
little's birchwood farm which are kind
of misleading to say the least marx and
spencer even made up their own scottish
lake called loch muir which even though
it doesn't exist was displayed on their
packaging of salmon products to create
the impression of wholesome scottish
salmon farming but the truth is there's
nothing wholesome or ethical about
salmon farming and investigations on
scottish salmon farms including ones
that supply marx and spencer just
further prove this with videos showing
salmon crammed into overcrowded pens
that are infested with flesh-eating sea
lice
max and spencer recently phased out
their fake label due to a public
pressure campaign but all of this
shouldn't really be surprising because
the fundamental purpose of those labels
is not to protect the animals but to
convince you to buy their product as the
director of technical marketing of manta
one of the largest chicken producers in
the us said at a 2020 industry webinar
so the one thing you want a label to do
is reduce consumer concerns about buying
your product and when you actually look
into many of these labels you'll learn
that they are either given out by
organizations that are closely tied to
the industry or they just flat out don't
make any sense tesco for example state
on their website that our approach to
responsible sourcing and our use of the
terms responsibly sourced and
sustainably sourced on our packaging are
governed by the sustainable seafood
coalition but the sustainable seafood
coalition was founded by organizations
with vested interests in the seafood
industry including some of the biggest
seafood companies in the world like
birdseye and young's and is a
partnership between many of the biggest
retailers seafood companies and
supermarkets in the world and on top of
that they're codes of conduct a
voluntary agreement on responsible
sourcing and labeling developed by
sustainable seafood coalition members
and as they say ultimately it is the
responsibility of individual businesses
to ensure alignment with the codes in
other words all these companies with
invested interest in the seafood
industry basically got together came up
with these guidelines and said okay
let's follow them if we feel like it in
any case let's start calling our seafood
products responsibly sourced as for
labels that don't make sense well how
about this one the family farm narrative
the usda classifies 98 of farms in the
u.s as family farms while at the same
time estimates say that 99 of farmed
animals in the us are factory farmed
which makes you realize that perhaps the
notion of a family-run farm has nothing
to do with an animal's actual well-being
but is instead a marketing ploy to make
you think of a romanticized ideal of
farming the same is true of local farms
as well every farm is local to someone
plus how does geographical location
determine the morality of what happens
on a farm and yet even though it
logically doesn't make sense we're
always told to support our local family
farmers and this idea that farms are a
happy place for animals is one that the
animal agriculture industry is
constantly communicating in one way or
another both implicitly through imagery
but also more explicitly as well we
focused heavily on of course animal
welfare happy fish means a happy farmer
absolutely i live and breathe this every
day i love my animals we realized how
important welfare was not only to tyson
but also to our customers and ultimately
to consumers the consistent repetition
of these statements and others like them
plays into something called the illusory
truth effect a phrase that refers to the
notion that repeated statements are
perceived to be more truthful than new
statements in effect the more times we
hear farmers humane wash what they do
the easier it becomes for us as
consumers to fall into the trap of
believing them and now does all this
mean that everything these industries
say and show is a lie
no
even though investigations consistently
show that farms are not as they portray
themselves it doesn't mean that there
are no farms that actually resemble the
way they are portrayed and there are
farmers who may misguidedly actually
believe that what they do to animals is
humane however animals are sentient
beings who can feel suffer and have
subjective experiences and the point of
these industries is to use their bodies
and ultimately kill them for profit
while animals might spend some time out
in a field it's also true that male
chicks in the egg industry are killed on
their first day of life because they're
not profitable to the industry and
mother cows have their babies taken away
from them shortly after birth just so we
can take the milk that was intended to
feed their babies simply put there's a
whole bunch of other things that are
done to animals that are inherent within
these industries and a standard legal
practice and yet they are never shown
and ultimately every animal who is used
for food eventually ends up in a
slaughterhouse where their life is taken
from them against their will in truth
humane washing isn't always so much
about what these industries show us but
instead what they don't show us
fundamentally the concept of animal
farming being humane for the animals is
a juxtaposition by its very nature and
if we honestly look at it from the
animals perspective and empathize with
the entirety of what they are forced to
endure the imagery and the labels become
clearly meaningless is this messaging
put into the world by someone who wants
to make a profit because in that case
it's very
important to scrutinize what this
industry or this company what they are
saying
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you