On 24th October 2025, three prominent animal welfare organisations, the ASPCA, Humane World for Animals (formerly known as the Humane Society of the United States), and Compassion in World Farming, severed their ties with the Global Animal Partnership (GAP), stepping away from the board of directors of an initiative many campaigners consider one of the meat industry’s most prominent humane-washing schemes.
The GAP has long applied what many campaigners believe to be misleading “animal welfare certified” labels on animal-derived products sold in major retailers such as Whole Foods, despite repeated exposés revealing ongoing suffering in certified facilities. The departure of these organisations follows an intense campaign by animal rights organisations, including PETA, which has consistently documented and denounced cruelty within GAP-endorsed farms.
According to PETA, undercover reports from GAP-certified suppliers are distressing. At Farmer Focus, whistleblowers revealed that “chickens had bruised, broken, and dislocated wings from being slammed into cages for transport to the company’s slaughterhouse.” At Plainville Farms, a PETA investigator discovered workers “kicking, beating, and violently throwing turkeys about, and leaving sick and injured birds to suffer without veterinary care.” Similarly bleak, the investigation at Sweet Stem Farm exposed pigs “crammed into severely crowded sheds on concrete floors and had painful, bloody rectal prolapses as large as an orange that were left untreated.”
For over a decade, the ASPCA, Humane World for Animals, and Compassion in World Farming were present on the board of GAP, even as other animal protection organisations such as PETA and Farm Forward distanced themselves years earlier, citing the continuing suffering within certified facilities.PETA has urged the public to be wary of so-called “humane” and “welfare” labels, highlighting their lack of meaning for the animals involved. As stated by PETA, “Every animal is someone, and they all deserve better than the deceptive labels ‘humane’ and ‘welfare’ certifiers slap on the packaging of their broken bodies…Misleading ‘humane’ and ‘welfare’ labels mean nothing to the suffering animals exploited for their flesh.”
