Welfare Group Calls for Audit of USDA Program

The Animal Welfare Institute is calling for an official audit of the US Department of Agriculture’s Process Verified Program—a certification system that designates some animal products as “humanely raised”—calling the label inaccurate and misleading. In a recent investigative report, AWI alleges that, because there is no federal standard for what constitutes humane treatment, companies need only adhere to their own self-defined standards in order to bear the Process Verified label. As evidence of the Process Verified Program’s lax regulations, the report cites the inhumane practices documented at two of the program’s approved farms, Sparboe and Perdue, both of which have been the subject of animal-cruelty investigations.