10/07/2021
There is no requirement that the cows, pigs, or hens who were exploited to create natural products
be treated any different from how other factory farmed animals are treated. Farmed animals who are exploited for natural products are not allowed to
live in natural conditions—they are not even allowed to satisfy their most basic natural behaviors. Despite consumer assumptions about what natural means, . . . the USDA’s natural food labels only regulate the presence of artificial additives and the degree of processing.
Free range, cage free, and certified humane labels are just as meaningless for farmed animals as are all natural labels. Just like farmed animals enslaved by organic industries, farmed animals exploited by free
range, cage free, and certified humane producers are routinely debeaked, disbudded, detoed, castrated, their tails are docked, and/or they are branded (depending on the species). Neither do free range and certified humane labels protect cows from perpetual impregnation, pregnancy, birth, calfsnatching, transport, or dismemberment (slaughter) at a very young age. Finally, free range, cage free, and certified humane labels fail to help
spent hens, who are sent to slaughter at the same youthful age.
