I’ve gotten a bunch of emails lately about this, so I thought I’d devote a whole post to it.

Basically, if you’re an omnivore and you’re trying to stop supporting the animal abuse that goes on at factory farms, it’s very simple. I swear. I myself am no longer an omnivore, but I was one not so long ago, and I like and admire people who are trying to switch from being inhumane omnivores to humane omnivores (I do! I think you’re fabulous.) I think there is a world of difference between promoting factory-farming animal abuse and promoting a pleasant environment for animals before they are slaughtered.

I think there is a spectrum of cruelty-free-ness – at one end there’s torturing and killing animals. At the other end, there’s not killing them at all. On a one-to-four scale it would go something like this:

• 1 – tortures and kills animals (factory farming, animal abusers, people who run inhumane tests on animals)

• 2 – not torturing animals, but killing them quickly (humanely raised meat/dairy + not supporting animal testing)

• 3 – not torturing animals, not killing them (humanely raised dairy/eggs + not supporting animal testing)

• 4 – not buying any animal products whatsoever (vegan + not supporting animal testing)

I myself was an omnivore, then I switched to eating humanely raised meat and dairy, then on to vegetarianism, and I’m slowly working my way towards veganism, which I think is the kindest way to live (but it’s really hard . . . ).

(Quick disclaimer — “humanely raised” means the animals live short but free-from-pain-inflicted-by-people lives — basically, while they are alive they are not physically abused, but they are usually killed long before the end of their natural lifespan — for a meat-providing animal, usually at about six months of age, and for an egg/dairy providing animal, when they stop producing eggs/milk. Chickens that are humanely raised are not kept in cages the size of laptops for their entire six month existence, and they don’t have their beaks cut off. Pigs and veal calves that are humanely raised are not kept in crates they literally cannot turn around in for their entire existence. So again, “humanely raised” does not mean “no kill,” and it has other drawbacks as well. Chickens that lay “humanely raised” eggs are slaughtered when they stop producing eggs, which is usually 3 years of age out of 9 year lifespan. “Humanely raised” dairy cows are slaughtered when they stop producing milk. Male chicks born to layer hens are slaughtered right after they are born; male calves born to dairy cows are slaughtered when they are six months old for veal. Dairy cows are kept continually pregnant to provide milk for people, and their calves are taken away from them at a very young age and fed on milk substitute. So, while humanely raised meat/dairy products are without a doubt far, far better than inhumanely raised, they are not as kind to animals as veganism.)

So,

The Three Steps to Becoming a Humane Omnivore:

Step 1 — Buy Humanely Raised Meat/Dairy Products at the Grocery Store:

The first thing you should know is that there are three very good lists of humane meat and dairy products:

1) The Animal Welfare Association’s Animal Welfare Approved List. This is the strictest and best list — it has very high standards (unfortunately it just started out, so there aren’t that many farms listed on it. But it’s growing every day). I wrote a blog post about it not too long ago.

2) The American Humane Association’s Free Farmed List. This is another good list — I wrote a blog post about it too.

3) The Humane Raised and Handled Certification list: I wrote a blog post about this one too.

The best thing about these three lists is that they have logos that are right on packages of meat and dairy products — the “Animal Welfare Approved,” the “American Humane Certified” logo and the “Certified Humane Raised & Handled” logo — so go to the meat section of your local grocery store and check to see if anything in the cases has those logos, and if they do, buy them.

What to do if you can’t find anything with either of those logos in your area:

If there’s nothing with one of those logos available in your area, the “free-range” label actually means something as well — it is definitely a step up from factory farming, so go ahead and buy anything that says it is “free-range.” I’d stay away from anything else — “natural,” “naturally nested,” “happy,” etc., mean absolutely nothing. (I suspect you’ll probably have better luck at natural/health food stores or upscale markets than Safeway/Luckys/etc.)

You can also use localharvest.org — it lists information about numerous farms. So if you find a meat product from a farm you don’t know anything about, you can look the farm up on Local Harvest and decide if it is humane enough for you.

The absolutely easiest way to find humanely farmed products:

The easiest way of all to buy humanely raised meat and dairy products is to shop at Whole Foods — every animal product at Whole Foods (in the prepared foods and the unprepared foods sections) had to pass Whole Foods humane standards (thanks to Pearl for telling me about this!), which are not as stringent as the other three standards, but are pretty good:

So you can just go to Whole Foods and pick any meat product out, you’ll be fine.

Step 2 — Go Out to Eat at Restaurants that Serve Humanely-Raised Meat/Dairy Products.

Eatwellguide.org is a lifesaver in this situation. Just put in your zipcode and it will tell you all the restaurants around you that have free-range, pasture-raised, sustainable, and biodynamic meat/dairy products, and it will even tell you which ones each restaurant carries (unfortunately not many restaurants seem to carry free-range eggs — in this area, I think Chez Panisse is the only one). Write these down, go to the restaurants, and be sure to order the humanely-raised meat/dairy products they offer. (Unfortunately Eatwellguide also won’t tell you whether any of the farms are AWA certified, AHA certified, or Humane Raised and Handled Certified. Hello, Eatwellguide? That would be nice. Along with making the search feature easier to use — I’d love to be able to do a search and find every free-range egg restaurant in the area.)

(Edited to add: As you can see from the comment down below from Erin of EatWellGuide (so cool!) — you CAN actually use EatWellGuide to find out which restaurants carry free-range eggs.  I was just confused because I was trying to find free-range eggs and dairy products at the same time, and the search engine showed me results with some restaurants that didn’t carry free-range eggs.  So anyway, go ahead and use EatWellGuide’s advanced search feature to find free-range products — it’s very useful — and, um, just search for one free-range item at a time!)

Google is also your friend — google your area, plus words like “free-range” and “restaurants.” You’ll be surprised by how many restaurants have that sort of thing.

(Optional) Step 3 — Allow Yourself to Eat Inhumane Products If You Really Crave Them

This is an optional step, but it helped me out a lot, so I thought I’d include it. Basically, you’re not going to stick to eating only humanely raised foods if you cut yourself off immediately from your favorite things. If you’re at a fabulous expensive restaurant you adore, let yourself eat whatever you feel like. Then, the next day, if you’re offered something you’re only kind of “meh” about, absolutely refuse to eat it unless it’s humanely raised. An animal suffered and died for that — if you don’t absolutely crave it, it’s just not worth eating it. The difference between faux-tofu-based-bologna and back-of-the-fridge- watery-and-rubbery -in-the-first-place-inhumane-bologna is not one of taste — trust me, they both taste fairly blah — it is that one caused a great deal of suffering, pain and torment, and the other did not.

It’s hard to believe, but after a few months you will be able to refuse fabulous expensive delicious product-of-torture-meat/dairy products. I promise. After you’ve spent a great deal of time eating only humanely-raised products, the thought of eating something that caused that much suffering will be psychologically difficult to take. At least eventually it became that way for me, anyway . . .

(If you have any (positive) advice that would help people trying to eat more humanely farmed foods, please add it here. If you want a personal description of what it’s like to start eating humanely farmed foods all of the time, check out Pearl’s comments on my humane farming posts.)

Good luck!

Tags : american humane association, animal welfare approved, free farmed, humane farming, humane raised and handled, omnivore
Categories : cruelty free, humane farming