The Certified Humane® program began as a counter to the abysmal conditions on North American factory farms. It was designed to empower the North American shoppers to weigh in on how they wanted farm animals to be treated — through their purchasing power.
Adele Douglass Jolley, the founder of Certified Humane®, never imagined how the program would grow on such a global scale.
The reason it did so is largely because a Brazilian animal welfare researcher — studying for her doctorate at Purdue University in 2005 — decided to lend her expertise as an inspector for the burgeoning program.
“I needed to be in touch with the animals in the real world,” said Rosangela Poletto, Ph.D., DVM, who later became a member of the Scientific Committee.
Today, Certified Humane® products are sold in 26+ countries. Rosangela and her growing team of inspectors around the globe audit farms and ranches using the program’s rigorous Farm Animal Standards.
The program has exploded in global growth in part because Rosangela never compromised the program’s high standards. Even as it expanded from Brazil, to Argentina, to Peru, throughout Latin America, now to southeast Asia, including India, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia.
“Without Rosangela, it would have never happened,” said Mimi Stein, Executive Director of Certified Humane®. “She enforced the program. She makes sure the program doesn’t lose integrity as we grow.”
Dr. Rosangela is now the organization’s Director of Science and Research. When she’s not globetrotting to promote the welfare of farm animals on behalf of Certified Humane®, she’s raising three boys (ages 15, 11 and 4) and teaching at the Federal Institute of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
And she’s just getting started.
“I do what I love, and I love to help people to improve the animals’ lives,” she said. “That’s why I never stopped. It’s my passion for everything.”
From the dairy farm to vet school
Rosangela grew up in a small town called Marau in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s most southern state, which sits along the border with Uruguay.
Her family raised dairy cows, horses, and beef cattle on the family farm. Rosangela would help produce and sell pasteurized milk in liter bags to local stores. She always cared for her own dogs at home.
Rosangela would often wash the cows’ water trough, give them fresh water, and then sit back to watch how the cows meandered back to the trough to drink.
“I was just passionate about providing them proper care and observing how they behaved,” Rosangela said.
As she prepared to go to college, she considered both medical school and veterinary school. But on her way to register for classes at the university, she remembers telling her mom that she couldn’t see herself working enclosed between four walls day in and day out.
“I just need to be around the animals,” she said.
Rosangela enrolled in veterinarian school in 1997. She threw herself into her studies, taking extra English classes, studying Italian at a private school and working in the vet hospital lab.
The neurophysiology of piglets
Despite her obsession with watching how animals behaved, Rosangela never thought of studying animal welfare. At the time, that type of science wasn’t a big focus in Latin America.
Rosangela’s perspective changed during her last semester of vet school as she was seeking a final internship to complete her program. One of her professors helped her connect with the animal science department at Michigan State University — and specifically to Brazilian professor Adroaldo Zanella.
Her internship focused on the neurophysiology of piglets, studying how early weaning and social isolation affected their brains. She explored how this dynamic of their care impacted their cortisol mechanism and their ability to manage stress.
“I never thought of myself becoming keen about brain function and its relation to animal welfare in my life,” Rosangela said. “And I loved it.”
After graduating from vet school in 2003, professor Adroaldo Zanella invited her back to Michigan State for a master’s program. That, in turn, led to an invitation to pursue a doctorate — advised by Dr. Jeremy Marchant and Dr. Heng-wei Cheng — at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Livestock Behavior Research Unit based at Purdue University.
In 2005, she moved from Michigan to West Lafayette, Indiana to continue her research at the USDA’s only research unit focused on animal welfare.
The call to the farms
Rosangela first heard about the (brand new) Certified Humane® program while studying at Michigan State. A postdoc fellow she worked with, the late Kirsty Laughlin, left their program to help Adele launch the nonprofit, Humane Farm Animal Care.
At Purdue, Rosangela began to feel what had kept her pursuing a career in medicine: the walls of her research lab were too confining.
“I really loved doing research, but I felt that I needed to go back to the farms,” she said.
In 2005, she reached out to Certified Humane® to offer her expertise as an inspector. Her training involved shadowing Brenda Coe, Ph.D., on a robotic milking operation in Pennsylvania as well as Jose Peralta, Ph.D., DVM, who now works as a professor at Western University of Health Science in California.
For five years, she audited farms that cared for pigs and dairy cows across the United States as she finished her doctorate research.
In 2010, having completed a Ph.D. in behavioral neurophysiology focused on farm animal welfare and a Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine, she moved back to Brazil. However, her association with Certified Humane® was far from over.
Just as she arrived back in Brazil, Rosangela got a call from the Certified Humane® main office in Virginia. Certified Humane® already had a collaboration with an organic certification program in Brazil. Now, a producer in Nebraska wanted their butter to be certified. The milk they used came from a dairy farm in Argentina.
So Rosangela traveled to her neighboring country to audit the dairy farm. Then she audited a few laying hen farms in Brazil, then in Argentina. Later, she audited farms in Peru and Uruguay.
Up to that point, Rosangela was the only Certified Humane® inspector in Latin America. But even that was about to change.
Promoting animal welfare to the world
In 2011, Adele asked Rosangela to join the Scientific Committee. Adele had traveled to attend a conference in Brazil and met Rosangela in person for the first time.
Rosangela remembers that meeting with Adele very fondly. Though the program was in its early days of global expansion, Rosangela was already grappling with how to spread the importance of animal welfare to farmers and ranchers who had been raising animals for generations.
“I asked her, ‘Adele, how much can I actually share knowledge or help them to understand animal welfare in practice?’” Rosangela said. “I remember clearly that she said, ‘I want Certified Humane to be an educational program.’”
From her position on the committee, Rosangela began helping establish the standards in Portuguese and Spanish. With every new language added to the program, the team seeks out a native animal welfare scientist who understands English well to help translate the standards.
But translating the words is just part of the global growth. Even today, animal welfare is an evolving science, Rosangela said. Convincing farmers and ranchers of the value of the Farm Animal Standards can be an uphill battle.
“In Latin America, it’s more about breaking through their old perceptions and confronting the taboos of some in the industry,” Rosangela said. “If you can show them all the possible outcomes that you can gain from the animals’ perspective and also from the economical perspective, you win the game.
“And then it’s easy,” she added.
For her part, Rosangela said she’s glad she’s been able to uphold Adele’s original vision.
“Certified Humane has been playing a very important role globally. We’re not only auditing and certifying the industry; we’re spreading animal welfare in an educational way,” she said.
Along with Portuguese and Spanish, Farm Animal Standards are now available in French, Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese.
The global phenomenon
While Certified Humane® had already expanded from the United States into Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East, Rosangela helped promote the Farm Animal Standards across southeast Asia — including Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and recently, Thailand.
Today, Rosangela oversees about 22 inspectors across the world, providing technical and scientific guidance as they work in the field. The team is growing as consumer demand for humane animal welfare practices catches on in more countries.
A few years ago, Rosangela’s most senior inspector traveled from Chile to Malaysia to train a new team of inspectors. Over the summer, Rosangela had the opportunity to travel to Vietnam with the same task. Last year, she was in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.
“Promoting farm animal welfare is an ongoing mission,” she said.
Overseeing the inspection team — and staying ahead of global science and the industry innovations — requires constant learning and communication.
“They can be on the other side of the world doing audits, and they’ll send me pictures and messages: ‘What do you think about this? What do you think about that?’” Rosangela explained. “Then we are communicating almost in real time.”
In November, Rosangela is hosting a workshop to launch a Certified Humane® program in Japan (right now, Certified Humane® products are available for purchase in Japan, but no farms are certified there). She’s also traveling to India soon to broaden farm animal welfare and strengthen Certified Humane® mission in that country.
After almost 20 years of involvement in the organization, Rosangela is more committed than ever to advancing the movement.
“Certified Humane is my heart,” Rosangela said. “You couldn’t break me from Certified Humane. It’s such a history that you can’t.”
Posted: November 26, 2024 by Certified Humane®
Becoming Certified Humane®: What happens during the certification process?
Our goal in this article is to demystify all the details and reasoning behind the certification and explain how a farm or ranch or processor becomes Certified Humane® and can remain on the program through annual audits year after year.
First, you should understand the values and principles that guide the Certified Humane® program. You can read them in full in this article.
Here are the highlights:
We also want to state that animal welfare scientists and veterinarians act as independent inspectors to perform in-depth audits for species they specialize in. We have always contracted with third-party animal welfare specialists to ensure the most accurate and non-biased reporting.
With all those principles in mind, let’s dive into the process of becoming Certified Humane®!
Step 1: A farm or ranch asks to become certified
While this first step may seem obvious, it’s important to point out that the Certified Humane® is a voluntary program run by a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, Humane Farm Animal Care.
We are not a government organization nor affiliated with any regulatory body or industry organization. We do not enforce animal welfare policies for people who aren’t on our program. Our standards require that trained handlers understand the needs of farm animals and how to apply those needs to their daily routine. That requires a long-term commitment to sustainable practices, not a quick fix.
Farmers and ranchers ask us to certify their operations because they recognize that shoppers trust the Certified Humane® logo. More and more shoppers are willing to pay extra in the grocery aisle if it means that they are supporting the responsible care of farm animals.
Our program is effective because it’s driven by consumer demand and by the compassion of farmers, ranchers and producers who want to do better.
Many operations who seek certification with us are already following at least some responsible care practices. They seek us out because our transparent standards allow them to showcase the ways they are doing right by the animals in their care.
Step 2: The applicant submits an application
When a new applicant submits an inquiry online, we respond immediately to begin their certification process.
Our preliminary conversations clarify the applicant’s business model and so we can determine which standards apply to them. We also answer any questions they have about their anticipated eligibility, fees, the audit process, the forms they need to submit, and the approximate timeline to final certification.
Applications usually include species-specific forms, one for each kind of animal the farm cares for at each site.
They also include one for each facility in the entire supply chain, including any slaughtering and processing locations. The process includes traceability audits at any facilities that create the retail packaging, ensuring all products with our logo actually came from a Certified Humane® farm.
In order to become certified, care during every part of a farm animal’s life MUST meet our Farm Animal Standards.
Step 3: We review submitted forms
Before we go onsite to a farm, ranch or processing operation, our Compliance Team reviews the application and relevant form(s) to see if any obvious corrections need to be made.
Step 4: An independent inspector conduct audit(s) of the entire operation
When the applicant passes the initial review, we’ll assign independent third-party inspectors to audit each farm, ranch or facility. The inspector will contact the applicant to schedule the needed audit(s) at a mutually convenient time.
Who are the inspectors?
The independent inspectors are highly qualified animal scientists or experts in the food industry. Many are veterinarians or have a Ph.D. in their field. They have hands-on farm experience with types(s) of animals they audit, and they’re familiar with practical ways to apply the best animal welfare practices.
Most importantly, inspectors care deeply about farm animals. They are passionate about improving their lives.
What happens during an audit?
The job of the inspector is to observe every site and every aspect of the applicant’s operation in order to assess compliance with our Farm Animal Standards. He or she will also review documents and records, interview the people who care for the animals, and conduct traceability audits.
The independent inspectors do more than check boxes. By observing a flock or herd, they can immediately pick up on even subtle issues with the health, nutrition, or handling of the farm animals. They know how to investigate further to identify what may be keeping the animals from thriving.
At the end of each onsite audit, the inspector will review their findings with personnel at the ranch, farm or facility. Their findings are compiled into a report that is signed by the on-site representative for the applicant.
Inspectors do NOT make any decisions about whether an applicant should be granted certification. They report only their expert observations.
The inspector will send the completed audit report to our Compliance Team for their review.
Step 5: We request corrections of any noncompliance issues
Once all audits are complete, the Compliance Team reviews all the documentation and audit reports to assess if the applicant is in compliance with our Farm Animal Standards. Depending on how complex the applicant’s operation is, this review process may take several weeks.
After this thorough review, the Compliance Team confers with the executive personnel for a final decision.
The Certified Humane® program requires full compliance with our Farm Animal Standards. We don’t give farms a partial score or use a grading system. All Certified Humane® farms, ranches and facilities meet every standard that’s applicable to their operation.
If the Compliance Team identifies areas where the applicant did not meet our standards, the executive staff will ask — in writing — for the applicant to address the noncompliance with corrective actions that can be followed consistently and sustainably.
Sometimes this requires a simple record-keeping adjustment. In other cases, the required change may be more extensive. In many cases, a second audit will be necessary to confirm the changes have been made.
We do NOT grant certification to any applicant until ALL issues of noncompliance have been addressed.
We pride ourselves in providing prompt service and helpful guidance to any producer interested in our program, from small family farms to complex ranching operations.
Step 6: We license the use of our logo to farms, ranches, and producers that are in full compliance with our standards
Once an applicant is fully compliant with our Farm Animal Standards and has signed our Licensing Agreement, we grant Certified Humane® certification!
Certification is good for one year and applies only to the animals and products that meet our standards.
Once certified, businesses can begin selling products with the Certified Humane® logo right away.
How do I get the Certified Humane® logo on my certified products?
Once the applicant has become Certified Humane®, our executive team will provide high resolution graphic files so the Certified Humane® logo can be included on packages and in marketing materials. Graphics are included with each certification.
With written approval from the Certified Humane® business, we can provide our high-resolution logo to third-party packaging designers.
Use of the logo is not transferable to third-party processors, distributors or purveyors for advertising.
Step 7: We review compliance annually
Each year, all Certified Humane® farms, ranches and processing operations go through a fresh audit process to renew their certification. They submit a renewal application and let us know of any significant changes to their operations.
We then assign an independent inspector to perform an audit for renewal of their certification. We rotate the inspectors who visit each Certified Humane® operation so that one inspector does not audit the same farm year after year.
Inspections for renewal applications are just as thorough as an initial audit. In fact, they tend to be more rigorous because inspectors compare notes made during previous audits to look for patterns that may be cause for concern.
As needed, we will conduct additional audits. These occur in the cases of major changes or new issues of noncompliance. They may be unannounced, as judged necessary by our executive staff.
Certification FAQs
Still have concerns? Below are more frequently asked questions about our certification process.
Q: Why don’t you audit farms more often?
Our inspections are designed to be a thorough and comprehensive review of ongoing care rather than a snapshot of a moment in time.
Independent inspectors review the year’s worth of health records and veterinarian treatments. They take a note of secondary health indicators like body composition scores or feather coverage for birds. They’ll judge how the farm animals act around people, which will tell them about the attentiveness of their caregivers.
Independent inspectors are scientists in their own right, meaning they’re critical thinkers who are trained to look deeper than surface observations. Because they are familiar with the species they’re auditing, they know when behavior they’re observing is a sign of distress, ongoing mistreatment (no matter how subtle), or when it’s perfectly in line with the natural behaviors of the farm animal.
Independent inspectors can’t be on every farm every day of the year. But they can tell you how well the farm animals are being cared for all year — based on their health, their behaviors, and the extensive records we require of Certified Humane® farms, ranches and processing operations.
Q: What happens if there is a problem or complaint?
Our team takes complaints about farms and ranches in the Certified Humane® program very seriously. The entire process is outlined in our Policy Manual, published on our website.
Our first step is to investigate all the details given by the complainant. Depending on what is learned during the information-gathering process, we usually follow up with an unannounced audit. If any nonconformances are found, the producer will have to make corrections to keep their certification.
If the farm or ranch cannot bring their operations back into compliance — or refuses to do so — their Certified Humane® status will be revoked.
Q: When do you deny certification?
There are cases where we cannot grant certification because a farm or ranch does not meet our Farm Animal Standards.
However, because our primary mission is to improve the lives of ALL farm animals, our executive staff (not the inspectors) will work with an applicant to better explain our standards and help them troubleshoot ways to improve the conditions for animals in their care. In many cases, these farms make adjustments to meet our standards and ultimately become Certified Humane®.
If we do not see improvements to the farm operations after working with an applicant, we will require that the farm wait a year and prove to us in writing that they’ve completely revamped their operations before they can reapply.
Your questions
What other questions about the certification process do you have? Email us questions or connect with us on social media!
Scroll to the bottom of this page for a link to the social media platform of your choice.
Posted: October 21, 2024 by Certified Humane®
How Dr. Rosangela Poletto helped grow Certified Humane® into a global movement
The Certified Humane® program began as a counter to the abysmal conditions on North American factory farms. It was designed to empower the North American shoppers to weigh in on how they wanted farm animals to be treated — through their purchasing power.
Adele Douglass Jolley, the founder of Certified Humane®, never imagined how the program would grow on such a global scale.
The reason it did so is largely because a Brazilian animal welfare researcher — studying for her doctorate at Purdue University in 2005 — decided to lend her expertise as an inspector for the burgeoning program.
“I needed to be in touch with the animals in the real world,” said Rosangela Poletto, Ph.D., DVM, who later became a member of the Scientific Committee.
Today, Certified Humane® products are sold in 26+ countries. Rosangela and her growing team of inspectors around the globe audit farms and ranches using the program’s rigorous Farm Animal Standards.
The program has exploded in global growth in part because Rosangela never compromised the program’s high standards. Even as it expanded from Brazil, to Argentina, to Peru, throughout Latin America, now to southeast Asia, including India, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia.
“Without Rosangela, it would have never happened,” said Mimi Stein, Executive Director of Certified Humane®. “She enforced the program. She makes sure the program doesn’t lose integrity as we grow.”
Dr. Rosangela is now the organization’s Director of Science and Research. When she’s not globetrotting to promote the welfare of farm animals on behalf of Certified Humane®, she’s raising three boys (ages 15, 11 and 4) and teaching at the Federal Institute of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
And she’s just getting started.
“I do what I love, and I love to help people to improve the animals’ lives,” she said. “That’s why I never stopped. It’s my passion for everything.”
From the dairy farm to vet school
Rosangela grew up in a small town called Marau in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s most southern state, which sits along the border with Uruguay.
Her family raised dairy cows, horses, and beef cattle on the family farm. Rosangela would help produce and sell pasteurized milk in liter bags to local stores. She always cared for her own dogs at home.
Rosangela would often wash the cows’ water trough, give them fresh water, and then sit back to watch how the cows meandered back to the trough to drink.
“I was just passionate about providing them proper care and observing how they behaved,” Rosangela said.
As she prepared to go to college, she considered both medical school and veterinary school. But on her way to register for classes at the university, she remembers telling her mom that she couldn’t see herself working enclosed between four walls day in and day out.
“I just need to be around the animals,” she said.
Rosangela enrolled in veterinarian school in 1997. She threw herself into her studies, taking extra English classes, studying Italian at a private school and working in the vet hospital lab.
The neurophysiology of piglets
Despite her obsession with watching how animals behaved, Rosangela never thought of studying animal welfare. At the time, that type of science wasn’t a big focus in Latin America.
Rosangela’s perspective changed during her last semester of vet school as she was seeking a final internship to complete her program. One of her professors helped her connect with the animal science department at Michigan State University — and specifically to Brazilian professor Adroaldo Zanella.
Her internship focused on the neurophysiology of piglets, studying how early weaning and social isolation affected their brains. She explored how this dynamic of their care impacted their cortisol mechanism and their ability to manage stress.
“I never thought of myself becoming keen about brain function and its relation to animal welfare in my life,” Rosangela said. “And I loved it.”
After graduating from vet school in 2003, professor Adroaldo Zanella invited her back to Michigan State for a master’s program. That, in turn, led to an invitation to pursue a doctorate — advised by Dr. Jeremy Marchant and Dr. Heng-wei Cheng — at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Livestock Behavior Research Unit based at Purdue University.
In 2005, she moved from Michigan to West Lafayette, Indiana to continue her research at the USDA’s only research unit focused on animal welfare.
The call to the farms
Rosangela first heard about the (brand new) Certified Humane® program while studying at Michigan State. A postdoc fellow she worked with, the late Kirsty Laughlin, left their program to help Adele launch the nonprofit, Humane Farm Animal Care.
At Purdue, Rosangela began to feel what had kept her pursuing a career in medicine: the walls of her research lab were too confining.
“I really loved doing research, but I felt that I needed to go back to the farms,” she said.
In 2005, she reached out to Certified Humane® to offer her expertise as an inspector. Her training involved shadowing Brenda Coe, Ph.D., on a robotic milking operation in Pennsylvania as well as Jose Peralta, Ph.D., DVM, who now works as a professor at Western University of Health Science in California.
For five years, she audited farms that cared for pigs and dairy cows across the United States as she finished her doctorate research.
In 2010, having completed a Ph.D. in behavioral neurophysiology focused on farm animal welfare and a Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine, she moved back to Brazil. However, her association with Certified Humane® was far from over.
Just as she arrived back in Brazil, Rosangela got a call from the Certified Humane® main office in Virginia. Certified Humane® already had a collaboration with an organic certification program in Brazil. Now, a producer in Nebraska wanted their butter to be certified. The milk they used came from a dairy farm in Argentina.
So Rosangela traveled to her neighboring country to audit the dairy farm. Then she audited a few laying hen farms in Brazil, then in Argentina. Later, she audited farms in Peru and Uruguay.
Up to that point, Rosangela was the only Certified Humane® inspector in Latin America. But even that was about to change.
Promoting animal welfare to the world
In 2011, Adele asked Rosangela to join the Scientific Committee. Adele had traveled to attend a conference in Brazil and met Rosangela in person for the first time.
Rosangela remembers that meeting with Adele very fondly. Though the program was in its early days of global expansion, Rosangela was already grappling with how to spread the importance of animal welfare to farmers and ranchers who had been raising animals for generations.
“I asked her, ‘Adele, how much can I actually share knowledge or help them to understand animal welfare in practice?’” Rosangela said. “I remember clearly that she said, ‘I want Certified Humane to be an educational program.’”
From her position on the committee, Rosangela began helping establish the standards in Portuguese and Spanish. With every new language added to the program, the team seeks out a native animal welfare scientist who understands English well to help translate the standards.
But translating the words is just part of the global growth. Even today, animal welfare is an evolving science, Rosangela said. Convincing farmers and ranchers of the value of the Farm Animal Standards can be an uphill battle.
“In Latin America, it’s more about breaking through their old perceptions and confronting the taboos of some in the industry,” Rosangela said. “If you can show them all the possible outcomes that you can gain from the animals’ perspective and also from the economical perspective, you win the game.
“And then it’s easy,” she added.
For her part, Rosangela said she’s glad she’s been able to uphold Adele’s original vision.
“Certified Humane has been playing a very important role globally. We’re not only auditing and certifying the industry; we’re spreading animal welfare in an educational way,” she said.
Along with Portuguese and Spanish, Farm Animal Standards are now available in French, Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese.
The global phenomenon
While Certified Humane® had already expanded from the United States into Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East, Rosangela helped promote the Farm Animal Standards across southeast Asia — including Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and recently, Thailand.
Today, Rosangela oversees about 22 inspectors across the world, providing technical and scientific guidance as they work in the field. The team is growing as consumer demand for humane animal welfare practices catches on in more countries.
A few years ago, Rosangela’s most senior inspector traveled from Chile to Malaysia to train a new team of inspectors. Over the summer, Rosangela had the opportunity to travel to Vietnam with the same task. Last year, she was in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.
“Promoting farm animal welfare is an ongoing mission,” she said.
Overseeing the inspection team — and staying ahead of global science and the industry innovations — requires constant learning and communication.
“They can be on the other side of the world doing audits, and they’ll send me pictures and messages: ‘What do you think about this? What do you think about that?’” Rosangela explained. “Then we are communicating almost in real time.”
In November, Rosangela is hosting a workshop to launch a Certified Humane® program in Japan (right now, Certified Humane® products are available for purchase in Japan, but no farms are certified there). She’s also traveling to India soon to broaden farm animal welfare and strengthen Certified Humane® mission in that country.
After almost 20 years of involvement in the organization, Rosangela is more committed than ever to advancing the movement.
“Certified Humane is my heart,” Rosangela said. “You couldn’t break me from Certified Humane. It’s such a history that you can’t.”
Posted: August 7, 2024 by Certified Humane®
The legacy of Dr. Joy Mench, trailblazing animal behavior scientist
It’s nearly impossible to explain the history of animal welfare research in the United States without mentioning Joy Mench, Ph.D., a longtime animal behavior research professor at University of California Davis.
That rule certainly applies to the development of the Certified Humane® program. Joy was one of the founding scientists and veterinarians whom Adele Douglass Jolley recruited to adopt farm animals certification standards for the United States market.
“We had a really good group of people working together,” said Joy as she recalled those early days, now more than 20 years ago. “We each brought different kinds of expertise. I’m the poultry expert, but we had people who had expertise in swine, cattle and other species.”
The group grew in number as time went on. The Scientific Committee now boasts more than 40 experts in animal science and welfare.
But in the beginning, the group was only a handful of animal scientists and veterinarians. And they were all women. Joy remembered that fact distinctly.
“The field of animal welfare was pretty women-dominated,” she said. “There were just a lot more women working in the area, so that was probably part of it.”
The way Adele remembered it, as she reflected during the organization’s 20th anniversary, the group was all women because only women replied to her call to create a new certification program.
“I would believe that,” Joy said with a laugh. “Women are very service-minded.”
The animal welfare movement
Joy describes Adele as an old friend, whom she met while she was a professor at the University of Maryland in College Park. Adele was a lobbyist for American Humane, pushing for more animal welfare regulations on Capitol Hill, and Joy was an advisor to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Adele was frustrated by the lack of progress in Congress. She approached Joy and others for help with a different approach — developing a voluntary program that would encourage American shoppers to choose better animal care practices with the weight of their spending power.
“It was very, very visionary,” Joy said. “We didn’t have anything like that in the United States at the time.”
Joy herself was a trailblazer in her own right, claiming some of the first animal welfare research positions in the United States.
In her decades of research, she’s authored 160 publications on animal behavior and welfare and edited a half a dozen textbooks on the topic.
She got an early jump into the career, pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Sussex right after earning a bachelor’s degree in biology from San Francisco State University. As she began her studies in the United Kingdom, she knew she was interested in studying bird behavior.
It just so happened that the first bird she ended up studying was a chicken.
At the time, there was a growing interest in farm animal welfare in England. Joy found herself at the forefront of research in understanding the feelings and behaviors of animals.
“I got really interested in applying my knowledge of animal behavior toward improving the lives of animals,” she said.
After earning her Ph.D. in ethology (animal behavior) and neurobiology, Joy got what she describes as a series of “lucky” breaks. The first was claiming a postdoc research position at Cornell University, one of the first animal welfare research positions in the United States.
The second was claiming the nation’s first professorship in animal welfare. Joy served as a professor in poultry welfare at the University of Maryland College Park for 10 years before accepting a position at UC Davis, where she stayed for the rest of her career.
What does “humane” mean?
Joy experienced her first commercial poultry farm during a research project at Cornell University. The experimental study centered on researching different kinds of housing systems for laying hens, exploring cages versus pens, which allowed the chickens more freedom of movement.
Up to that point, Joy’s farming experience was limited to occasional visits to her uncle’s small family farm in Iowa. Her uncle had a few chickens, some pigs and a few cattle, and Joy remembered how she loved interacting with the animals.
A commercial chicken farm was a different experience.
“Because of the enormous size, it’s a bit of a shock to see so many animals kept together in one space,” Joy said.
To this day, the United States doesn’t provide federal regulation for how animals are treated on any farm — not for commercial operations nor the smaller farms like the one Joy’s uncle oversaw. That’s what made Adele’s idea so visionary.
“To have an independent third-party body coming out looking at farmers’ operations to see how the animals are treated was a very new concept,” Joy said.
That continues to be a strength in the Certified Humane® program, Joy said. As a teacher at University of California Davis, Joy regularly taught two classes: Animal Welfare and Ethics of Animal Use. In both, she taught her students how scientific research informed the basis for animal care standards used by programs like Certified Humane®.
But Joy also taught them to explore and discuss the ethics of raising farm animals.
“People in our society have very different views about what words like ‘humane’ mean. There’s no set definition for that term,” Joy said.
That’s why it’s important that Certified Humane®’s Farm Animal Standards are transparent, defining exactly how farm animals under the program are treated. That allows shoppers to make an informed decision in the grocery aisle based on their own ethics.
Bravery during a “sensitive” time
Creating the basis for new standards in the United States started by exploring farms in the United Kingdom. Joy was a full-time professor at UC Davis when she traveled with Adele and a small group of women scientists to learn from the Freedom Foods program, developed by Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA).
“We toured farms in the United Kingdom, seeing types of commercial farms,” Joy said.
Many of the animal welfare practices they saw in action on those larger farms could only be found on small family farms in the United States. It was important for the group to confirm the scientific basis for and feasibility of applying each standard before including it in the new program.
The Freedom Foods program became the group’s template. Still, it took time and quite a few meetings to develop standards for the U.S. market. It was important for the group to confirm the scientific basis for each standard before adopting it into the new program.
The new program operated for three years under American Humane Association, with Brenda Coe, Ph.D., acting as its director of animal science programs. When Adele parted ways with American Humane to launch a nonprofit focused on farm animal welfare, Joy supported her, joining the Scientific Committee for the new organization.
In May 2003, Adele officially launched Humane Farm Animal Care, the nonprofit that still oversees the Certified Humane® program.
Joy was the only member of the Scientific Committee who attended the media announcement.
“I do remember that. There was a lot of — shall we say — sensitivity about this program being launched,” Joy said. “People didn’t really understand what it was and how it was going to function and what the implications of it were. So there was nervousness.”
“The industry has changed since those early years. These days, farmers and ranchers are more open to auditing programs and third-party standards in general,” Joy said. Some industries even have their own programs, proving the need for certifications that shoppers can trust.
Certified Humane’s standards are designed to be living documents, Joy explained. The role of the Scientific Committee is to update the standards as new research changes the scientific consensus on best practices for healthy, thriving farm animals.
The behavior of dogs and elephants
Joy retired from the Scientific Committee in 2023 — several years after retiring as a full-time professor at UC Davis. In retirement, she traveled and explored the wider world of animal behavior, looking for polar bears in the Arctic tundra and watching wolves in Yosemite National Park.
The adventures were fun, but she missed teaching at UC Davis.
“I really missed my involvement with students. I got a little bored after a few years,” Joy said. “So it’s nice to be back teaching.”
Her first class as an emeritus professor was a freshman course, not on chickens or farm animals, but on the behavior of dogs.
“We had a class that nobody was teaching, and I thought that would be fun,” Joy said with a laugh.
Of course, Joy has researched animal behavior off the farm many times before. She’s done studies on the behavior of laboratory animals used in research, like rodents and rabbits. Her last big research project before retiring at UC Davis was two years tracking the health and behavior of every single elephant living in a North American zoo.
“We studied about 300 elephants, looking at how their welfare was affected by the social group that they were in, the size of their enclosure and other factors,” she said.
That’s what keeps animal behavior and animal welfare so interesting to study and explore, she explained.
“You have to understand your species. But the principles of how you apply behavior to understanding welfare are universal across all species,” Joy said.
Posted: July 10, 2024 by Certified Humane®
Chicken expert Dr. Richard Blatchford explains the science and heart behind farm animal standards
But he wouldn’t have guessed that his family’s backyard chickens would eventually spark a career studying chickens and animal behavior science.
“When I was in grade school, I would sit in the chicken coop and read books to the chickens,” Richard said with a laugh. “They’d sit on my lap while I was doing it. I was a little nerdy when I was younger. I probably still am.”
Richard is an Assistant Extension Specialist, specializing in small and industrial-scale poultry, at the University of California, Davis Animal Science Extension.
He’s also a member of Certified Humane’s® Scientific Committee, providing advice and direction for our Farm Animal Standards. The organization relies on his scientific expertise to maintain the best care practices for laying hens and broiler chickens.
As a scientist, Richard loves that he is always learning. He loves that new knowledge can inform better decisions for farm animals.
“In animal welfare, really small changes you make actually have a really big impact, given the sheer numbers of animals involved,” Richard said.
The strength of the Certified Humane® program lies in its high standards and how transparent those standards are, even as the science changes, he said.
“It’s easy for a consumer to go onto the website and see what the standards are and then know that these birds were housed under these particular standards,” Richard said. “I think that’s great.”
Monkeys, tarantulas, and whooping cranes
Growing up just outside of Boston, Richard’s family was fortunate enough to have space for a backyard chicken coop, despite their urban surroundings. What began with 4 chickens when Richard was in third grade grew to almost 40 chickens by the time he graduated high school.
Richard began studying as a premed student at Hiram College in northern Ohio, thinking that the only career path for someone who loves animals was a veterinarian. While earning his bachelor’s degree in psychobiology, Richard had opportunities to work with the college’s colony of brown capuchin monkeys, with local wildlife including turtles and frogs at school’s field station, and even with a large group of tarantulas.
However, Richard’s true interest was birds. For two years after graduating college, Richard interned at the International Crane Foundation in Barbaroo, Wisconsin. He worked with captive whooping crane populations with the goal of reintroducing the endangered species back to the wild.
“I really enjoyed doing that, but the big picture was very unsatisfying because while you feel like you’re making a big difference day-to-day, there’s still habitat loss, and birds die after they get reintroduced,” Richard said.
His next internship was at a zoo. While he loved working hands-on with the animals, he ultimately wanted more to do more than feeding them and scooping poop.
He wanted to get into research.
You can work with chickens for a living?!
While exploring master’s programs, Richard learned about the animal behavior program at University of California Davis — and Joy Mench, Ph.D.
Joy didn’t work with exotic animals, but she did study poultry.
“That was what I was interested in, and I thought there could be a lot of transferable skills. And I do like chickens,” Richard said.
Joy happened to be one of Certified Humane’s founding scientists. Richard learned about animal welfare and how that applied to farm animals.
“When I realized you could actually work with chickens for a living, I was hooked,” he said.
He had found his calling — and a home at UC Davis. Richard finished his master’s degree, stayed on to earn his Ph.D, and was immediately offered a postdoc opportunity at the university.
Chicken inspector
While studying at UC Davis, Joy told him that Certified Humane® was looking for poultry inspectors and recommended him for the job. From 2008 to 2015, Richard worked as a poultry inspector for Certified Humane®.
As an inspector, he loved all the contact he had with the birds. He loved witnessing how farmers overcame challenges and developed innovative housing systems for their chickens.
During each inspection, Richard’s job was to report where farmers were not meeting Certified Humane® Farm Animal Standards for laying hens or broiler chickens.
The standards are designed to encourage farm animals to live how they instinctually desire to behave — not in ways humans think they might. For instance, one of the standards for chickens is to provide environmental enrichment and a stimulating environment. Years ago, Richard would see lots of CDs hung from ceilings of chicken housing.
“I’m not really sure where that idea came from,” Richard said. “Maybe something to peck at?”
He noticed that the chickens never interacted with the CDs. Instead, they tended to stay low to the floor in those houses. Richard wondered if the sunlight reflecting off the CDs was actually frightening the birds — much like how California wineries were using long strips of metallic tape to keep birds away from their grapevines.
“So there were good intentions, but potentially it was causing the birds to actually be fearful. So that’s not a really good type of enrichment,” Richard said.
What chickens prefer
The Certified Humane® program provides direction on what farm animals do want, need, and enjoy, based on studies by scientists like Richard.
“Perching, for instance, is really important for chickens,” Richard said. “They are strongly motivated to go up at night and get height, as an anti-predator defense behavior.”
The correct type of nesting area is also critical. If farmers don’t provide the right nesting box, chickens will find what they like on their own.
“They’ll nest on the floor or in places where it’s really hard to get the egg,” Richard said. “Nests on the floor mean the eggs could be in contact with manure and risk carrying salmonella.”
Instead, suggestions for good environmental enrichment include ramps, which Richard said chickens really enjoy; perches appropriate for the size of the birds; pecking blocks; and access to living vegetation.
Along with annual inspections, Richard would occasionally inspect chicken facilities after a complaint, sometimes after an animal rights group reported a concern about a specific farm or operation.
“In some cases, I’ve inspected the facility and provided some concrete evidence that would refute or back up what the animal rights folks were saying — wherever the scientific evidence led,” he said.
Scientific Advisor
In 2015, Richard accepted a position as an Extension Specialist at UC Davis. Since that role involves advising and guiding chicken farmers and large-scale chicken producers directly, he resigned as an inspector for Certified Humane to avoid a potential conflict of interest.
Instead, Certified Humane® asked him to join its Scientific Committee, where Richard has served ever since.
Where an inspector uses scientific knowledge to observe and report on specific operations, members of the committee use their expertise to advise organizational leadership on the practical applications of the Farm Animal Standards.
This might be prompted by an uncommon set of circumstances at a particular farm or ranch. Committee members may weigh in on a tricky case, based on an inspector’s report from the field. Organization leaders depend on the committee’s scientific expertise to make a final determination on whether a farm or ranch meets the standards or needs to make improvements.
The committee is also responsible for revising the Farm Animal Standards when new research or updated knowledge changes what the scientific community knows about best practices for animal welfare. As animal scientists learn more about a species, then Certified Humane® is able to create better and kinder standards for those animals.
How new research improves standards
Over the years, Richard has seen the standards change as scientists learn what is truly important for animals.
One big difference is moving away from resource-based measures of welfare, he said. Before, the assumption was that if you measure the environment — the feeding space, perch space, stocking density — and meet the threshold, then your birds are in good health.
“Now we know those measures are not as linearly linked as we’d like them to be,” Richard said.
Instead, standards are moving towards animal-based measures. That involves looking at the animals and seeing what their response is to the environment where they live.
For example, inspectors look for evidence of aggression that could mean the chickens are competing for food instead of finding plenty to eat. They look at the health of the birds: How is their feather coverage? Do they have any foot lesions? Inspectors will pick up a chicken to inspect it for parasites such as mites.
“It’s trickier because those measures tend to be more laborious. They take longer, and often you have to handle the animals. But it’s a much better measure,” Richard said. “I think that is a positive thing.”
The science and heart of raising farm animals
Richard loves that his input can help large production companies change their operations to benefit the lives of so many animals.
That’s why he loves his work as an extension specialist. In that role, he often helps backyard chicken owners incorporate realistic practices into their own small flocks.
Though they invest in chickens for their food production, backyard chicken owners tend to view their flock as companion animals like their beloved pets. But chickens are different from dogs and cats. Just like Richard reading books to his chickens in his youth, many flock owners don’t realize the health risk their chickens can pose to their own house and food supply.
Fortunately, there are easy solutions that significantly lower the risk of salmonella: washing hands after handling chickens and dedicating a specific pair of shoes to wear around the chickens, for example.
Offering practical suggestions to backyard chicken owners mirrors what Richard does for Certified Humane® — combining scientific research with a desire to do better on behalf of farm animals.
Richard’s love and respect for animals is at the heart of it all.
Posted: April 2, 2024 by Certified Humane®
Green Connect
With about five thousand laying hens raised to Certified Humane® Farm Animal Care Standards, Green Connect produces between 70,000 and 90,000 eggs per month at the peak of production under the brand called 3 Mộc.
“We want to send a signal and some inspiration to other farmers to convert their cage model to the cage-free chicken model,” explains CEO Huynh Hanh Phuc.
Guided by the goal of implementing a production method that ensures the well-being of the birds, Green Connect looked to incorporate Certified Humane® practices.
“We learned that chickens outnumber any other animal on Earth, but if raised in cages, they are prevented from performing various natural behaviors. I think that humans, in their quest for happiness, should at least respect animals, since they serve us with their eggs and meat,” comments Huynh Hanh Phuc.