Takepart.com

The next time you scoff at the number of labels given the meat you buy (pasture-raised, free-range, hormone- and antibiotic-free, etc.), consider this: Those labels may soon become your only window into what happens on most animal farms.

As it is now, consumers already rely heavily on the organizations behind these labels—such as Animal Welfare Approved and Certified Humane—to provide animal welfare standards (to wildly varying degrees, since, unlike the certified organic label, there is no unified federal standard behind such terms). Another option is buying meat from a small-scale producer who offers his customers more transparency than average (a terrific option for some, but one that is neither affordable nor accessible for all of us). What many of us don’t realize, however, is just how dependent consumers have become on undercover documentation of factory farms.

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