Obama Regulators Want To Let Factory Farms Label Their Meat ‘Humanely Raised’

[blueseas]

Are we in the 21 st century?

The proposed guidelines were recently posted by the Food Safety and Inspection Service, the federal agency that regulates how meat and poultry products must be labeled.

The new rules would permit meat producers to use terms like “Raised With Care” or “Humanely Raised on Sustainable Family Farms” simply by making up their own definitions for the terms. Each company’s definition of “humanely raised” would be entirely arbitrary, and regulators would perform no inspections to verify any of their animal-welfare claims.

Consumer advocates and animal protection groups said the proposed rules would amount to a federal seal of approval on a deeply flawed labeling system that misleads consumers and undermines farms that actually do provide better care to animals.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/humanely-raised-factory-farms_us_57fd7e2ee4b044be30160d0d?

[ciaobaby]

1. Well this is just insane !!!!!

One good thought, it does show desperation. They know more and more people are coming to understand the hell that is factory farming. It is the beginning of the end of Factory Farming. I just hope I am around to see it.

[blueseas]

2. Yes I cannot understand this

I think someone behind the scene is up to this..

[athena]

3. The labeling system is already flawed.

The way I see it, the words "humanely raised" are already meaningless, since no animal product you can buy at your local store actually comes from an animal that was humanely raised. Perhaps the more meaningless the labeling gets, the more likely that people will catch on to the fact that it means nothing.

http://www.humanemyth.org/

[Eatbeef]

4. Agreed

Agriculture, both plant and animal based, are plagued with terms originally intended to mean well turned into a marketing scheme. For example, organic all natural sea salt? Really? It's a rock, essentially. All natural can mean all kinds of things and people think anything all natural is good wholesome and safe, like anthrax, poison ivy, it's all natural! Hormone free labels in chicken is just silly because all hormone use in poultry is banned by the USDA. They're all hormone free. GMO can be anything from insect resistant seed genetically modified in a lab to two species of corn that were naturally cross pollinated. Cage free is misleading as "better" but those hens beat the crap out of each other so bad they're less hurt in a cage. Don't trust the labels. Do research on the companies that produce your food. Think you're making a diffence eating soy tofu instead of meat, think again. All that soy has a by product that contains a large amount of protein that isn't just thrown away, it goes into livestock feed to support the animal husbandry industry. Livestock producers get cheap feed through vegans eating soy and people using ethanol. Nonetheless, it was probably fertilized using manure from a dairy. Did you know diary cows in Florida eat orange peels? People fail to realize just how interconnected and complex agriculture is, which makes overall labeling of products difficult. Know where your food comes from and how it's produced.