Another e-mail in from the RSPCA inviting people to join the “Big Conversation” about animals. By no means a terrible idea. I signed in to leave a comment and made my feelings about the Assured labelling scheme known in the appropriate section, “Farmed animals and food”. I do not envy the RSPCA Ambassador her job. There are many other comments along the same lines. We have been duped, they should be ashamed of their hypocrisy say some, and “Please let us know what you are going to do about this and when.” I am not alone in objecting to the royal patronage either. Clearly there is little monitoring, if any. “Animal Rising have shown that criminal lawbreaking, neglect and extreme, deliberate cruelty were the norm on those ‘assured’ farms and slaughterhouses.” “I have been having a crisis of conscience for some time now over the RSPCA Assured scheme. It is clearly not working for the welfare of animals. It is unlikely that the RSPCA will drop the scheme because it earns them millions of pounds a year [which they pretend it doesn’t]. I feel that my only option is to leave the organisation.”
I first wrote about this in Animal Wild back in 2022:
There is a good deal of greenwashing. The RSPCA has certified one of Scotland’s biggest producers and The Aquaculture Stewardship Council saw fit to increase the ‘acceptable’ burden of sea lice by 500%. I have nothing against the RSPCA. I wish they would stay out of farming altogether though – their certifications, likes those of Red Tractor, are meaningless and premises and animal welfare are far from regularly checked[1]. The factory farming of salmon is a huge drain on wild fish populations which are taken for food. If they didn’t include astaxanthin, found naturally in wild salmon, in farmed salmon diets, they wouldn’t be pink, they would be grey – and no one would eat them.
[1] Rachel Mulrenan, Scotland Director, WildFish has this to say: “It seems unbelievable that RSPCA Assured and ASC can endorse and certify farms where more than half of fish die prematurely from disease or parasite infestation over a production cycle, or where farms have clearly breached the requirements designed to protect both farmed and wild fish welfare … this latest footage of deformed and diseased salmon is clearly worlds away from what customers expect when they pay a premium for certified fish, particularly given that some supermarkets advertise that these accreditations are some sort of guarantee that fish have been raised to the highest standards. Certification bodies and supermarkets have a fundamental duty not to mislead customers on the reality of farmed salmon, but it appears they are failing dismally on this. Our research found that, contrary to what the industry says, these are not one-off incidents of breaches of standards – the breadth of examples we encountered, both in relation to environmental and welfare standards, indicate a systemic failing of certification schemes such as RSPCA Assured and ASC to both implement meaningful requirements, and then to enforce these. ASC’s own research shows that certification schemes are consumers’ most trusted source of information about the sustainability of the fish they are buying. If these schemes aren’t going to properly hold the industry to account, then their existence risks being little more than a greenwashing operation. If they are to be credible, certification schemes need to be proactive, rather than reactive. Currently that is certainly not the case.”
Meanwhile Ingrid Newkirk e-mails about G.A.P., Global Animal Partnership, falsely encouraging people to believe that food bearing their label has come from a source where animal welfare standards are high. But it is just the same story, “the labels are a clever marketing ploy designed to hoodwink people who care about animals into thinking they’re doing the right thing, when they are actually paying to prop up factory farms where animals suffer incredible pain and misery.”. In this case endorsements come from, incredibly, Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), and Compassion in World Farming (CIWF). “That’s why so many ‘conscientious consumers’ have thought G.A.P.’s claims must be trustworthy. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary and many appeals to step away, the CEOs of all three of these organizations still sit on G.A.P.’s board of directors! The factory farmers are laughing all the way to the bank. Each of our investigations into 12 G.A.P.-certified farms has revealed hideous cruelty and abuse.”
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