What about animal welfare?

When people hear I am vegan, they often respond with something like this:

“I couldn’t go fully vegan, but I try to buy the most humanely raised meat I can.”

The instinct to buy meat raised to high welfare standards is a laudable one. For years, I fell into this camp, and I would hope that the animals I ate had “only one bad day.” Animal welfare is something so many people agree on, across the political and social spectrum. It isn’t really that controversial.

But there’s one big problem.

How can consumers know—for sure—the animals we eat were treated well while they were alive?

This cow was rescued and is living out life on a farm animal sanctuary.

There are zero federal laws protecting animals raised for food on farms. This means that essentially all farmed animal protections come from the states. Most states exempt farmed animals from their cruelty codes, which means things that would be illegal if done to a dog (like bodily mutilation without anesthetic) are perfectly legal when done to a cow.

And many states have tried to limit the spread of information from farms to the greater public by penalizing activists who try to record and photograph what happens behind closed doors.

One of the only ways consumers can try to learn how animals were raised before slaughter is by the labels that appear on meat products. But ultimately, the producers control those, too.

If you see the label “humanely raised on a family farm” on a package of beef, for example, maybe an image of cows grazing on a pasture comes to mind. That seems like a pretty good life, right?

Unfortunately, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) does not define the label “humanely raised,” which means that producers define it themselves. Claims like “pasture raised” are also only weakly regulated, and producers are given leeway to interpret this in many different ways.

As the old saying goes, this is a little like letting the fox guard the henhouse.

When you see “USDA-inspected” on meat products, that only refers to the ante-mortem and post-mortem inspections that are conducted at a slaughterhouse; it indicates nothing about how the animals were raised or treated. These inspections are primarily for food safety purposes, and they say very little about the welfare of the animals.

Ultimately for consumers, what this means is that it’s nearly impossible to know how an animal lived its life before it was slaughtered. The federal government doesn’t regulate it; states regulate it loosely; and labels can’t be fully trusted to mean what they say.

And the fact of the matter is that up to 99% of livestock raised for food in the United States spend time on factory farms.

So what does this add up to? I like to call it the “Welfare Trap.” In a dream world, consumers might be able to discern exactly how the animals they eat were raised, and make sure they buy meat that aligns with their values. But today, animal welfare claims just aren’t strong enough to make sure that animals actually were treated well when they were alive.

So we are left with two options: to eat animals that almost certainly suffered—in life and in death—or to abstain.

Veganism—refraining from consuming any animal products or meat—is the only way to make sure your daily food choices aren’t actively contributing to animal suffering. Veganism is not perfect. There are flaws in the food system beyond animal agriculture, to be sure.

But it’s a statement we can make with every meal that a few minutes of tasty satisfaction aren’t worth an entire lifetime of a sentient creature’s suffering.

For ideas on how to start reducing your reliance on animal products, check out my starter’s guide here.