Animal-based food products are an important source of nutrition for many people around the world. As the global population increases and the middle class expands in developing countries, the demand for meat and dairy is only set to increase. It is estimated that worldwide, more than 70 billion animals are slaughtered for food each year. The majority of these animals are farmed under poor animal welfare standards, which pose a serious threat to public health, the environment and the food supply system, not to mention the animals’ well-being alone.

According to the Global Animal Partnership (G.A.P.), 63% of consumers look for labels that identify how the animal was raised when purchasing meat. Furthermore, 46% of Americans say that food product sustainability claims have a direct influence on their purchase decisions, and 93% of consumers say it is important for brands and manufacturers to provide detailed information about what’s in a food product, and how it is made.

The Global Animal Partnership (G.A.P.) Animal Welfare Certified program assesses the welfare of livestock animals on-farm, during transport, at collection points and at slaughter. It is a multi-tiered labeling program that signals to consumers how the animals were raised. The higher the tier number, the closer the animal’s environment mimics a natural environment.

The program provides standards for producers that have been developed specifically for 10 major livestock animal groups, taking into account different production systems and geographic climates:

It is intended to provide a framework for continuous improvement in animal welfare, with species-specific improvements that producers can make in order to increase their G.A.P. Certification tier.

In general, the G.A.P. Certified program assesses a range of animal welfare considerations, which are customized by species but fall under a number of categories:

The G.A.P. Certified program comprises six levels of welfare standards, ranging from G.A.P Level 1 on the lower end, to G.A.P. Level 5+ on the highest end of the spectrum.

Each set of tiered standards—from Step 1 to Step 5+—has its own species-specific requirements, which must be met before certification to that particular Step level can be assigned:

As the standard-setter, Global Animal Partnership does not conduct audits nor make Step-level certification decisions. Authorized, third-party certification companies perform the audits and issue Step certificates, as appropriate.

More than 4000 farms throughout the United States participate in the G.A.P Certified program, with the majority falling within Levels 1-3. Only a limited number of farms have achieved Levels 4, 5 or 5+.

HowGood’s Animal Welfare metric has been developed to incorporate the G.A.P. framework, and provides an ingredient-level assessment of the animal welfare standards associated with your product. It has been designed to provide consistent measurement of animal welfare standards across every animal species, where relevant, and the food system broadly.

HowGood’s Animal Welfare spectrum encompasses the full range of animal welfare standards that exist across different species of animals in the food system, and normalizes those standards on a scale from 1-10. G.A.P. Certification excludes the poorest animal welfare standards from its scoring system, requiring that animals raised under Level 1 Certified conditions are free from direct abuse, have at least one enrichment activity and meet minimum space, feed, water and transport requirements. The unfortunate reality is that within the animal agriculture industry, many animals are raised without these basic requirements met, and while these operations don’t qualify for G.A.P. Certification, they are captured at the lowest end of HowGood’s Animal Welfare spectrum.

Additionally, within the food system generally, there is a different set of conventional animal welfare standards per animal species, therefore the baseline score for what is considered “conventional” for each species differs within HowGood’s scoring system. At the lowest end of the spectrum, within scoring brackets 1-2 you will find conventional pork, whereas conventional broiler chickens achieve a higher score on the spectrum given that higher standards of welfare are required to produce acceptable chicken meat.

For this reason, the scoring attributed to Levels 1-5+ for G.A.P. Certification in HowGood’s scoring system is different for every species, but normalized within the full spectrum of animal welfare standards that exist in the industry.