What is The Certified Humane Raised & Handled Program?

February 12th, 2014

Please take action to stop cruelty to animals in factory farms and any where else in our worlds live stock.

Todays post is by Ron Southard, CEO of SafeSourcing.

To begin with, we have many farms, processors and agriculturally focused companies as customers and suppliers in our database.

I was reading today in the Arizona Republic about proposed legislation by the states ranchers and farmers that would allow them to police their own farms for livestock cruelty. This is being supported by the Arizona Cattle Growers Association.?In fact if a public citizen takes a picture or video?of such cruelty and does not turn it over to them within 5 days it would be considered a class 1 misdemeanor. Isn’t this kind of like the of watching the henhouse with a shotgun? Nor to mention the constitutionality?of restricting free speech.?

There are programs out there that provide protections against cruelty in factory framing and The Certified Humane Raised & Handled program which is an inspection, certification and labeling program for meat, poultry, egg and dairy products from animals raised to humane care standards is one of them.

According to the Humane Farm Animal Care website over 10 billion animals raised for food in the U.S. annually endure inhumane treatment. Most are confined such that they can?t behave normally. Chickens can?t flap their wings or move. Pigs can?t turn around. Crowding and stress from these conditions compromise animals? immune systems. They must ingest antibiotics regularly to prevent disease. Further, the current system of factory farms causes problems for the people involved, the environment, and consumers, as well as for the animals.

According to Humane Farm Animal Care the impact extends beyond the animals. Overuse of antibiotics in animals is causing more strains of drug-resistant bacteria. The Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences estimated the annual cost of treating antibiotic-resistant infections in the U.S. at $30 billion.

What can retail buyers do? Look for and buy products labeled Certified Humane Raised and Handled? and encourage the suppliers of your favorite food brands to become certified and to use Certified Humane Raised and Handled? ingredients in their products.

The SafeSourceIt??Global Supplier Database contains all suppliers that are Certified Humane Raised & Handled and we encourage others to follow this model.?For those companies that are found guilty of cruelty in factory framing practices or violate the laws that are there to protect our livestock, they will be eliminated from our database and not allowed to participate in events for our customers.

Please contact a SafeSourcing customer service representative to learn more about our risk free sourcing trial program.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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