10 Food Label Definitions to Beat the Food Marketing Game
Knowing these common labels will save you time and hair-pulling during your next grocery shop
Story + Photography by Sarah Carroll
You go into a grocery store. You walk over to the refrigerated section and look at your egg options. Some egg cartons have a green USDA organic symbol. Other say humane certified. Others say all natural.
All of a sudden, a simple task of buying eggs just got a lotmore complex- how do you pick the one that's most in line with your values, best for animals, the environment, human health and the vitality of a just food system? For goodness sake, you haven't even gotten to the yogurt labels yet! And if you're in a rush? Forget about it!
If you've ever had these thoughts, you are not alone. It's a common point of stress, confusion, and frustration. Why is it so difficult to pick out animal products that you know are ethical?
If you shop at a local co-op or a conscientiously stocked grocery store, chances are good that there are great ethical animal products for you to choose from. But sometimes they’re side by side with a product that came from confined, intensive, inhumane practices that don’t protect human health, animal welfare, workers, or the planet. And big food companies know you don’t want to buy meat that says “Hey, this food did a lot of harm!” So instead, they package it in confusing, sometimes deceptive ways to conceal the real methods behind the meat. And these industrialized animal product players have a lot of power over rules around labelling, farm animal production, and incentives that make it easy to factory farm- and hard to raise humane, pasture-based meat, dairy and eggs.
If that weren’t confusing enough, lots of labels and production buzzwords have different meanings- and obnoxiously, sometimes no meaning. Some labels are certified, meaning the producer had to adhere to a set of practices and prove they followed them. Others are marketing ploys that say nothing about how your food was raised, but trick you into feeling healthy, sustainable or kind.
I think there are three strategies to ensure you have a successful, fast and heartening selection process at the meat counter or the cheese display.
Option 1- familiarize yourself with a few farms or producers that you trust and ONLY buy from them.
Option 2- learn your way around the most common labels and certifications so you can spot animal products you support and value in a jiffy.
And, best yet, Option 3: raising your voice to demand we make clear, uniform definitions for claims like ‘natural’ and make it easier to be a pasture-based farmer.
Let's focus on Option 2 for starters. And let's break it down. Here are some of the most common labels, certifications, marketing buzzwords and what they really mean.
1. USDA organic
According to the USDA, this little green and white circle means that this product was grown and processed in a way that addresses “soil quality, animal raising practices, pest and weed control, and use of additives.”[1] USDA Organic foods have been raised without most synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. And it has requirements for animal treatment, like requiring certain access to pasture for grazing, organic feed and forage, and no administering of antibiotics or hormones. And a fun fact: all USDA organic foods are automatically non-GMO, which leads us to…
2. Non-GMO
A non-GMO food, usually with the label of a butterfly on a green checkmark, means that this food is not genetically modified. According to the Non-GMO Project, a GMO is a plant, animal, or organism “whose genetic makeup has been modified in a laboratory using genetic engineering or transgenic technology. This creates combinations of plant, animal, bacterial and virus genes that do not occur in nature or through traditional crossbreeding methods.”[2]So if you want food the way nature provided to many generations past (and without the many unanswered questions about whether GMOs are safe for our long-term health or the environment), look for non-GMO labels!
3. Humane Certified
A humane certification requires farms to meet and verify a set of practices that protect animal welfare. Labels like Certified Humane and Animal Welfare Assured protect animal’s health, affective state (against things like stress and fear), ability to behave naturally, and access to their natural environment- like the outdoors! There are many humane certifications, and what they protect varies widely. Unfortunately, labels like Beef Quality Assurance and American Humane Certified protect the industry standard practices that often still incorporate inhumane practices. My personal favorites are Animal Welfare Assured and Certified Humane because they are the most protective of animal welfare- buy these to feel great about eating animal products and send a huge vote-with-your-dollars YES to farmers producing humane certified food.
4. Grass-Fed and Grass-finished
Did you know that cows eat grass? But most industrialized beef operations don’t pasture their cattle, instead feeding them corn and additives that cows were never meant to eat- and surprise, you wind up eating that stuff too. Unless you buy grass fed meat and dairy products! Grass-fed usually ensures that cattle have significant outdoor access and eat a natural diet. Certifiers like A Greener World, who also makes the amazing Animal Welfare Assured humane certification, sometimes offer labels like Certified Grassfed that verify grass-fed meat and dairy. Some grass-fed producers finish their cattle (fattening the animals up during the last few months before slaughter) in feedlots or on a corn feed. Grass-finished means that cattle only ate grass and mama’s milk, start to finish.
5. Pasture Raised
No, not pasteurized. Pasture raised meat and animal products means that animals have access to pasture and the outdoors, weather permitting. This is usually a good tip off that this product wasn’t raised in confinement in a factory farm or CAFO.
6. Antibiotics Free
Antibiotic free means that this animal product was raised without administering antibiotics to animals. Yes, those antibiotics- similar to the ones we take when we’re sick. Many farms and especially factory farms give animals prophylactic antibiotics to encourage growth and/or prevent animals from getting sick in confined conditions. We don’t want to eat antibiotics- and we certainly don’t want our modern antibiotics to stop working because bacteria has become resistant to antibiotics from irresponsible use in agriculture. Some labels like USDA Organic and some humane certifications also protect against irresponsible antibiotics use.
7. Hormone free beef and diary
Hormone free means that this beef or dairy wasn’t raised using added hormones like recombinant bovine growth hormone (or rBGH). With many questions and worries about the human health impact of added hormones in beef and dairy, hormone-free options tell you that cattle grew at a normal rate in a natural way.
8. Free Range
Oof, this is a confusing one. The idea behind free-range is a good one- animals should be able to move around naturally and not be confined to cages. However, for many animal products, “free range” has no constant, regulated definition. That means that some producers use free-range to describe that their animals have outdoor access and can move around naturally. For others, this language disguises the fact that animals are still confined indoors in overcrowded factory farm conditions. Consumer Reports has a great in-depth dissection of the term and what it means when if you want to do a deep dive.[3]Bottom line: look for a humane certified and verified pasture-raised product if you want to be certain animals had sufficient outdoor access. Or, even better, get to know your farmer so you have a real life picture of how animals get to move as nature intended!
9. Cage free
Cage free eggs mean that hens are not confined to cages, which are typically so small and crowded that hens can’t stretch their wings out or carry out natural behavior. Consumer Reports does a really nice dissection here too and remind us that cage free does not mean that hens had access to the outdoors. Instead, look for USDA Organic, or other humane certifications like Animal Welfare Approved or Humane Certified that require farms and producers to verify cage-free practices and better protect animal’s natural behavior, or talk directly with your farmer. And cage-free chicken? Doesn’t mean a thing![4]
10. Natural or All Natural
According to the USDA, meat can be labelled natural if the product contains “no artificial ingredient or added color and is only minimally processed. Minimal processing means that the product was processed in a manner that does not fundamentally alter the product.”[5]Does that mean natural products were grown organically, with no pesticides, antibiotics, or that animals were able to demonstrate natural behavior? No. If you care about those qualities, then “natural” means next to nothing. Look for other verified claims instead, like a humane or organic certification.
Sources:
[1]https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2012/03/22/organic-101-what-usda-organic-label-means
[2]https://www.nongmoproject.org/gmo-facts/what-is-gmo/
[3]http://greenerchoices.org/2017/04/25/free-range/
[4]http://greenerchoices.org/2017/02/06/cage-free-mean/
[5]https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety-education/get-answers/food-safety-fact-sheets/food-labeling/meat-and-poultry-labeling-terms/meat-and-poultry-labeling-terms