The gap between what Whole Foods Markets customers think GAP means & what it really does mean echoes the gap between what “Whole Foods Markets” voters believe & what founder John Mackey espouses
SAN RAFAEL, California––The Humane Farming Association on November 1, 2024 joined People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in appealing for the Humane Society of the U.S., the American SPCA, and Compassion for World Farming to resign from board-level involvement in the Global Animal Partnership, a marketing scheme invented in the name of “humane animal product certification” in 2005 by Whole Foods Markets founder John Mackey.
Identifying the players with a scorecard
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals [PETA] is the biggest animal rights organization in the world.
The Humane Society the U.S. [HSUS] is the biggest animal welfare organization.
The American SPCA [ASPCA] is the next biggest, and the oldest national animal advocacy organization in the U.S.
Compassion in World Farming [CIWF] is the biggest humane society, globally, with a specific focus on farmed animals.
The Humane Farming Association [HFA], founded in 1985, is comparatively small, claiming just 270,000 members, but has established a reputation for speaking truth to power, and over the past 40 years has been almost unique among major animal charities in having never been embroiled in any sort of scandal.
The Global Animal Partnership might be said to have had almost the opposite history and reputation, defended chiefly through alliances with HSUS, the ASPCA, and CIWF.
Political implications
Neither the PETA call for HSUS, ASPCA, and CIWF to leave GAP, issued by founder Ingrid Newkirk in a September 3, 2024 open letter, nor the November 1, 2024 parallel appeal from HFA, distributed by email to members, mentioned the November 5, 2024 U.S. national election.
Both calls for the resignation of humane organizations from the Global Animal Partnership board, however, have significant political implications.
The political gist of the matter is that Whole Foods Markets founder John Mackey almost from the start of the ancestral company in 1978 in Austin, Texas, has on the one hand cultivated a liberal, progressive image, appealing to an educated middle and upper class clientele, while on the other hand turning steadily toward the right, coinciding with his own increasing personal wealth.
“Whole Foods vs. Crapper Barrel”
By 2016 the public face of this dichotomy led Cook Political Report writer David Wasserman to develop and promote a “Whole Foods vs. Cracker Barrel theory,” holding that if voters live in convenient shopping distance of a Whole Foods grocery store, they are more likely to vote Democrat; if they live near a Cracker Barrel restaurant, they typically vote Republican.
Within four years the New York Times cited the “Whole Foods vs. Cracker Barrel theory” in explaining why Donald Trump was president, though defeated by Joe Biden in the November 2020 national election.
Observed the political website The Hill on January 25, 2024, as the national election campaign was just beginning, “Every shopping cart, be it at Whole Foods or Dollar Store, carries more than just food — it carries the threads of our common humanity.”
Perception vs. reality
Much of the appeal of Whole Foods Markets to educated voters lies in the John Mackey-manufactured perception that animal products and byproducts bought there are somehow more humanely factory-farmed and slaughtered than animal products and byproducts bought anywhere else, since they are certified by the Global Animal Partnership.
Never mind that from the very beginnings of the Global Animal Partnership, other humane product certification schemes and even some major agribusiness trade groups pointed out that the first two steps of the five-step Global Animal Partnership certification ladder require even less of farmers than was current standard practice.
John Mackey: closet Trumpist
Mackey himself, meanwhile, before his 2022 retirement, railed against “Obamacare,” the science connecting climate change with human economic activity, independent labor unions, “socialists” whom he alleged were taking over society, anything that either increased his taxes or regulatory supervision of Whole Foods Markets, and consumer pressure for capitalists like himself to actually practice in their businesses the “enlightened capitalism” that Mackey professed to represent in pursuing an organic, plant-based vegan diet.
Mackey apparently has yet to actually endorse former U.S. president Donald Trump, the Republican candidate in the 2024 U.S. presidential race, but has sounded increasingly like Trump in many of his media pronouncements.
U.S. vice president and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, on the other hand, in her previous career as California attorney general, established a strong reputation for litigating for consumer protection and corporate accountability.
“Animal welfare certified” turkey & pork
Opened the November 1, 2024 appeal from the Humane Farming Association, ignoring practically every convention of fundraising by putting the name of an organization competing for donors first and then giving it credit for an accomplishment, “Recently, PETA conducted investigations at 12 Pennsylvania farms that claimed to produce ‘animal welfare certified’ turkey and pork.
“These operations were certified by third-party inspectors with the so-called Global Animal Partnership, which conducts audits for many Whole Foods Markets’ products and for other companies.
“During [the PETA] investigation at Plainville Farms, for example,” the Humane Farming Association recounted, “investigators found rampant abuse––including the routine beating, kicking, and killing of animals. Such cruelty reportedly took place every night, but would never have been observed during GAP’s pre-announced inspections, conducted only once every 15 months.
“GAP not only ineffective but misleading”
“GAP’s inspections are not only ineffective,” the Humane Farming Association charged, “in ensuring that animals are not brutalized. The labels,” the Humane Farming Association alleged, “are extremely misleading to unsuspecting people who use this certification program when making purchases of, and paying premium prices for, animal products.
“Unfortunately, representatives of the Humane Society of the United States, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and Compassion in World Farming continue to sit on GAP’s board of directors, despite being made aware of the systematic and well-documented animal cruelty, deprivation, and suffering.”
The Humane Farming Association, “asking HFA supporters to write to these organizations and urge them to divest themselves from this deceptive program and immediately step down from the GAP board,” concluded with email addresses for Humane Society of the U.S. president Kitty Block, ASPCA president Matt Bershadker, and CIWF chief executive Philip Lymbery.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Horse$hit Under$tated
The Humane Society of the U.S. responded to Newkirk’s open letter with a September 6, 2024 website statement, likely to be replicated or paraphrased if HSUS responds to the Humane Farming Association.
“We advocate for both reducing the number of animals kept and killed for food and increasing plant-based alternatives, and for improving the welfare standards for farmed animals suffering today,” the HSUS statement said.
“Collaboration with farmed animal welfare standard-setting bodies, including Global Animal Partnership is an important part of the latter tactic,” HSUS asserted.
Changing the subject
“Our international work with certifiers including Global Animal Partnership and Humane Farm Animal Care, among others,” HSUS contended––broadening the discussion by lumping the GAP, the certification program widely regarded as the weakest, with one of those generally believed to be the strongest––“is important for providing technical assistance to poultry and pig producers.
“Cage- and crate-free systems are more difficult to manage and in the developing world, producers often need guidance to realize the full welfare potential of these systems,” HSUS said, again changing the subject, since the PETA allegations pertain specifically to factory farming corporations headquartered within the U.S., producing animals almost entirely within the mainland U.S.
Certification & the price of eggs
“Certifications also have segregation protocols to ensure that cage eggs are not sold as cage free, which is a vital component of our work with companies to implement their cage-free egg commitments,” HSUS mentioned.
Indeed, producers passing off eggs from caged hens as eggs from cage-free systems has been a persistent problem for farm product certification schemes.
(See How 725 million chickens lost the Super Bowl, & got a bum deal in U.K. too.)
(Merritt Clifton collage)
PETA resigned early
But this is not among the issues that either Newkirk and PETA cited, or that the Humane Farming Association mentioned. Both Newkirk and PETA, and the Humane Farming Association, focused on the simplest of all farm management issues: supervising workers to ensure that they are not beating up the animals.
ANIMALS 24-7 extensively exposed weaknesses in the GAP standards and structure in 2009-2011 and again in 2014-2016, 2021, and 2022.
“As you may recall,” Newkirk reminded ASPCA, HSUS, and CIWF board members in her September 3, 2024 open letter, “PETA was on the Global Animal Partnership board of directors when the organization was founded but left shortly after it became clear that this initiative was not realistically going to reduce animal suffering.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Newkirk did the right thing
“Farm Forward remained on the board for years afterward but also finally came to the same conclusion and resigned as well.”
(See Farmed animal product certifications “lack integrity,” investigators find.)
Newkirk, who incidentally has never liked ANIMALS 24-7 and at one point even issued a media release explaining why she would never respond to our questions, did the right thing as regards Global Animal Partnership.
So has the Humane Farming Association. A meaningless and misleading animal product certification scheme is not “improving the welfare standards for farmed animals”; it is simply misleading consumers.
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Perhaps strangely in a society that deifies the famous and listens to the loudest, most strident voices whether they share facts or fallacies, I’ve never been a fan of “celebs” in any form, and though I was duped by some of the organizations mentioned in this article, the blinkers were off years ago. I have shopped at WFM in the past with a friend who liked it, and a dear friend worked there. But again, the blinkers were off the first time I passed by the meat counter.
These people and entities are NO FRIENDS of animals or anyone who truly cares for/about them. And as always, the most powerful opposition to corruption is always through the pocketbook.
Sharing with gratitude.