Animal Welfare Approved
AWI launched its Animal Welfare Approved (AWA) standards program in Fall 2006, with husbandry requirements for beef cattle and calves, pigs, sheep, ducks, turkeys and rabbits. Standards for additional species will follow.
Only family farms can earn the AWA seal. Families who own, labor on and earn a meaningful livelihood from their farms have a true commitment and connection to their animals that is lost on factory farms managed by distant, corporate owners and run by hired hands. AWI strives to revitalize a culture of independent family farms, in which a humane ethic can be passed on to future generations.
The welfare of farmed animals is related to the extent to which they can adapt without suffering to environments designed by humans. Both the science and the philosophy of animal welfare recognize that animals have a mental life as well as bodily condition (health and vigor) that can be affected by how humans shelter and treat them.
The “Five Freedoms” are used to describe both the needs of domesticated animals and the duties of care owed them. The Five Freedoms have a long history, having first been described in a scientific report to the British government in 1965 and enhanced by the Carpenter Committee in 1980. They underlie the AWA program, reflecting the goals that the standards strive to achieve. They provide a useful benchmark by which farmers can evaluate the outcomes of their husbandry.
The Five Freedoms are: freedom from hunger, thirst, and malnutrition; freedom from physical and thermal discomfort; freedom from pain, injury, and disease (including parasitical infections); freedom to express normal behavior; and freedom from fear and distress.
Read more about this topic: Animal Welfare Institute
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