In Britain, we enjoy being reassured that our consumer choices are ethical, especially regarding food. Consider the frankly bewildering number of different labels shown on food packaging.

Egg cartons labelled ‘free range’ indicate that the hens laying them are allowed time to roam outside; meat products from RSPCA Assured farms claim to follow “world-leading welfare standard”.

The issue is, what do these labels even mean? Beyond feel-good welfare buzzwords, we aren’t told much about what these standards permit and prohibit. Take RSPCA Assured, associated with an organisation recognisable as one of the oldest and most respected animal welfare charities in the world.

This prestige buys a lot of trust from the British consumer. After all, why would the RSPCA risk its good name by associating itself with factory farms and cruel farming practices? Except, on several occasions, workers on RSPCA Assured farms have been caught kicking, punching and otherwise abusing their animals.

In 2024, an open letter signed by over 170 individuals and organisations called for the scrapping of RSPCA Assured. The For Charlie animal rights campaign cited almost 100 documented investigations over 16 years of abuse on RSPCA Assured farms and slaughterhouses.

The campaign accused the scheme of ‘welfare-washing’ and failing to effectively regulate animal welfare. These investigations continue, with another having been published this month. For All Animals recorded over 700 incidents of verbal and physical abuse towards calves over three days on one farm. It’s far from the standards of care we’d expect from the RSPCA.

In fairness to RSPCA Assured, as heinous and upsetting as the abuse recorded is, these investigations don’t establish that abuse is widespread across the scheme. In response to the open letter, the RSPCA commissioned the independent Crowe Review. It reviewed 200 RSPCA Assured farms and concluded that the scheme was “operating effectively” in enforcing its welfare standards.

The scheme also agreed to implement 20 recommendations made by the report, such as significantly increasing welfare visits to member farms. It would also be wrong to ignore the scheme’s efforts to improve animal welfare.

For example, RSPCA Assured requires outdoor grazing for dairy cows and increased care for cows during and after pregnancy, including extra space and food. Believe it or not, this is above legal minimum standards for animal welfare.

However, while reading RSPCA Assured’s animal welfare standards, I started to feel increasingly uneasy: these “world-leading welfare standards” seem to permit practices I find troubling, even cruel.

Both castration and disbudding (removal of horn buds with hot irons) of dairy calves are permitted, while the RSPCA describes them as “potentially injurious husbandry procedures”. Consider dairy calves: disbudding is common practice and allowed during the first five weeks of a calf’s life.

The procedure is painful, and the resulting wounds take up to nine weeks to heal, according to the Royal Veterinary College. The RSPCA regulations require disbudding to be performed with localised anaesthetic, where no similar requirement exists while performing non-surgical castration upon a calf (albeit with long-acting pain relief).

Animal lovers can console themselves by noting that the RSPCA admits this is “an area [they] are looking to progress”’. Animal farming is an inherently cruel industry. RSPCA Assured provides higher welfare standards to improve it — that is admirable.

It’s also failed to prevent mistreatment on its member farms, and its own standards allow for practices that cause pain. The RSPCA’s prestige encourages us not to ask questions about what being RSPCA Assured actually means.

Labels like it give customers a reason to believe that the animal they’re eating was spared from the worst of the industry. Not the whole of it.