Animal Welfare Approved (AWA) was founded in 2006 as a market-based solution to growing consumer interest in how farm animals are raised and desire to know where their food is coming from and how it is produced. The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), a non-profit charitable organization with a long history of reducing the sum total of pain and fear inflicted on animals by people, made the decision that it needed to create a separate division dedicated solely to certifying and promoting family farms that raise their animals with the highest welfare standards, and AWA was born.

The fundamental goal of Animal Welfare Approved is to improve farm animal welfare. Our main tool in this effort is granting the use of the AWA logo to farms that are annually audited and found to comply with our rigorous animal welfare standards. Seeing the AWA seal on meat, dairy and egg products gives consumers a way to identify products which come from humane farming systems, and it gives farmers a way to show their customers how they farm. We offer this certification and other technical and marketing services to farmers at no charge. Because we are not financially dependent on farmer fees, we are able to remain unbiased and transparent in our auditing and certification.

The Animal Welfare Approved standards are the most rigorous and progressive animal care requirements in the nation, and the only requiring the animals to be raised outdoors, on pasture or range. Continuously ranked as the “most stringent” of all third-party certifiers by the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), Animal Welfare Approved systems go beyond a simple set of rules to benefit farmers, animals and consumers alike with the simple philosophy that our own best interests are intrinsically linked to animals and to the environment we share.