Washington – Today, PETA filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia over the sale of meat products that carry the Whole Foods-backed “animal welfare certified” labels yet come from factory farms, including ones where it has been documented that animals have been kicked, slammed, suffered dislocated wings, and endured many other egregious cruelties; and ones from which cruelty-to-animals charges have emanated.

The lawsuit names Whole Foods’ creation, Texas-based Global Animal Partnership (GAP), the group responsible for the labels, which claims that its “animal welfare” standards are enforced by “independent” auditors. But PETA’s lawsuit outlines numerous ties between GAP, Whole Foods, and its auditors, including that the CEO of the company that manages GAP and the owner of the company that performs its “animal welfare audits” are the same.PETA also points out that it has taken PETA’s undercover investigations and whistleblower reports, and not GAP auditors, to expose extreme cruelty to animals:

• At Sweet Stem Farm, pigs were crammed into severely crowded sheds on concrete floors and had painful, bloody rectal prolapses as large as an orange that were left untreated. Sweet Stem Farm was GAP-certified at the time.

• At Farmer Focus, whistleblowers reported that chickens had bruised, broken, and dislocated wings from being slammed into cages for transport to the company’s slaughterhouse. Farmer Focus was and is still GAP-certified.

• At Plainville Farms...

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