Alternative Pathways for Challenging Corporate Humanewashing

The general public is growing steadily more concerned with nonhuman animal suffering in our "food" system. As such, consumers are increasingly leveraging their purchasing power to choose products which represent that those products are sourced in accordance with high animal welfare standards over competing products which do not represent any similar humane benefits. But concentrated animal feeding operations ("CAFOs") have recognized, and in turn, weaponized consumers' concerns to increase profit margins—changing the labeling and advertising of their animal products to include various animal raising and humane marketing claims without actually taking any measures to improve production practices to reduce animal exploitation and suffering. This marketing practice, of deceptively and falsely advertising a product as better for nonhuman animal welfare in some way when the animals used to make those products are in fact, raised and confined in the exact same manner as they would be in conventional factory farming, is often called "humanewashing." Humanewashing takes advantage of consumers seeking to make purchasing decisions aligned with their ethics, especially when those consumers are often unable to discover for themselves how exactly animals are treated in CAFOs, and does not actually result in any improvement in the lives of animals in our "food" system. Traditionally, challenges to corporate humanewashing take the form of consumer protection and false advertising litigation, but various procedural and substantive hurdles often render consumer protection litigation a bad vehicle for combating humanewashing. This talk will explore an alternative forum for challenging humanewashing through the independent, industry self-regulatory body of the BBB—the National Advertising Division ("NAD"). About the Speaker Brooke Dekolf is an Associate and Animal Welfare Fellow at Richman Law & Policy. Her work focuses on consumer protection law, complex civil litigation, and animal welfare litigation with an emphasis on accountability in aquaculture systems and fish welfare. During law school, Brooke worked as an intern at Legal Services of New Jersey and the American Civil Liberties Union Reproductive Freedom Project. She also participated in the Reproductive Rights and Justice Project, was a fellow in the Law, Ethics & Animals Program at Yale, was an editor for the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, and served as a director for the 2020 Rebellious Lawyering Conference. Brooke received her J.D. from Yale Law School, and a B.A. in English and Women’s and Gender Studies, summa cum laude, from Rutgers University. When not using the law to advocate for fishes, Brooke dedicates her time to hiking and wild mushroom foraging with her adopted Great Dane mix, Saint.