1. What is the Find Humane Website? How does it work?
FindHumane.com is a free website and phone app that helps people find humanely raised animal products including meat, skin care, clothing, pet food, and more. The default filter only shows products that are independently certified by ASPCA-recommended certifications that are at least pasture- or outdoor access-based. It works by showing such products on a map as well as a listing of delivery services (including frozen meats). You may search the map and delivery services list if you’re looking for something specific. There’s also a filter tab where users may change which certifications are shown on the map and delivery list. Advanced filters include animal treatment particulars (e.g. crate-free, hormone free, regenerative farms, etc.), ingredients (e.g. Kosher, gluten-free, etc.), and more. Some delivery services offer a discount if you use the Find Humane code listed on the delivery tab.
We noticed mostly grocery stores when we filtered by “pasture.” Do you list local farms?
We only have six farms so far (you can search “farm” in the app) but we’re in the process of adding more. Right now, we’re only showing independently certified producers that have ASPCA recommended certifications, and a lot of local farms aren’t certified yet, even though many are following humane practices. I recommend that small, local farms get certified with Animal Welfare Approved (AWA) which only costs about $100 per year and a one time $100 application fee. This includes all the costs of the annual audit. I’m not affiliated with AWA but it seems to be the best price for small farms. I’m also in the process of adding existing AWA-approved farms (check out our blog to find out every time we add a new producer or farm). Longer term, I’d like to spend some of our proceeds for farm outreach and connecting farms with AWA (or similar programs) and perhaps even subsidizing initial costs.
How did you get involved with the ASPCA and their “Shop with Your Heart” program on certified humane?
The ASPCA’s Meat, Eggs and Dairy Label Guide was the first, incredibly valuable guide that I found when researching. I reached out to that department and they were incredibly helpful in providing guidance and resources. Since then, I’ve been using the ASPCA’s Shop With Your Heart grocery and farm lists as two of the sources of humanely certified producers. I’ve also received guidance from the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and Farm Forward (FF). AWI’s Consumer Guide and FF’s Label Guide are also useful certification guides.
Why is this a project you are passionate about?
I think factory farming is terrible and I think people want to shift some or all of their purchases to more humanely raised animals. Besides the surveys that show a broad appetite for this, I know this is true because I’m one of those people, and I use the app often. There’s no other app or website that I’m aware of that makes it as easy to find humanely raised animal products based on ASPCA-recommended certifications in the way that Find Humane does.
In your opinion, what are the main issues with today’s agriculture industry?
I think animal and environmental welfare are the biggest issues with today’s agriculture industry.
How do you think individuals can help farm animals today? Do they need to go vegan?
In my opinion, whether or not to go vegan or vegetarian is a complicated ethical, nutritional, and environmental question. However, individuals who do eat meat or use animal products can help farm animals today by choosing more humanely raised animal products. Longer term, I’m open to working with vegan and vegetarian organizations to better understand how Find Humane can play the best role possible.
How do you source your info and keep it up-to-date (one of our challenges with our Crate Free App)?
Sourcing information is the hardest part of the app. Not only do we have a list of locations carrying humanely raised products, and a list of the specific products at each location, but each product also has a page that has product pictures, a link to the producer’s website, ingredients, certifications, and other detailed aspects. Since we currently only show products with ASPCA-recommended certifications, we source a lot of information from those certifiers (Animal Welfare Approved, Certified Humane, and Animal Welfare Certified). We also source producers from the ASPCA’s Shop with your Heart pages, and manual searches. For each producer, ideally, we work with that producer to receive the list of locations with their products; otherwise, we use publicly available information. For each product, we then input all of the product details and pictures. Both the website and app provide forms where consumers can submit locations or products at locations to help with crowd-sourcing this information. Finally, we periodically refresh each producer’s information.
To be frank, even the highest quality information that comes directly from a producer is sometimes incomplete or incorrect. I found this quite shocking at first: don’t producers know where they’re sending their products?! This is another area where I hope to use proceeds to work with producers to improve and streamline this data quality in the future. In addition, availability varies by region, season, store, or items may be out of stock. This is quite simply a difficult problem to solve, but it’s one I look forward to tackling as Find Humane grows.
One of the biggest struggles is that different producers often list their products at the same store but with slightly different addresses. If I were to just import these without taking this into account, then there would be overlapping pins on the map and the product lists would be split. Moreover, some producers have addresses that are simply incorrect or have misspellings. Although I can automate most address reconciliation (e.g. Road is the same as Rd, etc.), a significant chunk has to be done manually which is very time consuming.
Since the app really got off the ground about six months ago, we have imported approximately 15% of the ASPCA’s Shop with your Heart lists, and we’re working hard on importing the rest.
How can people help use and/or promote your work?
We are very open to feedback so let us know what you think through our contact form or email.
Tell your friends about Find Humane to promote it! Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. The links are at the bottom of our homepage: https://findhumane.com/
You may also subscribe to our blog for updates. You can optionally choose a premium subscription on Substack. You’ll receive the same blog post updates but this will help support our work. All proceeds will go toward development and marketing. Note that Find Humane is currently a self proprietorship and we’re looking into incorporating as a public benefit, B Corporation.
