RSPCA: exposing the high-welfare myth.

The premise being tested

“RSPCA Assured” is the welfare label British supermarkets use to reassure shoppers that the meat, eggs, and dairy they buy comes from farms with above-baseline conditions. It is the most widely-recognised farm welfare scheme in the UK.

That label is what makes a £4 chicken acceptable to a shopper who would never tolerate cruelty. So we asked the obvious question: is the label true?

The UK’s largest-ever farm investigation

In 2024, Animal Rising built up a network of investigators who carried out the largest farm investigation the UK has ever seen. They tackled the “one bad apple” narrative by showing the whole barrel was rotten — suffering and failure to meet even government standards was rampant across all “high-welfare” RSPCA Assured farms.

Footage and a report from the investigation featured 45 UK farms. The footage showed baby chickens dying in factory farms, pigs left dead for days in filthy sheds, and conditions indistinguishable from the conventional intensive farms the scheme is meant to be a step up from.

The conclusion: the gap between what RSPCA Assured implies and what RSPCA Assured-certified farms actually look like is not a margin of error. It is the entire product.

The slaughterhouse investigation

To preempt the “but the slaughter is humane” rebuttal, Animal Rising followed up with an undercover slaughterhouse investigation — capturing the killing line conditions for animals leaving these same “high-welfare” farms.

Across four RSPCA Assured-certified slaughterhouses:

• 85% of pigs at one facility were stunned incorrectly, remaining conscious during slaughter.
• 96% of cows at another facility were prodded with electric goads — explicitly banned by RSPCA’s own standards.
• 46% of cows exhibited panic behaviours at the same facility.
• Workers were filmed engaging in verbal and physical abuse of the animals.
• Animals were filmed witnessing other animals’ deaths — a breach of basic slaughter-line design.

The RSPCA Assured scheme has been described as “effectively fraud” by a Crown Court judge.

Senior resignations

The investigation forced an internal crisis at the RSPCA. Senior figures resigned in protest:

• Chris Packham resigned as RSPCA President, stating: “I’ve seen no meaningful change. With the irrefutable evidence of abuse uncovered, I must prioritize my love for animals above all else and step down immediately.”
• Caroline Lucas resigned as Vice-President.
• Brian May resigned as Vice-President, calling the organisation’s response “completely inadequate.”

The cost — and the bet

The combined campaign cost approximately £150,000. As an independent, supporter-funded organisation, that’s roughly an entire year of investigative budget concentrated into a single intervention.

It was a deliberate bet: that breaking the credibility of the dominant UK welfare label would do more for animals than any number of individual rescues. The bet is paying off — the conversation in British food media now treats “high welfare” as a contested term rather than a settled one.

What you can do

• Sign the petition calling on the RSPCA to drop the Assured scheme.
• Stop buying RSPCA Assured products — the label is unreliable.
• Share the footage — the more people who see it, the harder it is for supermarkets to keep using the label.
• Donate to fund the next investigation.