What FAT Is
Farm Animal Transparency is a nonpartisan, nonprofit research project. We score meat, poultry, and now seafood labels against 16 categories of supply-chain disclosure—giving consumers and journalists a verifiable way to compare what labels actually reveal vs. what they obscure. We do not grade on a curve; each category is assessed independently as Known, Partial, or Missing.
Why Labels Confuse
Meat and seafood labels are built to sell, not to inform. Terms like "sustainable" and "responsibly sourced" have no federal definition. "Natural" is USDA-defined for meat — but only for processing; it says nothing about how the animal was raised. Country-of-origin labeling for beef and pork is voluntary, so a package with no origin claim discloses nothing about where the animal was born or raised. The plant that processed your meat appears only as a coded establishment number most shoppers can't read. FAT cuts through the marketing to show which claims are verified by a third party, which are government-defined terms, and which are pure label copy.
What FAT Evaluates
For every product we score, we assess 16 categories: USDA/FDA required basics, species, breed, country of origin, farm, age at slaughter, processor, corporate ownership ("Who" — including foreign ownership, enforcement history, and antitrust/HHI concentration), brand, feed, animal welfare, medicine, hormones, quality and palatability, organic certification, and supply-chain intermediaries. Seafood scoring adds species-specific checks: FDA Seafood List compliance, aquaculture drug approvals, and the USDA/FDA regulatory fork for catfish.
What FAT Is Not
FAT is not a certification program and we do not sell scores to producers. We do not tell consumers what to buy. We do not issue a single letter grade—food systems are too complex for a single number to be meaningful. FAT provides category-by-category transparency data so that each person can weigh the factors that matter most to them.
The FAT App
Scan any meat or seafood label in the store and instantly see its FAT reading — how many of the 16 transparency categories the label discloses, and how each claim is verified. The app covers beef, pork, chicken, turkey, and—new in 2026—fish, shrimp, shellfish, and all major seafood categories. Available on iOS and Android.