The Humane League’s main programs are:

1. Corporate Pressure Campaigns

They hold the world’s biggest food companies accountable for the inhumane farming practices in their supply chains. They run public pressure campaigns that bring these issues to the attention of the companies' customers and shareholders, thereby threatening the companies’ brands. This creates the right business incentives for decision-makers to commit to phasing out these cruel practices.

The practices they pressure companies to end include:

• Confining egg-laying hens to overcrowded cages where they can never spread their wings.

• Immobilizing mother pigs in gestation crates where they can barely move or turn around 

• Raising inhumane breeds of chickens who grow muscle so fast that the their bodies can’t keep up*

2. The Open Wing Alliance 

The Humane League not only pressures corporations directly but also empowers 90+ organizations in more 70+ countries to do the same through the Open Wing Alliance. Launched in 2016, the alliance aims to ban the use of battery cages for laying hens, ensuring they can spread their wings and live more humane lives. Through the alliance, THL provides training, a proven playbook to follow and funding to member organizations, who collaborate to define the global strategy. By coordinating and working together, these organizations achieve far more than they could individually. 

3. Influencing government animal welfare policy

The Humane League advocates for stronger welfare regulations in the US, UK, and Mexico, and supports and coordinates the state-level efforts of 15 other US organizations through their Animal Policy Alliance. Policies they pursue include:

• Bans on veal crates, where baby cows are confined to produce more tender meat

• Bans on importing horses for human consumption

• Bans on confining chickens to cages

• Mandatory humane slaughter practices for farmed fish

* It becomes difficult for them to even stand up and often their legs fracture under their own weight. These breeds often lose most of their feathers, pecked off by other stressed hens or by themselves in an effort to cool down. Chickens can easily live for 5 years, but these extremely fast-growing breeds are slaughtered while they’re still babies, after just ~6 weeks 

• Convinced 300+ US companies to phase out the cruelest farming practices for egg-laying hens and 140+ to phase out the worst practices for chickens raised for meat. Companies and brands include Walmart. PepsiCo, KFC, Aldi, Walgreens, Burger King, Dunkin’, HelloFresh, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Kellog’s, CVS, Hershey, Oreo, and Unilever.

• Cut the proportion of laying hens confined in cages in the US from 40% to almost 5% over the past decade. *

• The Open Wing Alliance (a global network of organizations which they launched and still lead) has achieved 2400+ corporate commitments to better welfare in 70+ countries across six continents.

• Successfully defending California Proposition 12, a landmark law protecting basic animal welfare standards, from litigation by industry groups.

* We can’t give 100% of the credit for this progress to THL but they played a pivotal role in it