>I’m distrustful of “cruelty-free” branding because so many standards for that kind of thing are false or misleading, but with further research I expect I could find more harm-minimizing options there too.
Thinking mostly about eggs, I’ve concluded that “Animal Welfare Approved” (first choice) and “Humane Certified”+”Pasture Raised” (second choice) probably significantly reduce suffering compared to alternatives. There’s also Whole Foods’ GAP levels but I’m less familiar with those. No fancy analysis here, just “these labels set standards actually focused on welfare and claim to do verifications”.
I’m not saying that should make vegans feel happy to eat eggs. For one thing, there’s still chick culling at least until the sex selection tech becomes mainstream. But if you’re going to eat eggs, you have an option to spend more money to probably reduce suffering by a lot.
I think the biggest way this would fail is if the producers were falsifying things—in the most egregious case by picking up eggs from Walmart on their way to the farmers’ market. But in expectation there still seems to be a lot of value here worth paying for.
Meat, Eggs and Dairy Label Guide l Help Farm Animals l ASPCA
“Wild-caught,” “organic,” “grass-fed,” “humane”: animal product labels, explained—Vox
In this vein, I’d love to see an analysis of how eggs from hens meeting CH+PR standards stack up against other animal products in welfare terms, especially since it’s become very easy to find these eggs at supermarkets (at least in my corner of the US) in recent years.