The RSPCA Is Supporting Factory Farming – It’s Time to Drop RSPCA Assured
For the first time in UK history, undercover investigators filmed an M&S inspection at an award-winning dairy farm in Gloucestershire that was RSPCA Assured.
Over 3 days, more than 700 incidents of physical and verbal abuse were recorded. Newborn calves were kicked, hit, thrown, sworn at, force-fed and left hungry – for as much as 19 hours.
On the day of the inspection, workers knew an assessor was coming, with one worker saying:
“We’ve got an M&S inspection today… This could really look bad.”
Their clean-up operation was caught on camera, with workers hastily throwing more straw into pens and removing a dead calf less than 3 hours before the assessor arrived.
The inspection lasted just 10 minutes. No pens were entered. No calves were physically examined. Less than a minute after the inspector left, the abuse resumed, with a worker repeatedly striking a calf in the face with a feeding tube.
At the time of filming, the farm supplied M&S and Müller, had won industry awards for being ‘high welfare’, and carried the RSPCA Assured label.
If this is the best – what do the rest look like?
For more than 200 years, the RSPCA has challenged forms of animal cruelty that were once widely accepted, from dog fighting to animal circuses to live exports. Its aim wasn’t to somehow make these practices less cruel – it was to bring them to an end.
Today, factory farming is arguably the greatest source of animal suffering. Most animals on British farms are trapped in intensive mega farms, where they are denied everything that comes naturally to them.
Instead of opposing this industrialised cruelty, the RSPCA Assured scheme is certifying it.
A Moment for Leadership
PETA UK is part of For All Animals, a coalition of animal protection organisations calling on the RSPCA to end its support of factory farming and help bring about a kinder future for all animals.
The coalition is backed by individuals with deep, first-hand knowledge of the organisation – including former RSPCA presidents, trustees, prosecutors, auditors, and even an industry vet who has worked on RSPCA Assured farms. These voices come from inside the system, and they believe, as PETA does, that the RSPCA can – and should – be doing more.
With a new CEO now in place, this is a pivotal moment. Will the RSPCA take a clear and decisive stand for these animals, as it has on so many issues before? Or will it continue to certify systems that harm the very animals it are meant to protect?
What’s the Problem with RSPCA Assured?
RSPCA Assured misleads well-meaning consumers into believing they are making kind choices, when in reality this scheme still sees animals kept in intensive, stressful conditions, separated from their babies, mutilated, selectively bred for fast growth and high ‘production’ and slaughtered at a fraction of their natural lifespan. The RSPCA Assured scheme even allows pigs to be killed in gas chambers with a high concentration of CO2, which burns their insides.
Countless undercover investigations into RSPCA Assured farms and slaughterhouses have exposed widespread abuse, cruelty and neglect.
In 2024, Animal Rising visited dozens of RSPCA Assured farms and found cruelty in every one. Animals lived in filthy, overcrowded sheds, and many lay dead on the floor from dehydration and starvation. On fish farms, investigators witnessed some with missing eyes and other body parts.
PETA, too, uncovered unimaginable suffering on RSPCA Assured farms supplying The Happy Egg Co. Investigators documented hens packed into overcrowded sheds, suffering from feather loss, wounds, and stress-related injuries, with dead birds left among the living.
A Better Future Is Possible
PETA, together with the For All Animals coalition, is calling on the RSPCA to:
- Campaign to end factory farming by 2040, helping lead the UK towards a kinder future for all animals
- End RSPCA Assured certification
- End misleading advertising associated with the RSPCA Assured label
A respected organisation with “Prevention of Cruelty to Animals” in their name has no business endorsing systems that breed and kill animals for profit. The RSPCA can make good on the promise of their name and mission by ending its support for factory farming, and preventing cruelty towards all animals.
Take Action
Add your voice to the growing call for change.
Sign the petition and call on the RSPCA to stand against factory farming and end the RSPCA Assured certification for a kinder, more compassionate future.
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