A new program to certify and label food products that meet animal-welfare standards will be launched tomorrow by the American Humane Association with the guidance of two UC Davis animal-welfare experts. Joy Mench, a UC Davis professor and animal stress expert, and Carolyn Stull, a UC Cooperative Extension large-animal welfare specialist, serve on the scientific advisory committee for the new Free Farmed Certification Program. The first such certification effort in the United States, the program is designed to establish living standards for poultry, dairy cows and beef cattle that are raised for food production. It is modeled after England's eight-year-old Freedom Food program, which now certifies nearly 25 percent of Britain's animal-based food products. The Free Farmed Certificate Program will be offered for a fee to producers, processors and haulers of animal-based foods. The goal of the program is to provide independent verification that participating businesses provide humane conditions for their animals. Those companies that meet the standards can place a "Free Farmed" label on their products. "More than 8 billion farm animals are used in food production each year," said Tim O'Brien, president and chief executive officer of the humane association. "The American Humane Association is doing everything possible to ensure that animals raised for human consumption are treated humanely during their lives." The program will be administered by Farm Animal Services, a recently established affiliate of the American Humane Association. The service will conduct audits of farms, dairies, processing plants and other businesses. The inspection process will be verified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Businesses seeking Free Farmed certification must contact Farm Animal Services, then produce required documents and undergo an on-site assessment. Following that inspection, the USDA's Agriculture Marketing Service may elect to send an auditor to the business applying for certification. "The guidelines that the advisory committee developed for the humane treatment of farm animals are based on the members' collective experience with animal management," said Joy Mench. "Our goal was to develop standards that are scientifically sound as well as practical and achievable from an industry standpoint." "Much like the organic farming certification program, the Free Farmed program offers consumers the opportunity to make their purchase choices with the welfare of farm animals in mind," added Stull. "And it allows processors and producers who put the extra effort into quality animal care to take credit for that in the marketplace." Mench, an animal behaviorist, is director of the UC Davis Center for Animal Welfare. She conducts research on the welfare of farm, laboratory and captive animals. Her work focuses on better understanding social and abnormal animal behaviors and on designing better animal-management practices and housing environments. Because of her training with poultry and other birds, she helped design certification guidelines for egg-laying hens and meat chickens and will assist with some on-site inspections. Stull is an animal scientist who specializes in the welfare of domestic large-animals. Her studies have focused on dairy-calf management practices and alternatives, identifying stress factors for growing hogs on commercial facilities, and the physiological responses to long-distance horse transportation. She will assist the certification program in evaluating livestock operations located outside of California. The American Humane Association, founded in 1877, is the nation's oldest organization dedicated to child and animal protection. It serves as the umbrella organization for 6,500 animal shelters and protection agencies throughout the United States.