People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has called out several fellow activist groups for being too quick to support the Global Animal Partnership (GAP), a certification program linked to Whole Foods, PETA said in a release posted on its website.

PETA sent a letter to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), and Compassion in World Farming, pushing those organizations to step down from GAP’s board of directors, calling the certification program “a humane-washing program that enables animal-exploiting companies to slap misleading ‘animal welfare certified’ labels on their products.”

Leaning on the results of its own investigations, PETA contended the certification is ineffective, and that its target activist groups “may have hoped being on the Global Animal Partnership board would provide an opportunity to improve animal welfare on factory farms.”

However, “the initiative has been a complete failure — as others have been in the past.

“In fact,” PETA pointed out, PETA “was on the board when the organization was founded but left when it became clear that the initiative was never going to reduce animal suffering.”

HSUS, for one, was having none of it: “PETA’s recent outreach mischaracterizes the GAP. program and our involvement with it,” the organization said in a response on its website, offering context around “why the Humane Society family of organizations engages in this work”

Letter to HSUS, ASPCA and CIWF Board Members: HERE

News Release on PETA website: HERE

HSUS response to PETA’s letter: HERE https://www.humanesociety.org/news/peta-targeting-our-gap-work