After Farm Forward exposed serious animal welfare concerns at Alexandre Family Farm, the company has now lost two of the certifications it relied on to market itself as a humane and regenerative dairy.
Alexandre can no longer claim the “Certified Humane” and “Regenerative Organic Certified” (ROC) certifications, or use them to enable and perpetuate consumer fraud and the abuse of dairy cows we uncovered.
Alexandre surrendered its ROC certification in November 2025, with Certified Humane and Alexandre breaking ties more recently. By January 2026, Alexandre had stopped displaying the Certified Humane mark on its website and packaging. (Certified Humane focuses on animal welfare practices, while ROC relates to both animal welfare and the environment.)
The splits between Certified Humane, ROC, and Alexandre follow more than a year of scrutiny sparked by Farm Forward’s investigation, Dairy Deception, which documented systemic animal welfare problems at the high-profile California dairy. The loss of these certifications is a victory for consumer transparency. It demonstrates that when independent watchdogs and advocates hold farms accountable for their false assurances, we can successfully disrupt some of their core strategies for misleading customers. Without these labels, Alexandre has lost two of the most recognizable signals it used to reassure shoppers that its products aligned with their values.
Accountability in the U.S. food system is rarely obtained through legislation or a single, dramatic, sector-wide reform. More often, change happens incrementally. Investigations expose problems. Public scrutiny grows. And eventually, as producers’ illusory claims of high welfare and net benefits for the climate and environment are dispelled, they are forced to retreat from claims they can no longer defend.
Alexandre losing its capacity to display ROC and Certified Humane packaging is a notable win for the public. But for the animals, it’s not that simple.
In the short term, animals may have gained very little. After so many of its wrongdoings were exposed, ideally the dairy would have chosen to improve its practices. Alexandre could have opted to actually comply with the standards associated with the certifications that it had boasted for years. But we have seen no indication that Alexandre has reformed its protocols in response to the revelations of its animal abuse.
Instead, the company chose to stop using its most meaningful certifications. (Certified Humane standards are minimally better than standard industry practices, and ROC’s standards are meaningfully different from industry norms.) Perhaps breaking these ties reconfirms Alexandre’s true colors: from our perspective, the company has long appeared less interested in animal welfare and environmental stewardship than in pushing product for profit.
Despite losing access to its more meaningful certifications, Alexandre continues to humanewash and greenwash in earnest. The charm of the “Alexandre Family Farm” name conceals its true structure: an industrial dairy spread over multiple locations (including a bucolic “show farm”) with the attendant harms of industrial production.
The company continues to broadcast its care for animals and the land, despite losing third-party certifications backing up those claims. A visitor to its website may not even grasp that the company can no longer claim those stamps of approval; having surrendered Regenerative Organic Certified, the dairy’s site even still claims, “Alexandre Family Farm is the first dairy farm in the United States to be certified Regenerative Organic.”
Certified Humane’s and ROC’s halos likely continue to cast a glow over Alexandre’s dairy products, despite the dairy’s official split with both. Shoppers who originally chose Alexandre because it boasted those certifications are unlikely to notice that they have quietly vanished from Alexandre’s website and packaging.
Disappointingly, despite Certified Humane’s website having a blog, announcements page, and a news center, the certifier appears not to have used any of these to provide the smallest hint of the break. Instead, Certified Humane quietly removed Alexandre’s name from its multipage list of 350+ Certified Humane producers—an excision that few, if any, consumers would have spotted. Even among the most conscientious shoppers, who continually monitor those pages to notice if a brand quietly disappears?
Recently, Alexandre has entered into new partnerships that burnish its image. Several months ago, Alexandre added “American Humane Certified” to its certification list. American Humane Certified wins trust from uninformed consumers through a name that most shoppers can’t distinguish from more meaningful certifications, but is a far weaker, industry-run certification indicating little if any benefit for farmed animals over standard industry practices. The largest companies certified by American Humane Certified are two conventional factory farm companies, Butterball and Foster Farms; Alexandre has chosen to join their ranks.
In addition to this new ally in humanewashing, Alexandre has found a benefactor for its greenwashing: the current federal administration, most directly in the forms of U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehment Oz. In December 2025, the month after Alexandre surrendered its ROC certification, Kennedy, Rollins, and Oz stood alongside and showcased Alexandre’s co-owner, Blake Alexandre. They provided Mr. Alexandre the platform to claim that Alexandre is
“the first certified regenerative farm in the United States … making our planet a better place … literally doing the right thing,”
as they announced a $700 million Regenerative Pilot Program to shift U.S. farms to regenerative agricultural practices like those Alexandre purports to embody.
Alexandre has proven adept at exploiting certifications and other endorsements, and has plenty to choose from. Despite their flaws, the growing abundance of certifications, even misleading ones, reflects something positive. Consumers are increasingly concerned about the harms of industrial animal agriculture. They want assurances that farms are reducing their impact on animals and the environment. In that sense, the proliferation of certifications today can be seen as a hopeful development.
But in addition to reflecting consumer concern, the proliferation of certifications creates fertile ground for humanewashing and greenwashing. Unbeknownst to consumers, few certified animal products come anywhere close to meeting the ethical or environmental values shoppers believe they represent. Even some certifiers that appear strong on paper fail to monitor farms adequately to ensure that producers meet their standards.
The truth is that most animal welfare certifications serve as powerful marketing tools for conventional factory farms. Meaningful labels like Certified Animal Welfare Approved get lost in the sea of weaker schemes like Certified Humane and industry-owned certifications that mostly rubber-stamp standard industry practices. Examples of the latter category include One Health Certified, American Humane Certified (now claimed by Alexandre), and the trademarked design Alexandre created to apply to itself: its own “Eco Dairy” stamp of approval.
For many consumers, the distinctions between meaningful and meaningless certifications are nearly impossible to parse. Labels blur together, and companies benefit from the appearance of oversight even when the standards behind those labels are weak.
While the popularity of certifications could eventually benefit farmed animals (if they are coupled with accountability), for now, individual consumers can’t rely on these labels to make ethical judgements about products.
Food system reform rarely happens all at once. More often, it unfolds through incremental changes: increased scrutiny, better information for consumers, and gradual shifts in what companies can credibly claim about their products. Moments when companies like Alexandre quietly retreat from claims they can no longer defend are critical components of that process.
Alexandre’s diminished ability to humanewash and greenwash not only cuts down deceptive marketing in agriculture, it also creates space for more ethical producers. Markets can only improve when consumers have accurate information. When a company like Alexandre forges the appearance of treating animals and the earth well, but out of consumers’ sight, it disregards its stated values to maximize profits, it drastically undercuts other companies’ incentive to commit to higher welfare practices. Any company curious about selling higher welfare products, whether motivated by ethics or profits, will hesitate if the marketplace is crowded with look‑alike “humane” claims, and consumers struggle to distinguish genuinely higher welfare products from those produced by fakers. But when fewer bad actors are allowed to profit from false veneers of higher welfare, it creates space and economic incentive for other companies to invest the time, money, and effort to build genuinely higher welfare conditions. Over time, transparency is one of the most powerful tools available for improving the treatment of animals in the food system.
The ultimate goal is a food system where transparency is the norm and marketing claims reflect farming conditions. Whether that goal is achieved will depend on sustained scrutiny from journalists, advocates, regulators, and consumers. Concerning Alexandre—once the category leader for Certified Humane, Regenerative Organic Certified dairy—society is closer to that goal today than at the end of 2025. The industrial dairy stepping back from (even some) indefensible claims is a critical step toward market honesty and improved animal welfare.
In the short term, though, Alexandre and others seem committed to continuing their cons in whatever ways they can. When they can’t grift as effectively with animal welfare, they fully embrace the “regenerative” buzzword—now backed by $700 million in taxpayer funds through the President’s new Regenerative Pilot Program. Grifters will grift.
In the long term, if some portion of the population continues to consume animal products (which we think they will), we must demand far more humane methods and accurate marketing. Sadly, we’re not there yet. Progress, while meaningful, is slow. The industrial farms that raise at least 90 percent of U.S. farmed animals show no signs of willingly changing anytime soon, and the certifications that endorse them need to be reformed or replaced.
Shoppers concerned with animal welfare should support watchdogs’ efforts toward transparency. But that’s a long-term project. For now, given the dominance of broken certifications and the rarity and expense of products bearing the few that are most meaningful, an effective choice for consumers searching for genuinely high-welfare, environmentally-friendly food at grocery stores is to opt out of this inherently compromised system. Shoppers who want to accelerate progress toward a better future can reduce, or even eliminate, their financial support of foods that are disastrous for animals and the earth by changing their diets.