BRF Brasil has been approved by Humane Farm Animal Care (HFAC) for its Certified Humane program.
The food company, which sells chicken products under the Sadia brand to the Brazilian market, got the certification for 33 of its chicken farms in Midwest Brazil-located Goiás.
Certified Humane South America director Luiz Mazzon stated that BRF Sadia is improving the lives of over 40 million birds under its program.
Mazzon said: "We expect this program to continue to grow as more and more consumers demand humanely-raised food."
The Herndon, Virgina based HFAC is an international nonprofit certification program dedicated to improving the lives of farm animals in food production.
Under the Certified Humane program, producers have to follow HFAC’s animal care standards, including feeding animals only with nutritious diet and avoiding the use of antibiotics or hormones.
HFAC says that it regularly inspects farms to check whether the living conditions of the animals are in compliance or not.
Its Certified Humane label can be found on meat, poultry, egg and dairy product labels in US, Canada, Brazil, Peru and Chile.
HFAC executive director Adele Douglass said: "Having one of the largest food companies in the world commit to raising their animals Certified Humane shows that any producer of any size can commit to raising farm animals humanely.”
HFAC had launched the program in 2003 and has more than 140 companies are currently complying with its standards. The nonprofit organization claims that it has more than 514 million farm animals that have been raised under its standards.