Meet Andrew Gunther of A Greener World

This piece has been updated on February 24, 2021.

Andrew Gunther, the Executive Director of A Greener World (AGW), a non-profit organization best known for its Animal Welfare Approved program — which “audits, certifies and supports independent family farmers raising their animals according to the highest animal welfare standards, outdoors on pasture or range” — passed away unexpectedly last week.

Under Gunther’s expert leadership, AWA became the gold standard for food labels with strong standards for animal welfare, sustainability and pasture-based farming. Consumer Reports designated the AWA label as the only “highly meaningful” food label for farm animal welfare, outdoor access and sustainability and the FoodPrint Food Label Guide consistently ranks the AWA label as the most meaningful for all animal products.

“Andrew was a pioneer in bringing animal health and welfare to the mainstream marketplace. He had an exceptional ability to push boundaries — in the marketplace and among his peers — and could change minds dramatically and quickly. His larger than life personality will be sorely missed but the legacy he left is for all — people, animals and the planet,” said FoodPrint’s Chief Science Advisor Dr. Urvashi Rangan.

Read this interview with Andrew from a few years ago to learn more about his passion for animal welfare and land stewardship; why he was committed to helping people better understand the differences between conventional and pasture-based meat; and why this is such a loss to the animal welfare and sustainable farming community.

Tell us about Animal Welfare Approved and why its mission is so close to your heart? 

Some people view animal welfare through a strictly altruistic lens, but high-welfare farming systems benefit all of us. A Greener World was founded on the understanding that when you create farming systems that place the animal at the center, you automatically realize a number of tangential benefits for the environment, rural communities, public health and biodiversity. Take antibiotics for example: Industrial systems depend on routine antibiotic use to compensate for unnatural crowding and poor sanitation. When you raise animals in well-managed, high-welfare outdoor systems, routine antibiotics are unnecessary. This approach allows us to conserve antibiotics and save them for when we really need them. Animals benefit from higher-welfare systems, and we save an important medical resource for the future.

When it comes to the water footprint of a pound of beef, not all beef is the same. Tell us why that is. 

Water is widely seen as the next global resource crisis. Those of us in agriculture have a responsibility to use water wisely, and as consumers we will have to make increasingly nuanced decisions about the water impacts of our food. As eaters, the main way we impact water is through consumption. “Green” water is the rainwater that falls on pasture and grows grass. Green water is the primary water used in pasture-based systems: it would not be used for anything else, and passes through the soil to the water table or gently runs off into the streams without pollutants. The water use that I’m most concerned about is blue water — the limited supplies of surface and groundwater that we humans need for our own survival — and yet use without concern as if it is an infinite resource. In pasture systems, ruminants are super food producers using cellulose (inedible to humans) and water that is moving naturally through the system to produce nutritionally dense proteins. This means that lumping both industrially-produced and pasture-raised beef together when it comes to water use incorrectly vilifies more sustainable grassfed animals.

A large part of beef’s water footprint comes from what the animals were fed (high-grain vs. grass). The easy answer to the question, “How do I lower my water footprint?” is “Eat less meat, and make sure it comes from a pasture-raised source.” This nuance is largely missed in the recent vilification of beef by environmental groups, and is causing us to overlook the solutions right in front of us. Our recent post, “Not All Beef is Bad” covers this in great detail, and I invite anyone working towards globally responsible diets to read it.

What are the other benefits associated with pasture-raised production? 

Pasture-based production has a number of benefits beyond animal welfare. High-welfare, pasture- and range-based systems naturally facilitate responsible manure and water management, antibiotics preservation, carbon sequestration, productive rural economies and more nutritious meat, dairy and eggs. If you think about it, pasture-based production is much simpler than its industrial counterpart: rather than relying on massive infrastructure, heavy doses of subtherapeutic antibiotics, added hormones and unreliable manure management, well-managed pasture- and range-based systems generally fit the system to the land and animals and actually enrich the environment and the surrounding community.

Why is it important to you that all meat producers don’t get lumped in together?