What are your thoughts on the American Humane zoo accreditation program?
As far as I know, the Humane Conservation program is thorough and credible (although FYI, it’s a certification program and not an accreditation, which is a nitpick I cannot entirely explain the importance of but is apparently Relevant and Important). It is centered around assessing the aspects of a facility that ensure animal welfare. But honestly? I don’t know much.
The problem is that American Humane has chosen to keep their certification standards proprietary: not only are they not publicly available, but people involved in working on them and updating them regularly have to sign paperwork saying they’ll keep the contents and the process confidential. As far as I know, the only way to find out what the standards are is to actually go through the certification process.
This is obviously not great in terms of transparency. I don’t know why they’ve chosen to do it that way - I don’t get the impression from the organization that the choice is because things aren’t aboveboard, so I would hazard a complete guess that it may be a brand management thing (e.g. if they publish them, other orgs could utilize them, and they seem to be marketing the certification based on occupying a unique niche in the industry). I’m only willing to state what I did above because I’ve had the chance to speak to people I trust whose facilities have gone through the process, as well as those involved in the development of the standards. They could tell me absolutely no details, but could say that in their professional opinions it was detailed, focused specifically on animal welfare, and something they considered credible as an assessment tool. But I have to stress that that’s second-hand information and I cannot verify it myself at this point in time.
I’m hoping that someday American Humane will choose more transparency (if not with the public, at least for research purposes). When I first started working on comparative accreditation standards five or six years ago, the Association of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums (AMMPA) also kept their accreditation’s standards proprietary - I asked for them for research and was promptly turned down! A few years later they chose to release them to the public, and I’m hoping AH will follow the same path.
