Meanings
- uncountableThe flaunting of animal welfare claims to conceal unethical practices, analogous to greenwashing.
1 more example
Now, a new report from the anti-factory farming group Farm Forward seeks to outline the differences between independent and industry animal welfare labels and expose what it calls “humanewashing” among both types of groups. Like the now widely recognized practice of “greenwashing,” Farm Forward says that companies use humanewashing to deceive consumers who care about animal rights, leading them to believe animals were raised according to their expectations of humane treatment even when they were not.
2021 January 19, Lisa Held, “Are Some Animal Welfare Labels 'Humanewashing'?”, in Civil Eats, retrieved 13 Sep 2021
- gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of humanewash
Origin
From humane + -wash + -ing, following the established pattern of greenwashing, pinkwashing, purplewashing, and similar forms (which came ultimately from the figurative-extension sense of whitewashing as "slapping a paintjob over the truth to hide it and to give a specious nice appearance").
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
humanewashing. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/humanewashing
“humanewashing.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/humanewashing. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “humanewashing,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/humanewashing.
Source: humanewashing on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.