Humanewashing
noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The humaneness (animal welfare) analogue of greenwashing. uncountable
"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."
- 1 present participle and gerund of humanewash form-of, gerund, participle, present
Example
More examples"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."
Etymology
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").
More for "humanewashing"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.