The Custodian Standard
A rigorous, independent measure of how institutions, governments, corporations, and products treat animals, the living world, and the people within their reach.
Most certifications measure one thing at a time. The Custodian Standard refuses that fragmentation. It evaluates an organisation or a product across the three dimensions that, at One Kind World, are not separate concerns but a single one: the welfare of animals, the integrity of the environment, and the dignity of human labour.
Our mission rests on a simple premise — that the wellbeing of animals, the health of ecosystems, and the flourishing of people are inseparable. A supply chain cannot be ethical for workers while it is cruel to animals; it cannot be kind to animals while it strips the soil and the forest. The Custodian Standard is the instrument that holds these threads together, so that a claim of responsibility in one area cannot conceal harm in another.
The aim is not a badge to be purchased, but a verdict to be earned. By making conduct legible, comparable, and public, the Standard gives the careful institution a way to prove its care, and gives the public a way to tell the difference between stewardship and marketing.
How it works in practice
Assessment begins with disclosure. An applicant opens its operations, suppliers, and records to structured evaluation against published criteria. Each of the three pillars is examined on its own terms and then weighed together, so that strength in one area cannot offset neglect in another.
Evidence is gathered rather than asserted: documentation, site review, and independent verification take precedence over self-reported claims. Findings are scored against clear thresholds, and the result is a graded determination — not a pass that hides the detail, but a record that shows where an organisation leads and where it must still improve.
Certification is a relationship, not a stamp. It is time-bound, subject to re-assessment, and can be revoked when conduct falls below the line. The full criteria are published openly, so that any organisation can understand what is required of it before it ever applies.
What it involves
Four elements give the Standard its rigour and keep it honest.
Three integrated pillars
Animal protection, environmental impact, and labour practices are assessed as one. A subject is evaluated across all three, and a serious failing in any pillar limits the overall result.
Evidence and verification
Determinations rest on documentation, site review, and independent checks rather than self-declaration. The burden of proof sits with the applicant, not the public.
Published, open criteria
The thresholds and methodology are public. Anyone can read what is being measured, how it is weighed, and what separates one grade from the next.
Ongoing accountability
Certification is time-limited and reviewable. Standing must be maintained through continued conduct, and can be withdrawn when an organisation drifts below the line.
Part of one integrated mission
The Custodian Standard does not stand alone. It gives practical shape to the science that underpins all of our work — the recognition, set out in the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (2012), that animals are sentient beings, and the evidence in the WWF Living Planet Report (2024) that wildlife populations have fallen by an average of 73% in fifty years while human activity and livestock now account for the overwhelming majority of mammal biomass on Earth.
Set against findings such as Poore and Nemecek (Science, 2018), which show that a shift in how we produce food could free up to roughly three-quarters of the world's farmland, the case for measuring conduct across animals, ecology, and people at once becomes a practical necessity rather than an ideal. The Standard is how that evidence is turned into a benchmark institutions can be held to.
Help set the standard for stewardship
Building and maintaining an independent, evidence-based certification takes sustained, unconflicted funding. Your gift keeps the assessment rigorous and the verdict free of the interests it judges.
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