“We’ve become a nation of label readers, bottom line,” says Len Torine, director of the American Vegetarian Association. The AVA is among a small number of vegan-certifying organizations with proprietary standards that they hope will help appeal to ever more conscientious consumers. Their distinctive triangular logo can be found emblazoned on vegetarian and vegan products of small food producers and restaurants, and even massive transnationals like Starbucks and Taco Bell are now offering an assortment of AVA-certified products (albeit without displaying AVA’s logo on their packaging and, in Taco Bell’s menus, no items labeled vegan in any way).

While it’s hard to argue that even an officially vegan-certified burrito from Taco Bell would be healthy or ethically produced, AVA’s aim is to indicate to consumers something about the products they buy that ingredients lists won’t. “What the label readers want is transparency, basically. Clarity and honesty. When they see vague things on the label of the product, they’re not sure what it is,” Torine says.

“Vegan” might be as clear a standard as you can imagine: no animal parts or byproducts. Obviously precluded are meat, poultry, fish, dairy, even honey. Serious vegans also eschew things like beers clarified with isinglass (which is made from fish bladders), medication capsules made of collagen-based gelatin, sugar refined with bone char, and so on.

“[Companies] send us samples of the product they want to be certified with a full list of ingredients,” says Torine. “We have a review team, we put the products and ingredients through a very strict compliance review, and if there’s anything, for example, on the label like ‘natural flavors or spices,’ we ask them what that is to verify. If you’re using vitamin D3, we’ve got to know where that comes from, because that usually comes from lanolin, which is vegetarian, not vegan.”

Certifying that a packaged food is free from animal products is one thing. Certifying that produce is raised according to vegan standards is another. The idea is still uncommon. The British organization Vegan Organic Network certifies farms, including some U.S. farms. Though its standards go beyond even what many vegans would require—for example, they not only prohibit the use of manure, they ban the raising of any livestock on the property, the use of compost made from non-organic plants, and the use of any form of artificial fertilizer.

Metropolis Farms is the first U.S. vegan farm to be certified by AVA, and it may be the first farm so certified by a U.S. organization.

“I wanted somebody that was actually going to be more of a guard dog about this,” says Jack Griffin. “We gave [Torine] I think 50 to 60 pages, maybe more, of documentation. He reserves the right to inspect us at will, and close us down if we’re lying or not following his processes. Among other things, we have to wear rubber gloves. Our food isn’t touched by people until it’s harvested.”