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This year, more humane? Bochkarev Photography /Shutterstock

It’s becoming a Thanksgiving tradition as hoary as NFL football or the bloviations of your drunken uncle: days before the national feast, an animal-welfare group releases an undercover video documenting vile conditions within industrial-scale turkey facilities (see 2013, 2012, 2008).

This year, the largest turkey producer of all, Butterball-which churns out a billion pounds of turkey meat annually, a fifth of US production-has made a bold move to get ahead of these appetite-snuffing PR debacles. By fall 2014, presumably in time for Thanksgiving, all of its products will bear the American Humane Certified label, the company announced Tuesday.

The certifier is the American Humane Association, which calls itself the “first welfare certification program in the United States to ensure the humane treatment of farm animals.” The group’s standards for turkey production (PDF) place limits on stocking density (birds per square foot) and ammonia level (from manure storage) in the buildings, and also place stipulations on common industry practices like beak and toe trimming.

The American Humane Association’s scientific advisory committee includes animal-welfare stalwart Temple Grandin, as well as several professors from agriculture-centered universities like the University of Arkansas and the University of California-Davis. But it also includes a rep from Zoetis Animal Health, an animal-drug giant that was recently spun out of pharma behemoth Pfizer.