Factory farming is a broken system: torturing animals, destroying the planet and putting our lives at risk.

Despite this, it remains the dominant system for producing meat, dairy, and eggs. In the USA, 99% of the meat we eat is factory farmed;¹ while in the UK roughly 73 - 85% of farmed animals live in factory farms.²

In this series, we explore the many harms of factory farming and some of the ways that we can, together, make farming kinder to people, the planet and animals.

In the first article, we explored the little-known impacts of factory farming on our health, global hunger and its workers. In this second article, we look at the way that factory farming directly contributes to the climate emergency and what we can do about it.

Climate Change

Factory farming is a major driver of climate change, contributing around 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions³ — more than the entire transportation sector. Livestock, particularly cattle, produce significant amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide. Rearing cattle generates more greenhouse gasses than driving cars,⁴ with beef production over 110 times more emissions-intensive than plant-based protein sources like peas.⁵ If we don’t change our ways, our quest for cheap meat might just roast the planet.

Many people try buying their food locally to reduce the impact on the planet, but this has only a very small effect. 88% of emissions from animal products are generated on-farm,⁶ before they are transported to the supermarket. Overall transport accounts for less than 0.5% of the emissions from beef,⁷ for example.

Just avoiding the worst climate culprits like beef isn’t a real solution either, as factory farmed products are just as bad when you consider their impacts on the planet holistically, which we’ll discuss next.

Environmental Pollution

Factory farms are environmental juggernauts, generating colossal amounts of waste that wreak havoc on local ecosystems. US factory farms produce 13 times the sewage of the entire human population of the USA alone,⁸ storing it in open or covered pits or massive lagoons. These lagoons leak sewage and contaminate the surrounding land, air, and waterways at rates far beyond what nearby farmland can absorb. This leads to severe public health and ecological hazards, degrading both surface and groundwater resources.

Picture an ocean where nothing lives—a dead zone—created by the runoff from factory farms. This pollution, laden with manure, chemicals, antibiotics, and growth hormones, causes eutrophication in water bodies, a process that depletes oxygen and devastates aquatic life. The United Nations has highlighted the major role industrial farming plays in this environmental disaster, releasing large volumes of harmful substances into water sources.⁹

The scale of pollution is staggering. Dairy production is 31 times more damaging per unit of protein than plant-based staples, while farmed prawns and fish are 26 and 13 times worse, respectively.¹⁰ Even the air we breathe isn't spared, as beef production is 51 times more harmful in terms of acidic air pollution than tofu, with cheese, pork, lamb, shrimp, and chicken ranging from 15 to 25 times worse.¹¹ Factory farming's impact is a stark testament to our negligence, underscoring the urgent need for more sustainable agricultural practices.

Resource Inefficiency

Factory farming is a colossal drain on our planet's limited resources, using land with shocking inefficiency. Almost half the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture¹² and a staggering 80% of that land is used for animal products which contribute a mere 37% of the world's protein supply and just 17% of global calories.¹³ This disproportionate use of land resources reveals the inefficiency of our current food system, particularly when considering that beef and lamb require 50 times more land per unit of protein than plant-based sources like peas.¹⁴

The environmental cost of this inefficiency is immense, with factory farming emerging as the biggest driver of deforestation. Our relentless appetite for meat is decimating the lungs of our planet, as forests are razed to create pastures and grow feed crops. Pasture expansion for beef alone accounts for over 40% of deforestation,¹⁵ while cropland expansion for soybeans and palm oil—primarily used to feed chickens and pigs—drives an additional 18%.¹⁶ These impacts are so vast they can be seen from space, with NASA noting that cattle pastures have caused about five times more deforestation than any other commodities.¹⁷

This inefficient use of land not only contributes to habitat destruction and biodiversity loss but also undermines efforts to combat climate change. As we clear forests to satisfy our demand for animal products, we are sacrificing the very ecosystems that absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. To truly address the environmental crises we face, we must rethink our agricultural practices and shift towards more sustainable, plant-based food systems.

Ocean depletion

For years, we've been warned about the devastating impact of overfishing on ocean ecosystems. Over one-third of the world's fish resources are being depleted beyond their ability to recover, and the scope of this issue has doubled since 1990.¹⁸ One fishing method, known as 'bottom trawling,' has become particularly infamous for its destructiveness. It kills 41% of organisms in ecosystems, and those ecosystems take up to six years to recover.¹⁹ Despite everything we know about bottom trawling, it is still used to catch a quarter of the world's fish,²⁰ with 13.5% of the shallow seabed being trawled every single year.²¹

When fish farming began to scale up in the late 1990s, some hoped it would be a solution to the problems caused by the wild seafood industry. Sadly, it’s not a real solution.

Firstly, we still catch billions of ocean fish to feed the farmed fish. In fact, an estimated 40% of wild-caught fish are fed to farmed fish today. 440 wild fish need to be caught to feed each farmed salmon.²² Secondly, fish farming in sea cages wreaks havoc on sensitive coastal ecosystems by polluting them with antibiotics, pesticides, and eutrophication (the creation of deadzones by nutrient pollution).²³ So as it stands, neither wild caught seafood nor high-tech fish farms are as natural or kind to the planet as we’d like them to be.

Biodiversity: The Ultimate Measure of Environmental Health

Biodiversity is declining faster than at any time in human history.²⁴ Scientists warn that we are currently experiencing the sixth mass extinction event.²⁵ The last mass extinction saw the last of the dinosaurs die out.²⁶

The primary drivers of this crisis include deforestation, ocean depletion, and environmental pollution – all linked to our current farming practices. The Amazon rainforest, one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth, has seen 20% of its area cleared for agriculture.²⁷

In fact, the industrialisation of animal farming and the decline of wild ecosystems has left us in a world where farmed mammals (like cows and pigs) make up 94% of the total weight of non-human mammals, and the total weight of farmed birds is more than double that of all the Earth’s wild birds put together.²⁸ This loss of biodiversity highlights the urgency with which we need to reform our food system to protect and restore the planet's natural balance.

Farming is broken, let’s fix it

Despite the daunting challenges posed by factory farming, there is a hopeful path forward. Transitioning away from animal agriculture could offset 68% of emissions through to 2100, with 90% of this benefit coming from phasing out cows, sheep, and dairy.²⁹ Remarkably, some plant-based protein sources, such as certain nuts, are already carbon-negative, actively reducing atmospheric carbon levels.³⁰

A shift to a plant-based food system could also slash agricultural land use by 75%,³¹ freeing up vast tracts of land for reforestation and other environmental restoration efforts. This transition extends beyond personal dietary changes. Supporting recommended charities that promote the development of alternative proteins³² and advocate for institutional changes can drive systemic progress. By making farming practices kinder—providing more space for animals and reducing their numbers per farm – we can minimize pollution and allow local ecosystems to process waste more effectively and sustainably.

Innovative solutions are also on the horizon. Companies are developing cell-cultured fish and shrimp, promising consumers the seafood they love without the environmental destruction associated with traditional fishing. Additionally, organizations like the Fish Welfare Initiative are working with the aquaculture industry to improve practices, enhancing both fish welfare and the health of local ecosystems.

As we increase the proportion of our diet that comes from plants, in line with WHO recommendations,³³ we can significantly reduce the environmental burden of farming. These changes represent a crucial step toward a sustainable and compassionate food system that prioritizes both planetary health and animal welfare. The journey ahead may be challenging, but the potential benefits for our planet and future generations are immense.

Want to get involved?

We can all be involved in helping speed up the change to a kinder way of farming.

The charities we support are at the forefront of all these efforts: pressuring companies to end the cruelest practices of factory farming, helping make plant-based meals more available and supporting the development of alternative proteins.

By supporting these charities with even a small amount of your donations, you can be an important part of the movement to fix factory farming and make our food kinder.