Three things you can do to help fix factory farming
5 minute read — Published August 2nd 2024
Do you know anyone who actually likes factory farming?
Seven out of ten Americans are uncomfortable with the way animals are treated in factory farms. Of course they are. It is awful to think about animals living their entire lives in cramped, filthy conditions, unable to engage in their natural behaviors, like dust bathing for chickens or nest building for pigs.
One of the big things that stands between many people and taking action agianst factory farming is the belief that there isn’t anything we can do to help.
But things are not hopeless! As alternatives to factory farming become more available, many people believe that we are now able to evolve our food system away from factory farming.
So, here are three ways that people, just like you, have helped to start moving beyond factory farming, and how you can get involved too.
Digital campaigning
We can directly improve the lives of factory-farmed animals in the short term by pressuring food producers to eliminate the cruelest practices, such as battery cages and confinement for pigs.
A really simple way to get involved is to join The Humane League’s ‘Fast Action Network,’ an app that allows you to participate in their digital campaigns to put pressure on more companies.
These campaigns push retailers and restaurants to stop buying animal products made using these practices. This forces factory farms to abandon these specific cruel practices. While this doesn’t mean the lives of these animals are now free from suffering, it does significantly reduce the severity of their conditions.
So far, these campaigns have successfully gained commitments to eliminate battery-caged eggs from over a thousand major companies, including KFC, Walmart, and Burger King. Overall, this means that 40% of US egg-laying chickens are now cage-free, compared to less than 5% in 20101
Another benefit of these campaigns is that they are extremely cost-effective for the number of factory-farmed animals they help. The Humane League, for example, estimates that it costs them just $16 per cage to free chickens from cages—and multiple birds live in a single cage1
Get political
One of the most powerful tools available to us is changing the laws regarding the way we treat animals. Letting your elected representatives know that you care about factory farming can help push the issue up the political agenda and encourage them to vote against factory farming.
While the law still provides very little protection for farmed animals, there have been some major legal wins recently. For example, in California, Proposition 12 implemented bans on some of the worst factory farming practices, as well as banning the sale of products from animals kept this way in California. The measure was challenged in the Supreme Court, but the animals won—this means that other states could follow suit.
But there have been setbacks too. The factory farming lobby is extremely powerful. Two states (Florida and Alabama) have banned cultivated meat2
Eight states have also implemented so-called ‘ag-gag’ laws which infringe on the freedom of speech of animal welfare campaigners and stop them from reporting on the damage done by factory farms. Fortunately, in five other states, ag-gag laws were partly or fully struck down as unconstitutional, while 17 other similar laws have failed to pass their state legislatures4
If we are going to push back against the rich factory farming lobby, then we have to show politicians that their voters care about these issues and oppose these unfair, potentially unconstitutional, and damaging laws.
Donate
One of the most underrated and possibly best ways to help animals is to donate to the charities that do the best job of helping farmed animals.
Donating to charities that are focused on making sure your money helps as many animals as possible is one of the easiest and most impactful things you can do. FarmKind makes this easy. We’ve done the homework for you so that you can donate to the best charities working to reform factory farming without the hassle of spending hours doing research. We operate independently, funded by philanthropic grants. This ensures that 100% of your donation goes to your chosen charities and that our recommendations remain free from bias.
Not only that, but if you donate through us, your donation will also receive a bonus from our bonus fund, so that it goes even further.