Through ‘A Compassionate World’, I not only seek to explore the issues involved in factory farming and animal welfare, but also provide you with a useful resource to find out more information.  With this in mind, I’m happy to report that I’ve fully updated my ‘Facts and Figures’ page. 

Here you’ll find some interesting, but also shocking, facts that you may not be aware of.  For instance, did you know that:

• Two out of every three farm animals in the world are now factory farmed;
• A typical supermarket chicken today contains more than twice the fat, and about a third less protein than 40 years ago;
• Piglets born into factory farms often have their tails docked and their teeth clipped, usually without any form of anaesthesia;
• For the production of foie gras, force-feeding geese increases the size of the liver by up to ten times and the fat content of the liver exceeds 50%;
• An area of land equivalent to the size of the European Union is used to grow feed for farm animals?

These, and many more facts, are included on my newly updated ‘Facts and Figures’ page, so please take a moment to review and find out more.

Thank you for your ongoing support.

Every time we turn on a tap, we take for granted access to fresh, clean water. For much of the time, many of us barely give it a moment’s thought. What is also less well known is how much water is used in the making of our food; and how our food choices can affect the amount of our water use.

At Compassion, we’ve been giving much thought to water recently and we’ve been working with our friends at the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) on a new initiative looking at water use in food production. A startling fact is that a quarter of all the freshwater used globally relates to meat and dairy production. How animals are raised has a big effect on the amount of water needed. For example, grain feeds for animals use 43 times more irrigation water than pasture-based animal feeds. It’s just another factor that underlines the benefit of moving away from industrial farming, instead putting animals back on the farm and out in our pastures.

We commissioned research by leading Professor Arjen Y. Hoekstra from the University of Twente, in The Netherlands. Professor Hoesktra has also calculated that 15,500 litres of water are needed to produce one kilogram of beef. That’s equivalent to about 90 bathtubs of water! And it’s about 12 times the quantity needed for a kg of wheat.

If animals are raised on grass, then the water use is largely rainfall on grass. Reared intensively in confinement and fed grain, then the water use is much more likely to be drawing on rivers and aquifers; in other words, diverting water away from other human uses and adding to the overall burden on hard-pressed water courses.

The worrying prediction is that in little more than a decade, about two out of every three people in the world could be living in areas of water shortage. It underlines the need to take saving water seriously. Be it in our homes or in our food. It is just another reason to avoid the products of industrial animal agriculture.

Our new report, Freshwater Use and Farm Animal Welfare, makes recommendations for more effective use of water in food production. These include implementing humane-sustainable farming policies, and supporting farmers who use and develop better practices.

The size of our water ‘footprint’ is more than just whether we use hosepipes in a drought. It also relates to our food choices too.

The latest reports are that farmers in 12 EU countries are still profiting from keeping hens crammed in these tiny cages. Their disregard for the new rules means millions of hens are still living in miserable conditions in the EU. It also leaves the majority of farmers, who invested significant amounts of time and money into getting rid of the cages, at a disadvantage. The longer it takes for the 12 rogue states to clean up their act, the greater the disadvantage to those farmers using legal systems and the more hens still in cramped cages will suffer. The Commission will now move to the second stage of its infringement procedure, eventually getting the European Court of Justice involved. But progress through the EU machine will be slow and national governments have a duty both to the hens stuck in barren battery cages and to EU tax payers not to burden the Union with further costs.

It’s encouraging to see that Romania has dropped off the list of rogue states yet to release their hens from illegal systems, and the European Commission’s swift response to non-compliance is welcome. But the governments of those countries still shamefully flouting the rules should never have allowed this to happen. The rest of the non-compliant states need to follow Romania’s lead and consign barren battery cages in the EU to history.

Recent exposés of the international trade in live farmed animals reveal cruelty and suffering to be routine and tolerated.

Compassion, in cooperation with various like-minded organisations, has exposed throughout Europe, Turkey and Egypt unacceptable treatment of animals in long distance transportation and their slaughter.

Even Britain is not exempt. After an undercover investigation documented cruel and unnecessary treatment of pigs, I repeated my call for the installation of CCTV in British slaughterhouses to ensure the law is strictly enforced and any transgressions prosecuted.

You may also recall my interview with Lyn White from Animals Australia. She documented shocking examples of cruelty when cattle raised in Australia were killed in Indonesia.

Thousands of live farmed animals are needlessly transported long distances across continents, including from continent to continent, and across the world’s oceans, often to countries whose slaughter methods would be considered illegal by those with stricter laws.

There is no justification for the long distance transportation of live farmed animals. Animals should be slaughtered in the country where they are raised. Their carcasses should be shipped to the countries where they are consumed.

A case in point is the Gracia Del Mar, a livestock carrier cargo ship which left Brazil for Egypt with 5,600 cattle.

On Friday, March 2, Animals Australia contacted Compassion with information they had received about the Gracia Del Mar. She encountered severe weather, apparently a freezing snowstorm off the coast of Algeria, which caused the deaths of 1,200 cattle.

My colleague, Peter Stevenson, immediately contacted veterinarian David Wilkins at the International Coalition for Animal Welfare (ICFAW). ICFAW represents animal welfare organisations, including Compassion, at the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). The OIE is the international agency which is responsible for mediating solutions to issues such as the Gracia Del Mar. ICFAW immediately brought to OIE’s attention the unfolding tragedy with the Gracia Del Mar. On March 9, ICFAW followed up with a letter to OIE’s Director General, which said:

‘We are concerned that the competent authorities of Egypt and Brazil and the OIE did not pay sufficient regard to the OIE recommendations on the transport of animals by sea in dealing with this disaster.’

With the OIE’s failure to act quickly, ignoring their own guidelines, the tragic fate of the surviving cattle on the Gracia Del Mar was set in motion.

With 1,200 dead cattle on board, the Gracia Del Mar continued to sail along the north African coastline to Egypt. But Egypt refused her permission to unload anywhere in the country. She docked in Port Said, which is at the northern entrance of the Suez Canal. A veterinary committee inspected the Gracia Del Mar and found the health status of the surviving cattle, estimated to be 4,400, to be very poor. The committee rejected the shipment and refused permission to the Gracia Del Mar to remain in any Egyptian port, including Port Said.

The cargo ship was given permission to cross the Suez Canal. But, by the time she arrived at the port of Sokhna, a further 350 cattle had died, making a total of 1,550. The Sokhna port authorities refused the Gracia Del Mar permission to dock. She stayed outside the port for three days. During this time a further number of cattle, about 450, died. The total number of dead cattle now stood at least 2,000.

The Gracia Del Mar then sailed to Djibouti, which is a country in eastern Africa at the southern end of the Red Sea. Here, the surviving cattle, about 3,600 were unloaded and will stay for about two months for fattening.

If the journey that these surviving cattle experienced was not bad enough, the fate awaiting them most likely will include another voyage up the Red Sea from Djibouti possibly to the port of Safaga in Egypt for slaughter. Undercover footage shot last year in the slaughterhouse in Safaga documented the cruel and horrific methods used. Just consider for a moment the catalogue of suffering and deprivation these surviving cattle endured from Brazil, across the Atlantic, the Mediterranean Sea, the Suez Canal, and the Red Sea for their lives to end in inhumane deaths in an Egyptian slaughterhouse.

There is no justification for any long distance trade in live farmed animals, which must be replaced with a carcass only trade.

Meanwhile, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) must conduct itself in a more responsible manner. It claims to have a global leadership role on animal welfare and has taken upon itself the task of producing international recommendations on animal welfare, including transportation and slaughter. It must now do more to help developing countries to carry out transport and slaughter operations in accordance with its recommendations.

Even though the OIE failed to intervene in the case of the Gracia Del Mar, I welcome the statement it issued on April 3. The OIE reminded its member countries to comply with the OIE recommendations on the welfare of animals during sea transport.

The OIE statement stresses: ‘Specific standards were already adopted by the 178 OIE Member Countries several years ago regarding the obligations of the competent authorities of any importing country. These standards establish that, in the event of a refusal to import, suitable isolation facilities should be made available by the importing country in order to allow livestock to be unloaded from a vessel and held securely, without posing a risk to the health of the animal populations of that importing country.’

Further, the OIE made a commitment that it will ‘remind all Member Countries of the standards adopted by the OIE and the steps that can be taken to prevent this type of regrettable situation’ at its forthcoming 80th annual General Session of the World Assembly of OIE Delegates in May.

Compassion will continue to pressure the OIE to encourage and assist its member countries to implement its animal welfare recommendations. Indeed, animal welfare organisations throughout the world are willing to work with the OIE to help member countries with this implementation.  

The tragedy that befell the Gracia Del Mar must never happen again. I know many of you agree with me. More than 40,000 emails were sent by Compassion’s supporters to the OIE urging them to implement policies to ensure it can respond ‘promptly and effectively to future incidents of this nature’.

Together, we can make a difference for farmed animals worldwide.

Saladillo, Argentina: Walking across a sun-soaked field, I’m being eaten alive by mosquitoes! I’m With Daniel Rugeroni; he’s in his 60s and is dressed in khaki. He’s a civil servant for the Department of Justice in Buenos Aires. Today, he’s returned to the land that’s been in his family for three generations. Daniel grew up here; played in these fields; watched ducks on the nearby pond. He points out a beautiful vista. This is where he planned to build his dream home; to retire on familiar ground with a sunset view. 

He beckons me up a grassy slope. We clamber our way through vegetation that’s taller than either of us. We watch for hidden burrowing animal holes. A couple of times, we go crashing over, dust ourselves down and press on. The mosquitoes are mercifully behind us. Birds like I’ve never seen flush up from dense habitat. Then we reach a fence. The contrast the other side couldn’t be starker… Cattle everywhere; crowded into small muddy pens stretching out as far as we could see. The tranquil pond where Daniel recalled seeing ducks is now surrounded on three sides by cattle. He remembers when this “monster” was created. How he abandoned his dream and became resigned to life in Buenos Aires. 

Daniel tells me that investors bought the land, flattened the hills and fenced it in. Then came the cattle; a few hundred at first; then thousands. He estimates 5,000 head here at any one time. I later find it can hold 8,000. With them came the flies and the smell. I’m struck by the noise from so many bellowing bovines; “You get used to it,” he tells me, “but not the smell.” 

I was later invited to see the feedlot. I watch as a gaucho, a Spanish cowboy with black Basque-style beret, rides a painted black horse, swirling a lasso above his head. Young cattle run round the pen trying to escape. Amid the dust cloud, I see a calf plunge to the ground, halted by the rope in the gaucho’s grasp. Two more gauchos sit on it, jab a syringe in its suede-brown hide, then release. The calf runs feverishly back to the herd which is pressed as far as they can get in the corner of the pen. 

The cattle stand in a well-trodden mud-like mix of sand and excrement. It’s like a cattle market scene from a Western movie; only the cows are here for life. There’s no shade from the relentless sun. The pens are crowded and barren, so much so that there’s little more to say. A group of cows face me; the scene coloured by silver strands of slobber picked out by the low afternoon sun. They’ll be fattened on cereals, not a blade of grass. They’ll be slaughtered in Buenos Aires. 

This is the new reality for Argentina’s beef. As the vast monocultures of soya – the ‘green deserts’ – spread across the country, the cattle that once grazed on rich pastures are divorced from the land; forced into feedlots. There are still some to be seen grazing as nature intended. But it’s becoming less frequent.    

Daniel laments how this place so familiar, now feels like a much-loved past. He tells me of feeling sadness akin to divorce; of feeling driven from his family’s land; of a dream destroyed. 

My journey through Argentina has shown me anew the true cost of factory farming. Daniel’s story is but one of many testimonies that I’ve collected in Argentina and elsewhere. The details vary but the theme’s the same; factory farming damages people’s lives, as well as animal welfare and the planet.

I’m travelling with a journalist and a camera crew.  I’m researching a book about how our food affects people, animals and the environment in both distant lands and close to home.  I’m also filming for a new campaign exposing the raw truth behind factory farming, be it confined animals or the chemical-soaked crops used to feed them.

We arrived in the town of San Jorge.  We pulled up beside the police station and adjacent tall municipal centre where local media had gathered.  I was taking part in a press conference held by leaders of the ‘Stop Spraying’ campaign.  Local councilor, Esteban Roglich was joined on the platform by Dr Damien Verzanasi, a leading doctor against indiscriminate pesticide spraying.  The Doctor works with the victims of the agri-toxins relentlessly sprayed for industrial soya-growing.

I listened to harrowing tales of children near-fatally affected by blanket spraying of crops and communities from airplanes.  A small community had won a landmark battle to stop the planes showering their homes with powerful toxic pesticides.  A Bill was now being introduced to extend this vital protection to the entire town.  I found myself welcomed into this, the heartland of the battle against the ill-effects of industrial farming.  My message was one of solidarity.  I promised to take their story back to Europe where so much of the soya around here could well end up.

You see, Argentina is the soya meal capital of the world.  It accounts for half the world’s production for export.  Most of it is destined for markets such as Europe and China.  Soya meal is used to feed factory farmed animals.  And there’s the connection.  That is why I’m here; to link with people on the frontline of the fight for a better food system.  To call for a common sense approach to feeding people that doesn’t harm distant communities, their landscapes or farm animals.

In the UK, few of us know that the cheap meat on our shelves is all too often linked to the plight of distant communities and their countryside.  In recent years, a sizeable proportion of the soya meal fed to Britain’s factory farmed animals has come from here, the vast monocultures of Argentina’s diminished landscape.  Thankfully, solutions are close at home.  By choosing food from humanely reared animals, we can really help make a difference to imperiled communities, environments and the welfare of the farm animals themselves.

Compassion is a ‘Charity of the Month’ for Animal Friends Pet Insurance. If we get the most votes in their March Facebook poll we’ll receive an incredible £5000 donation towards our work to end factory farming! This really would make such a difference to Compassion in World Farming.

Every vote counts in this poll and it could make a big difference to our work. So please vote and spread the word…for the next three days.

I’ve included a little step by step list below:

• Firstly you visit this Animal Friends website and ‘like’ the page then – ‘Allow’ the app (I have been assured by Animal Friends Insurance that they cannot then access any of your personal Facebook data).
• Click on the button next to the Compassion in World Farming logo so that it goes pink then click ‘submit’.

It would be fantastic to have your support with this, we are currently in third place. Help us to put the farm animals first and to come first. £5,000 would make such a difference to the factory farmed animals that we are helping.

Thank you in advance.

I was joined by an outstanding panel of speakers including Dr Olivier De Schutter, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and Dr Modibo Traoré from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). It was our annual lecture in memory of Compassion’s founder, Peter Roberts MBE.

I believe that the present failure to feed people is nothing short of scandalous and requires urgent action. Industrialised animal rearing – factory farming – is a big factor holding back our ability to feed the world.

One in seven people in the world today are hungry. By the middle of the century, there will be 2 billion more mouths to feed. The world will need 70-100% more food by 2050 according to the UN. Some have leapt at this to justify ‘sustainable intensification’; a gobbledygook oxymoron; ‘business as usual’ industrial agriculture with green window dressing. I reject that approach as fundamentally flawed. The reality is that factory farming is not feeding the world. The grain-feeding of confined animals uses more food than it produces.
 
Put people first!
A third of the world’s cereal harvest is fed to farm animals; if it were used directly for human consumption it would feed about 3 billion people. Industrial livestock production involves feeding vast quantities of human-edible food to confined animals. Under more natural conditions, those animals would convert things that people don’t or won’t eat into edible food for humans. Ruminants, like cows and sheep, will turn grass into meat and milk. Chickens will search pasture, woodlands and orchards for food; producing meat and laying eggs. Along with pigs, they will recycle food waste with great enthusiasm.

Stop wasting food!
North America and Europe waste up to half their food; enough to satisfy the hunger of the world’s billion undernourished people between three and seven times over. Much of it ends up dumped in landfill. Much greater effort is needed to reduce food waste. Humanely kept pigs and poultry could have a big role as nature’s recyclers by turning unavoidable food waste into food products.

Food Sense
I believe we need ‘Food Sense’ – a common-sense approach to producing food; geared toward putting food into people’s mouths, rather than into factory farms and landfill. Keeping animals humanely is fundamental – on farms, not in factories:

1. Pasture-reared ruminants – food from ruminant animals, such as beef, lamb and milk, should be produced through grazing on mixed, rotational farms, permanent pastures or marginal lands. This converts plant-life that humans can’t eat into edible food. The wasteful practice of feeding grain to confined cattle for intensively reared beef or milk should be ended.

2. Pigs and poultry on food waste and foraging – pigs and poultry are nature’s great foragers and recyclers – the perfect recipients of food waste. They should no longer be factory farmed; instead, returned to the land, on mixed farms where they can forage and turn food waste into eggs and meat. The current practice of feeding them cereals and soya squanders vast amounts of food.

3. Food from mixed farms of crops and animals – mixed farms, where animals are rotated with soil-enhancing crop rotations should be encouraged. It’s better for the soil, farm animal welfare and the quality of our food than keeping animals in factory farms and growing their feed elsewhere using chemical-soaked monocultures.

4. Fish for people, not livestock – Up to a third of the fish landed in the world is not consumed directly by people. It’s used mostly as feed for farmed fish and other livestock. Plundering the seas to feed confined farmed animals is a scandal. Ending the practice would take pressure off over-exploited seas.

5. Avoiding over-eating meat – Most people in the west eat more animal fat and protein than they need. Reducing consumption of saturated animal fats by 30% would lead to about a 15% reduction in heart disease in the UK and Brazil. Balanced eating would help reduce the impact on our health as well as the environment and animal welfare.

The last half century has seen many farm animals disappear from the land to be caged, crammed or confined on factory farms. Our global society currently wastes more than half its food. With the prospect of 2 billion more people to feed by 2050, our food system needs to be more productive, more effective. That cannot mean simply doubling farm outputs in a business-as-usual fashion.

Just doubling output from our current food system would be like a water company with badly leaking pipes, losing half their water, simply laying down a second set of equally leaky pipes. Yes, it would double the water to peoples’ homes. It would also double the waste. Far better to have more effective pipes, free from leaks, than more of the same.

Last night, I began Compassion’s call for ‘Food Sense’; a common-sense approach to feeding the world. One that ends the competition for food between people and farm animals; reduces and recycles food waste; supports the keeping of animals on farms, not in factories; and delivers more effective food systems geared toward feeding all people, now and in the future.

Your support will be vital in getting the message across. Please download our ‘Food Sense’ brochure and share it far and wide. Thank you for being there.

Michael Tucker

We’ll remember Michael not just for being Compassion’s best dressed campaigner but for the long hours he spent outside the then Ministry of Agriculture in Whitehall, campaigning against live exports. Michael was at the heart of our long running vigil that took up daily residence outside the Minister’s office, personally collecting thousands of signatures in support of our campaign.

Instantly recognisable with his bowler hat, Michael’s daily presence on the Capital’s streets brought our campaign not just to the attention of decision makers in the corridors of power but also to the many tourists walking this route. He would spend many hours talking to people from across the globe about this issue and in return for a few moments of their time they would get a great picture with a true London city gent.

We’ll miss Michael, as will the cabbies, bus drivers and civil servants in Whitehall, who will no doubt remember Michael as one of the most colourful and effective campaigners farm animals have ever had working to improve their welfare.

In Victoria, Australia, 700,000 chickens, ranging in age from less than one week to not more than six weeks, were abandoned without food by Tip Top Poultry.  The Victorian Department of Primary Industries had to intervene with emergency supplies of food.  Reports suggest the company is likely to be charged with animal cruelty. 

In Turlock, California, 50,000 laying hens in battery cages were left without feed for two weeks.  About one-third died from starvation. Most of the remaining hens were euthanised by the local government authority, Stanislaus Animal Services Agency. The company involved faces prosecution. Some 4,460 hens were rescued in what is hailed by Animal Place as California’s largest farm animal rescue.

The link between these two incidents in Australia and the United States is that both firms were deep in financial trouble. They went bust in part because they could no longer afford increasing feed costs.

Factory farming is something no one can afford. It means animal cruelty, environmental damage and unhealthy products for us to eat, while denying vital resources to feed those who suffer from starvation. As our important report, Eating the Planet, showed you do not need factory farming to feed the world’s population. These are the reasons why we must end factory farming. And this is why I celebrate the European ban on barren battery cages as a step down the road toward cage free farming.

One of the positive effects of the European ban is the increasing demand for non-caged eggs in supermarkets and other businesses. Recent figures from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the UK show that nearly one in two eggs bought at the end of 2011 came from hens kept free range (45%), with barn and organic eggs combined (7%).

Compassion is committed to a whole food system which is kind to animals, honestly labelled and cares for the environment and consumer health. Clearly, much remains to be done. I know I can count on you, and our increasing ranks of supporters throughout the world, to work toward the day when we can celebrate all farm animals being free from cages and confinement.