Last week seemed like a whirl! It came off the back of a planning trip to New York. It started with a catch up with the Tubney Charitable Trust, the wonderful organization that has given game-changing support to Compassion’s work with food companies and our European campaigning. Then it was deep into budget meetings with my senior team ahead of our next trustee’s meeting.

Mid-week saw me writing for my book on the future of food before brainstorming with Roland Bonney, director of the Food Animal Initiative (FAI) in Oxford. FAI is dedicated to developing practical and economic farming systems that treat animals better.

Thursday, a five-year planning session with my home team was followed by a highly engaging two hour session in Devon. I was at the Duchy College rural leadership course at Dartington Hall. I led a two-hour session with about twenty future leaders of the farming community on how to feed a growing population humanely and sustainably. I made the case for why factory farming and so-called ‘sustainable intensification’ were far from sustainable. That returning farm animals to the land and cutting down on the huge food waste inherent in intensive livestock rearing were the ways forward. That we needed effective food production, rather than the current scenario worldwide, where nearly half the food produced never reaches a human mouth. More in future posts…

Friday saw me on a permanently housed dairy in Somerset talking about the future of dairying. It was a great opportunity to share perspectives and learn more. There is much we still need to do to ensure that, during the grazing season, cows are kept in fields where they belong.

A brief stop for coffee, cake and conversation with one of our major supporters rounded off a week on the road. On Saturday, I was delighted to collect Helen, my wife, from hospital after a ten-day stay. Today, we’ll be with our adopted hens before the next week begins.

Take, for example, the prescription of low-level doses of antibiotics for intensively farmed animals. These drugs are not to treat specific sick animals but entire populations of chickens or pigs. Antibiotics are routinely given because of their stressful, unsanitary, overcrowded and confined conditions. They’re often physiologically stretched to the limit to maximise productivity. In short, factory farmed animals are inevitably at high risk of infection.

The antibiotics are given as a pre-emptive move to prevent and control bacterial infections. If these animals were not kept in factory farms but instead outdoors in humane and sustainable conditions, this indiscriminate use of antibiotics would not be necessary.

Farm animal welfare and the use of antibiotics is an issue that is not only the concern of Compassion. It is also the concern of our friends at the Soil Association and Sustain, the alliance for better food and farming.

Earlier this year, I wrote here about how we came together to form the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics. Together we aim to halt the routine use of antibiotics in farmed animals.

Today, I want to bring you up to date with the latest developments, particularly our new report, ‘Case Study of a Health Crisis’.

Our report shows that over-use of antibiotics in factory farming, especially at low doses over several days, is contributing to the huge threat of a world without effective cures for bacterial infections. We set out the evidence that:

• Farm animals are breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant strains of Salmonella, Campylobacter and E. coli;
• Farm animals harbour antibiotic-resistant strains of MRSA that could become virulent;

and has contributed to:

• Diminishing effectiveness in human medicine of critically important antibiotics such as cephalosporins.

The Report’s Foreword is written by Professor Christopher Butler, Head of the Institute of Primary Care and Public Health at Cardiff University and Dean of Research in the School of Medicine. He writes that the challenge is to ‘reserve antibiotics for those who will achieve meaningful clinical benefit and to keep them away from those who are unlikely to benefit’.

We want EU-wide action to reduce the use of non-therapeutic antibiotics in farm animals. We want a target to reduce overall antibiotic use on EU farms by 50% by 2015. This should go hand-in-hand with specific controls on the use in livestock of ‘critically important’ human antibiotics.

To be clear, we thoroughly believe in the use of antibiotics to treat genuine illness in farm animals. But to use antibiotics as a pre-emptive measure, a tool to prop-up an otherwise unhealthy and unsustainable system, is simply unacceptable.

This report is available free to download. Please visit now our Save Our Antibiotics campaign page on our web site.

Professor Butler speaks of the need for ‘Antibiotic Stewardship’ to ‘preserve the precious reservoir of antibiotic susceptibility that humanity has left to it’.

It’s something we need urgently. If we don’t, then factory farming will not only continue to cause unimaginable suffering to farm animals, it will also threaten the future of our antibiotics; and with it, our own health and well-being.

Based on the number of visits made last year to A Compassionate World, two of the three most popular blogs were about chickens.

The most popular, ‘Have you seen the news?’ celebrated the historic agreement reached in the USA that could see an end to the barren battery cage there.

‘Why is animal welfare of any importance?’ was the second most popular blog. Here, I explained why Compassion is concerned with farmed animals. It isn’t just because of their welfare. It’s also because factory farming is a wastefully inefficient way of producing food and it harms the environment.

Coming in third place was ‘Reflections on a cage ban’ where I made the link between the EU barren cage ban and the ex-battery hens adopted by my wife Helen and I.

Huckle

‘Back at home, our new hen nestles into a bed of straw,’ I wrote. ‘It’s the first time she has ever made a nest. She lays an egg. I can see the difference made to the life of this one sensitive creature. How wondrous then that, from 1st January next year, the tireless efforts of compassionate people everywhere will have touched the lives of so many millions more.’

Another chicken related topic I wrote about was our Good Farm Animal Welfare Awards. This included the Good Egg Award given to companies that pledge to use or sell only cage-free eggs.

But I didn’t just focus on chickens in last year’s 65 blog posts. I also wrote about the successful campaign against the proposed mega-dairy at Nocton, Lincolnshire. In November, I travelled through California’s Central Valley. I saw for myself the devastating impact that mega-dairies are having on the environment, human health and animal welfare. I saw how thousands of cows are confined in muddy paddocks and fed unnatural diets. With such great progress being made with chickens, it’s plain wrong to bring cows into confinement when they belong in fields during the grazing season.

This past year saw us add a new feature called the Factory Farming Facts video series. Five short videos explain the impact factory farming has on animals and our food, health, resources and environment. If you’ve not seen them already, please do take a look. Also please take a moment to visit ‘Facts and Figures’ and ‘Jargon Buster’ to deepen your understanding of factory farming and get the information you need to persuade that relation, friend or colleague who isn’t yet convinced. Can’t find what you need there? Send me a question at ‘Ask Philip’!

My very first blog post in May 2009 focused on Compassion’s founder, ex-dairy farmer Peter Roberts. He and his wife, Anna, began this organisation when they saw chicken battery farming replacing traditional methods of farming. This wasn’t progress, they thought, it was cruel madness. Long before many others, they made the link between factory farming and world hunger. Sadly, Peter is no longer with us but this Christmas Anna, now in her eighties, spoke to me about her pleasure in knowing battery cages are now illegal in the EU; “Wonderful” she said, toasting with her teacup!

Thanks to you, our campaign against factory farming is making real progress. I look forward to seeing you here at ‘A compassionate world’ in 2012 so that we can continue to work together to bring about true compassion in world farming.

Joanna Lumley at the launch

After the New Year’s festivities, back-to-work Britain has been battered with gale-force winds. Outside, it’s another blustery day. Fences have been torn down, trains have been disrupted. But it hasn’t stopped a scrum of journalists and photographers turning up to catch the moment. We clamber down the bus’s narrow passenger staircase. In the shadow of the pillars and domes of the National Gallery, the unmistakably stylish figure of Joanna poses dramatically for the cameras. Behind her, our bus is decked out in a white banner advertisement showing sheep peering haplessly from the slats of a livestock truck. Beside it are the words, “They can’t ring the bell when they want to get off”. It’s the beginning of a nationwide campaign to renew the spotlight on a trade that has caused unimaginable suffering to so many animals for far too long.

Three times more animals, mainly sheep and calves, were exported live from Britain last year than the year before. It’s a deeply worrying trend. Over 200 trucks trundled through Kent to the continent in 2011, taking sheep to their deaths in far away slaughterhouses and calves to continental veal farms that all too often operate standards so poor they would be illegal in Britain. Over 75,000 animals in all were exported live from Britain last year. Thankfully, it’s a far cry from the 2.5 million animals that used to cross the English Channel before the nationwide protests in the early 1990s. But it’s a worrying increase nonetheless.

Joanna is resplendent in a slim black outfit topped off with a burgundy-beige tweed jacket, golden hair tied back in a pony-tail. She speaks fluidly, passionately and persuasively: “The cruelty involved in the trade is shocking!” She points to new footage showing animals caught up in the trade. They are exhausted, without food or water, forced to eat their filthy bedding. The scenes are a snapshot of the millions of farm animals transported across the European Union on journeys sometimes lasting up to 2 days. “The numbers from Britain have reduced dramatically since 15 years ago but are again on the rise” Joanna explains, “this campaign is aimed at bringing the spotlight back on the issue.”

Joanna is a committed and tireless campaigner, not least on this issue, having taken part in countless media events and press conferences calling for an end to the trade. I remember one day in particular in the mid-1990s when Joanna helped us launch a new undercover investigation showing the latest evidence of horrendous cruelty involved in animal transport. Joanna was watching the film for the first time at the conference. As she watched, she cried. That was the photo that captured the imagination of the cameras and the hearts of the general public.

A decade and a half later, we’re launching a new campaign; this time aimed at finishing off a remnant trade that really should have been left behind in the 20th Century. Buses throughout Britain will carry our message over the coming weeks. We will increase the pressure on Brussels, Westminster and Ramsgate; the latter being the only British port taking live animals for slaughter. We will encourage people everywhere to join the campaign – www.stopliveexports.com Your support, as ever, is hugely appreciated. Atop the red bus, Joanna declares 2012 as “the year for change – let’s make it happen!” I couldn’t agree more.

Regrettably, McDonald’s in the USA appears not to be keeping up with their European counterparts.

A recent undercover investigation by Mercy for Animals (MfA) documented shocking animal cruelty at the farms of one of the suppliers to McDonald’s in the USA.

Hidden-camera footage detailed hens crammed into filthy wire cages unable to stretch their wings. Investigators caught on tape workers burning off the beaks of young chicks without any painkiller and then callously throwing them into cages. The bodies of decomposing hens were found alongside hens still laying eggs for human consumption.

Compassion applauds McDonald’s in Europe for their enlightened animal welfare policies. But we condemn the treatment of chickens in the USA as documented by Mercy for Animals.

We will work with MfA and other American animal protection organisations as well as McDonald’s USA to ensure they implement the same animal welfare policies as their European colleagues. It’s encouraging to see McDonald’s recognise the issues raised by MfA’s investigation. It said the video documented behaviour which was ‘disturbing and completely unacceptable’ and dropped the company as one of its egg suppliers.

It’s getting better in Europe, with the recent ban on barren battery cages. But remaining is the travesty of the so-called “enriched” cage; bigger cages with woefully designed objects at best offering a pallid version of what hens really need to carry out their natural behaviour. It’s almost as if a scientist looked at individual behaviours in isolation and oversimplified them to the point of meaninglessness. Then along came a penny-pinching engineer with a fraction of the budget needed to deliver. The result falls well short of what is needed; a crude obtusity of a system in place of a true solution. Thankfully, food companies big and small, together with consumers are seeing through this illusion and are choosing cage-free eggs; better all round for the welfare of the hens and the quality of the resulting food.

When I’m with my hens, I find no need to be anthropomorphic; to project human feelings to animals. To me, watching hens for any length of time makes it obvious that they are neither human nor automata. They are sentient creatures that can feel pain, suffering and well-being, whose needs and wants we deny to the impoverishment of the very soul of our society. Alternatively, we can let them live how they are meant to live; and rejoice at the better world it creates for us all.

You can read previous instalments of ‘Living with hens’ here: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V.

New Year is a time of both reflection and looking forard. We can look toward a better future for Europe’s hens. And, by way of reflection, here’s what I wrote way back in 1999 when it was first won:

REFLECTION (1999)

It takes a lot to get something banned. Especially when that something is dominant throughout an entire industry. Churning out a staple product – eggs – for the best part of the European continent. Yet, we did it. The battery cage is to be banned.

Nearly a decade ago, I joined CIWF. Veal crates had just been banned in the UK. Legislation to ban them on the continent was but a dream. Breeding pigs were still being crated or chained throughout their pregnancies in this country. And, if you talked about animals as sentient beings, the general response – “animals are what?”

Now, a decade on, Europe too is phasing out the veal crate, the UK’s pregnant sows can no longer be confined, and not only do people talk freely of animals as sentient, the EU has written it into law!

As for the battery cage, the epitome of what we mean by the term ‘factory farming’, achieving a ban seemed a mountainous challenge. It was the horror of the battery, and just this challenge that, 32 years ago, inspired a man of great courage and vision, Peter Roberts, to set up CIWF.

This summer, 32 years on, animal campaigners throughout Europe gathered in Luxembourg for the outcome of EU negotiations that would decide the future for cages. I will never forget the overwhelming sense of elation at hearing that cages would be banned! Standing on the steps of the Council building, nervously hanging on to every word, as Nick Brown, the UK’s Agriculture Minister explained the detail of the agreement. An enduring feeling of privilege at being there on the day that history was made. An end in sight to the nightmare of the battery, and the beginning of a dream come true.

It took a mammoth effort. Over tens of years, perhaps hundreds of animal welfare groups did their bit, thousands of people protested, and millions bought free-range eggs. The political and economic odds always seemed to be stacked against us. But together we did it. We have pushed back the boundaries. There is still much more to do.

In achieving this, the most far-reaching piece of legislation in the history of animal welfare, we need no longer look to future challenges with fear or despondency. Time scales can be frightening. But great things don’t happen overnight. If conservationists plant a new oak wood, it may take a century or two to grow. Yet, agreement to ban battery cages in Europe took only 32 years! Yes, 32 years too long. But great cruelties – engrained in the very fabric of our society – take time to eradicate. That time has come. We now have momentum. There is hope. By continuing to work together, there will be compassion in this cruel world after all.

Battery eggs from caged hens would have unappetisingly pale yolks if it wasn’t for the chemical colourant incorporated into their monotonous food ration. By contrast, our hens need no such artificial props to help them produce healthy-looking eggs. They have deep ochre or orange-coloured yolks that reflect the variety of their diet. At regular intervals, my wife Helen boxes up the eggs and distributes them amongst eager neighbours, friends and family. With yolks flavoured and coloured by the hens’ varied endeavour, we are now well used to getting comments back telling us that our hens lay the best eggs tasted; better even than commercial free range eggs!

Most of our eggs are given to people in our local community. Our son, Luke, enjoys one or two at the weekend for his breakfast. From time to time, Helen will have a bake-fest, resulting in the freezer being stuffed full of quiches and bakes of every description.

Helen’s mum, Anna Roberts, is now in her eighties. In the 1960s, Anna and her dairy farmer husband, Peter, set up Compassion in World Farming to campaign against the tide of factory farming that was sweeping the agricultural landscape. When three small girls were tucked up in bed, Anna and Peter would be in the back room of their country cottage churning out the latest campaign literature calling for a fair deal for hens and other farm animals. It seems that hens have a special place in Anna’s heart. And wanting to see them out of battery cages was a big motivation for their work. Encouraging people to choose free range eggs instead of eating the product of the battery was a big part of her life.

A decade into the 21st Century, Anna has little appetite and eats like a garden sparrow. There is one exception; when we prepare one of Helen’s home-laid egg quiches. Here, Anna seems to rediscover her appetite, eating every last crumb! It is wonderful to see her enjoying a good meal, particularly provided by our hens. It is a fitting way for them to give something back for all the hard work and sacrifice during those earlier years. Days when speaking out for farm animals was often seen as a cranky eccentricity; a far cry from the mainstream concern of consumers, companies and legislators that it now is, at least, in Europe. Without doubt, Anna has laid the foundations on which the modern movement for farm animal welfare is built; testimony to a compassionate heart, a strong will and a far-reaching vision of how the world should be.

You can read previous instalments of ‘Living with hens’ here: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV.

Read more about our battle for food sense and against factory farming’s new frontier here.

However, factory farming’s new frontier is the US-style mega-dairy. I saw dozens of these recently in California’s Central Valley and they were far from pretty. Thousands of cows crowded on dirt; not a blade of grass anywhere. This is what is known as ‘zero-grazing’.

We were pleased that, after months of campaigning, a proposal for a 3,700 cow mega-dairy in Lincolnshire, UK was withdrawn. The average dairy herd in Britain is currently about a hundred cows. We were deeply disappointed when Powys County Council ignored strong opposition to agree a 1,000 cow mega-dairy at Leighton near Welshpool. It is a set-back that has only strengthened our resolve to oppose this new threat, not just in the UK, but across Europe.

I don’t believe that big always means bad; intensification is the real crux of the issue. Britain’s biggest breeding pig farm, for example, is run along extensive lines with the sows kept outdoors. But highly intensive farming methods often go hand-in-hand with scale, as is the case with mega-dairies and meat chicken farms.

Some in government seem to have fallen in love with the term, ‘sustainable intensification’. It’s an oxymoron, gobbledygook, a contradiction in terms. Increased intensification is the route to diminished sustainability and to yet more animal welfare problems.

It’s hard to see how it can be sustainable to keep animals permanently indoors; especially when it involves moving dairy cows off pasture and onto feed grown elsewhere, often with copious fossil-fuel based fertilisers and chemical pesticides.

Despite the undoubted progress in Europe, 80% of farm animals continue to be factory farmed. That is why we’ve launched our new campaign, Filthy Business. To draw attention to the fact that factory farming is still very real in Europe. And that our taxes are paying for it!

By far the greatest proportion of factory farmed animals in Europe is intensively reared poultry. Next come pigs. Numerically, dairy cows make up a very small proportion of the total of animals factory farmed.

Estimates for intensive dairying – where the cows are permanently housed (zero-grazed) on farms big or small – are hard to come by. An industry estimate for intensive dairying in the UK suggests less than 10% of cows are permanently housed; we estimate that the overall figure for Europe is similar. If anyone has better estimates, we’d be glad to hear from you. Estimate or not, one thing is clear; if we don’t fight mega-dairies, if we don’t expose ‘sustainable intensification’ for the nonsense that it is, yet more animals and the quality of our food will suffer.

The battle for food sense is well and truly on. Help us fight the Filthy Business of factory farming. Help us ensure a better future for Europe’s farmers, farm animals and our food.

Thank you.