11 Secrets of Factory Farming
Unveiling the devastating impacts of factory farming that Big Ag tries so hard to keep hidden.
One of the most destructive industries on the planet is also one of the most secretive. The industrial farming of animals for meat, eggs, and milk creates vast profits for a handful of people while driving environmental and health crises and causing suffering on an unimaginable scale. It’s time to unveil some of the worst impacts of the factory farming industry.
1. Factory farming is the leading cause of deforestation
Industrially farming animals for meat, dairy and eggs is the leading driver of tropical deforestation. This is caused predominantly by rearing cows for beef, but also by growing the soy that supplies feed for factory-farmed animals – including dairy cows, pigs, chickens and fish – all over the world.
2 Factory farming is driving wild animals to extinction
When forests and other habitats are destroyed, the wild animals who depend on them die out. Already, wild animal populations have declined by an average of 70 percent since 1970 and this is a crisis that is affecting the whole world.
3. Factory farms pollute waterways and get away with it
The billions of farmed animals have to poop, and that poop has to go somewhere. But there is far too much of it and it is toxic. It inevitably ends up in waterways, where it destroys ecosystems and makes waters dangerous to swim in. In the UK, farms cause more river pollution than water companies but they are still not held to account, and the environmental catastrophe is only getting worse.
4. Factory farms incarcerate billions of animals a year… and are legally permitted to mutilate them
Ninety per cent of the animals farmed in the UK are factory farmed. They endure intense confinement, the removal of their young, untreated diseases and injuries, forced insemination, and multiple mutilations – from their tails being amputated to castration and their teeth being ground down. Due to industry lobbying, these mutilations remain legal and can be inflicted without pain relief.
5. Factory farms exploits workers who pay a heavy price
Workers in the animal farming and slaughter industries are often paid poverty wages while being expected to undertake some of the most dangerous jobs on the planet. Among the toxic chemicals and frightened animals, sharp knives and complex machinery, they must make split-second decisions, and even the strongest and most experienced may succumb to injury and death. Mental health problems, substance abuse, violence, forced labour and even child labour are hallmarks of this most exploitative of industries.
6. Factory farms help create antibiotic-resistant pathogens that kill people
The filth and squalor of factory farms – where almost all meat, dairy, and eggs come from – are perfect breeding grounds for disease. Just to try and keep the animals alive in those conditions requires large amounts of antibiotics. But this drives antibiotic-resistance and it is wasting our only chance to have effective drugs for humans in need. More than 2,300 people in Britain died with an antibiotic-resistant infection in 2024 and that figure continues to rise.
7. Factory farming has created the perfect environment for the next pandemic and they are in our communities
Inside those squalid factory farms, viruses circulate among the tightly-packed, immunocompromised animals. Inevitably, those viruses escape. If we are lucky, someone gets mildly sick and then recovers. If we are unlucky, infection spreads from person to person, causing severe illness and death. Intensive poultry and pig farms are known to be the most dangerous, with one bird flu variant (H5N1) killing 60 per cent of the people it infects. It is widely thought that factory farms could unleash the next pandemic.
8. The factory farming industry is worth more than $1 trillion and it has made some of the richest people on the planet
Don’t be fooled by the idyllic farmyard images. Today’s farms are vast warehouses into which large numbers of animals are crammed. In this cut-throat industry, vast profits from sales, taxpayer subsidies and other grants and tax breaks flow ever upwards. Individual farmers rarely get rich but the vast agribusiness empires that control them do. The family that owns Cargill, for example, includes 14 billionaires. Meanwhile, their business pollutes, destroys and sickens.
9. The factory farming industry invests millions in lobbying to prevent better regulation
All over the world, factory farming corporations have a seat at the top political tables. They pay huge sums of money to politicians to prevent regulations being enacted, to ensure reports are watered down and exposés spiked. One of the world’s largest agribusiness firms, JBS, which has its meat products on shelves in the UK and all over the world, has admitted to bribing 1,800 politicians and is associated with insider trading, price fixing and corruption. Why are we giving these people our money?
10. Factory farms are exempt from many animal welfare laws and seem to just ignore environmental laws
It is illegal to keep a dog or a cat the way that chickens and pigs are kept. It is illegal to mutilate companion animals without pain relief. It is illegal to cut their throats. But the factory farming industry is exempt from the laws that protect other animals and as for environmental laws… well, they appear to just ignore those with impunity.
11. The factory farming industry is a master at misleading advertising through greenwashing and humane washing
The reason you may not know all of this is because the industry is allowed to get away with misleading advertising and claims. It says animals enjoy high welfare on British farms. It says the industry is beneficial for the planet. It says that everything is just lovely down on the old family farm. None of this is true.
