Climamte Change

THE IMPACTS OF FACTORY FARMING
We rear and slaughter an estimated sixty five billion farm animals worldwide every year. Nearly 2 in every 3 of them spend their lives in factory farms - farming systems that prioritise maximum production above all else.
This modern phenomenon creates vast quantities of seemingly cheap meat, milk and eggs. But it comes as a cost.   Animals are treated as commodities and are often raised in intense confinement. Factory farming is highly dependent on large quantities of limited resources such as grain-based feed, water, energy and medication. In short:
• Factory farming is dangerous, threatening our health and wellbeing, and the welfare of farm animals
• Factory farming is unfair, threatening rural livelihoods and exacerbating poverty
• Factory farming is dirty, threatening the planet and its precious natural resources

The drought that ravaged East Africa in 2011 was reported by the BBC to be the worst in 60 years1. As the rains failed and the ground became parched, tens of thousands of families set-off in search of food and water for themselves and their livestock, struggling to find places that were better than where they had come from. The BBC reported that an estimated 100,000 people died from the famine caused by the drought. Severe weather events such as this are forecast to become more common as the effects of climate change worsen2. The farming of livestock, at the vast scale that factory farming allows, is a major contributor to climate change, causing 18% of all greenhouse gas emissions3.

'[O]ne woman, called Fatuma… had walked from her home in Somalia for a month and a half with her four children aged between three and 10 to reach a Kenyan camp. She said: "The weather was very harsh. It was so hot, and there was very little shelter. I left my husband in Somalia. I do not know if I will see him again… We had 15 goats. But they died one by one because of the drought. We had a well in my village, but it dried up. Then...