Farm Forward: Against Animal Abuse in Factory Farming

According to non-profit advo­cacy group Farm Forward, in the last 70 years—a tiny blip in the his­tory of farming—cruel, unsus­tain­able fac­tory farms have grown to the point where they pro­duce more than 99 per­cent of the domes­ti­cated farm ani­mals raised to pro­vide food in the United States. Globally, live­stock now cover 30 per­cent of the earth’s sur­face. During this same period, indus­trial farm­ing meth­ods have dev­as­tated rural com­mu­ni­ties by reduc­ing the num­ber of farm­ers in the nation by 85 percent—even as the US pop­u­la­tion has more than doubled.

Farm Forward goes on to state that, given the unprece­dented scale of pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion, it is no sur­prise that the food choices we make when we eat, along with how and where these foods are pro­duced, have a big­ger impact on our own health, the ani­mals’ well-being, global warm­ing and other major envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns than any other sin­gle activity.

Industrial Inhumanity

“The def­i­n­i­tions of what a fac­tory method is can be open to a bit of inter­pre­ta­tion,” Ben Goldsmith, direc­tor of Farm Forward, told Organic Connections. “But for the aver­age consumer—you know, for me, my fam­ily, my friends and my community—the com­mon prac­tices within these facil­i­ties would war­rant cruelty-to-animals charges if done to a dog or a cat. I don’t know if there is really any ques­tion in our minds that what is hap­pen­ing is wrong, and it is cer­tainly more indica­tive of an indus­trial sys­tem than any­thing we might imag­ine, based on some idyl­lic farm from days of old.

“Because of this indus­try, turkeys are no longer capa­ble of repro­duc­ing with­out human inter­fer­ence,” Goldsmith explained. “Chickens are bred to grow so quickly they are not able to stand or stand freely after just sev­eral months of their lives, and they cer­tainly can’t live out the nor­mal life span that they once could. Cows and cat­tle are con­fined to feed­lots by the thou­sands and cramped in filthy con­di­tions. Hogs in most states are rou­tinely con­fined to crates so small that they can’t turn around.

“Recently there was an inves­ti­ga­tion into a chicken hatch­ery by a lead­ing ani­mal advo­cacy orga­ni­za­tion that made national news. This video was shot in one of the largest hatch facil­i­ties in the United States and is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of true indus­try stan­dards. The hatch­ery was pro­duc­ing baby chicks that were intended for egg pro­duc­tion. When the chicks hatch, the males and females are sep­a­rated; females are sent to facil­i­ties that pro­duce eggs and the males are destroyed.

“Once grown, the chicks are con­fined in cages where each bird has less than a stan­dard piece of printer paper’s worth of space. The vast major­ity of these hens will live their entire lives crammed into these tiny cages, stand­ing on a wire-mesh floor.”

Similar con­di­tions were also graph­i­cally depicted in the recent doc­u­men­tary Food, Inc. (see Organic Connections, September–October 2009).

Medicated Food

Due to the envi­ron­ments in which these ani­mals are raised, increas­ing amounts of antibi­otics and antimi­cro­bials are used to ward off dis­ease. According to a recent report by the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production enti­tled Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America, “Major risk stems from the rou­tine use of spe­cially for­mu­lated feeds that incor­po­rate antibi­otics, other antimi­cro­bials, and hor­mones to pre­vent dis­ease and induce rapid growth. The use of low doses of antibi­otics as food addi­tives facil­i­tates the rapid evo­lu­tion and pro­lif­er­a­tion of antibiotic-resistant strains of bac­te­ria. The result­ing poten­tial for ‘resis­tance reser­voirs’ and inter­species trans­fer of resis­tance deter­mi­nants is a high-priority pub­lic health concern.”

The Pew report also con­cluded: “The present sys­tem of pro­duc­ing food ani­mals in the United States is not sus­tain­able and presents an unac­cept­able level of risk to pub­lic health and dam­age to the envi­ron­ment, as well as unnec­es­sary harm to the ani­mals we raise for food.”

Reversing the Trend

Fortunately, Farm Forward is mak­ing great strides in revers­ing these trends. Farm Forward imple­ments inno­v­a­tive strate­gies to pro­mote con­sci­en­tious food choices, reduce farm ani­mal suf­fer­ing, and advance sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture. Incorporated in 2007, they are at the fore­front of prag­matic efforts to trans­form the way our nation eats and farms. Their exec­u­tive staff and board have been work­ing on behalf of farmed ani­mals since the early 1990s, and this accu­mu­lated exper­tise helps solid­ify Farm Forward’s unique role as the first cen­trist orga­ni­za­tion where dis­parate inter­ests opposed to the abuse of ani­mals on fac­tory farms can unite in coor­di­nated and effec­tive ways.

Farm Forward’s board of direc­tors is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of forces that have been united and would most likely have never come together under other cir­cum­stances. It includes John Mackey, chair­man of the board and CEO of Whole Foods Market; Frank Reese, owner and founder of Good Shepherd Turkey Ranch and pres­i­dent of the Standard Bred Poultry Institute; Jonathan Safran Foer, nov­el­ist; Jonathan K. Crane, PhD, ordained rabbi and ethi­cist; and sev­eral nota­bles in other fields.

Much of Farm Forward’s work is done through con­sult­ing. “Our CEO, Steve Gross, has been pro­vid­ing con­sult­ing ser­vices to some of the largest ani­mal advo­cacy non-profits in America for many years,” Goldsmith related. “He has helped groups like PETA [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals] cre­ate mass cor­po­rate cam­paigns, which have resulted in some of the most mean­ing­ful vic­to­ries for farm ani­mals ever. And he’s been instru­men­tal in nego­ti­a­tions between these advo­cacy groups and cor­po­ra­tions to find com­mon ground where the lives of ani­mals can be improved while cor­po­ra­tions can con­tinue to do what they do best, which is to pro­duce prod­ucts that peo­ple want.”

Gross has helped lead suc­cess­ful nego­ti­a­tions between ani­mal advo­cacy groups and some of the nation’s biggest companies—including McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Safeway and Whole Foods Market—which have bet­tered the liv­ing con­di­tions for hun­dreds of mil­lions of ani­mals. Gross is cur­rently work­ing with ani­mal advo­cacy groups such as Global Animal Partnership, The Humane Society of the United States, and PETA to address the urgent need for increased audit­ing to ensure that com­pa­nies prop­erly imple­ment ani­mal wel­fare improve­ments fol­low­ing a nego­ti­a­tion. Experience has shown that audit­ing, which is often neglected, is a cru­cial part of real progress in chip­ping away at the most trou­bling meth­ods of fac­tory farming.

Click on any image above to see a larger version.

Farm Forward has also been work­ing to get laws changed in favor of ani­mals. “Just in Michigan we’ve seen some incred­i­bly promis­ing leg­is­la­tion pass recently, which will increase the life span of hogs and chick­ens con­fined in cages so small that they can’t turn around for their entire lives,” Goldsmith said. “It echoes the land­mark leg­is­la­tion in California that took place in November 2008, which did much the same—mandating changes to farm pol­icy and ani­mal han­dling, no longer per­mit­ting preg­nant sows, as well as chick­ens that pro­duce eggs, to be con­fined to cages so small that they can’t turn around.”

Another major step by Farm Forward was achieved in November 2009, when board mem­ber and best-selling author Jonathan Safran Foer released his book Eating Animals—a unique explo­ration and deeply per­sonal expo­si­tion of the issues that arise from fac­tory farm­ing and the alter­na­tives that are avail­able to con­sci­en­tious con­sumers. The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle and Esquire call Foer “bril­liant,” and his pre­vi­ous works have been trans­lated into 30 languages.

It is through such vehi­cles that Farm Forward helps to bring about the change that will really count—a shift in gen­eral think­ing. “One of the major ways that we are mak­ing a dif­fer­ence is pro­mot­ing the pro­duc­tion of cul­tur­ally sig­nif­i­cant works to change the con­ver­sa­tion about food in this coun­try and to change how we indi­vid­u­ally and together think about our oblig­a­tions to the ani­mals we are eat­ing,” said Goldsmith. “I believe that Jonathan’s book does just that. And the response to this book that we observed from peo­ple on all sides of this issue, even before it was pub­lished, is just so heart­en­ing to see. This con­ver­sa­tion is really begin­ning to shift.”

Good Shepherd Turkey Ranch

Some very impor­tant work is also being done by Farm Forward board mem­ber Frank Reese, who runs the Good Shepherd Turkey Ranch in Lindsborg, Kansas. “Frank Reese main­tains what are now the last viable flocks of true standard-bred her­itage turkeys and chick­ens in the United States,” Goldsmith con­tin­ued. “They are one of the last diverse and viable flocks in the world. Frank is com­mit­ted to pro­tect­ing and pre­serv­ing poul­try species that are capa­ble of, among other things, nat­ural repro­duc­tion. They lead long, pro­duc­tive lives out­doors and are not given any antibi­otics. For a large per­cent­age of their lives they’re free to come and go, and they have immune sys­tems that have been lost in indus­try poul­try for decades.”

This year Reese plans to breed 15,000 standard-bred turkeys, 40,000 standard-bred chick­ens, 500 ducks and 200 geese. He sells them through a local mar­ket and online through Heritage Foods USA (www.heritagefoodsusa.com) and his own site (www.reeseturkeys.com).

A new label for Reese’s poul­try has been approved by the USDA, a com­pli­cated process. It includes the descrip­tive words Heritage and Standard Bred, and spec­i­fies that the chick­ens are not younger than 16 weeks old.

A her­itage chicken is a stan­dard breed of chicken (as defined by the American Poultry Association)—such as the Buckeye, the Java or the Jersey Giant—which can repro­duce nat­u­rally, grows slowly and can thrive out­doors. These birds were once raised by small-scale fam­ily farm­ers around the coun­try and bred for har­di­ness, sur­viv­abil­ity and fla­vor. They are now in dan­ger of extinc­tion because of mass-market industrialization.

What Can Be Done

“Everyone can help by mak­ing con­sci­en­tious choices every time they sit down to eat, and cer­tainly by learn­ing more at farm­for­ward .com or by read­ing Jonathan Safran Foer’s new book,” Goldsmith con­cluded. “Retailers specif­i­cally can reach out to orga­ni­za­tions like Farm Forward to begin a dis­cus­sion on the kinds of prac­tices they should be favor­ing for var­i­ous types of ani­mal agri­cul­ture, and then take a look at their own poli­cies of what they can do to encour­age their pro­duc­ers to strive to incor­po­rate the newest and most humane and sus­tain­able prac­tices avail­able to them.

“There are a great num­ber of small changes that make a large dif­fer­ence, and often it takes the retail­ers reach­ing out to their own sup­pli­ers to demand these changes before any­thing is done. So it’s very impor­tant that retail­ers begin to under­stand the amount of power and respon­si­bil­ity they have in deter­min­ing the way the prod­uct they sell is pro­duced, and main­tain rela­tion­ships to the extent pos­si­ble with indi­vid­ual farm­ers to ensure that the farm­ers are uphold­ing these stan­dards that their cus­tomers would expect. They can also sup­port pro­gres­sive farm­ers like Frank Reese by sup­ply­ing his prod­uct and by edu­cat­ing cus­tomers on the dif­fer­ence between a Good Shepherd Turkey Ranch her­itage turkey and the other turkeys avail­able in the supermarket.”

To get fur­ther infor­ma­tion on what’s being done, visit www.farmforward.com.