Farm Forward Launches
Farm Forward is committed to a simple but revolutionary idea: We can live without factory farming. We can live without intensive confinement operations that devastate our natural resources and contribute to global warming more than any other industry on the planet.1 We can live without abusing animals, drugging them, genetically engineering them, and denying them the ability to engage in most of their natural behaviors. We can live without polluting our waterways, fouling our air, and emptying entire marine ecosystems of life.
In fact, we can live, and live better, without the whole unwieldy apparatus of industrialized farming that has replaced the small family farmer and an evolving tradition of animal husbandry with factory workers in blighted rural communities.
Here's how:
We can fundamentally change the way we raise animals
Right now, 99 percent of poultry producers are using intensive confinement techniques that take advantage of the fact that chickens and turkeys are given no legal protection from abuse. But a small network of poultry farmers at Good Shepherd Ranch have combined traditional animal husbandry with modern technology to develop an innovative way of raising birds that is both humane and sustainable. Farm Forward is helping Good Shepherd Ranch to position itself as a progressive leader in the industry and supporting an initiative to pass its techniques on to a new generation of farmers.
We can reevaluate our understanding of farming
Now that the devastating effects of industrialized farming have been abundantly documented (by the United Nations,2 the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production,3 and a slew of animal protection and environmental nonprofit groups), there is a strong cultural backlash taking place. Farm Forward is working with scholars, writers, and religious leaders to raise awareness about the worst abuses in agribusiness and the best alternatives to factory farms. Bestselling novelist Jonathan Safran Foer and University of Colorado Distinguished Professor Bernard Rollin are two of the respected voices working closely with Farm Forward to help change the way our culture approaches farming.
We can work with corporations to increase transparency and encourage genuine animal welfare and sustainability standards
Large companies are unwilling to make big changes in the way they do business on their own, but given the right incentives, corporations can learn to adapt in a way that makes sense for everyone. Farm Forward is working with other nonprofit organizations to help give fast food companies, supermarkets, and restaurant chains a reason to demand reform from producers. Through negotiations, undercover investigations, and public awareness campaigns, we have already seen important and far-reaching changes in the agribusiness industry. And we are just getting started.
Right now, we are at a crossroads. In the 10,000-year history of animal agriculture, the foolishness of factory farming amounts to little more than a short, depressing chapter. But if things continue the way they have been going, its effects may be irreversible. With our planet, our health, and our ethics at stake, the question is not whether we can live without factory farming, but how much longer can we afford to live with it.
Please join us in moving farming forward. Sign up for the Farm Forward mailing list to receive updates about our work and important information about how you can get involved.
- 1. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Livestock’s Long Shadow, 2007, http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.htm
- 2. ibid.
- 3. Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, Putting Meat on The Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America, April 2008, http://www.ncifap.org/.
