Advocacy & Funding for Farmed Animal Welfare

Campaigns focusing on farmed animal welfare are relatively recent events of global animal advocacy, even though the UK animal protection movement is frequently identified as being launched when Richard Martin introduced his Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act in 1822. However, farmed animal advocacy only began following the 1964 publication of Animal Machines, a book by Ruth Harrison. In her book, she describes how farm animals were suffering in new systems of industrialized animal agriculture (dubbed “Factory Farming”) and were mostly viewed as units of production rather than sentient animals. From 1950 to 1990, the movement primarily addressed companion and laboratory animal welfare, even though the Humane Slaughter Act was passed and revised in the US during this period. It should be noted that the first organization to focus specifically on farmed animal welfare was Compassion in World Farming, founded in the UK in 1967, even though campaigning on behalf of farmed animals was not widespread in the animal movement at that time