Katie Cantrell,
AlterNet.org
April 2018
Katie Cantrell founded Factory Farming Awareness Coalition FFAC and wants to educate people about what really happens on factory farms... In addition to being extremely cruel to animals, factory farming is a leading driver of global warming, deforestation, species extinction, water waste, and pollution.
The California-based nonprofit Factory Farming Awareness Coalition has a
simple mission: to educate people about what really happens on factory
farms. Why is this necessary? Most Americans think farm animals are treated
well, despite the fact that 99% of animal products come from factory farms.
And factory farming, in addition to being extremely cruel to animals, is a
leading driver of global warming, deforestation, species extinction, water
waste, and pollution.
FFAC executive director Katie Cantrell founded the organization in 2010,
shortly after graduating from UC Berkeley. She’d read the book Eating
Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer’s gripping exploration into why we eat some
animals and not others, and she was inspired to expose the truth about
factory farming.
Cantrell hopes to raise awareness, not just about the cruelty inherent in
raising animals industrially, but the often-overlooked social justice,
environmental and public health impacts of factory farming. Since its
inception, FFAC has delivered highly visual, compelling, and even
life-changing presentations (see for yourself) to more than 75,000 people in
schools and businesses, including Stanford, Google and Tesla, convincing
many to embrace a plant-based diet.
Go here to request an FFAC PRESENTATION for your own workplace or group.
The FFAC approach, which is to reach out to consumers directly, makes even more sense under the current administration. Just this week the USDA overturned a popular rule that required animals raised for organic-labeled meat and eggs to have enough space to move around in. As Cantrell says, public-policy solutions to end factory farming will require a different political landscape than the one we currently inhabit. For now, what we choose to put on our plates has never been more important.
There is no way to sustainably raise 9 billion animals, Katie Cantrell
says.
Nate Lotze: Are most people genuinely ignorant about the conditions on
factory farms, or do they just prefer not to think about it?
Katie Cantrell: I think it's a combination of the two. By now most people
know that factory farms exist, but they have no idea of the scale or scope
of the problem.
There was a recent study by the Sentience Institute that found that 58
percent of U.S. adults think most farm animals are treated well, and 75
percent say they usually buy products from animals treated humanely. The
reality is that 99 percent of animal products come from factory farms. We
start our presentations by asking people to guess how many animals are bred
and killed for food every year in the U.S., and most people (including
adults, and even environmental educators) guess somewhere in the
neighborhood of 50-100 million. The answer is over 9 billion.
So people lack even a basic understanding of key parts of our food system.
That's caused partly by agribusiness' extensive PR, but it's also caused by
people not seeking out the truth. I think at some level people know that it
will cause discomfort, it will disrupt their habits, and that deters them
from pursuing information. So it comes back to framing the information in a
way that motivates people to learn, and that empowers them to make change.
After graduating from college, Cantrell founded Factory Farming
Awareness Coalition, an organization working to reduce animal product
consumption for the good of the planet.
NL: What is the primary goal of FFAC in terms of actual behavioral changes?
KC: Our primary goal is to lower animal product consumption, because
there is no way to sustainably raise 9 billion animals. The only way to end
factory farming, to stop climate change and deforestation, and to ensure
enough food and water for the growing global population, is to scale back
the number of animals raised for food.
We emphasize that there is no one right way to go about dietary change; you
don't have to be fully vegetarian to order a veggie burger instead of a
hamburger, and you don't have to be fully vegan to put flax milk in your
cereal instead of cow milk. Many people have this idea that if they can't be
100 percent perfectly vegan, it's not worth trying. We emphasize that small
changes add up to a large impact, and that every time we decide not to eat
an animal product we're taking action against one of the most destructive
industries on the planet.
NL: Why do you think showing people the realities of factory farming is an
effective strategy?
KC: Right now the overwhelming majority of Americans still have no idea
where their food comes from. Agribusiness has spent billions of dollars over
the past several decades to promulgate the myth that products in the
supermarket come from Old MacDonald's farm. We believe it's important to
create a more informed consumer and citizen base to create demand for
plant-based products and for legislative and regulatory action.
In my experience, people who see the realities of factory farming are
horrified and say they will avoid factory-farmed products in the future.
However, most end up falling back into old habits. How can we make the
initial commitment translate into lasting change?
Consumers have to have at least a baseline literacy about where food comes
from and the impacts of the food system so we understand why change is good.
The more veg foods become culturally accepted and even desirable (witness
Beyonce encouraging her 112 million social media fans to go vegan), the less
stigma and social pressure people will face, which is a leading driver of
recidivism—people going back to eating meat. Ensuring that veg foods are
delicious, affordable, and easily accessible is also critical to allowing
people to follow through with behavior change. Luckily, the market is very
much headed in that direction, with even Tyson introducing a new line of
plant-based meals.
NL: Besides educating people about factory farms, what else will it take
to end factory farming? Are there any new developments that you are
particularly excited about?
KC: There are a few different routes I can envision that could lead to the
end of factory farming. I think the most likely is that clean meat
technology succeeds in supplanting factory farming because it is cheaper,
more efficient and safer (which means less risk for corporations and
investors). That's the one that makes me the most hopeful.
There are also political solutions that would require a landscape very
different from the current reality, and are unlikely to come to pass without
some type of political revolution eliminating the influence of corporate
money on politicians. These include: changing subsidies to favor the
cultivation of fruits, vegetables, and legumes, rather than meat, dairy,
corn and soy; instituting a tax on meat; regulating animal welfare and
environmental pollution such that factory farming practices are either
outlawed or become prohibitively expensive.
Of course, there are also more apocalyptic scenarios that could lead to the
end of factory farming, such as a widespread zoonotic disease outbreak that
kills a large percentage of livestock and disrupts the centralized food
supply, or a disease that causes a human pandemic and leads the public to
declare that factory farms are too great a risk to public health. Increasing
devastation from climate change could also lead to a more clear consensus
around the need to end factory farming to stave off climate catastrophe.
But again, I hope we can proactively move toward clean meat and plant-based
foods before we are forced to change the food system due to disasters.
Nate Lotze, a News Fellow for Stone Pier Press, works for a statewide conservation organization in Pennsylvania and has also spent time as an environmental organizer and organic farmer.
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