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animal agriculture
World Bank Leads Development Giants in Investing $2.27 Billion in Factory Farms
"We're calling on World Bank President Ajay Banja to phase out these investments, which are undermining his climate agenda," said one researcher.
Oct 21, 2024
The Green Climate Fund and 11 of the 15 multilateral development banks together invested at least $2.27 billion in factory farming in 2023, undercutting their stated climate goals, according to a report published Monday by the Stop Financing Factory Farming coalition.
The report, launched the same day as the start of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank's annual meetings in Washington, D.C., found that the World Bank was the worst offender. The bank—principally through its private-sector lending arm the International Finance Corporation (IFC)—put nearly $750 million toward industrial agricultural projects, five times more than any of the other banks.
"Factory farming is a leading driver of greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, biodiversity loss, animal cruelty, and water pollution," Merel van der Mark, head of Animal Welfare and Finance at Sinergia Animal, said in a statement. "Development banks have all pledged to align their investments with the Paris climate agreement, yet are failing to make the kinds of investments needed to keep the goal to limit global temperature rises to 1.5°C within reach."
"There are examples of better practices out there."
The report was based on 2023 disclosure information scraped from project webpages by the Early Warning System. It found that the Green Climate Fund and 11 of the 15 multilateral development banks had invested a total of $3.3 billion in animal agriculture generally, funding 62 projects. The banks also mobilized another $3.4 billion for the sector from other sources including banks and governments. The World Bank Group also led the pack in animal agriculture financing overall at over $1.5 billion.
Factory farming—or industrial agriculture—received most of that money, representing 68.3% of investments and 76.7% of supported projects. Only 2.3% of investments and 6.7% of projects involved non-industrial farming that might potentially be sustainable.
The report's authors said their research "reveals a concerning trend toward support for the industrialization of animal agriculture." This can occur through more monocropping of plants like soy or corn for animal feed; more warehousing of large numbers of animals in concentrated feed operations that release large amounts of climate-, land-, and water-polluting waste; and the construction of slaughterhouses.
The World Bank's investments in factory farming go against its own research. The bank released a report in May finding that the agrifood system generates a third of total greenhouse gas emissions, and that animal production and consumption make up almost 60% of those emissions. It even stopped serving meat in its staff cafe.
"The World Bank has set out an ambitious road map to drastically cut agricultural emissions while feeding the world. However, this good work is being undermined by its private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation," said International Accountability Project researcher Alessandro Ramazzotti. "Last year IFC invested $501 million in factory farming including a $47 million loan to a Chinese company for a multi-story pig farm, making it the largest investor of all the development banks. We're calling on World Bank President Ajay Banja to phase out these investments, which are undermining his climate agenda."
In addition, the groups behind the Stop Financing Factory Farming coalition—which is headed by Bank Information Center, Friends of the Earth U.S., Global Forest Coalition, International Accountability Project, Sinergia Animal, and World Animal Protection—call on all development banks to move their money from industrial agriculture to regenerative agriculture that boosts biodiversity, helps the environment, and strengthens local communities, following the model of the five banks in the report that did not invest in factory farms in 2023.
"There are examples of better practices out there," said Ladd Connell, environment director at Bank Information Center. "The Green Climate Fund supports some low-carbon projects, such as providing financial and technical support to smallholder women farmers in Cote D'Ivoire to help them adapt to climate change. Where banks invest in new livestock projects, they should be innovative and sustainable, following agroecological principles."
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Multilateral Banks Must Stop Funding the Factory Farms Fueling the Biodiversity Crisis
Animal livestock is the leading driver of biodiversity loss. At the U.N. biodiversity summit next week, leaders must agree to shift finance towards more sustainable forms of food production.
Oct 18, 2024
Correction: An earlier version of this article said that pig farms in Ecuador's Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas region generated roughly 15 million pounds a day. It has been corrected to reflect the fact that 4.4 million pounds of waste are generated per day.
Our natural world is in crisis. An area the size of Portugal is deforested every year on average, and wildlife populations have declined by an average of 73% since 1970. Deforestation is a leading driver of the climate crisis, and wildlife loss can destabilize precious ecosystems.
To tackle this, two years ago governments agreed on the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), a set of goals and targets to protect nature. On October 21, leaders will meet at the United Nations biodiversity COP16 summit in Colombia to formally review their progress for the first time.
The industrial animal livestock sector is by far the largest driver of biodiversity loss, and must be where attendees at COP16 focus their attention.
“There is no nature anymore. Pollution in the air, pollution in the river.”
In the last 50 years, global milk production has more than doubled and meat production has more than tripled. This increase has been achieved through industrialisation—by putting more and more animals in smaller spaces, in worse conditions, feeding them more supplements and medicines, and using resources more intensely. It has led to poor animal welfare, low quality of food, and health risks for humans and other animals, including antibiotic resistance.
It has also led to hugely negative impacts on the environment, including for wild animals and their habitats. Livestock farming is the leading driver of deforestation—with clearing of forests for land for cattle accounting for 42% of all deforestation. The production of farmed animals and the feed for them now occupies 80% of the world’s agricultural land, yet provides just 17% of humans’ global calorie supply.
As a result of these factors, today 70% of all birds on Earth are farmed poultry, and 93% of all non-human mammals are livestock with just 7% wild. Overhauling the way we produce food is vital to protect our natural environment and to stem species loss.
Multilateral development banks (MDBs)—such as the World Bank Group—have made a series of commitments to protect nature, yet despite this the five biggest MDBs invested over $4.6 billion in factory farming between 2011 and 2021, and have shown no signs of reducing their spending since.
At the U.N. climate conference COP26 in 2021, leading MDBs released a Joint Nature Statement promising to support governments and the private sector to tackle nature loss. And at COP28 last year they went a step further, including committing to “tackl[e] the drivers of nature loss by fostering ‘nature positive’ investments” and “valu[e] nature to guide decision-making.”
In addition, Target 14 of the Global Biodiversity Framework agreed by world leaders requires public and private financial flows to be aligned with the goals of the GBF. This means MDBs must ensure their investments align with other GBF targets, like Target 4 to halt species extinction, and Target 10 to enhance biodiversity and sustainability in agriculture.
But rather than investing in sustainable forms of food production, MDBs are propping up a broken model of factory farming that is totally at odds with these pledges.
For example, the private sector branches of the World Bank Group and the Inter-American Development Bank Group have together invested over $200 million into PRONACA, Ecuador's largest pork and poultry producer. PRONACA used the funds to build and expand a series of factory farms, including in Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, an area of Ecuador home to Indigenous peoples and tropical forest.
According to a shocking report by the Ecuadorian Coordinator of Organizations for the Defense of Nature and the Environment (CEDENMA), PRONACA's pig farms in the area generate roughly 4.4 million pounds of toxic waste each day, fouling the soil, air, and waterways.
CEDENMA surveyed local communities about the impact of the factory farms. Interviewees told them that PRONACA contaminated rivers, killing off fish that local people rely on for food and jobs, and harming local tourism. One intensive pig breeding farm was set up just meters away from a sacred site.
“There is no nature anymore. Pollution in the air, pollution in the river,” said one local resident.
Investments like in PRONACA are unfortunately just one of hundreds of harmful factory farm investments made by MDBs. Similar investments have been made or are being planned in Bangladesh, Nigeria, Poland, and elsewhere all over the world.
Ahead of COP16, we and other members of the Stop Financing Farming coalition are calling on MDBs to stick to the commitments they’ve made to protect nature by ruling out any further finance for factory farming and instead supporting more nature-friendly forms of agriculture. This means investing in the production of more plant-rich foods, and when they do finance animal agriculture, ensuring it is sustainable, following the principles of agroecology.
Shifting finance in this way would not only help protect nature, but also promote nutritionally superior diets, create jobs, and tackle climate change.
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Outraged Over False Claims of Pet Eating? Consider the True Horrors of Factory Farms
What we do to billions of animals legally in the U.S. food system is far more extensive, not to mention ghastly, than much of the animal sacrifices that may occur in other people’s religious rituals.
Oct 13, 2024
The stories about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets have been debunked. Even the woman who filed a police report accusing Haitian migrants of stealing her cat apologized when she later found her cat in her own basement. Sadly, despite being proven false, the damage from these unfounded claims has been severe. Haitians living in Springfield have been subject to hate crimes and threats from people who believe the lie and have coupled their outrage with bigotry to terrorize a community of migrants who are living and working legally in the community through the Temporary Protective Status designation.
Despite the fact that there is no substantiation for the stories, a friend tried to convince me that Haitians are really, truly eating cats and dogs. The evidence, he insisted, came from police bodycam footage. As it turned out, the footage he was talking about was from an arrest of a woman—who was not Haitian—in another part of Ohio who allegedly killed and ate a cat. This woman was born and raised in America and apparently has a mental health disorder. When I pointed these facts out to my friend, he still didn’t acknowledge his error. Instead, he sent me a description of Vodou (aka Voodoo), a religion practiced by many Haitians, which included descriptions of animal sacrifice. He wrote that it would be better if this religion died out and its immigrant practitioners assimilated into American culture.
Perhaps this particularly pernicious and bigoted moment in our polarized society could be a wake-up call to become a bit more introspective and cultivate some moral consistency in how we treat others.
My head was spinning. There were so many ways I could respond. Should I focus on helping him to acknowledge that his original claim was false? Should I point out that his Irish family and my Jewish family were vilified for their cultural differences when they came to this country and invite him to reflect upon his negative judgments about newer immigrants? Should I talk about the range of religious injunctions, not confined to Vodou, which cause harm to animals? I didn’t know where to begin.
Because we’d discussed animal cruelty many times in the past, after mentioning all the points above, I further responded that what we do to billions of animals legally in the U.S. food system is far more extensive, not to mention ghastly, than much of the animal sacrifices that may occur in other people’s religious rituals. Moreover, I pointed out, he was an enthusiastic participant in the cruelty we inflict on cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and other animals raised for food because he regularly consumes meat, dairy, and eggs. Until now, he’d never expressed much concern about the welfare of animals, often telling me that he cares more about people than animals. Suddenly, along with millions of other Americans who erroneously believe Haitians are eating dogs and cats, he claims to care a lot.
In our culture, most people recoil at the thought of eating dogs and cats and believe it would be wrong to do so. But if it’s wrong to eat dogs and cats, then how is it right to eat pigs—known to be as or more intelligent than dogs—or to consume cows and chickens, both able to feel pain just as acutely as cats and cockatiels do? If we look inward to consider who we eat, we may discover justifications but little disgust or moral outrage.
And yet, the abuse we inflict upon billions of farmed animals each year is on a scale nearly unimaginable. For example, dairy cows in the United States are forced to produce a calf every year, and when they are born, the newborns are taken away from their distraught mothers on their first day of life. We then take the milk meant for the calves for ourselves. The cows are then forced to produce 5 to 10 times the amount of milk they would naturally produce to feed their young, resulting in mastitis, a painful udder infection necessitating antibiotic treatment in about half the dairy cows in the United States. After years of this cycle of artificial insemination, birth, and perpetual milking, their milk production declines. At that point, the cows are sent to slaughter, usually to become hamburger or processed meat.
What about chickens and turkeys, whose names we hurl as an insult of cowardice (for the former) and stupidity (for the latter) even though these birds are brave and intelligent? Almost all of them live the entirety of their lives in crowded, ammonia-saturated buildings; are debeaked without painkillers to prevent them from pecking each other to death in their confinement; and, if they are being used for egg production, are likely caged so tightly they cannot even stretch a wing.
Where is the outrage? Where is the disgust? In her book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, psychologist Melanie Joy describes the invisible belief system, which she calls carnism, that leads us to eat certain animals while protecting others. It is this invisible belief system that explains our horror at the thought of people eating pets—a horror we might conceivably express around the dinner table as we gnaw on the rib of a pig or the wing of a hen.
I’d like to hope that the false accusations made against Haitian migrants will help us realize the glass houses we’re living in so that we stop throwing stones. Perhaps this particularly pernicious and bigoted moment in our polarized society could be a wake-up call to become a bit more introspective and cultivate some moral consistency in how we treat others. And then maybe we’ll each take a step toward minimizing the harm we cause humans and nonhumans alike.
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