As advocates for animals in the industrial food system, we tend to emphasize the factory farm. That makes a lot of sense: nine billion chickens, for example, spend their short, sad lives on factory farms each year in the U.S. alone, so raising awareness of their suffering, lobbying for better laws to protect them, persuading people not to eat them, and so on, is necessarily a core part of our work. 

At the same time, industrial food animal production (IFAP) is a huge and sprawling system that relies on the factory farm but also extends far beyond it. The mass conversion of animals into food and profit involves a complex web of inputs, processes, outputs, and actors, from the production of animal feed crops to the person cooking meat for dinner at home. This web requires the participation of people in many different roles (some more willingly than others), and is embedded in a society and culture that lends it legitimacy and support. Viewing IFAP in this way – that is, as a system – raises the possibility of mounting a movement-wide response, targeting the system from multiple angles in a strategic and coordinated way.

A feature of systems like IFAP, though, is that they span many areas of experience, expertise, and understanding. An expert in supply chains may not immediately see what agricultural policy has to do with IFAP. The problems caused by corporate concentration might not be obvious to someone working on a ballot initiative to protect animals. It can be difficult to get that big-picture view of which parts of the system everyone’s work is affecting, and how we could combine different approaches for maximum effect.

That sprawling complexity is why, by this time last year, I was pretty confused about IFAP and our opposition to it. As a scientist, I’d published research about the environmental impacts of animal agriculture. I’d read many academic papers about other aspects of IFAP, and I could have told you a little about the tactics used by farmed animal advocates. However, I didn’t have a clear picture of how it all fits together. 

Fortunately, thanks to a grant from Animal Charity Evaluators, I was able to spend several months immersed in the academic literature about IFAP, as well as learning about people and organizations opposing IFAP via articles, podcasts, conversations, and more. I used this material to write a report that presents a holistic, system-focused perspective on both IFAP and our resistance to it (concentrating on land animals in the United States). I hope this work provides tools and information that can support our movement as we become increasingly strategic and coordinated in our work. Now, here are some key takeaways from the report.

IFAP operates as an end-to-end system, shaped by the drive for profits and embedded in a supportive environment

IFAP encompasses many interlinked processes: producing animal feed; creating, raising and slaughtering animals; and the processing, distribution, sale, and consumption of animals and products derived from them. Like any other industrial system, outputs from one process flow into the next, and waste is produced along the way. What sets IFAP apart from other industrial systems is that some of its essential processes take place inside animal bodies.

Companies involved in IFAP are motivated to increase revenue and decrease costs. To increase revenue, they might create new products, expand into new markets, and farm more animals. Decreasing costs is partly about scale and reducing input costs. Larger facilities tend to have lower costs per animal (up to a point), and companies that grow their market share and expand into different parts of the supply chain often have cost advantages as well. Inputs such as food and labor are relatively expensive, and companies look for ways of using them more efficiently. Strategies include using less labor-intensive systems (such as cages vs cage-free barns), creating animal breeds that need less feed to produce meat, and using growth-enhancing substances. Animals (and some humans) become components of the industrial machine, shaped to fit the system rather than the other way around.

Some costs can simply be avoided or offloaded onto others. Noise, odors, and pollution from factory farms can be imposed on local communities, rather than prevented at the source. Slaughterhouses can pay low wages to vulnerable workers who are unlikely to complain about dangerous conditions. Animals bear the effects of genetics and living conditions designed to make them more productive, and so on.

Why does such a system exist, persist, and expand? A wide range of social and cultural factors combine to support and enable IFAP. To highlight just one set of demand-side factors, meat-eaters commonly report that meat is “normal, natural, necessary, and nice” – it’s needed for health, we evolved to eat it, everybody eats it, and it tastes good. People may not be aware of practices on factory farms, or may believe (or tell themselves) that their meat was humanely raised or that farmed animals lack the capacity to suffer.

On the supply side, some people participate in IFAP because they believe it to be an efficient way of “feeding the world”. Efficiency, productivity, and profitability are highly valued in some societies, and a system like IFAP possesses those virtues. Agribusiness companies have come to amass considerable power, and they actively work to influence policy, research agendas, and public opinion. Meanwhile, friendly politicians do their part by proposing and enacting legislation that advances industry interests.

A system-focused approach highlights opportunities for our movement

At first glance, viewing IFAP as a system can be discouraging. The system is so vast, complicated, and entrenched that transforming it can seem impossible. However, a system-focused perspective also opens up opportunities. To begin with, every process, actor, location, belief, convention, or phenomenon that currently participates in, supports, or enables IFAP is a potential target for intervention. We can confront the system in a multitude of different ways. We have options.

In addition, we can link the problems caused by IFAP to the places within the system where they arise (Figure 1). This helps to show where and why we can make connections with others who are also dealing with problems caused by industrial animal agriculture. Potential allies range from environmental justice advocates to groups working on public health issues. Figure 1 also illustrates why IFAP is a poor solution to the problem of providing affordable protein: it has been continually optimized for production and profit at the expense of many other considerations.

Figure 1. Simplified diagram of industrial food animal production and the problems it causes. Various possible components and connections have been omitted for clarity.

We also begin to see how the varied approaches used by animal-focused groups are already targeting different aspects of the same system. Corporate campaigns and political lobbying aim to directly improve animal lives, while alternative proteins give options to consumers, and animal sanctuaries hope to change the attitudes that give legitimacy and support to IFAP. This doesn’t mean that every intervention is equally valuable and equally effective in every context, but it does imply that, at least in theory, we can strategically deploy different interventions in order to have the greatest effect.

Implementing a system-focused approach requires adopting frameworks for understanding system change

To really see how we can strategically deploy interventions, though, we will need some good frameworks for organizing what we need to do, and how to make change happen. One such framework, derived from viewing IFAP as a system, is shown in Figure 2. 

This figure is initially best followed from top to bottom. It shows that, to end IFAP, we need to work on both the supply and demand sides. On the demand side, we need to reduce the revenue that can be derived from IFAP products, while increasing demand for alternatives. We can do this by redirecting individuals and institutions towards alternative products. This can be achieved by making animal products more expensive, developing more suitable alternatives, and making the consumption of animal products less socially acceptable. At the bottom, a layer of deep social and cultural changes would support all of the above work.

Figure 2. High-level overview of system changes that would, together, end industrial food animal production. Again, various possible connections, feedback loops, and second-order effects have been omitted for clarity.

The supply side can be read in a similar way: we need to make IFAP less viable and attractive as a business, which means making it more expensive and risky, and reducing the supply of people who will or must participate. That in turn implies changing legislation, delegitimizing participation in IFAP, and helping participants transition into alternative activities. Again, deep changes to society and culture would support all of these efforts.

This framework does not spell out how we can make any of these changes. Neither does it specify which ones are feasible, cost-effective, or even strictly necessary. Instead, its purpose is to organize our thinking about what we are trying to do, on a movement-wide scale.

Other frameworks described in my report move beyond “what needs to change?” and towards “how can change be accomplished?”. They show how we can think of system change in terms of (1) altering both individual behaviors and social structures; (2) destabilizing the institutional pillars (industry, media, academia, etc.) that give support to IFAP; and (3)  identifying “shallow” and “deep” intervention points in the system. A further framework illustrates how different actors and approaches fill different niches in a social movement “ecology”.

These frameworks were chosen for being especially relevant, promising, and/or well-known in farmed animal advocacy circles. However, as long as they are explicit about the framework(s), model(s), or theory/theories of change they are working with, those pursuing movement-wide coordination can coalesce around whichever one(s) they find most helpful.

Working as a system, to transform a system, will be challenging…

Ideally, a coordinated, movement-spanning coalition would use a suite of proven interventions, carefully targeted according to a sound understanding of cause and effect. We would continually monitor a set of indicators that precisely characterized the status of IFAP and our progress towards ending it, and we would rapidly adapt in the face of new information and opportunities. We would be numerous, strategic, and well-enough funded to destabilize and replace this entire system. By pulling many levers in a strategic sequence, we would push industry and society away from industrial animal agriculture, and towards a future of good food, happy beings, and healthy ecosystems.

In reality, this scenario is… aspirational. Most obviously, IFAP is a global, multi-billion dollar industry that is thoroughly embedded in our social fabric. Aside from that, many types of intervention are already difficult to evaluate, and assessing the combined effects of multiple interventions in the context of a complex, unpredictable system will present additional complications. Knowing what to do and whether it is working will be equal parts science and art. Collaborating with people with very different backgrounds, skills, and mental models is a challenge in itself, not least in the presence of continual opposition from industry and its allies. There can also be disadvantages to coordination, especially if it is poorly executed, such as extra overhead and a risk of centralizing too much power and stifling experimentation and innovation.

…but we have many tools at our disposal, and we can experiment and learn from others

Nonetheless, I believe there is power and opportunity in understanding and responding to IFAP as a system. We already have tools for confronting many different elements of the IFAP system (and the report describes how different types of intervention relate to the various components of the system). We can also draw on long experience within our movement and the research that is also being conducted there, on practitioners in adjacent fields, and on academic research into social movements, complex systems, and more. We can experiment on smaller scales (a city, say, or a small country) as we gain skills and knowledge in combining interventions and coordinating with one another. Nudging the system towards a sustainable and ethical equilibrium is not a trivial task, but we owe it to the animals to seriously investigate how a system-focused approach can advance our cause.