Last week I was in a room packed with people that want to stop factory farming, but this wasn’t an animal rights meeting, and it wasn’t a vegan food festival : it was a small village in England filled with local residents, and to me, that is what winning looks like.
When I first joined the animal movement by going vegetarian 15 years ago there was a purist streak running through it. Joined the meeting, but you still wear leather shoes?! No thanks mate, we don’t need your help. Did you go vegan, but for health reasons?! You’re basically an animal abuser. Think we should end animal farming, but you’re motivated by the climate, well jog on because this is not the place for you. I repeatedly saw keen and dedicated people being excluded from the movement for various purist reasons. Thankfully, this is now becoming a thing of the past, but CAFF is building a broader alliance than I have ever seen.
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This week I visited a little village in Oxfordshire where a new factory farm run by PD Hooks was being planned. In the lead-up, CAFF got to work notifying the residents, telling them that if they wanted to stop it, they should come to a meeting at the village hall. A local society for the preservation of the village was also trying to get people together to object to the farm.
Before CAFF these applications would pass under the radar and get approved; if the residents heard about it at all, the industry told them half-truths, leaving them unprepared for what was coming their way. Once a farm is approved it is very difficult for the residents to stop it; once their waterways are polluted, their air becomes toxic and their property prices decrease. There are now around 2,000 factory farms across the UK.
Here things are different. With 48 hours left for residents to object, 70 people show up on a Tuesday evening. The people who come are not activists, many are rarely involved even in local issues, but they love their village. These are people with concerns about the effect on local wildlife,of additional traffic on the roads, of local noise and air pollution, and also people who care about the welfare of the animals. People know that this isn’t the farming that they grew up with and they want it stopped. So the village hall is now packed out.
We don’t know yet, as this application is still in progress, but we can tell you PD Hooks has a serious fight on their hands. The residents will put in their objections, contact their councillors and hold meetings with their neighbours to coordinate. At the same time a call will go out to people across the country who are facing similar applications and they will be given the chance to object too. People in the animal movement will hear the call too and object. If you want to be kept up to date, join the mailing list here , and help us get the word out by asking your friends to join too.
And what happens if the application is approved? Does that mean the fight is over? No. CAFF has brought and won three legal cases against approved factory farms so far, and the residents and CAFF will be able to judicially review this application as well. Every time we win a case against a factory farm in the high court, we have a chance to change the law going forward by setting legal precedents and building good case law. For too long, factory farms have been pushed through the planning approvals process with little to no public scrutiny, and residents have been left to dry. But now, CAFF is empowering people to fight these applications every step of the way, even all the way to court.
Using this coalition, every single planning application for a factory farm that CAFF has challenged has been either delayed or completely stopped, meaning that most of the expansion of the UK animal industry has been blocked, and blocked by a small team working with local residents, the animal movement and a couple of legal experts.
For this strategy to work local residents and an animal rights campaign group don’t need to agree on everything; in Factory Farming we have an issue that the entire nation can unite around. Because all it does is harm, harm people, harm animals, harm our collective future and nowhere is that vision more stark than in the local communities the mega corporations use and toss aside. This isn’t the animal movement coming into a place and trying to get the public onside with our aims, it is the animal movement using its time and energy to support local people who would otherwise be run over by the big companies behind most factory farming. This is helping to empower local people as well as helping to prevent the expansion of one of the world’s worst industries. This is a new way of doing things.
I am sure that there are other areas where people are, although they probably don’t know it, crying out for the support of the animal movement as they cope with the downstream effects of factory farming and animal exploitation generally. Flooding from grouse moors, hunts coming through villages, or people with local wildlife being poisoned by the lead during pheasant shoots.
The government is going to try and close this avenue. They are going to push to allow the industry to continue increasing. To do so they are going to have to run roughshod over local democracy, they are going to have to crush the voices of local people and we know they will. Unless we can organise against them.
The animal movement needs to get behind the local people who don’t want factory farming in their area and support them as big business moves to crush their opposition so they can continue to expand these industries. We need to continue reaching out to unlikely allies because the animals are not the only ones who suffer as a result of our broken food system and in the nation of animal lover allies are everywhere. It’s up to us to find them.
Solidarity,
Harley
Animal Rising is directly challenging factory farming in the UK on multiple fronts. If you want to help us challenge the cruelty of this industry, one with deep pockets, and government connections, join the team by becoming a regular donor. :)
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