Factory farms are farms where animals are subjected to any of the following: routine confinement in cages, crates or crowded areas; selectively bred for accelerated/harmful growth rates; unable to access their natural behaviours; and/or routinely mutilated to counteract the negative welfare outcomes of intensive farming.

Factory farms don’t provide many jobs, usually just 1-2 staff for huge farms, because they are designed to maximise productivity with as little resource as possible and that’s why the animals are packed so tightly into these sheds. With the use of machines and automation, the need for the traditional farm worker has become less and less.

 Factory farms don’t necessarily produce cheap food in the long run. The price may be low at the checkout, but we pay in other ways – subsidies, health costs and pollution clean-up.

Food security in the UK is a big problem, and is likely to get worse unless significant changes are made. The UK human population is nearly 70 million, and yet the UK farms over 1 billion land animals every year. All of those animals need to be fed, and they are fed crops like corn, wheat, oats and soya - we import 3 million tonnes of soya a year into the UK to feed farmed animals. We are creating a food security issue by having so many animals that need to be fed.