DIVEST FROM
FACTORY FARMING
One industry links two of the greatest crises humanity faces: climate breakdown and new pandemics. That industry is industrial animal agriculture, responsible for runaway deforestation, 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions, the degradation of natural environments, and animal cruelty. This damage also makes new viruses like COVID-19 more likely to emerge.
Yet major development banks, such as the World Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, who should be helping humanity create a safer, more sustainable world, are lending billions to the worst forms of animal agriculture. And they are ignoring our message to stop.
Development banks are funded through our taxes, in the form of contributions from governments worldwide.
Will you join us in calling for them to immediately stop financing industrial animal agriculture?
TAKE ACTION!
We cannot defund the livestock sector alone. We need your help.
Please sign up to receive our action alerts to help with this campaign. With very simple and quick actions, like writing an email, sharing materials on social media, or simply forwarding one of our emails to friends, you will be making a difference.
On May 21, 2021, the board of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s commercial lending arm, will vote on a proposed $50 million loan for the expansion of Pronaca, Ecuador’s largest industrial livestock producer. Pronaca has a history of being responsible for major social and environmental problems.
Pronaca’s poultry and pig factory farms confine millions of animals in the Ecuadorian province of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas. Residents say waste from the animals eventually ends up in their rivers, tainting it with fecal coliform bacteria, causing skin and gastrointestinal problems and respiratory issues. As a public financial institution, the IFC’s investments must be guided by public interest. This is not what is happening, quite the opposite.
You can read our letter to the IFC in English here, and in Spanish here.
It is time for this financial institution to stop funding the expansion of factory farms. Please follow the steps below to ask the IFC to stop funding Pronaca and to commit to divesting from all forms of factory farming!
WHY #DivestFactoryFarming?
New pandemics
In industrial livestock operations, animals are kept in overcrowded and stressful conditions, which creates environments that are favorable to the emergence and/or spread of zoonotic disease. A recent UNEP report recognizes that these operations are major drivers of zoonotic disease emergence.
Deforestation and biodiversity loss
The livestock sector is by far the largest driver of deforestation in South America, where natural ecosystems are being destroyed at a rapid pace to be turned into pastures for an ever-expanding cattle herd, or transformed into large crop fields to feed farmed animals. Food systems and especially large-scale meat and feed production are also major drivers of biodiversity loss and underlie the increased fragility of numerous ecosystems worldwide.
Climate crisis
The livestock sector is responsible for 14.5% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions globally. If nothing changes, experts project it will account for almost half of the world’s allowable budget for greenhouse gas emissions, for a 1,5°C temperature increase scenario, by 2030 and 80% by 2050.
Social equity and farming livelihood
Small-scale farmers, including indigenous and traditional communities, suffer from competition with the industrial livestock sector over land. They are often pushed aside by the sector, which can result in serious land conflicts. Small-scale farmers also face fierce competition from the industrial livestock sector, which can produce at cheaper prices because it does not pay for the costs of its social and environmental impact.
Food security
The production of meat, fish from aquaculture, eggs, and dairy, requires around 83% of the world’s farmland, despite providing only 37% of our protein and 18% of our calories. If the grain used as animal feed was instead used for direct human consumption an extra four billion people could be fed.
Antibiotic resistance
The industrial livestock sector routinely uses large amounts of antibiotics to promote growth and prevent diseases that inevitably occur when animals are kept in poor conditions. In some countries, up to 80% of the total consumption of medically important antibiotics happens in the livestock sector. This high exposure to antibiotics leads to antibiotic resistance, which undermines the efficacy of antibiotics in human medicine.
Human health
High levels of consumption of red and processed meat contribute to heart disease, diabetes, and certain cancers, and are made possible by industrial livestock production.
Animal
cruelty
In the industrial livestock sector, most animals are kept in very small cages or overcrowded spaces for their entire lives. They are exposed to high levels of stress and can not execute their most basic natural behaviors. Many will stand on slatted floors their whole lives, suffer painful mutilations, face excruciating boredom, and never see the sun.
DONATE
Your donation allows us to expose the sad fact that our taxes are being used by development banks to fund the climate crisis and the cruelty inherent in industrial animal agriculture.
Please donate to help us build a future in which factory farming will belong to the past.
A CAMPAIGN BY:
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Sinergia Animal is an international animal protection organization working in countries of the Global South to reduce the suffering of farmed animals and promote more compassionate food choices. We are recognized as one of the most effective animal protection NGOs in the world by Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE).