Global Impact Report 2024

Convincing governments and policy makers to put farmed animal welfare above the interests of big agriculture is no mean feat. But, thanks to YOU, we did it! A ban on live exports for fattening and slaughter from Great Britain has been enshrined into law!

The passing of this momentous legislation follows 50 years of relentless campaigning. For many governments, animal welfare issues are largely a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. But even in the face of such disregard, you carried on campaigning, with your public outcry getting louder and more determined with every setback.

But the fight is far from over. The devastatingly brutal trade is still happening around the world, with calves, cattle, sheep, pigs and other animals routinely transported by road and sea, for days or even weeks. Many suffer overcrowding, exhaustion, hunger, dehydration, fear and stress, with some also dying on these hellish journeys.

In 2024 we continued to campaign in Europe and the rest of the world, with crucial impact being achieved because of your unrelenting compassion.

• The European Commission published proposals to create stricter requirements on animal transport. While this is moving in the right direction, it doesn’t go far enough.
• Thanks in part to this global movement of supporters and other NGOs, the Australian government finally announced an end date for the export of live sheep by sea, with the legislation set to be in place by 1st May 2028.

On our annual Ban Live Export International Awareness Day 14th June:

14,000 people saw or shared our powerful live transport footage

At least 120 NGOS across 31 countries joined the Ban Live Export International Awareness Day

EU citizens sent 464,586 digital campaign postcards to EU ministers.

What next

It’s now time for the rest of the world to follow the UK’s lead and prioritise the wellbeing of farmed animals. We’ve made historic change once, and, with your help, we can and will do it again.

Thanks to you, back in December 2022 we delivered a remarkable 400,000 signatures calling on the UK and Scottish governments to stop dragging their heels when it comes to Ending the Cage Age. As a result, in April 2024 the Scottish Government finally launched an industry consultation on banning the use of cages to house laying hens for egg production. The UK Government, however, is still falling behind, and we are continuing to apply pressure on them to follow Scotland’s lead.

In Europe, a team of citizen heroes formed by Compassion launched legal action to End the Cage Age, demanding that the European Commission delivers on its democratic promise to legislate to ban cruel cages across Europe. The launch of this first-of-its-kind legal action wouldn’t have been possible without the generosity of our donors across the world.

In the USA, we’ve helped 4.6 million families on government nutrition assistance get access to cage-free eggs. In addition, we’ve played a part in ensuring that California’s flagship anti-confinement legislation for farmed animals was successfully defended in the US Supreme Court – the highest court in the land. Momentous achievements like this wouldn’t be possible without you by our side.

What next

One thing’s for certain – we won’t stop until every cage is an empty cage, and, together, we’ll continue our pursuit of accountability from those in power.

Compassion’s Rethink Fish campaign continues to demand welfare protection for fish worldwide. In 2024 a groundbreaking new study, co-authored by Compassion’s Research Manager, Phil Brooke, and lead author, Alison Mood of Fishcount, unveiled some staggering facts: rather than the standard practice of reporting in weight only, the study found that an astounding 1.1–2.2 trillion fishes are caught globally each year, around half of who are turned into fishmeal and oil, mostly used to feed farmed animals.

In the USA, we celebrated yet another campaign victory, with Compassion having direct involvement in shutting down the nation’s only octopus farm. We also gave evidence that helped the US state of Washington introduce the first ban on octopus farming in March, followed in September by California, which will be the first state to prohibit both the farming and sale of farmed octopus products.

Compassion’s teams worldwide mobilised to fight against plans to build the world’s first commercial octopus farm in the Canary Islands. The campaign to defend these incredible creatures has generated significant worldwide attention and positioned Compassion as experts in this field.

As part of the campaign, we coordinated a letter signed by 75 NGOs and experts urging the Canary Islands Government to reject plans for the farm. In April 2024 we went a step further and exposed the inadequacy of the company’s environmental assessment of the project to sea, people and wildlife.

What next

We’ve already achieved milestones in our fight against factory farming and, with your help, we will continue campaigning to prevent octopuses and other new species being added to this merciless system.

Honest labelling is vital to ensuring informed consumer choices and increasing demand for high welfare food. This in turn leads to improvements in farming practices and better conditions for animals.

Crucially, a new poll, commissioned by Compassion, surveyed more than 2,000 UK participants and highlighted how consumers strongly support transparency on their meat and dairy products. Two-thirds of UK public surveyed (66%) support mandatory honest labelling despite the cost-of-living crisis.

It’s this dedication to honesty in food labelling that makes Compassion pioneers unyielding in their pressure on policy makers to do the right thing and prioritise transparency. As a result, in the UK, Defra made a U-turn regarding its failure to produce a consultation on mandatory animal welfare labelling, with the UK Government subsequently launching a public consultation on ‘fairer food labelling’ in March 2024.

Positive labelling reforms also took place in France, where the success of the L’Etiquette Bien-Être Animal food labelling welfare initiative showed the high expectations of consumers and the readiness of some producers and food businesses to fulfil them.

What Next

This major progress marked an important step towards ending labelling confusion. With your backing, we will continue urging governments to make this a priority, creating a more transparent food system that has animal welfare at its heart.

The rise of antibiotic resistance has become a significant global health concern, with the overuse of antibiotics in intensive farming a major contributing factor. This is why we are campaigning for stricter regulations, and we won’t accept the UK Government’s inadequate procurement standards for food and catering.

After years of delays, in May, the UK Government finally unveiled proposals for new legislation on the use of antibiotics on farms – a victory for mistreated farmed animals. You helped us make this stand. However, despite the UK’s repeated pledges that it would align with the EU’s stronger stance on this issue, its proposals are still weaker than the European regulations that came into force in January 2022.

What Next

As long as the misuse of antibiotics in factory farming continues, so will our lobbying to ensure tighter regulations. Together, we must continue applying pressure around the world, until the industry stops using these vital drugs for humans as routine medicine to prop up the dirty and crowded conditions found on factory farms.

Through our Good Farm Animal Welfare Awards, we recognise market leading food companies for their policies or commitments that benefit farm animals and the environment.

We award companies that are committed to implementing substantial policy changes to improve animal welfare by working collaboratively with us to meet a species-specific set of awards criteria. We also recognise businesses that are taking steps to create more sustainable and nature-friendly food supply chains.

In November 2023, we celebrated our first in-person Good Farm Animal Welfare Awards ceremony in Bangkok, recognising 16 Good Farm Animal Welfare Award winners across Thailand, Japan and China. The majority focused on cage-free eggs and higher welfare broiler production, and together these alone are set to benefit the lives of over 25 million animals.

The Better Chicken Commitment (BCC) is the leading set of standards for chicken welfare, committing members to introduce higher welfare standards for all the chickens reared for meat in their supply chain. Globally, more than 625 businesses have signed up.

Thanks to you, Compassion secured five new companies to the BCC this year, including Burger King France; three pet food companies in the US – Good Gracious Company, Beast Feast and Evermore, and one U.S. Producer – Labelle Patrimoine.

In addition, 19 companies have published their transition timelines for implementing BCC-compliant chicken, including two in Europe and 17 in the USA.

We don’t just take these sign-up promises as a certainty, and we hold companies accountable to their BCC pledges via our US and European ChickenTrack tool.

We consistently track the performance of major food companies via our Global EggTrack tool and hold them to account for their commitments towards eliminating cages for hens. Our seventh EggTrack report showed that, of 444 companies monitored, there was a positive 75% transition to cage-free eggs.

Nine companies made new global cage-free commitments, including Dairy Queen and The JM Smucker Company, and the cage-free transition for companies reporting at a global level increased by nearly 7% between 2022 and 2023. Eight commitments were fulfilled in 2023, bringing the total commitments achieving 100% cage-free status to 257.

The report had significant influence, achieving a media reach of over 1 million in targeted trade press titles in the UK, Italy, Spain and Poland! You helped us achieve this success with major food companies and now more hens will benefit from this vital work.

The relaunch of the latest Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare (BBFAW) introduced tougher assessment criteria this year, with a new baseline for animal welfare improvement for the 150 global companies assessed. This new report highlighted a remarkable 95% of global food companies now recognise ‘farm animal welfare’ as a core business issue.

The move to end factory farming has never been more urgent. Causing untold suffering for farmed animals, it’s also a major driver of habitat decline, deforestation, and pollution; and is a risk to human health. Which is why our ambitious global campaign, END.IT, is so vitally important.

Thanks to your tenacious advocacy, public awareness of the detrimental effects of factory farming is growing. In 2022 we launched our online END.IT petition, to urge governments to move away from industrial animal agriculture, and to urge world leaders to take global action by bringing forward a Global Agreement for a fair food and farming system. Now, two years later, the number of signatories exceeds 720,000.

Our participation at climate change events such as UN Climate Change Conventions (Conference of the Parties (COP) allowed our International Affairs team to highlight the urgent need for world leaders to agree to a rescue plan for our global food system, before it’s too late.

During COP28, we were delighted to announce that we had joined a broad coalition of more than 150 organisations in a Call to Action for Transforming Food Systems for People, Nature, and Climate. This declaration reflects the increasingly universal recognition that our food systems must mitigate against, and not exacerbate, climate change emissions.

Our revolutionary international Extinction or Regeneration conference last year shone a spotlight on solutions to transform the global food system. This highly successful, two-day conference – held with IPES-Food (International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems) and other partners – welcomed 740 delegates from 41 countries. Thanks to it being live streamed on several government websites, a further 370,000 people watched in China.

The event achieved extensive international media coverage, with a potential reach of more than 2 billion views in 13 countries and our event hashtag trended on X (formerly Twitter) in the UK on both days. Its success also led to us publishing a book containing delegate papers, named Regenerative Farming and Sustainable Diets Human, Animal and Planetary Health.

Compassion is committed to finding an ethical and sustainable path forward for a healthier, kinder planet, and welcomes pioneering methods that enable this development, such as cultivated meat. This innovative approach to producing meat grown from animal cells in a controlled environment has the potential to revolutionise the food system.

Last year, the USA officially approved cell-cultivated chicken – chicken grown from stem cells in a bioreactor – for commercial sale. For the first time ever, American diners could tuck into chicken produced without harming a single animal. Whilst tasting the same, it has the potential to use much less land and emits fewer greenhouse gases – a triple win for people, animals, and the planet.

February 2024 saw the launch of the new book, Cultivated Meat to Secure Our Future: Hope for Animals, Food Security and the Environment, which was co-edited by our CEO Philip Lymbery with former Compassion trustee and CEO of Belgian animal welfare group, GAIA, Michel Vandenbosch.

Compassion has focused on finding new ways to influence the policies of the financial sector and to channel investment away from cruel factory farming towards a more humane food system that protects animals, people and the planet.

Together with Humane Society International and World Animal Protection, we established the FARMS Initiative. This has developed Responsible Minimum Standards (RMS) for the main farmed species: pigs, meat chickens, egg laying hens, beef cattle, dairy cows and farmed fish. The focus of this work is to use to the Standards as an advocacy tool to improve the investment practices of commercial banks.

Key successes have included commercial banks, BNP Paribas and Standard Chartered, taking the Standards as an important reference point within their policies.

We also worked closely with a range of other key financial institutions, encouraging them to take the FARMS Initiative’s Standards as their reference point for animal welfare. These include Rabobank, Climate Bonds Initiative, Société Générale, ING, ACTIAM, the Asia Protein Transition Platform, and Mekong Capital.

Meanwhile, our work with the Stop Financing Factory Farming Coalition drove important conversations with multilateral development banks (MDBs) to stop financing industrial livestock production. We urged them to rethink their position for reasons of environmental necessity, as well as animal welfare.