And why SAFE is working to end it.
Factory farming is the industrial-farming of animals, where their lives are shaped around maximising production, efficiency, and scale.
This can look like…
Around 800,000 hens in Aotearoa are trapped in colony cages. A hen will spend her entire life unable to walk freely, dust-bathe in the soil, or fully stretch her wings.
A mother pig may be confined in a crate when she gives birth, unable to turn around or nurture her piglets.
Around 125 million chickens are farmed for meat, and 1.6 million hens are farmed for their eggs in barn systems.
Thousands of cattle confined into overcrowded wastelands made up of mud, faeces, and urine, with little-to-no access to shade or shelter.
Image Credit: Grassroots Campaigns
A chicken bred for meat is bred to grow so quickly that her body struggles to support her, putting her legs, heart, and other organs under immense strain.
Beaks are cut off to reduce feather pecking. Tails are docked to prevent biting. Teeth may be clipped. Animals can be subjected to painful mutilations because the environment they’re living in makes these problems more likely.
The details look different across species, but the underlying idea is the same:
Animals are treated as units in a production line, valued for what they can produce rather than for the lives they could experience.
The future isn’t fixed.
We don’t have to accept cages, crates, and crowded sheds as part of our food system.
We can build a future where animals are no longer treated as commodities to be produced, confined, and controlled.
We can end factory farming.
Join us.
Build a resilient, plant-based food system that doesn’t depend on animal exploitation.
SAFE has launched a major new campaign calling for an end to factory farming in Aotearoa, backed by a public petition and a nationwide advertising campaign exposing the reality of intensive animal farming.
Aotearoa had a chance to improve hens’ lives. Instead, we’re preserving factory farming.
New footage from a Taranaki pig farm has revealed the grim reality of life inside a farrowing crate for mother pigs – the same cages the Government is rushing to legalise through the Animal Welfare (Regulations for Management of Pigs) Amendment Bill.