All animals have evolved to be perfectly adapted for their ecological niche, their part in natural ecosystems, and the more conditions in which we force them to live deviate from these conditions, the more their welfare will suffer.

Professor Tim Lang, Centre for Food Policy, City University of London

Factory farming and aquaculture are the biggest forms of animal cruelty on the planet affecting more than 92 billion individual animals on land and an estimated 124 billion fish every year in underwater intensive fish farms.

Factory farming, and the associated industrial mono-crop production necessary to supply animal feed, are also drivers of global biodiversity loss – including the demise of farmland birds, bees and butterflies, as well as iconic species, such as penguins, polar bears, elephants, jaguars, orangutans and rhinoceros.

In February 2021, the Chatham House report Food System Impacts on Biodiversity Loss, published in partnership with Compassion in World Farming and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), identified that the intensification of agriculture - especially intensive animal agriculture - is the world's major driver.