Factory Farming’s Climate Cost Is Bigger Than Most People Think

Factory farming isn’t just an animal welfare issue—it’s a major driver of climate change, biodiversity loss, and public health risks. In this episode of Climate Confident, I speak with Thom Norman, co-founder of FarmKind, to break down the true environmental costs of industrial animal agriculture and explore solutions.

We discuss:
✅ How factory farming contributes up to 19% of global greenhouse gas emissions, primarily through methane, deforestation, and fertiliser use.
✅ The inefficiencies of animal agriculture—80% of cropland is used to feed livestock, yet it provides only 17% of global calorie intake.
✅ The role of antibiotic overuse in factory farming and its link to rising antimicrobial resistance.
✅ Why shifting to alternative proteins—such as plant-based and cultivated meat—could significantly reduce emissions and land use.
✅ The effectiveness of corporate campaigns in driving industry-wide change, such as the transition away from caged eggs.

We also discuss consumer choices and why the focus shouldn’t just be on individuals but on systemic change—better policies, clear food labelling, and investment in sustainable food innovation.

If you’re interested in supporting impactful organisations tackling factory farming, Thom shares how FarmKind helps direct funding to the most effective charities.

🎧 Tune in to learn how rethinking food production can cut emissions and improve global health.

🔗 Links & Resources:
FarmKind: FarmKind.Giving
Compassion Calculator: CompassionCalculator.org

👉 Follow the podcast for new episodes every Wednesday!

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Transcript

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Thom Norman: 0:03

Whether you care about the planet as I'm sure most, if not all your listeners do, animal welfare, or human health, or all these things, thinking about how you can make a difference to this issue is important for all of these reasons and factory farming is actually this, this one issue that kind of intersects with all these different things that we care about.

Tom Raftery: 0:21

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Climate Confident podcast, the number one podcast showcasing best practices in climate emission reductions and removals. And I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Don't forget to click follow on this podcast in your podcast app of choice to be sure you don't miss any episodes. Hi everyone. Welcome to episode 206 of the Climate Confident podcast. My name is Tom Raftery. And before we kick off today's show, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to all of this podcast's amazing supporters. Your support has been instrumental in keeping this podcast going, and I'm really grateful for each and every one of you. If you're not already a supporter, I'd like to encourage you to consider joining our community of like minded individuals who are passionate about climate. Supporting the podcast is easy and affordable, with options starting as low as just three euros or dollars a month, less than the cost of a cup of coffee, and your support will make a huge difference in keeping this show going strong. To become a supporter, you simply click on the support link in the show notes of this or any episode or visit tinyurl. com slash climate pod. Now, in today's episode, I'll be talking to Thom Norman from FarmKind and in upcoming episodes, my guests will include Jarand Rystad, who's CEO of Rystad Energy. We'll be talking about the energy transition. Professor Anneliese Bracco from Georgia Tech. We'll be talking about marine life. Ryan Schermerhorn, who's an IP lawyer, and we'll be talking about climate patents. And Dr. Gemma Green, co founder and exec chair of PowerLedger, where we'll be talking about energy autonomy. Back to today's episode. And as I said, I'm talking today to Thom. Thom, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Thom Norman: 2:10

Yeah, sure hi, I'm Thom, Thom Norman, and I am the co founder of FarmKind. We are an organisation focused on helping people to impact on factory farming, and we do this by finding amazing charities that are doing incredible work in this space, and then helping people to support those charities.

Tom Raftery: 2:28

So tell me, Thom, what The pathway to this, because it's not an obvious one. What were you doing before this? And what was your kind of Damascene moment that made you decide to start FarmKind?

Thom Norman: 2:43

Yeah, I was doing something quite different before this. I, used to work as a lawyer. I was a lawyer for the UK government where I was on a number of issues but sort of, most prominently on actually nuclear energy policy.

Tom Raftery: 2:56

Obviously.

Thom Norman: 2:58

Yes, obviously, exactly which is a really interesting sort of area of government. The UK was trying to do some kind of interesting, exciting things. So that was very, fascinating to work on, but completely different to what I do now. So what I, what I ended up doing was I had kind of been interested in the impacts of animal agriculture from a perspective of the climate, but also from perspective of animal welfare for some time. And it turns out that like, the really big issue in this space in general is funding. There's a lot of organisations out there. Some of them are doing really great work and making a really big difference on this issue. But almost all of them are extremely funding constrained. So we're thinking about what can I do to have some more of an impact through my career and what I'm, what I'm doing with my life. And this seemed like a really important issue to work on because if you care about the issue of factory farming and animal agriculture, or the climate or animal welfare, You can start a new charity, but then you're it's like you're competing with everybody else for this small amount of funding, right? Whereas if you can try and increase the funding for great organisations that are doing good work then everybody benefits. So that's why I was particularly excited in this work. I went through a kind of incubation program for charity. So a bit of sort of like a Y Combinator but for specifically for charities and that's where I found my co founder and we launched FarmKind.

Tom Raftery: 4:16

And give me the big picture view of what it is FarmKind does. So it's not that you're a charity per se, it's rather that you're an aggregator of charities, and then you dispense to charities that you think are the more efficient. More powerful, probably the wrong word. Better at what they do.

Thom Norman: 4:42

Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Raftery: 4:43

My vocabulary is a bit stunted this morning, apparently, but

Thom Norman: 4:48

Well, it's yeah, I mean, it is an interesting question, right? Because it's just saying, oh, this is a good charity. It's actually kind of complicated. And like, there are different ways of charities being good in different ways in different things. So yeah, it's kind of is a little bit hard to sum up, but what we do yes, you're, you're broadly right. So we are, we are a nonprofit ourselves. We don't seek to make money. We are funded by by grants from like large foundations and things like this. So all the money that kind of goes people donate through us to charities, 100 percent of that money goes on to the, to the charities that they're supporting. We don't take any of that, but yeah, it's right. What we do is we go out and we work with experts. So we work with grant makers at major foundations. We work with an organisation called Animal Charity Evaluators that are specialists in evaluating charities in animal spaces. So in factory farming, but also they work on things like animal testing and wild animals and these all of that kind of thing. Charities to do with animals. And we work with, with these experts to identify currently six charities that we think are particularly effective. So they use your money, especially well, if you donate through them, your each dollar is buying a lot of kind of impact in the world. And that's kind of, that's the main thing that we focus on. And we have selected these charities to cover all the sort of major sort of groups of animals that are, are in factory farming. So. chickens and pigs and cows and fish and crustaceans. And then also to be tackling this problem from multiple different directions. So it might be that the ultimate solution to factory farming is for example, moving to kind of things like cultivated meat and new technologies for different kinds of more sustainable foods. Or it might be that what we need to do is work on improving practices in factory farms right now. And sort of dealing with some of the externalities and the kind of sustainability issues in farms right now and so because there's some kind of uncertainty about exactly what's going to work. It might be one of these things or a combination of these things We make sure that we're not just kind of going putting all our eggs in one basket. We pick charities that are effective but are working kind of different theories of change and different approaches to this problem. And then, yeah, what we do is we basically, we go out to sort of the public and through things like this podcast and other things like this. And we ask people like, these are great charts that If you care about this issue. We'll try and persuade you that that's a good idea. These are, these are really good charities that will, spend your money wisely. And you can see through us quite directly, like this is exactly the impact of donation. This is how many animals you can help. This is how much carbon you're effectively offsetting if you like and we can report that to you. So you can really see what the value of your donation is.

Tom Raftery: 7:24

And what has surprised you most on your journey from working for government on nuclear technologies through to starting up FarmKind and working with animals and animal charities?

Thom Norman: 7:39

Yeah. So it is an amazingly different thing to do. And I think, it is a real challenge. I think the, biggest thing I think is just how complicated it is to like work in this kind of environment of, trying to get a message out there. The world of like, before I was sitting very comfortably sitting in my, in my office, like, you know, giving my advice to clients and not having to deal with kind of the wider world and how do you communicate to the general public about this or that, the other, I can write in my you know, horrible legalese and feel very comfortable with that. And like, how do you actually go out and talk to people about some issues that can be quite complicated? And there's, there is definitely a lot of nuance in some of these things. How do you do that in a way that people are going to find engaging? That they're going to understand? I think we all, we all interact with farming because we all, you know, we all eat right. And we all buy products that come from some kind of, from the food system more broadly, but that I think creates a lot of resistance for people because they think like, if you're going to care about some of the problems in the food system, That means I have to change my diet. I have to do, you know, I have to maybe give up the foods that I like most and these sorts of things. And that creates a lot of resistance for people understandably, I think and they don't kind of want to engage. Also, we have like generally very positive ideas about what it means to be a farmer. Like we have this old McDonald's kind of ideas that are sort of floating around. And so actually how you kind of communicate with people sensitively and in a way that they are going to want to engage with not feel judged is quite, quite difficult because there are a lot of barriers, a lot of people who do it very badly and do kind of come in with like these sort of like quite judgmental messages sometimes. And so, I think understandably people are very cautious when we're trying to talk to them about this issue. And how would you do that in a way that's respectful and accurate, but also compassionate and and engaging is is quite hard, but we're hopefully getting better at that over time.

Tom Raftery: 9:37

Okay. And you mentioned you're a nonprofit and that a hundred percent of the donations go to the charities. So where do you get your money from?

Thom Norman: 9:47

Yeah, so we are grant funded so we are funded by a number of large foundations and also some high net worth individuals who, who are excited in the work by the work we're doing and have decided to fund us. On our website, we have a transparency section, which actually lists precisely what all these, all these funds are so people can go and see that. But but that's essentially it. So we take money from large philanthropic foundations, and then we we use that for our funding.

Tom Raftery: 10:12

Okay. And obviously this is the Climate Confident podcast. Let's dig into a little bit how factory farming causes climate issues for people who may be unaware. Walk us through that.

Thom Norman: 10:25

So I think the first thing to say is usually when we talk about climate and animals, we, we sort of talk about animal agriculture rather than specifically, factory farming. It's sometimes difficult to like disaggregate these two things. But in the USA about 90, 99% of the animals raised are raised in what could be classed as factory farms. In somewhere like the Europe and the United Kingdom, it's, it's around in the range of 70 to 80%. And increasingly large numbers in the developing world as well. So. Broadly speaking, we can, I think it's, it is fairly accurate to say that the majority of the impacts of animal agriculture more broadly are also true of factory farming. So animal agriculture and factory farming is responsible for something in the region of 15 to 19% of total greenhouse gas emissions. This depends upon how you kind of calculate the numbers and things like this. A lot of those emissions but by no means all are from methane, which is, as I'm sure many of your audience will know a very potent greenhouse gas, but one that breaks down in the atmosphere much quicker. So if you are measuring on a 100 year timescale, or twenty year timescale or something like this, you'll get a very different. calculation for like how impactful and factory farming is on emissions, but we can say that it, we can say that in total it's, in something in this range, that makes it more, a, larger contributor to climate change than, for example, direct emissions from cars. However you cut it, even if you take the low estimate. It's a very significant portion of our total carbon emissions as a planet. And where this comes from is there's, there's the sort of the famous cow farts and cow burps. That's definitely part of it. And that's, that's a source of, of much of these kind of methane emissions, but you also have things like nitrous oxide from fertilizers. This is a big emitter. And then you also have a bunch of effects from the food that we feed to animals. So, a major driver of deforestation is both clearing land for grazing animals, but also clearing land to grow crops. And the vast majority of the crops that grow in the world are not fed to us, but we feed them to animals. And then we eat the animals. And so what this does is it means that we actually lose about 30% of the calories that we produce from cropland in this process of feeding crops to animals and then, and then eating the animals. So our animals produce something in the region of 37% of our total protein and 17% of our total calories. So they are relatively small amount of our diet, but they are, they are using around about 80% global croplands. So most of agriculture is going to produce a fraction of, of what we eat. And so we're having things like as I say, deforestation, water pollution and water usage, land being used for much less carbon sequestering activities than it could be if we turned it over to forest land and things like this. And so all of these things contribute to factory farming's impact on the climate more broadly. And then you also have specific, this is specific then factory farming, local pollution issues as well, because what you're doing is you're concentrating a huge number of animals into a really small space, and all of the waste that they produce so by some estimates, animals in farms produce 13 times as much sewage as the entire American population. So, the animals in America are producing 13 times more sewage than all the humans in America. And it's all concentrated into relatively small spaces. There are some amazing photos, and art projects that they did where they, they took aerial photographs of factory farms and you can see these lagoons of the waste and they, they are, I mean, they actually create quite beautiful images, but they are in reality, when you think about what it is, really horrific as these giant kind of lakes of sewage, which are obviously having an incredibly large impact on the local environment in terms of the gases that are produced, the the sewage leaks out into the, the land around the land can't sort of deal with this with that amount of sewage And so it's polluting the like environment and polluting waterways locally as well. So you have these kind of macro level climate issues, but you also have these kind of very intense local impacts to, to the environment from factory farming as well.

Tom Raftery: 14:47

One of the reasons we've moved to factory farming is that it is a far more efficient way of producing protein than having, cows out in the field grazing where they should naturally be. So if you have them not in a field grazing, if you have them enclosed in a space, 500 per meter, obviously not that, but you know, very, very tight together. It's more efficient in terms of protein production and we are a planet now of over 8 billion people and one of the things that people were very worried about in the early 70s and late 60s was the fact that we were going to run out of food to feed people and then you had the green revolution which, you know, all this is part of, so if we get rid of factory farming, what's the alternative?

Thom Norman: 15:41

Yeah. So I think just firstly, to slightly nuance this, I agree that it's very efficient in terms of the inputs for the food. But when we think about factory farms being very efficient, what we're often doing is forgetting about all the externalities that are created by this. So all this pollution and this impact on the climate is a cost of factory farming, but it's not being typically calculated when we think about the price you pay in the supermarket for your food and things like this. So factory farming is very efficient in terms of turning inputs into animal products. But if we were to include all these externalities, it starts to look a lot less, less good. The alternative, the first thing to say is like globally we will need to reduce the amount that we rely on animals to produce our food. This is very clear it's from a climate point of view, it is simply unsustainable to feed the the amount of animal products we do currently. If we think currently most animal products are eaten by rich people because they're like relatively expensive versus say grains and crops things like this. As the world gets richer, which is obviously a good thing broadly, we want like people to be lifted out of poverty and things like this, they're eating more animal products. So without even growing the population of the world, the current demand for animal products is, ever growing. and it is already at a level which is almost certainly unsustainable if we're going to hit our climate goals of keeping, global warming between two, two degrees. So we need a, we need an alternative way to produce food that people want to eat. There are some really exciting technologies out there in the cultivated meat sector, where we're looking at how you produce things that are actual meat products. So biologically they are indistinct from something that, you know, a cow steak or a cow burger, but are produced essentially in a factory, if you like. So in a, in a kind of a process that is run by humans where we growing the cells themselves rather than the animal. These kinds of technologies can produce food at a, with far fewer impact inputs far less water usage, none of the need for growing of these crops, none of these methane emissions, so a much, much lower carbon footprint and much lower impact on the environment. This is a way to produce at least some animal proteins. Then we have things like plant based foods and things like this, which are also, I think, part of the the kind of food mix that we, that we'd like to see and then there may be, I think there definitely will be a role for some amount of animal agriculture that's done in more sustainable and less intensive ways. And so it's having less of a direct impact on the planet. And I think that this combination of less intensive animal agriculture and these new technologies providing us with food at scale at much lower environmental costs is a good kind of roadmap for how we can produce a future food system that's a lot kinder to the planet.

Tom Raftery: 18:29

If I am a factory farmer, what incentive do I have to move away from factory farming? Obviously, I'm highly unlikely to go the way of growing meat in vats, cultivating meat. That's, that's more for, lab companies to do. But. I could grow plants, maybe produce plant protein that way. More likely, I would go back to the example I used earlier of having the animals out in fields. But like I say, what's the incentive of doing that versus my current factory farming?

Thom Norman: 19:06

Yeah, so, on sort of transitioning away from animal agriculture directly, there are some really interesting programs being run in Europe I'm thinking particularly of Holland, where they're investing quite a lot of money into helping farmers to transition to less environmentally damaging farming techniques and moving out of animal farming and into plant farming and things like this. These seem like really exciting projects because they're giving farmers a road map, to finding new ways to make a living and a sort of fair transition away from this kind of like high carbon more damaging food system. So these seem like really good options. Farming for actual farmers for the people who run these farms is often really not great these days. So the kind of meat industry, it's dominated by a few very large companies that tend to keep the cost they pay to the sort of on the ground farmer, very low. These people are operating at tiny margins. Often they are operating with really considerable amounts of debt. And there are some at least anecdotal evidence of like quite high suicide rates and mental health issues, for, farmers on the ground. So it's, I think it's very unconvincing that like, if we could give farmers a genuine route out to, a new kind of job that they thought was still consistent with their cultural self identity and things like this, that they wouldn't just, take that with kind of open arms. I think it's very possible that they would, they would love to do that. And many would love to do that. The, at that kind of bigger level of these large meat companies, I think that consumer choice can play a really big role and consumers can demand new things like better standards. So, corporate campaigns that say to for example supermarkets or, you know, Burger King or something like we don't, we as consumers don't want you to buy eggs from caged hens, for example, these kinds of campaigns have been enormously successful in reducing the most cruel practices. So for example, caged egg laying hens. There's been a big campaign over the last sort of 10 years to stop using caged eggs. And this has produced a increase from about 4% of US hens being out of cages to 40% of US hens being cage free. So this is a massive change in a really small amount of time. And this has come from organisations like the Humane League, for example, focusing on pushing companies to say, we're going to commit to buy only cage free hens. So these kinds of kind of consumer and NGO pressures on companies can really force them to change their practices And make their farming more sustainable better from an animal welfare point of view. And also I think ultimately this can be a real pressure for pushing them to think about like, how do we produce food that's less environmentally damaging? There's a big move from a lot of these companies to, I think a lot of it's greenwashing, but to say like, we are producing high, green beef or whatever it is. So there is clearly an incentive there that they are responding to currently in quite a disingenuous way. But if we can hold them to account, then it is possible they will then have to look at like, Okay, how do we actually make our food more sustainable and kinder to the planet?

Tom Raftery: 22:17

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. If I go, for example, to the shop to buy eggs, there are all kinds of now wording on packages that tries to sell me on the fact that they probably weren't in cages when they produced these eggs. So we need, I think we need, standardisation across labeling. There's some efforts at it, but it's not very clear not to me as a consumer and I'm I like to think I'm reasonably educated on the topic, so I think for people who don't look into this as much as me, it must be really, really confusing to try and find more ethical food in general.

Thom Norman: 23:00

Yes, I agree. there was a consultation on it recently from the UK government to do mandatory standardised welfare labeling across all animal products. So this was going to be like a five tier system. Where like A to E and like, they also have very clear sort of standards and everyone would have to print this on their animal products. These kinds of initiatives seem very good because they remove a lot of the kind of bad incentives that you can have in these kind of voluntary labeling schemes and things like this. So that's really exciting. But the kind of broader point I think is actually, it shouldn't, I don't think it should be on the consumer to make these kind of choices ultimately. the analogy I'd like to use is, is with the carbon footprint, right? In sort of previously we have this idea of the carbon footprint, which focuses people on, Oh, I need to fly less. I need to drive my car less. I need to like, have only a two minute shower or whatever it is. And kind of ignores the fact that that there are these systematic and structural reasons why our economy is high carbon. And I think it's the same when it comes to animal products. We as consumers, live in a place where it's for many people, it's extremely hard to find plant based or high welfare alternatives. It's, as you say, extremely confusing to look in the shop and work out which of these products is the best, best one for the climate or the best one for animal welfare. There's a lot of misinformation out there as well. And really it should be on the companies and we should be, I think the, more effective thing as a consumer to do is to think about, How can I use my voice to pressure corporations and governments to change the game itself and to change the structures rather than trying to expend huge amounts of effort myself on picking the right eggs in the shop. So I would say to people It's okay. You don't, don't feel too much pressure. Obviously, if you can find the cage free eggs, that's great, but don't, don't put this all on yourself, right? Like, instead let's, let's think about how we can pressure the organisations with the real power to make a significant change to do that

Tom Raftery: 25:28

Nice agitate for change. I like it. In terms of, I mean, you mentioned plant protein or plant based meat, I guess. No, that's not the right way to put it either because all meat is plant based meat essentially, but the likes of Beyond Meat, which is a meat substitute made from plants directly, obviously much more efficient to do it that way. Impossible Foods is another one. There are several more. We're all quite familiar with them, but the other alternative that you mentioned, the cultivated meats, which is where you take, you know, like a biopsy type amount of material from an animal. So. Not very cruel or less cruel than shooting them in the head and putting that into a vat and growing it up to several tons of meat or whatever that's not yet as widely available or even regulated for in most markets yet. So where are we with getting meat that's produced in a vat as opposed to the likes of the Impossible Foods and Beyond Meats that I mentioned earlier?

Thom Norman: 26:39

So these products have made some pretty impressive gains over a relatively short amount of time. But you're right. You can't go to the shops right now and buy them. So they are regulated they have been approved for at least some kind of sale in Singapore, Israel and even the FDA in the US has approved these processes. You can buy in some restaurants in places like Singapore, you can, you have been able to buy cultivated chicken for some number of years. And in the US a similar process to produce proteins from milk is used to produce things like cheeses and ice creams and things like this. So there are some, some products that you can buy in the US which are using essentially this process. And they are available for sale, but in general, yes, this is still like pretty new and it's still a technology that's in development. It's still something that needs a lot of support from either governments or from NGOs and there's an amazing organisation called The Good Food Institute that has really been spearheading this the development of alternative proteins and including cultivated meats for a number of years thinking about how we can bring scientists together with entrepreneurs to kind of build these companies that can explore these things. How can we share learnings and also how can we try to ensure that the regulatory environment is fair for these new technologies because we have, some of your listeners might know about this, but there have been some bans on cultivated meat, despite the fact that they're not even available for sale yet in a number of states in the US and also in Italy. These are being largely driven by the meat lobby and companies who essentially don't want to have to compete with these products. And so they are kind of, often turning it into kind of a culture war issue and pushing for legislation which is sometimes explicitly protectionist to ban these products before they're even hitting the shelves. So, The Good Food Institute also helps to kind of try and push back on these and create a better, a fairer playing field for these new technologies too.

Tom Raftery: 28:35

And essentially, the meat produced in these, I want to call them vats is a very similar process to the way we produce yogurts. Any kind of fermented food that are also produced in vats. We're just taking, in this case, cells of animals and growing them up in a vat and that produces a mass of cells, which is essentially what meat is anyway, and they're genetically indistinguishable from meat from a live animal that we've slaughtered to meat that comes out of the vat, correct?

Thom Norman: 29:09

Yeah, these are very, very similar processes in many ways to, as you say, to things we, we have certainly much, much cleaner and more disease free than the factory farming is. And I would argue also given the amount of kind of antibiotics and hormones that are often fed to farmed animals and the amount of genetic modification that is already in the breeds that we certainly know that's natural even than than the meat that we consume on the on the regular.

Tom Raftery: 29:37

Yeah, I guess the difficulty when in terms of cultivated meat would be that you could cultivate the likes of minced meat, but you wouldn't be able to cultivate the likes of a steak, correct?

Thom Norman: 29:52

So I don't, I wouldn't want to say confidently you definitely can't, but certainly the early developments have been in things like burgers and mincemeats and these kinds of products where you're, you can grow small amounts of the protein and sort of, effectively like mold it together into a, into a given shape.

Tom Raftery: 30:09

Okay. Let's go for a bit of a left field question, Thom. If you were to describe FarmKind's mission in terms of a superhero story, what Obviously, the likes of factory farming would be the villain, but what would FarmKind's superpower be?

Thom Norman: 30:28

ooh, that's an interesting question. So I think I, maybe I'll go for Ant Man here because the, the meat industry is worth about 2 trillion, 2.3 trillion dollars. And the amount of money that goes into charities that work to tackle factory farming is about 200 to 290, depending on your estimate, million dollars. So it's around about a thousand times smaller than the meat industry. Which, Ant Man to, yeah, seems a little bit, but, and yeah, actually the fight against Factory Farming does pack quite a punch, just like Ant Man. As I mentioned before, we've seen an increase from 4% of cage free hens to 40% over the last 10 years. We've seen recently Proposition 12, which is a, a landmark piece of animal welfare legislation in California was defended successfully in the Supreme Court versus both the meat industry and the Biden administration weighing on the support of the meat industry there. We've seen things like these multi million Euro transition schemes for moving to more sustainable agriculture going on across Europe. So there are a number of really exciting things going on in this battle against factory farming despite the fact that the the kind of NGO space here is absolutely tiny, versus the enemy.

Tom Raftery: 31:50

What about consumers? I know you said it's a it's like carbon footprints. We shouldn't guilt ourselves into it, but it's quite difficult as a consumer going to a restaurant, for example, and even even that that's me looking for stuff. But what about the vast majority of consumers who might actually be looking for a steak, a big juicy steak. How do we shift attitudes there away from very high contaminating food products to more sustainable ones? Because shifting that culture, I mean, it's easy enough to shift technologies, but shifting people's attitudes, much more difficult prospect.

Thom Norman: 32:38

Yeah, I agree. Which is why I think broadly certainly at the moment, it's probably not focusing on people's individual diet choices is probably not where we want to be putting our efforts. We're much better off changing kind of the landscape in which the consumer is making a choice rather than trying to get the consumer themselves to change their choice. So if we provide more alternatives. So for example more plant based alternatives and more of these kind of alternative proteins and if we can make sure that the meat that is available is raised in higher welfare environments So for example, not not in cages and is also raised in in less environmentally damaging ways. So the the suite of choices available to you as a consumer are themselves better options. I think this is the this is the right approach for us to be taking it's likely to be I think the evidence suggests significantly more effective.

Tom Raftery: 33:29

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Looking ahead, 5, 10 years, you know, what do you hope will have changed about how we think about and tackle factory farming?

Thom Norman: 33:41

The first thing to say is this problem, it can feel extremely overwhelming and it can feel like there's like nothing we can do. But I think as I've, as I mentioned, there are some really positive signs. And so what I think is very possible that in the next kind of 10 ,years certain practices like keeping hens in cages are regarded as genuinely kind of beyond the pale and just kind of a really small percentage of the market. I think it's also possible that things like these alternative proteins are starting to hit the shelves. Starting to be part of the kind of foods that we see And we're really starting to see this quite concerted change in the way that we think about a diet. I also think that we're seeing increasingly politicians who are dealing with climate change and are serious about climate change, really taking on the idea that the food system is a major part of how we deal with this issue. I expect to see, and I really hope to see our food taking a much more prominent role within this kind of broader climate change discussion, because I think it really needs to, given how much of a contributor it is to this problem.

Tom Raftery: 34:44

For people who are listening, who are inspired by this conversation, what's the one thing they can do today to help combat factory farming?

Thom Norman: 34:55

Yeah, so I think there are a number of things you can do. One of the simplest and easiest for many people is actually just to donate to organisations that are working on this issue. You don't have to do that through FarmKind You can you can do it somewhere else. You can do it through FarmKind too. We actually have a calculator on our website. Which you can find at compassion calculator. org. It allows you to put in kind of what you eat in terms of animal products on a weekly basis and find out how much money you would need to donate if you wanted to do as much good for animals as it would be if you sort of like cut all those products out of your diet entirely. And we assume that that means that by cutting them out, those, those animals weren't raised for food. And it costs about 23 dollars a month to have the same impact as going entirely vegan, as it were for that entire month. So really not that much money. Right. This is the amount of money that most people can afford and can have a immediate impact straight away. That's a simple thing that people can do. Another thing if you're really not quite sure, is getting involved in things like position campaigns and political campaigns that are lobbying for these kinds of changes So the Humane League is a good example of an organisation that's constantly running these corporate campaigns are pushing companies to have better welfare for egg laying chickens, but also meat chickens and pigs and some other animals. They do these kind of online campaigns where you can get involved. Just from sitting at home, like on your phone, you can get involved and show your support. So this is a really simple thing that everyone can do. And then also there is for people who want to take the bigger step diet change does have an impact. I don't think we should be asking people to do that as a first sort of step. And it's not for everybody, but it does make a difference and it is a thing you can do to make a big difference here.

Tom Raftery: 36:41

Lovely, great. if I think back, I'm, I'm not vegan. I'm not even vegetarian, but I do at least try and reduce the amount of meat I eat. And I haven't eaten beef probably in 15 years, because if you look particularly at any of the charts of the environmental damage, particularly the carbon footprint of foods, beef is almost orders of magnitude ahead of the next nearest food stuff. So just by cutting out beef out of your diet or even reducing it, like I say, I haven't had any in about 15 years. You can make a significant reduction in your emissions at least. And also to your point in as well, just the welfare of animals. So keep that in mind. If you're listening to this and looking for something to do.

Thom Norman: 37:30

Yeah, So I think reducing is a great option for people. Like it's very doing something like having one meatless meal a week or something like this is like, is a really great thing to do. And makes a big difference. If you care about both the climate and the animal welfare impact of your food, one thing to consider is there is actually a little bit of attention here in terms of like, if we're thinking about like, are we going to eat this meat instead of this meat? Because the animals that are in terms of animal products, the lower emissions. So particularly chickens also have both some of the worst welfare conditions in terms of the way we produce them. But also because the animal themselves is a lot smaller, you have to eat a lot more chickens to replace the, like, let's say you're eating, like, your meals are all beef and you now have, your switch all to chickens, you're eating a lot more chickens, which means a lot more animals need to go through the process in order to feed you than for, cows. So, if we say replace our cow with, chicken, then although that is definitely better from a climate point of view, it also comes with this quite really quite significant welfare trade off which also also has some impacts on pandemic risks and things like this as well. So I think my personal suggestion would be if you if you think all these things matter, that it's probably on net better to focus on like, having like, say, one less meal a week or something like this, rather than kind of trying to like replace cows with like chickens or something like this.

Tom Raftery: 39:00

Great. Thom, we're coming towards the end of the podcast now. Is there any question I didn't ask that you wish I did or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of?

Thom Norman: 39:13

I think the one thing I would underline, is, this issue of factory farming is often thought about as like, if I don't care about animal welfare. well, I can just leave this alone, but we've talked about some of the climate aspects of this issue, but there's also something that doesn't get talked about so much, but it's the human health aspect of this issue. So the biggest driver of pandemics historically has been animal agriculture of one source or another. Today, the significant risks to us for sort of future pandemics, like the next kind of COVID, are things like bird flu and swine flu, which are largely driven by intensive animal agriculture and factory farming. And antibiotic resistant diseases are expected to potentially be one of the leading causes of human death by 2050. And while factory farming is not the only driver by no means of these, it is a significant driver of this issue. So whether you care about the planet as I'm sure most, if not all your listeners do, animal welfare or human health or all these things, thinking about how you can make a difference to this issue is important for all of these reasons and factory farming is actually this, this one issue that kind of intersects with all these different things that we care about. And that's why I think it's a really, a really good issue for us to focus on and to think about how we can make a difference to.

Tom Raftery: 40:33

Yeah, fair point. I remember reading a stat a few years ago now that astounded me, and it was that 80% of the world's antibiotics are used today to give to animals, and you give it to animals not because they're sick. You give it to animals as a prophylactic to stop them getting sick, you know, so it's, it's a constant drip feed into their, into their bodies to stop them getting sick. Whereas we take antibiotics only when we get sick. So it's, it's no wonder that there is antibiotic resistance building up amongst the pathogens. So yeah, good point. Good point. Okay, Thom, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Thom Norman: 41:15

Yeah. So I think the best place to go is FarmKind's website, which is FarmKind Dot Giving. There you'll find links to things like our newsletter, our social media. Also check out the stuff we're doing in terms of the charities that we we recommend and see how much impact your donation could go. We have lots of little widgets and calculators on there. So you can see like. How much good you could do with, with, you know, your 10 or your 50 or whatever. So I think that's the best place to go.

Tom Raftery: 41:42

Thom, that's been fascinating. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Thom Norman: 41:45

Thanks very much. I've enjoyed it.

Tom Raftery: 41:48

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about the Climate Confident podcast, feel free to drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com or message me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you like the show, please don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.