Factory Farm Playset
News
Over 70% of the UK’s farmed land animals live on factory farms. Watch what happens when children come face-to-face with the reality with the Factory Farm Playset.
Through books and play, we're taught from an early age that farms are open spaces, with happy animals who are free to roam. In reality, over 70% of the UK's farmed land animals live on factory farms in intensive and unnatural conditions.
We wanted to highlight the stark contrast between our perceptions of UK farms from an early age, and the dire reality of living conditions for the majority of farmed animals in the UK.
Using a small-scale reproduction, The Factory Farm Play Set represents the hidden reality of the conditions factory farmed animals endure.
This film shows what happens when children come face to face with factory farming.
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Infographic source references
1Factory farm map
2 Figure estimated as a minimum based on FAT stat figures (2019 global livestock production primary slaughtered/commodities) and the UN (2017) figures of global intensive farming.
3 5 Questions About Agricultural Emissions, Answered
4Animal agriculture and climate change
5The Humane Society
6Green and Growing
The unique environmental impact of cows
- 1.47 billion cows1 alone are burping and farting out approximately 150 billion gallons of methane every day2
- 95% of the greenhouse gas produced by cows is from burping3
- Cows burp approximately every 90 seconds4
- 1.41 trillion methane-rich cow burps are being released into the environment every day5
- Methane is thought to be 25-100 times more destructive to the environment than carbon dioxide6
- Over 23.7 billion methane-rich cowpats, weighing a staggering total of 43.4 million tonnes, are deposited around the world every day7
Cow impact source references:
1 FAO 2017. Updated number of cattle globally (2019) is 1.5 billion.
2 Ross, Phillip. "Cow Farts Have 'Larger Greenhouse Gas Impact' Than Previously Thought; Methane Pushes Climate Change". International Business Times. 26 November, 2013.
250-500 liters per cow per day, x 1.5 billion cows globally is 99 - 198.1 billion gallons. Rough average of 150 billion gallons CH4 globally per day.
See also: Miller, Scot M, et al. "Anthropegnic emissions of methane in the United States". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Vol. 110. No. 50. 18 October 2013.
3 95% of the gases come from the front of cows – only 5% from the back.
4 Defra UK - Methane emissions by individual dairy cows under commercial conditions
5 24 hours * 60 minutes/ 1.5 (90 sec burp interval) = 960/day 960*1.47billion= 1.41 trillion
6 Shindell, Drew T, et al. "Improved Attribution of Climate Forcing to Emissions". Science. 326, 716 (2009).
Vaidyanathan, Sayathri. "How Bad of a Greenhouse Gas is Methane? The global warming potential of the gaseous fossil fuel may be consistently underestimated". Scientific American. December 22, 2015.
7 A.D. Herring. Beef Cattle. Editor(s): Neal K. Van Alfen, Encyclopedia of Agriculture and Food Systems, Academic Press, 2014. Pages 1-20.
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The drive for cheap meat has industrialised our farming system to the point that many farms are unrecognisable in comparison to those we have been repeatedly conditioned to think of.