By Philip Lymbery, Global CEO

Despite a difficult year with profound challenges for all of us, not least from Covid, 2021 will be remembered for seeing some of the greatest strides ever for animal welfare and our mission to end factory farming.

This was the year when the European Commission announced the end of the cage age – that it would bring forward legislation to ban all cages for animals farmed for food. A far-reaching pledge brought about by the most amazing campaign. Led by Compassion, 170 organizations joined forces to gather 1.4 million signatures from EU citizens calling for this seismic change. And it is testimony to everyone involved, from our supporters, staff teams across our coalition partners, celebrity supporters, companies, and politicians who rallied to the cause, that this unprecedented stride has been taken for animals. Some 300 million animals are set to benefit from better lives free from cages as a result.

In more good news, thanks to a campaign by CIWF Czechia and other animal welfare groups, the Czech Republic passed a ban on caged hen farming. In addition, three more US States – Colorado, Utah, and Nevada – passed bans on cages for hens.

As well as progress on political reforms for animals, our relentless corporate outreach has seen another suite of companies pledging to move to higher welfare standards across whole tranches of their product lines.

Big names in the food industry committed to better welfare for their chickens reared for meat, including Burger King and Friday’s in the UK; KFC and Galliance in France; Carrefour in Poland, Fileni in Italy, Subway across Europe, Sprouts Farmers Market and Natural Grocers in the US, and Domino’s Pizza in Australia and New Zealand.

To date, since our corporate engagement program started in 2010, we have achieved company commitments to better welfare that are set to benefit more than 2.23 billion animals annually.

Further inspiring progress was seen in the UK with the government announcing perhaps the biggest shake-up of animal welfare in British history, including proposed bans on live animal exports, legal recognition of animal sentience and the outlawing of the sale and import of cruel products such as foie gras. This could finally put an end to horrific export of calves and sheep over long distances, a campaign hard-fought by Compassion and kindred societies for half a century.

New frontiers

As well as driving impact for animals on traditional issues including cages, confinement systems, and live exports, this year also saw us exposing cruelties in the forgotten factory farms under the water.