FACT-Based Animal Welfare for 40 Years
Interview with Executive Director Harry Rhodes and more about their 10/2 dinner event
The inhumane treatment of livestock was a dark corner of the industrialized food system in 1982, when the Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT) was founded by activist Robert Brown. In the 40 years since, FACT has illuminated the ills of factory livestock farms, focusing on animal welfare and the overuse of antibiotics on farm animals.
On Sunday, October 2, FACT is holding a 40th anniversary celebration fundraising dinner. The event will take place at Duke’s Alehouse and Kitchen, a highly regarded farm-to-table restaurant in suburban Crystal Lake, about 50 miles northwest of downtown Chicago. Details and a ticket link are below.
I recently sat down with FACT Executive Director Harry Rhodes to discuss the nonprofit organization’s work and the upcoming celebration. In 2001, Harry founded Growing Home, an urban farming operation in the South Side Chicago neighborhood of West Englewood that provides job training for local residents with employability issues, including ex-offenders. After 17 years heading that organization, he segued to his role with FACT in June 2019.
Excerpts from our conversation are below.
Q: It's FACT’s 40th anniversary. Tell us a little bit about the history of FACT.
A: FACT was started 40 years ago in Chicago by Robert Brown, who was an activist in animal welfare issues… He saw that nobody at the time was doing anything about farm animals, which were being raised in awful conditions… One of the early projects was called Nest Eggs, which was to get hens out of the battery cages where they were raised…
The mission and vision was that animals should be raised on farms humanely, on pasture, without dangerous drugs that are bad for the animals and bad for the food we eat. They set up the Antibiotics Working Coalition with a lot of partners… FACT is still leading that coalition and working with FDA. Anytime you're working on policy issues, you get small successes which grow and really can influence a lot of things. But it's slow going and challenging work.
Q: It's interesting that the environmental movement was going strong 40 years ago, organic farming started become a bigger factor. Why did it take so long for animal welfare to really get integrated into those two?
A: I don't know why they weren't connected. Even now when you talk about animal welfare, there's a lot of funders and organizations that are interested in it, but they view plant-based solutions as the answer and that means you're not slaughtering animals. That may be a beautiful vision, but it's not gonna happen in our lifetime. So the next best thing is to raise them well, make sure that they have good lives while they're alive. Then they have one bad day, but at least when they're alive they're treated well…
The whole issue of antibiotics relates to antimicrobial resistance, with more and more people getting sick from diseases that they weren't getting sick from before and dying from it… We've set as a goal to lower the amount of antibiotics being given to animals by 50 percent within the next two years…
The big change that we helped bring about five years ago was related to antibiotics that are just being used for growth. That was banned, and after that there was a significant reduction in the amount of antibiotics given to animals. Unfortunately, it plateaued around 2019 and now you see it going up again, especially with cattle and pigs. So we have our work cut out for us, but we're keeping an eye on it.
On the humane farming side, 10 years ago, we started the Fund-a-Farmer grants program. It started out small with just a few grants, the total was about $15,000 10 years ago, and that in the last three years has really taken off. The interest is huge. Every year, we get over 600 applications, and we can only fund about 10 percent of those. But our fund has grown from around $90,000 three years ago, and this coming year, it'll be $250,000 that will be distributed…
Food:Land:Opportunity [a major funder of projects to help build a better food system] is here in Chicago, and this year we're going to have a section of the grants that are focused on farms that are selling within the greater Chicago market… We work with a couple of farms in the Chicago area, around Woodstock: Terra Vitae Farms and Broadview Farm and Gardens received grants this year. And they're donating food for our event coming up October 2 at Duke’s Alehouse and Kitchen, a good farm-to-table restaurant in Crystal Lake.
It's exciting to go to the farms to see what they're doing. I love going out and seeing how innovative these farmers are and how dedicated they are to improving the way their animals are raised and improving just the general food system.
Q: When I was growing up, we had this bucolic image of cattle grazing in the pastures. When did the realization of factory farms and factory livestock come in?
A: I think you've had two things happening in parallel development. One is the factory farms. And then the government policy of “get big or get out”… The USDA has been supporting industrial farming worldwide…
Smaller farms, whether it be organic, whether it be urban farming, have really been growing and taking off. Our network of farmers is about 10,000. Three years ago, it was 6,000. So there's a huge interest…
Consumers want food that's good for them. Often you go to the supermarket, you don't know what to get, and that's one of the things we help people with. We have a whole section on our website on information for consumers, so that they can understand the system and how it works…. I think the movement for healthier foods, for livestock and poultry, has really grown among farmers and there's more and more farms that want to do it that way. The younger farms, the newer farmers, they all are interested in in making it pasture based, humane, organic, some of them regenerative…
And that relates to climate. And there's been a lot of people saying animal agriculture has been bad because of the climate. And I say that industrial farming is bad and bad for the climate. It's not that animal agriculture, which can be an integral part of any farm, is bad. It's industrial farming that's bad, whether it's vegetables, or mono-cropping, which is terrible for the environment. People are becoming more aware of regenerative agriculture and regenerative grazing, which puts put carbon back in the soil, and in general just is a better way of farming. It's better for what you eat. It's better for the animals and it's better for the planet…
Q: I dream of a system in which there's a lot of money in the Farm Bill to provide subsidies for young farmers who want to start farming, help people get access to land…
A: The will is there, it's just getting the resources. That's the biggest challenge. Though we provide them with a little bit of that with our small grants, it's not going to help them get access to the land. But we also do webinar educational programs to connect them with where the resources are and how they can get them… All our webinars are free for the farmers and we record them all so they're all available even if you don't get them the first time around. We are starting to put together short courses based on some of the webinars and events. Our first one was pasture-based chickens and we'll be doing additional courses. We also have a mentorship program…
Q: So let’s circle back to the October 2 fundraiser. What can people expect at the event?
A: I I will be showing this new video of Terra Vitae Farms, and we will have one of the farmers from Terra Vitae. They'll be saying a few words as well, as will the farmers at Broadview. We'll have a great five-course dinner, and it's all very reasonable, only $75 a ticket. I'll say a few words, but it's not gonna be a lot of talking. Mostly it's just the experience and having time to discuss these things.