Hormel Foods Corporation, commonly known as Hormel Foods or simply Hormel, is an American food processing company founded in 1891 in Austin, Minnesota, by George A. Hormel as George A. Hormel & Company. The company originally focused on the packaging and selling of ham, sausage and other pork, chicken, beef and lamb products to consumers, adding Spam in 1937. By the 1980s, Hormel began offering a wider range of packaged and refrigerated foods. The company changed its name to Hormel Foods Corporation in 1993 and uses the Hormel brand on many of its products; the company's other brands include Planters, Columbus Craft Meats, Dinty Moore, Jennie-O, and Skippy. The company's products are available in over 80 countries worldwide.
Polyface Farm is a farm located in rural Swoope, Virginia, run by Joel Salatin and his family. The farm is driven using unconventional methods with the goal of "emotionally, economically and environmentally enhancing agriculture". This farm is where Salatin developed and put into practice many of his most significant agricultural methods. These include direct marketing of meats and produce to consumers, pastured-poultry, grass-fed beef and the rotation method which makes his farm more like an ecological system than conventional farming. Polyface Farm operates a farm store on-site where consumers go to pick up their products.
Tyson Foods, Inc. is an American multinational corporation based in Springdale, Arkansas that operates in the food industry. The company is the world's second-largest processor and marketer of chicken, beef, and pork after JBS S.A. It annually exports the largest percentage of beef out of the United States. Together with its subsidiaries, it operates major food brands, including Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm, Ball Park, Wright Brand, Aidells, and State Fair. Tyson Foods ranked No. 79 in the 2020 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.
Animal Outlook, formerly known as Compassion Over Killing (COK), is a nonprofit animal advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. It is headed since May 2021 by Executive Director Cheryl Leahy, who succeeded Erica Meier. Formed in 1995, as a high school club, their primary campaigns are to advocate against factory farming and promote vegan eating. While the group welcomes those who are interested in animal welfare who eat meat, it encourages a transition to a plant-based diet.
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is an American nonprofit organization that focuses on animal welfare and opposes animal-related cruelties of national scope. It uses strategies that are beyond the abilities of local organizations. It works on issues including pets, wildlife, farm animals, horses and other equines, and animals used in research, testing and education. As of 2001, the group's major campaigns targeted factory farming, hunting, the fur trade, puppy mills, and wildlife abuse.
Paul Shapiro is an American animal welfare writer who authored the 2018 book Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World. He's also the CEO and cofounder of The Better Meat Co. and the host of the Business for Good Podcast. He has delivered five TEDx talks relating to sustainable food and animal welfare. Prior to publishing Clean Meat, he was known for being an animal protection advocate, both as the founder of Animal Outlook and a Vice President at the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).
Smithfield Foods, Inc., is a pork producer and food-processing company based in Smithfield, Virginia. It operates as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Chinese-owned conglomerate WH Group. Founded in 1936 as the Smithfield Packing Company by Joseph W. Luter and his son, the company is the largest pig and pork producer in the world. In addition to owning over 500 farms in the US, Smithfield contracts with another 2,000 independent farms around the country to raise Smithfield's pigs. Outside the US, the company has facilities in Mexico, Poland, Romania, Germany, Slovakia and the United Kingdom. Globally the company employed 50,200 in 2016 and reported an annual revenue of $14 billion. Its 973,000-square-foot meat-processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, was said in 2000 to be the world's largest, slaughtering 32,000 pigs a day.
Animal slaughter is the killing of animals, usually referring to killing domestic livestock. It is estimated that each year, 80 billion land animals are slaughtered for food. Most animals are slaughtered for food; however, they may also be slaughtered for other reasons such as for harvesting of pelts, being diseased and unsuitable for consumption, or being surplus for maintaining a breeding stock. Slaughter typically involves some initial cutting, opening the major body cavities to remove the entrails and offal but usually leaving the carcass in one piece. Such dressing can be done by hunters in the field or in a slaughterhouse. Later, the carcass is usually butchered into smaller cuts.
Wayne Pacelle is an American animal rights and animal welfare activist, non-profit businessperson and author. Two of his books have been New York Times best-sellers. His official website can be found here.
Intensive animal farming, industrial livestock production, and macro-farms, also known as factory farming, is a type of intensive agriculture, specifically an approach to animal husbandry designed to maximize production while minimizing costs. To achieve this, agribusinesses keep livestock such as cattle, poultry, and fish at high stocking densities, at large scale, and using modern machinery, biotechnology, and global trade. The main products of this industry are meat, milk and eggs for human consumption. There are issues regarding whether intensive animal farming is sustainable in the social long-run given its costs in resources. Analysts also raise issues about its ethics.
Mercy For Animals (MFA) is an international nonprofit animal protection organization founded in 1999 by Milo Runkle. MFA's mission is to "prevent cruelty to farmed animals and promote compassionate food choices and policies."
Assured Food Standards is a United Kingdom company which licenses the Red Tractor quality mark, a farm assurance programme for food products, animal feed and fertiliser. Multiple cases of animal abuse have been reported on Red Tractor assured farms.
Norm Phelps was an American animal rights activist, vegetarian and writer. He was a founding member of the Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians (SERV), and a former outreach director of the Fund for Animals. He authored four books on animal rights: The Dominion of Love: Animal Rights According to the Bible (2002), The Great Compassion: Buddhism and Animal Rights (2004), The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA (2007), and Changing the Game: Animal Liberation in the Twenty-first Century (2015).
Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) is an international grassroots network of animal rights activists founded in 2013 in the San Francisco Bay Area. DxE uses disruptive protests and non-violent direct action tactics, such as open rescue of animals from factory farms. Their intent is to build a movement that can eventually shift culture and change social and political institutions. DxE activists work to "put an end to the commodity status of animals."
Nick Cooney is a managing partner at Lever VC, an investment fund focused on alternative protein companies.
The Global Animal Partnership (GAP) is a nonprofit which seeks to promote the welfare of farmed animals by rating the welfare standards of various farmed animal products.
An Act to Prevent Cruelty to Farm Animals, more commonly known as Question 3, was the third initiative on the 2016 Massachusetts ballot. The measure requires Massachusetts farmers to give chickens, pigs, and calves enough room to turn around, stand up, lie down, and fully extend their limbs. It also prohibits the sale of eggs or meat from animals raised in conditions that did not meet these standards.
Wayne Hsiung is an American activist. Hsiung is a co-founder of The Simple Heart Initiative and previously led the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), which he also co-founded. Hsiung was formerly a lawyer, but is no longer eligible to practice law after being suspended by the California State Bar in March 2024. During his time as a lawyer, he worked with the law firms DLA Piper and Steptoe & Johnson, was a Searle Fellow and visiting assistant professor at the Northwestern University School of Law, and a National Science Foundation-funded graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hsiung ran for mayor of Berkeley, California, in 2020, largely focused on the issue of animal rights, and earned 24% of the vote, defeated by incumbent Jesse Arreguin.
Proposition 12 was a California ballot proposition in that state's general election on November 6, 2018. The measure was self-titled the Prevention of Cruelty to Farm Animals Act. The measure passed, by a vote of about 63% Yes to 37% No.
Ventilation shutdown (VSD) is a means to kill livestock by suffocation and heat stroke in which airways to the building in which the livestock are kept are cut off. It is used for mass killing — usually to prevent the spread of diseases such as avian influenza. Animal rights organizations have called the practice unethical. The addition of carbon dioxide or additional heat to the enclosure is known as ventilation shutdown plus (VSD+).
