Here’s What Your Gift to The Humane League Will Accomplish in 2022

And we’re here because of you. Because you fuel our work with your donations, your signatures, and your voices. You partner with us year after year to continue pressuring an archaic and greedy industry to change its ways. Everything you do makes a difference, and every one of us at The Humane League is deeply grateful for your partnership in this important mission.

Every year we take the time to step back and reflect on our strategies to make sure we’re making smart, strategic steps to leverage every dollar of our annual budget to change a trillion dollar industry. Our plans for 2022 are bigger than ever, and I hope that you will stay with us in this fight. We need you.

Please consider making a donation to keep the momentum we’ve gained this year going strong. We still have to raise $1.5M for this year’s budget, and a donor has generously offered to match your donation to help us close our funding gap. It’s time to ramp up our work to give billions of individuals a better life and end factory farming once and for all. Animals are counting on us.

In 2022, with your help, we will…

• Change the world for chickens by ending live-shackle slaughter, one of the single greatest causes of suffering in slaughterhouses today.
• Secure more global corporate commitments to eliminate cages for billions of egg-laying hens and hold companies accountable to their commitments.
• Explore strategic interventions to help pigs, cows, and fishes raised for food.
• Expand and support a growing global movement of professional and volunteer activists leveraging their skills and raising their voice for animals, and inspire people around the world to join us in leaving animals off our plates.

End live-shackle slaughter

Every year billions of chickens are slammed into metal shackles, hung upside down, and dragged through an electrified stunning bath before their throats are slit. A horrific practice, even when everything goes according to their plan. However, many of the birds have their legs broken, suffocate under the weight of their organs, and miss the blade, leaving them to be boiled alive. While chickens raised for meat suffer every day from a variety of industry-standard atrocities that we are working to end, one of the single greatest causes of suffering is their manner of death.

Over the last two years, we have seen important progress towards ending this practice. Tyson Foods, the largest and most powerful chicken supplier, committed to eliminating live-shackle slaughter from four of its slaughterhouse facilities last year. McDonald’s, the largest restaurant chain in the country, has a policy to switch completely to a more humane method of slaughter for chickens by 2024 and has reported they are on track to do so. And over the last year, four of the country’s largest retailers, including Kroger and Whole Foods, also committed to eliminating this cruel method of slaughter.

We see a window of opportunity to eliminate this brutal practice once and for all, and impact the lives of billions of individuals so that no one will ever again be boiled alive. In 2022, we will focus on eliminating live-shackle slaughter to reduce their suffering.

Eliminate cages for egg-laying hens

Six billion hens around the world, including 220 million hens in the US, are kept in tiny battery cages every single year, unable to spread their wings or turn around. We and a coalition of animal protection groups have pressured nearly every major food company in the US to phase out intensive confinement by 2026, and there are now over 100 million hens in the US who will never face life in a cage. And this year, the Open Wing Alliance reached an important milestone, securing over 100 commitments from global companies to eliminate cages from their supply chain.

Still, these commitments mean nothing without action to see them through. To actually remove and destroy cages designed to confine hens for egg production. To eliminate systems of intensive confinement for good. It is essential that we follow up with companies who have missed their own deadlines to source 100% cage-free eggs and pressure them to either meet their own public commitments or start publicly reporting on their progress to transition their supply chain.

Funding our work will enable us to use corporate outreach, pressure campaigns, research, and public reporting—like our Eggsposé—to activate our growing volunteer base and allow us to support legislation. Legislation like Proposition 12 in California and Measure 3 in Massachusetts will phase out intensive confinement of egg-laying hens, as well as mother pigs and veal calves.

Simultaneously, the Open Wing Alliance (OWA)—which brings together 80 member organizations united in a common goal to end the abuse of chickens worldwide—will continue pressuring the world’s largest companies to commit to eliminating cages around the world. In 2022, we have plans to expand into strategically important regions where factory farming is growing, to stop the practice of intensive confinement before it starts. The OWA is primed to expand its capacity to provide the support, resources, and training needed for the coalition to achieve its mission as effectively as possible.

Help pigs, cows, and fishes raised for food

Eliminating the suffering of animals raised for food, no matter the species, has long been the top priority for THL. This has guided our programmatic priority of helping chickens, the world’s most abused land animal. However, to continue making an impact on the sheer scale of suffering that is inherent in animal agriculture, we need to continually evaluate our programs. We have identified a number of unique opportunities to push the needle even further, not just for chickens, but for the billions and even trillions of other animals abused for food.

Assessing public interest and awareness has always been a factor in determining cost-effective interventions, and though many in the animal protection movement have long known of the scale of suffering fishes experience, there has been little evidence that any lasting progress can be made. Until now. In 2021, The Humane League UK began a messaging study to determine the best way to communicate about the suffering fishes endure, and in the coming year, we want to further explore opportunities to make a life-changing difference for the trillions of fishes raised for food.

Furthermore, millions of consumers are oblivious to the horrors of the meat, egg, dairy, and pork industries. Standard practices like chick culling, castration, and dehorning cause immense suffering and must be exposed as some of the worst and most widespread abuses that occur behind the closed doors of factory farms. While technological solutions exist to each of these problems, without mass awareness and public outrage, food producers have little incentive to adopt them.

Support a growing global movement

To topple giants, we must build an even bigger movement of advocates speaking up for animals and demanding change. We must hone and refine every tool we have, from educating millions of people about the cruelties inherent in factory farming, to inspiring hundreds of thousands of people to sign petitions, to training thousands of activists to leverage their power to secure lasting legislative change, to professionalizing a coordinated global movement of animal protection organizations around the world to apply pressure in every single corporate market. We win together.

We see a strategic opportunity to leverage the successful model of our international Open Wing Alliance to build political and legislative power for farmed animal protection advocates in the United States. Our new Public Policy program will focus on organizing and empowering a national alliance of local and state-level animal advocacy groups and uniting them around legislative agendas that include animals raised for food. The greatest waves may be made for animals like cows and pigs, millions of whom suffer every year, and with whom the public more easily connects than chickens. But all species' lives are equally important, and we see a strategic opportunity to expand our work to make a lasting impact for even more individuals.

Because of this significant new program, and other important initiatives, next year will be our biggest year yet. We will invest in more outreach to educate and empower millions more people and encourage them to keep animals off their plates. We will expand both our own international teams and those in our Open Wing Alliance, focusing on strategically important regions to strengthen our power across the 63 countries and counting in which our OWA members reside. We will train skilled volunteers on how to leverage their passion to make the greatest possible impact. And we will begin aligning advocacy groups across the US to leverage greater political power for animals. 2022 will be a year unlike any other, as more people band together to tighten the thumbscrews on greedy animal abusers.

Thank you for supporting The Humane League

2022 will be a big year for animals, and we have you to thank for getting us here. We have planned to significantly increase our investment in creating meaningful change for animals, and as such, the combined budgets for The Humane League, The Humane League UK, and The Humane League Mexico will total roughly $20 million. Through multi-year grants and pledges, we are fortunate to have already secured half of the funding we will need to meet this budget next year, which leaves us with a funding gap of approximately $10 million as we enter the new year.

Your support will enable us to scale our most effective programs around the world, explore new strategies to impact potentially trillions more lives, invest in and grow our staff domestically and internationally, increase grants to allied organizations in the global movement, and educate millions more people about the horrifying realities of factory farming. We have a proven track record of success, and we are deeply committed to using every dollar you donate to The Humane League to impact as many lives as possible.

Thank you for leaning in with us to secure the lasting change that animals so desperately need. Because of you, this year, and every year moving forward, hundreds of millions more animals will live better lives.