In 2022, the ASPCA launched the Fund to End Factory Farming, a Request for Proposal (RFP) fund offering financial support for innovative projects that would hasten our nation’s transition away from industrial animal agriculture—which causes immense suffering for billions of animals each year—toward a more humane, sustainable and fair food system. In our inaugural year we chose to focus on projects that would offer new evidence of the harms caused by factory farming and the benefits of higher-welfare, pasture-based and plant-based models, as well as data on the viability of the transition from one food system to the other.  

We are thrilled to announce our 2022 Fund to End Factory Farming grant winners, and the nearly $200,000 in funding for their innovative projects!

We were able to award twice the amount anticipated thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor. Together, our grantees represent farmers, trade groups, think tanks and organizations. Their projects will benefit animals, the environment, food producers, consumers and the public at large.

2022 ASPCA Fund to End Factory Farming grant winners:

• CLEAN WATER FOR NORTH CAROLINA 
  Gathering evidence of how North Carolina factory farms are polluting the air, surface water, and ground water, and impacting neighboring communities.
• FRIENDS OF THE EARTH
  Synthesizing data pointing to methane digesters as facilitators of factory farming rather than mitigating its harms.  
• INSTITUTE FOR AGRICULTURE AND TRADE POLICY
  Demonstrating how federal subsidies enable the expansion of factory farming, including harms to animals.
• JB FARMS
  Supporting a former conventional chicken farm’s trailblazing conversion to plant production, including flowers, microgreens and specialty vegetables.
• MERCY FOR ANIMALS 
  Exploring more accurate measurements of the value people place on animal welfare through food product choices, to spur both legislative and industry improvements for farmed animals.
• PLANT BASED FOODS INSTITUTE
  Establishing the opportunities for, and multi-stakeholder benefits of, transitioning commodity crop land to regenerative crop production for the plant-based foods industry. 
• SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE AGRICULTURE PROJECT
  Supporting contract growers hoping to leave the industrial agriculture system and providing resources to prevent others from becoming trapped in the industrial ag model.

Learn more about the ASPCA’s long history of grant funding to help achieve our goal to end factory farming, and join our Factory Farming Task Force to be alerted when the application period opens for the 2023 RFP funding round.