Year in Review
2023
Year in Review
2023
Year in Review
2023
Year in Review
20232023
A crucial year for animals.
Fueled by your kindness and courage, our collective effort drove real and lasting change for farmed animals in 2023.
We partnered with food industry giants to move plant-based meals into the mainstream. One of our powerful investigations made headlines in the New York Times. We continued to influence legal protections that shape the lives of animals around the world. And we held companies accountable for commitments they made to improving the lives of millions of animals trapped in our food system.
Our efforts are far from over. We need to be stronger and more resilient than ever—to pave the way for a future where animals are no longer in our food system. Join us.
We supported hundreds of schools to serve 15 million plant-based meals.
Mercy For Animals partners with schools in Brazil to inspire and train kitchen staff on how to reduce meat, dairy, and eggs used by 20%. In 2023, we continued active programs with six school districts and entered into two new commitments.
We trained 896 chefs, nutritionists, and school staff members in plant-based cooking, and we supported them in replacing 15 million meals with plant-based ones.
This could spare 295,000 animals from miserable lives at factory farms while ushering in potential long-term benefits for students learning about plant-based eating at a young age.
In addition to our partnerships in Brazil, we worked with the executive chef of Cherry Creek school district in Denver to remove eggs and cows’ milk from the district’s baked goods. The school district consists of 67 schools serving 53,000 students.
We collaborated with companies to change their menus, products, and strategies to bring vegan meals into the mainstream.
Subway México and Mercy For Animals collaborated for two years to produce a vegan version of the company’s iconic chicken teriyaki sub. The sub launched nationally on July 5 in more than 780 restaurants across Mexico.
We also had positive conversations with Starbucks and Caribou Coffee. Seeing the growing demand for plant-based milk, both companies launched holiday drink lines with half the drinks using plant-based milk as the default option. These launches prop up plant-based drink options for about 16,000 U.S. Starbucks locations and nearly 500 Caribou locations.
After conversations with Mercy For Animals, Panera added a new vegetarian sandwich to its menu. The toasted baguette sandwich became available for a limited time at participating U.S. locations.
Pullman Ibirapuera, a brand of Accor Hotels, launched a plant-based cafe after more than a year of planning with Mercy For Animals. The cafe serves as a pilot project with the goal of eventually expanding to other Accor hotels across Brazil.
After conversations with Mercy For Animals, Shake Shack expanded its plant-based burger and milkshakes to all 260 locations nationwide.
Brazilian food-tech company Liv Up and the largest calzone franchise in the country both launched their first plant-based options.
We held companies accountable for their animal welfare commitments.
We persuaded 12 food brands to commit to eliminating eggs from hens kept in cruel cages. And we followed up with companies that had committed to reducing suffering for chickens raised for food to ensure they were on track to meeting their pledge deadlines. Our efforts prompted 80 companies to report on the progress they’d made toward their welfare commitments.
Fourteen brands published detailed roadmaps outlining how they would meet their goals. Dog food company Campfire Treats became the first company to satisfy all elements of the Better Chicken Commitment for all its chicken products.
We fought to keep one of the strongest farmed animal protection laws in the United States and built momentum in Washington.
In one of the most significant wins ever for farmed animals, the Supreme Court of the United States dismissed the pork industry’s challenge to California’s Proposition 12. Mercy For Animals and our allies fought hard to convince the court to uphold Prop 12. The Harvard Law School Animal Law & Policy Clinic filed an amicus brief on behalf of a coalition of law professors and animal protection organizations, including Mercy For Animals. The brief voiced our strong support for the law. As the court decision was under review, we released a hard-hitting investigation showing the undeniable horror of cramming pigs into crates barely larger than their bodies.
We have also been influencing the Farm Bill and building legislative power—resulting in the introduction of forward-thinking policies like the Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act, aimed at protecting farmed animals and holding corporate animal agriculture accountable.
We helped inspire seven intensive confinement bans.
Mercy For Animals was part of a powerful coalition of organizations and supporters pushing for the passage of a New Jersey bill to prohibit keeping calves and pregnant pigs in intensive confinement. On July 26, Gov. Phil Murphy signed the bill into law.
The law mandates that mother pigs and calves raised for veal have enough space to stand up, lie down, and turn around freely.
We pushed government officials to effectively ban cruel confinement of mother pigs in six states in India—combined with bans from last year, these bans will spare an estimated 1.5 million mother pigs from life in cages so small they cannot turn around.
We galvanized thousands of people to take action for animals.
Our followers wield immense power. In 2023, more than 37,000 Mercy For Animals supporters sent nearly 100,000 messages to companies and elected officials advocating policy change for animals.
They also brought a message of compassion to the streets, organizing more than 650 actions across 41 communities that have a local Mercy For Animals hub. Our volunteers put pressure on companies falling short of their animal welfare promises through targeted demonstrations and met with key members of Congress to urge opposition to the harmful EATS Act.
We launched farm transition demonstration hubs.
We provided resources, support, and expertise for 10 farms that have transitioned or are transitioning from farming animals in Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Iowa, and Indiana.
In our effort to build out a scalable model for farm transitions, we launched demonstration hubs. Our demonstration hubs will model the viability of farm transitions to all farmers and impress upon government officials the importance of subsidies to farmers who want to leave industrial animal agriculture.
We also engaged lawmakers by flying farmers to Washington, DC, for events and meetings. Together, we championed a plant-based future in five meetings with members of Congress, 32 with congressional offices and House Agriculture Committee staff members, six with USDA agencies, and one with the White House Office of Climate Policy.
We awarded grants to BIPOC-led organizations.
The People’s Fund, a Mercy For Animals grant program, aims to advance our work to create a just and sustainable food system, build people power to accelerate change, and achieve racial equity in funding across our movement. The grants provide financial resources to activists and organizations dedicated to making the food system work for everyone.
This year, the program distributed 11 grants of $20,000 each to four new organizations and seven previously funded grantees, totaling $220,000.
We are opening hearts and minds to promote kindness toward all animals.
In honor of Earth Day, over 70 acclaimed chefs and influencers from around the world signed an open letter by Mercy For Animals and other coalition members calling on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to enforce stricter emission standards at factory farms.
Celebrities Ryan Eggold, Jessica Parker Kennedy, and Moby collaborated with us to gather support on social media for the Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act.
In Brazil, our #1WeekWithoutMilk social media campaign kicked off with three videos narrated by celebrity Márcio Garcia. The videos went viral and drew widespread attention to the cruelty mother cows and calves endure in the dairy industry. As a result of the campaign’s traction, the Brazilian government’s agriculture committee filed a motion of censure to try to silence us.
In the United States, we partnered with acclaimed New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to release a new undercover investigation into the pork industry.
