Here’s How You Made 2018 the Most Extraordinary Year for Farmed Animals Yet

It’s truly been a game-changing year for farmed animals. Throughout 2018, Mercy For Animals was hard at work inspiring people to switch to a vegan lifestyle, pulling back the curtain on factory farms to expose cruelty, moving major corporations to adopt stronger animal welfare policies, and helping advocates around the globe make changes for animals.

Here are some of our accomplishments from this past year.

We released eight investigations.


From our groundbreaking investigation into Brazil’s chicken factory farms to exposing mother pigs trapped in crates in six factory farms in Mexico to our first-ever investigation into the commercial fishing industry, our brave undercover investigators shined a light on animal suffering and inspired people to end their support of cruel industries.

We held animal abusers accountable.

After a 2017 MFA undercover exposé revealed workers punting and throwing chickens and ripping the legs off conscious birds, we secured 38 charges against Elite Farm Services, Sofina Foods, and a chairman of Elite Farm Services.

We made history!


Thanks to all our supporters, MFA and a coalition of animal protection groups inspired voters to pass Prop 12, the strongest farmed animal protection law in the world. More than 200 MFA volunteers helped make this pass by an overwhelming margin. Additionally, after several MFA investigations, California governor Jerry Brown signed Senate bill 1017 into law, requiring the phaseout of cruel fishing driftnets.


Carrefour Brazil, the country’s leading supermarket chain, committed to banning cruel cages for egg-laying hens after talks with MFA. And after a 48-hour campaign led by MFA and other animal protection groups, Marriott committed to banning battery cages globally and Royal Caribbean extended its chicken welfare policy to include Canada. In total, 29 companies committed to eliminating cruel cages for hens and 22 companies committed to reducing the suffering of chickens raised for meat.

We took on McDonald’s.


In 2018 we helped start a massive coalition campaign calling on McDonald’s to prohibit the worst abuses for chickens in its supply chain. We launched ads at over 3,000 McDonald’s locations around the country—including in New York’s Times Square—informing customers of the animal cruelty in McDonald’s chicken nuggets.

We took our social media to the next level.

This year, MFA’s social media team added more than 904,000 new followers across global platforms, received more than 1.7 billion impressions on social media content, and got 16 million views on our blog platforms.

We gave hundreds of thousands of people one-on-one support!

Our vegetarian support team had more than 774,900 one-on-one interactions to answer questions and provide support, with tips on going vegan, recipe ideas, nutritional information, and more.

We helped implement food policy changes globally.


Once our 2018 food policy commitments are implemented, more than 1.5 million meat-based meals will be replaced with vegan meals each year. MFA partnered with the city of Pedreira, Brazil, to reduce meat, dairy, and eggs served in public schools by 20 percent and collaborated with the state of Veracruz to replace nearly 1 million meat-based meals with vegan ones each year through a program to serve only vegan meals every Monday in all public schools.

We empowered our volunteers.

With help from our global outreach team, animal activists took more than 5,772 online actions and we hosted more than 1,000 outreach events! Volunteers around the globe participated in protests, vigils, and other campaign actions to put pressure on major corporations like Walmart.


Thanks to supporters like you, we’ve been able to move mountains for farmed animals and we have big plans for 2019.

Please continue supporting our work by making a donation today.

For more highlights, see our 2018 year in review.