Plant-Based & Vegan Active Updated Aug 26, 2026
Is farm animal welfare policy catching up with public opinion?
The gap between opinion and factory farming
Where it stands as of Sep 4, 2026
The gap is closing in places and widening in others. Brazil banned both the production and sale of foie gras, and the US share of cage-free eggs rose from under 20 percent in 2018 to 45.7 percent by July 2025 as producers moved to keep selling into California under Proposition 12. Over the same stretch JBS, the world's largest meat company, dropped its net-zero and deforestation commitments, and most farmed animals are still raised on factory farms.
Surveys keep finding that most people oppose common factory-farming practices, yet the vast majority of farmed animals are raised on factory farms and meat consumption keeps rising. The arc tracks whether policy and corporate commitments, like cage-free pledges and national farming roadmaps, start closing that gap.
The story so far
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Aug 26, 2026 Latest
Sentient reported that California's Proposition 12, which bans extreme confinement of breeding pigs, egg-laying hens and veal calves and blocks in-state sales of animals raised that way even from other states, has survived repeated lawsuits and farm bill rider attempts, with the national share of cage-free eggs rising from under 20 percent in 2018 to 45.7 percent by July 2025 as producers moved to meet its standard to keep selling into California.
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Aug 25, 2026
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva signed Bill 90/2020 into law on July 23, making Brazil the newest country to ban both the production and sale of foie gras, a law taking effect 180 days after publication that followed more than a million messages from supporters to lawmakers between March and April.
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Aug 7, 2026
Brazil's Congress voted unanimously to ban both production and imports of foie gras, becoming the second country after India to prohibit both sides of the trade, after French diplomats lobbied against the ban ahead of a new EU trade deal with Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay that took effect in January 2026. Animal Equality, which gathered more than 310,000 signatures for the Brazilian vote, said its similar US campaign has already passed 442,300 signatures.
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Aug 1, 2026
Sentient reported that Iowa's confined animal feeding operations grew 13 percent over six years even as Iowa voters oppose weakening the state's animal welfare laws by nearly two to one in a new poll, while the state now slaughters more than 39 million hogs a year.
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Jul 31, 2026
Brazil banned both the production and sale of foie gras nationwide, becoming the first country to prohibit both, after animal welfare activists sent more than a million messages to lawmakers over the force-feeding of geese and ducks used to make it.
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Jul 17, 2026
JBS, the world's largest meat company, dropped its net-zero and deforestation commitments, while advocacy groups in Atlanta and Chicago pressed Kroger to restore a cage-free egg commitment the retailer had abandoned.
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Jul 16, 2026
Switzerland set a transition period running through full enforcement in 2027 requiring labels on meat, eggs, milk and foie gras, domestic or imported, disclosing painful procedures like debeaking, tail docking and unanesthetized force-feeding, with restaurants and retailers also required to comply. Separately, a Canadian scorecard found 15 major food companies had fully delivered on cage-free egg pledges, a 60 percent jump since 2024, with 11 restaurant chains now sourcing 100 percent cage-free eggs.
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Jul 10, 2026
A survey found fewer than 13 percent of British adults rated common factory-farming practices as acceptable, while the UK government's Farming Roadmap 2050 began encouraging farmers to shift from livestock into crops like lentils. Separately, a Canadian scorecard found McDonald's Canada, A&W, Subway and Boston Pizza had all reached 100 percent cage-free egg sourcing, though Canada as a whole sat at just 21 percent cage-free versus the UK's 82 percent and the US's 47 percent.
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Jun 30, 2021
Answering a petition signed by more than 1.4 million people, the European Commission committed to propose legislation phasing out and finally banning cages for hens, sows, calves, rabbits, and other farmed animals across the bloc. It set its sights on tabling that proposal by the end of 2023, a promise campaigners would later have to keep chasing.
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Nov 6, 2018
Ten years later Californians went further with Proposition 12, again by close to 63 percent, requiring cage-free housing for egg-laying hens and barring the sale in California of eggs, pork, and veal from animals kept in tight confinement anywhere. By tying market access to how animals are treated, it reached well beyond the state's own farms.
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Nov 4, 2008
California voters passed Proposition 2 with about 63 percent in favor, requiring that egg-laying hens, breeding pigs, and calves raised for veal have room to turn around, lie down, stand up, and fully extend their limbs. Few animals in the state were then raised under such rules. The lopsided vote showed how far public feeling ran ahead of common practice.
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Jul 19, 1999
The European Union adopted a directive to phase out the bare battery cage for egg-laying hens, setting minimum welfare standards and banning conventional cages across every member state from 2012. It was one of the first times a major bloc wrote farm animal welfare into binding law. The industry was given more than a decade to adjust.
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