At Home

• Visit the Sierra Club Food and Agriculture Team and CAFO Subteam websites to learn more.
• Eat fewer meat, dairy, and egg products.
• Choose foods sourced by farms that raise animals in unconfined settings using agricultural practices (e.g., regenerative/organic) that improve ecosystem health and prioritize animal welfare.
  • Kiss the Ground for Regeneration: Promotes regeneration and healthy soil.
  • Regenerative Organic Certified® (Regenerative Organic Alliance)
  • Ecological Outcome Verification: Outcome-based monitoring protocol for grassland environments.
• Explore the Plant-Forward approach to cooking and eating exemplified by Menus of Change® (a joint initiative between Harvard School of Public Health and the Culinary Institute of America).
• Use the Farm Forward Animal Product Label Guide: An animal welfare-focused guide to selecting animal product brands in grocery stores.

Local

• Support local farmers
  • Shop at farmers’ markets and food co-ops that support local farmers and sell non-CAFO animal food products.
  • Patronize u-pick farms and farm stands.
  • Consider joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture).
• Consult a local or national directory to find out where you can purchase and dine on eco-friendly and humanely-raised animal foods.
  • Eatwild: Getting Wild Nutrition from Modern Food
  • Local Harvest: Find family farms
  • Eat Well Guide: Eat local, even when you're not
  • National Guide to Finding Local Food (National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition)
  • Real Organic Project: Find organic farms certified with Real Organic Project
  • Regenerative Organic Alliance: Regenerative Organic Certified® Operations
  • Land to Market: Support land health through better purchase decisions

State

• Contact your Sierra Club state chapter and voice your concerns and inquire about their efforts to resist CAFOs.
• Join the Sierra Club and get involved.

Federal

• Promote the Farm System Reform Act, which would transition from CAFOs toward a more resilient food system.

Watch these eye-opening documentaries exposing CAFO harms:

• Right to Harm: “Exposes the devastating public health impact factory farming has on many disadvantaged citizens throughout the United States.”
  • Sierra Club-sponsored panel discussion (members featured in the film)
• The Smell of Money: “A powerful film that educates, inspires, and advances the fight
  for environmental justice.”
• Kiss the Ground: Mission: “Saving the soil beneath our feet.”

Speak up: Contact your elected officials, local watershed group, and state environmental regulatory agency. Relay your concerns about air and water pollution and public health dangers from the storage and land application of massive amounts of untreated livestock manure. Demand answers and action. Be persistent.

Additional resources

• Socially Responsible Agricultural Project (SRAP): Protects communities from factory farms
• Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF): Survey: Majority Of Voters Surveyed Support Greater Oversight Of Industrial Animal Farms
• American Public Health Association call for a national moratorium on CAFOs and CLF action steps
• ASPCA: Revealing the Problem with Factory Farming
• Center for Food Safety:
  • Opt Out of Industrial Meat: This fact sheet is based on the 2018 Center for Food Safety report.
  • Fact Sheet: Consumers’ Guide to Meatless Burgers: Learn the facts about about meatless burgers.