ASPCA Farm Animal Welfare Grants

Funding the Transition to a More Humane Food System

In addition to corporate outreach, consumer education and legislative advocacy, grant funding is a powerful way that the ASPCA is working to achieve our broader goal of ending factory farming. Our grants support diverse stakeholders and advocates who are exposing the harms of industrial animal agriculture and building a more humane, sustainable and fair food system.

Since its creation in 2012, the ASPCA’s Farm Animal Welfare program has funded a wide range of projects that reflect our position that there are multiple valid approaches to ending the suffering of farmed animals. We have supported efforts by farmers and farming organizations, public institutions, animal protection groups, and food and agricultural justice organizations. In total, we’ve given over four million dollars—and we’re just getting started!

Project Themes

Farmer Transition Support
At the heart of a better food system are farmers, but it can be challenging for them to find funding to support more humane farming practices. The ASPCA provides strategic grants to empower welfare-focused farmers and farming organizations, from underwriting the Food Animal Concerns Trust’s Fund-A-Farmer program to supporting the expansion of meaningful welfare certification standards, like Animal Welfare Approved, Certified Humane and Global Animal Partnership to funding programs that help conventional farmers transition out of factory farming.

Grassroots Campaigns & Education Support
Some of the most exciting gains for farmed animals have come from grassroots advocacy calling for food system reform, and the ASPCA has been proud to provide funding for many of these campaigns. Grants have supported state ballot efforts to end some of the cruelest forms of animal confinement (through such measures as California’s Proposition 12, Massachusetts Question 3 and efforts to shift institutional food purchases toward more humane and plant-based items. In addition, the ASPCA has sponsored conferences and gatherings of experts across the country to bring attention to the harms of factory farming, the plight of farmed animals and the potential for a more humane food system.

Research Support
With major entities in the agricultural industry funding or influencing much of the research into farming practices and attempting to silence whistleblowers who challenge our food system, there is a critical need for more research into the many negative consequences of factory farming, and its viable alternatives. The ASPCA has funded studies of farm animals’ innate needs and preferences, supported clinics working to leverage the law to reign in the abuses of industrial agriculture, funded policy reports and recommendations to address drivers of factory farming and sponsored fellowships for journalists bringing a critical eye to these topics. Most recently, the ASPCA launched the Fund to End Factory Farming in 2022, which has become an annual grant program.

Current Grant Opportunities

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