Breaking the industrial animal agriculture machine and reducing factory farming could be the most powerful, compassionate, and catalytic investment funders can make today.

I was eight when I started fostering dogs. Growing up in Shimla, India—where winters bite—I’d build cardboard shelters under the stairs for stray puppies. They’d spend their days tumbling in the sun and curl up safe at night. It felt simple and good: a small act of care in a world that didn’t always notice suffering.

As I got older, my fondness for animals, and more importantly, for justice, only increased. I learned about the hunger, disease, and infections that plagued dogs across the country, so naturally, I thought I’d help dogs when I grew up. Everything changed when I got my first job in animal welfare.

Very early on, I came across a graph that compared the global dog population (900 million) with annual farmed animal slaughter (215+ billion), and I realised that even if I helped every stray dog on the planet, I’d still be reaching less than half a percent of the animals who suffer. The vast majority of the remaining 99 percent, live and die unseen inside farms with systems built for efficiency and profit, underscoring the importance of reducing factory farming and advancing animal welfare. Billions of chickens, pigs, cows, and fish endure confined lives, and suffering is so industrialised it makes it easy to ignore.

Over time I came to understand what separates a dog or a pig isn’t their ability to suffer—it’s how our systems, traditions, and habits have decided whose suffering counts. Zoë, my co-author, also came to this cause out of concern for animals, but ended up with the same conclusion. Factory farming isn’t just an animal issue—it’s fundamentally a human one.

Most of us grew up singing ‘Old MacDonald’, imagining cheerful barns and green pastures. Walk into a supermarket today and that illusion still persists—happy cows on every packet, or an enthusiastic chicken selling her eggs. But behind those pictures lies a machinery so vast and efficient it’s become invisible.

Changing that, requires not just empathy but influence, and that’s where philanthropy can make the greatest difference: by bringing what’s hidden into view and by catalysing better systems for all.

Read the full article about reducing factory farming by Shweta Sood and Zoë Sigle at Alliance Magazine.