A toy large L shaped roof panel part of Factory Farm Playset
A toy large L shaped roof panel, made by This is Cow for World Animal Protection, London, 2021.
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Factory farm playset made by This Is Cow for the charity World Animal Protection (WAP) in 2021 (England). This playset was used in a WAP campaign to put the animal welfare and environmental issues associated with factory farming on the media agenda during COP26, aiming to continue highlighting the issue beyond the summit. Factory farming is the dominant form of meat and dairy production across Western countries. These industrial, intensive models of production involve keeping animals in close confinement. They require carbon-intensive inputs, such as corn and soy feed, largely grown from deforested areas in South America, laced with antibiotics to prevent the animals getting sick from this diet. Their waste streams are also an environmental issue, with run off a major cause of river pollution.
The factory farm playset captures this industrial system of food production using cows, chicken and pigs, represented by many figurines of these animals and the caged infrastructure they are kept in. It also features farmers in hazmat suits, another feature of this system needed to prevent disease, which spreads rapidly in such close-confined fragile monocultures of animals in poor states of health.
The playset was used in a social experiment by This Is Cow to demonstrate how children react to the cramped and unsanitary conditions, and how they would fix it.