World Farm Animals Day is a day dedicated to exposing, mourning, and memorializing the needless suffering and deaths of 50 billion innocent, feeling animals in factory farms and slaughterhouses. Observed in all 50 states and around the world, World Farm Animals Day has been organized since 1983 by FARM, a non-profit public interest organization based in Washington, DC. The date, October 2nd, honors the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, one of the foremost champions of humane, sustainable farming.
World Farm Animals Day activities traditionally include vigils, marches, leafleting, tabling, and exhibiting. More dramatic events include street theatre, cage-ins and video rigs. Activists will encourage governors and mayors to issue special proclamations denouncing factory farming.
The broad support for WFAD reflects a deep and widespread public concern with the excesses of animal agriculture. Rural residents suffer from pollution of their water and air by discharges and runoff from massive feedlots and factory farms. Independent producers and farm workers are displaced by the relentless encroachment of large conglomerates. Consumers are concerned about meat safety and are switching to plant-based alternatives. Nine out of ten Americans believe that, as long as animals are killed for food, they are owed a humane treatment during their short lives.