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More than £116m of UK taxpayers’ cash has been used to fund “cruel and damaging” factory farms overseas previously 5 years, evaluation has discovered.
Researchers who checked out shares held by the federal government in 5 world growth banks mentioned the cash has additionally helped gas greenhouse fuel emissions, in addition to air air pollution, antibiotic resistance and pesticide use, which all threaten human well being.
Schemes supported by the banks have additionally taken properties, livelihoods and ancestral lands from native communities via the growth of industrial agriculture, based on a study carried out for the World Animal Protection organisation.
The report referred to as ‘Your Taxes, Their Farms: Funding Factory Farming Abroad’ analysed 1,855 initiatives from 2018 to final yr funded by growth banks, that are arrange and funded by governments to supply loans for financial development. But the UK authorities mentioned taxpayer cash just isn’t immediately utilized in these initiatives.
Projects vary from the development of new factory farms and fisheries to animal feed mills, in international locations together with Vietnam, China, Brazil and Uganda.
The UK is the most important donor to the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which in 20 years has lent greater than £150m to broaden factory farms in Ecuador, the study discovered.
The scheme prompted protests from Indigenous communities, who have been prevented from fishing and bathing when rivers turned polluted, World Animal Protection claimed.
“Factory farming undermines food security for communities around the world through the inefficient use of resources,” the report warned. “As cruel factory farming grows, more and more land that could be used to grow crops for humans or to protect wildlife is instead used to plant crops like soy to feed factory-farmed animals.”
The funding may even cease the UK from assembly its net-zero targets as a result of such farms account for many of agriculture’s carbon dioxide emissions, it claimed.
Harvard University researchers say world livestock emissions should be halved by 2030 to fulfill the Paris local weather goal. “This will not be achieved if factory farming continues to be funded and expanded,” the report authors mentioned.
They add utilizing large portions of water to develop animal feed additionally causes forest loss, destroying habitats.
“The UK government is not only jeopardising the country’s ability to meet its climate commitments by allowing taxpayer money to fund factory farming operations abroad, but it is also allowing billions of sentient animals to suffer on a global scale,” the report concludes.
A 2018 study mentioned: “Animals reared in factory farming systems are routinely subjected to extreme physical and mental harm. Most are kept in small cages or overcrowded, unsanitary spaces and throughout their lives have no access to the outdoors and cannot express natural behaviours.”
Chickens are sometimes confined to areas smaller than a bit of A4 paper, whereas pigs endure castration and tail-docking with out ache reduction.
Development banks receiving UK cash have promised to align operations with the Paris local weather deal.
But Lindsay Duncan, of World Animal Protection, mentioned growth banks and member international locations ought to re-evaluate practices that “contribute to immense animal suffering as well as significant social and environmental impacts”.
She mentioned: “Funding should be redirected to systems that support regenerative farming and that offer plant-based alternatives alongside high-welfare meat products.”
A Foreign Office spokesperson mentioned: “The foreign secretary has been clear that tackling the climate and nature emergency is the most important geopolitical challenge of our age. Part of the solution is unlocking much more climate and nature finance, and this starts with multilateral development banks. The five MDBs featured in the report provided over $63bn to tackle climate change in 2023 alone.
“Taxpayer money is provided to the banks as capital, which the banks use as leverage to borrow from the bond markets. Taxpayer money is therefore not directly used in these projects.”
An IFC spokesperson mentioned: “Livestock plays a vital economic role in development, supporting the livelihoods of approximately 1.3 billion people worldwide, with women accounting for around 70 per cent of the sector’s workforce.
“It also serves as a source of high-quality protein and essential micronutrients.”
They added, according to IFC’s Practices for Sustainable Investment in Private Sector Livestock Operations, it labored with livestock shoppers which have been “committed to enhancing animal health and welfare, protecting the environment and promoting food safety”.
Last week, analysts from the Stop Financing Factory Farming coalition mentioned that 15 main multilateral growth banks and the Green Climate Fund collectively invested $3.33bn (£2.57bn) in animal agriculture initiatives final yr.
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