Farmed Animal Network Southeast Asia (FANSEA)

“At World Animal Protection, we move the world to protect animals, where animals live free from cruelty and suffering.”

World Animal Protection envisions a world where animals can exist without enduring cruelty and suffering. However, the current situation presents a contrasting picture for billions of farmed animals. The increasing affluence of millions worldwide is driving higher expenditures on meat and animal products, reshaping diets. Consequently, animals are raised, transported, and slaughtered on a massive scale, enduring appalling conditions within an industrialised global food system striving to meet growing demand at minimal cost. Regrettably, for many, these animals are viewed as commodities rather than sentient beings capable of experiencing pain and distress.

Since 2015, World Animal Protection has been tackling this critical challenge by actively involving major food companies and producers in phasing out the most detrimental animal farming methods and practices. These include issues such as close confinement, overcrowding, barren environments, and other welfare-related problems like mutilations and excessive growth rates. Recognising that these efforts alone are insufficient, we advocate for a fundamental shift in global diets toward a more plant-based food system and the cessation of factory farming, where large numbers of animals are kept in intensive conditions with a primary focus on efficiency and profit.

In 2021, World Animal Protection's Farming Programme launched a 10-year food systems strategy aiming to revolutionise the global food systems, ensuring a good life for farmed animals. Our goal is to make animal welfare a priority of global significance, transforming public perception so that animals are not perceived merely as commodities. We aim to demonstrate the interconnectedness of ill-treatment and the destruction of animal habitats with our own well-being. Across the globe, burgeoning movements attest to the fact that people are no longer content with incremental, short-term solutions. The increasing demand for change reflects a desire to address the root causes of inequality and suffering within the global food systems.

We acknowledge that the endeavour to eliminate the most detrimental intensive farming practices and overhaul the food systems demands resources far beyond the capacity of any single organisation. In fact, it surpasses the collective capabilities of today's animal protection movement. Consequently, it is imperative for us to actively collaborate with and provide support to other organisations willing to join forces in addressing these substantial global challenges.

Therefore, the goal of our Farmed Animal Network Southeast Asia (FANSEA) is to establish a robust community of organisations throughout Southeast Asia, recognised as one of the world's most critical and significant regions for farmed animals, dedicated to enhancing farmed animal welfare and/or contributing to the cessation of factory farming.

Most of the 70 billion farmed animals worldwide endure conditions that curtail their lifespans, inducing fear, pain, and illness. Their suffering is pervasive, severe, avoidable, and often concealed.

With the generous partnership and financial support from Open Philanthropy, World Animal Protection is dedicated to enhancing the well-being of farmed animals, including chickens, pigs, cows, fish, and shrimp by:

• Working with food businesses to end cruel practices and systems, such as barren and crowded environments and painful mutilations
• Piloting projects that demonstrate the viability of high-welfare production systems
• Shifting or creating government or inter-government policies to improve farmed animal welfare, reduce factory farming or create policies that shift diets towards a more plant-based system while acknowledging animal welfare as one of the reasons
• Empowering consumers to take action in demanding higher welfare products or shifting to plant-based diets thus putting pressure on corporations to make commitments to improve their farmed animal welfare policies and to reduce their animal protein offerings and offer plant-based alternatives
• Exploring a system-based approach to help transform the global food systems beyond by 2030

Since 2021, World Animal Protection has been providing financial and technical support to local grassroots organizations in order to build their capacity toimprovefarmed animal welfare, particularly in countries with substantial farmed animal populations or the potential to influence a significant number of animals throughout Southeast Asia. Proposals that aimed to bring about an end to factory farming or facilitate a substantial shift towards plant-based diets were also taken into account. Currently, eight organisations across Southeast Asia have been awarded grants ranging from USD 40,000 to 80,000 for project durations spanning one to two years.

By the conclusion of the Investing in Others grant period, the the eight grantees in the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam aim to:

• Improve the lives of farmed animals by implementing Responsible Minimum Standards (RMS) at scale in Southeast Asia
• Demonstrate direct farmed animal welfare improvements and the number of animals impacted
• Gain corporate commitmentsor government policy changes related to farmed animal welfare at scale and/or a shift to producing plant-based alternativesEnable public mobilization, communications, technical support or research in aid of improving farm animal welfare, a shift to plant-based diets
• Have the potential to disrupt the status quo/create lasting change on one or more farm animal welfare issues
• Have the potential to be scaled and replicated

An essential requirement for the eight grantees is to make contributions in the form of commitments to farmed animal welfare. These commitments must align with or exceed the Farm Animal Responsible Minimum Standards (FARMS).​ The standards are specific guidelines outlining minimum welfare standards regarding how farmed animals should be raised, transported and slaughtered. For more information about  FARMS, please visit

 FARMS  

Philippines

1. Philippine Animal Welfare Society (PAWS): ‘PAWS-World Animal Protection broiler chicken welfare project’
2. Tambuyog Development Center (TDC): ‘Farmed shrimp welfare and protection project’

Thailand 

3. Patom Organic Living: ‘Improving local organic farm standard towards World Animal Protection farmed animal welfare policy and organic food high welfare meat and plant-based consumption’

Indonesia

4. Yayasan Lembaga Konsumen Indonesia (YLKI): ‘Develop consumers demand on high welfare chicken broiler product based on FARMS standard’
5.  Animals Don’t Speak Human (ADSH): ‘Farmed animal welfare scoping report in Bali (pig, broiler chicken, laying hen and fish at the inland and lake aquaculture)’

Vietnam

6. Evergreen Social Ventures (HealthyFarm): ‘Humane egg market development: improving corporate engagement and competitiveness for cage-free eggs in Vietnam’
7. Centre for Marinelife Conservation and Community Development (MCD): ‘Strengthening the ecological farmed shrimp sustainability and animal welfare in Ca Mau province, Mekong delta of Vietnam’
8. Vietnam Animal Welfare Association (VAWA): ‘Making long-term change for chicken and pig high-welfare and cage-free movement in Vietnam through policy change and technical guidelines’