Be part of something big – help us hit our £25,000 target!
We’re launching this appeal from zero with a clear goal: to raise £25,000 for our Investigations Appeal, funding two major new campaigns.
Your donations will empower our investigators to capture footage inside factory farms – evidence that will expose the truth, challenge powerful industries, and save animals’ lives.
For £25 and above become a Friend of the Investigations Team or donate more than £100 and be an Investigations Patron.
0 Donors
As you read this, countless animals who feel love, fear, pain and hope are being subjected to unimaginable suffering. Just so humans can consume their flesh.
Billion-pound global businesses try to obscure the truth, but we won’t let them.
For over 30 years, Viva! Campaigns’ investigations have tirelessly exposed the farming industry’s heartbreaking cruelty. They don’t want us to hear the screams or know the terror their greed unleashes. But thanks to our investigations team and your support, they will not be able to conceal their atrocities.
We were the first vegan charity to go undercover. In the 90s, fuelled by our investigations, we led children’s marches all over Britain to put an end to live exports. We filmed 40 pig farms across the UK and launched a consumer campaign to expose the animals’ suffering – resulting in a drop in consumption of these beautiful animals. We were the first to film duck farms undercover – leading to mass publicity and again a direct drop by millions of the numbers of these birds killed and eaten.
Our investigation of kangaroo shooting and ostrich farming brought about a collapse in the sales of both, with all supermarkets dropping their meat.
We are proud that we don’t just investigate, we galvanise people’s power. We take to the streets and we get the media coverage to shake things up. Our exposés have led to wins for animals, including the closing of four mega pig farms!
With your invaluable support, we keep showing that our investigations and high-profile campaigns have the power to bring the industry to its knees. Nine out of 10 vegans say their main motivator for adopting a vegan lifestyle is the horror of factory farming. People seeing what is happening is life-changing and life-saving.
Cranswick is the UK’s largest pig farming and pork production business. Viva! Campaigns recently investigated Cranswick and what we found is an urgent reminder that we must further raise public awareness.
Viva! Campaigns has more farms to expose to provide the evidence for two major campaigns.
Cranswick Investigation
The sheer scale and number of lives taken by the horrors of pig farming is beyond heartbreaking.
I can’t stop thinking about the deep sadness in this sow’s eyes. Like so many others around her, she was trapped but didn’t understand why; what had she done wrong? Wherever you turned, countless souls, in some form of hell, pleadingly looking into your eyes. Another beautiful mother was struggling with a painful uterine prolapse – a result of being forced to birth multiple large litters. Some pigs were also suffering from hernias that were so bad they were weighing them down like huge udders, so they could barely move.
Devastating brutality
Pure fear in the air and none of these mothers are able to offer reassurance to their innocent babies, deprived of those early-life moments of connection by farrowing crates, the (somehow legal) caging system the industry uses to make sure that 60 per cent of British sows will never be able to turn around and comfort their piglets.
These highly intelligent animals only had an old bit of chain and a wooden block to play with (the minimum legal enrichment). Of course, this was not going to prevent them from growing frustrated and their boredom had led to disturbing scratches on each other, as well as early signs of cannibalisation, with ear and tail biting. In one of the many overcrowded, stinking, dark corners, a pig lay with a burst hernia, as a second buried her snout in the open wound.
Cranswick – the best of British
With 98 per cent of pigs kept indoors and 85 per cent of the UK’s meat coming from factory-farmed animals, we all know these conditions aren’t unusual. And looking on the Cranswick website will only enrage you further: wholesome images of pigs rooting happily outside, a blatant lie for these poor pigs.
Cranswick may be market leaders in prioritising profit (over compassion), but factory farming is only growing; rotting pigs, dead piglets, crowded crates and widespread disease are not unique to this investigation. It’s happening all over Britain, just down the road from you. We can’t stay silent while animals endure all this, just so supermarkets can sell ‘cheap meat’. The public must be shaken awake.
The stench, the filth, the sheer scale of inhumanity, often feels too much to consider. But imagine being there, as our investigators are, time and time again. Barely able to move for all the animals and struggling to avoid standing in the excrement these innocent beings are forced to live in. This is what our tireless, brave, uncompromisingly compassionate undercover teams have been doing for over 30 years. Without their dedication, these hellholes would continue unchecked.
And now we urgently need funds to investigate more farms for upcoming campaigns.
A mother’s deepest instinct – to nurse and protect her young – cruelly stolen away by factory farming’s cages and concrete; farrowing crates like these are legal.
This poor sow’s uterus has prolapsed from the likely toll of birthing huge litters repeatedly.
Will you be a crucial part of our investigations team?
I am in constant awe of our investigators and their teams. Every truth they uncover requires months of research to locate these fortresses of cruelty. As these businesses grow, so does their ruthless drive to protect profits, with security getting ever tighter, which means it is only getting harder to document their savagery. Our investigators work in the most challenging scenarios, both emotionally and technically, to capture what is really happening.
Our investigation teams comprise some of the best journalists in the world and they need to be because they’re often taking on big businesses with more money than many countries’ whole economies. The air is thick with death and the filth all around them affects both the equipment and filming visibility. It is often impossible to breathe without coughing, another reminder of what the animals’ lives are like.
We want to be able to keep paying these super-experts for their work, as well as fund the equipment they need. Despite the many investigations I have taken part in over the last 30 years, I always feel trepidation. But it is the investigators who have already risked so much to establish a path for filming.
Numerous shivering piglets, with facial necrosis, a sign of severe infection and trauma.
I often ask myself: “How do they keep going?” It’s surely soul-destroying seeing these captive animals, over and over. One investigator told me that the hardest thing about the job is walking away knowing that there are animals in there that won’t be saved. He said that it gave him night terrors, as he repeatedly relived what it was like to be in these cells. And yet, it’s also this horror that drives his determination. These investigations work. Our campaigns work. We can’t stop. Every life saved matters.
Backed by our incredible supporters, Viva! has successfully taken on huge farms and companies, saving millions of animals over the last three decades. But, with the way the world is going, it is now more important than ever to keep fighting – we cannot rely on governments and public bodies to end the suffering caused by systemic greed; we all must continue to take on factory farming together. Please help by contributing something, be it small or large, to help fund our critical investigations and, in the process, our impactful campaigns.
We have identified several factory farms to inspire TWO MAJOR CAMPAIGNS and we would so appreciate anything you can afford to help us reach £25,000 to make this possible*. This is your opportunity to become a Friend of the Investigations Team or a Patron.
Your generous support will fund essential equipment and the investigation team. On the left is a snapshot of the costs associated with a project. Each investigation requires a minimum of three days with a team of two to five people. We prioritise durable gear that supports crucial scouting missions and can be repurposed for future projects.
* the cost of a full campaign is significantly more
Back our team now and be a vital part of our new Investigations Team: for £25 and above become a Friend of the Investigations Team or donate more than £100 and be an Investigations Patron.
Yours for the animals
Juliet Gellatley
Founder & Director
