Today (5 May), animal welfare and environmental NGO, Compassion in World Farming, delivered an open letter with more than 80,000 global signatures – and over 22,000 from the UK calling on the Prime Minister to stop feeding factory farms and fix our broken food system.

Celebrities who added their name to the UK letter include Dr Amir Khan, NHS doctor and broadcaster, Deborah Meaden, businesswoman and entrepreneur, Dale Vince OBE, entrepreneur and United Nations Climate Champion, with experts including Professor John Fyfe CBE, international strategic development specialist, Sir Jonathon Porritt CBE, eminent writer, campaigner and advisor on sustainable development and Isabella Tree, award-winning expert on sustainable land management.

This is part of a global initiative to cut food waste, which has been backed by award winning actor Brian Cox, and actors and activists Joaquin Phoenix, Kate Mara, and Rooney Mara.

The open letter follows the release of Compassion’s Food Not Feed report in October 2025, urging the Government to end the world’s biggest form of food waste by cutting the use of human-edible grain – such as wheat, barley and oats – to feed factory farmed animals. Calculations based on Defra’s report Agriculture in the UK 2024  show that over 50% of UK grain is used as animal feed. The amount of grain lost per year in the UK as a result of being fed to animals is 8.3m tonnes – far greater than the 6.4m tonnes of household food waste.

In April 2026 the World Bank warned that the Iran war risks causing food shortages due to soaring fertiliser prices. At this time of increased food insecurity, the open letter explains that feeding human-edible grain to animals to produce meat or dairy is an inefficient way to produce food. For example, for every 100 calories of human-edible grain fed to animals, just 3-25 calories of meat are produced. This waste is not only driving food insecurity in the UK, costing the planet and causing animal suffering, but also wastes public money to subsidise the production of these crops. The Government must instead prioritise food for people, not for factory farms.

In the UK, feeding human-edible grain to animals wastes at least 790,000 hectares of the UK’s arable land – the size of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk combined. If this land were used to grow more efficient and less wasteful human-edible food like legumes, pulses, fruit and vegetables, we could feed 16.5 million more people in the UK alone. 

Dr Amir Khan, NHS GP and Compassion Patron, said:

It’s deeply concerning that so many families are having to skip meals and children are arriving at school hungry. In my GP practice, I’m increasingly seeing children who are clearly undernourished, and it’s disheartening to watch public money continue to support a food system that isn’t meeting their needs.

It is increasingly clear that factory farming is one of the least efficient ways to produce food and it is driving food insecurity in the UK. The Government must stop wasting food and the public’s money on factory farms. Let’s scrap the grain that’s not feeding us at all and grow diverse, healthy, nutritious crops instead like fruit, vegetables, legumes, pulses, peas, beans, nuts and seeds. We need to start feeding people. Our lives literally depend on it.

Anthony Field, Head of Compassion in World Farming UK, said:

Our report shows how utterly inefficient our current UK food system is. We’re squandering vital protein and agricultural land that could be better used to grow a wider range of foods to feed people – in fact 16.5 million more people annually and an astonishing two billion people worldwide.

Factory farming is wasting a staggering 8.3 million tonnes each year in the UK meanwhile thousands of people go hungry and the demand for food banks continues. World events increasingly highlight the need for UK food security, so let’s end the biggest form of animal cruelty and eco-crisis. Government must urgently start growing nutritious nature-friendly crops and feed them directly to people and it must support farmers to make that switch. Let’s grow food for people, not feed for animals in factory farms.

Joaquin Phoenix, actor and activist, said:

Land that could produce nourishing food is used to feed industrially farmed animals, at great cost to their lives and the planet. I’m joining the global call for governments to prioritise food for people, not factory farms.

Rooney Mara, actor and activist, said:

Industrial animal agriculture is profoundly inefficient and it is undermining global food security. I’m joining the call to urge governments to stop feeding factory farms.

Kate Mara, actor and activist, said:

Factory farming locks us into a cycle that drives hunger, fuels climate breakdown and compromises animal welfare. I'm calling for food for people, not factory farms.

~ends~

For more information please email media.team@ciwf.org or call +44 (0)1483 521 615

Download images of the open-letter hand in.

Read Food Not Feed: How to stop the world’s biggest form of food waste.

Compassion’s open letter to the Prime Minister.

Open letter backed by Dr Amir Khan delivered to Downing Street