The rich American vegans calling the shots for UK farmers

Travellers on the London Underground have been subjected to a series of horrific adverts in recent weeks. Thousands of posters, including ones depicting lice-eaten salmon and a pig with fumes rising around its trotters, have cropped up on the Tube. The adverts are the work of Project Slingshot, a pressure group calling for an end to the practice of stunning pigs with carbon dioxide (CO2) and banning factory-farmed salmon . Its 5,000 posters dotted across the travel network have cost £400,000 – but the group hasn’t stopped there.

Alongside its Tube ads, it has projected anti-factory farming videos onto Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament. Diane Morgan, the comedian, also appears in a number of Project Slingshot adverts. It also enlisted Chris Packham, the environmental campaigner and BBC presenter, to appear in a campaign video attacking Marks & Spencer, claiming its salmon is covered with lice and chemicals, a claim the retailer says is misleading. Animal rights campaigns are nothing new – Peta has campaigned for decades – but Project Slingshot has seemingly come out of nowhere to drive the animal rights agenda.

It claimed victory last week for its “trotters” campaign after the Government proposed banning the stunning of pigs with CO2 before slaughter. How has a relatively unknown group managed to make so much noise? The answer lies in the identity of its funders: deep-pocketed US charities who have bankrolled the group. But that raises questions over the ethics of a US-registered charity, influencing what happens to farmers in rural Britain. “I think there is something fundamentally a bit strange about some very rich people, mostly in California apparently, funding campaigns against farming in the UK,” says Tim Bonner, the chief executive of the Countryside Alliance.

Project Slingshot was founded in London by Matthew Glover, the campaigner behind “ Veganuary ”, which challenges people to go vegan every January. But its funding structure is what makes it controversial. Despite its British profile, the group is registered in the US as a nonprofit charity rather than with the UK’s Charity Commission. The group says this because “much of our philanthropic funding comes from the US, and this structure lets our donors give tax-efficiently while we build campaigns on both sides of the Atlantic”.

Much of this comes from charities in California associated with the tech industry. Dustin Moskovitz, who co-founded Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg, has given money in the past through his Coefficient Giving charity, helping fund a “Frankenchickens” campaign against factory-farmed chicken. Vegan Grants, another charity bankrolled by Jay Karandikar, a former hedge fund manager, also bankrolls the group. Richard Griffiths, the chief executive of the British Poultry Council, has reservations about the arrangements and thinks that Project Slingshot is a threat to food security.

“It’s extremely frustrating that supposedly philanthropic money is pouring into the UK to try to stop food production,” he says. “One of the most frustrating things about these sort of campaigns is that they set up one thing that they’re very much against. But they never provide any sort of alternative.” British farmers are also opposed to the group’s activities. Tom Gurney, a beef farmer in Norfolk, says factory farming is essential if Britain is to feed itself.

“Food security is important, and I think that when budgets are tight, UK factory farming has a place,” he says. Gurney says those who visit Lodge Farm want to know they are buying meat from “animals produced in an environmentally conscious, high-welfare way, which is reflected in the flavour”. But Gurney makes the point that not everybody can pay for the luxury of locally sourced high-end meat. “If people can’t afford that,” he says, “then UK-based factory farms are the next best thing.”

Gurney says that if factory farming were banned, cheap meat would be imported from across the world. Naomi Hallum, the co-founder of Project Slingshot, says that while she would like to see a vegan world, it is a long way off. “Trying to change a man’s diet is harder than trying to change a man’s religion. That’s not what we’re here to do at all,” she says. Hallum, who grew up in beef and sheep country outside Liverpool, says that the most interesting responses to the campaign have come from farmers themselves.

“A lot of farmers have written to say they support the campaign because factory farms feel like a threat to them too.” Project Slingshot’s success in getting a proposed ban on using CO2 to kill pigs on the agenda is a sign of its clout. But Lizzie Wilson, the chief executive of the British Pig Association, is not on the same page. The ban had been tabled, she told The Telegraph, without the existence of a viable and thoroughly tested alternative.

Hallum argues that factory farming is unnecessary. “I’m sure a lot of the public believe that battery farming is a necessary evil to feed the population,” she says, “but it’s not. It’s only a necessary model for corporations to make money. It’s not necessary for us.” The great issue, according to the Project Slingshot co-founder, is that we have come to believe we need “meat, eggs, and dairy” in everything we consume. Hallum is less clear on what we should be eating instead.

The call to take meat off the menu comes despite growing concern about the security of food supplies in Britain. A 2024 government report warned the UK’s food system was becoming less secure, the National Audit Office said earlier this year that Britain must prepare for shortages and experts warned in a letter to Andy Burnham last month that the country was manifestly not ready for such an outcome. Gassing pigs is not pleasant. But when you get into how to feed our growing population ethically and sustainably, the trade-offs are difficult.