Thom Norman: Why Money Matters Most in Fighting Factory Farming (FarmKind) #15
Why donating £23+/month to effective animal charities does even more good than going vegan, and why you might consider doing both. Thom also shares the challenges and rewards of starting a charity (FarmKind), how to maximize your impact for animals, and career advice.
Articles, organisations, and other media discussed in this episode
FarmKind – Thom’s organisation helping individuals and businesses reduce their impact on animal suffering through giving strategies, including the Compassion Calculator and Impact Fund.
Animal Advocacy Careers – Resource for those looking to build a high-impact career in animal welfare.
Animal Charity Evaluators – Identifies and supports the most cost-effective organizations working to reduce animal suffering.
PETA – Animal rights organisation advocating against factory farming and animal cruelty.
Good Food Institute – Promotes alternatives to industrial animal agriculture, including plant-based and cultivated meat.
Our Podcast Episode with Bruce Friedrich - Co-Founder and President of Good Food Institute.
Sinergia Animal – Works to improve farm animal welfare in low- and middle-income countries.
Our Podcast Episode with Caroline Oliveira - Fundraiser for Sinergia Animal.
Legal Impact for Chickens – Legal advocacy organisation fighting for better protections for farmed animals.
Rethink Priorities – Conducts research on corporate campaigns for animal welfare.
Giving Multiplier – Research-based approach to encourage more effective charitable giving.
Ambitious Impact Charity Entrepreneurship – Provided seed funding for FarmKind to launch its work.
Lead Exposure Elimination Project (LEEP) – Another organization that received funding from Charity Entrepreneurship.
GiveWell – Charity evaluator that influences Thom’s giving decisions.
Against Malaria Foundation – One of the global health charities Thom supports.
Our World in Data - Reveals 99% of US animals raised on concentrated feeding operations (factory farms) in 2022
Biblical References:
Luke 13:34 – Jesus compares His care to a hen gathering her children under her wings.
Acts 10:9-22 – Peter’s vision about eating animals.
Episode Highlights:
Humans vs. Animals
“I think often the position that we start, tend to start with is humans are made in the image of God. And so obviously we are separate from the rest of creation in a meaningful and important way. And I think I'm not disputing that, but I think we don't necessarily think about what necessarily follows from that versus what, like, where the leap in our logic is, right? So it might be that we have a special place in creation, but the rest of animal kind and indeed the planet are still part of creation. And stewardship does not mean, dominion in fact, does not mean you can do whatever you like, right? If you think about the model as a… even a king, a ruler still has a duty to their citizens, right? To look after them and not to needlessly exploit them… [dominion] doesn't mean we have carte blanche to do whatever we like with animals.”
The Realities of Animal Cruelty
“So in the case, example, eggs in the USA, still about 60% of eggs in the USA are produced from battery chickens, which means chickens kept in a very small cage. They have about the space of a piece of paper to move around in, they can't do simple things like stretch their wings. These are, they, you know, these have, metal grills on the, on the floor. So they're very painful and uncomfortable places to live. And that's their entire life where they live. Similarly, we constrain mother pigs for the majority of the year because they're constrained every time they're pregnant. They're pregnant about three times a year, so most of their lives in a metal sort of grill, that means that they essentially can't move around. They can't turn around. They have almost no space. Some of them, the bigger ones can't even sort of sit down.”
Eating Meat in Today’s World vs Biblical Times
“Certainly in the developed Western world, we live in a world where it is not necessary from a health point of view, from a nutrition point of view for us to eat animals. And it is also very difficult for us to access animals that have been raised in what could even generously be described as a humane environment. And I think those two crucial points mean that this argument based on what people in biblical times were doing is not one that connects to our modern experience.”
Giving > Veganism as a response to Animal Cruelty
“Diet changes are by no means the only option. And it can be part of your response, but it doesn't have to be. You can still do the same amount or more good through other means. And donations is one of the most impactful things that you can do. It's also one of the easiest things that you can do. So as I say, we at FarmKind, we recommend some of the most cost-effective charities out there.”
“As I say, approximately the amount of suffering that you prevent by going vegan is about a $23 donation to these charities. So yeah, we can make big differences.”
Top Career Paths for Impact in Animal Welfare
“Yeah, so politics is extraordinarily neglected as an issue, particularly in the animal space and also in global health, I think, as well, to a degree”
“Working for a legislator can be a really good approach. If you can find an organization that is hiring people for what's called lobbying, so public affairs, kind of like influencing politicians, these are very good options. There are a number of organizations, like Animal Advocacy Careers.”
“The other place is high level leadership roles are really hurting in the animal space. There just aren't enough people. And so if you have a background in kind of like maybe as a senior manager in like some completely unrelated area, that would make you an extraordinarily good person to explore the animal space.”
Founding an Animal Welfare Organisation
"Yeah. So I think founding is a great option. I think you need a very high tolerance for uncertainty. And I think something people should consider if they think that starting something brand new sounds really exciting and impactful is also trying to be an early employee of a fairly new charity, because you can get essentially the same amount of impact, in terms of counterfactual impact of your career, without the uncertainty of actually you do something that turns out it's not very good and doesn't work. And I think more people should also think about like being like employee number one, because that could actually be better than being a founder.”
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JD (00:00)
I'm really excited. This week we're talking to Tom, who is the co-founder of farm kind. This is a UK charity that is just one year old and they connect compassionate people with impactful charities that are fixing factory farming. I learned a lot from Tom about what it looks like to found a nonprofit. Also to transition from working as a lawyer in the government to doing an impactful nonprofit.
Also about some of the horrors of what's going on in farms right now, but also just some of the joys of ways we can help animals and be good stewards of creation as Christians who are inspired by Genesis and inspired by the life of Jesus and the eschaton vision. We dig into that and all the biblical scriptural concerns and also reasons to care for animals. So without further ado, we'll jump into it as always, if you're interested in some of the things we're talking about in this episode.
You can check out the notes or the details, wherever you're listening to or watching this podcast. and if you want some advice or mentorship for your career, then sign up for our free one-on-one advising. We'd love to pair you with people like Tom, with people who are a couple steps ahead of you career wise or wherever you'd like to go, who can support you and pray with you for your next steps. So with that, let's jump into it.
JD (01:24)
Tom, thanks so much for coming on. Good to see you.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (01:27)
Thanks, yeah, thanks for having me.
JD (01:29)
Why don't you take a moment to share a little bit about yourself and what you do for work and how it is you impact the world.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (01:36)
Yeah, sure. So my name's Tom. I'm the co-founder of FarmKind. We are, I guess you can think of us as like a witch or a wire cutter for animal charities. So we work with experts to find some of the best animal charities out there. And then we recommend them to people who want to work, who want to have, an impact on the issue of factory farming specifically as some of the best places that you can donate to, to have the biggest impact with your donation.
JD (02:06)
That's awesome. And are you an animal guy? Have you always been taking care of animals, thinking about animals? How did you get into this animal space?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (02:15)
Yeah, so I haven't always been an animal person. So I had, I think, a very normal start in life in terms of my priorities around animals. I think, as for many people, when you grow up in the church, I don't think that like, think, ethics and like, particularly things like global health and development, and these kinds of questions are like very front of mind, right? Like, you're often thinking about like, okay, how can we help the
people who are less fortunate themselves in our community, and then thinking about charities that are helping people abroad and both helping them materially and also spiritually and these kinds of things, right? But often I think animals don't get much of a say in that conversation. So that was kind of my initial framing. And then I was on a tube train in London and there was a sign above, in the tube trains they have lots of adverts, right?
And there's this advert, as there is often in the around January time, kind of around veganism and around factory farming. And my partner who'd been kind of thinking about these issues a little bit, she turned to me and she was like, trying to talk to me about this design and getting me to like engage on this issue. And I felt myself instantly become quite defensive. And I was like, well, so she was vegetarian at the time.
JD (03:35)
Was she a vegan or a vegetarian or?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (03:40)
She's trying to talk to me about this. I'm saying, of course, factory farming is terrible. We shouldn't do needless suffering to animals. Obviously, that's bad. And what we should really do is have some kind of like we should ban the cruelest practices and only do what's necessary. And she says to me, but you're not going to do that, you? You're not going to change the laws. initially, mean, there wasn't a sort of road to Damascus moment. That was like a
I just was like, oh, very like, what are you talking about? Let's just talk, change the subject. But yeah, this is true. This is true. But she was right, right? Like I on my own wasn't doing anything, doing nothing to actually affect this issue at that time. And I was eating animals. So I was, you know, I was more part of the problem than I was part of the solution at that time in life, right? And...
JD (04:10)
Well, you were working as a lawyer at the time, right? So maybe it's not inconceivable that you couldn't have worked in that space, yeah.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (04:36)
I think what started me thinking about it was just my reaction. I was like, I don't love how I showed up in that conversation. Maybe there's a reason for that. And that kind of, that was just the start of this process that took me a few years really to go from why am I so defensive here to thinking through the ethics, thinking through the reasons for and against and expanding our moral circle to include animals.
and coming eventually to a conclusion that, yeah, really we, caring for all the beings on the world means not inflicting unnecessary suffering on all beings. And that includes animals and actually, factory farming in particular, but in animal agriculture in general, probably is not necessary when it comes down to it.
And therefore, we should do what we can, I think, to end this, what I think is a moral tragedy of factory farming.
JD (05:45)
Thanks for that. Yeah. You're a Christian. You heard about these issues or other issues more so growing up in church. That's something I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about, which is why the church doesn't talk more about animals. But what role did scripture and the teachings of Jesus play in that kind of epiphany or that road to Damascus moment for you?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (06:05)
Yeah, so I had a lot of conversations around this with people. I think that I think often the position that we start, tend to start with is humans are made in the image of God. And so obviously we are separate from the rest of creation in a meaningful and important way. And I think I'm not disputing that, but
I think we don't necessarily think about what necessarily follows from that versus what, like, where the leap in our logic is, right? So it might be that we have a special place in creation, but the rest of animal kind and indeed the planet are still part of creation. And stewardship does not mean, dominion in fact, does not mean you can do whatever you like, right? If you think about the model as a...
even a king, a ruler still has a duty to their citizens, right? To look after them and not to needlessly exploit them and things like this. for me, that's where we have to think, okay, so fine humans have a special place and they matter more, but that doesn't mean we have carte blanche to do whatever we like with animals. And so if that's the case,
what is a responsible stewardship for the animals in the world and for indeed the environment? And I think when you look at factory farming, we can go into some of the detail of what that word means and what that is. But I think it's impossible to make the case that good stewardship looks like the current industrialized animal agriculture process. And so I think there's a, yeah.
JD (07:52)
That's good.
Yeah, no, that's good. So let's say I'm with you at this point. I'm like, so full disclosure, I am a vegetarian. I went vegetarian like nine years ago or so. But I really want to put myself in the shoes of the former you, the former me, and perhaps many of our listeners who are trying to faithfully follow Jesus and the teachings of scripture and be good stewards, right? But maybe aren't quite comfortable with like,
Thom Norman - FarmKind (08:07)
Hmm. Yeah.
JD (08:22)
full-blown Peta activism or veganism. This isn't an identity for us, right? We want to be more loving, more just Christians. so let's say, I agree with you so far, I want to be a good steward, but why should I care as much as you seem to?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (08:24)
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think the place I want to start here is with a brief anecdote, if I can. So I used to volunteer on a sanctuary and there was this one pig called Henry and he became kind of famous because every week when the food truck, the food, they had got a food truck that would kind of come with all these like old vegetables and stuff from the local farms that they can sell them. Right. So
given to the sanctuary to feed the pigs and the sheep and things like this. And Henry worked out that that's what was going on. And this truck has got all the food in. So this truck pulls up one day and the guy who runs the sanctuary gets out and goes off to have his lunch before dispersing the food to the animals. Henry walks up to the truck, uses his nose to open the truck, hop inside, and then crucially close the door behind himself.
So no one knows he's there. And now it's just Henry and a truck full of food. this is, think anyone who's lived with animals like companion animals, dogs and cats and things, this is not too surprising, I think. Like we know animals have these personalities. They are complicated, interesting beings with an inner life of a sort. the factory farming is...
JD (09:39)
You
Thom Norman - FarmKind (10:04)
I think when we start with the numbers, we start with 10 billion animals in the USA alone being killed each year for in-factory farms. The environmental pollution, producing 13 times as much waste as the US population, contributing 19 % to climate change, the increase in antibiotic resistant diseases for human beings that...
increase in bird flu and other kinds of pandemic risks that are all parts of factory farming. But I think ultimately, what we're talking about is the individual tragedy of beings like Henry being denied any kind of natural normal existence, any of what they were put on the earth to the life they were put on earth to leave, right? And that happening individually to them over and over and over again.
JD (10:54)
Right, right.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (11:01)
each of those animals is a being like Henry who's being denied what they would live.
JD (11:05)
So yeah,
that's good. Let me push back here. So I'm sure Henry's a happy pig. Sounds like Henry was having a good time. And aren't a lot of animals on farms treated well? When I drive through the Midwest, I see a lot of animals on ice pastures. And I understand, maybe not animal has the poster child existence that we see on the front of milk cartons. But also at the same time, animals are better off than they would be in the wild.
raise them on farms, we're giving them a better existence than they might have otherwise had in the wilds. And after all, in scripture we see, anyways, there's lots of objections that immediately come to mind, but maybe you can handle the former, we can address any scriptural objections later. But this impression I have, which is that like, maybe it's not that bad for Henry, because Henry still gets a good life, and probably a pretty quick humane death at the end of the day.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (11:43)
Mmm.
Yeah. So I think the reason that when we look at, when we see animals in farms, that looks good is because the vast majority of animals in farming, we never see because they live their entire life in a barn and it kind of looks quite nondescript, right? You don't know that there's animals in that shed. That shed is a funny word to use, this giant barn, right? Because the vast majority of animals, so 99 % of animals farmed in the USA are farmed in...
what we concentrated animal feeding operations. So this is sort of the technical term that we often call factory farms. This is data collected by our world in data, which is a good source for this kind of thing. And these animals we don't see. Yeah. Yeah. We never see these animals because they live their entire lives indoors, right? In these concentrated places. So this is primarily chickens and pigs, the worst lives, but also
JD (12:42)
We'll put links to that in the podcast description. Yeah.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (12:56)
Even cows, they spend only a very small portion of their lives typically outdoors, and then are moved for a large portion of their life to these indoor feeding operations to sort of grow them quicker before they go to slaughter. And so it's those animals that are the majority of the animals that we're talking about here and that are in our food system, their lives are very different to what you might see when you're driving along. So they're being contained indoors for their entire life in a very small space.
so in the case, example, eggs in the USA, still about 60 % of eggs in the USA are produced from battery chickens, which means chickens kept in a very small cage. have about the space of a piece of paper to move around in. they can't do simple things like stretch their wings. these have, metal grills on the, on the floor. So they're very painful and uncomfortable places to live. And that's their entire life where they live.
Similarly, we constrain mother pigs for the majority of the year because they're constrained every time they're pregnant. They're pregnant about three times a year. so most of their lives in a metal sort of grill, that means that they essentially can't move around. They can't turn around. They have almost no space. Some of them, the bigger ones can't even sort of sit down. And so this is actually what...
JD (14:09)
How do you
pronounce those? So, so crates, so crates, so stalls.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (14:12)
Sal stools, yeah. So there are two different types.
There are gestation crates and then there are farrowing crates. And these refer to, so gestation crate is for the period of gestation. So the part of the pregnancy and then a farrowing crate is for like just right at end of pregnancy. And then when they have the newborn babies because in different countries. So gestation crates are restricted in their use in Europe and in the UK. Whereas gestation crates are much more wide out.
commonly used in the US, for example. And so this is what we're talking about when we're talking about factfinding. We're talking about intense confinement, lots of animals in the same space, extremely dirty, a large percentage of those animals, depends on the animal, but die before they are slaughtered of diseases and things like this. And so I think there is, it's very hard to argue that the life that they are living is better than what they would live were they a wild animal in these cases.
JD (15:06)
Yeah.
Is there anything surprising about this as you've been immersed in this space, learning more? think the first time I learned about the sheer numbers of animals on these concentrated feedlots, I was shocked. I'd already been vegetarian. I'd gone vegetarian for pacifistic reasons, really religious Christ-like pacifism I was trying to embody in my diet. then I learned about this and the sheer volumes and the sheer horror of what's going on. I wonder, not to be too...
Thom Norman - FarmKind (15:19)
Hmm
Hmm.
JD (15:34)
to be too morbid, but like, are there any specific instances of cruelty that stand out to you?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (15:39)
Yeah, yeah. I try not to, yeah, I mean, think just very quickly, try not to like, it on too thick, because there are, there's a lot and we could go for a long time talking about the different things. But I think that, you know, I want to just acknowledge that it can be distressing to hear about these things. And I'm not trying to upset people by talking about these things, right? We're trying to just explain the issue and then we can talk about what we can do about it, right? But I think that one of the things that certainly surprised me, so I was a vegetarian before I before I
JD (15:47)
Sure, sure.
Hmm.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (16:09)
became vegan and stopped eating all animal products. And the reason was, I sort of hadn't, at that time, hadn't really considered the issue. But what happens to egg laying chickens and cows? So just a really simple example. In the egg industry, they use different, completely different chickens to the ones for meat, right? They're a different breed. they're bred. We selectively breed all the animals to try and sort of optimize their productivity.
And chickens for meat are bred to grow as fast as possible. And that causes them all kinds of difficulties as they grow many of them there. Their organs can't actually sustain their body weight and things like this. they can become completely immobile before they die. Yeah. Yeah.
JD (16:50)
The graphics of this are incredible, right? You see the chicken from 1970 to 1990 to
2025, and this is like a tripling of size. It's incredible.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (16:59)
Yeah, it's so funny when people say, oh, but isn't eating meat natural? Because the meat that we eat today certainly is not natural. Like, it's completely different to what people have eaten for most of human history. But these chickens for eggs, they're a completely different breed, as I say. And only, if you think about it, only female chickens can lay eggs, right? And so the male chicks, once they hatch and once they're identified as this is a male, they're killed.
on essentially on day one. And a very typical way of killing them in the US particularly is to put them into a grinder alive. So you can see these, I wouldn't particularly recommend it, but you can see these, this footage of a conveyor belt that is just chucking these, these baby chicks into the spinning blade. And that's, that's how we deal with 50 % of the egg laying chickens that are born.
So that, think that one's a particularly kind of stark example of the sorts of practices that go on typically.
JD (18:05)
Yeah, you know, the thing with the hens and the chicks and the birds is that this to me so clearly echoes back to some of Jesus's analogies that he used to describe his own love for Israel and for the people of God is like he longs to gather them under him to provide for them like the way that a mother hen gathers her chicks, right? And it's so yeah, such a jarring contrast to what we inflict upon animals every day.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (18:24)
Hmm.
Yeah,
I think so. think we should really underline that when we think about, so one of the things that people might come back with this, obviously, there are examples clearly of Jesus feeding people with fish, for example. There is the vision that pizza, Yes.
JD (18:49)
Peter, in fact, right. So this is his vision of these unclean
animals by Jewish law. And here's a voice that says, Peter, go kill and eat. Do not call unclean what I've made clean, right? So yeah, a lot of Christians that I know view this as an endorsement that it's okay to eat animals. I'm curious where you fall on this debate. I don't know what your theological views, obviously you're ethically committed to not eating animals, but do you leave a concession for some kind of eating animals for?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (19:08)
Yeah.
JD (19:17)
you know, in theory in the perfect idealized circumstance, it would be okay.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (19:22)
Yeah. So I think the crucial point, I think that I would say here is the food system that we have today is a mile apart from what we're talking about in this, in this instance. There are two crucial differences. Number one, the way that they would have raised animals and in those animals would have been a much more, less industrialized and less, less cruel system for the animals. And number two, there would have been far fewer options in terms of food. Right. And so those two things I think are really
There are clearly parts of the world today and clearly in the past where eating animals would have been essentially necessary for people in terms of the food availability and things like this. And it makes sense if humans are apart from the rest of creation that that could be in that case where it's necessary that the eating animals would be acceptable. That is not the world we live in today. Certainly in the developed Western world, we live in a world where it is not necessary from a health point of view.
from a nutrition point of view for us to eat animals. And it is also very difficult for us to access animals that have been raised in what could even generously be described as a humane environment. And I think those two crucial points mean that this argument based on what people in biblical times were doing is not one that think connects to our modern experience.
JD (20:47)
So I'm going to throw a few more criticisms or pushbacks on what you're saying. I'm curious how you respond. So one is this idea that, OK, we have this terrible suffering of animals on farms, on concentrated feeding lots, or factory farms, if you want to call it that. But there's also terrible suffering in other places in the world, right? There are millions of children who are going hungry. In the US, there are many communities where people feel their livelihoods shrinking back.
There's also many people who don't know the gospel and the love of God and Christ. So why prioritize animals in a world with all these other issues? And if humans really are most important, as you said, how can we help any animals before we've helped all the people?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (21:29)
Yeah, okay. think so these are like, there's some somewhat some truth to these these kind of challenges. And I think I wouldn't certainly not dismissing them. I personally, for example, give to to give well as part of my my effective giving. So my claim is definitely not you should do animals and like, forget that forget the humans, right? Like, this is not what we're saying. What we're saying is, actually, we should look after we should try to do what we can for humans and for animals.
When it comes to prioritization, I think there are two points to address. One is it's surprisingly easy to help animals. So if you get AMF or something like this, for example, saving a human life in some of these like cheapest, sorry, yeah, the Against Malaria Foundation, which is one of the kind of statistically cheapest ways if you like to save a life from your donations. This costs a few thousand dollars.
JD (22:13)
That's the Against Malaria Foundation,
Thom Norman - FarmKind (22:26)
saving, preventing a chicken from living a life in a cage, an egg laying chicken from living a life in a cage, based on rethink priorities estimates, historically has cost about 85 cents. So we can make some really radical differences in the lives of many, many animals for very small amounts of money, which leaves plenty of room in our giving for humans too. So I think we can do both very, very, very, very easily. It's really not a lot of money that you need to donate to animals to make a big impact.
In fact, so we have a calculator on our website, allows people to essentially calculate the offset of, so your diet produces this amount of animals are needed for your diet. There's a certain amount of suffering that comes along with that. How much would you donate to do as much good as your diet has an impact? And we found that it's for the average ornamentivore only about $23. So really small amounts of money can make a really big difference.
leaving us plenty of room in our diet and our mental space to then go along and focus on human issues if that's what you feel particularly called to and if that's what particularly resonates with you. So I would say these are not either or.
JD (23:38)
Nice, nice. So that's good. a lot of animal advocacy campaigns that I see are trying to convince people, including myself, to go vegan. I'm not a vegan. I would find it very hard to go vegan. Like honestly, it's really hard to cut out dairy for my diet. I think maybe it's an idealized world. I should be vegan. I do think that...
Thom Norman - FarmKind (23:48)
Mm.
JD (23:58)
There are probably, you know, dairy cows that are living happy on pastures and I should probably be buying organic too, but I'm not. And sometimes I feel like really bad that I'm not. I feel like that's kind of the end all be all for, for caring more about animals. But I think an interesting vision here is that actually maybe the most impactful thing we can do is give effectively. So tell me more about the impact of effective giving for animals.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (24:22)
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I think the first thing to say is a big part of what we do at File and Kind is to say that we get that diet change can actually be really hard. It's not as simple as just changing what you order in the grocery stores. All kinds of things that are connected here in terms of our psychological relationship to food, maybe health concerns, all sorts of things, right? And so if you think, oh yeah, this issue seems important. I want to do something about this. Diet changes.
by no means the only option. And it can be part of your response, but it doesn't have to be. you can still do the same amount or more good through other means. And donations is one of the most impactful things that you can do. It's also one of the easiest things that you can do. So as I say, we farm climb, we recommend some of the most cost-effective charities out there. We work with experts to identify those charities, grant makers and the organization Animal Charity Value Wages, which I know you guys link to on your site.
to identify six of the best charities for donations where you can get sort of the most bang for your buck, if you like, in terms of need for additional donations and the impact that those donations have for animals. And this allows us to make a really big difference in the lives of animals for really small amounts of money. As I say, approximately the amount of suffering that you prevent by going vegan is about a $23 donation to these charities. So yeah, we can make big differences.
JD (25:46)
Yeah. That's per month, right?
Not per year, per month. Okay. So that comes out to like 280, $300 a year. Then that means if you're donating $900 a year, you're having three times the impact for animals that you could have had, have you gone vegan or vegetarian? Is that right? Yeah. So, wow. Okay. Those are interesting numbers and you could have a lot more impact than that if you were really
Thom Norman - FarmKind (25:50)
Yeah, yes, yes, that's right.
That's right.
JD (26:14)
intentionally pursuing an earn to give path. That's a path that we still recommend here at Christians for Impact. If listeners are interested in pursuing a higher earning career, we have a report coming out on that or might be out by the time you're listening to this. You can find that on our resources tab on the website. But really, I guess that means if you're earning like 100 or 200 grand, let's say you're earning 200 grand a year, you donate 50 grand of that a year to animals. Like the sheer numbers are massive, right? If it's
a dollar to free an egg laying hen from a cage for a year, then $50,000 donated is 50,000 hens, right? That's an entire, I mean, that's an entire house, mean, entire factory that's freed. it's an incredible number. It's a mind boggling number, right? It's kind of hard to conceive what that would be like, right?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (26:55)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And so just to explain why that is, because I know we like, like, a to sort of dive into numbers, that seems implausible. Like, is it really true? I think one of things that's very surprising to people is the amount of money donated specifically each year to tackle factory farming in particular is in the region of, it's like difficult to estimate, but in the region of $290 million globally.
Right? This is a tiny amount of money when you think about 100 billion animals, land animals globally being farmed. And so this is an extremely neglected issue from a monetary point of view. And this just means that there is still a lot of really low hanging fruit in terms of interventions, which are highly cost effective and there's just not enough money. So the marginal impact of your dollar is extremely high.
relative to some other causes that you could do. And this is why we end up with these really small numbers of costs per impact.
JD (28:08)
Nice, nice. Yeah, could we drill into the bird cost effectiveness for a second? Because this is one that I've done some digging into and still have some questions about, but I'm still by and large very impressed by, but I think you know a lot more about this than I do. what this means is that if you donate to, is this based on the estimate that if you donate $1 to, for instance, the Humane League, that historically on average this resulted to, I think the estimate is nine to 120.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (28:16)
Hmm.
JD (28:36)
hen life years moved from cages to cage-free facilities? Is that what this is based on, the 85 cent figure?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (28:38)
Yeah.
Yes, that's right. Yes. So, rethink priorities did an analysis of corporate campaigns, which is the sort of primary way that these kind of cage free campaigns work, which for anyone.
JD (28:52)
Yeah, could you walk through
how those work maybe in half a minute? We have an episode actually with Carolini from Synergia Animal and a lot of what they do in Brazil are corporate campaigns. So, but maybe you could refresh this in like 20 seconds what that is. Yeah.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (28:59)
Nice, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
So actually Synergy is one of the other charities that we recommend through Final Cut. So basically what the corporate campaign is, is you say, instead of trying to get individuals to change how they buy things, what you say is, want Walmart or KFC to change what they're buying. So you say to the company, we want you to commit to stopping to buy eggs from caged hens. And if you don't make this commitment, we'll do some protests, we'll get people to...
you know, to talk about this and we'll public pressure on you to make these changes. And it turns out that actually for many companies, they're prepared to make these commitments and the follow through rate on these commitments is really quite high. Historically, it's been around, I believe 80 % to phase out cages. And so we're seeing those phases out going on. this has contributed. So when, for example, the Humane League started, which is about 15 or so years ago,
In the US, there was about 4 % of US hens were cage free. And that now is 40%. So I'm not claiming that the entire difference is their work, but over that period of time and their campaigning, we've seen a massive increase in the number of cage free hens. And actually that, yes, exactly, hundreds of millions of birds. And that's been the same actually in the UK. So a big increase since they started in the UK from 50 % up to 75 % cage free in the UK.
JD (30:19)
Hundreds of millions of birds being moved from, yeah, yeah.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (30:32)
And there's, yeah, they have at this point, thousands of corporations that have committed to going cage free and stopping buying caged hens. They also do similar campaigns for meat chickens as well, which is a different ask, obviously, because typically they're not kept in cages, but a very similar thing. So these corporate campaigns are...
JD (30:51)
What I love about these
campaigns is that they actually respect the law in the sense that they're not imposing in this kind of like anti-capitalist, anti-market way, these restrictions on companies top down. Although, right, we should have laws against animal cruelty, of course. A lot of what's happening to these companies is they're breaking the laws that exist on animal cruelty, or they make...
public pledges to their customers, their consumers that, hey, we are treating our animals in this way that honors good stewardship, when in reality, they're not doing any of that. And so what these corporate campaigns are doing is just coming up to these companies, partnering with them, saying, hey, you made these commitments. We want to help you make these commitments. If you don't honor your word, we're going to tell people about it. And we're not going to be quiet. We're going to go on the streets and publish on social media. And like, that is like,
doing what the law arguably should be doing, right? And it's a lovely peaceful kind of protest that really has an impact that's quite impressive.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (31:55)
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's brilliant. is, it is fundamentally what's going on here is that they re the company realizes that their consumer wants this. And so they're responding to, to the consumers, design actually often in interestingly, many of the people within the companies themselves, cause they're humans too, right. And they often feel quite good. They're like, they like the fact that they're able to make these changes too. which I think is also quite nice.
JD (32:13)
Right, right.
I think that's an
important point. mean, Carolina herself was at Nestle when she started to transition to animal welfare work. yeah, that's, that's, it's important not to demonize others. You know, many of us could be doing more for animals, but it doesn't mean that we, we all hate animals, right? I think many of us that in our heart want to help animals. We just need to see, see ways how, but tell me about some other ways how, what are some of the other charitable interventions that aren't corporate campaigns that you're excited about or that you guys recommend?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (32:23)
Mmm.
Yeah.
Yeah. we, we work on, I like to think of what our work in kind of two buckets. So we help animals that are suffering today and currently in factory farming with a number of our charities. So Synergia, the Humane League,
Then we also have this part of what we do, which is trying to support moving to a sustainable future where we're producing enough food for people that's healthy and environmentally less impactful in a different way. So we support organizations like the Good Food Institute, who work on cultivated meat and alternative proteins to developing how can we
How can we produce food for people without the need for animal agriculture at all? And we also work with organizations like Synergia who have campaigns around essentially meat replacement. taking, again, we're working with corporations or large universities and things like this to get them to produce more plant-based meals and sort of reducing the demand for meat products and increasing demand for plant-based products. So we kind of have this dual approach of helping animals now and trying to also support
a sort of sustainable alternative over the future.
JD (33:53)
Yeah, there are good Christians among the leaders at all these organizations. We have a podcast with Bruce Friedrich in the link description. You can check it out. Highly recommend it. Actually, my parents listened to that one and my parents aren't like animal people or whatever, they, they thought it's kind of a misnomer at the title. They thought it was going to be about climate change, which it is definitely about climate change. But then Bruce got into
Thom Norman - FarmKind (34:07)
Hmm.
JD (34:16)
the social teachings of Jesus and the Catholic Church and gave this really beautiful case for caring about animals. And my parents left that conversation, left that podcasting. They're like, whoa, OK, this is really important and cool stuff So yeah, yeah.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (34:32)
Nice.
JD (34:33)
And where are you guys hoping to go? So this, this charity that you started is only what three years old now. It's still pretty fresh.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (34:41)
We're just over a year old, fact. we're, yeah, yeah.
JD (34:43)
Just over a year
old and where are you hoping to be in five years, 10 years? And if you'd to share kind of how you've been making progress so far, that'd be welcome too. But I want to get the vision.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (34:55)
Yeah.
Yeah. So our, our vision is to get, so after five years of operations to be raising $10 for every $1 that we spent, that's kind of our, that's our goal, our goal star. We also, we were looking at this in the day and we found that if like big picture, if 0.01 % of the US population donated offset, that would double the amount of money
going to factory farming globally. So a big long-term vision, if we could get this tiny percentage of US population, yeah.
JD (35:30)
Wow. Wait, really? So just 0.01%.
What is that? Like 1 million people were to give $300 a year. That'd be 300 million right there. Yeah, there's the map. Yeah.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (35:35)
It's one million people. So yeah.
Yeah,
there you go. So that's our secret, very ambitious, where we'd like to go. But fundamentally, what we want to do is just increase the amount of money going to some of these amazing charities doing amazing work so that they can do more of that work. We can scale up the stuff that's already making an impact and also explore new opportunities and new ways to make an impact for animals on this issue. Yeah.
JD (36:04)
Nice. Let's talk about that. So if you got a couple
minutes, I'd love to hear some of the program models and the scaling, room for scaling. You've got these great videos where you do street interviews, where you're talking to people about what do they think it takes to offset their animal consumption every year. And you've got really slick marketing, too, on the website. So nicely done there. But what's it going to take to scale from where you're at now?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (36:20)
Yeah.
thank you.
Yeah, so we're still, I think we're still in this explore phase of kind of working out, you what can we do? I think the effective giving movement, which is sort of a global movement of organizations aimed at trying to get, help people to identify great charities to donate to and persuade people to donate to these charities, is still incredibly young. And we haven't, there's a lot of unexplored space about like, what can we do? How can we reach more people? The number of people that we've reached
is still relatively small, even though actually the number of lives saved at this point is really quite extraordinary. And so we're part of that exploration. Some of the things we found can be really impactful are actually things like blogs and podcasts and things like this, because the most powerful way to communicate an idea is word of mouth. And that can be a little bit slow to do.
But something like a blog or a podcast is kind of like word of mouth, but scaled up, right? But we're also...
JD (37:33)
Where are you trying to get
on? What are the blogs and the podcasts that are in? You made Christians for impact. Congrats. Yeah, you've landed it. You've the climax, but no, no. are the next ones in sight?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (37:36)
Yeah, yeah, that was the top of that, you know.
Yeah. So we've been doing some work with some sub stackers recently, kind of looking at like the idea of this calculator is like a, know, if you love animals, but also love steak, here's like a way to like still make an impact. And that's been particularly successful for, that's been a really sort of cost-effective and a good way thing to do. We're also working with a PR team at the moment on like, can we do some stunts to like really kind of break through and create a bit more of like a
JD (38:13)
Mm-mm.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (38:15)
mainstream interest in So, well, I don't know yet, we want to basically, we want to kind of take this idea of the offsetting and like kind of dramatize it for people and make it something that's kind of like interesting and eye catching and something that people can engage with. Because we're really interested in not just communicating to people who already sold on this idea of being effective,
Um, but yeah, it's, it's, it's difficult. You have this, this fight, like classically in marketing, this idea of the funnel, right? So you have like a wide bit of the top where you reach a lot of people and make kind of funnels down until you get to people at the bottom.
So we're kind of working on both ends of that, trying to like increase the people who are finding out about us at the top, but also get better at like, how can we engage people who kind of have come to us once. So like, how can we make sure that we're, for example, doing, you know, things like email marketing in a way that they think is interesting, sending them stuff that they actually want to read and like that they find.
find interesting and persuasive and not spamming them and that sort of thing. But also like how can we make our website a good, interesting experience, something that people like enjoy, actually enjoy using and will ultimately decide through the information that we provide them and the kind of the approach that we take that they want to give through us to the charities that we support. yeah, there's like, I mean, we're a small team. It is literally in terms of paid staff, myself and my co-founder, we have a few amazing volunteers.
JD (39:34)
Yeah.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (39:36)
but it's just the two of us and there's a lot to a lot of moving parts and a lot of us sort of to it does feel like kind of trying to build the car while driving down motorway,
JD (39:41)
It's.
Yes, yes.
But it's a great example of how it only takes two people to build this car that can race down the motorway, right? Like it's, you don't need that many people to take a really inspiring product or service or charity and then just start it and see what happens. So.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (39:59)
Yeah. Yeah.
So I mean, that's how we were founded was out of this program called charity entrepreneurship, which is this idea about like, could, there are all these problems in the world in global health and in the animal space that are actually like, seem like they could be solved by a new small charity, but it just happens to be that no one's identified this problem yet. So a great example is the lead elimination project and they work on, they worked just lead poisoning is like a
huge issue in the developing world in terms of the number of dailies, the number of kind of like years of healthy life that it affects. And it just turned out that like, no one was really working on this. No one was meaningfully working on this problem. And so this organization called Leap was started now a few years ago, and they've made massive traction in getting commitments from countries to remove lead from paint. And this has made real big difference. so charity entrepreneurship is all about kind of like
small teams of people getting together, focusing on a problem, and making a big impact in the world. And we were started out of this. And so we take that same methodology of like, can we be frugal, move fast, of as a, take that startup mentality and apply it to doing good, in our case, trying to raise money for amazing animal charities. And so, yeah, we, I think it is, I'm surprised at like how much it is possible for like pretty small teams with like not really that much funding to achieve.
JD (41:26)
Right. And you got
some seed funding from them, right?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (41:28)
we were funded with $130,000 from them that sort of covers our first year.
JD (41:33)
Okay, nice. And this is a whole application process,
right? You apply, they accept a fraction of the number of people that apply, and then you do this like one or two year fellowship with all the people in London, is that right?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (41:46)
It's less than that. It's eight weeks. you go from, you go from, it's pretty, it's, I mean, it's, it's an amazing experience, but it's pretty intense. So you go from like, not really having sort of being a normal person, having a normal job to within eight weeks, meeting a bunch of people, deciding one of them you want to start a charity with, deciding what charity you want to start, and then pitching for funding to then go and start the charity in eight weeks. Yeah.
JD (41:50)
Eight weeks, yeah.
Pretty full on, yeah?
It's like speed dating, for your charity partner, yeah.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (42:15)
There is a.
JD (42:15)
I'm sure you guys are super close now. I hear from friends who've started charities or businesses that they're co-founders. They're really, really tight with.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (42:23)
Yeah, yeah. I'm really lucky that Aidan, my co-founder also lives in the UK. So he lives in London too. So we can like work together instead of having to work remotely, which also really helps. Yeah.
JD (42:33)
We've also had Julie on the podcast. We'll put
the link in the description. Joy Bittner, she went through charity entrepreneurship, now called AIM, and also started up her charity this way.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (42:43)
It's a great program. It's a really good way to, if you want to sort of make an impact with your career, this is like definitely one option that, that is definitely worth considering because it's, yeah, it's an extremely, it can be extremely effective way to make a big difference.
JD (42:57)
Nice. So to close, I want to take just 10 minutes with 10 rapid fire questions about careers. What are the ways that impact minded Christians can do the most good through their careers for God's kingdom, for the world? And yeah, are you ready? Awesome. So what's it like as a founder? Who should be a founder? Give me your general career advice for founders of charities.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (43:01)
Ciao.
Yep.
Yeah. So I think founding is a great option. think you need a very high tolerance for uncertainty. And I think something people should consider if they think that starting something brand new sounds really exciting and impactful is also trying to be a early employee of a fairly new charity, because you can get essentially the same amount of impact, in terms of counterfactual impact of your career, without the uncertainty of actually you do something that turns out it's not very good and doesn't work.
And I think more people should also think about like being like employee number one, because that could actually be better than being a founder.
JD (43:54)
Nice. cool. So earning to give as a path, we mentioned it before, but do you recommend it? And if so, like who should, who should consider that? Who'd be a good fit for that?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (44:05)
Yeah, I think Earning to Give is a great approach. think often we should celebrate people who do this more, I think, than we do, because it's an extraordinary thing to work in the corporate world or a world where most people are focused on earning money for themselves and to do that and to say, I want to do this to help others to have a positive impact on the world. And I think that's an amazing thing.
Obviously you have to be a little bit careful that the industry you're doing is like not net negative. So, you know, you're working in something that you think is not itself causing, causing harm in the world, but otherwise I think it's an extraordinary, extraordinarily good way to make an impact.
JD (44:48)
Say you're a Christian who's working in politics or wants to work in politics or policy. What are some of the highest impact ways to help animals through politics and policy work?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (44:57)
Yeah, so politics is extraordinarily neglected as an issue, particularly in the animal space and also in global health, I think, as well, to a degree. A lot of the kind of really impact-minded people have actually gone to work on AI specifically right now. And so there are these gaps where there is a real need for people. And so I think this is something people should really take seriously. Working for a legislator can be a really good approach.
If you can find an organization that is hiring people for what's called lobbying, so public affairs, kind of like influencing politicians, these are very good options. There are a number of organizations around Animal advocacy careers. Yeah. Animal advocacy careers, sorry, are a great organization. They actually run a program helping people to do this specifically in Europe, but they also can link you into opportunities in the UK and US.
JD (45:38)
animal advisory careers? Yes, yes.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (45:50)
And they're a great place to look for this specific career option, which I think is a really high impact career option. Yeah.
JD (45:53)
Nice, I didn't know that. I didn't know they had connections with the policy
lobbying side, that's great. All right, you were a lawyer. What career advice do you give for lawyers who want to transition out of law to have more impact? Or would you recommend that? Should they stay in law?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (46:01)
Yep.
I think law earning to give is a great option for lawyers. I think, again, I would say that being a lawyer gives you some really useful skills for things like lobby work and regulatory work and this kind of political piece. think there's some really useful skills there. The other thing that you could consider very seriously is operation support. So lots of charities really need people who understand how to do things like
legal work and kind of make sure they comply and sort their taxes and all this kind of stuff. think the loyal mind is really well suited for this. And this is an area that lots of charities need support with. getting involved in that and becoming like an operations expert, I think is also a really impactful potential way to help charities.
JD (46:59)
Nice. Yeah, if you had to summarize what the top impact pathways for careers are for helping animals caring for creation, what would you say?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (47:07)
Yeah. So I think that the two key bottlenecks that we have in the animal space is funding. becoming either just simply giving yourself or becoming an expert in how to raise money is very impactful. The other place is high level leadership roles are really hurting in the animal space. There just aren't enough people. And so if you have a background in kind of like maybe as a senior manager in like some completely unrelated area, that would make you an extraordinarily good person to explore the animal space.
JD (47:37)
So what are some of the best places to go for career advice for having a maximum impact for animals?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (47:43)
two great places I think to start our animal advocacy careers and of course, Christians for Impact as well is another great place. 80,000 hours, which is another kind of careers advisory, they recently put animal factory farming as one of their top priority areas as well. So they now have some some good information as well. So those are three, three good places to look.
JD (48:05)
What would you give generally for career advice for Christians who want to have an impact?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (48:10)
Yeah. So I think I mentioned it already, but I think trying to get in as like employee number one, a small charity is underrated. It has almost all the impacts of being a founder with very little of the downside of like, maybe this intervention isn't actually useful because by the time someone's scaling up. No, yes, not the highest pay, but well, exactly. Yeah. And many impactful charities, in fact, that the employees earn more than the founders.
JD (48:28)
Maybe not highest pay, but the founders aren't making much anyways.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (48:39)
So, you it could be better paid than being a founder too. But when you're scaling up to actually employing people, it probably means you have some signal that what you're doing is good. And therefore you're just like stripping out a lot of the uncertainty of the intervention you're working on not being effective by kind of being an early stage employee. Whereas when you're a founder, like there's maximum uncertainty. And so I think this is like, yeah, being an early stage employee, I think is a particularly good place to be in terms of your impact.
likelihood.
JD (49:09)
Awesome. Yeah, any other final career advice or thoughts?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (49:14)
I see. I think one thing I think, is particularly in the animal space it's easy to think I'm not the right person for this space. I don't have like a background in these kinds of, know, whether it's law or like biology or farming or whatever. Right. And people just consistently underrate how much impact they can have. This is an issue where there just aren't that many people working on it.
There aren't many people with, experience and there is not a lot of funding. So the chances that what you are good at is something that is required in this movement are actually like surprisingly high. And so if you think that this could be something you'll, you'll move by this issue, you think this is something I would like to at least explore. I would really just encourage you to do that because the chances are you can have a big impact in this space.
JD (50:01)
Nice, nice. Well, keep up the great work with FarmKind and is there any way we can be supporting what you're doing or encouraging you?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (50:09)
Yeah, so you can see what we're doing at farmkind.giving. That's our website. If you would like to sort of use the calculator to offset your own impact, then you can find that there. The other thing that would specifically really be helpful to us is if you know people who have blogs or podcasts or things like this, who you think might be interested in kind of what we do and maybe thinking about like...
covering our calculators, talking about it. We're always looking to meet people who kind of have an audience.
JD (50:42)
Awesome. And we'll include links to you guys, of course, in the description. And yeah, listeners, if you're keen to get connected with Tom, Tom, are you, are you in principle open to being connected with people, including for career advice for potential founders?
Thom Norman - FarmKind (50:52)
Yeah.
Yeah, of course. So my email address is tom with htom at farmkind.giving. People are more welcome to email me.
JD (51:07)
Awesome. Well, you heard it. Great. Thanks, everyone, so much for listening. And we'll see you again next time.
Thom Norman - FarmKind (51:12)
Thanks a lot.
