Providing a transparency model for animal agriculture

Fair Oaks Farms demonstrates that American consumers can accept large-scale agriculture if they can see it for themselves.

Remember the happy cows in California advertisments with individual Holsteins on lush green hillsides? This imagery created an unreal expectation in the minds of consumers about how these animals were raised. What animal agriculture really needs to share with consumers are the real stories of how cows, pigs and poultry are raised on modern, large-scale farms. Fair Oaks Farms in Indiana has chosen to tackle the biosecurity and public relations challenges of welcoming a half-million visitors each year to tour its 37,000-cow dairy, 3,000-sow farrow-to-wean farm and, coming in 2017, half-million cage-free laying hen farm.