Famed scientist Jane Goodall and Animal Save Movement are among those to amplify calls to end farm animal gifting to people in developing countries via charities such as Oxfam, World Vision and Christian Aid. But farmer critics have accused activists of playing ‘grinch’ this Christmas.

Gifting farm animals to friends and family at Christmas time is nothing new. In 2006, the World Land Trust (WLT) and Animal Aid labelled the then already popular 'Give a Goat' and cow initiatives as a “dangerous concept” that “merely add to the problems of hard-pressed communities because of the drain on limited resources the animal represents."

This year, however, renowned primatologist and anthropologist Jane Goodall, a lifelong vegetarian-turned-vegan, has added her considerable gravitas to the criticism of such projects being peddled by the world’s largest charities, notably Oxfam, World Vision, Heifer International, Christian Aid and Child Fund.

In a video statement posted on Monday, Goodall said: “In the lead-up to Christmas, many people are feeling generous and want to help those less fortunate than themselves. There are a number of organisations that have launched campaigns, suggesting that one way to help those suffering poverty and hunger is to gift them an animal, such as a heifer.

“As a result, farm animals are bought in great numbers by generous donors. Unfortunately, this can result in unintended consequences. The animals must be fed and they need a lot of water, and in so many places water is getting more and more scarce thanks to climate change. Veterinary care is often limited or totally lacking.”

#StopAnimalGifting is also a key campaign from the Animal Save Movement (ASM) global network, and like Goodall has called for a radical rethink of these harmful initiatives, recommending instead that the charities and NGOs responsible switch to focusing on plant-based projects using sustainable irrigation and regenerative agriculture to improve soil health and address the causes of environmental degradation.

Like WLT and Animal Aid before them, Goodall and ASM point out the many hidden drawbacks of what appear at first to be well-intentioned and logical ideas. While it might make sense to send goats, cows and chickens to impoverished areas, it more often than not fails to address the underlying causes of economic and environmental degradation.

“Farmed animals do not magically ‘live off the land’. They need food and water and quite often these precious resources are already scarce. Having an animal to feed may actually add to the burden families are already facing,” said Miriam Porter in an ASM blog post.

“Many of the gifted animals end up suffering from malnutrition and dehydration as they don’t have enough to sustain them. Furthermore, raising these gifted animals requires up to ten times more water than growing crops.”

Plant-based NGO A Well-fed World has also been highly critical of the animal gifting initiatives, and runs an alternative project endorsed by ASM. According to A Well-fed World, many of the recipients of gifted cows are lactose intolerant, a fact highlighted by a recent spoof Starbucks campaign from Switch4Good. In Africa and Asia, regions aggressively targeted by dairy gift programmes, the prevalence of lactose intolerance can be as high as 90 per cent of the local populations.

Furthermore, ASM and others argue that more animals mean more mouths to feed when recipients may already be struggling to feed themselves, and when grazing animals are sent to areas affected by drought and dessertification, housing, animal feed and water must be provided.

Oxfam, which this year offers to send a goat off to Africa for £12.50, hit back at the claims saying it has changed the lives of thousands of families.

“The Oxfam-funded goat distribution programme in Malawi started in 2005. Since then over 3,000 families have received a goat and their lives have begun to change for the better,” said the charity. “It is a simple initiative that aims to ensure that people have enough food all year round, particularly during the dry season or hungry months – when personal maize harvests have run out and the earth is dry so nothing can grow without irrigation.

“A goat is a valuable asset to a vulnerable household; it breeds easily and can produce up to six kids a year. Offspring can be sold to help families cope or kept to produce manure, which will improve subsequent harvests. Ideally, within a year, each family will be able to choose to do both: selling goats to improve their homes or pay for school fees; and using manure to increase their maize and vegetable harvests so that they can produce a surplus to sell.”

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A simple idea it might be, but with the underlying issues so complex, shouldn’t the real solution be more considered? In 2006, WLT issued a rebuttal to Farm Africa after the latter admitted to sending goats to parts of Africa where the people could no longer sustain herds of cows and sheep.

"Claiming that goats are the only solution after cattle and sheep have died of starvation (as Oxfam and Farm Africa do), is an illogical and ill-thought out suggestion", said John Burton, who at the time was Chief Executive of WLT. "Once a habitat is this seriously degraded goats will be the final straw. All regeneration ceases, leading to desertification. This is not an hypothesis, anyone can see for themselves if they visit the arid areas of Africa or Asia."

In a ludicrous response to the ASM campaign, the Stetson-wearing Greg Henderson, writing for Farm Journal on Tuesday and seeing an opportunity to attack the plant-based movement, lambasted activists for being in “full grinch-mode” and concluding:

“While such an anti-food animal campaign does not directly target America’s beef industry, it should be viewed as another red-flag warning about the ultimate mission of such activists and their tactics. Key to these group’s [sic] ultimate success is convincing people that all animal agriculture is bad for both people and the planet. Trying telling that to impoverished people facing Christmas with an empty table.”

We’ll ignore the Western-centric assumption that everyone in Africa, Asia and other target regions celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25. Henderson also accuses ASM, Goodall and others of “narrow thinking” by not mentioning “the fact [that] gifted animals turn grass and other non-human-edible plants into meat and milk,” but he himself failed to grasp that many of these gifted animals are sent to places without any plants at all due to overgrazing, drought and dessertification, and that adding more grazers only exacerbates the problem.

Henderson’s blog is an irrelevance barely worth considering in this discussion, but in a sense, it demonstrates the short-sightedness that underpins the animal gifting projects. At the heart of each one is a fundraising model, a means of receiving a share of donations by manipulating and pulling at the heartstrings of well-intentioned people who trust that their money is going to worthy projects. Oxfam, World Vision, Heifer International and many others - which offer gifted animals at wildly varying costs - have created short-fix “initiatives” with pictures of cute children in Africa holding chickens and goats that they know people are more likely to give money to than regenerative plant-based projects.

The world doesn’t need more animal agriculture when even a relatively small number of goats, cows and chickens - when compared to the numbers held in intensive farms - can add to pressures on water, land and plant growth. The world needs healthier soil and to reverse the effects of overgrazing, achievable through plant-based projects such as those from A Well-fed World, which funds starter equipment for mushroom gardens, plants fruit trees and provides quality seeds for crops; and The Lemon Tree Trust who create community gardens for refugees.

We know it’s tempting to give your loved one an animal gift pack on Christmas Day, with a picture of their goat on the cover, but as Goodall, ASM, Animal Aid, WLT, PETA and many others have stated, it’s causing far more harm than good.

Andrew Gough is Media and Investigations Manager for Surge.

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