WFAD has been sponsored since 1983 by FARM , a non-profit public interest organization working from the nation's capital through a world wide network of activist groups and individuals.

The broad support for World Farm Animals Day reflects a deep and widespread public concern with the excesses of animal agriculture. Rural residents suffer from pollution of their water and air by discharges from massive feedlots and factory farms. Independent producers and farm workers are displaced by the relentless encroachment of large conglomerates. City residents are competing with factory farms for water supplies. Consumers are concerned about meat safety and switching to plant-based alternatives. Nine out of ten Americans feel that, as long as animals are killed for food, they are owed a humane treatment during their short lives.

Indeed, most participants are motivated by their outrage at the abysmal treatment of farmed animals. Each year, nearly ten billion cattle, pigs, sheep, and other innocent, feeling animals are caged, crowded, deprived, drugged, mutilated, and manhandled in factory farms and slaughter-houses until death ends their agony.

'Veal' calves are torn from their mothers at birth, chained by the neck for 16 weeks in tiny, filthy wooden crates, and force-fed a liquid formula that is deficient in iron and fiber. Breeding sows are kept pregnant for three years in constricting metal 'gestation stalls.' Laying hens are crammed 5-7 birds into 'battery cages' the size of a folded newspaper, where wire mesh floors and walls cut painfully into their feet and tear out their feathers. They are frequently starved for up to 14 days to raise egg production.

The animals are transported to slaughter in crowded trucks with no protection against weather extremes and many succumb in transit. Sick and injured animals are dragged with chains to the killing floor. Some are skinned, dismembered, scalded, and drowned in their own blood by slaughterhouse workers, while fully conscious.