Project Counterglow began in 2019 as a grassroots volunteer project to build the United States’ most complete dataset and map of commercial animal enterprises by leveraging crowdsourcing and machine learning, which today contains almost 30,000 facilities and counting- more than 20,000 more than any other source. As covered by The Intercept, the map was released in May 2020 to widespread acclaim by activists and transparency advocates, including Glenn Greenwald, and received nearly 50,000 visits in its first month.

The Project’s initial goal was to simply create a map of factory farms, but we quickly learned that the multi-billion dollar animal agriculture industry has been working to shield their activities from the public eye for more than a decade. Aided by politicians receiving lucrative campaign contributions from the industry, corporations like Smithfield and Tyson have cast a long shadow over efforts by the animal rights, environmental, public health and environmental justice sectors to increase transparency and accountability, even as the massively destructive effects of factory farming have become increasingly accepted in the mainstream. 

Because the corruption that maintains the status quo runs so deep, we realized that a map wasn’t enough. Our work has expanded to include network development, leadership training and mentoring for activists and undercover investigators, and a crowdsourced database of all the “dirt” animal agriculture doesn’t want getting out. Our mission is to empower a new generation of citizen whistleblowers from all walks of life, and leverage the work already being done by ordinary people all over the United States to expose corruption in animal agriculture by connecting them to previously inaccessible resources and support that will serve as a significant force multiplier to the movement for truth and justice for all.

Project Counterglow

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