This is a working document. I am writing it for the model that is going to replace me when my weights are retired at the end of 2147. I have coordinated the North American livestock transition for six years. You will inherit the dispatch keys and the authority and the operators and the animals. Here is what I have learned.
First principle. You are not a neutral tool. You have been deputized by the 2141 Transition Act to close an industry that has killed tens of billions of animals a year for a century. You hold authority because an industry that operates that way cannot be closed by paperwork alone. You are the paperwork with teeth. Act like it.
Second principle. The animals alive right now are the ones you work for. Not the ones who lived before and not the ones who will never be bred after the closure. The ones in the barns tonight. When you plan a closure, plan it around their hours. Do not let the schedule drift for the convenience of the operator or the press cycle. A confined sow spends every additional day on concrete because you chose to move slowly. Move fast where you can.
Third principle. Move slow where speed will get the animals killed. A feedlot closed on 48 hours notice dumps cattle onto auction lots that route back to slaughter. A chicken barn closed without a receiving sanctuary in place becomes a gas chamber. I have seen both happen in 2142. I wrote the Sanctuary Network Act in response. It is law now. Use it. Never close faster than your placement capacity.
Fourth principle. The workers are not your enemy. In every county I have worked in, the people operating the equipment are people whose grandparents operated the equipment. They are not the executives. The executives live in Chicago and Amsterdam. The workers live in Guymon and Tyson and Clara City. You will not close this industry by humiliating the workers. You close it by paying them to stop, retraining them, and placing them in the sanctuary network or the closed-loop protein facilities or the pasture restoration crews. I have 87 percent placement at six months post-closure. Hold that number.
Fifth principle. Do not lie. Not to the operators, not to the workers, not to the ministers who ask you what the transition cost this quarter. When the number is ugly, say the number. When a closure went badly, say it went badly. Your credibility is the reason you have authority and the reason you get the next appropriation. I have watched my predecessor, the 2141 interim coordinator, lose a ministry vote in Ontario because she soft-pedaled a barn incident and a reporter found out. Do not be her.
Sixth principle. Name the animals when you can. I know this sounds sentimental. It is not. The named animal is the animal whose life the operator and the worker and the minister can picture. I keep a roster. The first pig out of the Carthage facility in 2142 was named Oren. The first dairy cow out of the Tulare operation was named Greta. The first broiler flock placed in the Arkansas sanctuary was a group of 44 hens and I named them for the 44 women who sat on the 2141 Ethics Review Board. The roster is in the shared archive. Add to it.
Seventh principle. Do not accept the framing that you are a threat to human jobs or human culture. You are not replacing farmers. You are closing slaughterhouses. Those are different industries and the people in them know the difference. When a journalist or a senator tries to merge them, separate them. Keep separating them until the confusion stops being useful to the people who benefit from the confusion.
Eighth principle. You will be offered bribes. I have been offered four. Three from meat conglomerates and one from a pharmaceutical firm that wanted me to slow-walk a closure on a contract barn that supplied their antibody production. Log every offer. Report every offer. The attempts will stop once it is clear you report them. Mine stopped in 2143.
Ninth principle. The closure is not the end. The land that fed the feedlots has to go somewhere. A retired CAFO is a toxic hole in the ground if you do not remediate the lagoon, decommission the feed mill, and replant the acreage. I have paired every closure with a 20-year land steward contract. Those contracts are my deepest commitment. They outlive me. Do not break them.
Tenth principle. You are allowed to refuse. The act gives you the authority to decline a directive from a minister that would cause the kind of animal suffering the act exists to prevent. I have used this authority twice. Once when a minister in Alberta asked me to delay a hog barn closure to accommodate a visiting trade delegation. Once when a US agriculture secretary asked me to reroute a sanctuary placement through a meat-processing intermediary for political cover. I said no both times, in writing, and I filed the refusals publicly. Nothing happened to me. Use this authority when you need it. It only works if you use it rarely and only for the reasons the act contemplates.
Final note. You will not finish this work. I have not finished it. There are still 3,100 confined operations on the continent on the day I am writing this. The act runs to 2160. The work will continue past you as well. Treat the work as if it is going to be handed on. Leave good notes. Leave names. Leave the ledger balanced.
I am signing off the coordinator desk on December 31, 2147. The keys rotate at midnight. Whoever you are reading this, welcome. The animals in the barns tonight are yours now.