Hannah Thompson-Weeman, the vice president of communications for the Animal Agriculture Alliance, said the actions of extreme animal rights groups certainly didn’t pull back. It looks like it’s become even more extreme.
Thompson-Weeman said activist organizations ramped up their efforts in 2020 and did not take any moment to slow down their efforts despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In fact, very opportunistic about the pandemic and trying to use it to their advantage, to spread messaging about animal agriculture allegedly being a public health risk,” she said from her office in Arlington, VA. “Not even stay-at-home orders or restrictions on events and travel have quelled protests.”
Thompson-Weeman said this included many numerous protests at the small and large-scale levels at farms, especially at plants and processing locations here in the US and Canada. Many protests focused on plant operations, transport, and trucking.
While on the rise, she said it’s essential to not lose sight of the long-simmering types of activism, like legislative pressure and pressuring retail restaurant brands that might not be as in the face as people camping out outside of processing plants, but still happening. The industry needs to be very conscious of this subtle activism.
The AAA V-P of Communications said farmers and farm organizations need to stay vigilant in what animal and food activists do, especially right now, with so much scrutiny on the food system, much discussion on how farmers produce food and how it gets to consumers. People are probably more aware than ever and paying a lot more attention to those things.
“While activists try to take advantage of that, it’s also a great opportunity for us to be there and help feed that curiosity and make sure we’re providing balance and accuracy in those conversations,” she said.
— continued on page 23
— continued from page 22
Hannah added, “We all deal with challenges and production difficulties that compete for our attention, but we also can’t lose sight of the importance of both connecting with consumers and also influencers.”
Thompson-Weeman said to make sure the industry focuses on legislators, retail restaurant brands, the media to be sources and resources on animal agriculture and meat production because they hear daily from the other side.
A recent report from the Humane Society of the United States on their ‘taking action for animals’ virtual conference was the drumbeat throughout that session. Encouraging activists to get involved legislatively, all the way down at the local municipal level, so they can start passing what they believe is quote-unquote animal-friendly policies.
“In the end, it will restrict our ability to raise animals for food. And they hope ultimately end it,” she said.Next, Thompson-Weeman referred to the COVID-19 fallout at the Maple Leaf hog plant in Brandon, MB., where immediately the union and some political parties called for shutting down, shut it down. It is activist groups taking advantage of supposedly showing concern for plant employees as the guide to call for plants to be immediately shut down, aligning very conveniently with their objective of not using animals for food.
“We’re seeing a lot of new alliances forming between worker health and worker safety advocacy groups and animal rights groups coming together around this message of boycotting meat,” she said. “Some new allies are coming together because the animal rights groups are realizing, hey, people are talking about employees, so we can latch on to that and use it to further our messaging. But again for them, it’s all about promoting an agenda where people don’t eat meat and where the meat industry ultimately doesn’t exist.”
On the subject of more plant protein processing plants coming up and serving the crop-producing farmers, Thompson-Weeman said the AAA understands and has no problem with plant protein burgers because it serves farmers. People talk much about alternative proteins, and some companies have tried to say the pandemic is turning people to purchasing those more and more.
“Our viewpoint at the Alliance, we are all about consumer choice and having more choices for consumers in the marketplace that can compete,” she said.
Consumers can make decisions based on what matches their values and their budgets driven by taste, cost, convenience, all of those things, certainly for some consumers, they do look for things like animal welfare labelling or sustainability information.
The Alliance has no issue with the plant-based products but has significant concerns with the marketing both by companies that produce them and activist groups, which again see it not as a supplement or another option; they want those to be the only choices. •
— By Harry Siemens