When is the last time that you picked up the phone to tell your favorite restaurant or grocery store how much you appreciate the meat options they offer? That might seem like a silly or unnecessary thing to do, but many of us don’t realize just how frequently food brands are hearing from activist groups about how they need to drop meat in favor of vegan options.

Much ado has been made of Burger King’s meatless Impossible Whopper and other restaurant chains that are adding plant-based meat options to their menu. Adding more choices for customers to choose from is never a bad thing, whether they contain meat or not.

It does get a little concerning, though, when you hear activists explain how urging restaurants to add vegan options is actually “an incremental approach used to gradually switch companies over to veganism,” as stated by a Mercy for Animals representative at the 2019 Animal Rights National Conference.

This year’s conference was far from the first time that activists have shared this “incremental changes” approach to pressuring restaurant and retail brands to adopt certain supply chain policies or change their menu offerings. At the 2015 conference, a representative of the Farm Animal Rights Movement, the group leading the conference, suggested that activists lie to brands and the public by saying “We are trying to reduce the number of animals used for food. We aren’t trying to make everyone vegan.”

This strategy – “putting your foot in the door, not in their face” – was said to be more likely to keep the attention of a target audience than being direct and upfront about wanting everyone to go vegan. In the speaker’s words, “Take them one step at a time or you will lose them.”

This approach is pretty apparent in some activist groups’ activity. After years of working to make consumers wary of large-scale agriculture, some animal rights groups have begun to launch campaigns against brands who market themselves as “humane” alternatives – including Whole Foods and Chipotle. Following this “incremental changes” strategy, animal rights organizations that portray themselves as concerned with animal welfare will continue to move the goal post of what they define as “humane” until no livestock or poultry farming exists.

As a speaker from United Poultry Concerns stated at this year’s conference, activists actually believe “it’s not the way we farm animals that we need to change, it’s our willingness to let go of it all together” (despite claims from some that they are focused on ‘improving animal welfare’).

It's important for all of us in the food chain to remember that we’re all being pressured by the same group of extremists – small as it actually may be (activists at this year’s conference even bemoaned how “we are not even close to being on the cusp of global veganism,” and “half of the self-identifying vegetarians have eaten chicken or fish in the last month”).

Restaurant and retail brands should reach out to the meat and agriculture industries to learn the truth behind activist claims and campaigns, and the meat and ag industry needs to be proactive in communicating with customers about hot topics and issues.

Activists’ efforts to take meat off menus not new, but goal posts keep changing

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