As I mentioned in my last blog, the Alliance has once again released a report from the Animal Rights National Conference. Animal rights extremists are becoming increasingly aggressive in their efforts to end animal agriculture and the meat industry. Releasing reports from major activist conferences enables everyone in animal agriculture to prepare for strategies and tactics targeting their livelihood.

Similar to the themes of last year’s conference, speakers made it clear their vision is animal liberation, not promoting animal welfare. “There is no such thing as humane slaughter and anyone who tells you differently is simply lying,” said Michael Budkie of Stop Animal Exploitation Now. “We need to say that all animal agriculture is cruel and wrong,” said Karen Davis of United Poultry Concerns. Demetria Atkinson of Redefine Your Mind argued “Animals are people too.”

Another alarming topic of discussion was the use of “undercover” videos and the media to damage the reputation of animal agriculture and reach their goals. “Investigations are the single most powerful tool to expose the inherent cruelties in large-scale animal agriculture,” said William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality. “Make sure you start with something dramatic...That’s much more likely to go viral,” noted Jane Velez-Mitchell of Jane UnChained News Network.

Restaurant and retail brands remain major targets for activist groups, as attendees at the conference were encouraged to pressure restaurants and retailers and make it seem like a lot of people are asking for vegan meals by blitzing companies on social media, by mail and in-person. Laura Cascada of Compassion Over Killing urged conference attendees to write post cards so they could have “several hundred post cards to dump on the front step of [one restaurant chain] at some point.”

In a workshop at the conference, The Humane League asked attendees to write birthday cards with negative messages to the CEO of a major restaurant chain saying, “This will be the meanest card you’ll ever write.”

While talking about corporate campaigns, Kelly Myer of The Humane League said, “We surround buildings so that employees have to see and feel guilt anytime they leave” and “An incremental approach is used to gradually switch companies over to veganism.”

While our main priority should be continuing to serve the vast majority of the population that happily consumes meat and poultry, we also need to be tuned in to this small but very loud group trying to impact our ability to do business. I’ll continue to share insights from this conference and our ongoing activist monitoring in future posts.

Activists focused on “animal liberation” – not animal welfare

Join for free* to continue reading.