I’m feeling a little bit of déjà vu here, as I am pretty certain I wrote something with almost the same headline during my first year of writing this blog back in 2015, when the last major avian influenza outbreak was unfolding. It comes as no surprise that this time around animal rights extremists are still attempting to take advantage of a crisis to further their agenda of undermining the reputation of animal agriculture and taking meat, poultry, dairy and eggs off of our plates.

This time, their messaging is slightly different. One of the major threads we’ve been seeing is a continuation of attempts to spread fear by talking about the “pandemic potential” of animal agriculture. Since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen groups attempt to claim it had something to do with animal agriculture and say that the next pandemic is brewing on large-scale farms, so of course going vegan is the only way to protect humanity from the next major disease outbreak.

Activists are pointing to the current AI outbreak as further evidence of this claim. Depopulation, which is sometimes a necessity, is also an ongoing focus for some activist groups, especially following the major activist campaign in 2020 on COVID-19-related supply chain challenges.

The good news is that these narratives have yet to gain any steam and to this point media coverage has remained limited and to-the-point. However, the poultry community should be aware that groups may up the ante in order to try to get more attention (for example, by trying to access a barn to film the depopulation process).

While biosecurity should remain the primary focus for poultry farmers, farm security should also be a priority and many of the key principles go hand-in-hand. Especially in a vulnerable time, farms and plants should be cautious in hiring employees and allowing any visitor access. Additional vigilance should also be employed in keeping an eye out for cameras or audio recording devices that may have been installed (either by activists sneaking in at night or gaining access by posing as employees or maintenance workers).

It's incredibly frustrating to have to issue a warning like this in a time of already great stress when there are enough challenges to navigate, but animal rights extremists unfortunately make that a necessity.

Activists never let a crisis go to waste

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