As you probably know if you follow this blog, a key role of the Animal Agriculture Alliance is monitoring animal rights activist organizations. While animal rights activists make up a small subset of our population, they know how to make their voices loud and are bound and determined to disrupt the animal agriculture and meat communities’ efforts to responsibly raise and process animals to feed a hungry world. Keeping an eye on these groups and spreading the word about their strategies and tactics is an important part of our mission to safeguard the future of animal agriculture.

One way that activist groups strategize and mobilize their followers is by hosting conferences, such as the virtual “Not Your Usual Animal Rights Conference” hosted this past weekend by PETA. The conference was billed as a “stimulating and powerful event that will fortify your beliefs and strengthen your work to counter speciesism” and that attendees would leave prepared to “make landmark changes for animals.” Session titles included “PETA's Legal Eagles Take You Inside the Courtroom on Groundbreaking Cases,” “Beyond Meat Remix: Cooking Class With Jane Velez-Mitchell,” “Gouda Riddance! How You Can Break Up With Cheese, Drop Pounds, and Live Healthfully,” and “'Humane-Washing': Learn How to Spot It and Help Stop It.”

Key takeaways from the conference included:

PETA is using “revolutionary teaching tools” such as TeachKind, its “Humane Education Division,” to “turn students into activists.” TeachKind offers lessons and activities starting at the pre-kindergarten level with titles such as “Teach Students the Importance of Veganizing Their Plates.” The site also offers advice to teachers if they face “opposition to humane education” from school administrators.
“Protein-packed” meat and dairy alternatives were billed as the solution to climate change and health issues, with Dr. Neal Barnard (of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine) claiming that going vegan most likely helped a woman get rid of her endometriosis because she wasn’t consuming hormones from animal products.
PETA is “fighting for the constitutional rights of animals,” including legal cases such as the “monkey selfie” case and their fight to grant the monkey rights over the image. Outside of the courtroom, they’ve enlisted celebrities such as Harry Potter star Evanna Lynch to support their cause.
All forms of animal use are under attack by PETA. In addition to promotion of vegan diets and discussions of “humane-washing” in food labels, there was also a heavy focus on animals in entertainment (one session was about how activists can “pull the plug on SeaWorld and other marine prisons”), research (including calls for certain research centers to be “shut down”) animal testing (including discussions of “undercover investigations” into animal testing facilities) and pet breeding (referring to breeders as “pet pimps”).

These discussions should remind us of how important it is to be standing up for animal agriculture, from the classroom to the courtroom. We also need to find alignment with other communities who rely on animals (such as entertainment, research, pet breeding) so we can support one another and present a united front in the face of threats from activist groups.

The Alliance has several other activist conferences on our radar for the summer, so stay tuned for more insights.

All forms of animal use on the agenda at virtual PETA conference

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