While protests or break-ins at farms or plants are a major headache, when I’m asked what concerns me most for animal agriculture my answer is usually the pressure campaigns that extremist organizations run targeting major restaurant, retail and foodservice brands. A group of activists descending on a location might feel more urgent and alarming, but it will have much less of a long-term impact on our ability to do business than a major customer announcing new supply chain requirements as a result of pressure from extremists.

Pressure campaigns are efforts by animal rights extremist organizations to push brands (or governments, organizations and other entities) to adopt a certain policy. Their demands might appear on the surface to be focused on animal welfare or sustainability, but the true objective is to ban certain policies that are widely used across animal agriculture in order to reduce efficiency and drive up costs, hopefully leading to less consumption of meat, poultry, dairy and eggs. While legislation remains a core strategy for some animal rights groups (look no further than Prop 12), many are turning to pressure campaigns as a potentially faster way to impact animal agriculture with fewer checks and balances than the legislative/regulatory process.

In a recent workshop that was livestreamed on social media, a speaker from PETA clearly laid out their pressure campaign strategy. The speaker explained that PETA wants to “end use of animals as food” by “making vegan food accessible,” and one way they are doing that is by “increasing [the] price of animal products” by “ending animal ag subsides” and “passing welfare regulations.”

Activists were encouraged to “set a goal, identify who has the power to make the change you want to see, use a variety of strategies and tactics that fit the campaign, escalate tactics to be more disruptive as the campaign progresses, identify secondary targets and leverage your victory to pressure other targets.” Examples of campaign tactics shared included writing letters to CEOs, “phone blockades,” boycotts, home demonstrations, protests at stores, petitions, “investigations” of suppliers, “disrupt” or “occupy,” and a social media blitz. If the campaign seems to be stalling, activists were told to move on to a “secondary campaign,” where they turn the pressure onto companies and organizations affiliated with the primary target (investors, customers, distributors, sponsorship partners, etc.), making sure the secondary target knows they are only receiving this attention due to their connection to the primary target (and the primary target’s refusal to give in to the activists’ demands).

While none of these insights are really new, it’s always helpful to hear activists’ strategies explained in their own words — especially when they acknowledge that these campaigns are truly about raising costs in order to end animal agriculture. We need to be proactive in preparing our consumer-facing supply chain partners for these attacks. Now is the time to arm them with science-based, accurate information about animal agriculture along with recommendations for fending off groups who do not truly speak for the consumer.

Anatomy of a ‘pressure campaign’

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