With a new year right around the corner, I think it’s worthwhile to take a moment and look back on some of the major challenges our industry faced from animal rights activist groups in 2019. These groups will undoubtedly take their efforts to damage the reputation of animal agriculture and meat production to new heights in 2020, and understanding their current tactics will help us prepare for what may be next.

One of the biggest conversation topics of 2019 has been climate change and protecting the environment, and of course activist groups have tried to capitalize on that to further their agenda. Activists used things like the EAT-Lancet report and the Green New Deal to push for an end to meat consumption to save the planet, and heavily promoted substitutes like the Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat as tools to reach that goal. At the 2019 Animal Rights National Conference, multiple speakers referred to the planet going instinct by 2026 if we don’t all go vegan and urged animal rights activists and environmental groups to join forces. I think we’ll continue to see this message repeated louder and louder in 2020 and we need to amp up our efforts to counter it.

We’ve also seen an uptick in protests and activists wanting to get arrested in the name of animal rights this year, with regular vigils held at plants and farms across the country. Despite many of the leaders of Direct Action Everywhere facing some pretty serious charges for past actions, the group held another large-scale protest in conjunction with the Animal Liberation Convergence this spring — this time targeting a duck farm and processing plant. Activists actually chained themselves to plant equipment, demonstrating why these actions are a threat to both human safety and animal health and welfare (due to biosecurity concerns). These groups will continue to get more extreme to keep getting media attention, so we’ll need to be ready for these incidents to continue and escalate.

While “undercover video” campaigns are far from new, 2019 was a particularly aggressive year for video releases, including the targeting of Fair Oaks Farms (and by extension fairlife and Coca-Cola). Various other videos were released this year targeting the aquaculture industry, other dairy farms and a hog farm. In the hog farm example, the state police stated they believe at least some of the footage was not actually filmed at the farm in question, further confirming what we already know about activists being willing to exaggerate and fabricate to produce sensational videos. These campaigns should remind us that we all could be a target and need to take proactive steps to prevent issues, such as continuous training for employees and caution in hiring.

Here’s hoping that 2020 will be a quiet year on the animal ag front, but with the newly-introduced “Farm System Reform Act of 2019” taking aim at large-scale operations, I think we’re in for additional fireworks (and not just the ones coming tonight at midnight).

Looking back on activism in 2019

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