If you have to credit animal rights and vegan activists for something, it’s being persistent, aggressive and strategic.

When they realized around a decade ago that simply crying “go vegan” wasn’t working, they shifted their focus to making animal agriculture less efficient and sustainable by trying to get common industry practices (gestation stalls, cages for laying hens) banned by state laws or restaurant and retail brand sourcing policies.

The activist movement also realized that they’d be more effective in presenting a united front and working together to pick which issue they’d all focus on from various angles (from the more professional-appearing HSUS visiting company boardrooms to the more transparently extreme PETA protesting outside the building).

The latest segment of the industry that we’re seeing activist groups come together to target may be somewhat unexpected – seafood.

At the Animal Rights National Conference this summer, several sessions focused on fish (a noticeable increase in discussion of fish over previous years). Speakers from activist organizations Compassion Over Killing and Fish Feel said fish are “the largest category of exploited vertebrate animals.” Commercial fishing was described as “cruel” and “incredibly wasteful” and people were encouraged to go vegetarian in order to save fish from dying.

The speaker from Fish Feels called for more activism on behalf of fish, saying “aquatic animals suffer the most out of all farmed animals and receive the least amount of recognition from both the animal rights and animal welfare communities.”

Both fishing and aquaculture were criticized, with speakers claiming that we are overfishing the oceans and farmed fish are abused and skinned alive. One session closed with a call to action for audience members to go vegan, spread the word about how amazing fish are and post comments online about the cruelties of fishing and aquaculture.

Targeting of the seafood industry has already gone beyond talk and into action; Compassion Over Killing just released an “undercover video” campaign targeting a salmon hatchery. Extreme organization Direct Action Everywhere included aquatic imagery in a recent protest. The Open Philanthropy Project, a grant-providing organization funded by one of the founders of Facebook, has awarded considerable funds to groups that want to target seafood, including $250,000 to Compassion Over Killing for “investigations.”

Hopefully the seafood industry will learn from what the rest of animal agriculture has dealt with for decades and stand as a united front against activism.

Vegan activists take aim at their next target

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