It may be a new year, but animal rights activists are up to their old tricks — and learning some new ones. Over the past year we’ve seen increasing “whistleblower outreach” efforts targeting farm and plant employees by various animal rights activist groups, including the Animal Legal Defense Fund and Direct Action Everywhere. They claim to be working to help farm and plant employees report concerns about anything from animal welfare to COVID-19 protocols, but in reality, their efforts are focused on finding new ways to get intel to support their long-running campaigns against animal agriculture.

Some efforts are very direct, such as online forms where “whistleblowers” can submit concerns or activists standing outside of plants handing out flyers to workers. Others are more underhanded, such as activists using social engineering to strike up relationships with plant employees in order to get information. Activists have used tactics such as striking up online relationships (some even romantic) with employees or spending time at bars that employees frequent to get to know them and seek out information about plant operations (or referrals for employment). We have also heard recent reports of animal rights activists approaching plant employees with flyers soliciting participation in surveys or interviews.

It’s an unfortunate necessity for us to inform employees at all levels about these ongoing efforts and encourage discretion in sharing any type of information about their job. Even seemingly innocuous tidbits about plant operations and scheduling could be used by activists to inform their work. If your employees are under a confidentiality agreement (which they should be), make sure to offer reminders about the agreement and that they should not be sharing proprietary information about your business with anyone. Ask employees to report anyone suspiciously seeking details about their work, especially if it is someone who is new in their lives. Encourage workers to direct any inquiries they receive about participating in surveys or interviews about their job to management for vetting (the Alliance can assist with this). The Alliance also strongly recommends having an anonymous way for employees to report any true concerns they have so your company can react swiftly. Promote this continuously and ensure that addressing employee concerns is integral to your company culture.

These efforts are not about hiding anything or avoiding transparency; it’s about protecting your business and the industry as a whole from groups who have demonstrated time and time again what their end goal is (ending animal agriculture and meat consumption) and just how far they are willing to go for it (break-ins, theft, installing recording devices, impersonating company leaders … the list goes on).

Warning: activists targeting plant employees

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