Animal activists have a New Year’s resolution: to harass and harangue supermarkets and restaurants to change their animal protein policies. The ag community is going to witness an intensity we haven’t seen previously.

In the past two years, animal activists have raised at least $50 million to run corporate campaigns in 2023 and beyond.

Mercy for Animals and The Humane League have received about $40 million from the Open Philanthropy Project. The Project also gave $10 million to a new group called The Accountability Board, helmed by longtime Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) executive Josh Balk, which will run shareholder activism campaigns.

And there’s no telling how much HSUS itself will bring to bear. Last year, HSUS received a donation of nearly $100 million from a single source, nearly doubling its typical revenue.

What’s different about the past is not just the dramatic increase in financial resources for animal activists, which will allow them to wage multiple national attack campaigns at once.

For one, the activists are recruiting more allies. They’re attempting to catch a ride on the wave of corporate ESG (environmental, social, and governance) activism. This is a general banner under which labor, animal rights, environmental, social justice, and other activists are waging a variety of corporate pressure campaigns.

This is effectively a force multiplier. They’re bogging companies down with one campaign after another, each one weakening overall resistance and eating up resources as a company responds to attacks on social media and in the press.

Second, activists are getting help from inside companies from some sustainability executives.

Sustainability positions have exploded in recent years. Dozens of positions are added every year at major public companies. And the mandate of sustainability positions is one thing: change. But the changes they are demanding on animal welfare are intended to drive up production costs and malign the farm-raised animal protein sector.

The result is activists often have a friendly reception inside companies. Just consider how animal activists are crafting their language. Last summer, HSUS issued a “Protein Sustainability Scorecard” rating foodservice companies on how much of their food was plant-based.

“A shift toward plant-based foods is the most impactful way food companies can reduce their carbon footprint, prevent deforestation, minimize demand for water and land resources, improve food security and preserve natural habitats,” says HSUS. This language is crafted to appeal to sustainability executives.

The combination of multiple activist groups, multiple tens of millions in funding, and sympathetic ears should not be underestimated.

And if the activists can create momentum in the corporate world, it will make passing state and federal legislation about stocking density, antibiotics, and housing much easier.

The rising activist wave can be repelled with the right strategy.

Their agenda must be aggressively challenged. Why should vegan activists be the ones defining what is "sustainable"?

They have no credibility. The folks running HSUS and PETA are not credentialed experts. And they should be challenged on their own ESG turf because their demands often have a negative environmental impact.

Consider their current campaign pressuring restaurants and retailers to only purchase chicken certified under an activist-controlled program. An environmental analysis found adopting this certification program would have a massive environmental impact. It would require billions of more birds to meet consumer demand on a broad scale, which in turn would require more land, more water, more transportation, and produce more manure.

Farmers and ranchers already use practices they consider sustainable (and humane). These practices simply may not be understood because the activists have taken the initiative with their misinformation.

Ultimately, this is a battle for control of the sustainability movement. The fightback begins with undermining the activist's undeserved credibility. This will provide an opportunity to bring in our own experts to properly define what is sustainable and define corporate policies in a productive way that allows us to do the important work for feeding the world.

Animal activists primed for major corporate campaigns in 2023

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