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Imagine you are a farmer. You work hard to care for your animals and produce high-quality food for your customers. Then one day, a group of protesters show up and chain themselves to your gate. They even have posted fake videos alleging animal mistreatment online, and have tagged your biggest customers. What do you do?
This was a scenario presented to us at a recent conference. And my first thought was, “Oh my gosh, I do not want to have the job of figuring out what to do!”
Fortunately, that’s where today’s guest comes in. Hannah Thompson-Weeman is the president and CEO of the Animal Agriculture Alliance. The Alliance’s mission is to safeguard the future of animal agriculture and its value to society by bridging the communication gap between the farm and food communities – which includes developing a plan of action for when protestors strike.
Hannah has been with the Animal Ag Alliance since 2014, serving to promote the value of animal agriculture and providing guidance to this community on many issues, including engaging with animal rights extremist groups and their campaigns.
During this eye-opening conversation, Hannah reveals many of the tactics these groups use in the name of animals welfare (but really, it’s about ending animal ag) that center around 4 main approaches:
- Ballot initiative campaigns
- Targeting restaurant and retail brands
- Changing the focus to sustainability
- Boots-on-the-ground activity (like protests)
Hannah discusses each one of these points in detail and explains how they can be effective for these extremist groups in getting their demands met. These tactics, however, do not do what they claim to do, which is to protect animal welfare. In some cases, the animals actually may be put in dangerous situations, farmers and their families are harmed, and consumers end up paying more for their food.
This is a great episode for anyone that wants to learn more about how these groups work. During this conversation, we also chat about:
- How shifting the goal posts makes the demands impossible to meet
- It’s not a grassroots movement they want us to think it is. It’s a highly connected group of organizations with strategies and lots of funding
- The rise of for-profit and citizen journalism leading to misinformation
- The importance of voices outside of the meat industry to respond to extreme activist groups
Resources:
Sustainable Dish Podcast Episode 22: The Pros and Cons of Massachusetts Ballot Question 3
Sustainable Dish Episode 202: Frank Mitloehner, PhD
The Great Rabbit Pardon of 2016
Connect with Hannah:
Website: Animal Agriculture Alliance
Instagram: @animalagalliance
Facebook: Animal Agriculture Alliance
Twitter: @animalag
TikTok: @animalagalliance
Episode Credits:
Thank you to all who’ve made this show possible. Our hosts are Diana Rodgers and James Connelly. Our producer is Emily Soape. And, of course, we are grateful for our sponsors, Patreon supporters, and listeners.
If you’re ready to take your support for a nutritious, sustainable, and equitable food system to the next level, join my Global Food Justice Alliance community on Patreon. You will have access to ad-free podcasts, exclusive videos, a discussion community, and much more. Go to sustainabledish.com/join to support my work.
Today’s podcast is sponsored by Alec’s Ice Cream, the first and only verified regenerative, organic ice cream and the best-tasting ice cream I have ever had. They are Certified Humane and use 100% A2 dairy, so even for those of you who are sensitive to dairy, you may find that Alec’s is a treat for your tastebuds and your insides. Check it out by going to sustainabledish.com/icecream and use code DIANA for 20% off your order.
Join me September 29 – October 2, 2022, for a fun and informative weekend getaway at White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Georgia. You’ll learn about regenerative farming and nutrition, plus participate in farming activities and enjoy incredible food. To learn more, visit sustainabledish.com/events and get your tickets today before they sell out.
Quotes:
“At the end of the day, it’s about raising the cost. It’s about making production less efficient, and raising the costs so that unfortunately, consumers can’t purchase as many animal proteins.” – Hannah Thompson-Weeman
“Beyond Meat is one of the major sponsors of the Meatless Mondays campaign. And their CEO’s mission is to end animal agriculture, and so that is the mission behind Meatless Mondays.” – Diana Rodgers, RD
“We’re just trying to promote healthy eating. And animal protein can be part of healthy eating. And you can raise up one product without having to denigrate another.” – Hannah Thompson-Weeman
“Your health is very personal. People can and should make whatever decision aligns with their values and their budgets.” – Hannah Thompson-Weeman
Transcript:
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I’m Diana Rodgers, a real food registered dietitian, author, and sustainability advocate. I co-host this podcast with James Connelly who was a producer on my film Sacred Cow. I also founded the Global Food Justice Alliance, an initiative advocating for the inclusion of animal source foods like meat, dairy, and eggs for a more nutritious, sustainable, and equitable worldwide food system. You can check it out and join me at global food justice.org. Thanks again for listening. And now on to our show.
(Alec’s Ice Cream Ad) Diana Rodgers, RD
Today’s podcast is sponsored by Alec’s Ice Cream, the first and only verified regenerative, organic ice cream and the best-tasting ice cream I have ever had. They use Certified Humane, 100% A2 dairy, so even for those of you who are sensitive to dairy, you may find that Alec’s is a treat for your tastebuds and your insides. So if you want an out-of-this-world, delicious, and creamy ice cream that’s also earth and gut-friendly, give this stuff a try. My favorite flavor is the Matcha Chocolate Chip, but they also have a bunch of delicious options. So go to sustainabledish.com/icecream and use code DIANA for 20% off your order. That’s sustainabledish.com/icecream, and you can get 20% off with my name D-I-A-N-A. And now, on to the show.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Hey, everyone, thank you so much for listening to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I am here with Hannah Thompson-Weeman, and she is from the Animal Ag Alliance. And I recently spoke at a conference there. And my biggest takeaway from that conference was focused on a case study that we all had to do on basically what would happen if a bunch of vegan protesters came to your farm, chained themselves to your, you know, gate, and the media is showing up? And oh, my gosh, what do you do? And my immediate response in my head was, “Oh, my gosh, I do not want to have that job of being a charge of what you do.” And so I thought, Hannah, I would bring you on to talk a little bit more about what your organization does and the types of issues that you help farmers with. And then also just so that my listeners, because they’re largely not in ag, but are concerned about issues like this, just to give us a kind of a broad sense of who’s funding these guys? What they doing, and I mean, you mentioned they’re partnering with police forces, and you know, just kind of what’s the lay of the land out there for this anti-meat kind of activism group and how your organization helps them?
Hannah Thompson-Weeman
Well, to give a little context, because folks might not be familiar with the Animal Ag Alliance, we are a nonprofit. And our mission is to safeguard the future of animal agriculture and its value to society by bridging the communication gap between the farm and food communities. We’ve been around since 1987. So we have quite a bit of history in this area. And we got started because several organizations even back then, in the late 80s, saw the need for first there to be an organization that brought the whole animal ag community together. And secondly, really focused on this topic of animal welfare. And then as part of that animal rights activism, because even then, again, 30 years ago, they saw the potential for animal rights activism to have a really tangible impact on perception of animal agriculture and our ability to do business – even though activism looks a lot different today than it did back then. So our organization does a lot of positive communications, proactive engagement, talking about important subjects, like animal welfare, sustainability, responsible antibiotic use. But then we also do a lot of monitoring of those adversarial groups and voices, who are just opposed to the use of animals for any purpose, including for food. So for these extreme organizations we’re talking about it’s not about animal welfare, not about how animals are raised, how they’re treated. It’s not about sustainability and environmental impact. It’s about a belief that we should not be using animals for food no matter how well we’re doing it and advocating to advance that mindset.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah. And so I did a podcast way back on question ballot, question three in Massachusetts, which was banning confined chicken operations. And ironically, we only had one in Massachusetts, but it was basically, PETA had spent a million dollars on this campaign to pass it. And what they do is they try to pass it in a liberal state like Massachusetts because then it sets a precedent to, you know, go into larger states like California. And this not only supposedly banned the production of, you know, eggs in crates, but also the consumption across state lines. So you couldn’t, and I mean, it’s unenforceable, it’s ridiculous. But if it enough states pass it, then that’s a big problem. And, you know, having people standing out at grocery stores, “Don’t you care about animals? Please sign this.” So that’s a slightly more benign-looking way. But, you know, I just had Frank Mitloehner on the show, and we were talking about how carbon emissions is now like, they’re able to advance their mission even further with attacking carbon emissions, right, because that’s the big hot topic. But we – at the heart of it is the desire to end all of animal agriculture. And so, you know, there’s really nothing the livestock industry could ever do to appease these groups. And even when I had a woman on the show from Mercy for Animals, and I was talking with her about, you know, the cage-free chicken, Mercy for Animals is basically putting pressure on McDonald’s and other corporations in sort of like a mobster-style way -issuing press releases and really activating their consumers, And I said, “Well, how’d that work out for you? Because in a CAFO setting, if you’re not separating these chickens, they’re going to just attack each other.” And she did admit that it was counterproductive to animal welfare mission. So yeah, could you just give a little bit more background on like the types of groups that are putting money behind this energy?
Hannah Thompson-Weeman
Well, you just hit on three big trends in the activist movement, so legislation, like you mentioned, the use of these ballot initiative campaigns, and exactly as you went through, they will intentionally target states that have very little of the production in question, because it’ll be much more difficult for there is no ag community there to kind of mobilize and push back on it. And they will intentionally use this ballot initiative process, so that it is put forth to a public vote. And you can get 51% of the public to vote for just about anything, especially when it sounds very generic. Sounds like it’s a good thing for animals. But really, at the end of the day, it’s about raising the cost. It’s about making production less efficient, and raising the costs so that unfortunately, consumers can’t purchase as many animal proteins. And that way, they hope that that will have a ripple effect and ultimately cut down and eliminate production. And that’s a strategy that they have outlined. They’ve talked about that in their conferences, it’s this incremental changes, quote, unquote, approach. They know that going out there and saying, “Go vegan,” doesn’t work. They’ve been trying it for decades. It’s not effective and sales of meat is stable, if not increasing year over year consumption patterns are remaining consistent again, if not increasing in animal protein, both in the US and really around the world. But they need to back it up. They need to find what they think are more quote-unquote, reasonable asks, like phasing out certain production practices that are broadly used, again, as a way to drive up those costs and reduce efficiencies. But then they’ll come back and they’ll ask for something else. So cage-free eggs, as you mentioned, is a great example. There was a huge campaign to both legislatively and target restaurant retail brands, which is the other trend you hit on that I wanted to mention, to target the use of cages in housing laying hens and egg production. And not long after that major campaign, someone from the Humane Society was interviewed in the article saying, “Well, cage-free really isn’t good enough. Well, we really want to see is pasture-raised.” So then if it became pasture-raised, it would be something else. It’s always going to keep moving the goalposts and keep moving the needle. Because really, again, it’s not about the production practices, it’s about ending the industry ultimately. And then again, that restaurant retail pressure, some organizations have found you know, what if we can get a household name, restaurant or retail brand to get on board with this, that’s a heck of a lot faster than trying to get legislation passed. So they’re targeting those brands and targeting their reputations. And then lastly, it’s the coalescing around sustainability. That is also a huge trend in the activist movement over the past few years, because, as you mentioned, it’s the shiny object. It’s the thing everyone’s talking about, the new administration is focused on climate, we’re seeing a lot in the headlines about climate change and sustainability. So it’s the latest way that they can try to tie their narrative to what the general public and media is interested in, and use it as yet another way to undermine public trust and confidence in animal agriculture. So as far as the landscape of these organizations, the first thing that really I want to undermine is, as I’ve mentioned several times, it’s not about animal welfare, it’s about animal rights. So we’re talking about a very small but loud percentage of the population who has that mindset. But it also is not a grassroots coalition of passionate individuals. There’s a lot of strategy and there’s a lot of money in this. The Alliance has group profiles on around 200 different organizations that are targeting animal agriculture in one way or another. And one of the resources we have it’s actually publicly available on our website is a graphic that shows how just the most active 35 or 40 of these organizations are connected, you can see the lines which demonstrate how funding projects collaboration, and staff and volunteers are flowing back and forth between these groups, between ones that are upfront and will say we want to end animal agriculture. We want everyone to go vegan to others that will attempt to position themselves as more professional, more moderate and more animal welfare focus as a way to get in the door, get in the boardroom, get in the courtroom and be taken more seriously. But what that chart shows is it’s the same people, it’s the same strategy. Those different public personas and brands is very intentional. It’s a way of going about the issue differently. But again, they’re all collaborating, and they’re all moving in the same direction. And then again, there’s also a lot of funding in this, just those biggest 35, or 40, organizations are bringing in $650 million in income annually. And that comes from things like consumer fundraising campaigns. We’ve all seen the commercials with a Sarah McLaughlin song and the sad dogs and cats in the background. So those kinds of fundraising campaigns, there’s also corporate sponsors. And then there’s a lot of foundations that are channeling millions of dollars into these organizations. One example is a group called the Open Philanthropy Project, which was started by one of the founders of Facebook, so there’s a lot of money there. And they had a board member that was passionate about animal causes. So they’ve adopted animal welfare as a cause, hired some former Humane Society, the United States staff members to oversee their farm animal welfare division, and they are pumping millions of dollars into activist groups, you know, $10 million in operating funds, millions for a rebranding effort for certain campaigns. So make no mistake, there’s a lot of strategy here and a lot of money behind these efforts.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Hannah, the Open Philanthropy Project – that’s really interesting because I know that the Guardian is getting money from them in order to produce anti-livestock coverage, which I don’t even understand how that’s ethical journalism.
Hannah Thompson-Weeman
That is something that is extremely frustrating that “Animals Farmed” series that the Guardian is producing, where they have a very clear mindset established and are fundraising off of that, but then it is under the guise of being unbiased journalism. And, you know, this is kind of maybe a tangent off the side of activism. But I would say, kind of that shifts towards citizen journalism, and “everyone with the keyboard is a journalist” has really contributed to the rise of activism and the rise of misinformation. In our case about animal agriculture, it is so easy to put together what’s basically a blog post, again, under the guise of being an article and being from a reputable journalist, and it’s set fire to social media. And then it’s so hard to take that back. So unfortunately, there’s other quote unquote, media outlets that are just again, activist funded under the guise of being more third party and a way of being seen as more credible. But the Guardian series is a great example of that, where it’s basically for-profit journalism, and again, has a very clearly defined perspective and narrative that they’re trying to further. And it really calls into question the credibility of the content. But unfortunately, it’s a name that people recognize and their coverage tends to get carried quite a bit. And they’ve been doing a lot, especially coverage on the sustainability.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yes. And I have called out Vox in particular and the New York Times. The New York Times will run very misleading information about the meat industry in their magazine section written by somebody with no science, nutrition, or environmental background, who is, you know, ethically against eating meat, but then they’ll cite all kinds of wrong statistics. And because it’s published in the magazine, it’s maybe not as rigorous.
Hannah Thompson-Weeman
Or they’ll run op-ed, and then because it’s an op-ed, they say, “Well, it’s an opinion piece.” So they won’t run a similar length op-ed from a different perspective. And as the New York Times, particularly, I’ve been with the Alliance for seven and a half years now and I would say, at least once a year, there’s some major New York Times piece that completely misses the mark as far as being accurate on animal agriculture. And we all have the same conversation every year where, you know, what’s the point? You know, what are we going to do? How do we engage on this because every time we reach out and say, “Well, here’s a perspective you could have included, or here’s something that was missed,” and it just doesn’t seem to go anywhere. And you can only write so many letters to the editor. So I really appreciate as part of the reason why we ended up having you at our conference is having someone with your background where you’re a little bit removed, you know. You’re not from the animal agriculture community. Your dog in this fight comes from food equity, and making sure people have access to the food that they wish to purchase at a price that they can pay to have a healthy sustainable diet. So I think having voices like yours, and some of your listeners who are from outside of the animal agriculture community is so valuable because it can’t just be us constantly reacting to things. We need some of those external third-party voices correcting that narrative, and we really appreciate that.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yes. And unfortunately, when the livestock industry pushes back, it just is not heard because, Oh, it’s big meat. Right? Even if it’s not big meat, even if it’s a producer, it’s still Well, they’re just the… of course they’re in it for the money. You know, some as if dairy farmers make a ton of money, right? We know that that’s not true.
Hannah Thompson-Weeman
What we run into them the activism side as well, you know, sometimes people will ask why we’re not more public more vocally critical about activism and pointing out some of these things. And, you know, part of the reason is that, you know, that gives them the ability to position themselves as the David to our Goliath. And also, because from our perspective, we need to be focused on the message. We need to focus on the issues, not the messenger, obviously, forums like this, obviously, in conversations with our members, we have all of that intel. We can share it, we can help people understand the landscape. But when it comes to our more public messaging, we want to talk about animal welfare. We want to talk about sustainability. You know, these people aren’t worth our breath, quite frankly. So we want to stay focused on the actual topics and communicating the science. But at the same time, we have all of this background information that we can help provide people to help them understand who these groups are, and what their ulterior motives are, and what they can prepare for if they might be targeted and kind of what to do and what to expect, right.
(White Oak Pastures Event Ad) Diana Rodgers
Looking for a fun and informative weekend getaway at one of my favorite regenerative farms? Come join me with celebrity farmer Will Harris at White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Georgia September 29th through October 2nd. You’ll meet some really cool people, participate in farm activities, learn about regenerative farming, plus have nutrition classroom time with me. And of course, enjoy incredible food. To learn more, visit sustainabledish.com/events and get your tickets today before they sell out.
Diana Rodgers, RD
I mean, it’s so funny when I push back against, you know, campaigns like Meatless Monday, and I point out that, Beyond Meat is one of the major sponsors of the Meatless Mondays campaign. And their CEO’s mission is to end animal agriculture and so that is the mission behind the Meatless Mondays, it’s to work with kids to get these anti-meat messages started at kindergarten, all the way through 12th grade. The propaganda that they have in the schools is completely incorrect science – livestock creates more emissions than all of transportation, all these messages also about the unhealthiness of meat and how you need to, you know, just eat beans instead. And you’ll reduce your chance of getting diabetes, and you’ll save your kidneys and you’ll lose weight and all these things. And it’s just wrong. So, you know, people will come to me who are less familiar with the fight, and said, “Well, what’s wrong? Of course, salads are good.” I think salads are good, too. So it’s not about salads are good. It’s about anti-meat messaging, especially to underprivileged children, who really need that animal source food for their growth and brain development and telling these kids that meat is bad because when you look at what kids eat, New York City public schools are meatless, what is in New York City kid eat, right? They eat chicken nuggets, they eat mac and cheese, they eat, you know, a Subway sandwich. So this means you’re just gonna go to Subway and get a sandwich no meat. I mean, this doesn’t mean that they’re gonna go to Sweetgreen’s and get an $18 Kale bowl with chickpeas and nutritional yeast on top of it, right?
Hannah Thompson-Weeman
Well, then you can promote fruit and vegetable consumption without it being at the detriment of animal protein, which is something so frustrating that we see with a lot of these efforts as well. We’re just trying to promote, you know, healthy eating, like you said, or whatever. And, you know, animal protein can be part of healthy eating. And you can raise up one product without having to denigrate another, and especially with Meatless Mondays, and to the point you just made that school meal might be the most nutritious meal they get all day – most balanced, the only hot meal they get all day. So when you’re taking that away from them. And for us at the Alliance, it’s always goes back to choice. You know, if you are adding a vegan or vegetarian choice, we have no issue with that. That’s all well and good. It’s when you start to take choices away, or you use misinformation to promote one choice over another. That’s when we get concerned because at the end of the day, food is very personal. Your health is very personal people can and should make whatever decision aligns with their values and their budgets. But they should make that not based on fear, and not based on misinformation. So for us, it’s always about choices and more choices is never going to be a bad thing. But the elimination of choice, especially with a lot of these campaigns, like we mentioned earlier, targeting cage-free eggs. Eggs are one of the most affordable and available sources of protein out there. So the fact that you have now raised the cost of that for not really a tangible animal welfare benefit is extremely problematic. And I think maybe the silver lining of that is that we have seen, particularly restaurant retail brands be a lot more hesitant to adopt these policies that they’re being asked to adopt by extremist groups because they’re realizing, “Wait a minute, you know, why did we adopt this cage-free egg policy? Right now conventional are still available and that’s what our customers are choosing. If people really wanted this it’s where the market would have gone.” When the Dollar Store came out with a cage-free egg policy is, you know, when the movement should have jumped the shark. And everyone should have realized this does not make sense. You know if this makes sense for a certain segment of the customer for a certain brand, again, that’s all well and good, but it’s when the options are being taken away that it becomes really an access concern. And we really try to promote that messaging around choice.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yes, and I 100% align with you. And just for the listeners who might be freaking out right now, I just want to reiterate my position, which is that animal-source foods are good. Not everybody can access the, you know, the more expensive options, which I think if you have the money and it aligns with your values, definitely you should be doing that. And so I do promote grass-fed, regenerative pastured poultry, pastured eggs, all of that stuff is great. But we have a lot of people that are shopping at Dollar Stores, and you know, just do not have access to those choices. And it’s still going to be a better choice then, in my opinion, as a dietitian, a bagel, or mac and cheese or, you know, some other box dinner like that burger in the McDonald’s Happy Meal. The burger patty is the best thing in that. And it’s just meat and salt. Like that’s what it is. It’s not some weird pink slime, or it’s just meat. And it’s providing iron and B12 that these kids are otherwise not getting. So I’m about food equity and nutrient density, number one, and I’m sure you can agree there’s lots of missteps that the animal ag industry has made in the past. And there’s great ways to improve animal welfare across the sector – feed, you know, grazing practices, like there’s lots of room for improvement across the sector. But that doesn’t mean that there’s only one perfect way to consume your protein.
Hannah Thompson-Weeman
Yeah and that’s something another one of our summit speakers, Jack Bobo, I probably started at some and I’ve heard him say it a million times, when we talk about the food system. The message should not be you know, it’s bad, it’s getting worse and used to be thrown out and start over. It’s pretty dang good. Is there other ways to be better? Are there ways to be more innovative? Absolutely. But we should come at it from a position of we’re doing a pretty good job, how can we do better? Not, you know, how do we tear it all down and then start from scratch or something like that. And certainly the animal agriculture community shares that continuous improvement mindset when it comes to animal welfare, responsible antibiotic use sustainability, all of those conversations are constantly happening within the animal agriculture community. And that’s part of the frustration when you know, we talk about all these millions of dollars that are going into activism, what could that funding do for our real research and real innovation and real progress in animal agriculture? So certainly, that would be the mindset of the animal ag community is, you know, what can we do to go further? What can we do to do better to do more, you know, we’re coming from a great place already, but how do we get to the future and meet the needs of our consumer, but kind of when you add this activism part to that, and this ulterior motive trying to falsely drive the market, it makes it even harder to try to do those innovations, and really invest in scientific advances, because you have these polls in different directions that don’t really align with animal welfare or sustainability.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Exactly. And so when we see schools like Harvard getting a $10 million grant for their food law department, specifically earmarked for anti-meat advocacy work, so that these, you know, future food based lawyers know all of the strings to pull and how far to push it. That’s really concerning. When then I or probably you go out to try to raise money to try to push back and it’s just so hard, right? Because it is a David and Goliath situation on our end, right? So going back to that, too, and in this case study, so can you talk about, you know, can you maybe give some examples of I mean, the one you gave at the – well, it wasn’t you right? It was another or was it you? Okay, I couldn’t remember.
Hannah Thompson-Weeman
I did some in my presentation. But Trisha from the dairy and community is who lead the crisis damage.
Diana Rodgers, RD
The crisis demonstration. So again, all that was going through my head the whole time was, “Oh, wow, I never want to have to deal with this situation,” because it was an absolute total nightmare. So basically, this group, why don’t you set it up because you’re more familiar with it. And this was a real actual like, at first it was proposed to all of us at the conference as this is a mock situation and we just want you at your tables to come up with a solution. Like, what were the first three things that you would do? And I was like, these are very specific details that she’s giving. And then we all sat around for a few minutes before we even decided to tackle it and talked amongst ourselves about, you know, is this actually… did this actually happen? And then it did actually happen. So what was it?
Hannah Thompson-Weeman
Well, we’ve talked a lot in this conversation about kind of the higher level activist campaigns, so the sustainability messaging, working with the media, restaurant retail pressure legislation, but then we have the on-farm, on-plant activist incidents, and that is when they actually go to that level of targeting an individual farmer or rancher or an individual processing plant, with actual boots-on-the-ground activist activity. And one of the biggest trends in that space are these quote, unquote, undercover video campaigns. So that is where an activist group will pay someone to get hired in a farm get hired on an in a plant. And their sole intention there is to capture pictures, to get footage that they can use against the animal ag community, as a whole, problematic for a lot of different reasons. Obviously, when a farmer hires someone, they expect them to be there to uphold their standards, to abide by their trainings and not have this ulterior motive. So in some instances, in those campaigns, what’s being filmed is standard operating procedure, scientifically supported, veterinary supported, but when you take it out of context, and add that dark lighting and the Sarah McLaughlin song and all of that, it starts to look nefarious to someone who’s not sure what they’re looking at, or it might be actual mishandling or outright abuse that absolutely should not be happening, but they choose to allow it to go on weeks, months, sometimes it’s upwards of a year before they release this footage when the timing is advantageous, and the media cycle or whatever legislation they’re trying to push. And in some of those instances, it’s their res… was always the employees’ responsibility to stop those sorts of things. But in some cases, they’ve even – it’s even been said that they’ve egged employees on they’ve enticed them to behave in a certain way so they can get the footage that they need for these campaigns. So that was what the case study was kind of built around was, what do you do if you’re a farmer, and you get the call from a local journalists saying, we have footage on your farm of animal mishandling or animal abuse? And in this specific example, which I think was a few different real life examples kind of cobbled together. But the video, if you watched it, it was kind of different angles, kind of different farms. It wasn’t clear whether the cows were here in the US. So a lot of these videos can be very misleading with the amount of things that they put together in them. And then not only is there this hiring concern, but when you are targeted with these type of campaigns, there’s typically a lot of follow-up. So a couple years ago, in Florida, there was a very aggressive campaign targeting the dairy community. And there were protesters outside of farms for weeks. And the thing about a farm is that 90% of the time the farmer lives there. That is their home. So when you have protesters camped outside of your home for weeks, we’ve also had instances over the past few years of protests outside of the homes of company leaders of organization leaders. They’ve said they’re burying piglets on someone’s lawn, they’ve said they’re dumping hog feces on their lawn, and any type of thing they can use to again, try to intimidate, try to be threatening. I would say even to encourage people to go along with whatever change they’re demanding to be made. We also have examples of individuals going into barns. Kind of – so not even getting hired but just trespassing. So going from farm to farm, trying to get access to barns. If you’re familiar with animal ag at all, especially from the poultry community after the recent outbreaks of avian influenza, your biosecurity alarm is ringing. When I say that there’s a reason why you shouldn’t go from farm to farm. There’s a reason why you can’t just walk in to a farm without following certain biosecurity procedures for the health and safety of the animals there. But we have activists that will do that. They will actually steal animals. So usually poultry a couple times it’s been calves or piglets. They’ll go in they’ll take them out again say they’re rescuing them and try to get massive publicity for that. So this is something that farmers and ranchers do have to deal with and do have to think about and out in California. There’s been a few scenarios where an activist group has actually bussed hundreds of protesters to farms to hold these day-long protests. And those protesters were attending a conference, they didn’t even know where they were going. They were just put on a bus and taken to this farm and hold this massive protest. So that’s a doomsday scenario of hundreds of people descending on a farm. But it’s been reality for a handful of producers. And it’s just unfortunately, something that our farmers and ranchers have to think about and have to prepare against, which is a really sad thing, when you think about it, of all they’re trying to do is get people the animal protein options that most people want to enjoy. And they have to think about these type of threats.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And you even mentioned at one point that they will contact the local police departments and let them know that if there are any animal mishandling issues that their group which often has a very benign-sounding name, like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, right. Or, you know, we know that they’re no good, but you know, something else, and they’ll end up taking the animals and actually providing really poor care for them. And then using that against the farmer saying, look how skinny your cow is, or horse or whatever, when they’ve actually deteriorated in that organizations care.
Hannah Thompson-Weeman
So yes, they will absolutely exaggerate any qualifications that they have, or any authority that they have. And a lot of times these incidents are in rural areas. So local law enforcement might have never dealt with a protest before, never dealt with this kind of issue. And they’ll try to take advantage of that take advantage of the confusion, to claim that they have a right to enter the facility to take animals into their custody. And then again, they are not animal caretakers. They have some veterinarians involved, but they’re usually small animal veterinarians who probably don’t know a whole heck of a lot about taking care of farm animals. But then they’ll use that as a big fundraising opportunity, you know, help us with these animals that we took in, help us take care of this chick, this baby chick that we have, or this calf that we have, whatever it might be. It’s a big fundraising and media opportunity for them that they definitely tried to use to get mileage out of these campaigns.
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Diana Rodgers, RD
Yes, and I’ve even visited animal, quote-unquote, sanctuaries where they’ve rescued animals – farm animals and other animals. And the conditions that these poor things are in is so sad. Actually, there was a case here in Massachusetts with my friend Jen Hashley where her farm was being attacked for raising rabbits. So they raised lots and lots of animals for food, but it was the rabbits in particular that this one woman was, you know, really upset about. And so she ended up paying them $30,000 to take the rabbits, which the farmers were actually secretly like, we’re kinda like, done with rabbits. Anyway, they’re a little bit, you know, not really making much money for us. So $30,000 and to their surprise, she ended up raising that money, bought the rabbits off them, and then had them in her basement playing like Buddhist monk music to them in cages, and animal welfare actually went to this woman’s home and said, You can’t do this. This is against animal welfare, you got to get rid of all these bunnies. And the Boston Globe wrote the story. So well, we can put the link to this in the show notes. But the funny thing is, as absurd as this whole situation sounds, the angle of the story was on the side of the rabbit woman and not the farmers. The farmers in the town parade were called rabbit killers by a whole bunch of non-town residents that you know, bus themselves in. And meanwhile, these guys are like, my friend Jen is like a professor at Tufts in the animal science department. And they are the most ethical, educated, careful farmers you could possibly meet.
Hannah Thompson-Weeman
And that’s the sort of thing where, you know, it’s the amount of trouble that one individual can create for a farm just based on their own personal viewpoint. And that’s where it gets to be so frustrating if you don’t want to eat rabbits, by all means you don’t have to eat rabbits. But you know, do you need to interfere in someone else’s ability to have their livelihood and to again offer an option to people who might be interested in purchasing it? And people also don’t realize that there are animal welfare guidelines in place across every sector of the animal agriculture community. So whether they’re voluntary guidelines, or many require third-party audits, it is not the wild west out here where there are no best practices in place. There is no metric for continuous improvement. These are continuously reviewed. They’re refreshed. They have expert panels that are working on them constantly. So animal welfare is absolutely a commitment in the animal agriculture community. And there are methods in place to ensure that and a lot of people don’t realize that and don’t realize the commitment that the animal ag community has, in part because of all the myths and misinformation you hear out there.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And the funny thing about that ballot question three about the confined chicken operation was, so the farm where I had been living, we did pasture chickens. And we had a small trailer that we made this beautiful actually, it was just like gorgeous architectural chicken house, right. But we were actually technically in violation of the law, because according to the ballot, the chickens had to have enough room to spread their wings fully on each side. And chickens like to huddle up when it gets cold out. And so we actually on purpose made something kind of cozy for them. And then the other rule was that they could only be, quote, unquote, confined for six hours. But in New England, in the winter, it gets dark at 3:30 in the afternoon. The coyotes and foxes come out, they’re looking for – everybody likes chicken, right? Dogs like chicken. Coyotes like chicken as much as people do. And so they’re looking for a meal, if you can only protect them for six hours and have to open the door at 2am or midnight or something, you’re asking for trouble. And so these rules were written to make it impossible for producers, especially on the smaller scale.
Hannah Thompson-Weeman
Well, that’s something one of our members who’s involved in poultry welfare research will always say, has anybody asked the chickens? Yeah, so you know, has anybody actually considered what is beneficial animal welfare for a chicken because a lot of these campaigns are trying to ascribe human interests and what we might want to a chicken and we are not chickens. So what you might enjoy, and what you might find enriching or beneficial is not the same as what is beneficial from an animal welfare, animal health sense to a chicken. And the same thing goes for pets, you know, people are obsessed with their pets. Activist groups try to tap into that and say, what if this is your dog? What if this is your cat? They are very different animals, physiologically and their ultimate purpose. And all of that is very different. So you can’t ascribe those emotions to farm animals, it is very different and exactly like you hit on. It’s very intentional that these regulations are extremely onerous to comply with, and they’re especially different from state to state. So it’s this patchwork of regulations where it’s always a little bit different. So if you want to sell in this state, you have to have the space requirement, but in this state, it’s this space requirement. And the whole idea is that they’re hoping that producers will say, “Well, we’re just not going to do it.” So example prop 12, in California, very similar to question three in Massachusetts, it applies to egg laying hens to sell housing, and then also to veal calf housing. And not only in California, but also anything sold in California. So clearly, some of their hope is that producers will just say, “You know what, either we’re going to sell this way across the whole country, because it’s not worth it to switch just for California.” Or the opposite. And say, “we’re just not going to sell in California or not going to sell in Massachusetts,” to try to take those products off the shelf. And the other interesting thing that I think you mentioned, or you know, you mentioned is that a lot of these things to comply with are most difficult on the smaller producers. This is causing further consolidation, especially in the egg community with complying with cage-free regulations. It costs a lot of money to make those kinds of conversions, and to make them on the extremely fast timeline that a lot of egg producers have had to comply with. So some have been forced to go out of business or they’ve been forced to sell. So where we want more local production, or want more of a local connection to our food. Some of these regulations that again, are actually beneficial for animal welfare or the environment are counterintuitive. They’re counterproductive. The only choice if producers can’t comply is to sell out and cause further consolidation of animal agriculture.
Diana Rodgers, RD
It’s, well, it’s so fascinating to – especially that chart that you mentioned, to just see where all the money is flowing for all of this. And, you know, I imagine a lot of people that aren’t as deeply entrenched in this world as you and I are might look at this work as you know, they’re harmless. You know, they just love animals and they’re harmless, but it’s not like that. And, you know, these global anti-meat food policies, there’s a lot of money behind them. And to my dismay, there’s not a lot of money behind the push back campaign and the meat industry is really confused about how to handle it. They don’t know. And even when they do voice something, it’s dismissed because it’s industry. And, you know, we have a lot of people just afraid to raise their hand and push back because there’s no money in doing that, right. There’s no funding really to be doing that. They don’t want to lose followers. And so to just not even go there is is a lot easier than actually saying something so…
Hannah Thompson-Weeman
Well. And it’s not just farmers and ranchers that are getting heat with these campaigns. It is restaurant retail brands. So dietitians,who speak positively about animal protein, as I’m sure you’ve experienced, will get the deluge of social media hate and it is very, it takes a certain metal to engage here, which again, it’s very unfortunate that just being a dietitian, and talking about the nutritional value of meat sets you up for personal attacks, but that’s the kind of world that we’re living in. And I think that’s why we need more and more folks engaging in this conversation, especially the type of people that I know, follow you and listen to your content. Your voices are so important. And the more people that are speaking and sharing positive factual information, the more it will kind of stave off those type of attacks or making them ultimately less meaningful. But when it’s very few voices standing alone, then it does get a lot of an uphill battle. And it’s very difficult to make sure that science will carry the day and a lot of these really important decision-making areas. And something we talked about earlier. You know, it can’t just be the animal ag community or the meat community talking about this, that seems very self-promotional, even if everything we’re saying is 100% correct and then scientific. It will still get dismissed and pushed back on. So we need all the third party experts, whether that’s researchers, dietitians, we need all of those folks engaged in this conversation, so we can try to make sure that we will keep the science in the discussion.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Well, I mean, one unfortunate result of the food shortages that are happening from the war in Ukraine is that I think there is going to be much more of a focus, and Frank Mitloehner was talking about this on the podcast. But there’s going to be much more of a focus on just nutrients – getting nutrients to people, and not rewilding usable farmland and taking things out of production, but actually increasing production because we have people that actually just need food.
Hannah Thompson-Weeman
Now, we saw that coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic and all the supply chain difficulties and processing difficulties that that caused as well. We follow the UN Food Systems summit extremely closely. And most of the member state engagement in the UN Food System summit was around food security. A lot of those countries have no interest in you know, overhauling or throwing out their food system. They want a food system like the US. They want more efficiency, they want more safety, they’re very concerned about food security. So that was a really interesting outcome of that discussion. That, you know, obviously sustainability is critically important. Obviously, we have to make sure that we’re producing food ethically and responsibly. But part of producing food ethically and responsibly is producing it in a way that gets to the people that need it at a price they can afford and is accessible to them. And I think that message came through loud and clear in that process. And we’re also seeing that as well. When we talk to food companies and restaurant retail brands, the last thing they want to do right now is add a policy that’s going to make sourcing more difficult for them or is going to drive up costs even further for their customers. So I think now, a silver lining of a lot of those incidents, like you mentioned, is a greater awareness of the benefits of our food system and of how we can strengthen even further to make sure we’re focusing on food security as a really important element of sustainable food production.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Hannah, you’re so articulate in all of this, I really appreciate your voice. The conference that you held in Kansas City was incredibly well organized and smooth, and very impressive. And I really applaud all the work that you’re doing. How can people find out more about Animal Ag Alliance?
Hannah Thompson-Weeman
We are online animal ag alliance.org. We’re also on pretty much every social media platform, some version of Animal Ag or Animal Ag Alliance. If you are super interested and maybe more connected to the animal ag community, we are funded by members so you can actually join the Alliance and get access to some of the resources I’ve mentioned today. Those group profiles, our farm security recommendations, what to do if you have a protest. So if you’re interested in membership, you can find that information as well. As you mentioned, we do have our annual stakeholder summit so we just have that last month for this year, but we will be back in 2023 will be in the DC area, holding a stakeholder summit once again in early May. So if you are interested in public perception around these topics and how we communicate about sustainability, what’s the latest in activism – definitely keep our stakeholder summit on your radar. But in the meantime, again, that’s animal ag alliance.org and animal ag, animal ag Alliance across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, wherever you are. We’re – TikTok we’re on now. So definitely follow us and engage with us and we’d love to follow you guys back and see what you’re sharing as well.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it, and, you know, keep up the great work. Thank you so much.
Hannah Thompson-Weeman
Thank you
Diana Rodgers, RD
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