Agricultural News
Animal Activist Groups Encouraging Followers to Harass Local Businesses to Force Their Compliance
Tue, 22 Aug 2017 11:21:17 CDT
The Animal Agriculture Alliance recently published their annual report on observations made while monitoring the National Animal Rights Conference held not long ago in Alexandria, Virginia. Hannah Thompson Weeman of the AAA, spoke with Radio Oklahoma Ag Network Farm Director Ron Hays about some of those observations made at the conference and what tactics the anti-agriculture groups are encouraging their followers to utilize in their fight against the livestock industry.
"For the past several years, activist groups have been very aggressive and very focused on pressuring restaurants, retailers and food service companies to adopt certain policies," Hannah said. "Of course, these policies on their surface might sound like something good or positive for animal welfare, but I think at their core - what they're trying to do is get policies put in place that make production less efficient, that drive up costs, that force farmers to have the burden of changing production practices which unfortunately puts some farmers out of business."
Hannah uses cage-free eggs as an example. Many businesses have in recent years pledged to only source cage-free eggs. They've done this in response to the overwhelming pressure of activist groups that, Hannah says, have harassed these businesses into complying with their demands.
"Harassment was one word they used," Hannah said referencing speakers at this year's animal rights conference. "They had basically harassed a company into adopting a certain policy. They talked about going on to social media pages of restaurants and retailers and bombarding them with negative comments and reviews, forcing them to deal with the activists. Those companies are consumer facing so they do have a brand to defend and these activist groups know that. They're trying to pressure them, damage that brand and use a lot of aggressive harassment tactics to get those brands to cave to their demands."
Listen to Hannah offering more insights into the strategies being used by animal rights activists to hinder production agriculture, with Ron Hays, on today's Beef Buzz.
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Network and is a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the LISTEN BAR below for today's show and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
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