Animal Ag Alliance gets sneak peek at activists’ agenda

The Animal Rights National Conference boasted 1,650 attendees at this year’s conference, which was July 30 through Aug. 2 in Washington, D.C. Two of those attendees were interns with the Animal Agriculture Alliance, an industry coalition working to educate the public and food industry stakeholders about modern animal agriculture. The tone and the ultimate agenda targeting animal agriculture has remained the same over the years, but the tactics used to convince people to stop eating meat, milk and cheese have changed, she said. There’s more focus on using technology and social platforms and manipulating the media to get the message across and convince people that animals are equal to humans. Therefore, they argue that humans don’t have the right to raise animals for food or in any way to enhance quality of life, she said. There is also a lot of focus on legislation, with the mindset that if society won’t change to a vegan lifestyle, activists will work to enact laws to force that change, she said. Speakers at this year’s conference also stressed the importance of focusing on incremental changes toward veganism by pressuring food companies and convincing consumers to gradually make the switch, she said. he concern for animal agriculture is not so much that people will stop eating those products but that activists are using sophisticated, high-pressure campaigns on food companies to force them to make policy changes that affect their suppliers — farmers and ranchers, she said. Their agenda is to increase costs for livestock and poultry producers so they’ll either go out of business or to increase the cost of animal products beyond what consumers can afford, she said...more