Animal Activists Are Using More Sophisticated Schemes to Destroy the Livestock Industry

Raising livestock has never been easy–but don’t worry folks! There are a whole group of people with lots of money and some very strange ideas that want to help you get out of the livestock business.

The animal activist movement has been around for a long time, but these are not your father’s animal activists. These are nut jobs with a whole new set of tricks, a whole new agenda, and a bit of a different way of doing things. No longer are there just PETA weirdos taking off their clothes in public to protest fur, or guys going undercover and making videos and editing them and putting them on the Internet to try to say that all livestock operations are terrible. This is a new group of people with lots of money and some very sophisticated tactics that you need to know about.

“The trends used by these organizations continue to change and evolve from year-to-year,” according to Emily Ellis, Director of Communications with the Animal Agricultural Alliance. “Currently, the main groups that we’re following bring in over $800 million in income each year. Most of which is being used for lobbying efforts to push for a vegan, plant-based diet. They want to move away from animal agriculture.”

She says these animal activist groups are also buying many, many shares of stock in companies that process food and deal with animal agriculture in an effort to challenge the livestock industry from within.

“Two groups—HSUS (Humane Society of the U.S.) and The Accountability Board, which is essentially an offshoot of HSUS—have been very active in shareholder proposals. Many of them are animal welfare focused, but there have been some that were environmentally focused as well. We did see some success on the environmental side where there have been one or two that have passed by these organizations. Again, it’s just another method of them trying to leverage whatever influence they can have over changing policies for farmers and ranchers,” say Ellis.

Another one of the new tactics they’re using is that they want to become your friend! They want to help you leave the industry of animal production.

“Groups like Mercy For Animals—they have a project called The Transformation Project where they’re trying to build relationships and inroads with animal agriculture to transition them away from animal Ag into either crop production or some other type of industry entirely. We’ve also seen Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) introduce a bill for the same thing to transition away from animal ag,” says Ellis.

Learn more by listening to Hoosier Ag Today’s brand-new podcast: “WTF? (What’s Threatening Farmers?) with Gary Truitt!” You can CLICK BELOW—or, you can also find it wherever you listen to your podcasts.