6+ years as a THL volunteer here, so I’m an informed source but not an official one. I don’t think the BCC will affect THL’s efficiency much directly, since we’ve mostly been focusing on cage-free campaigns for the past couple years. Those have largely been going well. The BCC has been hard to get more traction on and probably requires mobilization on a larger scale than we currently have.
Companies reneg with some frequency (at least enough frequency to keep us busy), which prompts us to run campaigns to get them to recommit to their pledge. Those have mostly been successful. I’d estimate somewhere around 70-80% success rate with recommitting, but of course actual data would be nice.
Hi Siobhan, good question. I haven’t seen enough data to build a good sense of the success rate. Some of that is just the time scales—a lot of these campaigns have been in the past few years and we haven’t had a chance to see how good the follow through is.
There is some evidence that even companies that are breaking their commitments have made progress. When we do get companies to recommit, they’ll start publishing their numbers. A lot of them have made some progress (like 5% to 20%) and a few of them have made a lot of progress, getting close to 100% (maybe they broke their commitment because they didn’t want to be beholden to us?). Based on these bumps from the original commitment, I think it’s plausible that recommitment would cause another bump.
I had a conversation with my regional organizer a couple years ago about how companies weren’t committing to the BCC as readily as the cage-free egg commitment. I don’t know what the exact commit/win rate was, but it was low enough that THL decided to back off pushing on the BCC, leave those campaigns to other organizations (I think MFA), and focus on closing out the cage-free commitments instead. Most of our campaigns since then have been national and international cage-free commitment adoption and follow-through.
We’re getting into my speculations here, but I think there’s a couple reasons why companies were unwilling to commit:
The BCC is a bigger ask than cage free
The BCC has weaker public optics. “Let chickens out of cages!” Is a lot more resonant with the average person than “Companies should adopt slower growing breeds and improve shed conditions!” In other words, it’s not a very catchy goal.
THL is still a relatively small organization that can only create so much hassle for companies. Enough inconvenience to push cage free, but not enough for a big target. I have a couple forum posts going into more detail about our size and leverage.
Altogether, the BCC seems too big for our current level of collective power. If we had more activists and a stronger tagline, we might be able to push companies more effectively.
6+ years as a THL volunteer here, so I’m an informed source but not an official one. I don’t think the BCC will affect THL’s efficiency much directly, since we’ve mostly been focusing on cage-free campaigns for the past couple years. Those have largely been going well. The BCC has been hard to get more traction on and probably requires mobilization on a larger scale than we currently have.
Companies reneg with some frequency (at least enough frequency to keep us busy), which prompts us to run campaigns to get them to recommit to their pledge. Those have mostly been successful. I’d estimate somewhere around 70-80% success rate with recommitting, but of course actual data would be nice.
Hi Zachary, do you have any notion of the success rate in going from recommitment → realised changes?
Also, thanks for your service! 6+ years is a lot of volunteering.
Hi Siobhan, good question. I haven’t seen enough data to build a good sense of the success rate. Some of that is just the time scales—a lot of these campaigns have been in the past few years and we haven’t had a chance to see how good the follow through is.
There is some evidence that even companies that are breaking their commitments have made progress. When we do get companies to recommit, they’ll start publishing their numbers. A lot of them have made some progress (like 5% to 20%) and a few of them have made a lot of progress, getting close to 100% (maybe they broke their commitment because they didn’t want to be beholden to us?). Based on these bumps from the original commitment, I think it’s plausible that recommitment would cause another bump.
Might they just be lying about the numbers?
Thank you for your service 🫡
Could you give more detail on this?
I had a conversation with my regional organizer a couple years ago about how companies weren’t committing to the BCC as readily as the cage-free egg commitment. I don’t know what the exact commit/win rate was, but it was low enough that THL decided to back off pushing on the BCC, leave those campaigns to other organizations (I think MFA), and focus on closing out the cage-free commitments instead. Most of our campaigns since then have been national and international cage-free commitment adoption and follow-through.
We’re getting into my speculations here, but I think there’s a couple reasons why companies were unwilling to commit:
The BCC is a bigger ask than cage free
The BCC has weaker public optics. “Let chickens out of cages!” Is a lot more resonant with the average person than “Companies should adopt slower growing breeds and improve shed conditions!” In other words, it’s not a very catchy goal.
THL is still a relatively small organization that can only create so much hassle for companies. Enough inconvenience to push cage free, but not enough for a big target. I have a couple forum posts going into more detail about our size and leverage.
Altogether, the BCC seems too big for our current level of collective power. If we had more activists and a stronger tagline, we might be able to push companies more effectively.