Thanks Elijah! Great summary. To your question “Why did they put in effort if not to get customers to see them more positively? I would guess that follow through is much more about avoiding negative publicity than gaining positive reputation.” This is basically right. Some companies have been more proactive, even fulfilling their pledges early. Some drag their feet and it takes public pressure for them to move. Groups like The Humane League (which I work for, as a disclaimer) have been running the same types of campaigns used to get the original commitments to ensure that companies actually implement those pledges. These have been successful, but avian flu in the US is a major complicating factor.
As for gaining new commitments, this is now focused outside the US, so maybe that’s where your impression came from? For more context, Asia, where the majority of hens live, is focused on getting new commitments. Latin America is a mix of securing new commitments and working on accountability. Parts of Europe are widely cage-free with other parts still advancing this. Africa is securing new commitments, as well as convincing company to stay cage-free as a lot of farming is less industrialized, but companies elsewhere want to export their cages there.
This is very helpful and interesting, thank you for the information! Would most/all of the follow-up campaigns that THL have done be findable online? For instance, when I search stores like “Trader Joe’s cage free” I don’t find much besides things from 2016, and I assumed that meant that there weren’t follow-up campaigns. Is that impression probably right?
I’m glad it was helpful! No, the follow-up would not necessarily be online, unfortunately. It’s something we track internally for our own strategic purposes and impact assessment. But a lot of progress is made through behind-the-scenes negotiations—we only launch public campaigns if companies don’t make progress during the negotiation phase. And if there is a public campaign, sometimes part of the final negotiation is that we agree to take all our public materials down in exchange for the company publicly reporting its progress.
Trader Joe’s is a bit of a weird example—it seems like they are making progress (they have lots of in-store signage, for example) but they haven’t publicly reported their cage-free progress. But since we suspect they’re already making progress, they wouldn’t be a particularly meaningful campaign target. So your suspicion about Trader Joe’s is right, there haven’t been follow-up campaigns, but you couldn’t generalize that to other companies.
Thanks Elijah! Great summary. To your question “Why did they put in effort if not to get customers to see them more positively? I would guess that follow through is much more about avoiding negative publicity than gaining positive reputation.” This is basically right. Some companies have been more proactive, even fulfilling their pledges early. Some drag their feet and it takes public pressure for them to move. Groups like The Humane League (which I work for, as a disclaimer) have been running the same types of campaigns used to get the original commitments to ensure that companies actually implement those pledges. These have been successful, but avian flu in the US is a major complicating factor.
As for gaining new commitments, this is now focused outside the US, so maybe that’s where your impression came from? For more context, Asia, where the majority of hens live, is focused on getting new commitments. Latin America is a mix of securing new commitments and working on accountability. Parts of Europe are widely cage-free with other parts still advancing this. Africa is securing new commitments, as well as convincing company to stay cage-free as a lot of farming is less industrialized, but companies elsewhere want to export their cages there.
This is very helpful and interesting, thank you for the information! Would most/all of the follow-up campaigns that THL have done be findable online? For instance, when I search stores like “Trader Joe’s cage free” I don’t find much besides things from 2016, and I assumed that meant that there weren’t follow-up campaigns. Is that impression probably right?
I’m glad it was helpful! No, the follow-up would not necessarily be online, unfortunately. It’s something we track internally for our own strategic purposes and impact assessment. But a lot of progress is made through behind-the-scenes negotiations—we only launch public campaigns if companies don’t make progress during the negotiation phase. And if there is a public campaign, sometimes part of the final negotiation is that we agree to take all our public materials down in exchange for the company publicly reporting its progress.
Trader Joe’s is a bit of a weird example—it seems like they are making progress (they have lots of in-store signage, for example) but they haven’t publicly reported their cage-free progress. But since we suspect they’re already making progress, they wouldn’t be a particularly meaningful campaign target. So your suspicion about Trader Joe’s is right, there haven’t been follow-up campaigns, but you couldn’t generalize that to other companies.