Thoughts my own and don’t represent my employer
ASuchy
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I like the style of promoting this conversation! Thanks for starting it.
A few additional points that might be useful.
Furnished cages typical lifespans are considered to be 15-25 years. If there is uncertainty and financial strain, it is likely that this will be pushed to the further end of that and beyond it. A typical response I’ve heard regarding the shift away from cages is something like “the farmer is going to keep this going as long as they can and then retire”.
Beyond just the systems, the houses they are built in have lifespans of around 50 years. Due to different needs for cage vs cage-free systems, a house built for a cage system may not be able to easily or at all be converted to house cage-free systems.
@JamesÖz 🔸 points about advocacy cost and public support resonate with me. My understanding is where we have seen furnished/larger cages pop up, like in Europe, Canada, Australia, South Korea briefly in the US. This hasn’t been an advocate push. The push has been for cage-free and the industry has lobbied to have that lowered to furnished/larger cages.
@Mia Fernyhough point about any cage putting a cap on welfare improvement resonates. I see
@Joren Vuylsteke shared a chart of the change and I think by starting from 2009, it misses some of the shift to cage-free which was already happening in advance of that. I can share a chart in DM if anyone would like. ~50M was cage-free in 2003, ~75M in 2006. Countries like Germany leading this.
Overall, one of the strongest things points from my perspective is being aware that there are definitely waves of change in the systems that we can benefit on focussing on. These waves are also present in the US, where changes in standards happened around the year 2000. I think advocacy in many places has the power to shift the choices when change needs to be made. Ie a laying hen system needs to be replaced/refurbished, the obvious choice then being cage-free. This from my perspective is one of the key differences and increased challenge in doing broiler work, these moments of capital investment do not occur in the same way as in cage-free. And where loans for new ‘higher welfare’ buildings (capital cost) is a clearer investment case when it comes to cage-free, the same situation is not present for broilers where the costs are almost exclusively related to operating costs (feed etc).
A few points that might be helpful.
Broiler Breeds: These grandparent stock as you write do take years to build up, however, that process has already been happening as companies have committed and moved to the BCC, so additional growth in this will happen significantly faster than, when first developing these new breeds. Scaling up with demand is now more like a year to two now, as it is drawing from a larger base.
In terms of transitioning cage-free barns taking months and years to complete, vs a slaughter device for broilers being implemented significantly faster. I think this is also related to planning. To reduce down time, barn transitions can happen quickly, but a barn transition would likely not happen if new caged-hens had been just put into a system, rather they would wait for these birds to be slaughtered. But if they were near end of life, concievably a barn system transition could happen in the same or faster timeframe than a CAS is installed, based on a companies funding and planning.
I think it is also useful to consider the impact on welfare, when prioritising some of these interventions. Ie breed has a significantly larger impact on broilers than slaughter https://welfarefootprint.org/#
On the timelines of implementing cage-free commitments. It is true that many commitments made in the global north focussed on longer, and namely 2025 fulfilment dates. However, the implementation of many of these commitments started from the inception of their commitment in a phased approach. More recently, for example with Kewpie in Asia, smaller and shorter time milestones are being agreed upon, that perhaps better illustrates what change often looks like.
Overall, my personal perspective, and I do work on corporate commitments, they still seems like a good bet. Due to the combination of impact on animals in near/medium term, increasing the competence of campaigning organisations and embedding animal welfare policy within food companies.
Thanks, the report this year will be coming out a bit later due to another big project being released imminently.
It is promising seeing that the cumulative results from previous years continue to increase. For example: the 2023 cumulative when from 89% at the time of the report to now being 93%.
Thanks for the suggestions, I will mention them to the team.
Sure
Thanks for writing this, this is also something I have been thinking about and you’ve expressed it more eloquently.
One thing I have thought might be useful is at times showing restraint with job titling. I’ve observed cases where people have had a title for example Director in a small org or growing org, and in a larger org this role might be a coordinator, lead, admin.
I’ve thought at times this doesn’t necessarily set people up for long term career success as the logical career step in terms of skills and growth, or a career shift, often is associated with a lower sounding title. Which I think decreases motivation to take on these roles.
At the same time I have seen people, including myself, take a decrease in salary and title, in order to shift careers and move forward.
Thanks for the additional insight.
I think you are in a better position to see what is needed. How I would think about this is what leverage do your opponents to these asks have and if you think your actions would be powerful enough to overcome them.
Good luck on the next phase!
Glad to hear it was helpful. I think they are planning to do another piece of research that will incorporate this as well. Awesome organisation.
This is a great write up! Thanks for sharing it!
I’m curious how you see this aspect playing out?
Many MPs are supportive of animal issues but have little incentive to raise it as a political issue. One MP and one staffer said that politicians are often exposed to radical animal activists and need to be shown that animal advocates can be moderate and offer reasonable policy solutions.
I think there is a difference between radical actions and radical asks. If a radical action is asking for a country to immediately stop eating meat, the ask and action are generally considered easy to write off and dismiss as being unrealistic. I think this is often a default view of animal activists. Radical actions (and the threat of them) with a reasonable ask, ie cage-free campaigns, are more difficult to be dismissed.
The issues you chose to focus on from my perspective, seem quite reasonable. Are you considering incorporating more radical actions into your future plans?
If I get it right, your thoughts are how do we mitigate costs, limit logistics and provide better access to major organisations and funders.
I’m excited about and supportive of how AVA has developed regional conferences. I attended the Asia AVA and noticed that numerous funders from other parts of the world were in attendance as well as staff from major organisations. I think the regional events provide a number of other pluses that AVA Africa pretty much say themselves.
By hosting this event on the continent, we can:
Bring together a larger, more diverse group of advocates from the region.
Address logistical and cost barriers such as visa challenges and travel expenses.
Facilitate better-informed and regionally relevant interventions for farmed animals.
Many funders I’ve spoken to have a genuine interest in supporting and growing animal protection work in other parts of the world and I can imagine that their attendance will continue and probably grow at these regional events. I also see potential, that these regional events, might inspire future funders in each region, something I see as important as we continue to grow this work.
I can see that LA might not be the best place if we are looking at a global event, concerns about the scholarship progress and your burning desire to do great things for animals. I also think that the addition of the regional conferences is a fantastic step in improving accessibility for organisations to meet, co-create, build community and fundraise.
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In your post and subsequent comments I sense dissatisfaction with the scholarship process and that your primary goal of attending AVA US is to access funders. I realise you are posting from an anonymous account, so maybe you already do this, but if not. Post about the work your organisation is doing here and on FAST. I’m sure people would love to hear about it. If you haven’t presented at a regional AVA summit or a conference like CARE I think might be a great thing to do.
Working with many food companies on their commitment to transition to a cage-free egg supply. I have seen the following happen, staff gain internal buy-in, publicly state it on their website, in some cases the first time the company has a tangible stated animal welfare position.
I’ve rarely encountered people at a company who don’t care about animal welfare, I think the challenge for them is understanding how they can operationalise it. I think the cage-free work has helped many companies, and staff within them, to move forward and builds inertia.
An example I like of this is Carrefour’s work on cage-free for chickens and then moving forward to create cage-free systems for quail.
I understand that in total corporate commitments cover about 70-80% of the US egg market.
The remainder 20-30% is more or less what you identify, non-chain restaurants and non-chain companies in other industries, where the time to do corporate work is probably not worth it and would be expected to shift following law making.
Many schools and cafeterias use third party catering companies like Sodexo, Compass, Aramark etc, that have cage-free commitments and are making solid progress on their commitments.
If you’re calculating the 40% aggregate by assuming that all the companies have equal market share, that can skew what is happening. The largest in each sector normally have the largest piece. And sector by sector by market share it is grocery stores, restaurant chains/caterers, manufacturing and then hotels.
I agree in the large change in a short amount of time. Small thing, my colleagues at THL recently wrote a blog on an update on USDA numbers which slightly changed the data.
Edit (forgot to add the link)
And I agree with Jakub’s take.
Welfare Footpring Institute, gives a nice overview of the pain reduced moving from cage to cage-free environments here.
Hi, I’m not sure if I have all the answers you need.
I think some reasons for this are:
The term cage-free’ is more understandable for a non-technical audience than deep litter, that as you say is more of a technical term for veterinarians. This is important for public communication and campaigns.
A campaign message is often benefited by keeping it simple, in this case asking for ‘cage-free’ and then as companies and governments adopt agree, we see more deeply defined standards developed and adopted, that do not confine birds to cages and also include other criteria like you are mentioning in deep litter and free-range systems.
- USDA and European Union use the term ‘cage-free’ to describe their standards as do influential organisations in animal welfare advocacy like the RSPCA. As significant advocacy on this issue has happened in these regions, and a large proportion of EA’s come from Europe and english speaking countries where this term is used, the term has probably been adopted as a default.
The terminology might vary by region? I’m not sure where you are based. For example, working in Europe, I have most often heard ‘deep litter’ used when working with German companies.
Overall, I would emphasise, that cage-free is not a standard that is intended to compete with any other definition of housing for laying hens, rather it is a minimum ask, the birds shall not be confined to cages, which allows for significant reduction in their pain.
The ambition and execution your team has continues to inspire me.Looking forward to seeing this continue!
Thanks for sharing this update Stephen, it’s been inspiring to see the recent momentum your organisation has had.
Thanks for looking into this. Two things.
I have heard a number of positive endorsements of https://www.vegan-friendly.com/ work from people that I view has having better insight into this than I.
In conversations I’ve had on cage-free and moving to egg replacements with companies. Perhaps, the largest concern I’ve heard is the fear of a company being reliant on one brand/product. The companies are often of the opinion that eggs give them much more flexibility in their supply chain to scale up/down and shift suppliers. I imagine that egg replacement solutions that share that characteristic might be better received.
Appreciate you thinking about and giving this thought publicly Emre.
A colleague shared a model of three concentric circles representing engagement, attributed to M. Bauman, but I’ve yet to see the original source. The model categorises engagement as follows:
External Partners: “How can I benefit?”
Members: “How can I contribute?”
Core: “How can I serve?”
If I understand correctly, your concern is that the core segment isn’t expanding sufficiently within EA-supported animal organizations. My interpretation of this model is that there should always be an invitation to engage more deeply. The changes you are considering for yourself seem to align with this principle, and I would be very interested to hear about your experiences if you implement them.
Some actions I’m considering:
-Switching to a physical office and using it as a community space. Maybe even sharing space with a vegan restaurant.
-Spending more time in-person with our supporters myself.
I’m not sure whether the issue lies in the prevalence of single-issue communication or in the belief that organisations must embody people power to drive change. If our focus is on achieving quick wins in animal welfare, there might be less emphasis on harnessing people power. Similarly, if an organisation is predominantly funded by a small group of major donors, it may not feel the need to cultivate a large supporter base.
I think growing people power is important and perhaps the strongest tool to do this is local volunteer groups. An example comes to mind of an org that has their flagship campaigns as a cage-free, broiler work and had a local volunteer group run their own campaign to ban pony rides at a local fair. The volunteer campaign used generally the same approach of a pressure campaign that would be used on cage-free and broiler work and gave the volunteer group an up close look at the strategies and allowed them to see and create change that was more tangible and personal to them. I saw this have the effect of deepening the engagement of many of the volunteers to do more of their own work and also engage on bigger asks on the organisations flagship campaigns.
What you propose as your actions on single issue campaigns, I think can happen at local group gatherings where people have space to discuss, and see the variety and nuance in others thinking and importantly take action that drives work forward which I think helps with that engagement. In person informal discussions can also feel like lower stakes in expressing a dissenting view vs sharing on a public forum.
I don’t have any insight into why this grantee wanted to remain anonymous.
I do know of some situations in the animal advocacy space, and advocacy space in general, where it is strategic to not have on the public record (or as little as possible) where one is receiving funding from. Reasons for this might include:
Increased government scrutiny and harassment as a ‘foreign agent’ by receiving money from abroad.
Exposing how groups and initiatives might be connected can damage how their targets interact with them. Ie bad and good cop initiatives having the same funding source can often damage the ability of the good cop to carry out their role.
A local organisation, with large amounts of funding from abroad, can easily be criticised for not representing local interests.
Sometimes it is simply just really useful for adversaries and people, organisations you want to influence to know as little about you as possible.
Probably more reasons I’m not thinking of right now
I hear the concern you raise and also see there are cases where the tradeoff with transparency on distributed funds and setting the grantees up for success may be in conflict. Might some insight into why the grant is anonymous help bridge that gap?
For example:
One of our grantees, who received $291,000, requested that we do not include public reports for their grants as doing so is likely to negatively impact their ability to carry out their work by exposing publicly how they are connected to other organisations.
I’ve been looking at this housing part more in the US and that high A-frame era of barns was then followed by ‘manure belt’ farms around the 00′s. I am of the understanding that many of the A-frame era barns no longer exist and are replaced by new cage-free barns. Whereas the ‘manure belt’ era farms are likely the ones still with cages in them. I see what you mean about the bans in Europe. Two things on that, 1. In all the cases you’re describing there was a shift from battery cages to enriched cages. So that is two eras of cages potentially in one overall housing unit. 2. I think there is also additional years in advance of a ban to be considered, markets, particularly now on cage-free in Europe have shifted significantly in advance of the bans announced and I think the same thing is happening in countries we will soon see bans from.
I’ve not seen that sympathy expressed. Not saying it isn’t or wasn’t there. I think this might be more a result of the power struggle.
Probably, but I forget what :-)
Yes, there are definitely opportunities to be found. I think part of that is identifying the waves and power. China went rather rapidly from non-intensive egg production cage-free. 90′s was the first wave of this, and then there was a bigger push to industralize and move to cages in the 00′s. I’m hopeful about work in China creating positive changes for laying hens.