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Many in the animal agriculture sector feel they’ve been the target of many attacks during the coronavirus pandemic. Hannah Thompson-Weeman, vice president of communications at Animal Ag Alliance, recently said animal agriculture and the food supply chain has risen to the challenges wrought by COVID-19 despite the continued attacks by activists opposed to animal agriculture.

“This year has been really crazy in terms of animal rights activism, everything from attempts to tie the current pandemic and future pandemics to livestock and meat consumption, despite the fact that that really has no scientific backing or basis. But they're being opportunistic and trying to take advantage of people's fears and concerns to continue spreading negative messaging about animal agriculture."

Thompson-Weeman said they’ve also seen animal rights activist groups ignore stay at home orders so they can camp out near meat processing plants to protest of hold vigils.

“We are seeing a lot of groups who just don't believe that animal agriculture can be done ethically and responsibly, they don't believe that animals should be raised for food, and they're really latching on to current circumstances to try to promote that messaging and a lot of it comes down to large scale production, or as they would say factory farms. So, activist groups are viewing this as they call it a tipping point, people are concerned, people are paying attention, have questions maybe about the food chain if they haven't paid as much attention before, and that makes this, they believe, an opportunity for them," Thompson-Weeman continued. "But it's also an opportunity for us to be answering those questions and getting that positive and accurate information out there.”

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