2022 Will Be Interesting Year For Animal Ag Activists

The Animal Ag Alliance continues to monitor the fight between animal agriculture and activists who have been charged with criminal wrongdoing. Hannah Thompson-Weeman, the soon to be President and CEO of the Alliance, said 2022 will be a very active year.

“They've been very brazen about breaking the law, theft, trespassing, all those types of things. There are trials scheduled across the country in 2022 involving some of those extreme activists. We’re anticipating trials in California and Utah as well, and just in December the first of those trials was held in North Carolina and the activist in question was found guilty on two felony charges for stealing a goat back in 2018. So, it's promising to see that he was convicted, you know, those felony charges did stick. The jury came back very quickly with that guilty verdict. So, we're hopeful that other cases will go the same direction.”

She said the activists are trying use a “necessity defense”.

“They say that the conditions on farms and ranches are so dire that it's necessary for them to take the law into their own hands and break it and steal animals, which of course we know to not be the reality and they're just supposed to what we're doing in general, doesn't matter how well we're doing, it doesn't matter what the standards are, if at the end of the day we are using animals for food, they are opposed to that.”

She adds that anyone in the animal ag community should stay tuned for the results of the trials because they are going to be precedent setting, either way.

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