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‘Animal liberation’ is the focus of animal rights conference

“Animal liberation” was the focus of a recent national meeting of animal rights activists in California.

The Animal Agriculture Alliance had a representative at the Animal Rights National Conference in Los Angeles. Alliance spokesperson Hannah Thompson-Weeman says conference speakers made it clear their objective is the liberation of animals, not enhancing animal welfare.

“They talked about opening up all the cages and emptying out all the farms—bending the law and extrapolating the limits of the law in order to advance their goals,” says Thompson-Weeman.

Conference speakers also focused heavily on the “reproductive rights” of animals, an apparent new focus for the movement. Using eggs from laying hens and milk from dairy cattle were mentioned as “female animal exploitation”, says Thompson-Weeman.

“Some speakers tried to draw a line between feminism and women’s rights, and some topics that are really popular in pop culture right now—and tried to draw connections between those topics and animal agriculture.”

Thompson-Weeman says the Alliance attends major activist conferences so it can keep farmers and ranchers informed of the groups’ strategies and tactics.

AUDIO: Hannah Thompson-Weeman