WAYNE HSIUNG: I was wrong to condemn cage-free. Cage-free campaigns have seen enormous momentum, going from 12% of the US market in 2016 to nearly 40% by the end of 2024. It is likely the most successful campaign in animal rights history. Meanwhile, the vegan movement continues to stall, sowing doubt in the effectiveness of more radical, 'abolitionist' messaging. More importantly, I was wrong because I failed to realize the divisiveness of my messaging. I was wrong because some of my advocate friends had been working on cage-free campaigns for many years, and human relationships are more important than ideology.
WAYNE HSIUNG: In 2016, I walked into a cage-free egg farm and accomplished what was, at the time, my greatest success as an activist. I was leading an investigative team with Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), and we documented tens of thousands of birds crammed in industrial sheds, covered in feces, and (in some cases) literally being eaten alive. When we published footage from our investigation – including the open rescue of a sickly bird named Ella who had been pecked clean of feathers and was struggling to stand – the story went viral.
“Cage-free is not all it’s cracked up to be,” I wrote in the Huffington Post. Millions read that article – it was ultimately shared over 30,000 times on Facebook alone – and our investigation reached The New York Times and Washington Post. At speaking events across the nation, I blasted the shift to cage-free as fraudulent and counter-productive.
But I was wrong to condemn cage-free. Recent research shows that cannibalism and other abuses have probably decreased as the industry has learned to manage cage-free facilities. Cage-free campaigns, moreover, have seen enormous momentum, going from 12% of the US market in 2016 to nearly 40% by the end of 2024; in terms of influence on the industry, it is likely the most successful campaign in animal rights history. In contrast, the vegan movement continues to stall, sowing doubt in the effectiveness of more radical, “abolitionist” messaging. One would have to be willfully ignorant to miss these developments.
But the most important reason I was wrong had nothing to do with the effectiveness of cage-free campaigns. Rather, I was wrong because I failed to realize the divisiveness of my messaging. Some of the most brilliant advocates in the nation, such as my friend Bruce (formerly PETA, then at Farm Sanctuary), had been working on cage-free campaigns for many years. My supposed “success” was attacking theirs. The result was a movement divided and demoralized…
Infighting of this sort distracted us from our mission – helping the animals – and undermined the scalable cooperation that is the hallmark of effective movements. And I was partly to blame. Even if I had been completely right about the facts on cage-free, I was completely wrong in my approach… My most important lesson from the fight over cage-free, however, is that relationships are more important than ideology… I thought my success in 2016 came from attacking the folks who work on cage-free. But I was wrong. My greatest success came from becoming their friends. SOURCE…
RELATED VIDEO: