Anne Hilhorst on hitting companies where it hurts

My guest for today is Anne Hilhorst, CEO of Wakker Dier, a Dutch animal welfare organisation. She joined Wakker Dier when she left university 15 years ago and plans to be there for another 15 years!

Besides the impressive longevity of their staff, Wakker Dier is a really impressive and interesting organisation that I knew very little about. Thanks to them, no supermarket in the Netherlands has sold eggs from caged hens since 2006, no fast-growing breeds of chicken since 2021 and over 90% of the retail sector has a meat reduction goal. 

This is already an amazing list of accomplishments, and far from all of what they’ve achieved too. There seem to be a few things about them that helped, which I’ll unpack with Anne in this episode. Some key themes include that they spend over 90% of their effort & resources in getting companies in particular to stop supplying the cruelest products, spending around one third, yes that’s 33%, of their budget on advertising for campaigns and they even read books about the companies they are targeting, to learn what makes them tick.

Chapters:

• (00:00:00) - Cold intro: going big on advertising
• (00:05:24) - Recent rollbacks by retailers
• (00:10:51) - What Wakker Dier does
• (00:14:43)- How long it took Wakker Dier to end fast-growing chickens
• (00:21:52)- Pressure through spending millions on advertising
• (00:31:52) - The importance of praise
• (00:36:33) - Plofkip: the origin
• (00:47:23) -When to ask for full commitments vs immediate implementation
• (00:52:12) - Asking supermarkets for meat reduction - how is it going?
• (01:06:22) - Closing 3 questions

Resources:

• Wakker Dier's website
• Book: The lonely Quest of Unilever’s CEO Paul Polman 

Enjoy the episode! 

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

Transcript

Cold intro: going big on advertising

Anne 0:00

It's changing all the time, but to be like to say roughly, I think we have about six million in incomes this year.

James 0:07

Yeah.

Anne 0:08

And about two million goes to advertising.

James 0:11

Wow. That's very interesting. So like a third of your budget, I can imagine for most groups, if I had to guess, I don't think it'd be more than like 10%. So it it's it's just interesting to see how much more emphasis you put on that. And yeah, because I was thinking it can't be that cheap to have TV commercials in the Netherlands. So it's like, no, you you if you think it's worthwhile, you you just pay, which makes total sense.

Anne 0:31

Yeah.

James 0:31

Because it seems like the results ha have been good. So it makes sense to pay.

Anne 0:35

That's the whole issue because you want to get there where they are talking to their customers. And that takes money.

James 0:43

I mean, yeah, I think the results speak for themselves. I think the fact that you guys managed to get everyone to the slow-growing breeds and banning cages is probably a long time for many other countries, is some good sign that this this uh this approach works, at least in uh in the Netherlands. Hi everyone. My guest for today is Anne Hilhorst, who is the CEO of Wakadere, a Dutch animal welfare organization. She joined Wakker Deer when she left university 15 years ago, and all things are going well. She plans to be there for another 15 years at least. And besides the impressive longevity of their staff, Wakker Deer is a really impressive and interesting organization that I knew basically nothing about. And thanks to their efforts, no supermarket in the Netherlands has sold eggs from caged hens since 2006, no chicken from fast-growing breeds of broiler chicken since 2021. In addition, over 90% of the retail sector has a meat reduction goal. This is already an incredible list of accomplishments, and it's also far from everything they've achieved over the last 20 years. And there seems to be a few things that help them achieve these goals, which I'll unpack today with Anna in this episode. And some key themes we'll touch on is that they spend over 90% of their effort and resources in getting companies in particular to stop supplying core products as opposed to focusing on the public or politicians. In addition, what I found quite interesting is they spend a third, yes, that's 33% of their budget, on advertising for campaigns to really hit the retailers and targets where it hurts. And also, they even read books about companies they're targeting to really get under their skin and learn what makes them tick. So yeah, I found this a whole very fascinating insight into corporate advocacy at its best. So I hope you enjoyed the episode. Tauna, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?

Anne 2:36

I am doing great, actually. The weather is great, so I'm feeling good.

James 2:40

Nice. Well, we're excited to have you on and learn more about uh Walker Deer, which is maybe a group that hopefully advocates have heard a bit about, but maybe don't know too much about. So I'm excited to kind of dive into that. But before we get there, what's something you changed your mind on recently in the animal advocacy movement and why?

Anne 2:58

Well, one of the things that um I've been thinking a lot about recently is about how we address the whole topic of uh what is animal welfare in the or in like in the countries and in what the people think. Like it feels like a very left, left is topic, like politically, where it's actually really not. You know, it's a topic that really concerns a lot of people if you're asking right now on the street, do you think it's okay to cut off the tail of uh of a young piglet? I guarantee about 80% will say no, I don't think that's suitable. And yet we make is a very polarized and political argument. And that's something that I've been thinking a lot lately about.

James 3:39

Like, did something change or what kind of happen that kind of brought this into your mind?

Anne 3:45

Well, I think that um we have been having some setbacks lately of good movements that are either going backwards or being stopped. And it feels like the whole ambition of the society as a total, like what people want and where we want to move to towards, that it's getting a very negative vibe on animal welfare. Like it's all reducing and getting worse. Where that hasn't been the case. I mean, it usually was always very for-thinking, like this. We know this is not okay, but we want to get away from this, but we don't know how. And in the last couple of years, it's changing a bit towards now, we want to go back to how it used to be, and we actually want to decrease animal welfare. For me, that's a new movement. Like, we and I'm not really just talking about meat consumption because that's always been a political and a very polarized topic. I'm far much more concerned about the way we treat animals and how we keep them. And even on that part, it feels like it's getting like, I don't know, like more acceptable to be very negative about that. But it used to be a topic that everybody could agree on, that it needs we need to do better. And all of a sudden that's kind of yeah, decreasing a bit. So I'm I'm thinking a lot about that, especially because in my work, with uh the work that I do, we use polarization quite a lot to get the conversation starting. So uh it's an interesting topic that we do a lot with.

James 5:17

And then maybe in terms of those you said that those setbacks, I guess can you say what they are or are you gonna give more detail?

Recent rollbacks by retailers

Anne 5:24

Yeah, so in our own country, um we had a supermarket that already switched to organic milk, and that's now going back to regular. Another one uh agreed to stop promoting meat as much. So they stop with the big, the very big promotions and the on their on their main beef, uh, main, well not beef, meat uh products, um, they're actually going to do that again. So after a break of two years, they're gonna increase their meat promotions. Um, and I just recently, just today, read that in uh, well, it's not the Netherlands, but it's quite nearby. It's in Belgium, uh, supermarkets actually are going back from uh the better chicken commitment animals back to regular broilers, which is huge setback, and it's only very well, you know, for us that's a very near market, of course.

James 6:17

Yeah, yeah.

Anne 6:18

So though and that's all happened in the last three months. Well, in a period that it used to only go forwards, like it's always like we're gonna increase and nobody and and all of a sudden it's it's getting to be okay to go back again. So that's something that I'm thinking a lot about.

James 6:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is interesting. This is something that companies might do when maybe that there's a big kind of push from the outside public is on side and maybe doesn't hurt their business case too much, but maybe now if there's you know inflation and the war in Iran, is this is this partially why you think they're changing it? Is this because actually it wasn't as good for them commercially as they would have thought, and they have to kind of make emergency changes? Like they're wh why do you think they're doing this?

Anne 6:59

Well, I do think that there's a lot of going on, and it's very difficult for me to really exactly get what's going on. We're just one little part in a big machinery, but um, I do feel that it's a combination of pressure on price, of course, but also that what the community feels, that the the whole part of animal welfare isn't that important anymore as it was five years ago, and that gives them the freedom to kind of get back on their f for on their in their on their past, you know, steps forwards, yeah. Because there's not such a society outrage anymore if they do. And you actually see that because they announce those steps, and it's not like everybody's like accept like outraged and getting like, what the hell are you doing? They're all basically okay, fine, I get that. And I think it's a good thing that meat becomes more available and cheaper, and it's important that we so it feels like the whole thing that there's less of a yeah, pressure from society to do better.

James 8:02

Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, yeah, I don't know if this is uh definitely the case, but I know in the in the UK, uh at least the government is in a very wary of doing things that will affect food prices negatively, and I think for that reason they haven't been very forthcoming on animal welfare reforms. And I wonder if it's like some combination of, you know, consumers of the public are just very, you know, when cost of living is high or inflation is high, and like other things come top of mind. And you know, of course they kind of prioritize animal welfare, you know, in absence of other stuff, or when it's like, okay, would I rather have cheaper food or animal welfare? You know, maybe the actually the cheaper food comes to the top, and you know, the more understanding of supermarkets doing the stuff, which makes yeah, maybe our job even more challenging.

Anne 8:45

Definitely, definitely. And I do think that's why I started with the whole polarization part. I do feel like it's getting more of an identity thing as well, that it's that it's not acceptable to less acceptable maybe to be very outspoken about animal welfare. Um if you're a bit more towards the right orientation, that's increasing. So I feel like those two powers of the time, the the the pressure on money, which is tight, which is I think everybody now kind of struggles with, right? With the fact that prices are getting up. But also the whole narrative that's been spun around that is for some reason very connected to animal welfare as well. Basically, it's it's all deemed woke, and woke isn't isn't something you and that's and that's for some reason directly uh related to all types of other uh movements as well. Yeah. Where of course it doesn't have anything to do with that. A lot of people care about animals. Yeah, I think most people care about animals. It's not a right or left thing, and it's not only a price thing either.

James 9:56

Yeah.

Anne 9:57

And for some reason, uh they are very successful in making it right now to feel that way, right? That that's the only solution, you know, to make this animals suffer more, only to make your meat more available for you. Um, which we all know that that's a game that supermarkets in particular are very uh successful in in moderating. So it's not definitely the case that a more expensive product is actually more expensive for consumers as well. They make a lot of choices in that field, and they can do a lot with not even increasing prices for people, but do increase the animal welfare. So in the it's not directly related, and they present that they present it now like it is. Yeah. So that's kind of well, you were asking where I was hanging out. That's that's how minus.

James 10:47

Yeah, no, no, this is this is that is very interesting. And I guess this will let me frame a bunch of the discussion.

What Wakker Dier does

James 10:51

Yeah, I guess and then maybe for people to get some background, you run Wakadir, but maybe you want to say a bit more about who Wakadir is, what you guys do, what you focus on.

Anne 10:59

Wakadir is a Dutch-based animal welfare organization, and we solely focus on the animals we eat. And we always want a direct link, direct link with the Netherlands. So we really focus on what do we produce and what do we eat. And within this uh set of parameters, we uh chose to focus uh very much on supermarkets and retail, uh, especially because we feel that that's a it's a big player who has two very important things they have the money and they have the power to change things, you know. And a government has the money, but it rarely has the power to actually make big changes. Uh and well, we all know farmers are just kind of stuck in the system as well. So we try to focus on where the money is being made, and that's the supermarkets. You know, our our the thing that we usually say to each other is like they decide what we can choose from. So they decide what's in the shop, where people can choose from, what they're paying for it, so they can really determine the narrative of what we eat, how much we eat, when we eat. Um, and I don't know how it is in the UK and other countries, but in the Netherlands, about 80 to 90 percent of everything we eat, we buy at the supermarket. So it has a huge impact as soon as you target them. So what we decided to do about even we've been working on this strategy for about the last 20 years, is really focus on getting the responsibility on the supermarkets, getting them to take that responsibility and basically take it out of the hands of the individual consumers, but say, yo, we take care of this, we make sure that our standards are better than what the government asks is asking, you know, is getting better than what's legally required. And and we'll make this choice for you so that you don't have to. And we did that with a lot of animal protein sources. So we did it with eggs, we did it with broiler meat, we did it with veal, we did it with pork, um, and currently we're working on dairy.

James 13:08

Nice. And I guess do you want to say more about a bunch of supermarkets up selling caged eggs maybe back in like 2006? What do you want you want to say when that was?

Anne 13:16

Yeah, 2006. Yeah.

James 13:18

Nice. And that was eggs from both battery cages and enriched cages, or just totally.

Anne 13:23

So they went to barn eggs.

James 13:26

Wow.

Anne 13:26

And we use the same principle. We really make them responsible for the animal suffering that they were selling, because that's always the case, right? That it's very hard to explain if you're a supermarket. It's very hard to explain. Look, this is what we're doing to our chickens, just so you can have a uh a cheap egg. And almost everybody who actually sees a chicken, realizes what it costs, will get outraged from it. But as soon as they're in a supermarket, there, you know, life happens, your wallet happens, the children are begging for stuff, you're not thinking about the picture that you saw earlier that day.

James 14:03

Yeah.

Anne 14:04

But if I can make you I can if I can make you tie that image to a supermarket, it will definitely affect the way you think about them. And that's what we use to get them to move. So basically saying you don't want to be connected to this to this horrible way of keeping animals. And that's just a very powerful tool, and we use that to get, for example, the battery cages, eggs out of the supermarkets. But we did, as I said, we did it with View as well, with boilers, and it's not that easy. It's not like you're it's not that if you say it once, they would automatically do it.

How long it took Wakker Dier to end fast-growing chickens

James 14:43

Yeah.

Anne 14:43

Um, so for example, our big broiler campaign, it took 10 years. I mean, it's still a lot of investment, and you need to make sure that you're gonna stick with it and you need to amp up the pressure.

James 14:54

Yeah, wait, and that's 10 years for all supermarkets in the Netherlands to stop selling fast-growing chickens and give and give them more space, or what did you win with a broiler campaign?

Anne 15:04

With a broiler, um the so we have a a label in the Netherlands that's called Better Life, and it's actually owned by an animal welfare organization. So they basically made like a system of three stars, one, two, and three. And for for example, three is usually organic, yeah, and then two is usually free free range, and then one is usually still industrial, but getting rid of the biggest problems.

James 15:34

Yeah.

Anne 15:36

And just to give a bit of a it's it's for for burglar chicks, one star is even a bit better than the European chicken commitment.

James 15:45

Okay.

Anne 15:46

So it's getting rid of the fast-growing broilers, it's getting them a lot more space, it's getting them uh sunlight, obviously, and a lot of enrichment, but it's also giving them a uh space outside.

James 15:57

Nice.

Anne 15:58

So it's a real big improvement. And uh, we made sure that every supermarket is actually currently already for the loss. I've you'd have to look at the what year we're at. I think it's about four to five years already that they're exclusively selling that one-star broiler meat.

James 16:14

You're trying to remove the worst products, the worst practices from supermarket shelves such as that when people go in, well, even if they pick, you know, the cheapest or the worst thing, it's still better than it was maybe three, four, five years ago, and that's already a huge improvement. So I I think that makes lots of sense in terms of.

Anne 16:29

Yeah, we always try to balance it a bit that because you need to be careful that it's not greenwashing. So we always make to want to make sure that we're that our ask is like ambitious enough.

James 16:41

Yeah.

Anne 16:42

Also feasible. So if you're gonna demand right now, like I want you all to go to organic, then you're pretty sure that's not, you know, you're just not gonna get any movement because they're just saying that's unrealistic. You're not you don't get what you're talking about. But if you're going too low, and they will all say immediately, because that's a test for us, if they say, Oh sure, we'll do that, then you know you're not you're not, you know, your demand isn't big enough. So it needs to be like a uh like a proper improvement. It needs a lot of commitment, and it's probably gonna take a little bit of time as well. But then you can actually, you know, get that market level up, up, up.

James 17:26

Yeah.

Anne 17:27

Hopefully to a standard that we'll uh be happy about.

James 17:30

Yeah. And yeah, the time is an interesting thing. I didn't realize the broiler campaign took 10 years, you know, that's obviously a long amount of time for a group to be pretty focused on on one thing. I guess like how did you guys balance that internally in terms of, you know, I I can imagine like there was times you thought maybe this we asked for too much, maybe we should change, or like how how did you kind of navigate this and what made you want to stick committed to this for 10 years?

Anne 17:53

Maybe, and maybe you wanna sometimes you want to scream into a corner. Yes, of course. And not yeah. Now we went through all of that. And I think that one of the reasons that we were able to get through and stick with it is because we really did our research, so we really knew that it was possible. So we were able to have a lot of conversations with almost every part in the chain, and that that's why we knew that isn't that we what we were asking was actually feasible. But it's important to know if the arguments of your counterparties are the ones that you're targeting, is it bullshit or not?

James 18:30

Yeah.

Anne 18:31

And if you're very convinced that it's bullshit, it will give you the power to keep on going.

James 18:36

Yeah.

Anne 18:37

And I think that's always a risk because as soon as you're getting a bit doubtful yourself, which can happen because you're not always getting the real picture, right? You're not always seeing everything that's moving in the sector. You don't really always know if you're correct or not. But if you are, it really helps to stick with uh your campaign. And I do want to add that in our broiler campaign, we had a big, we had an in-between step. Quite fast from the beginning, I think about a year in or maybe two years in, supermarkets got together and they said, okay, listen, we want to get Waker Deer off our back. But we also don't want to do what they want because the step towards one star better life is too big. It's about a 25% increase in in costs, which is big if it's because chicken is one of the cheapest products to use, right? So they have a very small margin on it. So 25 increase in your in your buy-in is is big. So they were like, we don't want to do that, but we also want to get walkadeer off our back. So they went and made a deal with each other and said, okay, within two years, we're all gonna switch to what we later called like an in-between chicken, uh, with standards that are remarkably close to uh the European chicken commitment. So slightly growing fast growing, you know, a little bit less fast-growing breed, some daylight, more space. The thing is, because they did that step, and at first we weren't too happy about it, but then we kind of said, well, okay, if you're promising us that you will continue moving upwards in your in your welfare standards, we will allow this because we understand that you need to get your chain in order. Because you obviously know as soon as you're talking about a different breed of broiler, it takes a lot of time to get enough chicks, right? And in this case, this breed wasn't invented yet. So it needs to be invented, it needs to get like upscale that you can actually get like a hundred million a year, because that's what we were talking about in the Netherlands. So we kind of realized that that takes time and that they need to kind of get their their chain of supply in control. So they did, and it was a huge success, and they were able to get all kinds of practical problems out of the way. So the way that the chickens are slaughtered need to be different, but also the meat that comes off is very different because your breasts are smaller and your thighs are bigger and your legs are bigger. So it needed all kinds of adjustments, and they were already doing that and being very successful at it. A couple years later, we were like, Okay, well, where's the next step coming? And they were like, No, we're it's all good now. No, we're still gonna need that that next step. So then we again increased the pressure, and it took us another two years to get them all to commit to the next step.

James 21:39

Yeah.

Anne 21:40

We really did need to push there. That wasn't going by itself.

James 21:44

Yeah. What's the kind of pressure you're talking about? When you say you're applying pressure, like what are the campaigns you're waging look like? You know, who are they targeted at? Like, what

Pressure through spending millions on advertising

James 21:52

do you guys do?

Anne 21:52

Yeah, so we use advertising. So basically, what we do, we kind of, and it's not that difficult in the Netherlands. Not that many channels, so we just kind of figure out okay, where are they advertising themselves? Yeah, we're just gonna be there with a TV commercial, with a radio commercial, with an outdoor commercial, and then we we actually pay good advertising agencies to come up with very catching TV commercials that really either really capture the suffering of the of the animal or really hurts the brand, or something in between. It's always on that line, depending on where in the campaign that we are. So if we're just starting or focusing more on animal welfare, and as soon as we know that everybody's got their picture in their minds of that, we call them explosion, exploded chicken, right? The proof kit. So as soon as everybody has their minds, if we say the word, they see like this huge, exploded, unhealthy chicken, then we always have to say, Well, he's selling them. And then we kind of and then we use a lot of their branding, of their colors, of their, and if we could, we could actually kind of we try to um really understand the target. So then it's for example, and a nice one that didn't really succeed, but it just to show you the way of thinking is it for us McDonald's in the Netherlands positions in themselves as a family restaurant, so we focused on telling them, well, this friendly, family-friendly restaurant is putting this huge ass antibiotic chicken in your lovely kids' meal. And then we made like our own meal, and all the little playthings were like different different animal suffering things, like they have uh footburns or they had XP, you know, they had like all this suffering things going on. Um, and then you're getting where you're you're kind of hurting them where you know, where they're having a soft spot, where they're you're gonna find their soft spot. So if I'm saying we're gonna increase the pressure, what I am doing is I'm current I'm constantly looking towards that brand. What are they saying about themselves? Where are they particularly proud of? And can I work with that?

James 24:18

And yeah, I think maybe the ways that I think marketers seems like different some other groups is A, yeah, but this like very, very strong focus on the corporate advocacy, trying to get companies to change, as well as maybe what you're kind of hinting at there, which is you guys try to have a kind of like an unusually deep understanding of you know the supply chain. So you know if a company's telling you something that's not true or you can question it. And I guess like how maybe like where did this come about is maybe one thing. And maybe the second question is and like when you do want to investigate whether some arguments are bullshit or like understand supply chain, like how do you do this? Do you have people who've like worked in big supermarkets and then joining Wakadir, or how do you actually form that?

Anne 24:57

No, we don't have people who work at supermarkets. What we did have is that my our former CEO did came from big uh food companies. So the whole idea of getting this responsibility back to them came from him. So he really said, Well, well, if you only knew how much they can control and you know, and and how much control they have of the supply chain and stuff, that really really set up the idea, like made us all very much aware of the possibilities that are there for big companies to change if they want to. So our whole system is basically getting them to want to. Yeah. So that's one. And the other thing, of course, of of talking with a lot of people is there are a lot of there are a couple of things interesting in that. I think one of it's that it's a very Dutch thing to do. So in the Netherlands, it's very common to exchange information and be in like good contact with different parties. Uh that's in our culture. So if I say, yo, uh I I would very much like to talk to you, chances are that they will open the door and come to talk with us. Whether it's all true what they are saying, yeah. For example, if you uh supermarkets are still the easiest. Supermarkets are in a lot of competition with each other. If you're talking to all of them, they will all kind of if you put all those stories together, you will find like a common narrative. You will find that there's always a couple of names coming up, or there's always a couple of problems coming up, or if there's always a particular, uh, maybe it's even something as a practical problem. If you're hearing it from all of them individually, well, then you're gonna need to think, okay, maybe they have a point. But as soon as you notice that, well, he's saying it's his fault, and he's saying it's her fault, and she's saying it, then you know, okay, wait a minute, there's something else going on. And then it can actually help to talk to people who are a little bit more outside of the chain. So, for example, I always find that talking to the slaughterhouses or the packaging companies, or maybe the more not like the most popular brands, but the little bit less popular brands, it really helps to get the full picture.

James 27:32

I think one thing that's interesting that we can maybe talk about in a second is I guess you're now working much more on uh I guess like meat reduction and protein transition, but I guess maybe a bit before that, are the other things that kind of come out in terms of things that make Wakadi maybe different to other animal groups? I think maybe the things you've identified as, you know, there's like a very large focus on other corporate advocacy, I guess being kind of like unusually kind of like in touch with the industry. Does anything else come out? Also, maybe I guess you've been doing this for uh a fairly long time, which I guess is also somewhat new for animal movement. Yeah, does anything else stick out?

Anne 28:06

No, I do think that it's not that special what we do. I mean, a lot of other NGOs do it as well.

James 28:12

Yeah.

Anne 28:12

I do think that if I'm talking to, especially if I'm talking to organizations that are fairly new in the whole company campaigning stuff, what I notice is that there's sometimes a lack of appreciation or or just like acknowledgement of that those companies are not like internally inclined or morally inclined to do well. They have other kind of parameters, and you kind of need to ask yourself the question, why would they listen to me? Yeah, like whether what am I saying, or what am I bringing, or what am I doing that makes them want to change? Because they definitely don't want to do it themselves, and they work with different rules than we maybe do. Maybe a lot of us, and I'm saying a lot of us like people working in the animal welfare movement, are maybe a bit more morally inclined to do or to make sudden uh some choices that are maybe not always the most financially safe, smart, for example, because we find that as a good guideline. But if you're a a business for profit, and the whole reason why you exist is because you buy and you sell stuff, and within that margin you make a lot of money, or even not even a lot of money, you make money. Those are your rules, like that's your most important part, and you need to take that in consideration, and you need to think okay, how can I, within their context, still create enough motivation to move and to improve? I think that question is often not really addressed. Yeah, it's basically, well, we feel like you should treat the animals better because they're suffering. It's not that they don't know they're suffering, they know they're suffering, they just don't feel like they have the means to do anything about it because they're in another way of thinking, another system, and they're not really judged on that part. So, and then again, there are different ways to make sure that they are motivated. It doesn't need to be company campaigning, it doesn't need to be advertising, but you do need to think about what will motivate them, what's in it for them? Why would they move? We really work on that question, and we're really trying to figure out what would make them move and what can be a motivation for them.

James 30:42

Can you maybe give some examples of like, okay, you've labeled kind of like this advertising and you almost like tarnishing a company's reputation if they're selling products as like one lever to motivate them to act. I guess what else have you guys found when you've been thinking about this question?

Anne 30:55

Well, for example, uh a big one, and another one is other adjacent topics that are more within the tropical fish chain, there's also a lot of forced labor. So if you can kind of make the connection with the way we keep animals there and treat them and the people with them as well, and say, well, this whole chain is evil. And then maybe you have an alternative where the welfare is better for the fish, but also for the people, then maybe you can use the whole argument of you don't want to be liable for maybe, you know, rare things going on there. Um make the switch. And as a plus side, you're also treating the animals better, and we'll we'll make, you know, we'll praise you for it. That's another way to look at what's in it for them. Like, how can how can I make this step worthwhile for them? Um, thinking about those along along those lines can be very helpful

The importance of praise

Anne 31:52

as well.

James 31:52

One thing you said you guys also do is uh you are willing to praise companies when they're doing things. I I guess and like maybe can you say more about this? Because I think some groups are restent to do it. I guess reasons you mentioned before of they're they're worried about this kind of greenwashing effect, or you don't want to say praise when actually the praise isn't always due.

Anne 32:11

Well, I think that's very much aligned with are you yourself convinced that praise is due? If you set a certain demand, for example, and they are obliging you, if they are saying, like, I'm gonna do what you're asking, well, that should be a good thing. And if you can't be happy about it, then you shouldn't have asked it. So there is a reason why you asked them to do it.

James 32:37

Yeah.

Anne 32:38

That's and so you should be happy about it. And of course, you don't need to go, oh, they're perfect now. But you do need to acknowledge that there was a step to be made and they took it, and you wanted them to. So I think that's the biggest thing. I mean, if you aren't happy about it, you shouldn't have said you shouldn't have asked them to do it.

James 32:58

Yeah, I think this is uh, I guess it seems like your approach is quite similar to what Anima International is doing now and what they're calling the fair cop, where you're you're willing to give praise and work collaboratively with companies, but then if they you know are giving you bad reasons or dragging their feet, you're willing to also campaign and use advertising and get the public outrage to kind of spark them into action.

Anne 33:20

It's it's shaming and faming. It should almost go together. And I want to add another uh thing on that. It's not just because uh you want to reward what they're doing, right? Because it's the same with you and me. If we're doing something that is not that easy, but we know it's better and we're doing it, you want to get a praise, right? You want to get some kind of reward for doing it.

James 33:45

Yeah.

Anne 33:46

Especially if the same people or the same situation is gonna happen again, and you need to make another choice whether you're gonna do it or not. If you just had a nice feeling about doing the best, the better thing just now, you're gonna be more inclined to do it again. And if it hasn't been a good experience for you because you didn't get the praise or you just got a lot of negativity from other people, why should you do it again?

James 34:11

Yeah.

Anne 34:12

So it needs to be a very positive experience for them.

James 34:16

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I think it will. I don't know why this thing came to my mind. It's like when people post on social media, and if you if you just get trolle by random people and people leave all this hate comments, you don't want to post because it's like it's like a it's like not a nice experience. And I guess it's similar to this. If you make a if you make some kind of move and you just get more hate, you're like, well, well, why did I bother?

Anne 34:34

Why did I bother? And you want to get them, and it really helps if you're getting a lot of if you're able to get like an advocate within a company. I mean, that's about the best thing you can achieve, right? If there's something within the company arguing your case because it was such a good uh experience when they went to do something did something with you the last time, well, it's gonna be a lot easier. Your life's gonna be a lot easier, and there's a lot more results getting from that. Yeah, and the other thing that I do feel like I need to mention is praising also really makes clear who's not praised. So, about the most effective thing you can do is saying, Well, he just made a very good step, and that one is still is still selling horrible animal suffrage. And if you really want to make it bold, say, if I would shop, if I were you, I will go to them. You know, I mean, then you're actually getting them to keep compete with each other on animal welfare, being like, oh well, I don't want to be next to him, I want to be better than him, and they're gonna, you know, and and it's not always gonna work, but if you can get that moving, that's a very powerful way to get uh companies to change.

James 35:58

Yeah, yeah. I yeah, I guess that's an interesting thing I've never thought of, which is you can both praise one company at the same time, criticize another company, and it putting them together almost makes it more strong for the one who's not doing anything.

Anne 36:13

For example, it's not it's a totally different category, but if you can somehow get a Pepsi and a Coca-Cola in a combat on the topic that you want, you know they would constantly try to you know up each other. If you can make that happen on animal welfare, you could just sit back and let them do it.

James 36:32

Yeah, yeah.

Plofkip: the origin

James 36:33

Maybe one thing I wanted to speak about, which I think is how I originally learned about you, is uh you mentioned the word already Pluffkip, which is which was yeah, the name for exploding chicken or I think fast growing chicken. We call it Franken chicken in the UK. And this is this was, I think, a big part of your campaign to improve the broiler standards in the Netherlands. Do you want to maybe say more about how you came up with this, why you felt this was necessary, and the kind of impact it maybe had on communicating the lives of chickens?

Anne 37:02

Basically, what we do is marketing, right? So, what we try to do is market our frame of a specific animal or a specific type of suffering. And we want to get everybody to think and feel about this thing that the way we want them to. So we're always working on new words, new payoffs, new ways of describing something to make it our own and get people, I mean we call it loading a specific frame with images and words. So that's something we always do. And Ploughkip is just happened to be our most successful one. We didn't disinvent it, it was a word used by a journalist in the Netherlands at one time.

James 37:49

Oh interesting.

Anne 37:50

And he just randomly said, look, well, it just looks it's not a it's not a chicken, it's an exploding chicken, you know, right off his hand.

James 37:59

Yeah.

Anne 37:59

And we just figured, well, that sounds good. We're gonna take that.

James 38:03

Yeah, yeah.

Anne 38:04

We did contact him about it, he didn't care. I mean, he he's alright with it. But we we uplifted this word and we really thought about okay, what do we want people to see and hear and feel if they see and hear hear Bluffkit. And then the so we did a lot of work on that, and then we have a lot of luck that the word is just very, I mean, it's fun to say, it's fun to hear. Um it's it's I'm I'm forgetting how it's called, but it's a word as always, it's a sound as well. So it's a very in in Dutch, pluff is like boom or uh like a like a like you're getting a hit.

James 38:47

Yeah, it's like onomatopoeia, I think. That one, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Anne 38:50

So um, so it's a and so it really makes a lot of you feel things, right? When you hear the word, and it's very fun to say, as I said, so it's it became instantly a word that's big, it became year the word of the year. Wow, and a lot of and it became like everything that was exploded, so all of a sudden you had plough fashion, you had plus, you know, it's it's like it became a word of a overcome in consuming let's tell you. So it became like a signal word for something that where the market has gone too far.

James 39:29

Yeah, yeah. Can you say about like what you did? So maybe between like the this word kind of being kind of said by this journalist, what was your plan from there? Was it just like, okay, we are gonna in every kind of public communication we do, we're gonna message this word, we're gonna do advertising. Like, how did you make make it uh a big thing initially?

Anne 39:47

Yeah, well, we did exactly that. So we really thought about okay, what are we gonna say? So we want uh we wanna add like animal suffering that's related to the exploding thing of the chicken. So one of the first things we need were okay, we need to talk about how quickly they grow. So the first thing's like only six weeks old, and they're already two kilos. I'm not using the correct words, but like that's and because that's very it's very in tune with the word, like you really get output. So, what do you mean with bluff? Ah, that's what you mean with bluff. And then we added a couple of easy, like welfare problems that were just easy to remember, like 20 on a 20 chickens on a one square meter and uh no daylight. Very easy. But we started, we always focused on the whole growing part, and then we did with the first advertising that we did is that we took a six-week old boiler, uh regular one, and an organic one, and we put them together, but nothing else. It was just a gray table and those two chicks, and then we just wrote down like there's the same, like both are six weeks old, one is about 800 grams, the other's 2.4 grams, uh kilograms, and then it would just say it's in every store. The word and the visual were so nicely connected that it really took off. And the other thing that really worked, that was just our luck, is that nobody has ever seen a broiler before. So people were like, What's this animal? Yeah, is this even a chicken? Like, what's going on here? So people were kind of what the fuck, you know, what's going on? And they were there weren't any words for it yet, and there wasn't a visual, so we had all the space to say, this is how your chicken nugget looks like, this is how they live, and this is how they're called, and we can control the whole narrative. So it was just a lucky, lucky, lucky thing, but I do think that we exploit it very well. So I think we did really make sure that we paid attention and did try to do it well. For example, I'm now currently doing dairy, and even though we took a lot of time to come up with the word and the frame and the welfare problems, because a lot of people already have a very cute, clear view in their head, especially in the Netherlands, because we're a very dairy-focused country. People already have a vision, and now we need to get that out of their minds and replace it with a new kind of vision, which is way more difficult.

James 42:43

Yeah.

Anne 42:44

So we were very lucky with the Plovk that people just had no idea, and they were very open to embrace our story about it.

James 42:53

That is an interesting point. I think it's very similar in the UK where we have a very idealistic view of you're like farming cows and sheep, but then probably no one ever sees pigs and chickens being farmed. So you're right. Maybe that's actually easier to change their minds.

Anne 43:08

It is because it's it's easier to kind of be uh well, to come back to the start of our conversation, it's easier for them to see the suffering and be outraged by it because a lot of people don't like animal suffering. So if it's very easy to see, if you can just look at an animal and see, well, that's clearly not right, yeah. Where for the sheep and the cattle, even from young age, you've been always been told that's all right, that's good, that's good, that's out suffering, that's happy animals. And now you and me have to convince everybody that those animals are in fact not happy.

James 43:44

Yeah.

Anne 43:45

And we need to change a narrative that's already very strongly embedded. Um, and we need to explain that it actually is animal suffering. Whereas if you look at a pig's pen or you look at a broiler, because the other thing that we had, we had a lot of Farmers who were saying, like, no, it's not that bad. Come, I'll open my door. Everybody came in. It was like, it's exactly like they said. Horrible. And it's almost and I want to get out of here. So that was a big advantage that you can actually really see the suffering.

James 44:18

Lots of animal groups I know spend most of their budget not on kind of like advertising and marketing, but actually on staff. So it's like probably it's quite a small percentage of their overall cost goes to like maybe advertising marketing. But maybe for you it seems like it might be higher than normal. Do you have like a rough idea of like how much marketers spends on advertising, marketing, or like kind of external comparing stuff?

Anne 44:42

It's changing all the time, but to be like to say roughly, I think we have about six million in incomes this year.

James 44:49

Yeah.

Anne 44:50

And about two million goes to advertising.

James 44:53

Wow. That's very interesting. So like a third of your budget, I can imagine for most groups, if I had to guess, I don't think it'd be more than like 10%. So it's it's just interesting to see how much more emphasis you put on that. And yeah, because I was thinking it can't be that cheap to have TV commercials in the Netherlands. So it's like, no, you if you think it's worthwhile, you you just pay, which makes total sense.

Anne 45:13

Yeah.

James 45:13

Because it seems like the results ha have been good. So it makes sense to pay.

Anne 45:17

That's the whole issue because you want to get there where they are talking to their customers. And that takes money.

James 45:25

I mean, yeah, I think the results speak for themselves. I think the fact that you guys managed to get everyone to the slow-growing breeds and banning cages is probably a long time for many other countries, is some good sign that this this uh this approach works, at least in uh in the Netherlands.

Anne 45:38

Yeah, no, it has it has definitely been effective. It's not like a miracle route, it still takes a lot of work, obviously, but it does have show we we've had successes, definitely had, yeah.

James 45:47

Yeah, yeah. Actually, maybe the other thing that came to mind I didn't mention before is terms of the differences is like this perseverance thing of like you guys spending 10 years on a campaign, which I think is like pretty unusual. And that maybe on K3 the movement has spent 10 years, like probably each individual group spending 10 years on Royal stuff. If you told them that now, they might be like, oh, 10 years is such a long time. Uh maybe hopefully we can finish in five, but it seems like did you know from the beginning it could be 10 years, or what did you expect early on?

Anne 46:14

Early on, I was still um in my first year of a working life, did I so I didn't have a um a clear view. We knew it was gonna take time. We did. But um I think the thing that we were most surprised about is that we kind of figured that the whole practical part of it. So the whole thing of breeding those chickens and and and changing the slaughterhouses and changing the way because even the the catching crates need to be higher because the chickens are bigger. Bro, there was like all this kind of work that we figured, like, okay, and I actually you know did calculations like if we're gonna chase the breed now, we need stock parenting, and then we need you know, like it's gonna take this long, and so we figured that we would would get a commitment earlier, but that it would take more time for it to actually be there, yeah. And it was the other way around. It took us quite a long time to get the commitment, but once they were in, I was very surprised of how quickly the whole market changed.

James 47:20

Maybe either based on that or your other experience, I think

When to ask for full commitments vs immediate implementation

James 47:23

it's like a little bit of a debate, at least I've heard now movement now, is you know, to what extent do you try to get companies to make commitments, even though they might be like kind of further away, or you get them to start doing stuff immediately, even if it's a small amount. So, for example, it's like you ask them to rather than saying go 100% slogan by, you know, in five, six years, can you do just 20% next year? And like that, that's enough for now. I guess like how do you think about this trade-off?

Anne 47:47

Well, that's actually a very different question that we struggle with as well. And I think that is very market-dependent. So, for example, if it's meat, and if they are saying, Well, I will do my fresh cutlets, cutlets first, and then the second year I will do all the grilled things, and then the third year I will do all the sausages, and it has a label and it's on the packaging, and you can actually go into the store and see if they're keeping up with their word, then I am very much pro getting a like a like a trajectory towards the success part. Because obviously you can't just go from zero to hundred in that time. But for example, with milk, it's much more difficult because it's all gathered in a big container, you can't really say what is what is what. So then you're have to then you have to rely and then saying to you, no, 20% is organic, I swear. Um, and then you have to wait another six years or so to actually confirm that they got where they wanted to be. And within those six years, at any given point, they can say, sorry you didn't make it. And then for five years you've been waiting and not doing any active, you know, any work. And then they're just gonna say, sorry, I'm not gonna do it. And then you just missed five years of campaigning time of animals continuing to suffer. So that I will always recommend against.

James 49:25

Yeah, I I guess in that case, if it's something they're putting on their website, I thought there was something around if it if they make a public disclosure and they're a public listed company, they kind of have to be telling the truth. Otherwise, it's kind of like lying to their investors. Or do you know more about this?

Anne 49:41

Well, I I do, and I'm in a bit of um I've seen it both ways. So I know companies that are actually very integrity, is a big part of their working model. So they will actually say, I can't do any proof but I can't do any commitments that I can't, you know, cash in, and that I can promise, and then I won't do it. And you have companies who will say whatever they want because they want to get you off your back. And then you also have the category of people that are did commit and do report, but not getting then, but not reaching their goals. And then it's always a big question of okay, well, are they reluctant or is it really difficult, or what's going on here? So I don't have a clear answer on that. I've seen it always around. So I've seen big companies doing commitments and just not doing what they say they were gonna do. Yeah, I've also seen companies being very, very strict with their own commitments and really keeping up us updated as well, like really getting in touch with us, like hey, I said it's gonna be week week 15, but it's actually gonna be week six week 16, which is fine, right?

James 50:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's no big deal.

Anne 50:55

That's no big deal. Um, so I've seen it every way around, and um, I'm not really sure which I would prefer. I think it's also part of making sure that either way you have some sort of control. So either because it needs to be in their annual reports, or because they are using a label, or because you know, I don't care what it is, but there needs to be some sort of control where you can actually get the proof that they're doing what there's they said they're gonna do, even if you're committing to, I can imagine, I'm just free balling now, but I can imagine that if they're saying, okay, you know, I can do this, but I can do it in five years, and then the the the way towards that is gonna be this and this and this. And I'm not gonna be able to sell that on a packaging, but I am gonna be able to show you that we bought a certain amount of organic milk, for example. I mean, then it will also be a different kind of conversation, right? They can if they can prove to you that they're actually doing what they said they do, I mean then then we're all then it's all okay. But yeah, there needs to be a form of control.

James 52:09

Yeah, that makes sense.

Asking supermarkets for meat reduction - how is it going?

James 52:12

Maybe to change gears a little bit, we can talk about the the protein transition work that uh Wakadir is working on, because I guess we haven't touched on this yet. I guess because of all the success you you've had, you know, on the various issues we've we've discussed, you know, boiler chickens, eggs, and other species, you guys actually moved on to campaigning against supermarkets to get them to pledge to sell, I guess, less meat and and more plant protein as a result. I guess can you talk more about this campaign and I guess like how it's gone so far and the current status of it?

Anne 52:40

Well, this one is actually quite interesting because this is one of those campaigns that at this moment I'm a lot less positive than I was a year ago. What we asked them to do about two years ago, well, three years ago, is to commit to the protein transition and to switch to 50-50 in 2025 and then 40% animal in 2030. And that's actually a very long time goal.

James 53:10

Yeah.

Anne 53:11

And our other uh our demand was they need to report every year on where they were standing. Uh so just been 2025, and nobody did what they were saying that they said they were gonna do.

James 53:24

Yeah. And like how how close are we talking? If maybe for some context, if if their goal was 50, like where did most companies start at and and where did they?

Anne 53:34

Most of them started just a little under 40.

James 53:37

Okay.

Anne 53:38

And they're now about 42.

James 53:41

Okay.

Anne 53:42

But for example, none of them made any progress in 25. And they're all blaming blaming it on the eye with and the protein hype.

James 53:53

Alright, yes.

Anne 53:55

And now we are actually a bit of okay, well, this was our our little way of making sure that they were actually moving. Now we have another five years or four years, that we're basically have to wait to see if they are gonna get there to their commitment. I mean, they're gonna report every year, but they didn't make any promises on the in-between years. They made a promise about 2030. So one of the things that we try to do is not make demands that are not supported by any other organizations. We have a lot of NGOs in the Netherlands working on this topic or on animal welfare, and we have usually have some government aims as well. And what you don't want to do is, you know, everybody saying, do this and do that, and then everybody, you know, has another opinion of what supermarkets should do. This yeah, either if you don't totally commit to it or feel like it's the best way, it's always better to kind of align your demands and like collectively stride for the same result instead of competing with each other.

James 55:08

Yeah.

Anne 55:09

So this whole way of protein shift and those goals and the way to measure it is not our idea. But we did kind of tag on and said, Okay, well, you have this goal filled out, and we are gonna try if we can get the supermarkets to commit. So we're gonna do the pushing. We're gonna make sure that they're gonna commit to this thing that you know that we're all saying that they should be doing. So that we did, and that was very successful. So 90% of the market share of supermarkets is now committed to that goal, but to say that they're actually moving and it's actually going well, no. And then it's and and what I said before, like it's very important to really understand what's going on so you can really uh weight their their arguments right now. This is actually a very difficult topic because of course protein transition is much more than just meat. You can do a lot about it, and you can do it on a in a lot of different areas. So you can do it with the promotions, you can do do it with proportion size, you can do it with whether the the amount of products that you offer, you can do it by just making and uh plot uh sorry, um plant-based cheaper.

James 56:29

Yeah.

Anne 56:30

You can do it by adding more plant-based material into your sausages. I mean, you can do it in a thousand different ways. What we now see is that supermarkets are trying all these kind of different things, but it's not resulting in a clear movement towards plant-based yet. Right now, I am ashamed to admit that we don't really know whether they are putting their best behavior, like, are they doing the best they can? Or are they simply doing some pilots to make sure that we they can say to us, look, I'm doing this, where on the other hand they're still promoting a lot of meat. That's now that's a a a real difficulty within the demand that we set, because we didn't say, I want you to sell less meat. We said we wanted you to commit to the protein switch, which is much more complicated and much more diverse than just meat. So it could very well be that they're all selling a lot less meat right now, but a lot more dairy because of the protein hype. And then in one point they're doing what we want, but they're not combining with the the real demands, which is the protein um uh transition. Yeah. I have a bit trouble to explain it very well, but this is one of those things that we feel like we've done a couple of things very good in this campaign. So we got the companies committed, they are working on it, we can see that they're working on it and they're reporting on it. But the results are very disappointing.

James 58:06

You can't really tell from the outside whether they're doing really serious, genuine pilots, and they're doing all their best to hit these goals, or they're doing the least required just to show you and other groups saying, Oh, look, we did our best, but the protein craze is too crazy, and consumers want this, and oh, you know, it's too hard for us. And I guess like how yeah, how do you counsel that? Of course, it's a very hard question, but like how do you guys think about this?

Anne 58:29

Yeah, well, and that's that's what earlier in this session you said, like, how did you know with all the broiler chicks that this is actually going on? That's because we had a lot of conversations and we're very in control of that narrative and of that campaign and those goals. Because I think one of the biggest problems is right now, because we've chosen to tackle a like a multi-faced issue. Yeah, that also makes it a lot more complicated to really understand whether these arguments that they're telling us are valid or not. So right now we are we're in doubt, we're struggling a bit whether it's it's genuine and they are actually moving forward, or whether it's just greenwashing. So it's kind of funny that I just went out saying that how very important it is, and right now I then on this case, I need to say that we are not as well informed as we like to be.

James 59:22

It's kind of obvious almost how you can convince supermarkets because every like no one, no one, like you said, you know, no one likes to see animals being treated poorly, and it's like everyone agrees that this is a bad thing. So when you do advertising saying, look, this company sells these awful, cruel things, you know it's bad. I guess in this case, how how did you communicate this to the public or like users to pressure supermarkets? Because if you say we want supermarkets to set a plant protein, you know, commitments for those ratios, it's like, but why? Like most people think meat is okay. So, like how how did you make this work?

Anne 59:54

Yeah, well, that is a difficult question, and I don't think that our frame is as strong, for example, as it was with poof kip or with uh the dairy right now, because we are struggling with this. But one of the most important things is is as you already said, like eating less is not a popular uh opinion, yeah. So we already changed it to more plant, less animal instead of less meat, yeah, but also getting like the more plants part a bit more towards your topic, and what we try to do is not to get away from anybody's personal opinion, but really get to uh the evil uh evil and what we say is evil uh game supermarkets play. So we really focus on we we're calling it like uh pressuring you into eating a lot of meat, making uh it it's so cheap that that the animal will sometimes we throw the animals as well, that the animals will suffer from it. Um one of the things that I feel that also always works really well is just so in the Netherlands we eat about 600,000 animals a day, and just saying that and making that relation towards did you know that supermarket blah blah blah is pushing you to buy as much meat as you can or so much animal as you can while we're already eating 600,000 animals a day. Getting the blame on them is a big part, and also kind of trying, it's not easy, but trying to get into a phase of you're being misled, or you're being pressured, or you're being lured, lured into buying more meat than you want, because we know you don't want to eat that much meat, because you know you like animals and you want to eat more healthy, you want to eat more plants, you're going, but it's the big supermarket who's always pushing you with more meat and more meat. Um, it's not a brilliant frame, but it is it's a it's a frame that helps you to stay away from you need to eat less meat.

James 1:02:08

Yeah.

Anne 1:02:08

Because people don't want to hear that.

James 1:02:12

Definitely, yeah. I agree. I I think yeah, no one likes being told what to do, but I think definitely people even less like being manipulated and being forced into doing stuff by someone else. So I think it makes sense that yeah, to kind of change things around. Yeah, this is like quite a tricky spot for Walker Deer in terms of the protein transition work, and Netherlands is probably the most progressed out of all the countries working on this. I'm kind of curious, do you have any lessons for others doing this work? Or like how's like what is your view on the protein transition work relative to other work you've done historically?

Anne 1:02:42

As I said, we're currently learning a lot about it as well. We did already, but um, it's it feels like it's it's pro it's prudent to kind of get better educated about this. I do really believe that the whole silent movement is a very big way to go. So, especially with all the prices. Oh, this is a very technical story, but just with all the prices going up, no, and the all the the improvement that's being done on getting like good proteins that are not animal-based and they are way cheaper. I think that a lot of that movement will go just because of prices.

James 1:03:21

By silent movement, you mean almost like in a normal burger, actually go from being 100% meat to 70% meat and 30% vegetables. Exactly.

Anne 1:03:29

And getting rid of all the egg yolk in cookies and getting all rid of all the the milk powder in in other, you know, like just basically if you if you I remember about 10 years ago, most of the cookies in the Netherlands were vegan. And they didn't put any butter in there, they didn't put any eggs in it because it's just cheap or not too, and nobody tastes the difference anyway. And then there came this whole move where it needs to be like real butter, and now it's all but you know, but the prices are going up and the top in is getting better. So I do think, and I know that's a small part, but I think that movement combined with adding it in meats and and adding it, and maybe for example, a lot of the pizzas now in the Netherlands are made with a mix of plant and animal-based cheese. All right. Now go to restaurant uh stores where they buy the restaurant stuff. I don't know how you call them in the in English, but yeah, it's a big category where it's still cheese, it's just you know a little edit. So I think that's a very big movement, and I do think that maybe this is something that we animal welfare people just shut up about. Yeah, especially with the whole polarization going on. So I think that we need to focus on animals. You know, we're still talking about animals, we're not talking about meat, we're talking about animals, how many animals? It's like like classic getting the connection between the product and the animals, and then addressing them them on that part and just showing the welfare problems, and then maybe get the silent movement to just do a lot of the work for us as well.

James 1:05:15

Is that what you'll be anyway asking companies to do for this for the pricing transition work and saying, okay, you've tried these things, but like we want you to focus harder on on this particular area?

Anne 1:05:25

Yeah, we already are. Yeah, we already are saying that that's one of the reasons why we focus on supermarkets, right? And caterers, because you do not want to get it to a place and a person needs to choose. Am I gonna buy a veggie burger or a meat burger, or am I gonna buy a product with 20% mushroom in it? You want to get to the point that the supermarkets make those decisions for you, and everybody can just kind of happily go along, feel great, and know that they're not, you know, playing a lot. Like maybe that they know that they're reducing their impact on animal suffering. I mean, that's should always be a good thing to kind of mention. But you need to get away from making it their responsibility. And we already do that by addressing supermarkets, but I do think that that needs to be more done more within the protein uh transition as well.

James 1:06:21

Nice. Makes

Closing 3 questions

James 1:06:22

sense. Maybe we can move on to the closing questions. This has been a very fun, interesting thing, but uh we're of your time, so it's we can move towards wrapping up. Um, what's a bit of news in the animal advocacy animal welfare world that you are excited about or grateful to hear recently?

Anne 1:06:37

That is a difficult question, especially with the conversation we just had.

James 1:06:42

Hopefully not too difficult.

Anne 1:06:43

Yeah, no, well, which is a bit unnatural for me to say because I'm very focused on the markets and how the market how the supermarkets and the whole market chain is working on an well animal welfare. But I do like that now the supermarkets are lacking, all of a sudden our government is stepping up. So we just had a a very positive change within our government about a couple of months ago, and all of a sudden now there are things moving that haven't been moving in decades. So that really fills me up with some hope and some progress, some feeling of progress. So that's that's a silver lining that I feel like okay, well, maybe this is the part where we can actually kind of connect again with, yeah, most of the people do want change, and most of the people do want to, you know, increase animal welfare. And maybe this is a chance to do get a bit more pressure from the government towards better, uh, better, better welfare, actually. So that's uh a small silver lining, still a bit nice.

James 1:07:50

Any news is like this is good news, and yeah, I agree. I think if government's doing that, that's even better because obviously they can enforce things and make it a legal minimum. So it's hard to have people not taking it seriously. Do you have any recommendations of kind of like books, articles, or podcasts to people that maybe either to learn more about things that have inspired you or like how you think about campaigning in advocacy or anything that you might recommend?

Anne 1:08:15

The one thing that I can really encourage people to do is once you're uh starting in company campaigning, really dig in the targets, the companies that you're working towards or against, actually, where you're working against. So especially with big companies, a lot of times reporters have already written books about it, for example, on their culture or on their oh how the company is is developed, uh has been developing over the time over time. And it's very insightful to realize what kind of working culture your opponents are thinking from. So it helps you to if you're if you want to look for a what can motivate them, what can what can get them into action towards the animals, it really helps if you understand their culture. And in a lot of big companies, there's been, you know, people write books about them. For example, there is a very good book on Unilever, written by a Dutch journalist, but it's in English as well. And of obviously it's a big international company, which really explains how that company works from within. And it really helps you to kind of know what the logic is that the people on the other side of the table are being, you know, being fed with, and what kind of things they need to take into account if they go back to their bosses and saying, Hey, I want to do this, you know, what is what is his pitch gonna be like? So it's it's a very, I would definitely recommend as soon as you're picking up any kind of battle to a brand or a company, see if there's any books lying around on their culture.

James 1:09:58

It's interesting. Yeah, but maybe earlier I was wondering when you say you kind of get into the company's weeds, I was like, how do you actually do this? But yeah, actually trying to read books written about the company is quite interesting. And maybe the final question is how can people get more involved in your work or learn more about Wakadir?

Anne 1:10:16

Learn Dutch.

James 1:10:18

Yeah, okay. We might have some Dutch listeners. I don't think it's a huge amount, but maybe a couple.

Anne 1:10:24

Uh no, yeah. Of course, we have a website, we are uh active on Instagram and things like that. So sure, look us up and uh come find out what we're doing.

James 1:10:34

Nice, very cool. Well, Anna, thanks so much for your time and for all the great work you do. Yes, it's really fun to chat and learn more about all your amazing work.

Anne 1:10:41

Thank you so much for this conversation.