My guest today is Thorbjørn Schiønning, also known as Toby, who is the Director of Communications and Campaigns, and co-founder of Anima International. He’s been involved in animal rights for 15+ years, specialising in corporate outreach, campaigning and media work.
In this epsiode, we speak about the recent huge success for chickens in Norway – where the Norwegian chicken industry agreed to phase out fast-growing broiler breeds, affecting over 70 million animals, by the end of 2027 – the first time a country has taken such major action to help chickens raised for meat. More importantly, we spend a bunch of time discussing Anima International’s strategy when it comes to corporate campaigning, and why they’ve come up with a new term, “fair cop” which they feel is a better approach to the well-known concepts of good cop and bad cop.
Toby has lots of useful advice for anyone interested in campaigning and advocacy: why threatening big campaigns can be counterproductive, why more campaign groups should build a war chest of campaigning funds, why most campaigners should wait longer before escalating and much more.
I learned a lot about corporate campaigning strategy from this one and this is coming at a really critical time in the movement, both for cage-free and our work on broilers, so hope you all enjoy!
Chapters:
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:03:04) - Should we block new farms?
(00:08:19) - Norway’s breakthrough for chickens
(00:16:06) - Why animal groups should focus on fewer issues
(00:23:12) - Focusing on commitments vs implementation?
(00:28:06) - What fair cop means
(00:36:13) - How to campaign when you're in it for the long haul
(00:47:25) - The value of patience & dialogue
(01:07:43) - Anima's £1 million war chest for campaigning
(01:13:39) - Poker, backgammon and developing good judgement
(01:21:43) - Good news, recommendations, and where to find Anima
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