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Courtesy of NAA:

The National Aquaculture Association (NAA) provides the following guidance to assist its members in preparing for an animal rights campaign. This guidance may not fit every farm or business and interested readers are more than welcome to adapt these suggestions to fit their situation or need.

The NAA has received credible information that several groups that identify themselves as animal welfare or animal rights organizations may focus on U.S. aquaculture during 2018. Such groups typically distribute malicious images and comments to create public revulsion towards all animal agriculture. A frequent tactic is to trigger controversial, negative verbal or visual exchanges by antagonizing farm and business owners, managers and/or employees during farm visits, protests, public events or via social media.

The NAA suggests that farms and processing plants re-examine or adopt hiring, farm visitation, and farm security policies to address these tactics used by anti-animal agriculture organizations. State or species associations should also consider adopting policies and practices, to avoid negative verbal exchanges or visual images during meetings and conferences.

1. Hiring Practices: Screen potential employees carefully. Keep an eye out for any indication of an individual seeking employment in order to advance the agenda of an animal rights group. Conduct searches of prospective employees on social media (Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others). Warning flags include factors that appear unusual for the applicant to be interested in the type or location of the employment opportunity. These factors may include: out-of-state driver’s license, telephone number, addresses, references or banks for check deposit without an indication of permanent relocation plans, and clearly over-educated and/or over-qualified applicants. Applicants who exhibit or support a vegan lifestyle are unlikely to have a legitimate interest in a job in aquaculture, make the effort to confirm that potential employees have no such reservations. Contact the NAA for additional hiring practice suggestions.
2. Fish and Shellfish Welfare Policy: Develop or review a farm/company animal welfare policy to share with the public. Contact the NAA for a suggested template. 
3. Farm Visitation: Develop or review a policy for welcoming and managing visitors. Sharing the work that you do to nurture, grow and market farm-raised fish and shellfish is a valuable means to educate your community and public decision-makers. Contact the NAA for farm visitation suggestions.  
4. Biosecurity Plan: Implement or review a farm biosecurity plan. A major component of a biosecurity plan is to restrict the movement of visitors to the farm or processing plant and to restrict employees to their assigned areas of responsibility. A biosecurity plan is typically focused on reducing risk of introducing disease or food safety hazards to the farm and farm products. However, clearly described and posted notices of visitor and employee access restrictions can assist in identifying visitor or employee intentions of conducting unauthorized actions. For assistance in developing a biosecurity plan, review the What You Need to Know About Biosecurity and How to Design Your Biosecurity Plan webinars on the NAA website at http://thenaa.net/webinars and talk to your veterinarian or aquatic animal health professional. 
5. Re-examine farming practices: Make time to walk through the farm, possibly bringing in a trusted family member or friend who has not spent much time on farms, to attempt to think through and change practices that might appear cruel to someone unfamiliar with fish or shellfish farming. 
6. Information Technology: Review your farm or association web site to make sure there is nothing (text or images) that might be construed as being cruel to animals. Meet with employees or contractors responsible for your website and electronic communication to advise them of a potential cyber-attack by anti-farming groups. Ask them if your website and email communications are sufficiently protected. 
7. Employee Notification: Meet with employees to explain the potential threat, review policies, and provide instructions on who to contact, how to report suspicious and inappropriate activities, and how to avoid an angry confrontation with activists focused upon creating negative images or comments. Discuss how the social media can be used negatively. Contact the NAA for a suggested employee animal care agreement. 
8. Prepare for protests: Animal welfare and animal rights organizations protest at farms, businesses, wholesalers, retailers, meetings and conferences and will interfere with vehicular traffic that is transporting animals or animal products. Their goal is to trigger angry responses that do not reflect the moral or ethical standards of the farming community. At a minimum, prepare for protests by communicating with law enforcement in advance of incidents and understand who to contact and how to request assistance if a protest occurs. Do not engage with activists and avoid being baited-in by inflammatory tactics. Contact the NAA for the Animal Agriculture Alliance publications entitled, Vigilance is Key: Simple Steps to Strengthen Farm and Plant Security or meeting or conference suggestions contained in Preparing for Activist Protests. 
9. Speaking to the media and public: Presenting your farm and your dedication to farming and animal husbandry is an important activity. How you and your farm are presented visually to the public may be more important in this age of instant images than what you say or write. Contact the NAA for media and public interaction suggestions.

The NAA has partnered with the Animal Agriculture Alliance to produce this information and a variety of helpful suggestions, templates and policies to reflect the 24/7 humane care and best aquaculture practices of U.S. fish and shellfish farmers.
 
For more information or the guidance publications described above, please contact the NAA Office at 850-216-2400 or naa@thenaa.net.