5 minute read - September 17th 2024

“Are you coming to the shrimp protest?”

It took me a second to compute this question when I was first asked. A shrimp protest… Sounds ridiculous, right? Yet a week later, there I was, holding a placard outside Tesco (the UK's biggest supermarket chain) at the world's first shrimp welfare protest, alongside 70 others, including someone dressed as a giant shrimp.

How on earth did I get here?

Not long ago, I would have never imagined spending my free time protesting… let alone for animal welfare… and shrimp welfare?

Stranger still — it may have worked: Less than 100 days later, Tesco announced their first-ever welfare standards for crustaceans, including big wins for shrimp. For the few shrimp lovers reading this blog — I'll explain what we were protesting and what Tesco's announcement means shortly. But first, let's address a more relatable question: Is protesting a sensible way to help animals?

Protests: Friend or foe?

Why be skeptical about protesting?

When you think of a protestor, what comes to mind? Many imagine someone on the political fringes with extreme demands. Perhaps a tie-dye-wearing hippie with laudable ideals but naive about real-world complexities. Or maybe a rural retiree waving a flag, shouting about traditional values — committed to preserving important principles but blind to the need for progress.

These caricatures aren't fair depictions of most protestors, but they reflect legitimate reasons for skepticism:

• Unrealistic demands: Many protests call for sweeping changes that seem politically or economically unfeasible, often failing to account for real-world constraints or competing interests. “Lower house prices, but no construction near me!” .. “Free jet skis for everyone, and also no raising taxes!”

• Too small to work: Protests are often far too small to have any influence on decision-makers. If it doesn’t reach a critical mass, what’s the point?

• Social division: Disruptive tactics or provocative rhetoric can alienate potential supporters and politicize otherwise bipartisan issues. (Although there is some evidence that these tactics can be more effective than they seem).

Personally, I suspect most protests make zero progress. Even when they achieve something, I question their effectiveness compared to other options, especially considering the time and energy invested.

So there are reasons to be skeptical, but we need to be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Protesting has immense potential.

Why remain open minded about protesting?

Evidence shows protests can effect change. In animal welfare, they've been crucial to campaigns like The Humane League's, which pressure corporations to phase out battery cage eggs from their supply-chains. In the US, 40% of eggs are now cage-free. While these are incremental changes, history shows protest movements can create significant societal shifts, from the suffragette movement winning voting rights for women, to the civil rights movement which led a leap in progress towards a less prejudiced and more egalitarian American society.

So protests, at their best, are worth consideration when trying to build a better world. But they’re not a panacea. We need to think strategically about when and how to use them effectively, and we need to be led by the evidence. (Thankfully, organizations like Social Change Lab are building the empirical knowledge base on what does and doesn’t work when it comes to protests.)

Okay, back to the shrimp protest..

My experience at the protest

I arrived at the protest half-expecting to see three other people there and half-expecting those that were there would be getting in people’s faces and turning the public against them. To my surprise, there were so many of us that we had to spread out around the corner to avoid blocking the sidewalk. My fellow protestors there that day weren’t the caricatures you might expect. Rather, they were regular folks — many of them novice protestors like me — making time in their busy workdays to protest, clear-eyed about the low chances of success but motivated by the understanding that the potential upside is high enough to make it worth finding the time.

Rather than being confrontational, the protestors were polite and smiling. Rather than being disdainful, passersby were curious what on earth we were complaining about. When we told them, the most common response was surprise that Tesco didn’t have basic welfare standards for shrimp already. After all, consumers want high welfare products and naturally expect that sophisticated supermarkets will compete to meet their needs.

I must admit though that not everyone understood what we were protesting for. One older man, speaking English as a second language, took a flyer and said to me sympathetically “you’re right to be upset that they don’t stock enough shrimp at the store!”. Definitely something lost in translation there 😂

Our biggest challenge? Creating catchy chants about shrimp welfare. Seriously, I challenge you: What’s the best you can come up with? My favorite of the day was “shame on a nation: eyestalk ablation!” — from experience, that one is hard to chant with a straight face!

From protest to impact shrimpact

Less than 100 days post-protest, Tesco announced their crustacean welfare policy — likely improving the lives of billions of shrimp over the coming decades.

But it’s not as simple shrimple as “get 70 people chanting bad chants outside a supermarket and a corporations will decide to do the right thing”. Far from it. A range of animal welfare organizations drove this change.

In these campaigns, "bad cop" organizations like pressure companies publicly by bringing customer and shareholder attention to practices that don’t meet their expectations. For example, The Humane League and Sinergia Animal (two of FarmKind’s top animal charities) publicly pressure companies to phase out caged eggs, and pork from the least humane providers.

The “bad cop” that organized the shrimp protest I attended was Mercy for Animals. They made sure we protested effectively without being an imposition shrimposition on members of the public or staff at the local Tesco store.

Then there are the “good cops”. These organizations work with the industry to help them transition to kinder farming practices. For example, Shrimp Welfare Project (another FarmKind recommended charity) help shrimp producers introduce humane slaughter methods. They helped make this win a reality, with Tesco’s policy thanking them by name! .

The domino effect has now begun: A week after Tesco’s announcement, Sainsbury's (UK's second-largest grocer) announced their own shrimp welfare standards. We can only hope that this progress will spread not just from company to company but from country to country as improved animal welfare standards often do (you might call it “shrimperialism”).

I asked Shrimp Welfare Project co-founder Andres Jimenez Zorilla how he thinks things will play out: “Momentum towards higher animal welfare is undeniable, and we fully expect humane slaughter to become the industry standard for producers supplying European (including UK) retailers in the near future. It’s clear that consumer demand for humane and sustainable practices is only going in one direction and SWP is keen to support the industry to make the transition smoother and faster.”

Lessons learned

Okay.. so I went to a weird protest. So what? For me, there were two key takeaways:

1) Strategic protests belong on the menu of options for making change in the world.

2) If concern for shrimp welfare can influence major corporations, people are more supportive of animal welfare reforms than we might think.

So the next time you hear about an unusual protest, don't dismiss it outright. It might just be the catalyst for meaningful change — even if it sounds a bit fishy at first.