Victoria plans $900k campaign to counter animal activists’ message

Victoria will launch a public campaign to stamp out untruthful and negative messages spread about the state’s agriculture industry and provide more support to farmers.

Victorian Agriculture Minister Jaclyn Symes. Picture: Yuri Kouzmin

A PUBLIC campaign to stamp out untruthful and negative messages spread about the Victorian agriculture industry by animal activists will be funded by the State Government.

The state will spend $710,000 on the campaign and provide an additional $190,000 to the Victorian Farmers Federation to work with and support farmers affected by farm invasions.

“(The campaign) will provide an opportunity to tell the story from farmers’ perspective and really combat some of those messages, that in my view are not true and are casting a view of the whole industry off isolated incidents,” Victorian Agriculture Minister Jaclyn Symes told The Weekly Times.

Ms Symes said the funding for the VFF would allow staff to work with police and better inform farmers on what to do during an invasion.

She said it would also help the VFF “make sure everything is up to speed on animal welfare standards”.

VFF president David Jochinke said they had not yet allocated new staff to the role and were still in discussions on the best way to execute the project but saw it as an opportunity to be “proactive rather than reactive”.

He said the VFF funding would also allow them to undertake research to see what messages were needed to be told in the campaign.

“With activists in the last year getting more active, what’s their key messaging and do we have adequate responses to that?” he said.

“Is it nutrition, is it bigger issues with production, or simply promoting benefits of eating locally grown food?”

The campaign will be delivered by an outside company.

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The announcement comes as Victorian Greens Senator Janet Rice said it was “sometimes necessary” for animal activists to break the law.

“Civil disobedience is sometimes necessary to expose cruel and illegal practices,” Senator Rice said last week.

“We know people have been appalled about what is going on with live sheep exports, and the cruelty of some poultry farm operations. These practices have only come to light when people have been forced to break the law to collect evidence.”

Senator Rice said activists who did commit trespass should expect to be charged. It would then be up to the courts to decide whether there were extenuating circumstances.