A few points that might be helpful.

1. Broiler Breeds: These grandparent stock as you write do take years to build up, however, that process has already been happening as companies have committed and moved to the BCC, so additional growth in this will happen significantly faster than, when first developing these new breeds. Scaling up with demand is now more like a year to two now, as it is drawing from a larger base.
2. In terms of transitioning cage-free barns taking months and years to complete, vs a slaughter device for broilers being implemented significantly faster. I think this is also related to planning. To reduce down time, barn transitions can happen quickly, but a barn transition would likely not happen if new caged-hens had been just put into a system, rather they would wait for these birds to be slaughtered. But if they were near end of life, concievably a barn system transition could happen in the same or faster timeframe than a CAS is installed, based on a companies funding and planning.
3. I think it is also useful to consider the impact on welfare, when prioritising some of these interventions. Ie breed has a significantly larger impact on broilers than slaughter https://welfarefootprint.org/#
4. On the timelines of implementing cage-free commitments. It is true that many commitments made in the global north focussed on longer, and namely 2025 fulfilment dates. However, the implementation of many of these commitments started from the inception of their commitment in a phased approach. More recently, for example with Kewpie in Asia, smaller and shorter time milestones are being agreed upon, that perhaps better illustrates what change often looks like.

Overall, my personal perspective, and I do work on corporate commitments, they still seems like a good bet. Due to the combination of impact on animals in near/medium term, increasing the competence of campaigning organisations and embedding animal welfare policy within food companies.

Thanks, the report this year will be coming out a bit later due to another big project being released imminently.

It is promising seeing that the cumulative results from previous years continue to increase. For example: the 2023 cumulative when from 89% at the time of the report to now being 93%.

Thanks for the suggestions, I will mention them to the team.

Sure

Thanks for writing this, this is also something I have been thinking about and you've expressed it more eloquently.

One thing I have thought might be useful is at times showing restraint with job titling. I've observed cases where people have had a title for example Director in a small org or growing org, and in a larger org this role might be a coordinator, lead, admin. 

I've thought at times this doesn't necessarily set people up for long term career success as the logical career step in terms of skills and growth, or a career shift, often is associated with a lower sounding title. Which I think decreases motivation to take on these roles.

At the same time I have seen people, including myself, take a decrease in salary and title, in order to shift careers and move forward.

Thanks for the additional insight.

I think you are in a better position to see what is needed. How I would think about this is what leverage do your opponents to these asks have and if you think your actions would be powerful enough to overcome them.

Good luck on the next phase!

Glad to hear it was helpful. I think they are planning to do another piece of research that will incorporate this as well. Awesome organisation.

This is a great write up! Thanks for sharing it!

I'm curious how you see this aspect playing out?

Many MPs are supportive of animal issues but have little incentive to raise it as a political issue. One MP and one staffer said that politicians are often exposed to radical animal activists and need to be shown that animal advocates can be moderate and offer reasonable policy solutions.

I think there is a difference between radical actions and radical asks. If a radical action is asking for a country to immediately stop eating meat, the ask and action are generally considered easy to write off and dismiss as being unrealistic. I think this is often a default view of animal activists. Radical actions (and the threat of them) with a reasonable ask, ie cage-free campaigns, are more difficult to be dismissed.

The issues you chose to focus on from my perspective, seem quite reasonable. Are you considering incorporating more radical actions into your future plans?

If I get it right, your thoughts are how do we mitigate costs, limit logistics and provide better access to major organisations and funders.

I'm excited about and supportive of how AVA has developed regional conferences. I attended the Asia AVA and noticed that numerous funders from other parts of the world were in attendance as well as staff from major organisations. I think the regional events provide a number of other pluses that AVA Africa pretty much say themselves.

By hosting this event on the continent, we can:
 

• Bring together a larger, more diverse group of advocates from the region.
   
• Address logistical and cost barriers such as visa challenges and travel expenses.
   
• Facilitate better-informed and regionally relevant interventions for farmed animals.

Many funders I've spoken to have a genuine interest in supporting and growing animal protection work in other parts of the world and I can imagine that their attendance will continue and probably grow at these regional events. I also see potential, that these regional events, might inspire future funders in each region, something I see as important as we continue to grow this work.

I can see that LA might not be the best place if we are looking at a global event, concerns about the scholarship progress and your burning desire to do great things for animals. I also think that the addition of the regional conferences is a fantastic step in improving accessibility for organisations to meet, co-create, build community and fundraise.

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In your post and subsequent comments I sense dissatisfaction with the scholarship process and that your primary goal of attending AVA US is to access funders. I realise you are posting from an anonymous account, so maybe you already do this, but if not. Post about the work your organisation is doing here and on FAST. I'm sure people would love to hear about it. If you haven't presented at a regional AVA summit or a conference like CARE I think might be a great thing to do.

Working with many food companies on their commitment to transition to a cage-free egg supply. I have seen the following happen, staff gain internal buy-in, publicly state it on their website, in some cases the first time the company has a tangible stated animal welfare position. 

I've rarely encountered people at a company who don't care about animal welfare, I think the challenge for them is understanding how they can operationalise it. I think the cage-free work has helped many companies, and staff within them, to move forward and builds inertia.

An example I like of this is Carrefour's work on cage-free for chickens and then moving forward to create cage-free systems for quail.

I understand that in total corporate commitments cover about 70-80% of the US egg market. 

The remainder 20-30% is more or less what you identify, non-chain restaurants and non-chain companies in other industries, where the time to do corporate work is probably not worth it and would be expected to shift following law making. 

Many schools and cafeterias use third party catering companies like Sodexo, Compass, Aramark etc, that have cage-free commitments and are making solid progress on their commitments.

If you're calculating the 40% aggregate by assuming that all the companies have equal market share, that can skew what is happening. The largest in each sector normally have the largest piece. And sector by sector by market share it is grocery stores, restaurant chains/caterers, manufacturing and then hotels.