Wildlife Conservation Sweden Project #26550

Help raise awareness about animal rights in Sweden

by Djurens Ratt

Project Report | Mar 6, 2024
Summer tour 2024 - soon to come!

By Ida Arneson | Outreach Manager

For the 19th year in a row, Djurens Rätt will go on a summer tour!

During the tour we visit festivals and events all over Sweden to raise awareness about the exploitation and suffering of animals in the fur industry, factory farms and animal testing. Our goal is to inspire more people to make animal friendly choices in their everyday life.

Here are some updates about the soon to come summer tour 2024!

Campaign focus – turbo chickens

Djurens Rätt focuses on creating as much impact as possible for as many animals as possible. In Sweden alone, over 100 million of chickens are killed every year, which makes chickens one of the most numerous of terrestrial animals.

The majority of chickens in Sweden are turbo chickens. Turbo chickens grow so fast that they get hurt, sick and die prematurely. The majority develop some type of movement disorder before their lives end at only 35 days of age. By then they have grown 50 times their size from hatching. The chicks' parents are forced to starve to slow their rapid growth.

Chickens, or more specific turbo chickens will therefore be the focus of our campaign this summer.

The project group is now planning the campaign activities on how to engage, in an interactive way, more people to take action for the chickens.

Preparing tour coaches and volunteers

In preparations for this summer tour, we have started the recruitment process of new tour coaches who will lead our volunteers and coordinate the different tour stops. We are looking forward to welcome new colleagues to the summer tour team!

We are also preparing our volunteers for this summer, for example we have updated our education material, and we are also planning to have three different kick-offs in Stockholm, Malmö and Gothenburg. During the kick-off we will update our knowledge regarding the campaign focus, outreach skills and the current situation for the chickens, and we are now setting more details about the program which will include inspiring talks and workshops.

Djurens Rätt's summer tour is made possible by your support. Together we create change for the animals and inspire more people to make animal friendly choices.

Thank you!

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Nov 7, 2023
Results and reactions from this year's tour!

By Ida Arneson | Outreach Manager

Djurens Rätt 18th summer tour - a change-maker for chickens!

The summer tour is a yearly tradition at Djurens Rätt, where we visit festivals, markets and cultural events to spread the message that animals have rights, with the goal to encourage people to make more animal friendly choices in their everyday life. This year we maximized our campaign creativity and managed to put even more light on the situation for chickens in factory farms. Here is a summary with the result and reactions from this year's tour!

Djurens Rätt strives for a world where animals are respected as sentient beings with the right to their own lives. With effective campaigns and political advocacy, Djurens Rätt makes a difference globally for the animals that are the most exploited and suffer the worst, and our summer tour is one important campaign to make this vision a reality.

This summer, team outreach, which includes our four tour managers Fanny, Caroline, Alfred and Catalina and more than 60 volunteers, have traveled all around Sweden and created thousands and thousands of conversations about animal rights with focus on the chickens' situation, thereby encouraging more people to take actions for the cause of the animals!

One new campaign activity for this summer was A chicken's life in 4D. The concept, a mobile chicken factory, was a converted truck that was supposed to be as similar as possible to a real chicken factory. With all their senses, the visitors got to experience what it means to be a chicken in Sweden today – from the sound and smell to the dirty floor.

Some of the results of this tour:

We made 53 tour stops.
Vi visited 20 different cities.
We welcomed more than 780 new members.
Handed out thousands of flyers and magazines about animal rights and vegan recipes.
More than 2100 people choosed to visit A chicken’s life in 4D.
The mobile chicken factory visited 17 different events and 12 different cities.

The reactions have been many to A chicken’s life in 4D, such as positivity that we highlighted the chickens, but also surprise, sadness, anger and shock. The summer tour's volunteers tell us more about the reactions they met from visitors.

- One visitor who got out of the truck wondered why no one reported the chicken industry to the police. I told them that, unfortunately, it is legal to raise and keep chickens in this way in Sweden today. There was also someone who said "Now I understand why you are vegan." Many of the visitors also wanted tips on alternatives to eat chicken after they visit the mobile factory, says volunteer Susanna Niemi.

- Many were shocked, saying they knew it was bad, but not THAT bad in the chicken industry. Some have been moved to tears after visiting the mobile factory, says Djurens Rätts chairperson Camilla Bergvall.

Within the upcoming months we will start planning the summer tour for next year. Our goal is to create even more engagement and change for the animals!

Djurens Rätt's summer tour is made possible by your support - together we create change for the animals and inspire more people to make animal friendly choices.

Thank you!

(All photos by Tim Kristensson)

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Jul 10, 2023
A warm hello from the middle of our summer tour 2023!

By Caroline Gripenberg | Tour Coach

Our summer tour is made possible by all our fantastic volunteers as well as this year's tour coaches Alfred, Fanny and Caroline. Here is a special greeting from the field from Caroline!

Hello!

We are now half way through our summer tour, and have visited festivals and other places such as Rosendal Garden Party, Lollapalooza, Jubileumsfestivalen, West pride, Linköping, Uppsala and Almedalsveckan in Visby, and there is a lot more to come. We have so far welcomed over three hunded new members to Djurens Rätt. We are so happy and pleased to know there are many people out there who, same as us, stand alongside our fellow animal friends and want to create a better world for them.

What we do on our summer tour

The focus of the tour this year is to raise awareness and create change for the chickens suffering in factory farms, and some of the activities we use are:

speaking with people about the situation for chickens and the suffering they endure
encouraging people to eat plant-based and giving them flyers with recipes
handing out flyers with a QR-code to scan to do a quiz with questions about chickens in Sweden, and the chance to win a book
visitors can get temporary tattoos with important animal-rights statements
children can play the game "guess the pawprint", which is very popular

Something special that we bring on the tour this year is our truck, where we have created a demonstration of a typical broiler chicken farm for visitors to experience. The inside of the truck is decorated to mimic a chicken factory with crowding, loud noise, dirty surfaces, strong smells and dim lighting. Here, the visitors can experience what it is like to be a chicken with their senses; smell, sight and sound. This has made many visitors curious to visit the truck.

The feedback and reactions after visiting the truck have been divided. Some visitors are crying tears of empathy, some say surprised: "but this cannot be in Sweden, right"? Most visitors agree that it is absolutely awful that we treat chickens this way in Sweden and that this needs to change - now!

In this report is a link to a video with some reactions from visitors.

Beautiful interactions with the public during our summer-tour

During the tour, we have had thousands of beautiful and rewarding conversations on the topic of animal rights with bypassing visitors.

Here are some examples:

many can not believe that we have something called "broilers" in Sweden 2023; were chickens live on top of each other in their own feces without getting their basic needs met, are slaughtered at a really young age and transported to the slaughterhouse in horrific conditions
many visitors are pleased to hear that Djurens Rätt work to create change for animals by having important dialogues with politicians as well as big companies to change laws and regulations and end animal cruelty. We need to change all industries where humans exploit animals, such as factory farms, the fur industry and animal testing.
visitors are very happy to receive recipes and advice on how to adopt an animal-friendly diet. A few of our visitors are wanting to go plant-based but say "they are not really there yet" and believe it is very important that people with the power are making regulations. I got the important comment from one visitor saying: "It is time for a minister of animal welfare".

We are also extremely happy to meet people who are already members of Djurens Rätt and other animal friends, where they give us a thumbs up or make a beautiful comment about the work we do and the fact that we are doing this summer tour. I have even gotten a hug or two. <3

Proud to be a part of the tour

Unfortunately there are sometimes negative comments from visitors about how good meat tastes. But, with providing the correct knowledge and having a loving conversation, these people have actually gotten inspired to live a more animal friendly life and comment back: "you know what, I am going to cut down on eating meat". This shows how important it is to spread awareness about animal rights to the public and having a summer tour like this is a fantastic way of meeting them.

I could not be more proud of being a part of this tour. Being halfway in, I now know how many people out there want animals to have a better, safer and healthier life. I, on behalf of the team in our summer tour, are looking forward to keep on sharing information and knowledge about animal rights to the public. We now have events such as Stockholm pride, Open-air cinema, Malmöfestivalen, Nytorgsfesten - and many more places to visit- around the corner.

It is thanks to all our members and supporters that we are able to make this happen. We are one big family who want to share the world with our animal friends alongside us, and not having them exploited by humans. Together we can make changes for a more animal friendly world. Our summer tour has convinced me of this more than ever before.

Thank you for your support!

Links:

Reaction video of the truck (in Swedish)

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