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Tuesday Dec 19, 2006
Goats bite charities
How should a charity respond to adverse press coverage? Is it betrer to stay quiet or come out fighting?
At the end of November, Andrew Tyler, director of Animal Aid published an article in The Independent arguing that the heavily promoted "give an animal for Christmas" schemes run by charities such as Oxfam, Christian Aid and Farm Africa were counter-productive.
Ultimately, my objection is to the commercial forces that are seeking to persuade people of the poor world that their best nutritional interests are served by buying into modern, high-throughput farmed animal production processes. With that comes an addiction to high capital input systems, additional stresses on precious water supplies, environmental destruction, a loss of control over the means of production, bad health, a nightmare animal welfare scenario and more human poverty and malnourishment.
Tyler also cited a report from another charity, World Land Trust that called animal gift schemes, "environmentally unsound and economically disastrous", primarily because goat farming was leading to desertification.
Other sections of the press soon picked up the story. The Daily Mail showed barely-concealed glee that "fashionable gifts" for the PC crowd were, apparently, doing more harm than good. The Times ran a similar story and, although both quoted rebuttals from Christian Aid and Oxfam, the overall effect can only have been damaging.
It's a nightmare scenario for charity fundraisers and press officers, potentially threatening a major campaign.
Farm Africa issued a strongly-worded press release (.pdf file) but, as far as I can see, neither Oxfam nor Christian Aid have done the same. Perhaps they didn't want to give any more publicity to what they see as unfounded allegations, or perhaps they feel there is enough information elsewhere on their site.
As a potential donor, however, if I'd heard these stories in the press, I'd want to read a direct response to them. The issues are complicated. But surely it's better to put the evidence in front of people rather than pretending that a controversy never happened.
Update: Intelligent Giving have their own analysis of goat giving - not the pros and cons, but whether your money will actually end up where you think it's heading.
Posted by Tom Green ( 11:52 AM ) Link to this post Comments[0]