BLOG: Survey reveals efficacy of investigation footage in diminishing the perceived credibility of animal agriculture operations
June 10, 2025
By Zoe Griffiths, Research and Operations Associate
Providing legal advocacy for exploited animals is at the heart of Animal Partisan’s mission. A key component of this work involves shedding light on the cruelty and neglect that farmed animals endure on an everyday basis, in hopes of eroding the picturesque family farm facade that the animal agriculture industry has so successfully upheld in the eyes of the general public.
With some of our current work taking place in the context of smaller-scale animal agriculture operations, such as livestock auctions, we wanted to empirically test the impact of our efforts in this domain. How might investigation footage from these facilities affect not only the perceived credibility of small and large-scale animal agriculture operations, but that of animal rights groups as well?
We conducted a brief online survey experiment to gain insight into our research questions. The study’s results, which are covered in more detail in our research report, were affirming of this approach. Indeed, they reveal the promise that investigation footage holds in decreasing the perceived credibility of small and large animal agriculture operations, while increasing the perceived credibility of animal rights groups and the general public’s attitudes towards farmed animals.
Methodology
We recruited 300 U.S. participants via Pollfish to partake in our survey experiment, the methodology of which was adapted from a 2009 research study. Pollfish employs the use of numerous quality checks to ensure the delivery of high-quality responses. These include the automatic disqualification of respondents for failing within-survey attention check questions, rushing through the survey, providing “nonsensical” free responses, and “straightlining”— choosing the same response down multiple questions.
Our survey posed the same sets of Likert-scale questions— those asking participants to rate their level of agreement with a statement from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”— to each participant before and after watching our social media video highlighting our investigation of Graystone Small Animal Sales, a livestock auction in Pennsylvania, which revealed widespread neglect and suffering of hundreds of farmed birds and rabbits.
These survey scales aimed to measure the participants’ perceived credibility of small and large-scale animal agriculture operations, as well as that of animal rights organizations. They additionally measured participants’ general attitudes towards farmed animals and the perceived level of “wrongdoing” on the part of Graystone’s owners, employees, and customers.
See the figure below for a visual representation of our methodology.
Results
After disqualifying participants who “straight-lined” through at least one set of matrix questions but did not meet Pollfish’s threshold for disqualification, in addition to weighing our data to reflect national U.S. gender and age demographics, we were left with a final study population of 183 participants.
Our results were clear: the perceived credibility of small and large-scale animal agriculture operations decreased significantly among participants after viewing our Graystone video. Additionally, the perceived credibility of animal rights groups, as well as participant attitudes towards farmed animals, increased significantly after watching the investigation video.
This effect was the most pronounced in terms of small-scale animal agriculture operations. The perceived credibility of these businesses decreased by nearly 18% post-video, dropping below the perceived credibility of animal rights organizations. Before watching the investigation footage, the perceived credibility of animal rights organizations was significantly lower than that of small-scale animal agriculture operations; this shifted dramatically post-video.
Other findings of potential interest:
66.4% of participants strongly agreed that the livestock auction’s owners should be held responsible for their treatment of these animals
55.2% of participants strongly agreed that the auction’s employees and customers should be held responsible for their treatment of these animals
While we should be careful not to draw definitive conclusions from a single survey, our findings should be encouraging to those working on cases that involve smaller agricultural operations, as well as those whose work prioritizes investigations.
For a deeper dive into our study’s methodology, data analysis, and results, read our full research report here.