In case you missed it, 2020 had one last issue for the meat industry to deal with on December 23^rd, when an activist with Direct Action Everywhere managed to appear on a Fox Business show posing as the CEO of Smithfield Foods. It was the finale to a year full of ridiculous actions from DXE, including misrepresenting their identities to gain access to plants to install cameras, protesting at the homes of meat company executives (burying piglets as well as spreading what they claim to be hog manure on their lawns), and calling for a moratorium on “factory farms and slaughterhouses” in the state of California (as a “first step” to ending animal agriculture nationwide).

According to DXE, they had been trying to pull this type of stunt off for quite some time, but most news outlets saw through them. They boasted about how they used fake email addresses and phone numbers to get past staff at the news outlet, and intentionally chose the holidays as a time when more tenured employees were likely to be on vacation. I’m not sure how much the stunt actually accomplished for DXE, as the impersonator seemingly chickened out of making his intended claim that Smithfield was going to go completely plant-based.

It’s incredibly disheartening to see activists finish the year by stooping to a new low, impersonating a food industry leader during a national news broadcast about the critically important topic of providing vaccines to frontline food industry workers. This type of stunt undermines public trust in both the media and the food industry at a time when farmers, ranchers, processing plant workers, retail employees, restaurant servers and every other link in the food chain continues to go above and beyond to keep shelves stocked and the supply chain flowing. This incident joins an extremely long list of examples of DXE’s willingness to fabricate, manipulate and outright lie about animal agriculture in its efforts to bring an end to the industry. This organization should not be taken seriously and its attempts to disrupt the food supply are shameful, especially given the rise in food insecurity over the past year.

This incident should serve as a reminder to media to be more vigilant in fact-checking claims about animal agriculture and the meat industry, as it proves that activists will do and say just about anything (true or false) to promote their agenda. It is also yet another tactic to add to the long list of things for animal agriculture and the meat community to be on the lookout for.

ICYMI: Activist poses on national news as meat company CEO

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