Animal activist groups are ratcheting up their corporate campaigns after being sidelined by the pandemic. We receive several emails a week from vegan groups targeting restaurants and grocers regarding their poultry sourcing, just as they have done with eggs and pork.

There are a few important facts that producers and associations can communicate to their customers, starting with the fact that these campaigns are an illusion.

Here’s how the illusion works: Susie, a vegan in Los Angeles, gets an email from an animal rights group asking her to send a pre-written tweet to Restaurant XYZ telling the business to change their chicken supply. Susie obliges and sends the tweet — despite never having been to Restaurant XYZ (or knowing anything about animal husbandry). Several days later, there are a couple of hundred tweets similar to Susie’s about Restaurant XYZ. Fearing bad PR, Restaurant XYZ agrees to make production demands from their supplier.

In other words, these voices are not normal consumers who eat or buy meat at these restaurants or grocery stores. It’s vegans, who don’t eat or shop there and never will, griping from behind a keyboard.

What’s more, these campaigns are bought and paid for. A single wealthy group called the Open Philanthropy Project (OPP), primarily funded by a Facebook co-founder and his wife, has given more than $130 million dollars to animal rights causes since 2016.

Just recently, the group awarded $3.6 million to the Humane League with the express purpose of funding the group’s corporate harassment campaign, after giving $1.6 million in 2019. OPP has also steered about $10 million to Mercy for Animals, another major corporate agitator.

This funding allows The Humane League and other activists to manufacture an “echo chamber” that creates the illusion to companies that people want them to change their animal protein sourcing.

OPP has also donated $100,000 to vegan media organization Sentient Media and nearly $1.8 million to the Guardian for (biased) reporting on farm animals. This helps support the echo chamber.

To be sure, angry Tweets, emails or phone calls from vegans are an annoyance. But targeted companies should also be aware that the activists are trying to trap them into an even worse situation.

With poultry, the activists demand subservience to the "Better Chicken Commitment." The commitment is based on standards created by Global Animal Partnership (GAP) — which received $3 million from OPP.

GAP was originally a program of Whole Foods, so the standards are predictably higher-cost. And as producers already know, there are serious downsides. For example, one GAP-certified free-range poultry producer suffered millions in losses after predators killed 160,000 chickens. (Is that “humane” to these activists?)

But most importantly, three of the five members of GAP’s board of directors GAP work for animal activist organizations.

Any company that commits to GAP standards is committing itself to a program that is controlled by animal activists and whose standards could be changed by these activists. And if they try to leave, the vegan bullies will come after them again.

As we are learning, past commitments that restaurants and retailers have made on pork and eggs are proving to be too expensive and too unrealistic. Last month, The Humane League issued an “Eggspose” report naming several brands that could not meet their cage-free egg pledges. Some companies have even quietly dropped their pledges.

In contrast, we have not seen or heard any evidence of these corporate harassment campaigns reducing sales.

Corporate harassment campaigns are experiencing an upswing at the moment, not because there’s a grassroots groundswell but because there are greenbacks lining the pockets of these animal rights groups. It is imperative that suppliers communicate to their restaurant and retail customers that this illusion is more bark than bite.

Don’t let the tail wag the hog

Join for free* to continue reading.