“Farmer Lobbyist” Is Animal Rights Operative with Ties to Extremist
Recently, a front group popped up on Capitol Hill called the “American Meat Producers Association.” Despite its name, the lobbyist who runs it not only has a history working for anti-meat activists, she’s living with a former spokesman for an animal liberation terrorist group.
Meet Holly Bice. She’s a former staff lobbyist for the anti-meat Humane Society Legislative Fund (now Humane World Action) and Animal Wellness Action. The latter was formed by anti-meat lobbyist Wayne Pacelle in 2018 after he resigned from the Humane Society under a cloud of sexual harassment allegations. (Bice joined just months after AWA formed.)
These days, Bice has formed her own lobbying firm. But she’s still cavorting with animal rights extremists.
According to Montgomery County, MD property records, Bice owns a home with John “J.P.” Goodwin. Goodwin is a former spokesperson for the Animal Liberation Front, an FBI-designed domestic terrorist group. The public property record says it is their principal residence.
The Animal Liberation Front and its sister group the Earth Liberation Front are responsible for numerous crimes, including arson, in the 80s, 90s, and 00s. Like today’s Antifa, the ALF was loosely organized, but it utilized a “press office” to talk to the media–and that’s where Goodwin came in.
Goodwin was a spokesperson at the ALF press office, where he glorified crime. Referring to an arson that caused $1 million in damage, Goodwin told the media, “We’re ecstatic.”
Animal People, an animal rights newspaper, called Goodwin “among the most militant animal rights activists of the 1990s,” noting that he “dropp[ed] out of Germantown High School in Memphis in the 11th grade to focus on activism, doing janitorial work for a living because the flexible hours allowed him time to protest.”
That includes a criminal record as as anti-fur activist:
Caught by a police stakeout and charged as alleged ringleader of a gang that vandalized fur stores, Goodwin and two younger alleged confederates pleaded guilty in April 1993.
Sentenced to three years in prison, they spent the next 30 months under house arrest, secured by an appeal bond. The prison term was finally overturned in favor of six months on probation.
After his stint as a spokesperson for terrorists, Goodwin joined the Humane Society of the United States, where he still is today, and where Bice was a lobbyist for the legislative arm. The aforementioned property is near HSUS’s longtime headquarters.
Bice is also associated with Marty Irby, with whom she worked at Animal Wellness Action. Irby is another animal rights lobbyist who claims to represent farmers’ interests. Irby was embarrassed last spring when news broke that a conservative client dropped him after Irby took sex workers to Mar-a-Lago and the halls of Congress.
Bice–also known as Holly Gann–has a long history associated with animal rights extremism going back to her law school days, where received a degree from Lewis & Clark in Oregon, a notorious hotbed for animal liberation fanaticism, and interned for Farm Sanctuary, a vegan group that wants to abolish all animal agriculture.
But now Bice claims to represent the best interests of meat producers? Color us skeptical. At face value, the “American Meat Producers Association” only appears to have a handful of niche meat companies as members. Based on Bice’s associations and history, they appear to be “useful idiots” for the animal rights movement.
