Why is ButcherBox Working With Anti-Meat Activists?
They say politics makes strange bedfellows–but this partnership is truly bizarre. ButcherBox, a company that sells boxes of meat direct to consumers, is working with anti-meat animal rights activists in Washington, D.C.
Their goal? To support anti-meat laws that hurt farmers and consumers.
ButcherBox is part of a group calling itself the “Responsible Meat Coalition.” The group is lobbying in Congress against bipartisan efforts to rein in California Prop 12 and Massachusetts Question 3. These laws–ballot measures financed by animal rights groups–ban the sale of regular, conventionally produced pork and eggs in those states. Instead, grocers are only allowed to sell more expensive products from alternative farming systems that don’t use common husbandry practices.
These laws take choices away from consumers. Lower-income consumers are hit the hardest, which is even worse given food price inflation over the past few years. These laws are also effectively a tax on farmers (and consumers) outside of these states. Farmers in, say, Iowa can no longer sell in California unless they spend millions of dollars to become “California-compliant.” Those costs get passed on to consumers.
To help consumer choice, Congress is looking to keep California’s regulations within California’s borders and protect interstate commerce–efforts that ButcherBox is opposing.
And here’s the weird part. According to lobbying records, the “Responsible Meat Coalition” is represented by Holly Bice, who is a longtime lobbyist for animal rights groups including the lobbying arm of the anti-meat Humane Society of the United States. And a recent D.C. fly-in event for the Coalition was represented by Josh Balk, a longtime vegan activist who also worked for HSUS. Balk now runs The Accountability Board alongside Matt Prescott, who infamously created an antisemitic campaign called “Holocaust on Your Plate” comparing modern farms to Nazi concentration camps.
ButcherBox did not respond to a request for comment.
What might explain this unholy alliance between ButcherBox and animal-rights extremists?
ButcherBox sells “Whole Foods”-style meat, and it comes at “Whole Paycheck” prices. A basic box online sells for $146 for 8-11 pounds of meat. That’s a range of $13.27-$18.25 per pound of meat. Plus shipping.
Clearly, these aren’t “everyman” prices. The price of chicken breasts and ground beef is under $4 a pound at a grocer near us–and we’re in the pricey D.C. area.
What is ButcherBox lobbying for, essentially? It’s a corporation seeking to use the government to ban and raise the prices of its competition. This suggests the company believes there is a limited market for their pricey meat boxes.
The whole scheme is very cynical and unethical to us.
The ultimate joke here is that animal rights activists reject even “Whole Foods” meat. How do we know? Just last week, Humane World (formerly the Humane Society of the US), the ASPCA, and Compassion in World Farming all departed the board of Global Animal Partnership, a meat certification program started by Whole Foods. They did so after getting pressure from PETA, which says there is no such thing as “humane meat.” Apparently these other groups now agree with that stance, too.
So ButcherBox is tying its advocacy and credibility to people who want to put ButcherBox and its suppliers out of business. That’s shortsighted.
