Rising Anxieties: Shareholder Activism, Cultivated Meat, and Media Bias

All right, so Meating Place totally revamped their, their website. So it took me a little time to find where they're hiding their reports of anxiety. But I finally did and I found an article by Hannah Thompson Wiemen, one of my favorites.

Uh, she's the president of the Animal Agricultural Alliance. New twists on activist shareholder pressure for 2025. And, you know, this is o this has been an ongoing effort within the movement to try to get shareholders to do, uh, something, uh, decent and, and, and maybe, maybe related to profit even, when they vote for how their share, how the companies that they own a piece of should be used.

And of course activists have bought some shares in companies so that they can be part of these meetings. And according to Hannah, their report reveals that while these groups are vocal and persistent, investors are overwhelmingly unconvinced. Okay. So you are wondering why I'm talking about this since it's pretty much nothing but bad news for us.

But she also adds that this has led to some new tactics to watch out for. So they continue to be nervous about this effort. As always, you know, the only people who who know or wanna know what's going on, uh, in in animal ag are the people who own it, animal ag, and us and everybody else with apparently including shareholders, would like to be in the dark.

Uh, and she's mainly talking about Humane World for Animals, or HSUS as it used to be called, and, uh, the accountability board and, and which this is one of their main, uh, their main efforts at the accountability board to, to look for, um, accountability from these companies by way of shareholder resolutions.

And, uh, there were six resolutions related to animal welfare and antibiotic use introduced at various companies, uh, like Starbucks, Yum Brands, and, um, some institutional investors as well. And they all failed. Uh, and less than 10% of shareholders voting in favor, uh, the antibiotic stuff, you know, people always care a little bit more about themselves than about animals, though not that much.

The antibiotics efforts maybe did a little better. There were also 18 sustainability related resolutions, uh, and none of them passed. Uh, they earned, um, also under 10%. So, you know, apparently the shareholders are own, who own these companies don't give a shit about anything. Um, but what she is concerned about, a concerning trend was the emergence of governance focused resolutions that had no obvious connection to animal welfare or sustainability.

And this is kind of interesting. She doesn't go into the details of what these are. Apparently this is a new tactic and apparently it's seeing a little bit more success. Um, two of them actually passed and, and even the, um, the ones that didn't received much better support than the ones about animals, about 28% on average.

And according to her. There are reports that these, you know, like she just makes this stuff up. I think it says there are reports, um, there are reports that these governance proposals are being used as bargaining chips. Leverage for meetings with leadership to push the group's animal welfare agenda. So, I thought that was super interesting.

I think this is still something to really keep an eye on. These are pretty sophisticated people doing, um, some pretty interesting work and the fact that they've come up with this new way of getting in, of actually becoming more insiders on the way these companies are being run and actually having success, you know, that that should give them some leverage on the stuff that they, uh, they're there to do.

All right. Lab grown meat and diamonds. This is from Meating Place as well, and it's by Jack Hubbard, who's, who's, uh, you know, he's a real industry promoter. And he's trying to draw an analogy, which I think is pretty unsuccessful between the lab grown diamond industry and the, the cultivated meat industry.

Lab grown diamonds apparently are quite successful. Apparently they can now make diamonds and, and they're, it's a lot cheaper to make 'em than to, to dig up the ground and find them. And they are, are apparently kind of exactly the same. So he thinks this is a similar phenomenon to what's going on in the food sector as quote scientists explore ways to create artificial animal protein, designed to put animal agriculture out of business.

One of the things that, um, he thinks was crucial is that the government removed the requirements that that, that in order to be called diamonds, the requirement that diamonds be naturally formed. And he thinks that this is the kind of, kind of effort that people in the cultivated meat industry are pursuing, and he doesn't think it will be successful for them.

He says they want synthetic protein to rapidly replace farm raised natural meat, which they falsely malign as harmful to the environment and cruel. The word falsely is doing a lot of work there. And in a perfect world, they want the federal government to eliminate any daylight in labeling. I have never seen any effort to try to eliminate daylight in labeling between cultivated meat and meat from the dead body of an animal.

I'm not saying that people wouldn't like that. Maybe they would like it. I don't think anybody think that thinks that that will ever happen. And I think probably a lot of people think it would be a bad idea. Um. And it certainly would not, I mean, it would not play. I mean, what's more going on is that the, the animal meat industry is fighting tooth and nail to even have it sold, uh, much less that it should be labeled deceptively as exactly the same as coming from an animal.

And hopefully we might get to the day, sometime when, when the fact that it's not from an animal would be seen as a plus. Imagine that, um, behind the inherent yuck factor of test tube meat, uh, there are nutritional differences. Uh, there are, um, according to him, one company submitted chicken that had higher levels of cholesterol and lead than farm raised chicken.

I find that surprising, but maybe it's true, but it, the nutritional differences are usually going the other way. It's an opportunity to use healthier fats and, um, create a cleaner product, uh, than than meat. And you couldn't get much, he unhealthier fat or dirtier product than than meat. And also there's no long-term health health studies.

Yeah, it's a new product. There are never gonna be long-term health studies for something that just got invented. I mean, come on. You really think this, we're not talking about forcing people to eat it. We're talking about allowing people to eat it. The lab grown meat companies are making the case that animal agriculture needs to go the way of the dinosaur, but the roar of the consumer is what will determine the future of food in America.

I think that's probably true and it's why, uh, you know, we can't give up. We can't give up. People have gotta give, like why is it so easy to convince people of all, of lies when it comes to food? Well, because as I say, every week people believe, it's easy to convince people to believe what they wanna believe.

I dunno why they wanna believe it though. Well, anyway. Um, alright. From Plant-based News, our friends at Plant-based News, meat industry executive says UK mega farms aren't particularly big. Unquote. Again, particularly doing a lot of work in that particular expression on the British Meat Processor Association's Chief Executive compared the size of UK Mega Farms, to those in the us.

One more thing for us here in the United States of America to be ashamed of. Things are piling up. I'll tell you, piling up. Tough times. Alright. It's not just in the United States, though we invented them, but also in South America and China, UK mega farms aren't particularly big in comparison to those.

This is from Nick Allen, who's the chief executive of this British Meat Processors Association, and apparently, uh, uh, contrary to the beliefs of many people in the UK, though I guess this might be getting a little better. There are loads of huge farms in the UK, um, nearly 12,000 of them as of 2023, and he thinks, and he would, that mega farms make consistent animal welfare standards easier.

Well, I guess it's easier to make them consistent. I'm not sure it's easier to raise the welfare. And said that the UK has quote some of the highest animal welfare standards in the world, which is I, I think probably true, which you know. You have to look at what they are in the rest of the world, like basically non-existent, to really understand what that means.

He also said the idea that meat production and consumption should be reduced to protect the planet is dangerous. Yeah, that's really dan... I feel so threatened by the idea that people would be against meat production because of the planet.

That's scary stuff. And he also described abattoir hygiene... abattoir is what they call slaughterhouses in the UK. You probably know that. Sorry. And described abattoir hygiene as stricter than hospitals, which really makes you really not wanna end up in a hospital in the UK. That's hilarious!

Since this is from Plant-based News, they do add a little, a few little facts into the article at that point, like that, in May, an abattoir was fined 47,000 pounds for obstructing hygiene inspections. Also, in May, a pig farm supplying major supermarkets suspended operations after workers were filmed beating pigs to death.

Uh, meanwhile, a study from February reported that animal agriculture, not fossil fuels, is actually the leading cause of climate change. Uh, yeah. Thank you for, for adding a few facts into your reporting on, on what this guy had to say. Um, this was specifically in the context of really good news.

The plans for a new mega farm in Kingsland, Norfolk were blocked by counselors due to environmental and climate change concerns. So maybe they're getting a little nervous over there. It seems to be, um, affecting their, their ability to to, to, to be truthful. Not that they really have much of an ability to be truthful.

Alright, on my, uh, frequent... one, as part of my frequent report on what your tax dollars are up to, this is from Drovers, USDA Announces plan to address rural veterinary shortage. Apparently no one wants to be a veterinarian, go to all that school and be a veterinarian on factory farms. I just can't imagine why that would not be somebody's dream job, you know?

Uh. You have to go to school for a million years, you don't make a lot of money, and you get to spend your life on factory farms. Over the past decade, the number of mixed animal and food animal veterinarians has decreased by 15%. Alright, so the USDA, uh, via Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced uh, the Rural Veterinary Shortage Action Plan.

And the plan is expanding grants and financial assistance, your tax money. Streamlining loan applications that we're gonna loan your tax money to them too. Investing in economic research to guide solutions, more of your tax money. Making federal service more attractive to veterinarians. Probably gonna spend some tax money doing that, I imagine.

How else would you make it attractive? How do you make it attractive, come to think of it? Recruiting more students from rural America into veterinary schools. Well, not as expensive, but still probably some of your tax money going for that. So, yeah. Uh, what would they do without us? What would they do without us?

They wouldn't exist. All right. Finally, just gonna report briefly on this really interesting article from, um, Sentient. And as Sentient Media, our friends at Sentient Media, uh, and, and you probably have heard of this, but I just wanted to report it 'cause it's such extreme rising anxieties Beyond Meat's rumored bankruptcy is the perfect example of food media bias.

How rumors the brand was going bankruptcy spread, and what that says about the discourse. I certainly saw it, I saw all sorts of, uh, reporting on, on how, uh, Beyond was going bankrupt. They've never been going bankrupt. They have, they, I mean, they're in financial trouble, no doubt about it. But they've never been going bankrupt, not happening. Wasn't happening then, isn't happening now.

They have the financial support. Uh, they're, they're retooling. Uh, they're very, very committed. Ethan Brown, who, who heads up, heads up Beyond. He's extremely committed. So this is a great article that goes into depth on that. And if you're interested in that, I highly, I highly recommend you take a look at it.

Uh, and you know, why would they be doing that? Well, you know why? Because their anxieties actually really are rising. They're probably pretty worried about what Beyond an Impossible are thinking about doing next. They managed to beat 'em back. They managed to beat him back, but they didn't manage to kill 'em.

And that's it for this week's Rising Anxieties.

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