Industry Paranoia and Wolf Wars | Rising Anxieties

And, uh, what's worrying me, which is a very, very big topic. I try to keep that, I try to limit that, probably some of which is worrying you, hopefully not as many things as worrying me.

'cause you know. That's what I do. Uh, alright, so don't forget, we're a podcast and we're on YouTube. Please subscribe and hit like wherever you listen. And, uh, let's get into it. Let's take a look.

Our first story is from our favorite, our favorite commentator, Hannah Thompson-Weiman uh, it's on, um, MeatingPlace.com, Navigating activism, what 2025 taught us and what 2026 will demand.

She's worried about you, happy to tell you. All right. As 2025 comes to a close, she says, It's clear that the pressures facing animal agriculture did not simply continue this year, they intensified. Now you might be thinking, she's talking about bird flu, other diseases, uh, tariffs, uh, all, all sorts of possible things, you know, the environmental destruction that they're causing.

Just, just all sorts of stuff. How, how perhaps their, uh, influence with the government is, is, is not as secure as they used to be. No. She's talking about you. Um, from escalating activist funding to evolving legal strategies and increasingly coordinated pressure campaigns, the landscape grew more complex by the month.

You know, it's just always so nice to hear how much she's worried about us. 'Cause sometimes I don't think we're getting anywhere, and then I read these kind of things and I think, oh yeah, we're, we're making a difference. Alright. Many people associate animal rights activism, she says, with dietary persuasion or campus protests.

Well, certainly dietary persuasion. Yeah. Campus protests. I don't know. But 2025 reaffirmed what our monitoring has shown for years, the movement is heavily funded, highly coordinated, and shifting towards systemic influence rather than calling for individual behavior change. Yeah! Though, I mean, I would have to say that individual behavior change is still key to the movement, but all this other stuff, absolutely.

Alright. She's really worried about how much money we have. You'll be surprised to hear based on publicly available financial data, the groups featured, uh, in their animal activist groups web, which is this ridiculous chart they make about how we're all connected to each other, um, bring in more than $865 million annually.

She does leave out the fact that some of these groups are like Humane World for Animals, the A-S-P-C-A, and, and most of the money they're bringing is probably not for farm animals, but, you know, details, details. That's not what she's really worried about though. She's really worried about private foundations and she's specifically worried about Open Philanthropy.

Uh, and you know, this did not used to be an issue, uh, for them about our movement. And it sure is now. Um, all right. Since 2016, they have awarded $88 million to broiler chicken welfare. Um, $40 million to cage-free reforms, and, and $40 million to supporting alternatives to animal products. I mean, that is the kind of money this movement did not use to be able to, uh, muster.

Um, she also talks about pressure campaigns, which she thinks are intensifying. Store demonstrations, I haven't seen one of them in a long time. Uh, scorecards, boy, we've been doing them since the beginning of time. Investor resolutions. Now, I was surprised to hear she was at all concerned about investor resolutions, um, and was taking it to be... you know, she works for the Animal Agriculture Alliance and they get money from, from farmers and ranchers.

Uh, put those terms in quotes, um, to, uh, to fight us. And so they like to, you know, they do like to make us sound maybe a little bit more dramatic than, than the movement is. But you know, she points out that resolutions focused on animal welfare all failed at shareholder meetings. Yeah, that's what I had heard.

So I'm not that worried about them. But she says activists use the process to gain meetings with leadership and push for incremental commitments. Did they? That's kind of cool. Thank you Hannah, for letting me know.

In another recurring conversation topic at conferences, she's talking about our conferences, um, activists emphasize that local engagement is where they expect to see the most success. Uh, this is a story I love 'cause clearly we get nowhere at the federal level. I mean, we barely have a federal government left and even the state level is intimidating and overwhelming and really hard, you know, if it's an ag state.

It's really hard to make any progress, but she's talking about municipal ordinances related to fur, foie gras, and what they call quote unquote extreme confinement. Well, fur, I mean, we've kind of won, I, I mean, it's not over and there's still plenty of animals suffering, but we're well on our way to winning that.

Foie gras, yeah, I mean, certainly, um, Pro Animal Future is pursuing foie gras um, initiatives. And I'm not saying they're not important, enormously important, but you know, you do have to make a leap from foie gras to then more commonly, uh, beloved foods. But extreme confinement, yeah. That's what we're going for.

Incrementalism remains central to their philosophy. Start with a small ask, secure a win, and then continue pressing for more. Yeah. That's how it's done. That is exactly how it's done. She talks about Direct Action Everywhere. She talks about cross movement collaboration, um, particularly with climate justice activists.

Yeah. I wonder why we're, uh, in... and interesting that she calls it climate justice, isn't it? Almost like she thinks it's right. Um, legal focused animal activist organizations. I'm glad to see she's focused on them since, you know, that's an area of activism I'm particularly fond of. Focused on expanding standing, influencing regulatory oversight, and integrating climate litigation strategies into animal agriculture cases. Transparency battles, FOIA disputes and regulatory authority over cell-based meat were also emphasized. Yeah, all of these things are really true and I'm really glad to hear that she's concerned about them. She concludes by saying the pressure is not slowing down and neither are we.

Well, neither are we, Hannah, neither are we.

Our, our second story is an upsetting one. I mean, you already know the most upsetting news, but it's about Zoe Rosenberg. This is from AG Daily, so it's the industry's point of view on what happened. DXE operator sentenced, fined in California poultry theft. A prominent animal rights activist, Zoe Rosenberg was sentenced this week to serve 90 days in jail for stealing four chickens from a Petaluma poultry slaughterhouse in Sonoma County, California.

Um, also, she has to pay $102,000 in restitution, two years unsupervised probation, maintain employment, or remain enrolled as a student. There's no question that Zoe will continue to do that. If they weren't sending her to prison, she would have an easier time, um, stay away from Purdue facilities in Sonoma County and have no contact with her collaborators in the crime, which, you know, these are the people she works with.

These are the people who are friends. These are, it's just, just unbelievable. Um, Rosenberg has long served as a major figurehead of DXE, including aggressively lambasting national FFA and Four H programs. I mean, she, she lambasts a lot of things about the industry. I dunno why they focus particularly on that.

Probably 'cause they think it sounds sympathetic for them. Rosenberg claims the birds were sick and neglected and activists even named the birds. Well, of course they named the birds. Like, what do you think? Poppy, Ivy, Aster and Azalea and placed them in an animal sanctuary. Uh, and. And, uh, they do, they do point out that Zoe is not, she's not a terribly well person.

She has type one diabetes and, and some other health challenges. She can't apply for alternatives to jail until she's been in for, for 30 days. And after that she could apply like for house arrest or whatever. And she's also, I didn't know this, she's requested a pardon from, um, governor Gavin Newsom. Yeah.

I mean, yeah. It's about time. I would like to hear about a pardon of somebody who's not like horribly guilty of hideous crimes, which is mostly all we hear about.

Alright from Veg News, uh, we have a story. Um, and this is a story that you've probably heard about. I mean, it certainly got around a lot and there's a lot of talk about it. It's about this Reddit thread. I don't really go on Reddit very often. Which I probably should. Inside the Reddit thread that blasts big meat for hiring people to take down veganism.

This is about, um, this was written, it was a Reddit post written by somebody who claimed to be a whistleblower, who had been hired by the industry to disparage veganism and vegan organizations. And he talked about it on this Reddit thread. I think there's some people who question the validity and the, you know, the point is, is you can't trust anything you see online.

So, uh, particularly if it's anonymous, but even if it's not, um, but, but VegNews nicely boiled down 20 of the points, I won't read all of them, that this person made in their post and certainly sounds legit to me. There has long been an organized financial incentive to discredit veganism online and, and, uh, you know, they pay people to do this.

Um. Emphasizing the concept of quote unquote big vegan was one approach used. I, I have to admit, I never saw, saw a post talking about big vegan, and it's pretty funny. Um, the work involved faking negative vegan experiences. So you know, all the health stuff and, and you know, trying to dissuade people, um, listing nutrients, uh, and, and, that and claiming that they're not available from vegan diets, even though, you know, they're just, it's just like a different level of availability or whatever.

A cubicle buddy claimed veganism caused him to have OCD and a bunch of people onwards have believed it. Um, a tactic involved embedding extremist vegan personas into threads. That sounds true. Cherry picking data, false claims. Um, they all were required to sign non-disclosure agreements. They didn't get paid a lot. Um, $17 an hour. Uh, and, and, um, yeah, yeah, there's more here, but you get the idea. Like, like there was a really big deal made about this online in a lot of venues I saw.

But was anybody really surprised? I doubt it, but it's nice to have it, you know? Ha. Having somebody confirm it. Alright. One story from Sentient Media, um, this week, Factory Farms in Iowa generate 110 billion pounds of manure per year. No one tracks where it's going. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. What kind of harm could that do?

You know? Just 110 billion pounds of shit. Um, all right. This, this actually started with a pig farmer 'cause this is a, um, uh, an article that was in collaborate in a collaboration between Inside Climate News and Sentient Media. So, um, one of their major sources was this pig farmer, Gene Tinker, but he used to work for the Department of Natural Resources. And when he was there, he says he, he unsuccessfully advocated for the department to update its rules on applying livestock manure as fertilizer.

And what's interesting is the DNR apparently requires these pig pig producers to submit documents outlining their plans for spreading livestock manure, but then they don't check up to see whether, where, and how they actually spread their actual manure. So who knows? You know? Isn't that convenient? 'Cause you can make it sound really good.

Oh, they have to sub submit all these documents. And the article also points out that it would be very easy to come up with, with those records of, of where and how the, the manure is spread because, um, they have to hire hauling companies and that contract with the CAFOs to take the manure and apply it to fields and whatever.

Um, and also, uh, nitrate pollution of drinking water has risen in tandem with the cancer rate in Iowa. And Iowa is one of only two states where the rate of new cancer cases is on the rise. And I have heard that the pollution situation in Iowa is terrifying. Uh, and, and, um, the article goes on with a lot more detail, but, uh, one of the points they make is that one of the reasons they leave out this, um, information or allow them not to report this information is 'cause it's proprietary information.

So, uh. What's so proprie... this, this one quote from this guy, Tinker, What's so proprietary about how much manure you put on a field, especially if you're telling the government ahead of time, how much you're allegedly going to be putting on the field? All you're doing is providing the record so people can vary, verify you actually did what you said you were going to do.

Which really belied this, like, claim that it's proprietary information. I mean, if it didn't sound like bullshit, so to speak, um, already obviously you have to say how much you're gonna put on the field. Like, how could it be proprietary to tell whether you were actually telling the truth? All right. Our final story is just, you know, one of the tragedies of animal agriculture, that's wolves.

This article makes me so mad. This is from Drovers, which is of course a meat industry site. Wolves are not going away. Ranchers push for practical management tools. There is a change of tone here because they used to like talk about wolves like they were the devil incarnate and now they're, they've got it that the public is just not on board with that.

So they're talking about conservation. This is by Angie Stump Denton. While the reintroduction of wolves has led to significant challenges for local ranchers, some say they are willing to deal with the animals if they will return to their natural habitat. Well, their natural habitat are, is all that land that you're grazing your cows on, uh, that's their na... that is their natural... return to their natural habitat!?!

You think that you can, you can define what a wolf's natural habitat is. Who? Who the hell do you think...? Well. Ah...

we're trying to be conservationists, says Luke Morgan, Lightning Bolt Cattle company General manager. Yeah, I bet you are. Wolves are here to stay. We've gotta have some tools to make it more holistic for people, wolves and the rest of the animals.

Holistic? What the hell? I mean, do they just ramp this language from what they think will sound good? Holistic. Morgan manages 2,500 mother cows and that is how they call them mother cows to um. Like, of course they're mother cows. That's what they're doing out there.

They're producing, producing young cows that can be eaten. But Mother sounds so, you know, sympathetic. Another guy, um, Rick Roberti. We don't wanna get rid of all the wolves. Yes they do. We just want them managed in a way we don't suffer so many losses for them to return to their natural habitat. Um, this other cattle producer, Amy Anderson Fitzpatrick.

She's talking about her family. So is she really running it? I don't know. Her family raises cattle in southern Oregon during the grazing season. The base ranch called Rancheria Ranch... Rancheria Ranch? It's in the mountains of Oregon and it's a mix of owned land and permanented grazing. Yeah, that would be known as wolf's natural habitat.

Fitzpatrick explains State and federal laws severely limit rancher's ability to defend their livestock. Only non-lethal hazing is allowed. And requests to remove or euthanize problematic wolves have been denied. Oh yeah, I bet. So what they want, they, they want, um, coexistence management tools that would allow flexible rapid deployment of non-lethal and when needed targeted lethal tools.

Yeah, that's what they want. They want, they wanna be allowed to kill, uh, the wolves legally. To address habituated wolves near people and livestock. They have zero fear of humans. Yeah. Well if they do have zero fear of humans, they're really stupid, and I don't think wolves are stupid. If we can instill a little fear, push them back into wilderness areas and keep them more of a wild animal.

You are grazing your cows on wild wilderness areas. Like you don't get to define, I already said this, didn't I?

Alright. The other thing they want is col. They wanna be able to collar the wolves. Of course, they want the government to pay all for all of this, I'm sure. He would also like to know how many wolves there are and would like to see a deer survey done? Well, you know, go right ahead and do that, honey. Uh, nothing. What's stopping you?

You don't wanna pay for it, do you? If there's not enough prey, you're pretty much saying they're going to eat cattle. So he wants there to be more deer so that they can eat them.

Um, Fitzpatrick expresses frustration with public perception. Yeah, public perception. It's one of the few animals that people actually do seem to have some sympathy for, and how the pro wolf sentiment on social media downplays or ignores ranchers struggles with the predators.

You know, maybe they don't ignore it. Maybe they just don't care about your struggles. Fitzpatrick says her family remains committed to ranching. Well, you know, maybe drop the commitment, while calling for a level playing field... a level playing field... between ranchers and wolves. Are you joking? That would allow effective protection of their livelihood?

I don't care about your livelihood. Roberty summarizes that sensible management policies will allow both wolves and ranchers to coexist, but he stresses that unless the balance is restored and ranchers voices are heard, both the rural way of life and broader ecosystem could face severe consequences.

Really not my problem. Really not my problem. Your rural way of life. Like go live in the country. I don't care if you live in the country. Go live wherever you want. That doesn't mean you get to kill everybody who's already living there. And that's it for Mariann's rant and this week's Rising Anxieties.

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