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US-Appointed Egg Lobby Paid Food Blogs and Targeted Chef To Crush Vegan Startup
An anonymous reader writes: The American Egg Board targeted publications, popular food bloggers, and a celebrity chef as part of an effort to combat a perceived threat from Hampton Creek, an egg-replacement startup backed by some of Silicon Valley's biggest names, according to internal emails. The Gaurdian reports: A detailed review of emails, sent from inside the AEB and obtained by the Guardian, shows that the lobbyist's anti-Hampton Creek campaign sought to:
- Pay food bloggers as much as $2,500 a post to write online recipes and stories about the virtue of eggs that repeated the egg lobby group's "key messages."
- Confront Andrew Zimmern, who had featured Hampton Creek on his popular Travel Channel show Bizarre Foods and praised the company in a blog post characterized by top egg board executives as a "love letter."
- Target publications including Forbes and Buzzfeed that had written broadly positive articles about a Silicon Valley darling.
- Unsuccessfully tried to recruit both the animal rights and autism activist Temple Grandin and the bestselling author and blogger Ree Drummond to publicly support the egg industry.
- Buy Google advertisements to show AEB-sponsored content when people searched for Hampton Creek or its founder Josh Tetrick.
The Egg Board is an advocate for the consumption of eggs. What's the problem?
This article seems more like a slashvertisement for Hampton Creek
This all sounds like what many companies would do when faced with an upstart competitor - basically what's known as "playing hardball".
If this Hampton Creek company is backed by some of the "biggest names" in Silicon Valley, isn't it well-positioned financially to respond? This doesn't exactly sound like David vs. Goliath.
As an aside - is there such a thing as "Big Egg"? We buy ours from a local farm.
#DeleteChrome
Those are all perfectly legitimate responses to attacks from food-fear mongers.
It's not just one startup--it's a multi-billion dollar industry built on FUD.
I think they are saying the board is funded by government. So basically your taxes are being used top fund bloggers to pay about eggs to hopefully surpress innovation.
I read the TFA, I even went to the news article at the Guardian, and still I can't find any real link !
It is easy to say that so and so lobby paid thousands to blogs to publish this or that, but until we can read the articles in question ourselves, how are we to believe anything reported in the news article is true?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The Egg Board is an advocate for the consumption of eggs. What's the problem?
This article seems more like a slashvertisement for Hampton Creek
The problem is a fraud on the public. Advocating a position that is based on who pays you, without regard to reason or truth or the benefit to mankind, without so much as a notice of your bias, causes massive amounts of harm to the public by sustaining inefficient practices.
It is perhaps the single most harmful activity to society a person can engage in--it wastes other people's lives. It perpetuates the spread of misinformation.
And it is fundamentally contrary to the ideals of Nerds, Geeks, and those who believe in the potential of science and information to help mankind get out of the mess we've made of our world and our societies.
It's an extension of conservative absolutism. When presented with a solution that came from anywhere but the echo chamber, the right dismisses anything that isn't a magic bullet that fixes it 100% without any side effects.
I realize that's me calling the kettle black when I refer to the "right" as a monolithic entity, but the general philosophy is to dismiss anything that wasn't their idea, or is too complicated to think about in terms of shades of grey. Conservatives tend to latch on to the simple, ideological solutions without any concern for anything they don't care about. For example: It's all well and good that Trump wants to deport 12 million people. That's an attractive sound bite that fits nicely on a bumper sticker, but it ignores how complex the issue is. Complexity tends to mean expensive. Who's going to pay for identifying and rounding up all those folks? Where are they processed for deportation? How do we transport them to the border? Who replaces the cheap labor that the agricultural industry relies on? I find that they refuse to see the world as it is, but how they think it should be.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Absolutely. In fact, one egg and 2 slices of bacon is what I eat for breakfast if I'm organized enough (which unfortunately I'm not usually) to ensure it's all in the house when I need it, and that I have time to cook it. And I feel physically better and have enough energy in the morning.
By comparison, a bowl of cereal, even a traditional one (ie milk and cornflakes or rice krispies) will ensure I have a sugar crash roundabout 10-11am, and I'm lethargic in the mean time.
The end result? I usually don't eat breakfast... (let's not kid ourselves though, it isn't the most important meal of the day. Nowhere near.)
As for the article, I must admit to thinking a great deal of it is complete crap, with fairly normal and entirely reasonable things spun as being part of a conspiracy. The board that promotes eggs on behalf of the dairy industry saw a commercial threat to eggs and... paid food bloggers to post recipes that used eggs whose funding was disclosed in each post? And was upset about another chef who posted a blog entry that disparaged egg production so contacted him to correct what they saw as wrong information? And someone who didn't work for them but was connected to them advised a company that made Mayonnaise to contact a more suitable body, such as the FDA, about a labeling issue with said rival?
Well my ghasts are truly flabbered. What a scandal you have there Guardian, truly on the same level as the Snowden affair or Cash for Questions. Not.
(The shame is I've seen what are almost certainly campaigns by entrenched industries to destroy competitors that misuse, for example, environmental groups, local media, etc, in secret with no investigation by anyone. Here a group is very open about what they're funding and saying, isn't manipulating the media or independent pressure groups, but apparently that's worthy of treating as scandalous.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.