Food choice is a basic freedom enjoyed by Americans. Yet, it has been under threat for decades by animal and environmental extremists who vilify traditional agriculture, especially animal agriculture, in pursuit of their mission to impose misguided ideologies on the citizenry. Nevertheless, demand for the unequaled flavor and nutrition of animal-derived products remains strong. A 2023 Gallup Consumption Habits poll revealed only four percent of the U.S. population are vegetarians, and merely one percent are vegans.
Despite the incessant, crusade-like campaigning by this fanatic minority, it’s clear that meat, dairy products, and eggs remain preferred components of most American diets. Sadly, there are certain subsets of our population whose food choices are systematically being restricted, replaced with meals that align with the animal and environmental extremist agendas.
In 2011, the Good Food Purchasing Program (GFPP) was founded in Los Angeles. It has since been embraced by 45 institutions, including schools, prisons, hospitals, and municipal cafeterias in numerous cities nationwide. The program is designed to “shift institutional food purchases” to align with “core values.” Two of these values are “animal welfare” and “environmental sustainability,” which already exist as basic principles in American agriculture and have for generations. GFPP’s iteration of acceptable foods is a dangerous, virtue-signaling reinvention of established national dietary guidelines. GFPP misrepresents its mission with the predictable utilization of feel-good language and mainstream talking points to disguise the subversive and authoritarian nature of its program.
Redefining “Animal Welfare” for Ideological Purposes
In the realm of animal welfare, GFPP purchases from suppliers that are focused on meeting animals’ physical, mental, and behavioral needs throughout their lives, which is aligned with existing American agriculture operations. However, when GFPP’s animal extremist ties are revealed, it’s clear that its definition of these needs has more to do with the animal rights of anthropomorphic Hollywood productions than scientifically sound, fact-based animal welfare and husbandry practices.
While GFPP does source some animal products, its website states the group strives to “reduce total animal weight of animal products sourced to reduce number of animal lives per meal served.”
GFPP Aligns with Environmental Extremist-Backed Criteria
Regarding environmental sustainability, the program purchases from suppliers that reduce or eliminate the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, improve soil health and carbon sequestration, reduce fossil fuel energy inputs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce carbon and water footprints, protect water resources, and reduce or eliminate single-use plastics and other resource-intensive packaging. They list a number of preferred certifications for their various suppliers, ranging from “wildlife friendly” to “food justice certified.”
To offset the increased expense of meeting these criteria, GFPP focuses on “shifting toward local producers to reduce travel and storage cost of perishables, or redesigning menus to reduce more expensive meat purchases by substituting produce and alternative proteins.”
Cattle rancher Shad Sullivan summed up this so-called “sustainability” in a February 2024 FOX Business segment: “Sustainability is nothing more than production and consumption control.”
“Control” is a common goal among extremist groups.
“Power of Procurement” Used as Social Engineering Tool
GFPP states that it utilizes the “power of procurement to create a transparent and equitable food system that prioritizes the health and well-being of people, animals, and the environment.” Listed among GFPP’s national partners are groups such as the ASPCA, Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), Farm Forward, and Friends of the Earth. Its “generous” supporters include the United States Department of Agriculture (our tax dollars) and the globalist Rockefeller Foundation.
A biased, agenda-driven and factually questionable study issued by the Rockefeller Foundation found Americans spend $1.1 trillion on food annually, but the actual alleged cost to our society is three times that dollar amount due to rising health care costs, climate change, and biodiversity loss.
GFPP marches in lockstep with animal and environmental extremism, which coincidentally aligns perfectly with the current globalist agenda. In 2014, the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, stated:
“Governments have few sources of leverage over increasingly globalized food systems – but public procurement is one of them. When sourcing food for schools, hospitals and public administrations, governments have a rare opportunity to support more nutritious diets and more sustainable food systems in one fell swoop.”
GFPP Has Well-Established Ties to Extremism
The push to adopt GFPP in various cities is primarily led by animal and environmental extremists. This has been ushered in without input from, or a vote by, citizens. A glaring example of this was San Francisco’s implementation of GFPP in 2020, which was championed by the local animal extremist group Compassionate Bay. Noteworthy is the city’s GFPP manifesto listing the Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM) as a national partner. OCM is not about competitive markets – it’s about restricting competitive markets to achieve its ideological, social engineering, and virtue-signaling goals. As one might expect, Compassionate Bay parrots the deliberately inflammatory and inaccurate “factory farming” label commonly used by extremists to malign modern farms, ranches, and animal feeding operations. “Truth” is not a Compassionate Bay core competency.
Compassionate Bay’s website states:
“We started with one goal: to facilitate passing animal and environmentally friendly legislation in the state of California. We are a grassroots group of volunteers dedicated to seeing political change that addresses factory farming and the climate crisis.”
They boast of being part of a cabal that successfully passed the state’s 2019 fur ban and led the coalition of climate organizations and animal rights groups that pushed for San Francisco to adopt GFPP. Further, they state:
“Inspired by SF’s Good Food Purchasing Program, in the summer of 2021 we successfully lobbied the Berkeley City Council to pass a resolution to cut their spending on animal products by 50% by 2024 with an end goal of 100%.”
Warped Ideology Fuels Effort to Eliminate Essential Component of Safe, Nutritious, Affordable, Accessible Food Supply Chain
Protect The Harvest has previously written about a coalition of extremist groups working to ban concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in Sonoma County. Compassionate Bay is among them, together with Farm Sanctuary, Social Compassion in Legislation, In Defense of Animals, and Direct Action Everywhere (DxE). Interestingly, also listed as a supporter is the environmental extremist group Western Watersheds Project (WWP), which primarily targets western ranchers who utilize federally managed public lands to graze livestock.
The coalition has until the beginning of March 2024 to collect 30,000 signatures from Sonoma County voters. If the signatures are collected, they will be submitted to the County for verification. If verified, the Board of Supervisors could pass the ordinance, which would then appear on the November 2024 ballot.
Extremists Apply the Term “CAFO” to Non-Agricultural Organizations
Feedlots have long been a target of the animal extremist movement. However, it is important to note they are applying the term to operations other than animal agricultural facilities. This is an example of the agenda to eliminate any form of human/animal interaction. For extremists, criteria for a CAFO has been distorted beyond regulatory and industry definitions. Extremists include small operations with all types of animals in the “CAFO” category. These groups admit in a footnote that small operations have never been a CAFO by regulatory definition, but can be designated so on a case-by-case basis by an extremist group. Basically, if these loons want to target an operation for any reason, they could. Their definition even encompasses horse facilities, with a small “CAFO” being anything fewer than 150 horses.
The Compassionate Bay website states:
“But this ordinance is not merely symbolic. You might be surprised to hear that there is, in fact, a CAFO in Berkeley: Golden Gate Fields horse racing track. The stables at this track confine upwards of 1,200 horses, many of whom are in stalls for 20+ hours a day.”
Ahead of the proposed measure’s signature-collecting deadline, Golden Gate Fields announced its closure in July 2023. Owners stated their racing operations would be consolidated in southern California. Golden Gate Fields opened in 1941.
Vigilance and Engagement – More Important Than Ever
Programs such as GFPP are being adopted across the nation, usually without the benefit of a vote by “we the people.” Other examples of this scenario include the C40 Cities initiative and vegan lunches forced on New York City public school students. Currently, these initiatives tend to be confined to larger, urban, liberally run cities. However, groups such as GFPP have the potential to infiltrate medium and smaller cities, spreading their disinformation, rhetoric and propaganda to rural parts of the nation.
These groups are relentless in their attempts to alter America’s food production and consumption to satisfy their unquenchable thirst for control. We stand for freedom of choice and A Free and Fed America™. We urge Americans to become better informed about how the food we eat is produced and why it is important for the United States to remain food-independent, improve food security for those in need, and support the hard-working farmers and ranchers who keep us fed with safe, nutritious, affordable, accessible, and plentiful food.
Related links:
Sonoma County Ballot Initiative Threatens Livestock Farming
Skewed Studies Used to Advance Extremist Agenda
Animal Rights vs Animal Welfare: There Is A Difference
The Inconvenient Truth About OCM
Western Watersheds Project: Welfare Environmentalists
