As animal agriculture fast forwards toward a future in which
we’ll all be subsisting on shamburgers and soybeans, the leading
cheerleaders won’t be activists, but ‘enlightened’ investors.
After a brief hiatus of sorts, the double f-word is back.
With a vengeance.
Talkin’ about “Factory Farms,” and their (alleged) devastation of the
environment at a level, to believe the rhetoric of an entire generation
of activists, exceeded only by the collective destruction of the
world’s tropical rainforests or perhaps the meltdown of the nuclear
reactor at Chernobyl.
In the larger context of blaming livestock producers for raising
cattle that are killing the planet, calling out large-scale production
facilities for their eco-impact is simply doubling down on the idea that
animal agriculture ranks right up there with Hitler, ISIS and the music
of Nickelback as a scourge the world could do without.
Supposedly, according to Forbes, a religious text among the investor
class, a new breed of private equity investor is going to force industry
leaders into a production makeover as a way to forestall the onset of
environmental Armageddon.
Putting on the pressure
As Forbes framed it in a recent article titled, “Move Over, PETA:
Meat Companies Have a New Thorn In Their Side,” a “growing cadre of
investors” now look beyond the bottom line in terms of providing capital
to the agricultural and food industries and will soon be marginalizing
factory farming by pressuring the downstream players in the retail and
foodservice sectors.
One of the leaders in this movement — if that’s an appropriate term —
is FAIRR, a consortium of more than 80 investors controlling some $12
trillion in assets. The goal is to start planning for a world where
“meat and dairy are no longer the darlings of the food world.”
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