We decided to use the name “Eat Less Meat” as a way to encourage all people to try a more plant-based lifestyle, to take whatever steps they were able to take at this point. It was important to make this name more inclusive to everyone. When I went to register the website name, the version without hyphens was already registered. By who?
Applegate Natural and Organic Meats. Why would they want the name eatlessmeat.com? They must be afraid someone will actually encourage this. It is not like any vegetarian industries have registered for eatlessveg.com (which is available by the way).
I checked out their website, and on the surface, appreciate that they are encouraging people to think about how their animals were raised, and go away from factory farms. I found the wording in their mission a bit odd, in that it never mentions the word “animals”.
At Applegate our mission is to Change the Meat We Eat.
By that we mean making good meat – the kind that’s raised humanely without antibiotics and hormones – accessible to as many people as possible. To achieve this evolution, we put our resources toward the people we think have the most potential to change our food system – eaters, farmers and innovators. Our work involves educating people about the important issues that impact their food, addressing the challenges faced by new farmers, and supporting big ideas that can improve the way good meat is raised, produced and distributed.
So, Applegate is trying to do better, and steer people away from those nasty factory farms and make them feel all good about humane treatment, and farmers. Oh, but wait… what is this? In May 2015, Hormel (producers of SPAM and all sorts of unnatural foods) acquired Applegate. I guess $775 million dollars will help Hormel sell both their processed food to people who don’t care, and also funnel in sales for people who think they are avoiding those nasty factory farms. Pretty disgusting if you ask me.