How the Egg Lobby Paid Food Blogs and Targeted Chef to Crush a Vegan Startup
A government-controlled industry group targeted popular food bloggers, major publications and a celebrity chef as part of its sweeping effort to combat a perceived threat from an egg-replacement startup backed by some of Silicon Valleyâs biggest names, the Guardian can reveal.
A detailed review of emails, sent from inside the AEB and obtained by the Guardian, shows that the lobbyistâs 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 groupâs âkey messagesâ
- 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 âlove letterâ
- 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 scale of the campaign â dubbed âBeyond Eggsâ after Hampton Creekâs original company name â shows the lengths to which a federally-appointed, industry-funded marketing group will go to squash a relatively small Silicon Valley startup, from enlisting a high-powered public relations firm to buying off unwitting bloggers.
One leading public health attorney, asked to review the internal communications, said the egg marketing group was in breach of a US department of agriculture (USDA) regulation that specifically prohibited âany advertising (including press releases) deemed disparaging to another commodityâ.
Tetrick called for the USDA to clamp down on the food lobby, as thousands of petitioners called on the White House to to investigate the USDA itself for âdeceptive endorsementsâ.
âThis is a product that has been around for a very long time,â the Hampton Creek founder said. âThey are not used to competition and they donât know how to deal with it.â
In statements, AEBâs Ivy and a USDA official denied any wrongdoing. An agriculture department official said that it âdoes not condone any efforts to limit competing products in commerceâ.
The AEB contracted Edelman, the worldâs largest public relations company, to coordinate the attack. One passage within the email tranche suggests that AEB amended its contract with Edelman to include a section called âBeyond EggsConsumer Researchâ.
âConduct qualitative/quantitative consumer research to pinpoint and prioritize areas of focus. For example, research will, ideally, provide actionable intelligence on what attacks are gaining traction with consumers and which are not so as to help industry calibrate level of communications response (if any) to ensure a consistent response strategy moving forward,â the passage reads.Â
âAds considered disparaging are those that depict other commodities in a negative or unpleasant light via either video, photography or statements,â said attorney Michele Simon, of the law firm Foscolo and Handel, after reviewing the AEB emails. âThe entire contract [amendment] with Edelman violates this rule.â
Some of the webâs biggest food blogs were unwittingly paid from the âBeyond Eggsâ budget to write supportively about eggs as AEB executives privately expressed mounting frustration about Hampton Creek, whose high-profile backers include the Facebook backer Peter Thiel, billionaire investor Vinod Khosla and other Silicon Valley luminaries.
When one Edelman executive, Jamie Singer, advised that the board wait on âan eventual and organic balancing of the media narrativeâ, Kevin Burkum, AEBâs senior vice-president of marketing, shot back: âHelp us understand why the recommended course of action seems to always be sit back and do nothing?â
More recently, Hampton Creek has in fact faced its own PR woes with allegations of suspect science and hazardous work environments. And last month the US Food and Drug Administration warned the California startup that the name of its flagship product, Just Mayo, was misleading and and should be renamed, insisting an egg-less product should not be described as mayonnaise.
The emails reveal how AEB executives had grown increasingly frustrated about coverage of Hampton Creek, hailing the company as providing a high-tech and sustainable alternative to factory-farmed eggs.
In an email an AEB executive noted a blogpost by Zimmern â an influential TV celebrity â that complimented Hampton Creek and described caged-chicken egg production as âthe poster child for everything farming and food systems shouldnât beâ.Â
The AEB executive complained Zimmernâs post was âa new love letterâ to Hampton Creek and suggested sending the TV chef a study underwritten by the AEB to contradict his take. A long exchange discussed whether or not to respond to Zimmernâs offer to host a bake-off between Beyond Eggs and hen eggs.
On behalf of the egg group, Edelman contacted high-profile food blogger and Food Network star Drummond, author of several top-selling cookbooks. Drummond did not agree to work on the campaign, the emails indicate. The group also sought out Grandin, another famous figure whose endorsement would have been valuable. Grandin, too, appears to have declined.
In 2013, Google bought ads against Hampton Creekâs name and other search terms including Tetrickâs name and his chief product, Just Mayo, so that links to egg board-sponsored talking points about industrial farming would pop up alongside links to Hampton Creek. The AEB emailed about how to deal with Buzzfeedâs Rachel Sanders, who reported on the ads, and others who followed up on the campaign, in the emails.
The AEB retained at least five bloggers and contacted many more during the period covered by the emails. The bloggers disclosed the egg groupâs advertising on their sites. The two bloggers who responded to the Guardian for this article said they were completely unaware that the sponsorships were part of a concerted effort against Hampton Foods.
Hemi Weingarten, author of the popular food blog Fooducate and an occasional columnist for the Huffington Post, published a post marked as sponsored by the AEB entitled â10 Reasons to Love Eggsâ that including this sentence: âAt just $0.15 each, eggs are the least expensive source of high-quality protein per serving.â This language is consistent with one of the American Egg Boardâs most regularly used talking points.
Weingarten said he knew nothing of the campaign against Hampton Creek and pointed out that his blog had published positive coverage of the company. âAs part of our ad sales activities we reach out to healthy brands and commodity boards to spend their ad dollars to reach our audience,â Weingarten told the Guardian.
Lori Lange, of the popular blog Recipe Girl, is listed by Edelman as receiving a fee of $2,500 for a bagel quiche recipe. Lange disclosed the post was sponsored. The Guardian emailed Lange for comment; she did not respond but did remove an AEB infographic that read in part: âTodayâs hens are producing more eggs and living longer due to better health, nutrition and living space.â
Blogger Gaby Dalkin was paid $2,000 to include the AEBâs âIncredible Eggsâ talking points in a recipe for breakfast burritos, and Susan Whetzel of Doughmesstic included the language in her in her Italian Egg Frittata recipe, according to the emails. Both disclosed the posts were sponsored.Â
Whetzel said she, too, was unaware that the blogpost was considered part of a campaign against Hampton Creek by the AEB, and that she had adhered to the Federal Trade Commissionâs advertising guidelines by including a disclosure notice. âItâs obvious itâs a sponsored post,â she wrote in an email to the Guardian.
Dalkin did not respond but an email bounceback said she was out of the country.
The cache of 600 pages of AEB emails, first reported last week, was obtained by Ryan Shapiro, a Freedom of Information Act (Foia) expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Washington DC-based Foia specialist attorney Jeffrey Light.
The messages show Ivy, who is set to leave the AEB at yearâs end after being named the industryâs 2015 Egg Person of the Year, received many messages from egg producers and processors who make up the boardâs constituent members, are required by law to supply its budget and were evidently unnerved over the rise of Hampton Creek.Â
Ivy expressed a desire to push back at the positive media coverage the company would start to receive, from the pages of Forbes magazine to Buzzfeed and beyond.
âWe know that shell egg producers are [...] feeling threatened by the introduction of this product,â she wrote in a September 2013 email.
In a statement to the Guardian, Ivy said the AEBâs efforts to âbalance existing media effortsâ were âcommonâ practice and âpart of a larger business strategyâ.
âWhile egg replacers have been around for many years, we recognize that the interest in this category has increased recently,â she said. â[I]n response, we bolstered our efforts to increase the demand for eggs and egg products through research, education and promotional activities.
âThese activities, which are common within the consumer products industry, include continuing to work with industry thought-leaders, conducting a paid social media strategy to balance existing media efforts and liaising with partner organizations.â
However it is the process of targeting a perceived rival that could prove most controversial for the AEB, a statutory body paid for by industry but partly appointed by the US agriculture secretary. Paid-for or âsponsoredâ blogposts are not uncommon, but the notion that a quasi-governmental body funded a campaign to undercut a Silicon Valley food startup could raise eyebrows.Â
Tetrick, the Hampton Creek founder, called for a congressional inquiry on Thursday, saying that the agriculture department should be held responsible for the AEBâs actions.
âThey have gone way beyond what they are allowed to do,â Tetrick said of the egg lobbying group.Â
He said the scale of the egg lobbyâs retaliation against his companyâs rise was âhard to wrap your head aroundâ.
âThey play the same game over and over again,â he told the Guardian on Friday. âThey say they are doing it to promote eggs, but itâs got nothing to do with competition.â