REPORT: Anti-Farm Activism Funded by Fake Meat Investors
Anti-farm ballot initiatives in California and Colorado received funding from venture capitalists with large holdings in vegan alternative food startups.
Public records appear to show venture capitalists with large holdings in alternative food and fake meat companies may be funding attacks on farming.
Last year, there were multiple attempts to restrict farming and ranching on ballots nationwide. Measure J in Sonoma County, California was billed as a “factory farm ban” but locals say it would have devastated ethical family farms. In Colorado, I-309 sought to ban Denver meat processors.
The network of interrelated vegan activist groups behind these bills appear to have received a significant portion of funding from a small handful of vegan alternative food investors.
“Whether these venture capitalists believe what they’re saying, I don’t know,” says Karen Sanders, an independent researcher from Sonoma County who came across these connections in her research. “But it’s worth their money to put their competition out of business.”
Who Is Behind the Farm Bans?
Venture capitalists Shaleen Shah and brothers Jay and Satish Karandikar are major investors in plant-based and factory-grown food products including Just Egg, Wicked Foods, Good Meat, and Good Catch, according to media reports. Their venture fund, Ahimsa VC, is described as “India’s only impact VC fund disrupting animal agriculture.”
All three are principles at Ahimsa Foundation, a non-profit animal welfare organization. Shah and Jay Karandikar also lead Karuna Foundation, a similar non-profit that funds vegan activism.
Both foundations—Ahimsa and Karuna—were founded in 2021. Their current combined assets, according to public records, is over $1 billion.
These foundations appear to fund a large, interrelated network of animal rights groups across the U.S., including those behind multiple ballot initiatives seeking to limit agriculture operations in California and Colorado.
“They fund these animal rights activists as basically foot soldiers,” Sanders says via email. “They are venture capitalists in alternative food sources. They are in direct competition with farmers. According to their 2022 tax filings, Karuna gave $2 million to Gen V, which launched in 2019 as Million Dollar Vegan, a global Animal Rights Extremist group, with the motto Unite. Disrupt. Transform. Shaleen Shah sits on their board as treasurer.”
Measure J: California Farm Ban
The Measure J campaign in Sonoma County was advertised as a ban on factory farming. Opponents say the bill would have put many organic, family-owned farms and dairies out of business.
Karuna donated $45,000 to the Yes on Measure J campaign.
Another angel investor named Nicholas Owen Gunden contributed $49,000 to the Measure J effort. Gunden is a major investor in soybean “meat” company Better Nature.
Gunden has a non-profit too, called Phaunaproject. One of the grant recipients on its website is Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), an extreme animal rights group based in Berkeley.
DxE co-founder Wayne Hsiung appears to be friendly with Shaleen Shah. In this podcast episode, the two discuss an FBI raid on Shah’s property related to stolen pigs from Smithfield Foods. Now a convicted felon, Hsiung has launched a new non-profit called Simple Hearts Initiative, which also receives support from Karuna.
DxE members or former members started a group called the Coalition to End Factory Farming, which sponsored Measure J. In a call to the Sonoma County Registrar of Voters, one researcher was given the names of three individuals who filed the Measure J ballot petition: all three are identified in online sources with DxE.
I-309: Colorado Meat Processing Ban
Phaunaproject also supports Pax Fauna and Pro-Animal Future, two groups behind the attempted Denver ban on meat processors, I-309. According to its website, non-profit Pro-Animal Future was incubated by their non-profit Pax Fauna.
Public filings on I-309 supporters list Gunden as donating $11,490, Phauna $127,045, and Karuna Foundation $65,000.
This Colorado initiative was spearheaded by Aidan (Cook) Kankyou and Eva Hamer, both former DxE members.
“Long-term plan to get rid of agriculture.”
Both Measure J in California and I-309 in Colorado failed. Sanders says it doesn’t matter.
“Win or lose, this is their long-term plan to get rid of agriculture.”
DxE has published a “Roadmap to an Animal Bill of Rights” in which they outline their plan to end animal farming in the U.S. by 2040.
“There’s a reason that across the country, the biggest agribusiness groups in the country, for example the National Pork Producers Council, donated almost $50,000 to the No on Measure J Campaign,” said self-professed factory farm investigator Lewis Bernier in a public debate on Measure J. “It’s because they have said publicly, they think that if this passed here it could spread to other places. We’re all in agreement that it’s a bigger problem in other places but this is a place where its more simple and more feasible to actually start. We can’t start where it’s worse, where they have the most power, where they have the most influence, and where there’s no small farms to transition to.”
Communities Targeted by Non-Local Activists?
“These farms around here are the first organic dairies in the USA,” says Shelina Moreda, one of the founders of Communities for Food & Family Farms, a grassroots advocacy group in Sonoma County. “Farms started by immigrants who gave their all to pass healthier land to their grandchildren. You have to ask yourself, why here? What’s really behind this? Is it money for certain people? Is it corporations stoking centralization of food systems? Is it developers hungry for this untouched land? Something is going on and we need the community to start standing up to protect their own few remaining local food and local farms before they are extinct.”
In an article on funding in the Measure J campaigns, The Press Democrat notes that an “interesting aspect of the Yes on J funding is how much is coming from the tech world.”
Cassie King, a spokesperson for the Coalition to End Factory Farming, said not to read into it.
“I think maybe [tech is] more a fertile ground for people who have money to donate,” she is quoted.
The Press Democrat reports that the Yes on J campaign spent $45,000 on housing for campaign volunteers in Sonoma County. This would suggest non-local activists targeted the farming community.
Perhaps the connection between fake meat investors in the venture capitalist tech world and a series of systematic attacks on family farms warranted a little further exploration.
The U.S. lost 14,590 farms and ranches in one year, between 2023 and 2024. In 1940, there were 4.6 million dairy farms in the country—today there are less than 26,000 left.
Consumers may feel they have a right to know that a significant portion of the money behind anti-farm activism appears to be coming into their communities from outside venture capitalists with large stakes in processed alternative food start-ups. Especially when these start-ups are direct competitors to the small, independent farmers and ranchers such legislation seeks to eliminate.
More Investigation Needed
Sanders attempted to send her research to local media, but says she was ignored. She says she thinks there are some true believers in the grassroots movement. She likens them to cult members. Others, she says, may start that way, but get corrupted by the money coming in.
“This is like sharks bumping their prey in the water,” says Sanders. “How is the public going to respond to losing their farms here in the U.S.? They’re testing us.”
She has researched other players in the environmentalist non-profit space who she says are working to shut down animal agriculture.
Rose Foundation, based in Oakland, California, has given grants to many environmentalist groups over the years, including California Sportfishing Alliance. These groups have sued farms under the Clean Water Act, including Sonoma County’s Mulas Dairy.
“These same groups are popping up in lawsuit after lawsuit, putting farms out of business,” says Moreda. “The ranch has to defend itself and hire a lawyer, with the threat of this dragging on for years and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like what happened to Mulas in Sonoma—they lost their entire multi-family member business and family legacy because farmers don’t have the money and time to fight lawyers for years. That’s scary that these groups can set out to annihilate our local food supply like that and nobody steps in to anything about it—to protect the people growing our food.”
Mulas Dairy agreed to shut down in a 2023 settlement agreement, after racking up almost $300,000 in debt. In addition to the family, 13 farm employees lost their jobs, according to reporting from The Press Democrat.
“It doesn’t pay to own ground anymore, not in Sonoma County,” Mulas told The Press Democrat last year. “There is no more right to farm—you don’t have the right to farm anymore.”
In the pending lawsuit against the Reichardt Duck Farm—initiated by Californians for Alternatives to Toxics, another recipient of grants from Rose Foundation—the farm states they agreed to pay $250,000 to the Rose Foundation as part of the settlement.
“I don’t understand how this is legal. I don’t understand why this isn’t considered a form of extortion,” Sanders says.
Thank you for the article. Non local = Non caring. I don't think manufactured food will ever catch on, I give it a 1 in ten thousand chance, but that doesn't mean they won't destroy farmers trying. My family buys grass feed beef ( pasture grazed and finished), Raw milk, local berries and stone fruit, eggs, and more. I hope MAHA / Nicole Shanahan and others step into the frey. Thank you for the article.