Washington, DC – A year after calling Iowa pork farmers “a greater threat than Osama bin Laden,” environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is bringing his WaterKeeper Alliance and its anti-pork campaign to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. But the June 6-7 event, which WaterKeeper is promoting as an exercise in “creating meaningful solutions,” is really aimed at tearing down successful pork-producing companies that Kennedy doesn’t like.
In their place, Kennedy wants to enshrine so-called “sustainable” livestock production, using the costly and inefficient methods favored by activist leaders from multi-million-dollar animal-rights and environmental organizations.
Kennedy declared war on America’s pork producers in 2001, telling National Public Radio listeners that he intends to sue them all out of business: “We have attorneys now who have money,” he boasted, “and they know what they’re doing. They are the best in the country and we are going to put an end to this industry.” True to his word, Kennedy has already filed billion-dollar lawsuits against the pork industry, using racketeering laws intended for use against organized crime families.
At last year’s “Hog Summit” in Iowa, Kennedy told a Fox TV reporter that “the best thing would be if this [pork] industry did leave the country.” And in a January 2001 Des Moines Register article, he suggested that beef and poultry would be his next lawsuit targets. “We’re starting with hogs,” Kennedy said. “After the hogs, then we are going after the other ones.”
Today, Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) Executive Director Richard Berman called on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to set aside the “sustainability” rhetoric and come clean about his profit motive. “Kennedy has built a coalition of high-priced trial lawyers,” Berman noted, “and their frivolous lawsuits threaten to raise the cost of meat for American consumers. Pennsylvanians ought to be concerned that Kennedy is using Gettysburg as a staging ground for his next money-grab.”
“And Kennedy’s ridiculous pork utopia has a significant price tag,” CCF’s Berman added. “The Swedes have already adopted a system similar to what the WaterKeeper people want, and pork prices in that country have risen as high as $12 per pound. Maybe Mr. Kennedy can afford that, but average Americans can’t.”
