Agenda
Linked to radical animal rights activism, Food Solutions Action’s (FSA) is an advocacy group whose goal is to replace chicken, beef, pork, and other meat products with highly processed imitations or lab-grown meat. Among the organization’s priorities is to secure federal and state subsidies to prop up the lab-grown meat industry.
Personnel
FSA lists three members on its board of directors: Ariel Nessel, Bruce Freidrich, and John Sobrato.
Prior to his involvement with FSA, Freidrich was a longtime executive for PETA, the infamous animal liberation group that opposes even pet ownership. His greatest hits include equating eating meat with beating your child, hurling fake blood at models, streaking in public, and trying to change the name of the Green Bay Packers. Friedrich once said that eating meat “is not your personal decision, any more than, you know, whether somebody beats their child is their personal decision.” Friedrich also commented that Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh’s decision to go vegetarian while on death row “groups him with some of the world’s greatest visionaries.”
Nessel is a real estate and solar energy investor and developer. He has been described as “one of the key philanthropists of the Animal Rights movement,” according to Animal Equality, a vegan advocacy group.
Sobrato, son of California real estate mogul John A. Sobrato, brings his family’s financial resources to the table for FSA. Sobrato has indicated his goal is “pretty much every animal and dairy product we eat being replaced with a plant-based alternative.”
FSA’s staff counts former community organizers for Food and Water Watch and Factory and the Farming Awareness Coalition among its ranks.
Funding
FSA is organized as a 501(c)(4). The latest public financial disclosure for FSA covers its operations in 2023, and shows that FSA’s revenues exceeded $1.8 million that year, with $727,000 spent on staff salaries.
Between 2021 and 2023, FSA received over $2 million in grants from the Humane America Animal Foundation and $250,000 in grants from the Karuna Foundation, which “supports and funds organizations and individuals advocating for a vegan lifestyle and the removal of animals from the food system.”
Lobbying And Political Action Committee
Lobbying records show that FSA is advocating for taxpayer funding to support the growth of the lab-grown/fake meat industry. FSA has recruited several staff members with experience working for members of congress for this purpose.
FSA also operates a political action committee (PAC) that spent over a quarter of million dollars in the 2024 election cycle. FSA PAC donated $10,000 to the campaign of California Senator Adam Schiff, who previously had sent a letter to the Federal Bureau of Prisons to include more “plant-based meat options” in the diet of prisoners.
FSA does not have an active social media presence, an X account for the group has gained only six followers and made no posts since it joined the platform in February 2024.
