Background
The Center for Responsible Food Business may sound like a large organization with a comprehensive mission in the food industry. But public records indicate that this organization, founded in 2023, is really a one-man “astroturf” operation linked to animal liberation extremism.
Dyed in the Wool, Activist Leadership
The Center for Responsible Food Business (CRFB) is run by Taylor Warren Ford. Prior to becoming President and working for the CRFB, Ford worked at the Humane League for six years. According to its tax return, CRFB only has one employee.
CRFB’s board has two other individuals linked to animal rights extremism. Board chair Mark Middleton is currently a director for the Humane League, while secretary Clauda Lifton-Schwerner is a state policy manager at Mercy for Animals. Both groups advocate animal liberation and vegan diets, and protest restaurants and retailers that serve animal protein.
Funding from Radical, Anti-Meat Activists
Public sources reveal that CRFB was the recipient of $500,000 from Good Ventures in 2024, a grant authorized following a recommendation from the Open Philanthropy Project. Open Philanthropy Action Fund had previously made a $120,000 seed-money donation in 2023, accounting for about 85% of CRFB’s revenue that year.
Open Philanthropy promotes its mission to drive alternatives and ultimately displace animal products from grocery stores. CRFB advances Open Philanthropy’s mission by advocating for such policies as tighter regulations on the use of antibiotics for raising livestock and making it more difficult for conventional farmers to bring their products to the market.
According to its grant database, Open Philanthropy Project has directed $300 million to animal rights groups since 2016. This includes funding corporate harassment campaigns at the Humane League and similar organizations–which indicate that these pressure campaigns are “astroturf” and don’t represent mainstream consumers.
Harassment Campaigns
Aside from maintaining a blog, CRFB does not manage any active social media accounts and has no apparent online following.
CRFB’s tactic of choice appears to be mobile billboard advertising, which it once used to try to get an adjunctant faculty member at Northwestern University fired. She was targeted due to her service on a supervisory board of a grocery company that animal activists have been targeting.
Records also indicate that CRFB published and then removed from the internet an analysis designed to encourage the residents of Denver to pass Initiated Ordinance 309, an effort to shut down a meat packing plant. That effort failed, garnering only 35.74% of the vote.
Location
CRFB is run out of an odd office building in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, according to its tax return.
