In a pun-filled letter to Montana from PETA senior manager of communications Andrew Bernstein, the group suggested that meat wasn’t the best investment and that he would be better off spending his money in a vegan-based protein operation.
Montana invested in the meat outfit in January of this year through Liquid 2 Ventures, where he is a managing partner, and was part of Crowd Cow’s $2 million funding round.
In an interview with Fox Business, he praised the operation and proclaimed his love for meat. “First of all, I am a big meat-lover and I just like this idea. You get online, and you look for meats. There isn’t a lot of competition in the marketplace for something like this in the way they specialise – and we believe in the founders.”
Crowd Cow was set up by Ethan Lowry and Joe Heitzeberg in 2015. It offers consumers the opportunity to purchase meat products directly from farmers through a crowdfunding platform, which means the animal is only slaughtered once all of it has been sold. Operating out of Seattle, it has already generated over $1 million in sales in less than two years.
It sells its produces in 20 US states with a plan to expand that to nationwide reach in the coming months.
In response to PETA’s letter, Crowd Cow’s Lowry said: “Millions of people love beef, and many thousands of families rely on cattle for their livelihood.”
PETA’s letter to Joe Montana
Dear Joe
We heard about your new business venture, Crowd Cow, and we’re hoping to intercept it in the name of good business and compassion. Unnecessary roughness doesn’t begin to describe the horrors that animals experience on their way to a plate.
Since transparency is the company’s goal, customers should get a good look at the playbook. They should see how calves are separated from their mothers, subjected to routine mutilations such as branding, castration, and dehorning — often without pain relief — and are hung up by one leg before their throats are slit, sometimes while they’re still conscious.
If you look downfield, you’ll see that meat is a losing venture. Many exposés have shown that eating meat and other animal-derived foods is a recipe for heart disease, obesity, cancer, and diabetes — not to mention its devastating effects on the environment, as animal agriculture is the number one contributor to climate change. On the other hand, a healthy vegan diet can help reverse the effects of diabetes, heart disease, and other life-threatening conditions.
Given that the market for vegan meats is projected to reach $5.2 billion globally by 2020, we urge you to call an audible and instead consider investing in sustainable, forward-thinking, compassionate businesses that put a focus on what’s good for animals, humans, and the environment. The ball is in your hands, Joe.
Sincerely,
Andrew Bernstein
PETA