White Oak Pastures: Difference between revisions

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As the owner of White Oak Pastures, Will Harris boasted to [[The New York Times]] in 2015, "We cheat to win," and that Confederate General Robert E. Lee was one of his "heroes."<ref>https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/dining/at-white-oak-pastures-grass-fed-beef-is-only-the-beginning.html</ref>
As the owner of White Oak Pastures, Will Harris boasted to [[The New York Times]] in 2015, "We cheat to win," and that Confederate General Robert E. Lee was one of his "heroes."<ref>https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/dining/at-white-oak-pastures-grass-fed-beef-is-only-the-beginning.html</ref>
<blockquote>The land at its margins is shadowed by great forests of pine trees, each holding hundreds of pounds of carbon, which once stretched unbroken across the landscape. Bald eagles who attempt to nest in them are hazed and harassed into leaving.<ref>https://whiteoakpastures.wordpress.com/tag/bald-eagles/</ref> The nearby highway is paved over an ancient First Nations footpath. Harris inherited the land from his great grandfather, who settled it in 1866,<ref>https://bittersoutherner.com/will-harris-white-oak-pastures-farm</ref> shortly after the Muscogee people were forcibly displaced along the Trail of Tears.<ref>https://medium.com/@unpopularscience/the-regenerative-ranching-racket-fe6cce917a42</ref></blockquote>


= Greenwashing =
= Greenwashing =

Revision as of 00:53, 19 February 2023

As the owner of White Oak Pastures, Will Harris boasted to The New York Times in 2015, "We cheat to win," and that Confederate General Robert E. Lee was one of his "heroes."[1]

The land at its margins is shadowed by great forests of pine trees, each holding hundreds of pounds of carbon, which once stretched unbroken across the landscape. Bald eagles who attempt to nest in them are hazed and harassed into leaving.[2] The nearby highway is paved over an ancient First Nations footpath. Harris inherited the land from his great grandfather, who settled it in 1866,[3] shortly after the Muscogee people were forcibly displaced along the Trail of Tears.[4]

Greenwashing

As a major supplier for General Mills, White Oak Pastures is "not just a small local farm, but actually part of a powerful and massive multinational company, and an important arm of its branding and marketing." [5]

In a 2019 report on White Oak Pastures' carbon footprint, funded by General Mills and published by Quantis, the ranch's importance to rebranding & consumer psychology was made explicit:

Regeneratively grazed beef can likely escape the stigma of extremely high carbon emissions attached to conventional beef. General Mills, Epic and WOP should consider how to tell this story to ensure brand enhancement[6]

Subsequently, their claim to produce "carbon-negative beef" through Holistic Management[7] has been decisively refuted, after this report was found to have "significant lapses that grossly exaggerate or misrepresent the true SOC sequestration capacity of their farming techniques." [8]

Further, it was also discovered that Jason Rowntree, the principal investigator in the study, had erroneously declared he had no conflicts of interest, despite sitting on the board of the American Grassfed Association and having received research grants from corporations such as McDonald's also seeking to rebrand their beef as 'regenerative' [9]

As General Mills' report was an assessment of WOP's application of Holistic Management as developed by Allan Savory, it was also cited by the Savory Institute as part of their presentation for the Climate Collaborative's 2020 report on Regenerative Standards, an organization financed in part by General Mills.

Savory Network

According to their website, White Oak Pastures is "proud to be named 1 of only 23 Global Savory Hubs" organized by the Savory Institute and participates in Savory's Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV) program as a "frontier founder".[10]

According to Allan Savory, scientific evidence against his methods is irrelevant because holistic management "cannot be peer-reviewed." He has made this argument several times, perhaps most recently on Twitter in March of 2021[11] in defense of its application by White Oak Pastures on behalf of General Mills in response to evidence of greenwashing through false claims to produce "carbon-negative beef." [12]

Wage Theft

In 2021, White Oak Pastures settled a class action lawsuit for $100,000 of wage theft paid back to its workers [13]

Sources

  1. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/dining/at-white-oak-pastures-grass-fed-beef-is-only-the-beginning.html
  2. ↑ https://whiteoakpastures.wordpress.com/tag/bald-eagles/
  3. ↑ https://bittersoutherner.com/will-harris-white-oak-pastures-farm
  4. ↑ https://medium.com/@unpopularscience/the-regenerative-ranching-racket-fe6cce917a42
  5. ↑ https://plantbaseddata.medium.com/the-failed-attempt-to-greenwash-beef-7dfca9d74333
  6. ↑ https://blog.whiteoakpastures.com/hubfs/WOP-LCA-Quantis-2019.pdf
  7. ↑ https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/climatecollaborative/mailings/1633/attachments/original/PPT-FINAL-Regenerative_Mapping-min_compressed.pdf?1579205603; p. 41
  8. ↑ https://plantbaseddata.medium.com/the-failed-attempt-to-greenwash-beef-7dfca9d74333
  9. ↑ https://medium.com/@unpopularscience/the-regenerative-ranching-racket-fe6cce917a42
  10. ↑ https://whiteoakpastures.com/pages/savory-hub?_pos=1&_sid=8b39d043f&_ss=r
  11. ↑ https://twitter.com/allanrsavory/status/1368586780790906885?s=21
  12. ↑ https://plantbaseddata.medium.com/the-failed-attempt-to-greenwash-beef-7dfca9d74333
  13. ↑ https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/employees-working-in-slaughterhouse-3337332/
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