The Lobbyist Behind Your $7 Eggs - Michigan Enjoyer
The price of eggs has skyrocketed in Michigan, and it’ll probably never go down in an appreciable way. And it’s all due to a chummy deal cut between Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, animal-rights activists, and corporate egg producers. Then there is the lobbyist who put the whole thing together.
In 2009, the Humane Society of the United States convinced Gov. Jennifer Granholm to sign a law requiring Michigan egg producers to use bigger cages so that confined hens could spread their wings and live more “humanely.”
In 2018, Ruddell, who was still working for the Humane Society, was back at the Capitol with a new idea, one imported straight from California.
“They (animal activists) had a gun to our head,” Ruddell told me. “We’re sitting in 2019, and the poultry industry has not made the conversion. Gretchen Whitmer is now governor, and there’s really not the feeling that she is going to be as favorable to the agriculture industry as she is to the animal rights community, because the progressives really funded her primary campaign in 2018.”
“So we felt like we had our back against the wall in the poultry industry to make sure we got the five years we needed desperately to match up with the new marketplace commitments.”
