Earlier last week, members of the Backyard Meat Rabbits group received a message that the group has been deleted after being reported by another group that promotes raising rabbits as companion animals called House Rabbit Society.

The Backyard Meat Rabbits group had roughly 30,000 members from around the world and featured content on animal husbandry related to keeping, breeding, and butchering rabbits for personal consumption and retail sales. The page was originally founded based on a husbandry book called Beyond the Pellet by Boyd Craven, former member Ashley Pierce says. Pierce works as the commercial livestock educator for Cornell Cooperative Extension.

“It was a rare group where everyone was very respectful and stayed on task,” explains Pierce. “It was a supportive community of like-minded, sensible people, seeking to improve the quality of their lives and diets, live and interact with the environment in a more sustainable way, and play an active role in the food system.”

Social media sites like Facebook and Instagram seem to be taking an aggressive stance against livestock and meat-related content these days. Facebook’s Community Standards are a vague set of rules that leave considerable room for subjective interpretation. Animal rights groups and anti-meat advocates frequently rally together to report content related to livestock and meat consumption as violating these standards. Officials at Facebook and Instagram are increasingly accepting the reports and placing “warning screens” over images of meat from butcher shops and legally-compliant hunters alike. 

Last year, for example, food vlogger and host of Best Ever Food Review Show Sonny Side found one of his videos depicting preparation of a traditional Phillipino dish censored.

"Before this moment, I was fine with civil discourse (and even uncivil discourse) in the comments section, ranging from how terrible my pronunciation is to whether people and cultures are ethical in their meat-eating traditions. Sadly, this changes today," Side wrote in a Facebook post in response to the censorship. “These cultures and their customs do not exist to contradict your worldview. They’ve been around since the beginning of time and they (outside of being inhumane or hunting animals to extinction) deserve your respect or at minimum your tolerance.”

Whether it’s placing a “sensitive content” screen over a chef’s images of pig ears and trotters or videos of sheep being shorn, the effect is alienating and only serves to drive a deeper wedge between consumers and transparent education about the food system.

“The vast majority of questions and answers in the group were surrounding the improvement of animal welfare and husbandry, including housing, feeding, breeding, health care, and processing.  I understand that not everyone views rabbits as livestock, as they are viewed in Backyard Meat Rabbits and similar groups,” Pierce says.

“Although we may have differing views, it does not allow censorship of a legal, wholesome activity that directly is benefitting the lives of so many.  Not only is the meat from rabbit very nutritious, but participants are also greatly benefiting from positive externalities such as manure for home gardens, education for youth, fiber or pelt crafting, showing and exhibiting, and the simple enjoyment of sharing your life with an animal. The rabbit creates equity and opportunity for both rural and urban residents to take control of their diets in a very direct way.” 

PETA is Facebook’s newest shareholder

The uptick in meat-related censorship may have something to do with one of Facebook’s newest shareholders: PETA.

In July 2019, Facebook announced that animal rights group PETA purchased shares in the company that entitles it to submit shareholder resolutions, attend annual meetings, and ask Facebook executives questions during the meetings. PETA’s decision to become a shareholder follows Facebook’s increased use of warning screens on videos from PETA allegedly depicting animal abuse, according to a statement from PETA. The activist group is urging Facebook to adopt the same policy as Twitter, which allows users to choose whether their feed will be censored with warning covers.

Support the case for better meat and bringing more transparency to food production

Efforts like this by animal activists and disillusioned pet owners only serve to create more misinformation and hysteria regarding livestock production. Regenerative farmers around the world are working to educate consumers about the environmentally and ethically sound ways they raise livestock in harmony with the environment. To support the nutritional, environmental, and ethical case for better meat, click here.

Lauren Manning, Esq., LL.M., is a cattle farmer, agricultural law professor at the University of Arkansas School of Law, food journalist, and contributor to the forthcoming documentary and book project Sacred Cow: The environmental, nutritional, and ethical case for better meat.