{"id":43263,"date":"2023-10-20T15:27:18","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/egg-lobby-tries-to-fry-hampton-creek-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:27:18","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:27:18","slug":"egg-lobby-tries-to-fry-hampton-creek-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/egg-lobby-tries-to-fry-hampton-creek-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Egg lobby tries to fry Hampton Creek – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Government officials and an egg lobby group have teamed up to try to scramble a Silicon Valley food startup that offers a plant-based egg alternative.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/i> has obtained 600 pages of emails that saw a US department of agriculture official, staff from the American Egg Board and egg industry executives collaborating to try to fry Hampton Creek.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The tech company has raised US$120 million to date, and poses an egg-sistential threat to the $5.5 billion per year egg industry.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hampton Creek sells a low-cost plant-based replacement for eggs, as well as a mayo replacement to boot.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the emails, the officials advise a group in how to proceed with a false advertising lawsuit filed against the startup, brainstorm tactics to force the company to change its name and ask Whole Foods to block the products.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The emails even include joke threats of violence against the Hampton Creek founder, with one official asking: \u201cCan we pool our money and put a hit on him?\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hampton Creek founder Josh Tetrick is understandably a bit upset about the authorities having a laugh about sending a hitman out to get him.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not entirely surprised that some industries that are lost in the past a little bit are fighting so hard,\u201d Tetrick told the Guardian.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cEven though it was joking, some of those notes about putting a hit out \u2013 that\u2019s some reckless stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Want to grow your business with Instagram?<\/i> StartupSmart School can help<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Government officials and an egg lobby group have teamed up to try to scramble a Silicon Valley food startup that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59891,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43263"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}