"a powerful, popular, and well-funded lobby"

Via Vegan.com, an article in the Washington Times features a rather peculiar sentence:

"The agriculture industry is under attack from a powerful, popular and well-funded lobby - animal rights groups, which want to see it die completely, said two speakers at the Animal Agriculture Alliance 9th Anual Stakeholders Summit in Arlington, Va., Wednesday."

The idea that anything resembling an animal rights position is "powerful, popular, and well-funded" in America is laughable at best.

Powerful? According to the speakers themselves, these groups want to do away with animal agriculture altogether. Abolitionist animal activists are so far away from achieving this goal--so far from even convincing any meaningful number of people that this is a desirable goal--that it is beyond absurd to call them "powerful."

Popular? Vegetarians make up a very small percentage of Americans, vegans an even tinier portion of that. Furthermore, among many Americans, words like "vegetarian," "vegan," "PETA," etc., are treated with open contempt and derision, and consuming meat is either commonplace or celebrated. The claim that animal activists are popular in America is, well, pretty stupid, I think.

Well-funded? Compared to what? Compared to industrial agriculture? Compared to the companies that advertise and sell their food to us? I'd be very surprised.

I don't know if this is paranoia or propaganda, but it doesn't sound even reasonably close to being true.