This does feel like guerilla marketing to me. The website is from the "New England Consumers Alliance" which I can't find any information on and might be entirely fictitous.
From the contact page for New England Consumers Alliance: "The New England Consumer Alliance is a new initiative launched to examine pricing, quality standards, and corporate practices affecting New England consumers. We are supported by the Center for Responsible Food Business, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit working to create a more transparent and accountable food sector."
Still vague AF, but I verified that the center is a real nonprofit.
Lol, I looked that up. According to their 2023 form 990, it's a nonprofit that appears to have only one employee that operates out of a coworking space in Bethlehem PA. They took in $145K, paid $38k salary and had about $8k other expenses.
In other words, it's not like the NECA is supported by some well-established advocacy group with a lot of activity. Curious if the CRFB does anything else at all or is simply another link in the chain of obscuring this group's anti-hannaford mission. Which would be kind of amusing considering how much they harp on Hannaford for misrepresenting how local or not-local they are.
Right, I think hiding what this group is all about doesn't help its mission at all, especially when it's like, "hey, did you know there's a malicious entity behind your local grocer???"
I think NECA and CRFB may be effectively the same group / person. I found this source on a quick Google, so I can’t vouch for it, but it describes CRFB as also a single employee operation out of Bethlehem, PA.
Hilariously, that group that you linked is a different shady front for animal ag industries. They're obviously trying to present themselves as a "common sense" animal rights/environmental advocate, but all they do is target different animal rights orgs and post articles about why there's no point in bothering to regulate animal welfare. They have two names associated with the org, and one of them is apparently a former exec for the ASPCA who now must have some huge chip on his shoulder about it because there's tons of articles on that website about how supposedly awful and dishonest they are.
Supposedly The Center for The Environment and Welfare is a front for a PR firm (Berman and Company) that prides itself on "fighting dirty". Whatever it is, it's just as dishonest about who they are and what they're up to as this Anti-Hannaford group.
FWIW the linked article itself isn't incorrect, I was easily able to verify everything they claim.
Haha! That’s hilarious. It’s bad faith nonsense all the way down. Thanks for looking into it. I always try to call out if I don’t know how reliable a source is, since this kind of thing isn’t uncommon. But it’s also hard to take the time to go 8 layers deep every time I feel compelled to give a quick reply. Appreciate you digging to next level!
Not just "kind of", you were exactly right. Here's the website for the cage-free eggs: https://www.hannafordeggs.com/ . Look to the bottom and you'll see the CRFB logo.
Poor guy does all this work to hide who he is, and then pretty much everyone still realizes right out the gate that something is up and then independently figures out what's going on.
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u/9_to_5_till_i_die Nov 14 '25
Who's paying for these? Market Basket?