Manny Rutinel, a Democratic state legislator now seeking a congressional seat in one of Colorados most competitive swing districts, has spent much of his adult life waging a public crusade against meat consumption and the animal agriculture industry, a record that now collides head-on with the economic backbone of the very district he hopes to represent.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, Rutinels activism dates back to his undergraduate days at the University of Florida, where he embraced theatrical protest tactics to promote veganism and denounce animal-based food production.
As a student, he stripped off his shirt, strapped on a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) sign, and preached a plant-based gospel to his peers and local media.
"In order to go green, you have to eat green," he told the Independent Florida Alligator in 2016, summing up a worldview that elevates dietary choices into a kind of environmental litmus test.
At another campus demonstration, he stood in front of a group of cows holding a sign that read, "Animal liberation is human liberation," telling a local reporter he hoped "some people will change their lifestyle and hopefully go vegan."
His flair for spectacle extended beyond placards and slogans.
On National Hug a Vegan Day the year before, he appeared dressed as a pig, underscoring his willingness to use costume and performance to advance his cause.
Those early stunts were merely the opening act in what became a sustained campaign against animal agriculture.
While at Yale Law School, where he served as a Law, Ethics & Animals Program fellow, Rutinel described animal agriculture as "a horrific, exploitive [sic] industry" and helped craft a policy blueprint aimed at pushing farmers out of meat production and into plant-based agriculture.
His activism did not remain confined to the ivory tower.
More recently, he founded and led Climate Refarm, an organization that worked with schools and hospitals to transition their menus toward plant-based meals and advocated for fiscal penalties on traditional animal products, including tax increases on meat, dairy, and eggs.
Now, as a state representative since 2023, Rutinel is vying for the Democratic nomination in Colorados Eighth Congressional District, a seat widely viewed as one of the most hotly contested in the country and a potential tipping point in the battle for control of the U.S. House. The stakes are high not only for national politics but also for local livelihoods, because the districts economy is deeply intertwined with the very industry Rutinel has spent years trying to curtail.
The Eighth District is an agricultural powerhouse, home to JBS, a global meatpacking giant and one of the regions largest employers.
A significant portion of the district lies in Weld County, which boasts roughly 4,000 farms and ranches and recorded an estimated $2.4 billion in commodity sales in 2022, making agriculture not just a cultural touchstone but a central economic engine.
Rutinels long-standing hostility toward meat production could therefore place him sharply at odds with voters whose livelihoods depend on ranching, meatpacking, and related industries. By contrast, the Republican incumbent, Rep. Gabe Evans, is himself a small-scale cattle owner and beef producer, a profile that aligns more naturally with the districts agricultural identity and priorities.
After the Colorado Sun first highlighted Rutinels history of condemning animal agriculture, the candidate moved quickly to soften his rhetoric and reframe his past positions. He insisted that his criticisms were aimed only at "bad apples" within the industry, not at farmers and ranchers as a whole, and he now praises Colorado producers as "the envy of the globe" and "good stewards of the land."
A spokesman for the Rutinel campaign told the Washington Free Beacon, "Manny is proud to stand with Colorado's family farmers and ranchers, who are his friends and the backbone of our economy. In Congress, he will always fight to support family farmers and ranchers, starting with reversing the disastrous and chaotic tariff policies of Donald Trump and Gabe Evans that threaten their livelihoods."
Yet this newly professed solidarity with ranchers and producers sits uneasily alongside a six-year record of activism and policy advocacy that, if implemented, would have dramatically undermined those same "friends."
Rutinel, who once worked at McDonalds, has spent much of his professional life advancing initiatives designed to shrink or fundamentally transform the meat industry. As a Yale Law student, he joined the universitys Climate, Animal, Food, and Environmental Law & Policy Lab and coauthored a 2020 proposal that would pay farmers through carbon-offset credits to incentivize a shift from animal agriculture to plant-based farming.
"As of now, farmers are polluting a lot in animal agriculture, and if they switched to plant agriculture, they would emit much less while still producing great products that provide people with nutritious, delicious, and sustainable foods," Rutinel said in an interview about the project. The premise was clear: use financial carrots tied to climate policy to nudge, or effectively pressure, farmers away from livestock and toward crops favored by environmental activists.
Around the same period, he launched a petition urging Popeyes, the fried chicken chain, to introduce a plant-based menu option, extending his campaign from policy circles to the fast-food marketplace. He also testified before a legislative committee in Connecticut, declaring that "the globe must dramatically shift away from animal products and toward fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and nuts," a sweeping prescription that would radically alter global food systems if taken seriously.
After graduating from Yale, Rutinel joined Earthjustice, a left-wing environmental litigation group known for its aggressive regulatory agenda. Working within its Sustainable Food & Farming Program, he helped push the Environmental Protection Agency to impose stricter regulations on slaughterhouses, adding further compliance burdens to an industry already heavily regulated.
From there, he went on to launch and lead Climate Refarm, which developed its own "verified carbon credit system" to finance efforts to move institutions away from meat-based foods. The group not only promoted plant-based transitions in schools and hospitals but also backed broader initiatives designed to stigmatize and discourage meat consumption.
Climate Refarm, which has since dissolved, signed a 2022 letter to an international coalition of mayors urging municipal leaders to "consider taxing meat, dairy and eggs." The letter leaned on Greta Thunbergs 2022 book, argued that the 2015 Paris Agreement did not "go far enough," and even criticized the menu at that years C40 World Mayors Summit for including meat and dairy, while offering a series of recommendations for phasing animal products out of urban food systems.
"Serve only plant-based foods at all council events," the letter read. "Start phasing out animal products from all city food purchases by swapping in more plant-based foods. Ban public advertising and sponsorship for all animal products from the city." These demands, if enacted, would amount to a sweeping government-led campaign to marginalize and penalize meat, dairy, and egg producers, with obvious implications for agricultural communities like those in Colorados Eighth District.
Pressed by the Colorado Sun about his association with such proposals, Rutinel said he does not "agree with every single sentence within those letters" signed by Climate Refarm, including the call to increase taxes on meat. His distancing, however, comes only after those positions became politically inconvenient in a district where ranching and meatpacking are not abstract policy targets but the source of thousands of paychecks.
Rutinel now suggests that his broader mission has largely been achieved and that his focus has shifted. He told the Colorado Sun that he is currently most concerned about caged chickens and deforestation abroad and that no other issue with the ranching industry "is coming to mind at the moment."
Since entering the Colorado legislature, he has not introduced bills explicitly designed to push consumers or institutions away from animal-based products. Instead, he has made "environmental justice" a centerpiece of his agenda, a term often used on the left to justify expansive regulatory authority and redistribution under the banner of combating pollution and inequality.
In 2024, Rutinel successfully championed legislation creating the Office of Environmental Justice, a new bureaucratic entity tasked with analyzing communities "disproportionately impacted" by pollution.
Such offices frequently serve as staging grounds for further regulation and litigation, raising concerns among conservatives and business owners that they will be used to target traditional industries, including agriculture and energy.
Rutinel also threw his support behind two controversial measures on Denvers 2024 ballot that would have banned fur sales and slaughterhouses within city limits. Indigenous critics of the fur ban warned that blocking them from selling their "traditional crafts and goods would be a significant loss," while the slaughterhouse ban, opposed by farmers and ranchers, threatened to eliminate roughly 160 jobs, most of them held by Spanish-speaking immigrants.
This stance is particularly notable given that the congressional district Rutinel seeks to represent is about 40 percent Latino, a community that often values both job security and cultural traditions tied to food and craftsmanship. The Democratic Party of Denver Central Committee ultimately opposed both bans, and voters rejected them at the ballot box, signaling that even many Democrats found the measures too extreme.
Beyond policy, veganism appears to permeate Rutinels personal life and public persona. In a 2022 TikTok video, he mused about romance in explicitly vegan terms, blending lifestyle branding with his political identity.
"Okay, turns out there are two places to fall in love as an adult aside from the apps," he said in the video. "The first is, of course, Trader Joes. If were both about to grab the vegan chorizo and our hands touch, that is romance of the highest form."
"The second place to fall in love: airports," he continued. "I dont know why, but if you are within my age range at an airport, I will be fantasizing about a long, beautiful life with you. Ill never approach youI dont have that kind of couragebut I will fantasize about you, no doubt."
For voters in Colorados Eighth District, the question is whether this long record of anti-meat activism, regulatory zeal, and lifestyle evangelism can be squared with the practical needs of an agricultural region that depends on cattle, meatpacking, and related industries.
Rutinel now insists he stands with "family farmers and ranchers," yet his documented effortsfrom pushing carbon-credit schemes to backing calls to "consider taxing meat, dairy and eggs"suggest a worldview fundamentally at odds with the free-market agriculture and working-class jobs that sustain his would-be constituents.
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