The failure of the farm bill last week was a major loss for House Republicans, the party leadership in particular, but it was also a win for Big Vegan.

That’s how Congressman Steve King might see it, anyway. Because when the farm bill lost in a 213-198 vote, so did a piece of legislation he attached to it: the Protect Interstate Commerce Act (PICA), which would prevent states from imposing their agricultural laws on out-of-state agricultural products. King said he created the bill to protect Iowa’s meat, egg, and dairy producers from being “held hostage to the demands of California’s Vegan Lobby.” With the farm bill shelved—for now, anyway—Iowa farmers who sell products in California must continue to abide by the state’s strict environmental, public health, and animal rights regulations.

Since King first introduced PICA in 2013, he’s deemed such regulations a vegan conspiracy. Animal rights laws—such as California’s requirement that chickens have enough space in their cages to turn around—are not really about animal rights, he says. They are attempts to impose wacko plant-based diets on America’s meat-lovers.

“In the end, they really want to take meat off our plate,” he said in 2013, referring to animal rights groups. And when the country’s largest such group, the Humane Society, gave him a “zero” rating on its annual scorecard this year, King celebrated by sharing a recipe for pheasant soup. “We carnivores won’t be intimidated by anyone in the ‘Vegan Lobby’ who can be chased out of the room with a raw pork chop,” he said.

The Humane Society of the United States, I have long referred to as the vegan lobby, is raising money again. Objective: animals = 2 people. https://t.co/h3i6HeMemo — Steve King (@SteveKingIA) January 30, 2017

The idea that there’s a powerful vegan lobby has caught on with vegans and non-vegans alike. In a Telegraph essay last year, titled “I would sign up to veganism if it weren’t for all the damned vegans,” a photo caption uses the term to refer to PETA protestors, thus equating the vegan lobby with animal rights groups as King does. But others use the term even more loosely. A writer for The Guardian seems to believe that the vegan lobby is people who love soy. And in a recent essay, vegan writer Janey Stevenson wrote, “I’ve deliberately disconnected myself from the vegan lobby because frankly, it’s embarrassing,” without explaining what, exactly, she’d disconnected herself from. A PETA membership? A vegan Meetup?