Foodies and Factory Farmers Have Formed an Unholy Alliance

One surprising result of the Covid-19 pandemic has been a spike in consumer demand for imitation meats. According to a Nielsen report, during the first nine weeks of the crisis in the United States, grocery store sales of faux meat products increased 264 percent. The reasons included concerns about illness at meatpacking plants, the possible spread of disease from industrial livestock operations, and even fears about the animal origins of Covid-19 itself.

This new boom in plant-based imitation meats is doubly surprising, since it came without any support at all from the leaders of America’s progressive “food movement.” Well before Covid-19, this movement had taken a stance against the new imitation meats. The reasoning behind this stance deserves a closer look.

Innovations always force new choices, and sometimes rearrange the political landscape. Getting into bed with a former adversary is fine, as long as both partners are getting an equal benefit; but the food movement’s opposition to imitation plant-based meat has put them in bed with the livestock industry—the producers of real meat, and a traditional food movement foe. Particularly in the Covid era, is this such a wise choice?

Progressives in the food movement have long been among the harshest critics of the livestock industry, mostly due to its reliance on Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), commonly referred to as “factory farms.” These facilities are highly productive, but too often at the expense of animal welfare, and they place human medicine at risk through an excessive use of antibiotics. This is also the same livestock industry that supplies the red meats and processed meats Americans consume to excess, increasing the rates of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and some cancers.

On the environmental side, runoff from livestock farms in the United States pollutes rivers and streams, degrading large bodies of water like Lake Erie and the Chesapeake Bay. The livestock industry is also a significant emitter of climate-warming greenhouse gases, contributing nearly 15 percent of such emissions around the world.

If imitation meat products from plant materials could begin replacing some of the real meat in our diets, all of these problems might be diminished. The fashion industry has learned to substitute imitation fur for the real thing; the shoe industry has learned to use imitation leather; imitation ivory has helped save elephants; and some imitation egg and dairy products are already a commercial success. Plant-based milks (made from almonds, oats, soy or coconuts, for example) now account for 14 percent of retail milk sales in the United States. If plant-based burgers could replace this much real ground beef in the coming decade, the needle could begin to move on a number of valuable goals.

Despite this important opportunity, most food movement leaders have rejected plant-based meat imitations. Burgers assembled from plant materials, with chemicals added, do not conform to their preference for traditional “whole foods” with minimum processing and no added ingredients. Mark Bittman, previously a food columnist at the New York Times and a prominent food movement spokesperson, faults imitation meats on these grounds: “If you’re combining a bunch of powders and turning it into something that looks like meat, I’m not sure you’re doing anybody any good. I don’t think it moves people in the direction of real food—which is the ultimate goal.”

Progressive food service companies and retailers join in criticizing the processed nature of plant-based imitation meats. Brian Niccoil, CEO of Chipotle, says he won’t serve plant-based meats “because of the processing.” Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, despite being a vegan himself, has a similar reaction: “If you look at the ingredients, they are super, highly processed foods.”

The livestock industry is now borrowing these food movement complaints about processing and additives to slow the uptake of plant-based imitations. The Center for Consumer Freedom, an organization that fronts for the meat, restaurant, and alcohol industries, put a full page ad in the New York Times in October 2019, warning readers that “fake meats are ultra-processed imitations with dozens of ingredients including methylcellulose, titanium dioxide, tertiary butylhydroquinone, disodium inosinate.” They said it was fake meat, but with “real chemicals.” The CCF then paid for a 2020 Superbowl ad that featured a young spelling bee contestant having trouble with the word “methylcellulose,” which the moderator identified as “a chemical laxative that’s also used in synthetic meat.”

Some food movement leaders complain about plant-based imitation meats because they are new and not yet time-tested. Food movement leader Michael Pollan tells us, “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food,” a standard that rules out much more than the Impossible Burger. Others appear to be rejecting the new imitation meat products because they come from profit-making companies and are protected by patents. Seth Itzkan, who created an environmental organization named Soil4Climate that defends real beef, says the Impossible Foods company should rename itself “Impossible Patents.” And for still others, fake meat products are objectionable because they contain an ingredient derived from genetically engineered soybeans, and propagated using genetically modified yeast. In 2017 two anti-GMO organizations, the ETC Group and Friends of the Earth, called on Impossible Foods to stop selling their burger, pending further safety testing and stronger regulation from the FDA. They accused Impossible Foods of trying to capitalize on animal welfare concerns to sell something that might be dangerous.