Meat industry is trying to stifle plant-based food innovation

...As surreal as that sounds, it’s pretty much exactly what some in the meat industry today are attempting in response to the recent success of products that look and taste like animal flesh but are actually made of plants. Newly introduced federal legislation, the Real MEAT Act, would require meaty products that don’t come from slaughtered animals to be prominently labeled as “imitation.” (“MEAT,” in this case, is capitalized to acronymize “Marketing Edible Artificials Truthfully.”)
The language of the bill alleges, without evidence, that “The lack of any Federal definition of ‘beef’ or ‘beef products’ for the purposes of meat food product labeling has led some to begin marketing imitation products as meat or beef.” While the bill can make such claims until the cows come home, there are, in fact, no such mislabeled products on the market, and if there were, false advertising laws would already apply. The reality is that all of the companies making plant-based meats go to great lengths on their packaging to tout that their products are made from plants, not animals. Burger King’s much-touted Impossible Whopper, for example, is heavily promoted as “0% Beef,” while Carl’s Jr’s similar product using a Beyond Burger is labeled “100% Plant-Based.”...MORE