Where's The Beef?

Livestock companies have a message for veggie burger makers: Hands off the word “meat.”

- Maddie Oatman

BY THE 3RD CENTURY, Chinese cooks had found that soy milk could be curdled to create a meat replace­ment known as tofu. Nearly two millennia later, the Gardenburger hit shelves, followed by the vegetarian’s answer to Thanksgiving: Tofurky. Now you can buy faux­blood­oozing patties with a texture eerily similar to the real thing. And lab­grown meat may show up in stores before you know it: Memphis Meats, a company trying to perfect beef and chicken from animal cells, counts billionaire Bill Gates and agriculture corporation Cargill as investors. Mean­ while, the environmental impacts of livestock are becoming clear: A major 2018 report by the Inter­ governmental Panel on Climate Change blamed animal products for three­quarters of food­related greenhouse gas emissions.

Although only 6 percent of Americans say they’re vegetarian, around a quarter of consumers polled by Nielsen in 2017 said they wanted more plant­based proteins on the shelves. Retail sales of meat substi­tutes in the United States grew 30 percent from 2014 to 2016, and they are expected to rise by 74 percent over current levels by 2023, to about $2.5 billion, ac­ cording to research firm Euromonitor International. While that’s still piddling compared with the $200 billion in products sold by US meat companies each year, the success of these substitutes appears to have come as a threat to livestock producers.