What To Call Fake Meat? Murphy Has A Suggestion

The opinions in this commentary are those of Dan Murphy, a veteran journalist and commentator.

Following a lawsuit filed by cattle producers in Missouri over the use of “meat” and “beef” by the marketers of shamburgers and other alt-meat products, the issue of how to label non-traditional protein foods has officially hit the front burner.

Industry groups have contended — quite rightly — that that the labeling terms applied to conventional meat and poultry products ought to be reserved for food products originating from livestock. It’s not really an issue of consumer confusion; the affluent demographic attracted to non-meat analogs are looking for alternatives to beef, pork and chicken, and they’re unlikely to pick up a package of shamburger patties, arrive home and then slap their foreheads, saying, “Man I wanted ground beef!”

However, there is a legitimate issue of, shall we say, “trademark-like” protection involved. With all the checkoff funding, the advertising dollars and the PR efforts invested in by industry companies and trade groups, it’s not fair for manufacturers of what amounts to knock-off products to be allowed to capitalize on all that marketing and the subsequent consumer confidence such initiatives arguably generate.

Plus, there is a standard of identity issue in play, since USDA has enforced strict definitions of various meat and poultry products, such as Turkey Ham, that could be confusing to consumers. Those regulations go well beyond what ingredients are allowed; the rules specify processing parameters and in many cases, the type size and label design permitted on the product packaging.

For all those reasons, it makes sense that the manufacturers of alt-meat analogs shouldn’t be allowed to co-opt the same terminology used by conventional meatpackers and processors.

Right on the money

So what to call all the new non-meat products now on the market that are sold as direct competitors to beef, pork and poultry?

At an October joint meeting between officials of USDA and he Food and Drug Administration, both FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb and USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue pledged to work together on a solution — which will have to await the outcome of the Missouri lawsuit asking for an injunction against alt-meat companies using industry terms to label their products.

Meanwhile, news reports indicated that the alt-meat company leaders had agreed to drop the “clean meat” label that had previously been rolled out, opting instead to describe the innovative products they’re busy developing and marketing with the phase “cell-based meat.”

Kind of clunky, to be sure, but a step away from “clean meat,” which had generated a serious backlash from industry officials arguing the obvious: You’re suggesting conventional meat is “dirty?”

To which the reply, unspoken but clearly implied, was “Exactly.”

Neither “clean” nor “cell-based” are appropriate labels, the former because it’s misleading, the latter because it suggests, albeit indirectly, that these products are produced in some sci-fi manner akin to the computer in Star Trek: Next Generation that in seconds could 3-D print any food product the crew desired.

I’ve got a better — and more accurate — name for the products now being sold by Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, New Age Meats and all the other companies rushing to market with alt-meat analogs: “factory foods.”

Think about it. What characteristics describe the manufacturing facilities we call factories?

For one, they’re designed for mass production. While “lab-grown meat” might have been bandied about as an early alt-meat descriptor, the reality is that while the R&D might have occurred in a laboratory, these products will have to be produced en masse in a factory-type facility to have any hope of being competitively priced.

Second, modern factories are driven by automation. Such technology used to be considered unfavorable, and companies’ advertising campaigns generally avoided those optics, choosing instead to emphasize the wonderful, dedicated people on their payroll as the reason their products were so fantastic.

Now, however, with the prominence of the tech sector — and the public’s increasing acceptance of how smartphones dominate our lifestyles — advertisers are proud to promote visuals of entire factory floors showing robots welding car bodies, assembling electronic gadgets or using laser-powered scanners to monitor production.

Make no mistake: If they’re ever to achieve significant market penetration, alt-meat manufacturing will have to take place in highly automated systems operated by software, not people.

Finally, the singular aspect that marks 21st century manufacturing is uniformity. The goal of every production engineer, plant manager or shift superintendent responsible for quality control is to operate systems that can churn out absolutely identical items arriving on the packaging lines without deviation or defect.

Although they won’t acknowledge it, that’s also the inevitable outcome — and the unspoken goal, quite frankly — of the systems being developed by the investors and entrepreneurs driving the alt-meat sector: Automated production of consistent, sterile, uniform products to be sold at retail with none of the variability in appearance and organoleptics that characterize conventional meat and poultry.

Thus, the appropriate and accurate appellation: Factory foods.

For the last 20 + years, factory farming has been used (unfairly) by activist organizations to demonize modern agriculture. Now, it’s industry’s turn to apply the term factory foods to describe the products those same groups are touting as better-than what’s produced by ranchers, farmers and producers.

Only in the latter case, the phrase is legit.