Beef lobbyists are ramping up their attacks on plant-based 'meat,' but Beyond Meat's CEO says 'the facts are on our side'
- As plant-based "meat" products from companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods grow more popular, the beef industry is fighting back with critical ad campaigns.
- A Super Bowl ad excoriating "fake meat" was the latest in a series of attack ads on plant-based "meat" companies funded by the Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit group with ties to food and agriculture corporations.
- Business Insider spoke to Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown about the latest attacks on plant-based meat, and Brown remains unbothered.
- "I think the facts are on our side," Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown said when asked by Business Insider about his response to the ads.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
As plant-based "meat" producers like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods explode in popularity, they face increasing backlash from the beef industry.
But Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown is unfazed.
"It's between us and the consumer," Brown said in a recent interview with Business Insider.
In November and December 2019, meatless burger producers recorded major victories in Arkansas, Missouri, and Mississippi, after winning back the right to call their products "burgers." Earlier that year, several states passed laws prohibiting companies from calling veggie burgers "burgers" and plant-based milks "milks," largely thanks to the efforts of agricultural lobbyists.
Around that time, op-eds lambasting plant-based "meat" were published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, written by lobbyists with ties to the beef industry, Richard Berman and Will Coggin, respectively. The Center for Consumer Freedom, of which Berman is executive director and Coggin is managing director, primarily conducts attack ad campaigns against rivals of their corporate clients.
The most recent attack ad released by CCF aired during the Super Bowl and featured a spelling bee contestant trying and failing to spell "methylcellulose," an ingredient in many plant-based burgers as well as in many processed foods. The ad concludes: "If you can't spell it or pronounce it, then maybe you shouldn't be eating it."
Brown, however, remains unconcerned.
"The lobbyists can do their thing. Let us do our thing, let us serve the consumer and I think great things can happen. I pay almost no attention to that," he said.
CCF says that it is trying to raise awareness about the ingredients in so-called "fake meat."
"Despite the perceived health halo, synthetic meats are the opposite of 'clean' eating. Our ad highlights a few of the many industrial ingredients found in synthetic meat products," Coggin told Business Insider in an email earlier this week.
However, Brown says that his company's products stand on their own. He also refuses to call them "fake meat, "saying that what Beyond does is use plants to recreate the experience of eating meat. He refuted CCF's insistence that plant-based "meat" products are overprocessed and artificial, emphasizing the nutritional advantages of Beyond products versus meat products.
"I think the facts are on our side," Brown said. "If you look at our sausage, for example, it's 50% less fat, 44% less saturated fat, 37% less sodium, more protein, and more iron. So let people say what they want."