Be Thankful You Don’t Have to Carve a Plant-Based Turkey This Year

AMAC Newsline By Andrew Abbott

As millions of families gather around the dinner table today, one thing we can all be thankful for is that we won’t be chowing down on a turkey made from soybeans. While that prospect might sound amusing to most Americans today, just a few years ago, the mainstream media and the left-wing environmental movement confidently predicted that “plant-based meats” would soon replace traditional meats, allegedly saving the planet in the process. But now, so-called alternative meat companies are struggling to stay alive, even as new questions emerge about both the safety and sustainability of their products.

Perhaps the most high-profile darling of the anti-meat movement is the plant-based meat company Beyond Meat. In the summer of 2019, the stock of the company reached an all-time high of $234 per share. Analysts predicted that plant-based meat would be over 15% of the meat market by 2030. At its peak, the company had a market value of $14 billion.

As of this November, that market value has plummeted to less than $1 billion and the stock price is down over 93%. The company has announced multiple ongoing layoffs as it struggles to survive. Other plant-based meat manufacturers have also faced similar losses as the overall alternative meat market continues to wilt.

While all markets, especially new ones, have a natural ebb and flow, the meteoric rise and staggering collapse of the entire “green meat revolution” is particularly noteworthy. Unlike other industries, the hype over plant-based “meats” was seemingly almost entirely a result of ideologically-driven media coverage and praise from one side of the political aisle, rather than actual consumer excitement about the product.

The proponents of plant-based meats promise a product which is similar in taste and texture to actual meat, but also healthier and produced in a more environmentally friendly way. However, claims about both the health benefits and “sustainability” of plant-based meats have come under intense scrutiny from experts.

According to one Harvard study, due to the high-degree of processing involved in producing plant-based meats from crops like lentils and soybeans, “most plant-based meat alternatives… lose their nutrient-density and, in particular, the compounds that make them coveted by plant-based eaters in the first place.” The Center for Consumer Freedom has also raised concerns that plant-based meats contain a number of potentially harmful chemicals used to give the products the texture and flavor of real meat. One poll found that 73% of nutritionists do not recommend plant-based meats to their clients. Moreover, new evidence has emerged suggesting that the supposed health risks of traditional meat have been greatly overblown, undermining a major argument for plant-based meats in the first place.

Even the plant-based meat industry’s pitch to save the climate largely fails to pass muster. Many of the crops used in plant-based meat are extremely energy and resource intensive. Soybeans, for example, require vast swaths of land for cultivation. Additionally, companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat do not report their overall environmental footprint, raising suspicion about just how “sustainable” these companies really are. And again, studies have repeatedly shown the environmental lobby’s constant warnings about how animal agriculture is destroying the planet are dramatically exaggerated.

Despite all these concerns, investors and the mainstream media gleefully embraced the “meatless meat revolution.” McDonald’s and Burger King even partnered with Impossible Meat and Beyond Meat to offer meatless “McPlant” burgers and “Impossible Whoppers.” Sales of both have been middling, and McDonald’s recently discontinued its McPlant Burger.

While plant-based meats may already sound un-appetizing enough, the next meat alternatives that the media and global elites are already beginning to push could be even worse. The World Economic Forum, for example, has recently published numerous studies to push consumers to embrace “insect proteins.” The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which was one of the largest individual investors in companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, has also recently begun investing in insect protein companies. Last year, the European Union (EU) ruled “that the larval stage of the Tenebrio molitor beetle, the mealworm, is safe for people to eat” and it will soon be on the market as a “novel food.”

Some companies have also started testing so-called “synthetic meats” (meat grown in a lab) with the support of government grants. Just like plant-based meat companies a few years ago, many of these startups have attracted bucketloads of cash from “woke” investors.

On the surface, this mad dash for meat alternatives may seem like an amusing spectacle for the majority of Americans who enjoy tender beef steaks and juicy chicken breasts and have no intention of ever purchasing plant-based meat, synthetic meat, or “insect protein.” But as liberal governments around the world tax and regulate their traditional meat industries into oblivion while Democrats push for similar policies here at home, causing the price of meat to skyrocket in the process, ordinary people may nonetheless soon find themselves having to choose between a soy burger or cricket patty – a future most would understandably like to avoid.

Andrew Abbott is the pen name of a writer and public affairs consultant with over a decade of experience in DC at the intersection of politics and culture.