American government built the meat industry. Now can it build a better food system?

Over the last decade, it seemed possible for animal welfare advocates to dream that the US might be on the cusp of a meat-free revolution. The plant-based meat maker Beyond Meat’s valuation soared after it debuted on the stock market in 2019, a bet on future growth. Oatly couldn’t produce enough of its dairy-free milk to keep up with demand, and plant-based Impossible Burgers were being served at both high-end restaurants and fast food chains like White Castle and Burger King.

In 2020, Impossible Foods founder Pat Brown even declared that the world could replace the use of animals altogether for food by 2035. 

But much of that optimism has since curdled into pessimism. Sales in the alternative meat sector have slowed and a number of startups have perished, leading multiple news outlets to eulogize the nascent industry. The industry’s problems can largely be chalked up to the cold hard fact that so far, it’s failed in its fundamental proposition: Consumers don’t think their products taste good enough to forgo conventional meat. Premature media hype, meat industry-funded attack ads, high price tags, and a flurry of imitators flooding the market with mediocre or downright bad products don’t help, either.

The essential problem that plant-based meat was supposed to solve remains unchanged. Per capita, US meat consumption is only projected to increase over the next decade, even as climate scientists say meat and dairy consumption in rich countries must decline rapidly to meet global climate targets. 

The initial enthusiasm for plant-based meat was rooted in the idea that it was a more promising path to end the factory farming of animals than traditional activism. Instead of changing people’s minds about what to eat, plant-based entrepreneurs and advocates sought to change meat itself. Based on the numbers, the payback on that bet is mixed. 

Grocery store plant-based meat sales in dollars soared from 2017 to 2021, but have since slightly declined. Even more troubling is the steep decline in the number of plant-based meat units sold at grocery stores, which fell 26 percent over the last two years (conventional meat sales dipped by just 6 percent over the same period). Plant-based meat sales in restaurants and cafeterias — along with grocery stores outside the US — have remained flat or grown only slowly over the past few years.

But progress doesn’t always move in a straight line, and this could be a mere lull — a market correction after years of unstable growth and investor hype. In an attempt to jumpstart the plant-based industry again, a number of nonprofits and companies have set their sights on state legislatures and Capitol Hill, intensifying their lobbying to advance their cause (and bottom lines). 

Some are focused on directing more R&D funding to “alternative protein,” an umbrella term that encompasses plant-based products, like those from Oatly and Beyond Meat, along with high-tech fermentation and lab-grown or “cell-cultivated” meat — real meat made by directly growing animal cells, without the slaughter of a cow, chicken, pig or fish. Just as the federal government’s early R&D funding for solar and wind power helped deliver cheap, abundant renewable energy, alternative protein advocates say R&D funding could enable the sector to lower the prices and improve the taste and texture of its products.

Some plant-based advocates are pushing in a more low-tech direction, working with schools and other federally-funded institutions to serve more beans, lentils, whole grains, and vegetables.

Jessica Almy, head of government relations for the Good Food Institute, an organization that advocates for alternative protein, said her organization seeks to create a “level playing field” between the conventional meat industry and the animal-free upstarts.

“The big idea here is that alternative proteins would compete in the free market,” she said, “and that consumers ultimately would decide the winners and the losers.” 

Currently, the meat market is not so free. The meat and dairy industries, which are powerful forces in Washington, have long benefited from a sprawling web of subsidies, R&D programs, and government grants, receiving about 800 times more public funding than the alternative protein sector from 2014 to 2020 despite the far greater costs they exert on the environment. 

“Our national policies continue to favor and fund high-emissions industries who promote unsustainable food systems and diets,” as Pearson Croney-Clark, public affairs manager for Oatly, put it in an email to Vox.

Consumers’ choices are determined by a number of factors beyond taste and price, like our upbringing and social norms. The very idea of meat’s necessity at every meal is stubbornly engrained in America’s DNA, too.

US factory farming has scaled to fulfill that belief, though the treatment of animals represents nothing short of a moral atrocity future generations will look back on in horror. We’ve long had a bounty of plant-based foods ready to replace much of it — think beans, lentils, whole grains, vegetables, and tofu — that might find more purchase among the American public if served up in more creative ways. Better tasting and more affordable plant-based meat products would help, too.

To give the plant-based food movement a fighting chance to bring our food system in line with planetary boundaries, we have to shift a policy landscape that for too long has benefitted the foods that do the most harm to the environment, animals, and public health. The movement’s fledgling influence campaign has already shown that progress is possible, and its broader agenda — a number of incremental but promising reforms — holds potential to actually move the needle on American meat consumption.  

Getting the next generation of meat alternatives from lab to table

The cost of various clean energy technologies, such as solar panels and wind turbines, have plummeted in recent decades. We can thank the federal government, which funded early stage R&D, for much of that progress.

That’s just as true for America’s highly industrialized meat and dairy industry, which has benefited from over a century of government support to build factory farming.

Alternative protein advocates say investing more of America’s agricultural R&D budget in their sector could be crucial to improving products, and thereby increase their commercial viability.

“Early stage R&D is more of a focus for this sector in particular because the products are so early in their development, and we think they can be so much better than they are,” Almy said. 

Advocates like Almy are starting to get what they want. In 2022, Congress approved around $5 million annually for the USDA to conduct in-house alternative protein research, and it’s already been dispersed to agency labs around the country. Projects include investigating how different strains of lentils and chickpeas affect flavor, the functional properties of soybeans, and food safety measures. 

It’s still a paltry 0.1 percent of the USDA’s $5 billion annual R&D budget. But it was a start.

The USDA also recently funded university research into breeding a higher protein strain of fava beans and developing plant-based seafood, and the US Department of Defense has taken some interest in the sector, too. There’s also been movement at the state level: In 2022, California invested $5 million into alternative protein research at public universities, while Illinois has helped launch a biotechnology hub that will in part work on alternative protein projects. 

R&D is even more crucial to cell-cultivated meat, which promises to provide precisely the same animal-based product consumers eat today — provided the cost can come down from the rafters. While the US government has approved two cell-cultivated meat companies to sell their products, they aren’t yet for sale. Startups still need to overcome a range of technical and economic challenges to scale up and compete with conventionally grown meat on cost, and some scientists believe they never will. Those challenges include making animal cells grow faster, preventing bacterial contamination, and building an affordable supply chain of feed for the cells. A couple cell-cultivated startups have gone under and several have laid off employees.

Venture capitalists have poured around $3 billion across more than 150 startups globally, which sounds like a lot, but it’s a pittance compared to how much has been invested into other sustainable technologies. Considering the enormous difficulty in shifting consumers’ diets to be more climate friendly, cell-cultivated meat proponents say it’s more than worthy of government R&D funding. That has finally begun to trickle in.

A few years ago, scientists at the University of California-Davis and Tufts University received millions of dollars from government agencies to study cell-cultivated meat. Sean Edgett, chief legal officer of Upside Foods — a large cell-cultivated meat startup — described these programs as doing important “table stakes” work, basic research that can help new companies get off the ground more easily and build a talent pipeline for companies like Upside.

The alternative protein industry is working to expand the pot of federal and state research dollars through the next Farm Bill and other pieces of legislation. Rep. Julia Brownley (D-CA) introduced the PROTEIN Act last year, which would establish alternative protein research centers in at least three universities and a dedicated research program under the USDA. Meanwhile, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) has introduced the PLANT Act to provide support for farmers who grow common ingredients in plant-based products and set up a program to help companies better market their products, similar to an existing USDA program for conventional dairy businesses.  

Making school food climate-friendly

With 5 billion meals served at school cafeterias each year through the National School Lunch Program, the lunch line has long been considered an opportunity to build a more healthy and sustainable food system. 

But even in crunchy California, for example, meat and dairy dominates school food, with only 8 percent of entrees entirely plant-based. Evening out that ratio could help improve student health, as a more “flexitarian” diet — one lower in animal-based foods and higher in plant-based foods — can improve metabolic health and reduce risk of Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers. 

The US federal dietary guidelines report that children and teenagers tend to under-consume plant-based foods. Changing that, at least in the school cafeteria, would also increase kids’ intake of fiber, a critical nutrient that 95 percent of Americans don’t get enough of and is found only in plant foods.

To that end, a coalition of environmental, public health, and animal welfare organizations recently secured a substantive win in the USDA’s recent updates to school nutrition standards. Those updates include giving schools more flexibility to serve beans, lentils, and tofu, allowing nuts and seeds to be served as a meat alternative, and allowing the option to serve hummus and other bean dips as a snack.

“That increased flexibility is a real opportunity,” said Audrey Lawson-Sanchez, executive director of Balanced, a plant-based nutrition group in the coalition. “Now it really is going to be about making sure that [school] food service teams… actually have the skills and the resources” to act on the flexibility. 

The demand is there, Lawson-Sanchez said, pointing to an Illinois law that went into effect last August which requires schools to serve plant-based meals to kids who request them. So far, she said, students at around 15 percent of the state’s 852 school districts have asked for them. Lawson-Sanchez’s group set up a pilot program at eight schools to help them meet those requests, and one was so successful that it now has one fully plant-based day per week and one 50 percent plant-based day per week. 

But schools need money to implement new programs, and plant-based advocates have drawn inspiration from the USDA’s Farm to School grant program, which helps schools set up gardens and bring local food into K-12 cafeterias by working with farmers. A specifically plant-based version could be used to train school chefs, develop new recipes, and market new dishes to students; last year, Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez (D-NY) and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) introduced a bill to fund such a program.

Advocates and policymakers also see breaking Big Dairy’s iron grip on school food and making it easier to get dairy-free milk as a ripe opportunity for change. Currently, schools must at least offer cow’s milk at every meal and few carry plant-based options. One out of five elementary and middle schools participating in the National School Lunch Program go so far as to require all students to take cow’s milk, even though kids throw away nearly half of it, and many students — especially those of color — are lactose intolerant. If a kid wants a dairy-free option, like soy milk, they have to provide a note from a doctor or parent, depending on their reason. 

Rep. Robert Scott (D-VA), ranking chair of the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which oversees school nutrition policy, wants to change that. A Democratic aide on that committee told Vox that Rep. Scott’s child nutrition reauthorization bill would loosen restrictions preventing students from getting plant milk alternatives, and set up a $2 million fund for schools to cover some of the cost of plant-based milk purchases.

Advocates in the school food coalition also want to see the USDA encourage more plant-based options, allow high-protein grains like quinoa to count as a meat alternative, adopt minimum fiber standards, and make cow’s milk optional at all schools. 

Beyond school lunches, the federal government directly buys billions of dollars of food each year for food banks, federal building cafeterias, and more. By one estimate, nearly 90 percent of the protein-rich foods it purchases are animal products. In recent years, there’s been an internal push at the Department of Defense — which makes up about half of federal food purchases — to shift some of its food to plant-based. Some military bases are serving more plant-based meals, and recent DoD nutrition standards now require legumes to be served every day at military base cafeterias. 

In April, for the first time in a decade, the USDA updated its standards for the Women, Infant, and Children’s program — another major government food purchaser. The updates include a reduction in the amount of cow’s milk participants can purchase and more flexibility to buy plant-based dairy products and fruits and vegetables. Oatly saw it as a win, while a major dairy industry group said it was “disturbed” by the new rule. 

Beyond federal agencies, other institutions can enact policies to put plant-based foods at the center of our plates. For example, New York City’s hospital system reduced its food carbon footprint by more than a third by making plant-based meals the default option, universities are increasing their meat-free offerings, and in some countries, major food companies have committed to making a larger share of their protein-rich products plant-based. 

A level playing field for meat alternatives

Following a playbook deployed by the fossil fuel industry against the renewable energy sector, the conventional meat and dairy industry and its legislative allies are now striving to hamstring its competition.

Over a dozen states have passed laws to restrict how plant-based meat, dairy, and egg companies can label their products, with some banning usage of words like “sausage” or “cheese,” even if accompanied by clarifying phrases like “vegetarian,” “plant-based,” or “animal-free.” Some of those laws have been overturned or weakened, but state lawmakers — and members of Congress, too — continue to introduce new bills. 

Legislative attacks against the cell-cultivated startups are more existential. Earlier this year, Florida and Alabama’s state legislatures banned the sale and production of cell-cultivated meat, and several other states have introduced bans. (In late June, days before the Florida ban took effect, Upside Foods gave out free cell-cultivated meat in Miami.) 

At this point, the bans are purely symbolic, as cell-cultivated meat is nowhere near commercial viability. 

Alternative protein producers want to stop these discriminatory regulations, but they also want to benefit from some of the government assistance that the conventional meat industry enjoys. One of those is low-interest federal loans, an unglamorous but potentially powerful tool for launching novel, capital-intensive technologies. 

Take Tesla, for example. In 2010, the company got a $465 million loan from the US Department of Energy that it used to build a manufacturing plant that eventually brought the Model S to American roads. Cell-cultivated meat companies will likely need this level of government support to scale, too. 

The US Department of Energy recently opened its loan application program to alternative protein companies, which could be a lifeline as venture capital funding has dried up across the economy. (Upside and its competitor GOOD Meat have paused plans to build out large manufacturing facilities.) Edgett said other federal loan programs should be expanded and made accessible to alternative protein companies, too. 

He also wants to see a smoother regulatory process with the USDA and the US Food and Drug Administration, which share oversight of the cell-cultivated meat industry and must both sign off on new products. Upside Foods’ cell-cultivated chicken has already been approved for sale but many other companies still have applications waiting for action.

Edgett said the two agencies “could just do more to make expectations clear” by publishing guidance for startups and establishing a uniform process for how these products will be labeled. Currently, he said, label approval is a one-off process for each company. The sector could receive some clarity later this year, as the USDA is expected to publish a proposed rule on the matter.

“I’m really thinking about a lot of these cultivated meat companies that have such short runways, and they’re running out of capital,” Edgett said. “And I think they’ve hit a wall on the regulatory side, just because it’s slower than they expected, or it’s fairly opaque.”

For any chance of success, alternative protein companies will need every obstacle moved out of their way, including what some consider to be a needlessly slow regulatory process. This may be especially important for startups whose products could be market-ready if only they had federal approval. For example, companies including Mission Barns, Meatable, and Mosa Meat aren’t seeking to produce 100 percent cell-cultivated meat or anything close to it, but rather, are making “hybrid” alternative meat — plant-based meat blended with a small percent of cell-based fat or protein to achieve a meatier flavor. These products in theory will be easier to scale and more affordable than their more purist competitors.  

The movement for a food system with fewer animal products has had a tumultuous decade, and ultimately, lower prices and tastier products won’t guarantee it experiences another major upswing. But meat’s outsized carbon and pollution footprint has, thus far, been a gaping hole in America’s ambitious environmental plans. To make progress on those goals, policymakers will need to show a willingness to move in a more plant-based direction. If done correctly, that could ease the increasing politicization of meat. It could also determine whether the development of better plant-based meat becomes a viable path to changing the food system — or remains a niche category.