The traditional industry’s fight against plant based competitors
The meat and dairy industries have lost out in the battle for the hearts and minds of consumers.
They seem to be resorting largely to arguments over language. For example, a spokesman for the Australian Dairy Farmers national policy and advocacy body national policy and advocacy body said the launch of a new plant-based Magnum, and other non-dairy alternatives to ice cream, signalled a serious issue for the dairy industry.
But he could only point to plant-based alternatives being incorrectly marketed as milk or some other product associated with real dairy, rather than coming up with how the dairy industry itself can protect itself from competition.
Nevertheless, the meat and dairy industries have gained government backing in the food language battle.
French politicians last year amended legislation to ban use of meat-like terms such as burger, fillet, bacon and steak, for describing vegetarian and vegan food. The ban will also apply to dairy alternatives. Any French or foreign company operating in the country found to contravene the ban faces a fine of up to €300,000.
The move in France came after the European Court of Justice ruled that terms like milk, cream and butter should only be used for animal products.
It has been suggested this move by France demonstrates how threatened meat and dairy production companies and governments feel. After all, in English, the original meaning of the word “meat” was “food of any kind”, still in use in words like sweetmeat, coconut meat, and the “meat of a nut”.
“It will be interesting to see how the language surrounding vegan alternatives in other markets evolves as meat companies put pressure on governments to react to the growing consumption of non-meat alternatives,” said Sarah Phelan, in the Bord Bia Paris Office.
She said Irish companies ending meat-free alternatives to France must be very vigilant not to contravene the new rules in their packaging and marketing material, and should think about interesting and creative ways to label their product.
A more effective route for the meat and dairy industries might be to point out to consumers how lightly processed most meat and dairy products are.
That may seem contradictory bearing in mind that the International Agency for Research on Cancer said in 2015 the risk of developing bowel cancer is 1.18 times higher for those who eat 50 grams of processed meat (such as hot dogs, ham, sausages, corned beef, beef jerky, canned meat, meat-based preparations and sauces) per day compared to those who eat none.
But they said consumption of unprocessed red meat has not been established as a cause of cancer.
More recently, a Journal of the American Medical Association study linked a 10% increase in the consumption of ultra-processed foods to a 14% increased risk in all-cause mortality, including obesity and cancer. Ultra-processed foods are those that go through multiple processes, such as extrusion, moulding and milling, and contain many added ingredients, as well as being highly manipulated.
The study followed roughly 45,000 French adults for about seven years and found that the increased consumption of processed foods is associated with a higher mortality, compared to death from any cause. Despite these stark figures, the study has several limitations.
Nevertheless, such findings may be the ammunition the meat and dairy industries need, by promoting their own basic products as lightly processed (for example, meat only needs to be grilled or fried). In contrast, it takes a lot of processing to make a nut milk or a veggie-burger.
Meat and dairy industries can turn the argument for unprocessed or lightly processed food versus ultra-processed food in their favour. Of course, that argument could be neatly turned right back at meat and dairy companies who themselves use ultra-processing.
