Few brands have risen to prominence as quickly or completely as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have. In the last five or so years, these companies have taken plant-based meat analogs from the vegetarian niche to center stage. Their vegan patties and other products are sold in grocery stores across the country — not just big cities and college towns — and are now available at several fast food restaurant chains like Burger King and Del Taco. Some people point to the rapid success of these companies — as well as longstanding leaders MorningStar Farms and Gardein — as evidence that a small number of companies are accruing a concerning degree of power in the plant-based sector. But can we really afford to be worrying about that at this stage in the game?
If we want to change our food system, we need to start with an understanding of how it currently works. It’s estimated that four companies control 73% of the beef packing industry; for pork and chicken it’s 67% and 54% respectively. Thanks to decades of mergers and acquisitions — along with tasty products and low prices (aided by sizable government subsidies and lax regulations and enforcement) — just a couple of meat companies reign supreme. If we’re going to fight centralization of power in the food industry, we should focus on scrutinizing the companies whose activity is threatening the health of our planet and ourselves — not the ones trying to help. As Breakthrough Institute’s Ted Nordhaus and Dan Blaustein-Rejto recently pointed out in Foreign Policy, “Any effort to address social and environmental problems associated with food production in the United States will need to first accommodate itself to the reality that, in a modern and affluent economy, the food system could not be anything other than large-scale, intensive, technological, and industrialized… A better food system will build on these blessings, not abandon them.”
Still, I’m not necessarily saying that we should aspire to have a small number of plant-based meat companies dominate the market — there are numerous smaller, independent brands that add value to the space (and we’re at the earliest days of plant-based meat, so it’s conceivable that any one of them could end up pulling ahead). But a desire for a highly diversified plant-based meat economy shouldn’t be prioritized over the potential for rapid and widespread availability of viable meat alternatives that may actually be able to take down the conventional meat industry. The fact that companies will have to contend with fierce competition from bigger companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat with more access to capital and greater distribution is an acceptable price to pay for the benefits of living in a world where plant-based meat is plentiful and affordable. After all, plant-based meat may be growing in popularity, but it still makes up only 1.4% of the broader meat market, according to recent data from The Good Food Institute. If we want to change that, we need to allow larger companies to grow to the point where they can take advantage of economies of scale. As GFI Executive Director Bruce Friedrich notes in The Guardian, “Profitability is a feature, not a bug. And really, it’s the most important feature.” If instead these larger companies are made vulnerable to antitrust lawsuits and protections, that will serve to slow the growth of the plant-based industry, and that’s the last thing we need.
This urgency comes from the fact that the industrial animal agriculture industry accounts for between 14.5% and 18% of all human-induced global greenhouse gas emissions each year, making it a major contributor to climate change. In addition, factory farms cause a massive amount of animal and human suffering — every year, 70 billion land animals around the world are tortured and killed by people subjected to horrific working conditions in order to produce cheap, filling, and tasty foods for humans that are making them sick. It’s time to recognize that we have a moral crisis staring back at us from the refrigerator. Frankly, if faux-meat near-monopolies are what it takes to defeat industrial animal agriculture, so be it.
As Ezra Klein writes in The New York Times, “If we don’t end [factory farming], soon, terrible things will happen to us and to the planet. Terrible things are already happening.” So, yes, if there comes a time when chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes are no longer the leading causes of death and disability in the United States, climate change is no longer a global urgent threat, and we’ve created a society that acts compassionately towards animals and laborers, we can address the specific corporate composition of the plant-based food sector then. (And if it’s too late, and I don’t think it necessarily will be, it still will have been well worth it.) Until then, keeping one or a few companies from holding corporate supremacy just isn’t as important as saving the planet and all who call it home.
