Real Food Requires Truthful Labeling
Reconciling Innovation With Existing Food Law
As a new farm startup, I’ve gotten really into Kimbal Musk’s call for Real Food. It’s a banner we can all rally behind. At the same time, I’m intrigued by all the development and innovation going on around food systems these days. But I’m also worried.
I’m worried that, in the race to come up with the next killer sustainable plant-based product, that the truth is being radically distorted — or ignored altogether
I recently forwarded to Beyond Meat, a Silicon Valley-backed plant-based protein manufacturer, my story questioning their product claims of being a 100% plant-based “Real Meat.”
Based on my research at the time, I was able to come up with preliminary legal definitions from the United States, the Commonwealth countries and the European Union, and they all said the same thing about “meat” — that it comes from animals.
I encourage people to come up with new paths forward in the “Future of Food,” but we’ve got to be honest about what we’re selling, buying and eating.
We can’t have “Real Food” without truthful and accurate labeling. Period.
What does the law say right now?
This morning I wrote to the FDA and the USDA asking for their legal definitions of “meat” — just to be sure I wasn’t the one who was tripping…
You’d think this information would be easy to find.
It is not.
I wrote to the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), who told me I would have to write to the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture). Guess what they told me… That I’d have to contact the FDA.
No joke.
This is the “food system” in America: a bureaucracy where no one can answer even the most basic questions regarding the underpinnings of our entire system.
Long story short, I eventually got someone on the line who would give me an answer from the USDA FSIS Labeling Division.
What is the composition of meat and poultry?
Meat and poultry is composed of muscle, connective tissue, fat and bone. People eat meat for the muscle. The muscle is approximately 75% water (although different cuts may have more or less water) and 20% protein with the remaining 5% representing a combination of fat, carbohydrate and minerals.
(Reference Ask Karen from the USDA FSIS website).
The “AskKaren.gov” site, while informative, is not quite a legal document, so I was happy that my respondent included a more detailed definition with perhaps more legal standing.
According to my USDA source, The Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA) is the law that gives authority to the activities of the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS). In other words, it’s why we’re allowed to “ask Karen” in the first place (whoever Karen is, I still don’t know).
The FMIA states:
(j) The term ‘‘meat food product’’ means any product capable of use as human food which is made wholly or in part from any meat or other portion of the carcass of any cattle, sheep, swine, or goats, excepting products which contain meat or other portions of such carcasses only in a relatively small proportion or historically have not been considered by consumers as products of the meat food industry, and which are exempted from definition as a meat food product by the Secretary under such conditions as he may prescribe to assure that the meat or other portions of such carcasses contained in such product are not adulterated and that such products are not represented as meat food products. This term as applied to food products of equines shall have a meaning comparable to that provided in this paragraph with respect to cattle, sheep, swine, and goats.
(k) The term ‘‘capable of use as human food’’ shall apply to any carcass, or part or product of a carcass, of any animal, unless it is denatured or otherwise identified as required by regulations prescribed by the Secretary to deter its
use as human food, or it is naturally inedible by humans.
(l) The term ‘‘prepared’’ means slaughtered, canned, salted, rendered, boned, cut up, or otherwise manufactured or processed.
(For further research into legal definitions of meat, see my original story about Beyond Meat’s claims of being “real meat.”)
In fact, the Beyond Meat Team eventually wrote back thanking me for my input and told me that not only have many other people made the same complaint to them, but that it will not appear on their next round of packaging.
I applaud them for that move, but they should never have included that claim on their product labeling in the first place. We as consumers and citizens shouldn’t have to complain in order to get companies to follow the law — especially not when it comes to food safety and accuracy in labeling. These things should be the base from which we all operate, not an after-thought in some kind of slapdash race of “lean innovation.”
In the United States, it is against the law to say that your product is ‘meat’ when it does not come from an animal base. The definition is clear.
We may not like that definition. We may not like what “real meat” means from an ethical or environmental standpoint. We may even want to “disrupt” food through technological innovation. Fine. But still, that is the definition, legally. It’s what we as a society have socially agreed “meat” is.
I want to plainly state that I have no other “beef” with these plant-based protein products, except where they call themselves “meat.” They are meat-alternatives, “meat-free” protein sources, simulated meat — or some other category of labeling yet to be named and defined. But they are not meat.
We cannot fly the “Real Food” flag and simultaneously mislead customers with inaccurate and false labeling.
This isn’t the Future of Food that I signed up for.
In fact, this just sounds like a re-packaged version of the same old B.S. and lack of transparency in the food industry that got us here in the first place.
