Reality Check, Please: Tyson is not going vegan

Why celebrating Big Meat’s forays into plant-based is helping them greenwash their unethical and illegal practices

The past few weeks have seen announcements about how Big Meat is jumping on the plant-based bandwagon. The news garnered far too much celebrating by some of my well-meaning colleagues. A closer look reveals an uglier reality.

Meat giant JBS recently acquired the Dutch plant-based meat company, Vivera for an impressive $410 million.

Next, Bloomberg broke the news of Tyson’s new plant-based line in a story called, America’s Biggest Meat Company Gives Faux Burgers Another Shot.

Cue the cheerleading from the vegan media.

The magazine VegOut was so excited, it tells us to “fire up the grill” because, “Tyson Foods, leading meat producer in the US, launches a new line of plant-based meats just in time for summer!”

And this article crows about how, “JBS entered the plant-based space in 2019, and has developed various vegan products that have been released around the world.”

Let’s take these one at a time.

Acquisitions do not transform the parent company

The argument seems to be that a meat giant such as JBS acquiring a plant-based brand will somehow by osmosis turn the company vegan. This is the nature of many comments on social media. But we have zero evidence that will be case, and we have plenty of evidence of why that will not happen.

Natural food brands have been bought up by conventional companies for decades now, so we have real world evidence to explore this hypothesis. Some observers made similar predictions in the early days of large food companies gobbling up natural and organic brands: that the acquired company's lofty ideals would have a positive upward influence on their parent. After decades of examples to the contrary, no one in natural foods is making that argument now. (If anything, some have expressed regret.)

Back in 2000, food giant General Mills purchased Cascadian Farms, known for its organic frozen food line and cereals, as well as the Muir Glen organic brand. At that time, the head of the Organic Alliance said the purchase, “validates the integration of organics into the mainstream. A company the size of General Mills would never make such a purchase if they didn't see it as a growth opportunity." Sounds familiar.

Later, General Mills also acquired Annie’s, among other natural brands. Did acquiring organic brands morph General Mills into an organic food company? Hardly.

In 2013, just when the GMO labeling movement was heating up, General Mills found itself on the receiving end of a mountain of criticism for being on the wrong side of that issue, despite its organic holdings. This is an especially dangerous outcome of the merging of natural foods with conventional: serious conflicts of interest can arise.

In 2018, General Mills’ investment arm also took a significant stake in the plant-based yogurt brand, Kite Hill. Yet, General Mills is still selling plenty of conventional dairy yogurt products, along with its highly sugar cereals, many of them marketed to young children.

Let’s consider an even closer comparison to the JBS situation. In 2015, the meat giant Hormel acquired organic sausage maker Applegate Farms for an impressive $775 million. This Fortune headline seemed overly optimistic: “Hormel goes organic with latest big food acquisition.” Then the article noted how small Applegate’s annuals sales were compared to Hormel’s: $340 million in 2015, compared to Hormel’s $9.3 billion.

Six years later, Hormel’s conventional meat business is humming along quite nicely. Its most iconic product, Spam, did especially well during the pandemic, enjoying double-digit growth. Even prior to Covid, Spam sales were on pace in 2020 for its 6th consecutive year of record growth, with sales increasing 28% by September. So no, Hormel did not exactly “go organic”.

Upon acquisition, the parent company does not ever morph into the acquiring company’s business model. The larger company is simply expanding their market share by gaining new sales. In other words, it’s in addition to, not instead of.

I want to be clear: I am not saying it is wrong for natural and organic brands to take investments or even be acquired by large conventional players. That is an inevitable result of brands needing capital to compete and grow. However, such investments and acquisitions do not lead to the acquiring company “going vegan”, as many on social media assume.

The acquired brand gains expanded resources and distribution, which is certainly a good thing for the brand. But let’s not kid ourselves that such expansion means the parent company is “changing its ways” or will displace its conventional brands or sales.

(We will need a separate deep dive into the many negative consequences that can occur when large conventional companies acquire smaller, mission-based brands.)

Meat companies engage in deceptive marketing

Now let’s look at the Tyson model of creating its own brand of plant-based meats. Again, previous examples are illustrative.

Given increasing consumer interest and concern over how animals are treated, years ago large meat companies started making dubious marketing claims. The apt word many advocates use for this practice is humane-washing.

In response, some NGOs and attorneys appropriately began using the court system to fight back. (I worked with a law firm myself to bring an early case years ago.)

For example, in 2019, non-profit organizations sued Tyson for misleading consumers with claims that its chicken products were produced using humane and sustainable practices. Other meat companies such as Perdue Farms and Foster Farms have also been taken to court over its misleading consumer claims.

These meat companies are not interested in improving their business model, they just want to pretend they are doing so to expand market share in the cheapest way possible.

These meat companies are not interested in improving their business model, they just want to pretend they are doing so to expand market share in the cheapest way possible.

This was painfully evident with Tyson’s first failed attempt with their “Raised and Rooted” brand. In 2019, the company released a “blended burger” and a chicken nugget with eggs.

The company’s press release proudly explained how the “brand was created to provide great-tasting plant-based and blended foods. Except that neither product was in fact “plant-based”. That’s why, in my role at the Plant Based Foods Association, I teamed up with my attorney colleague Amanda Howell at the Animal Legal Defense Fund. We threatened to sue Tyson for deceptively using the phrase “plant-based” to describe products that clearly were not. Tyson denied any wrongdoing, while they also told us they were reformulating. We took that as a victory for consumers and common sense.

New plant-based options do not displace animal meat

When any food company expands its portfolio, either with its own new line or through acquisition (or investment) the last thing that company wants is to cannibalize its own profits. How do we know this? They tell us so.

Back when Tyson released its original “Raised and Rooted” line, they said,

For us, this is about ‘and’ – not ‘or.’ We remain firmly committed to our growing traditional meat business and expect to be a market leader in alternative protein, which is experiencing double-digit growth and could someday be a billion-dollar business for our company.

To put that billion-dollar prediction into perspective, Tyson expects sales in 2021 to be $42 billion to $44 billion. If you think one of those billions will someday be plant-based instead of animal meat, think again. In this recent Business Insider article on Tyson’s “new and improved” (i.e., 100 percent plant-based) brand, the reporter asked “whether a goal of Tyson's plant-based offerings is to replace meat consumption over time?” The answer was clearly no: "It's about giving consumers choice,” Tyson replied.

The company is not even giving up on the failed blended burger. Tyson said they will continue to explore the concept, and “bring out those products when it makes sense."

Translation: Tyson does not care about what consumers want or what is best for the planet, they just want to keep selling animal meat, occasionally dressed up with some pea protein if they can make a few extra bucks.

Are consumers displacing other vegetarian meals?

OK, so even if Tyson doesn’t care, what about consumer behavior? What really matters is whether consumers are swapping out animal meat burgers with plant-based versions.

While almost everyone in the plant-based foods movement seems to be assuming this is the case, we need to question that assumption and ask for data to support it. Whenever I raise this, I get flummoxed answers, as if it’s obvious that someone eating a plant-based burger must be replacing an animal burger. (Someone with the company Vivera told me that people could not be eating two burgers at once.)

But there are alternate scenarios: One is that many vegans and vegetarians are adopting these new products. Yet we know that because this population segment has remained steady, these consumers alone cannot account for the high growth rates of plant-based foods in recent years. Nevertheless, they should not be discounted.  

The “flexitarian", consumers who are swapping out meat occasionally for plant-based options, certainly does help explain the mainstreaming and growth of the category. But this is where we may be making a troubling erroneous assumption. It is entirely possible that these consumers are replacing other vegetarian meals with the new burgers. To date, I have not seen any serious research to answer this highly relevant question. Even Tyson seems to favor this theory, for obvious reasons. Again, from Business Insider:

"People are swapping out other meals, like carb-based or vegetable meals, and actually replacing them with higher protein."

Read those words closely: Tyson is saying their target customer is not the meat-eater, it’s someone who would otherwise be eating a veg option already. Which one could argue is a horrible outcome all around: no reduction in animals killed or harmful environmental impacts from factory farming. And replacing a healthier “carb-based or vegetable” meal with a highly processed option instead. (See the long list of ingredients for the Tyson burger here and the chicken nugget here.)

Unless and until we see some independent research on whether or not plant-based meats are displacing animal meats, our movement needs a healthy dose of humility.

Unless and until we see some independent research on whether or not plant-based meats are displacing animal meats, our movement needs a healthy dose of humility.

Celebrating Big Meat a slap in the face to workers

Finally, celebrating Big Meat a slap in the face to countless workers who have long suffered and even died for these unethical companies who care only about their bottom lines. I did not see any of mention of the many negative practices of both JBS and Tyson by vegan outlets or even in the business media coverage. For example, nowhere to be found is how all the large meatpackers have put their workers in grave danger throughout the pandemic. Just a few choice headlines:

• America’s Slaughterhouses Aren’t Just Killing Animals, The Atlantic.
• Meatpackers deny workers benefits for COVID-19 deaths, illnesses, Reuters.
• Meatpacking plants have been deadly COVID-19 hot spots – but policies that encourage workers to show up sick are legal, The Conversation.

To truly understand the depth of the harm meat-packing plants have caused, follow the incredible work of journalist Leah Douglas. She has been tracking this issue for over a year now, the results of which are captured in this map that is constantly updated. To date, she has uncovered at least 59,013 confirmed Covid-19 cases, including at least 291 deaths among meatpacking workers. I shudder to think what these families might feel seeing all the celebration of the same companies that helped cause this devastating loss of life.

If you think the pandemic caused conditions Big Meat could not have anticipated, think again. This investigation by ProPublica explains how federal government documents dating back to 2006 predicted these outcomes, in a story called, “Meatpacking Companies Dismissed Years of Warnings but Now Say Nobody Could Have Prepared for COVID-19.”

Also, not a word about this reporting from last fall: “Owners of meatpacker JBS to pay $280M fine over foreign bribery charges”. According to the U.S. assistant attorney general:

“Executives at the very highest levels of the company used U.S. banks and real estate to pay tens of millions of dollars in bribes to corrupt government officials in Brazil in order to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in financing for the company.”

So, it’s quite possible that at least some portion of that $410 million used to purchase plant-based company Vivera was obtained though illegal means. But hurray for the animals.  

Please consider that when you celebrate the likes of Tyson and JBS, you are giving them exactly what they want: free advertising to cover up their evil deeds.

The last thing we should be doing is helping Big Meat greenwash its reputation by celebrating their attempts to co-opt plant-based foods for their own unethical gains.

 Michele Simon is a public health attorney, author, and founder and former executive director of the Plant Based Foods Association. (Full bio.) This is part a collection of articles called “Reality Check, Please”. Got ideas to share? [email protected]