How will fake meat impact farmers?

By Jossie Warnant

Along with the growing popularity of alternative meats have come headlines claiming that fake meat will hurt farmers. But have we been looking at this issue all wrong? 

Laureta Wallace from the National Farmers Federation (NFF) says they are “embracing” fake meat as a “new market opportunity for all the farmers we represent.”

“We're not concerned that there is not going to be any market for our beef...we actually think that it'll create a premium opportunity,” she says. 

The NFF represents Australian meat producers as well as soy growers and chickpea growers, whose crops are used to create plant-based products such as the newly released meat-free Four’N Twenty pie.

The increased popularity of plant-based products such as Beyond Meat has led to a spike in demand for the plants used to make them. 

These include legumes such as soya beans, chickpeas and lentils as well as yellow peas. Pea protein consumption volumes have almost doubled to 275,000 tonnes in the U.S., with the market expected to grow another 30 per cent next year. This is creating new opportunities for farmers. 

“We don't demonise people who choose to lead a vegan diet. We support everybody in their dietary choices”, says Wallace. 

But industry bodies such as the NFF and the NSW Farmers Association are calling for stronger labelling regulations when it comes to alternative meat products. 

“We embrace all these new products as long as there is truth in labelling...so people know what they're getting when they're at the supermarket”. 

This is a central aspect of the NSW Farmers campaign to ban plant-based products using the term ‘milk’. 

Backed by the Federal National Party, farmers are targeting products such as soy, oat, almond and rice milk. 

“We have seen a growing number of plant-based products on supermarket shelves during the past decade achieving consumer marketing leverage using the name ‘milk’,” Colin Thompson, NSW Farmers’ dairy committee chair, said in a press release. 

There are similar concerns with the issue of plant-based meat products, where farmers are concerned that consumers will be misled by products that are not meat. 

"The official definition of meat is ‘the flesh of an animal carcass’, and these products aren't that," said NFF chief executive officer, Tony Mahar, in a Farm Online article. 

Developments in the fake meat industry are bringing new opportunities for Australian farmers as well as calls for truth in product labelling.