14
CapitalPress.com
Friday, December 13, 2019
Ranchers have a beef with plant-based burgers
By BILL BRADSHAW AND ELLEN
MORRIS BISHOP
EO Media Group
ENTERPRISE,
Ore.
— Real beef? Impossible
Burgers? Beyond Meat?
Old-fashioned veggie burg-
ers? They’re all being con-
sidered these days as con-
sumers add concerns for
health, the environment and
climate change to their inter-
est in flavor.
But northeast Oregon
beef producers are wary of
the newest-generation of
plant-based burger offerings,
including Beyond Meat and
Impossible Burger. They are
beef look-alikes that seem-
ingly masquerade as meat.
Ranchers want consumers to
know what they’re getting:
It’s not beef, it’s not local
and it’s not as environmen-
tally friendly or as healthy as
many consumers think.
A case of mistaken iden-
tity — that consumers will
think they are buying meat
when they choose a less
healthy, highly processed
product out of the grocery
store meat case — is at the
top of local rancher’s con-
cerns. The newer genera-
tion of plant-based “meats”
— most notably a brand
called Beyond Meat — have
muscled their way into the
supermarket meat case and
onto the hamburger shelves.
These products are clearly
labeled “plant-based pat-
ties.” But they are engi-
neered to look like beef.
They sort of taste like beef.
Beyond Burger
Bill Bradshaw/EO Media Group
Beef cattle graze amid the snow in a pasture along Alder Slope Road south of Enterprise, Ore., on Nov. 25. With the
snow coming down, these cattle are likely getting the last of what they’ll graze for the season and depend on hay
their owner provides.
Todd Nash
Mack Birkmaier
They are a different animal
than the antiquated low-fat
veggie-burgers hibernating
in supermarket freezers.
Long-time
Wallowa
County rancher Mack Birk-
maier doesn’t like having
plant-based meat substitutes
marketed next to the ground
beef and steaks in supermar-
ket meat counters. “It’s kind
of like cheating,” he said.
Rancher and County
Commissioner Todd Nash
agreed.
“I would like people to
know that they’re buying a
plant-based product rather
than a beef product and have
it labeled appropriately so
that the consumer can make
that choice,” he said.
The unease is a national
one. Curtis W. Martin, a
board member of the U.S.
Cattlemen’s
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who ranches in North Pow-
der, echoes Birkmaier’s and
Nash’s concerns.
“By no means are you
going to steal our reputation,
our labeling and our quality
by trying to confuse … the
consumer by using ‘meat’
or ‘beef’ on the labeling or
advertising.” he said. The
USCA wants the U.S. gov-
ernment to ban the words
“meat” or “beef” from being
used to promote non-beef
products.
Touted as a healthy food
that will save the planet, the
new generation of plant-
based burgers are increas-
ingly popular. Beyond Meat
is now sold in about 35,000
grocery stores nationwide.
In Wallowa County it’s
available in Safeway, Dol-
lar Stretcher and the Mar-
ket Place in Joseph. Impos-
sible Burgers, sold only in
restaurants, are available
for lunch or dinner at Heav-
enly’s. The popularity of
these “plant-based meats” is
growing rapidly across the
nation, even though they are
more expensive than locally
grown grass-fed beef.
The healthiness and envi-
ronmental credentials of the
new plant-based “meats”
are also near the top of local
rancher’s concerns. “They
just aren’t very natural,”
Birkmaier said.
Beyond Meat’s “meaty
texture” comes largely from
processed pea protein iso-
late and rice protein. The
juiciness is courtesy of gen-
erous amounts of canola oil,
coconut oil and cocoa but-
ter. These plant patties con-
tain more saturated fat per
“burger” (30% of your daily
saturated fat ration) than
most of the ground beef next
to them. The Impossible
Burger, which is soy-based,
offers a stunning 40% of
daily saturated fat. In addi-
tion to its heart-stopping
fat content, the Impossible
Burger relies on genetically
modified ingredients to pro-
duce its meaty texture.
Local nutritionist Lana
Rose said she would not
choose to eat products that
were as processed and as
high in saturated fat content
as these plant-based burgers.
“There are better things
to eat. You are really not eat-
ing plants,” she said.
The Harvard Health
Review notes that “along
with the ambition to repli-
cate hamburgers comes a
comparable amount of satu-
rated fat. Since diets higher
in saturated fat are associ-
ated with increased rates of
both heart disease and pre-
mature death, they may not
be the type of food to opt for
if your ambitions are purely
health-related.”
Based on these data, Wal-
lowa County ranchers’ con-
cern for consumer health
seems justified.
In addition to its high
fat content, the new meat-
less-meat is also consid-
ered to be an ultra-pro-
cessed food — a category
now under increased scru-
tiny for obesity, cardiovas-
cular and metabolic disease,
along with breast and all
cancers, depression, frailty
in the elderly and prema-
ture mortality, as outlined
in a 2019 report by the U.S.
National Institute of Health.
(Ultra-processed foods are
defined by the prestigious
British Medical Journal as
“formulations of food sub-
stances often modified by
chemical processes and
then assembled into ready-
to-consume hyper-palatable
food and drink products.
… These foods include ...
reconstituted meat products,
pre-prepared frozen dishes
and soft drinks.”)
This is also perfectly in
line with Birkmaier’s princi-
pal concern about these plant
burgers: their potential nega-
tive effects on human health.
“I think the mothers of
America should be some-
what wary of feeding this
concoction of cells, plants
and chemicals to their chil-
dren,” he said. “Should
it have a warning label
attached? What does this
do to a developing child’s
body?”
For the environmentally
concerned, there are other
considerations. Both Impos-
sible Burgers and Beyond
Meat claim that their prod-
ucts have a lower “carbon
footprint” than beef and are
helping save the planet from
climate change.
A study done for Impos-
sible Burger has certified
that its product has an 89%
smaller carbon footprint than
the “equivalent beef prod-
uct.” But that statistic appears
to include cattle raised on
cleared portions of the Ama-
zon rainforest or driving sim-
ilar ecological deforestation
and devastation. It does not
take into account grazing
on rangelands or restorative
grazing practices.
Impossible Burger also
claims that the total land area
used to produce their ingre-
dients is only 4% of the area
needed to produce beef.
“That’s a very, very con-
servative estimate on our
part — most cattle globally
require far more land than
that estimate,” said Rebekah
Moses, Impossible Burger’s
senior manager of impact
strategy, during an interview
with Adele Peters, a staff
writer at the online mag-
azine Fast Company. “It’s
completely inefficient, and
it’s why beef is the leading
cause of deforestation in the
Amazon. If most of the land
that’s used for cattle feed
were to be left alone, with-
out the gassy animals, to
revegetate and actually store
carbon in trees and grass-
lands, it’s not an exaggera-
tion to say that we could set
the clock back on climate
change through food choice
alone.”
However,
Impossible
Burger did not address the
fate of private land once
cattle were removed. And
it also seems unaware of
the environmentally-based
farm-to-table
movement,
which advocates buying
locally produced foods and
supporting local agriculture
as a way to lower carbon
emissions globally.
To Wallowa County
ranchers, Moses’s state-
ment seems jaw-droppingly
exaggerated.
“First,” Nash said, “you
can always manipulate sci-
ence and say whatever you
want, in my opinion. We
have a tremendous amount
of range and when cat-
tle graze that properly, you
have a minimal impact,”
he said. “Agriculture as a
whole has changed practices
radically and we can seques-
ter more carbon in agricul-
ture than we produce.”
Martin, the North Pow-
der-based rancher, said he
was unsure of the carbon
footprint involved in plant-
based substitutes, portions
of which may be raised in
places as far away as Indo-
nesia or the Philippines, and
may be grown on deforested
land, shipped long distances
for processing and then
shipped again to consumers.
But he does know about
cattle production.
“It’s pretty dramatic how
The plant-based Beyond
Meat’s Beyond Burger
is sold in grocery stores,
but stores vary on wheth-
er they display it on the
meat counter or in the
frozen food aisles. Each
plant-based
Beyond
Burger contains 30% of
the daily recommended
amount of saturated fat.
American ranchers are cre-
ating more protein with less
input,” he said. That claim
is substantiated by a 2012
study published in the jour-
nal Sustainability, which
showed that U.S. beef pro-
duction had decreased its
carbon footprint by 16%
per animal over the period
1977-2009, and that rate of
decrease was expected to
continue. And a 2017 report
on livestock production and
climate by Oxford Universi-
ty’s Food Climate Research
Network noted that while
range-raised, grass-fed live-
stock could not feed the
planet’s growing population
sustainably, “... well-man-
aged grazing can cause car-
bon to be sequestered in the
soil — and at the very least,
can provide an economic
rationale for keeping the
carbon in the ground.”
Demand for the new
plant-based meatless burg-
ers seems to be exploding.
The Motley Fool’s web-
site reported in October
that “… major players like
Tyson, Nestle and Hormel
have announced that they
are launching or developing
(similar) plant-based prod-
ucts.” Food giant Smith-
field Foods is already in
the game, along with Safe-
way/Albertsons. In addition,
more fast-food and other
restaurants are adding faux
meat to the menus, includ-
ing Subway, which plans to
offer Beyond Meatballs in
its marinara sandwich early
next year.
In Wallowa County,
where grass-fed beef pro-
duction is an economic
mainstay, the rapid rise
of faux meats presents a
challenge.
“The problem is, we’re
a county with 7,000 people
and 25,000 cows and we can
provide everybody with a
wholesome, grass-fed prod-
uct here and even the tour-
ists who come in, we can fill
up the trunks of their cars
with grass-fed products,”
Nash said. “But we don’t
have a processor that is large
enough to be able to handle
that.”
Still, local cradle-to-mar-
ket grass-fed beef, (and
lamb, bison and yak) are
available here, and its pur-
chase supports local ranches
and the local economy. It
contains less fat and sodium
than plant-based burgers. It
has just one ingredient, and
no added chemicals. There
are no genetically modi-
fied organisms in Wallowa
County beef. It has a low,
and probably much lower
carbon footprint than the
new plant-based alternative.
And it costs the same or less.
To all interviewed, the
choice between local beef
and meat substitutes comes
down to the quality of the
food, as well as the effects
on our local landscape and
economy.
“We (cattlemen) ques-
tion whether these new plant-
based foods are a good, health-
ful product,” Birkmaier said.
“I look at these new kinds of
patties, with all their chemi-
cals, processing, and fat. And
I wonder if they won’t be like
other things that we thought
were healthy and good, but
turned out to be very, very bad
for us. I think that especially
mothers should think about
this when they decide what
their children are eating. We
know what’s truly healthy.
These plant-based products
have not yet stood the test of
time.”