Talking about impossible and beyond meat, of course. I like their taste, so I’m not one of those burger fash who complains about not being able to taste the flesh wounds of their victims. Just need the skinny on how it compares in terms of it’s nutrient quality, health factors in terms of contaminants in production or as a result of (PFAS, lead), and the impact on the environment. I’m sure the production of fake borg is better than maintaining and slaughtering cows, but relative to other foods how much better is it?
impossible isn’t vegan, they do animal testing
also very expensive compared to actually vegan alternatives
Beyond Meat also does taste testing with actual meat, some vegans (myself included) aren’t comfortable supporting this so I believe it is also worth mentioning.
I remember some dubious online talk about Impossible’s animal testing being required by the US Gov as part of some meat replacement/GMO thing but that may be 100% cope idk - not that it makes impossible vegan because it’s government mandated lol
Quoting directly from their website, bolding mine:
It’s their voluntary decision to take an optional step that led to:
Thanks for the quote! So it was
then
Wonder why they would choose to take that optional route. Is it as simple as animal testing being seen as the easiest way and industry standard?
You can read the rest of their justification if you’d like, where they say things like:
But they don’t actually make any attempt to address why an optional and voluntary step was necessary to their mission and its success.
I’m going to assume it’s expedience and profit motive then.
Seems, from that page, that they’re committed to the idea of Impossible and similar products not being intended for vegans, but for carnists who want to reduce their animal consumption, which is probably a larger market in the US at least. Disappointing but not really surprising.
I don’t see how this justifies…anything? If it was optional, and was a small-scale test that only had to be done once, why do it at all?
My idle thought goes to “does that make them currently vegan then?” but that’s pointless when there are infinite vegan options that don’t require supporting a brand which did animal testing. Nobody needs a hyper realistic borger
If they were already overly focused on carnists, it only gets better from there! The CEO+founder whose name appears under that post was replaced:
see my pfp for reaction
American burger brain and its consequences… The structural, load bearing brainworms can’t be removed, the entire thing needs to go
Also fuck off with that “flexitarian” shit. “Limited vegetarian” my ass, that’s just carnism! God I hate this liberal-ass mindset
It’s a great strategy when the majority of your market is vegans and vegetarians to alienate them whenever possible.
That’s the take vegans generally seem to have on them. It doesn’t help that their site is full of phrases like ”Everyone loves meat because it’s so delicious”, strong pick me energy. Personally, I’m not a fan of the ”vegan food needs to taste like meat to appeal to carnists” approach in general.
It’s good to have and use that knowledge, but also don’t forget that basically every single large vegan product company is owned by a company that creates and sells straight-up animal products. Morningstar (which itself sells egg products) is owned by the Kellogs mega conglomerate. Quorn is owned by Monde Nissin. Chao/Field Roast is owned by Greenleaf, which also owns Lightlife, and it’s a subsidiary of Maple Leaf. To my knowledge, Tofurky is the only big one free of this.
Also don’t forget to apply the same logic for whole food! Beans are the best! But who owns the bean brand? Usually some other megacorp that sells animal products. And the beans are often grown on farms with animal inputs (like fertilizer).
When you dig more than 1 level deep on supply chains and ownership, very little is actually free from animal exploitation. It is nearly impossible to actually rid your life of it, if that is the bar. However, we can do a lot that is practicable.
No ethical consumption etc etc. We should be doing the best we can, but shit is fucked all the way down the chain just about any way you slice it.
Some animal testing is a huge moral step up from constantly killing animals. And just to make this concrete, they fed soy leghemoglobin to 188 mice to get FDA approval for the ingredient, and it turned out to not be harmful to the mice.
So impossible don’t currently do animal testing, they did it exactly once.
Admittedly, I don’t know what the testing company did to the mice after the experiments finished.
Weighing 188 mice vs preventing the suffering and death of millions of cows/chickens/pigs in the future, I’d say I’m okay with that?
The rats were dissected and the animal testing was optional. Are there degrees of harm? Absolutely. Theirs could have been lower.
I said elsewhere that I haven’t yet completely cut them out, so it’s not like I’m coming at this from some moral high ground either. I would certainly still be eating more of their products though if they hadn’t taken the optional step to test on animals.