Non-Livestock “Meat”

But livestock-based “meat” has also not been the only way in which eaters— both American and otherwise—have approached this category of food. This section will first provide a brief history of meats in the context of vegetarian and other limited-meat cultures (both generally and within the United States).

A. Vegetarian Meats/Meat Analogues

Vegetarian and other limited-meat cultures have developed around the world for a number of reasons. Some of these are spiritual, others are based on ethics of non-violence, and even others are founded on nutritional/environmental concerns.^[432] These philosophical foundations are not the focus of this chapter. However, the presence of these cultures for centuries—whether plant-based proxies or fully alternative diets—means that humans have been exploring things described as alternative meats for quite some time. This section bypasses any full discussion of the philosophical grounding for vegetarian diets, as well as the development of fully alternative diets, and instead focuses on historical uses of foods used to replace livestock-based meats in traditional cuisines.

1. Generally

Modern historical accounts of vegetarian analogues^[433] for livestock-based meats tend to be sharply divided between Eastern and Western histories. But the short summary is that modern historical accounts of Eastern plant-based ana­logues tend to reach further back in time than modern historical accounts of

The Legal Definition of Meat 111 Western plant-based analogues (although this history of vegetarianism in both areas are quite histories).

Much of the modern historical account of Eastern plant-based analogues focuses on soy, a plant that has a “long history in Asia.”^[434] That is, “tofu and its value as an animal-protein substitute were clearly known in China by the time of the Tang Dynasty (618—907 CE), when the people called it ‘small mutton’.”^[435]

But vegetarian meat analogues in the East were not limited to soy.^[436] As one food expert, Fuschia Dunlop, has explained, “There are records from the Tang dynasty, which is 618 to 907, of an official hosting a banquet serving imitation pork and mutton dishes made from vegetables.”^[437] Other analogues include gluten-based analogues^[438] and jackfruit-based analogues.^[439] Indeed, the names of these analogues themselves include the term “meat” in other languages.

These analogues were not uniformly eaten by all Asians, however. While Chinese Buddhists often relied heavily on analogues in “temple cuisine,” Japa­nese Buddhists and Indian vegetarians did not.^[442] But when they were con­sumed, their consumption was related to virtue and frugality. For example,

The earliest known reference to tofu (worldwide) appears in China in the Anecdotes, Simple and Exotic (Qing yilu) [in 965] by Tao Ku. It states: When Shi Ji was the magistrate of Qing Yang, he emphasized the virtue of frugality among the people, and discouraged the consumption of meat. Instead he promoted the sale of tofu. But rather than calling it doufu (the

Chinese name for tofu), he referred to it as “mock lamb chops” or “the vice mayor’s mutton.”^[443]

Similarly, in the 1620s, “[a]t a banquet in Ming-dynasty China, a group of Buddhist nuns is reassured: ‘This is vegetarian food made to look like meat. It has come from the temple, and there can’t possibly be any harm in eating it.’ ”^[444]

In the Western world, at least according to William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi, the compilers of a comprehensive history of meat alternatives, the first mention of such alternatives was made in 1852.^[445] It was a vegetarian sausage, “composed mainly of red flannel and turnip tops, chopped fine.”^[446] This is not to say that vegetarian diets did not exist in the West prior to that; such diets were promoted for similar reasons as in the East. As Tristram Stuart recounts in his history of vegetarian philosophies:

Meat-eating came under fire from a spectacular array of viewpoints in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Revolutionaries attacked the bloodthirsty luxury of mainstream culture; demographers accused the meat industry of wasting resources which could otherwise be used to feed people; anatomists claimed that human intestines were not equipped to digest meat; and travellers to the East presented India as a peaceful alterna­tive to the rapacity of the West....

During World War II, Westerners also began to adopt vegetarian meat ana­logues for another reason: disruption in traditional food supplies due to the war.^[448] To replace the imported meats and livestock whose supply was disrupted by the Germans, the British began to include soy protein in their wartime sausages.^[449] But they did not plant their own soybeans. Instead, “they culti­vated an extraordinarily close relationship with the emerging soy sovereign, the USA. Winston Churchill assiduously courted the Americans, realizing that they would be an indispensable source of both war material and food.”^[450]

The United States supported this effort. While soy had been primarily used as a rotation crop before World War II, farmers were encouraged to use the

The Legal Definition of Meat 113 crops to produce soybeans.^[451] Indeed, one American World War II pamphlet stated “Remember—when you grow more soybeans, you are helping America to destroy the enemies of freedom.”^[452] What we see in this extremely brief history of vegetarian meat substitutes is that very similar values have histori­cally been used to valorize both livestock-based meats and vegetarian meat analogues.

2. In the United States

Vegetarianism in the United States began with more Christian religious under­pinnings.^[453] But from early Americans like Benjamin Franklin to Johann Con­rad Beissel, a German immigrant who founded the Seventh-Day Baptists in Pennsylvania, vegetarians were present during the foundations of the United States.^[454]

But they did not always seek to create meat analogues. In one documented meal by Benjamin Franklin (hosting George Washington, Benjamin Rush, and John Hancock), “Franklin served cucumber, a pot of butter, a jug of spring water, a loaf of bread, lettuces, leeks, a cheese, and foaming beer ‘more brisk than strong.’”^[455] Even in the earlier 1800s, when books like William Andrus Alcott’s Vegetable Diet^[456] were read by the public, the dietary focus appeared more on eating a variety of grains and vegetables versus providing suggestions for meat analogues.^[457] Even a prominent vegetarian meal covered by the New York Daily Times in 1853 seemed to provide few direct meat analogues:

[v]egetable soup, tomato soup, rice soup, farinacea, Graham bread, mixed­fruit cake, fruitbread, apple biscuit, wheat-meal cakes, moulded rice, corn blanc mange, moulded wheaten grits, vegetables, baked sweet potatoes, stewed cream squash, pastry, mixed-fruit pie, pumpkin pie, fruits, melons, apples, peaches, pears, grapes, pineapples, cooked fruits including plum jelly and baked apples, relishes consisting of coconut custard and fruited ice cream, and a beverage of pure cold water.^[458]

It was John Harvey Kellogg who most advanced the marketing of vegetarian meat analogues in America.^[459] “After developing additional meat substitutes, Kellogg formed the Sanitas Nut Food Company in 1889.”^[460] The Sanitas prod­ucts were described in relation to livestock-based meats.

Kellogg’s motivation for developing these plant-based analogues was this:

In dropping meats from the diet it was difficult at first to find a satisfactory substitute because for so many generations meals had been built around meats and to most people a meal without meat as its center was unthink­able In biologic living we left out the meat, left out all the condiments,

coffee and tea, and what was finally left was very plain and tasteless for those who were accustomed to high flavors.^[463]

Since then, others in the United States have promoted vegetarian meat analogues. The counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s looked to vegetar­ianism as a counterweight against traditional values it deemed harmful.^[464] During this period, Stephen Gaskin, founder of a prominent vegetarian commune, worked to purchase 1,000 acres of woods eventually known as “The Farm.”^[465] In 1976, commune members used soybeans grown on The Farm to produce “soy products such as soy burgers, soy loaf, and soy sausage. The community built a soy dairy that churned out soy milk, soy yogurt, and soy ice cream.”^[466]

Since then, vegetarian meat substitutes have grown exponentially. A short timeline in Mother Jones documents this progress.^[467] Vegetarian burger substi­tutes abounded, and producers explored innovations such as “mushroom in origin” meats.^[468]

The Legal Definition of Meat 115

B. Cell-Cultured Meats

Cell-cultured meats are a more recent phenomenon than the plant-based live­stock meat analogues outlined previously.

Proponents of such lab-grown meat cite potentials for lowering environmen­tal impacts,^[472] raising nutritional profiles,^[473] and even promoting more ethical consumption from an animal rights framework.^[474] This is not to say that such products are economically viable just yet. “Getting to a price consumers would be willing to pay at a restaurant is still at least five to 10 years away, according to several CEOs of the leading cultured meat companies.”^[475]

The production methods for such lab-grown livestock-meat analogues can vary. But in general, they start with creating what is known as a bio-reactor (basically a sterile vat that provides controllable conditions for cell growth) to grow the cultured meats.^[476] Then the lab-grown meat enterprise must acquire livestock stem cells, taken from living animal muscle, with satellite cells—which are “responsible for muscle regeneration after injury”^[477]—being the most promising type of stem cells for this use. After that, the producer must proliferate those cells by basically attaching the cells to a three-dimen­sional scaffold that—when the cells are grown—can mimic the structure of

livestock-harvested meats.^[478] Finally, the cells must be stretched and further grown so that they can be harvested as commercial viable products.^[479]

But readers who think of food categories in terms of taste and mouthfeel might ask, what does this food taste like? At least according to two reviewers of New Age Meats’s^[480] sausage, during a tasting in which photographs ofJessie the pig, from whom the cell biopsies were extracted, were displayed, “The flavor was smoky and savory. The texture was distinctly sausage-like. It tasted like meat.”^[481] More significantly, the reviewers added, “Then again, it is meat.”^[482]

In a different tasting, this time of a lab-grown steak (a more difficult product to create as a livestock-meat analogue, since producers cannot rely upon physi­cal food processing to replicate textures) by Aleph Farms of Israel, reviewers stated that “ ‘It’s close and it tastes good, but we have a bit more work to make sure the taste is 100% similar to conventional meat,’ he said, ‘But when you cook it, you really can smell the same smell of meat cooking.’ ”^[483]

IV.