Letter to the editor: If it isn’t pork, Impossible Foods shouldn’t use that word

Phony baloney

In 2018, Missouri became the first state to mandate that only products from animals can be marketed as meat. As plant-based products designed to mimic real meat emerge, the hundreds of members of the National Pork Producers Council gathering in Kansas City this week for our annual meeting hope the nation follows Missouri’s lead. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but plant-based products posing as pork are not, in fact, pork. They can’t be labeled as such.

Impossible Foods recently made a splash with the introduction of “Impossible Pork,” made from plant-based ingredients. The company’s announcement was not just a step too far — it was a brazen violation of labeling law. What’s impossible is for something that does not come from a pig to be called pork. You can’t make pork from plants unless you feed them to a pig first.

Just as pork producers can’t call their product beef or chicken, plant-based products can’t be called pork.

Plant-based products that imitate meat must face the same stringent regulatory requirements, including the truthful labeling standard.

It is wrong for plant-based food products funded by Silicon Valley to violate the brand of a product that has for centuries been known by consumers to come from pigs. U.S. pork producers support competition, but it needs to be on a level playing field. That’s not impossible; that’s just plain fair.

- Scott Hays, Monroe City, Missouri