Cattle ranchers are taking aim at fake-meat juggernauts, and the humble veggie burger is caught in the crossfire

"Tofurky wasn't keeping cattle ranchers awake at night," Laura Reiley writes at The Washington Post. But now Tofurky is joining the American Civil Liberties Union, the nonprofit Good Food Institute, and the Animal Legal Defense Fund to challenge a new Arkansas law that bans companies from labeling plant-based meat substitutes as burgers, hot dogs, sausage, or other traditionally meat-containing products. Arkansas isn't alone: So far this year, nearly 30 states have proposed such laws and seven — Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Wyoming, have enacted them.

The bills are usually backed by powerful cattlemen's associations, which argue that plant-based, insect-based, or lab-grown meat products can confuse consumers and are not as healthy as suggested, given the level of processing involved. The new legislation was prompted by the soaring popularity of deep-pocketed meat-simulating startups Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, Reiley notes, but "'first-generation' veggie burgers and similar products are caught in the crossfire.

"Tofu and seitan have been around for centuries," says Jan Dutkiewicz, a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University. "These were not on the mainstream radar — the stuff hippies eat. For Tofurky and Morningstar, customers were more vegans and vegetarians, not mainstream consumers. They weren't trying to compete with meat on taste. ... Impossible and Beyond are not an outgrowth of Tofurky. Their aim is to mimic meat as closely as possible. They are trying to supplant meat entirely."

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Tofurkey, which as seen its own sales shoot up as second-generation meat substitutes take off, isn't shedding any tears for the cattlemen and it is ready for its day in court. "If we lose, there's something wrong with our judicial system," Tofurky chief executive Jaime Athos tells the Post. "It's all [the cattlemen's associations] can come up with to censor speech. ... The meat industry's chickens are coming home to roost." Read more about the war on fake meat at The Washington Post.