“Fake meat products are the equivalent to human pet food,” an Australian wellness influencer named Jacqueline Pypers wrote on Instagram last fall. “When you look at Impossible Burger or Beyond Meat,” she continued, calling out the industry leaders, they are “so processed that you are hard-pressed in identifying the difference” between them and dog chow. The post ticked off the common ingredients, concluding, “I’d actually prefer the dog food.”

Her burn is part of a surge in online attacks blasting plant-based meats as ultraprocessed imitations. They’re vilified not just as pet food but also for containing ingredients that purportedly double as “laxatives” and “slug pesticides.” These critics—who appear across social media’s clean eating, raw food, and carnivore communities, on Ag Twitter, and among right-wing media hosts—tend to arrive at the seemingly only logical conclusion: “Why eat meat with this many ingredients when ground beef has . . . one?”

To the casual viewer, the posts feel like an organic social media meme trend. But upon closer examination, the arguments start looking similar. In fact, they echo attacks from 2019 and 2020 that were created and disseminated by a Washington, D.C., meat-and-restaurant-industry operative named Rick Berman, with the help of others, including a University of California, Davis professor whose center was devised by and gets funding from meatpackers. Those original broadsides, which for about a year circulated as print ads and op-eds in some of the country’s largest newspapers, also compared alt-meat to dog food—and worse.

Now, that same content is surfacing—often verbatim—in the social media posts of wellness influencers, keto dieters, the anti-seed oil crowd, vaccine skeptics, and others. Pypers, emailing from her home on Queensland’s coast in Australia, explains that she “began questioning the ingredients of vegan faux meats” after she graduated from college with a health degree in 2019. That led her “down a deep rabbit hole of following the money trail and who was profiting most from this movement.”

Has a master of manufacturing phony grassroots opposition finally tapped the power of social media? Or did Big Beef merely luck out that this crowd started echoing its propaganda? Either way, the consequences lead nowhere good for an already besieged plant-based meat industry.

Berman, whom 60 Minutes called “Dr. Evil,” spent three decades leveraging a network of dark-money coalitions to achieve the aims of anonymous corporations via his lobbying firm, Berman and Company.
(Berman did not respond to an interview request.)

In 2019, a Berman group funded by restaurant chains and meat companies, the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), began to fixate on vegan meat, during what proved to be a monumental year for the category. Impossible Whoppers debuted at Burger King that summer, and the response was so positive that the chain’s CEO told investors that it was “one of the most successful launches in Burger King’s history.” Customers signaled that they’d buy it again at a rate “in line with those of the original Whopper.” Meanwhile, Beyond went public that spring in the most successful debut since the 2008 financial crisis. Its stock ended its first day of trading up 163% and valued at $3.8 billion; less than three months later, Beyond’s market cap hit almost $14 billion. These venture-backed upstarts were tiny compared with the trillion-dollar global meat industry, but they looked like a threat.

As Beyond and Impossible exploded, lobbyists for the meat industry found themselves locked in a three-front war: battling scientists armed with growing evidence that meat isn’t good for the climate, health experts who they believed were transforming beef into something to avoid, and plant-based alternatives built on breakthrough tech. But consumer research hinted at a counterstrategy. Americans thought chemicals in food were bad, especially after witnessing such scandals as ammonia-treated “pink slime” being added to ground beef. Berman could flip vegan meat’s selling point—verisimilitude to real meat achieved through science—on its head.

Throughout 2019, Berman’s CCF placed “Fake Meat or Dog Food?” ads in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times. Many more followed, including “Should Fake Meat Have a Cancer Warning?” and “Fake Meat Has WHAT in It!”

That same year, Frank Mitloehner, an animal-science researcher who knew Berman from the speaking circuit, established the Clarity and Leadership for Environmental Awareness and Research (CLEAR) Center. The center, according to a confidential memo by a trade association, was established for beef purveyors to offer “input and advice regarding communications priorities of the industry.”

Mitloehner had tweeted a “trivia quiz” in June 2019 asking users to guess which list of ingredients were for a Beyond burger, which were for the Impossible burger, and which were for premium dog food. “Within 24 hours, I had 100,000 people trying to answer that trivia question,” he bragged on an agriculture-themed radio show. The CCF borrowed the conceit, added a bowl of kibble, and ran it as a full-page newspaper ad. It also created a downloadable PDF version, posting it on CleanFoodFacts.com, a site that “helps consumers better understand what’s in fake meat.” (Asked if he collaborated on the ad, Mitloehner responds, “No, I have not interacted with them.”)

Marion Nestle, the public health pioneer and author of the best-selling book Food Politics, credits Berman (begrudgingly) with identifying the burgeoning category’s Achilles’ heel. “He used concerns about ultraprocessed food, which I fully share, as the basis of the attack on plant-based meat alternatives,” she says. “Berman may be entirely unscrupulous . . . but he is smart. That’s why his clients hire him to do their dirty work.”

Last April, an influencer who goes by the name Carnivore Aurelius Instagrammed the dog-food quiz to his 684,000 followers. Aurelius, who also markets a beef-liver jerky brand under the same name, wrote, “Fake meat is glorified toxic dog food. (Spoiler: The dog-food ingredient list is the one that looks healthier).” Dr. Shawn Baker, an orthopedic surgeon whose 30-day all-meat diet has been embraced by the likes of Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson, has posted the dog-food quiz on social channels. It has bled into YouTube videos as well: The Daily Wire’s Brett Cooper, a right-wing influencer whose channel has more than 1.7 billion views, told her audience that vegan meat “looks like the freeze-dried-liver treats I give my dog.”

Mitloehner’s quiz has also appeared in myriad forms on TikTok. A video challenging viewers to take it was among July’s top #beyondmeat posts, with half a dozen more in the top 15 that called vegan meat “ultraprocessed.” Some include slideshows that screenshot ads or studies housed at CleanFoodFacts.com. Many feature all or part of this quote: “When you look at Impossible Burger or Beyond Meat, you will find they have 21 to 22 highly, highly processed ingredients. In fact, so processed you are hard-pressed finding a difference between those items versus, let’s say, pet food.” Mitloehner first said that, in 2019, but he’s rarely cited as the speaker.

How the anti-vegan-meat campaign migrated to social media is murky, but multiple food-industry sources say they believe the meat industry is actively working to tap into this channel. More than a dozen digital influencers contacted by Fast Company would not discuss where they had encountered the ideas they’re sharing. When pressed, Pypers, the Australian wellness poster, says that she’s never seen the Berman ads but may have encountered Mitloehner’s work.

Berman and Company has many strengths, but deftly leveraging social media isn’t one of them. The firm boasted just 70 Twitter followers in July, and while some videos have gone viral, the CCF’s 12-year-old YouTube channel has 2,500 subscribers. This summer, the firm posted a job listing for a social media strategist to “develop and implement engaging social content,” noting, “experience in paid promotion is also a plus.”

Several former Berman employees declined to speak, all saying that they didn’t work much on the fake-meat attacks, then adding, unprompted, that they were never told who the firm’s clients or donors were. James Bowers, who has co-led Berman and Company with fellow partners Mike Saltsman and Jack Hubbard after Berman retired from the firm in January when he turned 80, says that they don’t discuss the firm’s tactics, clients, or funding.

Beyond and Impossible have certainly not benefited from the attacks but are dealing with business challenges that go beyond a negative campaign. In January, Bloomberg reported that Impossible has seen sales at several restaurant partners dip, while KFC, McDonald’s, and Pizza Hut have yet to convert their Beyond collaborations into permanent U.S. menu items. Beyond’s revenue dropped 9.8% in 2022, to $419 million, and the decline continued in the first half of 2023, with sales sinking another 24.2%. Its market cap hovered at around $900 million this summer.

Impossible, in a statement provided to Fast Company, writes, “These so-called health claims being circulated about our products are just so far from reality. The truth is, Impossible products have a great nutritional profile compared to animal meat, with 25% less total fat and saturated fat. They’re also a very good source of protein, fiber, iron, zinc, certain B vitamins, and other micronutrients not found in animal meat. All of our products have zero animal hormones or antibiotics, which is huge. The fears about processing have been far overblown—the way we make our food allows us to create very high-quality, nutritious products for consumers that we’re quite proud of.”

Until August 2023, plant-based advocates had not seriously pushed back on the digital war being waged against them. Beyond, which declined to comment for this story, has been promoting that its new steak product is made from recognizable ingredients; and earlier this year, Beyond CEO Ethan Brown vented to an analyst who asked about Beyond’s retail sales. “We are not doing what others do. We’re not putting propaganda out there,” he said. “We’re not criticizing other companies. What we are doing is doing the research, right?”

Beyond’s new ad campaign, “There’s Goodness Here,” introduces consumers to a fifth-generation North Dakota farmer showing off his rows of fava beans, a base ingredient in Beyond products. The first spot focuses on the “simple and clean” process by which Beyond’s products are made, which suggests that this is the company’s response to the viral spread of the attacks against it.

But even some allies worry if it’s enough to redress them. Rachel Konrad, who served as Impossible’s chief communications officer from 2016 to 2021 and is now chief brand officer at the climate-focused business incubator, the Production Board, wrote a long critique of the Beyond response on LinkedIn, saying, “The campaign name alone—’There’s Goodness Here’ (SRSLY?)—hints at the mealy-mouthed, namby-pamby corporate response to come.”

Pro-meat forces have made no secret of their desire to harness social media. Old-school ad buys in the Sunday newspaper or even during the Super Bowl aren’t really reaching young Americans—a record two-thirds of whom consistently said for five years that they want a more plant-forward diet. Surveys also now show that up to half of Americans get nutrition advice from social media, and another study reveals that 64% of today’s teenagers claim they’d surrender their right to vote before abandoning TikTok. Teens also trust science less than average Americans and are more likely to believe what they see on TikTok. That makes social media creators’ influence on nutrition “a serious issue when it comes to spreading misinformation,” says Jennifer Stojkovic, founder of the Vegan Women Summit. “Five years ago, there was almost no such thing as a ‘carnivore influencer.’”

Last October, Berman wrote an article for a livestock trade publication called Meatingplace, arguing that the industry needs to target the consumers of tomorrow more aggressively. “When kids who are currently in middle and high school enter the working world, what will their purchasing attitudes be?” he asked. A month later, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the industry’s primary lobbyist, evangelized tapping influencers “to engage with consumers across the country about beef’s positive message.” As the influencers repeating Mitloehner and Berman’s attacks tag them with such hashtags as #yes2meat and #carnivorelife, they spread more widely.

The clean eaters demonizing plant-based proteins might balk if they knew the content they’re sharing was designed to bolster Big Beef and restaurant chains that feed Americans chickens and cows raised with antibiotics and hormones. But there’s a distinct overlap between this type of health consciousness and the online right. “Anything that strays from what’s deemed natural, primal, or masculine is automatically deemed dangerous,” observes Sara Aniano, a disinformation analyst at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism who has studied the online wellness community. “Innovative food products are seen as a dystopian consequence of leftist politics.”

As conspiratorial as the carnivore crowd can be, many people within the plant-based-protein sector are suspicious, too. They see this campaign as a grand plot to put them out of business. Alternative meat represents “an existential threat to Big Beef, whose lobbyists launched a deep-pocketed propaganda war a half-decade ago,” as the Production Board’s Konrad explains to Fast Company.

Although the USDA prohibits industry groups such as the Beef Board from using the promotional funds they receive to disparage rival industries, those groups have been known to flout these rules. There is a current federal complaint against the National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Program for an April 2023 ad campaign mocking “Wood Milk,” a fake product inspired by the fact that “these days you can make milk out of anything.”

In the vegan-meat world, an often cited smoking gun is an email that Impossible founder Pat Brown obtained in 2016. In it, the Cattlemen’s Association asked Berman what it would take to bury Impossible, which had yet to launch its burger, if the war chest was “unlimited.” (The Cattlemen’s Association did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)

But Berman has not needed an unlimited budget to achieve at least some of the meat industry’s aims. According to federal tax filings, Berman spent $763,994 on an “education campaign” in 2019 that encompassed a dozen ads, paid media, and a busy website. In 2021, the last year for which information is available, the expenses were $724,706. But since going all in on a 2020 Super Bowl ad, it produced only four new ads excoriating “fake meat” in the last two years, with none of them seeing the same second life online as the originals. In other words, the campaign’s funds appear to be going somewhere, it’s just not clear where.

There is no evidence that Berman and Company has eluded Federal Trade Commission regulations against false advertising claims and social media ad disclosures by paying those influencers without identifying their posts as sponsored. An FTC spokesperson tells Fast Company that the agency has not received complaints on anti-vegan-meat posts. It could simply be that Berman’s ads from a few years ago were just so pervasive that clean-eating zealots are now making copypasta of them. “When it comes to conspiracy theories,” says Aniano, “the least interesting conclusion is often the right one,” suggesting that after Berman and Company got everything rolling, it could sit back and let this sort of zombie campaign forever lumber online toward vegan meat.

When Berman and Company’s Bowers is asked what he believes has led to vegan meat’s recent reversal of fortunes, he won’t allow himself to brag. Well, not much. “While we won’t speculate on credit,” he says, “we were the only ones who executed an education campaign on the false promises of fake meat. Our firm motto is ‘Change the debate,’ and it’s evident that the debate on fake meat has been changed.”