Source: Reason
by Paul Shapiro
“Critics of the growing plant-based meat business say that unless a burger began with a heartbeat, it has no right to be called ‘meat.’ … More than a century ago, another incumbent industry tried to defend its turf by insisting that a new technology could imitate nature but never deserve nature’s name. The product was ice. America’s lucrative natural ice industry was being disrupted by a cheaper, cleaner, more reliable competitor: manufactured ice, or as its detractors insisted it be called, artificial ice. The incumbent industry fought back with a message that sounds remarkably familiar today: the new thing was an imitation, an artificial product masquerading as nature’s own.” (06/30/26)