Bypassing the animal: Plant-based meat and the communicative constitution of a moral market

Abstract

The food industry occupies a large portion of the plate in the study of moral markets. Moral markets for food include fair trade goods, organic products, family farmers initiatives, as well as plant-based meat alternatives, the focus of this paper. Driven by a growing concern for animal welfare, sustainability and the responsible use of resources, various companies launched products that successfully duplicate the taste, look and overall experience of meat eating, without the dire impacts of the meat industry on human, animal and environmental health. In this paper, we explore the formation of a market for plant-based meat as a communicative accomplishment. To do so, we analyse the rhetoric of one of its leading companies: Beyond Meat. By tracing the development of this food-tech company, we show that Beyond Meat’s activist-like rhetoric has contributed to the formation of a market based on the moral criterion of efficiency, which is achieved by bypassing the animal in meat production and by creating a transcending collective identity for meat-eaters of all sorts. Contrary to the more common process where moralized products move from social movement to market, we here theorize the formation of a moralized market that is depicted as a movement.