How Labeling Laws Affect Alternative Proteins (Rethink Priorities)

By ulazarosa, WilliamMcAuliffe, Ben Stevenson @ 2025-02-06T12:57 (+2)

Hi everyone! At Rethink Priorities we’ve just released new findings on the impact of restrictive labeling laws for plant-based and cell-cultured mteats.

TL;DR: A real “regulatory patchwork” isn’t a major cost burden—yet—but a federal ban on meat-like terms could be a bigger risk.

Problem

Meat industry lobbyists argue that meat-like labels mislead consumers into believing that animal product alternatives either contain animal products or have comparable nutritional benefits. On these grounds, they have advocated for either requiring clarificatory language (e.g., plant-based deli slice) or banning meat-like terminology (e.g., almond beverage instead of almond milk).

Key findings

• As of January 2025, 17 US states have passed regulations on the labeling language of animal product alternatives. Legal challenges so far suggest that typical labels for animal product alternatives do not violate existing regulations.
• In jurisdictions like the US, different states could adopt different labeling restrictions that cannot be jointly satisfied by any one label. Such a regulatory patchwork may be burdensome to comply with, even if the content of the regulations themselves are not.
• Experts we interviewed pointed to a variety of potential harms of a US patchwork (see Summary Table 1 in the Full Report). Of these, the most concerning was that retailers and distributors would drop animal product alternatives entirely due to the logistical difficulties of working across state lines.
• However, we speculate that a crisis of this sort is somewhat unlikely, and might spur federal regulation that preempts state laws if it did occur. Indeed, interviewees generally seemed more concerned about a federal ban on dairy terms for plant-based alternatives.
• A federal law is somewhat likely, possibly first for dairy alternatives and later for meat alternatives. When advocating at the federal level, it is more likely important to prevent a nationwide ban on meat-like terminology than to block a requirement for clarificatory language.

RP Recommendation

After conducting expert interviews, we deem it unlikely that the animal products alternative sector (viz., plant-based meat cell-cultured meat companies) will face steep costs due to a regulatory “patchwork” of product label restrictions across US states. Advocates should oppose a federal ban on meat-like terminology, but not a federal requirement for clarificatory language.

If you have any questions, and especially if this is relevant to your work, we’d love to hear your thoughts! Please reach out to Samara at samara@rethinkpriorities.org

[READ THE FULL REPORT]