Since boneless beef’s per capita consumption high-water mark of 88 pounds in 1976 (source: ERS), we have watched as chicken companies began to commandeer beef consumers with their branded advertising campaigns, surpassing per capita beef consumption in 2005. We watched as the Beef checkoff-funded generic advertising, “Beef, it’s what’s for dinner,” played over chicken’s encroachment. Were we complacent or afflicted by hubris as the two measures of beef consumption — per capita consumption and demand — both reflected precipitous declines?

Chicken consumption rose as a direct result of effective branded promotional campaigns led by advertising. In contrast, the beef industry engaged in a generic advertising campaign hoping that a checkoff-funded drive would result in increased consumption across all beef, or at least avoid a precipitous decline.

In my view, the large beef companies abdicated to — or more specifically, climbed on the backs of — cattle producers to promote the final product and reaped the meager sales rewards of the checkoff-funded beef promotion. This has angered me for years. Why couldn’t beef's big boys have followed the chicken companies’ example by developing and promoting their individual beef brands? Because they had a government-mandated and industry-funded promotion campaign, that’s why. As a result, no beef brands were developed and marketed, just a retail sea of red meat in white foam trays.

It is my opinion that the cattle producers caved in to big beef. How? Cattle producers have the cattle; the big four of beef production who control 80% of the beef slaughter in the U.S. need cattle to feed their insatiable processing facilities. This countervailing power would seem to result in some form of equity for both, but alas, the cattle producers are stuck with much of the burden of paying for the checkoff (Source: https://beefboard.org/checkoff) while beef's big boys receive a larger percentage of beef’s sales margin dollars. (Source: USDA ERS - Meat Price Spreads)

But that’s the cattle producers’ own fault, as they took their eye off the consumer ball with internecine squabbling about COOL. Additionally, a portion of them plaintively petitioned Congress to do something to curtail the big beef behemoths' domination of the industry and forced servility of the “downtrodden” cattle producers.

All of this has resulted in two things: First, from both a per capita and demand perspective, beef consumption has declined. Now as the pandemic eases (or at least the restaurant “lockdowns” are easing), prognosticators forecast a surge in beef purchases. We’ll see how long it lasts.

Second — and this is the frightening part for the entire animal agriculture industry — alternative plant-based proteins have come to market and are succeeding. The alt-protein market is predicted to hit $290 billion by 2035 and make up 11% of the overall protein market. (Source: “Food for Thought: The Protein Transformation,” a study by the Boston Consulting Group and Blue Horizon Corp.).

The largest plant-based alt-meat company, Impossible Foods, has just announced it's hired the Weiden+Kennedy advertising agency (of Nike fame) and is launching a national ad campaign, “We are Meat.”

If growth of plant-based “meats” continues as is forecast, the beef industry as we know it is dead. Imagine, if you will, a scenario in which plant-based faux “meat” sales force the replacement of only 20% of the beef industry infrastructure. That means the need for 20% fewer cattle ranches, grazing allocations, feedlots, processing facilities and associated employment needs — in other words, a death spiral for the beef industry.

Lest you think the beef processors will acquiesce and watch their plants be underutilized, you are sadly mistaken. They will quickly replace their beef processing capabilities and switch to plant-based “meat” production. Witness the purchase of or internal development of plant-based proteins by the major animal agriculture companies. These “for profit” entities have little affinity for the heritage of cattle ranching when it jeopardizes their profits.

You may not agree with my lamentations as to the degree of beef’s jeopardy, but you must agree that the statistics imply that the beef industry’s major players, producers and processors alike, must do something to counter this plant-based incursion.

My next blog will delineate my recommendations for the beef industry to both counter the plant-based companies’ efforts and drive up beef consumption in alt-meat’s face.

Beef is just dead meat!!!

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