Article originally published on Daily Hive.

Is the rising popularity of vegan and vegetarian food just another diet fad? Evidence is emerging that it is not only taking root in a growing number of home and restaurant kitchens but also deep in the food industry.

Diners in Metro Vancouver have seen more vegan eateries opening and more plant-based options at many other restaurants. Shoppers are finding new meatless products appearing on supermarket shelves. Even fast-food joints are pushing veggie burgers. Who didn’t hear about A&W selling out of its new plant-based Beyond Meat burger within hours last summer?

The same is happening across much of the developed world. In Britain, the recent launch of a vegan sausage roll caused a national media sensation, as the product quickly sold out and pundits debated the merits of changing an iconic British snack (The U.K. overtook Germany this year as the world leader for vegan product launches).

Even France, the home of Brie cheese, has seen a rise in meatless eating. French supermarket sales of vegetable protein surged by 82 per cent in 2016, and are set to grow by another 25 percent a year through 2020, according to one study.

Nevertheless, some are skeptical about the attention being paid to plant-based food. The U.K.’s Times newspaper reported last year that the meat industry was scornful of the increased interest in vegan food, stating: “Livestock farmers are being told not to panic about the rise of veganism because it is a passing fad for many young people who are merely following the latest fashion.”

But there are clear signs that the “plant-based revolution” is real.  And it’s not because of a few more vegan cafes and some popular veggie burgers.  The real evidence of change can be found in food business journals, which are reporting a quiet but fundamental shift within the global food industry.

Last year, Ingredion, a giant U.S. food ingredients company, invested US$140 million in manufacturing facilities in Saskatchewan and Nebraska to create flours and concentrates from peas, dried beans, chickpeas and lentils. The company’s CEO explained why: “We’ve identified plant-based proteins as a high-growth, high-value market opportunity that is on-trend with consumers’ desire to find sustainable and good tasting alternatives to animal-based proteins.”

Other companies are doing the same, creating animal-free protein for use in bakery products, cereals, pasta, batters and meat substitutes.  In 2017, the global plant-based proteins market was valued at US$ 10.5 billion and is estimated to reach a value of around US$ 16.3 billion by the end of 2025, according to analysts Persistence Market Research.

The egg industry is also being disrupted, as food companies seek to avoid the market volatility of egg supplies and prices, which are affected by disease outbreaks (avian flu) and recalls (salmonella). Many have turned to plant-based alternatives that fulfil the same function of eggs in baked goods or sauces without compromising flavour.

Other food companies have focused on improving the taste and texture of the new plant-based ingredients, such as removing the bitterness of pea protein or giving non-dairy ice cream the same creamy mouthfeel as the real thing – thus creating the potential to “veganize” just about anything.

These advances come on top of the already successful introduction of non-dairy milks, the launch of popular meat substitutes and high-profile investments in the sector by billionaires like Bill Gates and Li Ka-Shing and Richard Branson.

While many ethical vegans and vegetarians welcome these developments, which open up the possibility of a future without animal slaughter, there are concerns about Big Food’s involvement, especially its over-processing of food.

That’s why many influential vegans and vegetarians advocate for a “whole foods” plant-based diet and recommend keeping processed foods to a minimum.  Desiree Nielsen, a Vancouver-based registered dietitian and host of TV’s The Urban Vegetarian, has said “You can be a junk-food, cheesy-carb vegetarian, or you can be an Oreo- and candy-obsessed vegan.” She says eating processed meat substitutes once or twice a week is fine but diet mainstays should be simpler options like beans and high protein vegetables, preferably home-cooked.

Such advice is certainly having an impact. The rise in meatless products has been matched by an explosion in plant-based cookbooks and recipe blogs, suggesting many people are at least trying to avoid an over-reliance on processed foods.

Whether it’s led by convenient meat substitutes or homemade whole foods, the plant-based revolution looks like it’s here to stay.  And keeping animals off your plate has never been easier.

Article originally published in the Georgia Straight.

A controversial gene-editing technology may soon be widely applied to animals, with the livestock and biotech industries claiming that animals will be better off as a result. The truth is more complicated—and perhaps more disturbing—than they would have us believe.

A Chinese scientist stunned the world last month when he revealed he had created the first gene-edited babies using CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), a powerful new technology that can remove specific genetic traits. The scientist, He Jiankui, has been widely condemned by the scientific community as reckless and unethical, and the case has stoked public fears about the creation of “designer babies”, but CRISPR raises wider ethical implications—in particular, its use with animals.

Researchers have already used CRISPR to edit the genes of a variety of animals, and the creation of gene-edited farm animals is poised to become a commercial reality. The livestock industry and the biotech companies behind it are promoting CRISPR as a boon to animal welfare.

For example, CRISPR can create cows without horns, which are currently removed through painful procedures (e.g., cutting or burning) to reduce risk of injury to other animals and human handlers. CRISPR advocates say the need for those procedures would disappear. Genes can also be altered to make cattle more heat-tolerant or to produce pigs that are resistant to disease, suggesting a future with healthier, more resilient farm animals. Animal-welfare benefits are prominent in media coverage of CRISPR’s potential—and it’s no accident.

Recombinetics, a U.S. biotech company, has been careful to promote these benefits as opposed to the advantages to production. As the company’s chief executive officer, Tammy Lee, told Associated Press: “It’s a better story to tell.”

There is another, more ethically complex, story. While some of the applications of CRISPR to farm animals may improve certain aspects of animal welfare, there are fears that, taken together, they will be used to further intensify industrialized animal farming. Hornless, disease-resistant, weatherproof animals are easier to manage, transport, and keep in crowded conditions. There is little incentive for producers to invest in more humane husbandry. In short, cruel factory farming remains. It will just be more efficient.

Researchers are also promoting gene-editing as a means to create “double-muscled” animals (for more meat), but this could also cause unintended health problems. One attempt to produce meatier, gene-edited pigs resulted in deformed piglets that were unable to walk, dying shortly after birth. Double-muscled cattle produced by conventional selective breeding are more susceptible to respiratory disease, lameness, stress, and difficulty giving birth. Gene-editing will make it easier to create such animals, but the welfare consequences will be the same.

Any attempt by Big Agriculture to paint gene-editing as an amazing breakthrough in improving animal welfare should be treated with skepticism. Remember, these are the people who—through selective breeding for more meat—brought us chickens that grow so fast they are crippled by their own weight, leading to heart disease, skeletal disorders, and lameness. They are the architects of a system that has crowded billions of animals into cages, crates, feedlots, and transport trucks, causing incalculable suffering. Can they and their biotech partners really be trusted when they claim that they’re advancing a world-changing technology just to make animals happier?

Even if these industries are sincere in their promotion of gene-editing to improve farm-animal welfare, their proposals amount to applying technological, piecemeal quick fixes to the cruelty of factory farming, a problem requiring abolition, not tinkering.

Industrialized animal agriculture has been shown by science to be not only cruel to animals but also devastating to our environment and detrimental to human health. It’s a system that can’t be fixed. But it can replaced—by one that focuses on the production and consumption of plant-based foods.

The rise in popularity of plant-based alternatives to meat has been well-documented. Vegan and vegetarian foods are now competing with animal-based products on taste, price, and convenience. Investment and innovation in plant-based foods have exploded in the past few years and look set to continue. (The Economist magazine is calling 2019 “the year of the vegan”.) These developments offer a different path forward, one without mass animal suffering, environmental degradation, and the negative health consequences of a meat-heavy diet.

The other path, which maintains our dependence on animal incarceration and slaughter, promises only to further commodify animals by engineering them to suit our needs and desires. It’s a path to a world in which animals have no value beyond their use to humans.

By perpetuating the treatment of animals as products we not only diminish them but also ourselves and our humanity.

Article originally published on Daily Hive.

Charges against two B.C. businesses for animal abuse may serve as a warning shot to other companies in the agriculture industry that they, and not just individual employees, are accountable for any mistreatment of the animals they raise, transport and slaughter.

Last week, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) laid charges against Sofina Foods, Elite Farm Services and Elite’s president, Dwayne Dueck, for allegedly beating chickens and loading them in a way “likely to cause injury or undue suffering.”  They are scheduled to appear in court today, December 18.

The charges stem from video footage released by animal activists in June 2017 that showed chickens at a Chilliwack poultry operation being mangled, stomped on, thrown against a wall, and smashed into transport crates. The BC SPCA, which described the abuse as “absolutely sickening,” recommended charges, but a year and a half later Crown Counsel has still not prosecuted anyone.

The CFIA, however, has pursued charges under federal Health of Animals Regulation, which may financially penalize the companies.

When the alleged offences became public, the companies involved were quick to distance themselves from the revelations.  Sofina Foods called the footage “horrifying” and said it had requested that all of the employees involved be dismissed immediately.

Elite’s Mr. Dueck stated: “We are sickened with the footage and want to ensure all our suppliers and producers that this is not reflective of who we are, our fundamental beliefs or behaviours we accept from our employees.”

Six of Elite’s employees were fired but now it is the companies that are being held to account for alleged animal abuse, a development that should send a signal to others in the livestock industry that they can’t escape responsibility for what happens to the animals they profit from.

For too long, industrialized animal farms have been in a state of denial about animal suffering that occurs in their business.  When the 2017 undercover video emerged, the B.C. Chicken Marketing Board said: “It does not represent in any way, shape or form, how we do our business, not only here but anywhere in Canada.”

Yet, for years, undercover animal activists have exposed numerous cases of animal cruelty on farms across Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere.

The ease with which the undercover investigators have been able to find and reveal abuse suggests that animal cruelty in intensive farming is not the rare occurrence that operators claim.

Media coverage of animal cruelty on industrialized farms in the United States has become so commonplace and damaging to the industry that it has lobbied for “ag-gag” laws criminalizing undercover videos of the cruelty.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that some of these videos expose not only illegal acts of cruelty but also standard practices on industrialized farms that result in misery for animals.  For decades, millions of hens have suffered in cruel battery cages, that are only now being slowly phased out (and may be replaced with only marginally better “enriched” cages). Pigs and chickens are routinely transported in cramped trucks over long distances in extreme heat and cold.

Much of the suffering on factory farms is invisible to the public.  Science has shown that poultry raised for meat experience painful skeletal disorders and lameness as a result of selective breeding for fast growth. And despite the images of happy cows in pastures on milk cartons, most dairy cows in Canada are kept indoors, never feeling the sun on their backs.

Even animal agriculture’s own internal monitoring systems reveal poor animal welfare.  In 2016, inspection reports from the B.C. Milk Marketing Board, made public by media, showed that one in four farms in the province failed to comply with the provincial animal-welfare Code of Practice. During an 18-month period starting in January, 2015, the inspections revealed cases of overcrowding, lame or soiled cattle, tails torn off by machinery, branding and dehorning of calves without pain medication, and other examples of poor welfare.

The CFIA’s charges against Sofina Foods and Elite Farm Services should be welcomed, as they may encourage others in the industry to do more to prevent the kinds of extreme cruelty seen in undercover video footage.  However, no one should forget that this is an industry that incarcerates, transports and slaughters animals in conditions that compromise animal welfare but are not illegal.

Ultimately, the best way to help these animals is to reject factory farming entirely and stop buying the products this cruel industrial system produces.