In 1865, British lawmakers passed the “Red Flag Act,” requiring a man carrying a red flag to walk in front of every horseless carriage. The horse-and-buggy economy feared the emerging steam-powered automobile industry, so the future was legally forced to move at walking speed.
A few decades later, in the United States, dairy interests fought margarine by pushing laws that banned it from looking like butter. Some states even forced margarine to be dyed pink.
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Today, parts of the livestock industry are once again asking lawmakers to slow down what they fear may be an innovative threat, and their latest attempt is the newly introduced Fair and Accurate Ingredient Representation on Labels Act of 2026.
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Instead of trying to compete for consumers in a free market, the bill would require rather unappetizing labels on the meat industry’s competitors’ packaging such as “alternative protein” and “cell-cultivated protein burger.”
To hear the bill’s supporters tell it, consumers could be confused by current marketing on these animal-free products. In reality, however, consumers don’t seem to have a hard time understanding that foods which today are prominently labeled as “plant-based meatballs” or “vegetarian sausages” likely didn’t originate from a slaughterhouse.
But this bill isn’t about protecting consumers from confusion. It’s about protecting cattlemen from competition.
Consumers are well aware that peanut butter contains no dairy, coconut milk doesn’t come from a lactating mammal, hamburgers contain no ham, and chicken-fried steak has no chicken. Similarly, they buy plant-based meats not because they’re confused about their origin, but because they understand and actively prefer their nonanimal origin.
Whether because they’re trying to eat healthier or they want to protect animals and the planet, many consumers are quite happy to enjoy the taste of meat without requiring the often inhumane conditions in which animals are raised and slaughtered.
And this is exactly what the bill’s sponsors fear: that consumers may actually seek out animal-free proteins rather than the products from the more politically influential animal-based meat industry. After all, Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) is quite explicit about his reason for sponsoring this legislation: to “protect Nebraska beef.”
And that may be the most honest argument for the bill. The FAIR Labels Act is not fundamentally about fairness or accuracy. It’s about using government power to force speech that would slow down competitors before consumers decide they prefer them.
Rather than trying to suppress such market entrants, the sponsors of this legislation may want to welcome them. After all, plant-based meats are largely made of the same corn, wheat, and soy already grown so prolifically in their states. In fact, many of the biggest animal meat manufacturers are now investing in the so-called alternative protein startups and even offering their own lines of animal-free products.
The horse-and-buggy industry couldn’t stop the horseless carriage. Instead, companies like Studebaker, which started as a wagon and carriage maker in the 1850s, pivoted to becoming one of America’s major automobile manufacturers. The dairy lobby couldn’t stop margarine, and today many of the biggest dairy companies have their own lines of dairy-free butters and milks.
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Similarly, no amount of government-mandated awkward speech is likely to stop consumers from understanding exactly what a plant-based burger is, and forward-thinking meat companies are likely to market such products rather than suppress them.
The future eventually outran the man with the red flag. It usually does.
Paul Shapiro is the CEO of the Better Meat Co. and author of Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World.