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Colorado ranchers have beef with lab-grown and plant-based “meat” — and they want well-done labeling

Monte Whaley, Colorado Sun
A promotional photo showing a package of impossible "meat." (Provided by Impossible Foods)
Screen Shot 2019-11-26 at 9.04.27 PM

Boyd Meyer runs about 4,000-head of American bison on the Colorado-Wyoming border, fully aware of the speed, power and cussed nature of the 1-ton beasts.

Meyer, who runs Cold Creek Buffalo Company on 27,000 acres, is also part of a vanguard of Colorado bison ranchers, slowly chewing out a niche in the American meat market. For the past two decades, they have pushed bison as a low-fat, low-cholesterol delicacy to the American palate through high-end restaurants and local grocery store chains.

“We really are getting a foothold in the American meat market,” Meyer said. “This is a remarkable animal and people are starting to develop a real taste for it.”



The bison industry’s optimism is muted by new forces in the American meat market, however. Imported water buffalo is muddying the domestic market for bison ranchers. And pure science is moving the traditional ranching industry to demand let’s-set-the-record-straight rules and laws governing the very identity of meat.

This existential meat crisis is being pressed by the stampede of plant-based meat into fast-food joints and the eventual arrival of man-made chicken breasts in grocery stores and restaurants. Cattle producers especially worry that if they don’t do something to clear the fog over meat, families will one day be savoring an All-American burger from a cow raised in Ecuador or a lab in Boulder or Berkeley, California.

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