An Ode to America’s Food Processing Facilities and the Workers Who Run Them
Investment in Technology Is Unlocking a New Era in Meat Production
By Christie Lagally
Unless you are eating a tomato right from your garden, almost all the food you eat travels through a food processing facility — even if it is just to wash, sort, package and transport it to you. Processing facilities have a deep, intertwined history with America, growing out of important national moments like the need for lower cost food options during the Great Depression and demand for innovation to meet the challenges of World War II. Given today’s challenges of an unsteady economy and looming climate change implications, the next iteration of this historic food infrastructure is overdue.
Food Manufacturing predicted 2023 would be a year of innovation, automation and diversification in food processing. And we’ve seen the buildup to that. Meat processing facilities make up about a quarter of all food production in the United States (USDA 2019), but diversification of consumer palates (for health, environmental and ethical reasons) is introducing plant-based meat into the equation at these same facilities at a higher rate, pushing a conversation on how the future of food will be produced.
Meat Production Equipment Meets Plant-Based Meat
Despite the economic pressures, food production facilities across the United States have welcomed the production of plant-based meat using equipment normally used to process cows into hamburgers and chickens into nuggets. For these facilities, making plant-based meat is a costly and distracting endeavor due to the fundamental mismatch between the capabilities of meat processing equipment and the multi-stage process of making most plant-based meat products. The mismatch is compensated for with a lot of additional labor (3x the labor) — when the facility can even find such help in the tightest labor economy in 50 years. The high costs of this additional labor and synergy mismatch get passed to consumers in the form of higher prices.
The lack of synergy in conventional meat and plant-based meat production is purely a result of a deficit of historical innovation in the plant-based meat industry. America’s processing facilities simply do not have the technology to make plant-based meat in the easiest most straightforward fashion. And simplicity in manufacturing comes from a deep understanding of both the problem and needed solution.
At Rebellyous Foods, we spent the last five years developing, designing, building and now deploying a novel patented production system that fits the needs of large-scale meat producers to make plant-based meat. Once installed, our equipment streamlines the process, reduces labor by 90%, reduces waste by 95% and reduces energy by 80%, thereby making plant-based meat cost- and quality-competitive with animal meat.
We Believe Factory Work Should be Good Work
While the technology we’re developing is the missing component to this synergy, food processing facilities are the unexpected beneficiaries. Animal meat processing is dangerous, gut-wrenching and emotionally taxing work, even under the most automated conditions of slaughter, carcass destruction, and sanitation. Facilities even resort to child labor to clean slaughterhouses at lower costs or incarcerated workers to perform high-risk jobs — both practices which are unacceptable to today’s moral standards.
Running these facilities comes with a high price tag. Most facilities are diligently run, and immaculately kept, under state and federal agency guidelines in order to provide Americans safe food. But to keep food costs low and within societal expectations, many only offer minimum wages to their workers.
At Rebellyous, we’ve focused on the people who make our food from the beginning. Food production technology doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and the facility, the workers, and the bottom line of a food processing plant have to benefit first, before the American consumer can fully adopt meat replacements.
Putting in the Work to Change Production for the Better
It feels like a chicken-and-the-egg problem at times. Do you get the customers, and then solve for the production pain points that lead to worker, price and quality issues? Or do you solve the production problems first, and then go get the customers? At Rebellyous, we know the answer has to be both — they have to happen simultaneously. And then you iterate to optimize solutions.
To the outside observer, the solution looks a bit scattered and the results don’t happen fast enough. But that doesn’t mean the industry is on the wrong track. The long history of (and importance of) the food production facilities in America, means real technological change will take some time and rigor. Plus, success takes focus.
Patience and persistence in implementation is what will drive better production for plant-based meat.
Technology isn’t all that valuable unless it can truly be used. This is why Rebellyous developed the right equipment, and is also leading the real world deployment in America’s food processing facilities. One day soon, Rebellyous will install production equipment to transform chicken nugget lines into plant-based meat production lines — one by one. Installation of Rebellyous’ new production technology will fundamentally transform a meat processing facility producing high-risk animal meat to producing plant-based meat at more profitable margins than ever seen with animal-meat production.
The bottom line: the power to unlock margins on plant-based meat at these production facilities translates to a path forward for cost-effective meat replacements to tackle climate change, human health and animal welfare. And it means that we are giving hard-working operators of America‘s food manufacturing facilities a genuine means to be an agent of change and the ability to capitalize on the future of meat production in America. In these transformational times for our economy, our workforce, and the meat industry, America’s food processing facilities can lead the way to shape the alt-protein sector and bring climate-friendly foods to the masses.
Christie Lagally is the founder and CEO of Rebellyous Foods, a plant-based meat manufacturing and production technology company based in Seattle, Wash.
