Vegans: Stop shooting the messenger. A defense of Deena Shanker's Businessweek cover story on plant-based meat

Last week, the magazine Businessweek published a damning cover story about the rise and fall of plant-based meats. It’s a deep dive into how the category has over-promised and under-delivered, incorporating much data and previous reporting by the article’s author, Deena Shanker, a food reporter at Bloomberg.

Her reporting offers a much-needed reality check, one that the vegan movement could take a signal to re-examine many of our assumptions and overreliance on the marketplace of meat alternatives as the main solution to the myriad problems caused by the over-production and consumption of animal meat.

Instead, many in the vegan echo chamber have decided to shoot the messenger.

I want to address some of the childish – and at times even hateful – responses that I have seen over the past few days on social media. I feel compelled to defend Deena’s excellent reporting (and good name) for two reasons: one, she is a long-time friend and colleague; and two, I know how it feels to be attacked for simply espousing an unpopular viewpoint, even when that view is grounded in facts and experience.

I have known Deena for the past 10 years; we worked together early in her career as a food writer, and I always appreciated her clear-headed and no BS approach, since it mirrors my own. I have enjoyed watching her career as a journalist grow and when she landed at Bloomberg, I was thrilled to see her hard work and commitment to integrity pay off. Sadly, finding journalists who are willing to go beyond the headlines is rare in the media these days and Deena is always willing to dig deeper.

Deena and I have had endless discussions over the years on various topics: the meat lobby’s latest tactics, other food industry BS, or more recently, plant-based foods. I am always happy to spend time talking to Deena because she asks smart questions and even when we disagree, which we sometimes did in my previous role (I would beg her not use the word “fake” to describe plant-based meat), we would always maintain a healthy respect for each other and find common ground.

That’s why it pains me deeply to see the knee-jerk, clueless, and at times outright disrespectful and misogynist responses on social media to her cover story.

Here are a few themes unrelated to the substance of the reporting:

1.  The article is biased and “opinion” and should have been labeled as such. Impossible Foods went with this angle, along with a childish full-page ad in the New York Times. Another so-called vegan leader referred to the article as a “rant”.

Perhaps because almost all other media coverage has been either fluff (i.e., reprinting of press releases) or hostile from truly biased sources like the meat lobby, it’s perhaps understandable that when a reporter digs deep to analyze what’s really going on, and her negative conclusion is published in mainstream media, it is surprising and disturbing.

But opinion pieces are not cover stories, so accusing Deena of having “biased opinions” when her work is being edited and fact-checked by others at a top business magazine just makes vegans look petty and uninformed.

2.  Deena is not schooled in the topic. This one is especially absurd and ignorant because Deena has been covering both the conventional meat and plant-based sectors for many years now. She even took to LinkedIn to defend herself by listing her previous articles on the subject. I could relate to her desire to do this because I often get attacked by people who have no clue (and don’t bother to check) my background and deep experience in my own field. Again, you look ignorant and petty to attack a seasoned journalist this way.  

3.  Misogyny. A few comments went further in tone and that’s when my spidey- sense for misogyny gets triggered. For example, a commenter had this to say, on Deena’s post:

“Are you sure your op-ed wasnt written by chatgpt? “Can you write a derogatory opinion piece on plant based meats using as many meaningless pejoratives as possible. Make sure to empasize the trees over (what remains of) the forest”. [sic]

It’s one thing to disagree, but another to accuse her in such a baseless and mean way. As I wrote about before, it’s common to attack women for having strong opinions and unpopular views. I have been told I have an “agenda”, which Deena was also accused of having, but about what, it is never clear.

I have seen several comments refer to Deena’s recent spate of articles criticizing Beyond Meat, as if that alone is evidence of some biased agenda. Never mind her earlier articles that praised the company. Funny how she was never accused by vegans of having a biased agenda then.

Again, this is shooting the messenger: reporters report the news. Deena is reporting on facts and then providing analysis based on those facts. For starters, it’s a fact that Beyond Meat was overhyped and many others have said so.

But facts do not matter to the vegan echo chamber. They are like spoiled children.

It’s all so ironic that the overall response is to attack the messenger instead of the message. The meat lobby honed that tactic decades ago. I know because I have been on the receiving end of such attacks. As Deena commented, she was attacked in the past for being biased, but against the meat industry:

Years ago, when I did more meat coverage, I was accused of anti-meat bias because I was a non-meat-eater. (I think I was vegetarian at the time, was called vegan… anyway, currently pescatarian.) Now, people think I have an anti-vegan bias. I am really just calling it like I see it. I would love to see less animal suffering, less environmental damage, less worker exploitation. Unfortunately, my reporting has told me this is not the solution to those problems. 

So vegans, please stop attacking Deena and other media you don’t like and instead get to work with real solutions to the climate crisis and a parade of horribles caused by conventional meat production. We don’t have time for this BS.