Americans have increasingly accepted meat and dairy alternatives as staples in their daily diets. For example, recent market research shows that two out of every five U.S. consumers plan to purchase plant-based meat products in 2023. The prevalence of these forms of alternative protein has set the stage for a semantic — and potentially paradigm-shifting — dispute over the very meaning of the terms "meat," "milk" and "dairy."

In March 2020, our attention was turned to alternative-protein company Tofurky Co.'s challenge to an Arkansas law that prohibited companies from labeling edible products with the term "meat" and other meat-related words. Ultimately, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas ruled in Tofurky's favor in Turtle Island Foods SPC v. Soman, concluding that the information on Tofurky's packaging, labeling and marketing materials represented commercial speech meriting First Amendment protection. In Strain v. Turtle Islands Foods SPC in early February, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard arguments on appeal in Tofurky's constitutional challenge to a Louisiana law, which was similar to Arkansas' law in that it placed restrictions on the use of words used to market plant-based foods.

To continue reading Josh Kipnees and Henry Wainhouse's article in Law360, please click here.