Meatpacking workers who became vegan entrepreneurs

In recent years, several former livestock industry employees have founded startups focused on plant-based foods. Here’s how their transformation unfolded.

In 2016, Andy Shovel found himself at a loss. He and his business partner Pete Sharman had sold their British burger business and had a vague idea they had to build a more sustainable company next. They explored recycling waste management and electric sports cars.

The conversation then turned to alternative proteins, and the pair realised this was a growth industry where they could leverage their experience in the food industry and dived into research and development.

A few months later, Shovel’s girlfriend showed him a graphic video of chicks being slaughtered for the egg industry. “I thought it was some kind of extreme snuff video that I shouldn’t be watching,” he says. “Like most people, I was a bit of a sucker for so-called Cognitive dissonanceThis psychological bias occurs when people try to hold two or more contradictory beliefs at the same time — in this case, “I like animals” and “I like meat.”Read more from BBC Future about the hidden prejudices that drive vegan hatred.

“So I was basically in a kind of willfully self-inflicted ignorance about what goes on behind the scenes in the food industry,” says Shovel. He realized the video marked a turning point: As he worked on planning his new plant-based business, he “also went through a personal journey during that time” from KFC lover and ex-McDonald’s employee to vegetarian to vegan with a passion for animal welfare.

The parallel professional and personal journeys took several years. Eventually, Shovel and Sherman founded THIS, a plant-based protein brand that aimed to reach meat-eaters through sassy, ​​no-nonsense marketing. “I decided from the beginning that the best way to fundamentally take people off their guard… was to make them laugh,” says Shovel.

Shovel isn’t the only vegan entrepreneur to come from the meat industry: plant-based chicken company TiNDLE was founded by German Timo Recker, whose family business was meat processing, and Brazilian André Menezes, who previously worked for a meat wholesaler. The Vegetarian Butcher and Zoe’s Vegan Cowboys were founded by ninth-generation farmer Jaap Korteweg, who decided to give up livestock after epidemics of swine cholera and mad cow disease in the Netherlands.

These entrepreneurs are not the only ones rethinking their work with animals for food: some livestock farmers, for example, are also changing their minds. Becoming a dairy farmer Cultivating crops using vegan production methods.Humanitarian work“Something that benefits humans and animals alike.”

“I feel like change often comes from traumatic events,” says Morgan Sallis Deeney, who says that in her family’s case, a combination of drug addiction, suicide and another death left them faced with a difficult decision about what to do with their 800-acre Texas farm.

Salice Dinnie’s grandfather and uncles raised cattle and chickens on an industrial scale: nearly 1,000 cows and 12 chicken coops housing more than 55,000 birds each, a scale she says is “almost unimaginable.”

The sensory memories of her childhood remain vivid: “I remember walking into the chicken coop, struggling to breathe because of the ammonia levels, and seeing chickens on the ground, too heavy to get up,” says Salis Deeney. Moving to California to attend college felt like a different world.

After his grandfather died, his uncles’ workload became unmanageable, along with financial difficulties, so his mother, and Salis Deeney herself, decided to move back to Texas between 2017 and 2019. But they wanted a change of scenery.

The family had long considered themselves animal lovers, but there was a gap between their love for dogs and horses and their work. Salis Dinnie and her mother spent time traveling and rescuing animals. A combination of beliefs, financial pressures and the hardships of raising chickens led the family to abandon this form of farming. They had to go into debt, but they had supporters.

Salis-Dinny has been supported by Mercy for Animals, a nonprofit animal rights organization that runs a program called Transmation, which provides financial and technical assistance to help farmers transition away from industrial animal agriculture in the United States. There are other similar projects, such as in Switzerland, where farmers help each other. Switching from dairy farming to oat farmingHowever, agricultural transition programs tend to remain small and often struggle to attract enough interested farmers or to make them economically successful.

Transmation’s director, Tyler Whitley, said the company has worked with 12 farmers over five years. “We work very closely with a small number of farmers,” Whitley said.

This involves carefully managing expectations: “When you’re transitioning from a business you’ve run for 20 years and starting something completely new, change can be a very scary situation,” Whitley acknowledges. Switching to an entirely different type of farming is complicated.

Farmers usually contact the programme after they’ve grown tired of what they’re doing and have had discussions with their families. Whitley says farmers’ motivations are varied, including financial stress, a better quality of life, a desire for autonomy compared to contract farming where big companies bring in livestock, and concerns about the environmental impact and conditions of their animals. Transfarmation provides information about different livelihood possibilities and supports farmers in experimenting with different uses for their existing infrastructure, such as growing mushrooms on chicken farms. The programme also offers small grants of $10,000-$20,000 (£7,854-15,708) to help with the transition.

The lack of debt relief is a problem Finding markets for specialty crops is hard“All of the farmers we work with are profitable in their operations,” Whitley reports, and he believes that continuing to produce food allows farmers to maintain the pride attached to their identity.

Sarris Deeney is clearly proud when she talks about the various new activities taking place on her family’s farm. She now works as an animal rescuer at Let Love Life, a center that primarily rescues dogs. She started growing hemp in a former chicken farm, where it is dried and processed into CBD oil. Sarris Deeney is converting another chicken farm into a floriculture facility. She also has a long-term vision for her stay on the farm.

Salis Deeney acknowledges that such diversification plans come with risks, including limited profitability. But there would also have been risks in continuing to run the farm as before. She’s trying to make each day count. Every day on the farm, she smells honeysuckle, sage and other plants instead of ammonia from concentrated chickens, and sees more birds and butterflies around her. “I only see possibility,” she says.

For Shovel, the move from the meat industry to starting a plant-based company involved a fundamental shift in his thinking, which also helped him understand the psychology of his customers.

This is part of the reason behind THIS’s irreverent approach, which Shovel believes could help break down people’s defenses against eating meat. “Maybe we’re so accepting of terrible behaviour in the food system because we think it’s normal,” Shovel says. In his opinion, normalisation is powerful, and “it’s important to reevaluate our standards with fresh eyes.”

But the lesson from these plant-centric shifts is that personal ethics aren’t enough. Having a practical reason to make the switch often helps. That reason might be financial: Contract farmers’ chronic debt woes “make our job of coming up with competing alternatives a lot easier,” says Transmation’s Whitley.

Shovel says he initially decided to get into the alternative meat space because of the huge market potential.

Another lesson is the importance of maintaining a sense of community after major change. Identity is intimately linked to how we live our lives.Sometimes it can be especially unsettling. Sallis Deeney says she’s part of an incredible group of volunteers and staff at the animal shelter, but also part of a larger community where she finds common ground. It hasn’t been easy. She’s never felt like she belonged in East Texas, because she feels “there’s still a lot of old ideas and conservative ideals here.”

But in the United States, even politically polarized groups can come together. Pet ProtectionAs her farm moves away from livestock, Sallis Dinnie has found solace in the sense of community she’s found elsewhere, including through dog rescue.

This helps avoid the risk of embedding yourself too deeply in a niche community, something entrepreneur Shovel is conscious of: “Veganism is one of those areas where echo chambers are very prevalent,” he says.

like Many other vegansShovel has received a lot of criticism for his views on animal products. “I feel very isolated at times when it comes to my views on avoiding animal products,” he explains. “It’s a pretty shocking shift to go from being relatively aligned with the mainstream on things to suddenly feeling like an alien.”

But one place Shovel feels a little less alone: ​​He estimates that about 10% of THIS’s staff are vegan. Around 4% across the UKHe also recently founded an animal welfare nonprofit.

As part of a network of small farmers that works with Transmation, Salis Dinnie has also found a community that makes her feel less alone, even though the participants are spread across the United States.

“Agricultural communities can be quite small,” Whitley says, so the Transmulation team tries to give participating farmers “access to other meetings and networking opportunities so they don’t feel alone.”

Social factors matter“I think it would be really powerful if environmental groups had a way to show that being an environmentalist means being part of society,” emphasizes Anne Toomey, a conservation scientist at Pace University in New York. online“People can feel like they’re part of something, and have someone to check in with and experiment with,” such as an internet-based organic farmer support network. Toomey believes this helps overcome barriers.

This involves listening across divides and suspending judgment, which isn’t always easy to do. “This is a time of great change, so it really helps if we can lean in and understand each other so we can navigate this together,” Whitley says.