Policy discussions, such as “Make America Healthy Again,” and consumer trends, such as the “clean label” movement, are dominant forces in the food industry. The meat sector is actively responding, according to Division of Extension meat specialist Jeff Sindelar.
Sindelar says the movement is particularly relevant to the meat industry because the product naturally starts as a whole food.
“I think that the meat industry fits really well in that movement because meat itself comes from animals,” he said. Cuts like steaks and pork chops “have very little processing.”
While further-processed meats, such as bratwurst and hot dogs, do undergo more involved preparation, Sindelar categorized them as limited processing. The core of the clean label movement has centered on ingredient lists, a trend the meat industry has embraced, he says.
“There’s been a movement in the meat industry to clean up the labels, use ingredients that more consumers understand and they want, and move away from other ingredients that, you know, sometimes have been used for making the product more uniform, more economically viable,” he says.
Walmart is removing synthetic dyes and more than 30 other ingredients by 2027, such as certain preservatives, artificial sweeteners, and fat substitutes, from its U.S. private brand foods, including Great Value, Marketside, Freshness Guaranteed, and bettergoods. Sindelar says the meat industry has already been innovating to meet these demands, including using beet powder in place of red food dye.
He adds that companies manufacturing casings for snack sausages have already been required to use alternative natural color sources in some of those casings. Ultimately, Sindelar believes this is a positive trend, underscoring the importance and resilience of Wisconsin’s meat processing sector.
“Wisconsin is a very unique state in terms of the meat industry. Wisconsin has a trifecta,” he says. “It has history — we have generations of meat processors. We have a lot of resources for meat processing — a lot of dairy cows… a lot of beef animals. We have a lot of people in the state, so we have a large population of people that need to have protein and want protein.”
