Vegan

Last week, plant-based cheese and butter maker Miyoko’s Creamery emerged victorious in what could be a landmark legal case for dairy and meat alternative CPG brands. Citing the company’s first amendment rights, a California judge ruled the company can continue to use terms such as “butter,” “lactose-free” and “cruelty-free.” However, while the case could provide plant-based brands with some much needed legal precedent to defend the practice of using meat and dairy terms on their labels, the fight ahead is anything but cut and dried.

As the assets of dairy conglomerate Dean Foods continued to be divided up following the company’s bankruptcy filing, plant-based dairy brand Good Karma announced today that it has repurchased the majority of the company once owned by Dean and also closed a “significant” amount of capital through new strategic partners.

In this video NadaMoo CEO Daniel Nicholson traces back the evolution of the brand and discusses how the interest (and investment) in both the frozen dessert set and plant-based products has impacted the company. He also shares how the company has managed to find success over the past 15 years.

Moving from supplying brands to also helping create them, vegan “dairy” ingredient supplier Perfect Day announced an agreement in which it is investing in new brand The Urgent Company.

Sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make a plant-based omelette. When JUST — then known as Hampton Creek — started up roughly a decade ago, founder Josh Tetrick wanted to shake up the food industry. While his goal has remained the same, the path has changed. The company has expanded its strategy beyond its own branded products to form strategic partnerships with a focus on ingredients as the way forward. To start, the company announced this week a new food service partnership with Michael Foods, a subsidiary of Post Holdings and one of the largest processors of egg products in the world.

Just in time for the Fourth of July, Upton’s Naturals and The Plant Based Food Association (PBFA) are asserting their own independence against the state of Mississippi with a lawsuit to push back against new labeling laws. “It’s just ridiculous,” Upton’s founder Daniel Staackmann said about the new Mississippi law. “Perhaps the city of Hamburg should sue the meat industry in the United States for using [that term]?”

Two years after the co-op behind Welch’s food created fruit-bite brand Nothing But the Fruit (NBTF), the snack label is releasing its second juicy innovation: vegan fruit jerky. The portfolio expansion is part of the co-op’s strategy to show consumers the viability of its harvests goes beyond grapes.