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How Vegan Mayonnaise Could Prevent Future Sketchy Behavior from Big Ag

Just Mayo’s saga is in part the basis for new legislation that would put limits on how government programs that promote Big-Ag products like eggs, beef, and poultry can operate on the open market.
Photo via Flickr user David Kosmos Smith

Last year, Hampton Creek, a Silicon Valley startup that has raised more than $100 million in funding, launched an eggless vegan mayonnaise called Just Mayo. The faux mayonnaise was offered alongside other vegan egg-free products like Just Cookie Dough, and it seemed poised for success—a healthier mayonnaise that tastes like the real thing and could be eaten by a larger group of consumers should have thrived.

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But as Hampton Creek—backed by bigwigs like Bill Gates and Peter Thiel—marketed its plant-based alternatives to the masses, it encountered a torrent of resistance from the egg industry and government agencies. In the supposedly free-market USA, government bodies were acting on the egg industry's behalf and bullying a startup company because of the competition it presented.

Now, Just Mayo's saga is in part the basis for new legislation that would put limits on how government programs that promote Big-Ag products like eggs, beef, and poultry can operate on the open market. If the legislation passes, these initiatives won't be able to take down competitors or help shape government policy, according to Bloomberg.

The American Egg Board is what is known as a "commodity checkoff program," which is an industry group that operates under the United States Department of Agriculture, but is funded by mandatory payments from egg producers across the country. When Just Mayo entered the market with serious funding, the Egg Board went to work ensuring that its $5 billion industry was firmly under its control.

READ MORE: The US Egg Industry Has Fought Dirty in Its Takedown to Vegan Mayo

Just Mayo's story is long and tumultuous. Early on, a strongly-worded letter from the US Food and Drug Administration told Hampton Creek they couldn't call their product "mayo" because Just Mayo doesn't contain eggs. Then it got worse, with the Egg Board attacking Hampton Creek from all sides, going so far as to pay bloggers to write about eggs, and planning to confront Andrew Zimmern for featuring a positive bit about the company on his show Bizarre Foods.

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The Egg Board was behind the takedowns all along, pressuring the FDA to go after Hampton Creek. It turned into quite the conspiracy, with rather damning internal emails unearthed by the The Guardian. The Egg Board had also tried to get Just Mayo out of Whole Foods, and at one point, the Egg Board president Joanne Ivy was on an e-mail chain in which a fellow executive, referring to the CEO of Hampton Creek, asked, "Can we pool our money and put a hit on him?" (Ivy later resigned.)

It was a low point in a pretty bizarre scenario. "Hampton Creek was being attacked by its own government," Matthew Penzer, a lawyer for the Humane Society told Bloomberg.

READ MORE: The FDA Says Vegan Mayo Is Not Mayo

If it passes, the new legislation, known as The Commodity Checkoff Program Improvement Act, could prevent this kind of meddling in the future.

Faced with a future where they'll have to deal with vegan competition, some companies have already begun to pivot. Hellmann's now makes its own vegan mayo, but for now, they're sticking to the Egg Board party-line: For what it's worth, Hellmann's version is technically considered a "dressing & sandwich spread."