Meat's expanding its horizons, giving the livestock industry pause

The U.S. meat industry is gigantic, with roughly $200 billion a year in sales and growing. But the industry faces emerging threats on two fronts: plant-based meat substitutes and actual meat grown in labs. Plant-based meat substitutes are a lot more, well, meaty than they used to be. They sear on the grill and even "bleed." They look, taste and feel in the mouth a lot like meat. Of course, taking the animals out of the meat business is not good news for people who raise meat animals for a living. The meat industry is focused on shaping the regulatory environment for its new plant-based and lab-grown competitors, taking into account lessons learned from the rise of plant-based milks.After more than a decade of fast growth, plant-based milks have now captured about 13 percent of the liquid milk market, according to the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that promotes alternatives to animal protein.But the plant-based milk success story is a cautionary tale for the meat industry.