Hey there Modern vegans and vegan curious. It's Margaret, and welcome back to ModVegan.
Today on ModVegan, I'm going to be talking about Otsuka's
recent purchase of daiya foods. Now Otsuka is a Japanese company. They own a
bunch of different companies - including crystal geyser sparkling
water in the United States - a whole bunch of things but they specialize in health
and wellness, and they're also a pharmaceutical company, and so they test
on animals. And this has really upset a lot of people in the vegan community.
People in the vegan community absolutely love Daiya dairy free cheese and yogurt
and all that stuff, and they're really upset by this, and they're actually
calling for a boycott - super upset that the Daiya is being purchased by this
company. I want to talk about that today. I want to talk about why I think it's a
mistake to boycott Daiya, but first, if you want to see more videos like this
one and if you enjoy this video give it a thumbs up and subscribe and don't
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icon, and let's get to it.
So, Otsuka is a Japanese company and they just bought Daiya for 405 million dollars
Canadian. Daiya is a Canadian company, it is located in Vancouver - we actually
have quite a few plant-based companies here in Canada. We've got Daiya, we've got
Gardein and some other companies like that that have been created here in
Canada, and people around the world really love these companies, and they are
very attached to them. Especially vegans. And so, I was not entirely surprised when
I went to my local Calgary vegan and vegetarian website and saw plenty of
people calling for a boycott on Daiya and the reason they were calling for a
boycott is because Otsuka is - now, it's like a lot of other Japanese
companies: they own a ton of different companies so it's not just the
pharmaceutical company, they own water companies in the United States - I think I
mentioned in the intro, they own Crystal Geyser - which I remember from when I was
a really little kid is just a company that sold bottled water in the
U.S. - so they own a whole bunch of different things. Um, they also sell a
line of supplements in the US, but they sell a lot of different things.
But what people are primarily concerned about, and what vegans are concerned about, is
the fact that Otsuka owns a pharmaceutical company that is required
to test on animals and so the first point I want to make here - and I can state
right off the bat that I think the boycott is a mistake and for a variety
of reasons - but primarily because Daiya is going to stay the same company it
always has been. It still has the same leadership team, it still has the same
corporate structure. They are still going to be a 100% vegan company. There is
absolutely nothing to indicate that Otsuka wants to change any of that. They
are purchasing the company whole cloth, and they are going to be allowing it to
function the way it always has with the idea of expanding the market into Asia
and some other places, seeing what they can do with the product and helping them
to be able to spread further and obviously to also contribute to their
own bottom line.
So, Otsuka does own a pharmaceutical company. Now, this company
is required to test on animals just like any pharmaceutical company anywhere in
the world. I don't know how many people are aware of this, but if you own a
pharmaceutical company, if you introduce a new drug it must be tested on animals.
And now, different pharmaceutical companies will approach this different
ways, but if you introduce something that's new, that is going to seek
approval, it will have to be tested on animals. That is just part of the
approval process. It does not matter where you are in the world, that is part of it.
It is mandatory. Otsuka does try to minimize the amount
of animal testing that they do, and I mean - I do not agree with that. I'm a
vegan: I do not think that that makes any sense. I think it's the wrong way to go
about things. But that is the way that they do it. So they do use animal testing,
but Otsuka does use the 3 R's to try and reduce the amount of animal testing that
they do. The first principle that Otsuka tries to use is replacement or avoidance.
If a test can possibly be done by something other than an animal, if
there's a legal reason that they can get around it, they will try and do so.
So they'll try to replace it. The second thing that they'll try and do is, if they
cannot replace that testing, if it's not legal to do so, they will do anything
they can to REDUCE the amount of animals that are going to be used in these
experiments. And finally, they seek to REFINE the use of animals so that they
can use animals as little as possible, and also cause as little
as possible harm to the animals. We all know - I mean if you've ever had a friend that's
worked in, say, a biology department at a university, you know that even
when universities - and I mean my background is in academics, so I know a
lot of friends that worked doing animal testing at universities - and so, what they
had to do was, do all these different animal tests. But at least at Otsuka
they have processes in place to try and refine some of that animal testing so that
it's a doesn't end up resulting in the death of the animal - to shorten the
length of these study periods, all those kinds of things. So they are actively
aware and interested in that, and I'm going to be putting a link in the
description box below to explain their three part process. I'll be putting a
link to it down there. What I'm not trying to say here is that Otsuka
Pharmaceuticals is better than any other pharmaceutical company, or anything like
that. What I'm trying to say is that if you are a vegan that purchases things
from companies that are not vegan - so, like for me as a person, I try to always
buy the vegan version of a product, I try to encourage companies to make more
vegan products by buying vegan products. So if I'm going to buy something
from, say, Johnson & Johnson, I will look for a product that is vegan and that way -
and I even write letters to these companies, and I encourage you to do so
as well - if you're gonna buy something from those companies, buy something that
is vegan, let them know that you appreciate that they create that vegan
product by buying it - that's my philosophy. So I do purchase vegan items
from non vegan companies, and I would actually encourage that you do that as
well. But if you're someone who just absolutely does not believe in buying
anything from any company that is not 100% vegan, continue to do so. I don't
know how you manage it, but I absolutely would encourage you to do so. However, if
you are a vegan who buys things from non- vegan companies - if you buy vegan
products such as, you know, canned beans from your local Safeway store that are
Safeway brands...well, Safeway also sells dairy. Are you going to stop buying those
beans just because Safeway sells dairy as well? Or are you going to buy the
beans to encourage them to make more beans? I would hope that you would
be doing that, but everyone has their own way of approaching this. But I would say,
in my personal case, I have no problem buying vegan products from
non-vegan companies. And therefore, I am not upset by the fact that Otsuka's
bought Daiya. And there are a couple other reasons for this, and one of the
main ones is that Otsuka is a Japanese company. And I don't think that that's
immaterial. It is very important. I think the fact that they are an Asian company, they
saw value in Daiya, and now Daiya is being purchased for about four hundred five
million dollars, which is not a lot of money, especially when you compare it to,
say, Danone's recent acquisition of White Wave foods - who manufactures Silk dairy-free
products, so like it's Silk Almond Milk, Soy Milk - things like that - Dannon
bought White Wave foods for about ten point five billion dollars, something
like that. A lot of money. This is four hundred and five million dollars - it's a
lot less. But this Japanese company is seeing this dairy-free product line and
thinking "oh, you know our market could benefit from this". And if you're a vegan,
I hope that you can see how significant this is. We have a Japanese company
that's looking at this Dairy-Free Canadian company. We know that demographically
most people in Asia are lactose intolerant, and there are a lot of
food trends that are used in the US and in Western countries that are copied in
in Asian countries. So, you know, if cupcakes are really popular in in Europe
and in North America, the Japanese market is going to be interested in cupcakes.
And what are they going to want to put in those cupcakes? They're probably
going to put butter in those cupcakes. But a lot of their market is allergic to
butter, or very sensitive to it. And so a dairy-free margarine, or you know having
a dairy-free cheese for pizza. So, pizza's super popular also in Japan,
but a lot of the consumers there do have digestive issues with it - I mean, this is just
a fact - and so having this as an option is really important for Otsuka. And I can
see why they'd be interested in owning a company that allows them dairy free
options like dairy free cream cheese, all these kinda things, so that they can mimic
western products for the asian market. Things that people just want to try, they
can they can mimic those products, using daiya foods products, and they can avoid
the whole dairy issue. And this is really big, because what they're doing is - we
have the potential of having dairy-free products enter those markets before
dairy products do. So instead of ramping up dairy production in these Asian
countries, we might be able to see an increase in plant-based products instead.
So some of these cognate products - I don't know what you call them like these
you know corollary products - there's got to be a better name for than that - but you know,
dairy-free cheese instead of regular dairy cheese, things like that. I think
this is really important, and it's giving the Asian market a chance to get some of
these products early on, not getting them from cows getting them from other
sources. And I see that as nothing but a benefit. I understand that a lot of you
are probably on the fence about buying anything that comes from a non-vegan
company - of course, that is forgetting the fact that there really are not very many
vegan companies. We have a few - there is you know, there WAS White Wave Foods,
which was one of the biggest that has silk soy milk and things like that, as I
mentioned earlier in the video, they manufacture a lot of dairy free
beverages and things like that, but they were purchased by Danone and they make a
lot of the dairy products in the world. But they have been looking into
plant-based products and it's kind of interesting they went after White Wave
Foods. They purchase it for ten and a half billion dollars, which is a ton of
money, but they saw a lot of value in that company. And, obviously, this is
capitalism. They just want to make money. They see a way to get dairy-like
products without having to worry about the cows, and that obviously makes it a
more profitable company. It's a profitable acquisition for them and it
has been in the last quarterly results, danone was was showing a much better
profit than they'd been expecting, and this is - a lot of it is because of White
Wave Foods. I mean, that was something that I noticed - a lot of market
commentators talking about with how profitable these plant-based companies
are. So even Danone, which is one of the world's largest dairy companies, if not the
largest, sees the value in plant-based products, so much so that they actually
recently sold off part of their US dairy business. They sold off Stonyfield
yogurt, which a lot of people who like you know organic food and things like
that. I remember back when I was you know as someone we ate dairy and things like
that Stonyfield organic yogurt was kind of
like the "creme de la creme" of organic yogurt.
But it comes from cows and what what Dannon realized is like, why would we own
a company like Stonyfield, which is so expensive? You know, you have all of these
regulations with the organic dairy growth and things like that you know all
of these different regulations, but it's still animals and so there's still all
of these extra things being taken away from the system as well. You know,
obviously - you know take, giving these animal medical care and taking care of
their waste, and all those kinds of things it's incredibly wasteful! And they
make more money off of the dairy free version, so White Wave Foods is far more
profitable than Stonyfield was. And so, they sold Stonyfield for I think eight
hundred and seventy five million dollars - something like that - and it was a great
deal for them they got to get rid of something that was a drain on their
resources, which was Stonyfield yogurt, and they bought White Wave foods
instead. And all of this is causing a great deal of concern amongst dairy
farmers. It's been very interesting for me to see some of the comments that I've
gotten on this channel lately from people who are concerned about dairy and
the dairy industry people who maybe are vegetarian but own dairy farms - yes, I have
comments from people like that. And it's very interesting to see comments from
people who are very concerned and feel like vegans are attacking them. And
it's too bad. But, you know, one of the reasons that this channel is called
ModVegan is because I genuinely believe that the future of food is vegan.
It's not just because it's the right thing to do, it's because it is the most
efficient thing to do. And I know that lots of you guys don't like that, but
that's part of this channel. I do believe that veganism is not only the most
compassionate option, it is also the most efficient option. Because animal abuse is
not efficient. Abusing animals and using them, exploiting them is not efficient.
Trying to get all of these products that can be made perfectly easily out of
plants - it's not efficient to get it from animals. And so companies are starting to
realise that, and I see that as a huge thing. It's very interesting to me to see
how upset vegans have been by Otsuka's acquisition of Daiya foods. When you
consider the fact that Tyson Foods recently invested - they took a 5% stake
in Beyond Meat and no one seemed to bat an eye. Now Tyson, compared to Osaka which
is a giant conglomerate, but happens to own one pharmaceutical company that
tests on animals - you compare that to Tyson Foods which makes this living off
of abusing not just animals but probably people as well the way that they take
care of the people that work for them raising these animal is extremely
predatory, I think, is the nicest way to put it - I will put a link in my
description box below to a book that I read about some of the some of the
corporate practices of Tyson - but it is quite disturbing that a lot of these
pork pig and chicken manufacturers and animal abuser is what they do is they
force people to keep these animals in the most tightly contained circumstances
imaginable it's all about just making a profit and even though I think it's
great that Tyson is moving away from that and towards plant-based food I
still find it very disturbing and questionable that vegans are more upset
by this Daiya thing than they were by Tyson Foods investing in Beyond Meat. I think
that's completely hypocritical. There's a lot about this that I find totally
hypocritical. I would love to know what you guys think. I want to know what you
think about this acquisition. Are you going to jump on the on the boycott
bandwagon without really knowing very much? Like, what do you think about it?
I mean, honestly from my perspective, if you believe that it is okay to buy vegan
products from non vegan companies, to me the answer is completely clear: we should
be continuing to buy Daiya products if we like them and allowing this company
to hopefully expand, to spread plant-based foods to more regions of the
globe. I see that as a positive thing. I want to know: what you guys think? Do you
think that we just shouldn't buy anything from any company that's not
vegan? How, exactly, you manage to realistically sustain that in your life?
Because that's something I don't know how you do. So if you manage to do that,
I'd love to hear about it. I don't really see many options other than growing your
own food. If that's what you're looking for - and obviously a lot of us are not
going to be growing our own food, and so, it makes sense to buy - again, in my
opinion - vegan products from non vegan companies. I'm very happy that they will
be continuing with the same management team that they have in place now, they've
managed to grow that company very well, they've done a great
job making that company grow. And, I mean, I would love to see them develop some
better products. There's a few things from Daiya that I think could be improved
somewhat. Certainly their cheese. Our family is a huge fan of their yogurt. We
love their yogurt. I have another friend that also has become a big fan of their
yogurt lately, so I know that the yogurt is a hit. Some of the cheese products I
think that they have some catching up to do on, but it's been interesting to see
what people think about those things. I really want to know what you guys think about
this. I am concerned a bit that this has led to a boycott, whereas the Beyond Meat
Tyson Food things didn't really at all. People still seem to have no problem
at all touting the Beyond Burger, but they're very concerned about this with
with Otsuka. I'd really love to hear it. Do you think it's because it's a
foreign company? Do you think that's why people are more upset? I'd love to have you
weigh in on this. If you're someone who only buy vegan products from
vegan companies, I'd also love to know how you do that. I can really only
imagine that being possible if you grow a lot of your own food, but I'd be
interested in hearing what you do, how you manage that. And how you might
justify a book boycott, if you have a good justification for that boycott, I'd
love to hear that in the comment section below. Thank you so much for watching. If
you enjoy this video, thumbs up and subscribe so you don't miss another
great video, and do click on that bell icon, because otherwise you won't get
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ModVegan, you've got to click on that bell icon, and I will see you in my next video.
Thank you so much for watching, take care and have a beautiful day, bye!
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