Hailing it as the best-tasting and most satisfying such product on the market, vegetarian food manufacturer Greenwood Farms unveiled a more realistic meat substitute Friday made from soy raised in brutally cruel conditions. According to company spokespeople, the new line of Natures Way meatless products is made from soybeans grown and harvested in dark, cramped conditions where they suffer maltreatment and neglect from the moment they sprout, giving them a texture and flavor closer to that of factory-farmed beef, pork, and chicken. When you sink your teeth into one of our veggie burgers, youll know this is the kind of flavor you can only get from soybeans that have never seen actual sunlight. Our vegetarian entres and meal starters are the most authentically meat-like available on the market, because we make sure our soybeans are raised in filth-caked, overcrowded growing troughs in a windowless facility where daytime temperatures regularly exceed 120 degrees, said Greenwood Farms marketing director Michael Latimer, adding that the beans rich, savory flavor is enhanced by the unsanitary conditions and the regular spread of disease and infection through the crop. We also make sure our soybeans are pumped so full of a variety of powerful hormones and antibiotics that their growth is boosted far beyond what the plants are capable of naturally, giving our product the same delectable consistency as meat you find at your local grocery store. When you sink your teeth into one of our veggie burgers, youll know this is the kind of flavor you can only get from soybeans that have never seen actual sunlight, he added. According to Latimer, the confined growing facilities are designed to restrict nearly all of the plants heliotropic movement and suppress their natural phytochrome production, which ensures that most of their available energy is dedicated to increasing their lipid-to-protein ratio, giving the beans the succulent, juicy texture of conventional beef or poultry. As a side effect, the soys stems are reportedly too weak to support the weight of their growing beans and the plants eventually collapse on themselves, which Latimer cites as a further indication that his companys products are the most authentically meat-like on the market. Latimer explained that in order to maximize the number of beans per plot, plants are grown physically touching one another and are left to wallow in the discarded leaves and other fetid waste from their neighbors. Additionally, some young soybean sprouts are confined to pots barely larger than themselves as soon as they emerge, thus inhibiting healthy maturation and keeping them, according to Greenwood Farms promotional material, mouthwateringly tender. After the beans are mechanically separated from their pods at an age of only 45 days, Latimer said they are forced into overfilled tractor-trailers, with many being crushed under the weight of thousands of their fellow legumes. The soybeans then reportedly arrive at the processing facility, a steaming hot factory reeking with the stench of rotting bean hulls where every surface is said to be slick with plant effluvia. To ensure our product reaches stores when its at its most succulent and moist, we rush to dry, shuck, and salt the beans as quickly as possiblemeaning that many of them are still alive when theyre ground up in the turbo mills, Latimer said. After the soybeans have been completely pulverized, the leftover seed fragments, juices, and slurry that collect in the sluice grates in the facilitys floor are gathered so they can be used as fertilizer to be fed to the next generation of beans. Its all part of our effort to go that extra mile and make sure our soybeans are treated with as little concern for their well-being and natural development as possible, Latimer added. And thats a difference you can taste. 