Fakes‑Giving: Campbell’s 3D ‘Meat’ Allegations May Sour Holiday Soup Sales
Campbell’s places rantish vice president on leave during an investigation related to secret video taken of him claiming soup contains bioengineered meat and is meant for poor people.
Thanksgiving dinner in my home growing up included green bean casserole. The quintessential version of this delicacy included Campbell’s Soup.
As Americans across the country began their holiday meal preparations this week, a devastating video was released that may sour sales this season.
A Campbell Soup Company vice president, identified in reports as Martin Bally, was secretly recorded making derogatory remarks about Campbell’s products, the customers who buy them, and the ingredients used, including claims about “bioengineered meat” and “chicken from a 3‑D printer.”
These comments surfaced as part of an employment discrimination and retaliation lawsuit filed by former security analyst Robert Garza, who says he was fired after reporting the executive’s rant.
Garza alleges that Campbell’s executive Martin Bally made the offensive remarks during a meeting in November 2024, which was intended to discuss his salary. According to the lawsuit, Bally made several comments about Indian workers and said that Campbell’s is “highly [processed] food” for “poor people.”
Garza said he informed his manager, J.D. Aupperle, about the comments on Jan. 10 and claims Aupperle did not encourage him to report the incident to human resources.
Garza was then “abruptly terminated from employment” just weeks later, the lawsuit says. The discussion between Garza and Bally was recorded, according to Detroit television station WDIV.
James Regan, a Campbell’s spokesperson, said the company was not aware of the recording before it aired on WDIV on Thursday and doesn’t know if it’s legitimate.
The Campbell Soup’s Vice President wasn’t just caught saying Campbell’s soups are for poor people and use bioengineered meat
He literally said on a secret recording the company is using “3D printed meat”
This is a federal crime. It is illegal under US federal law to sell,… pic.twitter.com/LBMboTuy39
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) November 24, 2025
Here is the video presented by WDIV:
Bally’s description of the soup and the work environment was…spicy.
“We have s–t for f–king poor people. Who buys our s–t? I don’t buy Campbell’s products barely anymore. It’s not healthy now that I know what the f—‘s in it,” Bally allegedly said in the recording. “Bioengineered meat — I don’t wanna eat a piece of chicken that came from a 3-D printer.”
The rant didn’t stop there. According to the lawsuit, Bally made several derogatory comments about Indian employees, calling them “idiots” and saying they “couldn’t think for their f—ing selves.”
Garza also alleges in the filing that Bally admitted to regularly coming to work high from marijuana edibles.
Furthermore, the company has put the vice president on leave during the investigation.
The company also confirmed that Bally has been placed on leave during an internal investigation into the alleged comments.
“He has no filter,” Garza said of Bally. “He thinks he’s a C-level executive at a Fortune 500 company and he can do whatever he wants because he’s an executive.”
Garza said he recorded an hour-long rant by the top Campbell Soup Company executive because he said he trusted his “instinct that something wasn’t right with Martin,” when he went to meet with him to discuss his salary. Instead, he said he sat at a restaurant and listened to an explosive, hour-long tirade. He recorded all of it.
Garza is now suing the company — alleging racist remarks, admissions of drug use at work and retaliation after he tried to report it. The lawsuit was filed Thursday in Wayne County Circuit Court and names Campbell Soup Company, vice president and chief information security officer Martin Bally, and supervisor J.D. Aupperle as defendants.
But the problem isn’t confined to Michigan. Florida’s attorney general said he will “shut down” violators of the state’s law on lab-grown meat and indicated he is launching an investigation into Campbell’s about the recorded claims.
“We don’t do the fake, lab grown meat here in Florida. We’ll enforce the law and shut down!” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said on X.
Uthmeier said the state’s Consumer Protection division is launching an investigation into the company.
Federal rules for labeling lab‑grown or “cell‑cultivated” meat are still being finalized. Still, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) jointly regulate these products. The USDA requires truthful, non‑misleading labels, and is moving toward standardized terms like “cell‑cultivated” or “cell‑cultured” in the product name.
If Campbell’s Soup were using bioengineered meat in its products without clearly indicating its presence, the company would face serious problems. Several states have their own branding requirements and will likely move to join Florida in their own investigations, especially if it looks like the allegations may be true.
But perhaps the biggest penalty is the public relations hit during the holiday season.
It does look like the company took a bit of a hit today. pic.twitter.com/NIgcCxFoUM
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) November 25, 2025
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Comments
learn how to make your own “cream of” soups. I have been for 20+ years when I discovered something in the cream of chicken I was using was giving me immediate and severe migraines. So easy to do. A basic roux. Or my gluten-free friend has a cream cheese recipe she uses.
Bally sure has a mouth!
As for Campbell Soup, being for poor people, look at the price of it. I don’t think so. I’ll stick with good quality house brands for 60% of the price of Campbell’s.
Exactly.
I’m poor people, and stopped buying that stuff a long time ago, can’t afford it, been getting the canned soups at Save a lot, they have a pretty good variety, and most of them run around .89 cents or so a can, and are not half bad.
Apparently actually making soup alludes them.
I thought it eluded them…?
-s- The Night-Riding Pædant
Got me. should have paid more attention on voice to text.
Oh! Believe me! Speech to text bites me often, especially when my allergies have me clogged up.
This morning on X it came up with egg dog.
Coca Cola did something like this years ago with “New Coke” that almost bankruppeted them. Cracker Barrel was on the road to the same folly when the public screamed NO! Then the worst is Bud Lite with their infamous tranny ad. What is it that makes these people think they need to change, (Improve) something that is working?
To a great extent, though, it isn’t working for them. In the world run by the stock market, you have to be constantly growing. Otherwise your stock price stagnates, and everyone loses money, and nobody is happy. Then, when you get fired, your stock won’t be worth billions more than the discounted price you bought it at, and you’ll have to eat soup. Gotta grow, grow, GROW!
Well, canned anything is for “poor people”, in the sense of “people too tired or busy to actually cook.” For the last 40 years, that’s been a lot of middle class families.
If that’s such a big deal, what have you been doing to change it?
Also, honestly, I’ve mostly switched to the other national brand for my need-some-soup-now needs. And I seldom make casseroles where you put in soup anymore.
If Campbell’s wants a fantastic potato soup, I would give them my gluten-free recipe… for a price. 🙂
WHICH other national brand? I’ve not seen Heinz on the shelf in decades. Please, which one? Thank you.
Progresso.
Since you asked.
Folks, I don’t know what that guy was getting at in his weird rant but I’ve been into a number of Campbell Soup plants including the Chicken Soup plant in NC and they use real chickens. There are no “3D printed meats”.
You can tell because there’s chicken s–t everywhere?
You can tell because they haul truckloads of chicken into there and there is a farm just down the road from them.
I forgot to point out that I not only hauled boxes into that plant but also reefers full of chicken.
What’s next? Having to worry about whether your hot dogs are made from real lips and snouts, or artificial ones?
Granted my business experience with Campbell was 25-39 years ago, but that that time they were one of most honest players I dealt with.
It will be interested to see if the guy making these claims can prove them, if not he will be begging on street corners.
You can sue for alleged “racist” remarks?
Still looking for that “right to not be offended” part of the Constitution/ Bill of Rights….
Of all the things to sue for, it’s disgusting that this was at the head of the list. Or maybe the MSM chose to order the list that way on their own.
Under civil rights law it amounts to a “hostile work environment.”
I fail to see any economic incentive for lab-grown protein, particularly chicken-flavored.
It can’t possibly be less expensive (chickens go from egg to broiler in 6 weeks, and need minimal human labor to get there).
Yeah, despite the conspiracy theories bandied about this blog worthy of Zerohedge, meat just cannot yet be 3d printed on the scale Campbell’s needs to make chicken soup.
All you really need to know about the rant is “Bally admitted to regularly coming to work high from marijuana edibles.”
I thought most of the VPs I worked for were morons. Glad to see the stupidity isn’t confined to high tech,
Neither here nor there on Campbell’s but “chicken from a 3-D printer?” Um, no. The “executive” is mentally ill.
No, they do have “printed meat.” His terminology is unscientific, but so is “nuking a burrito.”
I call it “electrocuting”. Still wrong, but different, because I embrace diversity! /must I?
No they don’t.
By “they,” I was not meaning Campbell specifically, but “food scientists” as an industry.
Mmmm mmm Grok, Mmmm mmm Grok…Campbell’s Endoplasmic Reticulum is Mmm mmm Grok!
May we all have a fake yet festive Festivus.
“Campbell’s places rantish vice president on leave during an investigation related to secret video”
I have no idea what this sentence means, if its even a sentence. Anyone else think we need a copy editor around here?
Damn… now I’m kind of embarrassed to confess that I (guess I thought) I understood that sentence perfectly.
It parses perfectly, even though I think she made up “rantish.”
I got stuck on “rantish.” After I skimmed, I decided it should be “ranting.” I love making up words, but subtitles are no place to do it because its not clear form context.
Never, never give your reader a reason to stop reading.
Defined: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rantish
You have to wonder about fake meat. Perhaps we have been served real meat but fake vegetables for far too long. Sedientary, immobile life forms have had enough and are retaliating…it is the Riot Of The Rutabagas.
Attack of the killer tomatoes
The most disturbing thing about this article (to me) is that the USDA does not require the labeling of this type of meat. It stated the rules were in the process of being finalized. How many other products are affected?
Another rule I want to see is requiring drugs of any kind to have country of origin on the label.
The FDA doesn’t require it because “this type of meat” does not exist. LOL
Really?
They produce nothing but press releases.
From their first press release: “With current small-scale production costs of $150 per pound of chicken and $200 per pound of beef, Future Meat Technologies plans to release its hybrid products at a competitive cost level from its pilot production facility by 2021 and launch a second line of 100% cultured meat products at a cost of less than $10 per pound by 2022.”
Food for poor people???
Another Tinfoil Hat Day at L-I-F.
At this stage of development, 3-D printed meat is so much more expensive than the real thing that there is nothing for Campbell’s to disclose. There is no way there is any 3-D meat in canned soup.
There is no such thing as “3-D printed meat.” But keep getting those signals through the steel plate in your skull.
Just to be that guy:
That’s what they want you to think!
Why does this guy find it necessary to record his conversations with his boss? Sounds suspicious.
Because he evidently already knew the guy was nutty. Based on the racist stuff and the coming-to-work-high stuff.
Yeah I’d be surprised if this was the first conversation where the guy went off the rails. Even then recording a performance review seems smart given the tendency to make goofy statements to try and point the finger elsewhere….’gee John you deserved a bump in pay/promotion but mean old corporate HR told me had to change your rating downward b/c they wanted to put the half black, half asian, lesbian who converted to Judaism in the that slot to get maximum DEI points before the end of the year’.
Anyone who believes his claims is mentally deficient.
Like I said below, his job has nothing to do with recipes, production, or quality control. He’s in charge of IT.
I would like to nominate this VP for Time’s Man of the Year award.
Bally is a VP for IT, and has nothing to do with production or quality control. He was likely talking out of his ass.
Rule number 1. If your job is in any way connected to the Executive Suite, everything you say represents the company.
Vice President of anything makes the company accountable for every utterance you make, whether in one’s wheelhouse or not. Nearly every VP sits on boards, committees, and working groups, and are privy to company secrets.
Rule number 2. Don’t make shit up to show off, especially if it has to do with your job.
I have to question why this video was released. It could only have been because Garza is vindictive, wanted to hurt Campbell’s, and didn’t have faith that he could prevail in his lawsuit. So let’s release a video of an unhinged IT guy talking shit about his company and make Campbell’s look bad. Nobody investigates, they just take the story and run with it. As other commenters have noted here, “printed” meat is not viable for commercial quantity production and has only been done in labs. Guy was a looney IT guy, probably a crappy boss and Garza likely had very valid complaints about the guy. But releasing this video amounts to economic terrorism in my book.
Too many supervisors go home at the end of the day, and still have their jobs. Many should be fired, but the Constitution doesn’t have an Amendment that says you shall have a good boss.
People should be nervous when they mistreat employees, and should expect that their bullschiff will be made public.
Lab meat, 3D or otherwise, is too expensive for Campbell’s.
This is not happening.
I guess I’m missing something – 3d printed meat? er…so? I mean, it is still meat, right? It’s made of chicken flesh? When I buy Cambells soup I’m not thinking it’s the finest cuts of chicken.
Soup was invented to make use of all the bits of meat you didn’t want to eat. It was created to make use of leftover chicken from a previous meal.
I mean, we make chicken soup with chicken bones.