TheEconomistOctober 12th 2019 611A
journalist walks into Honest Bur-
gers, a small chain of restaurants in
Britain. Mindful of the carbon emissions
that come from raising cows, he orders a
plant-based burger. It tastes convincingly
beefy, at least when encased in a brioche
bun and loaded with vegan Gouda and chi-
potle “mayo”. He asks where this wondrous
environmentally friendly virtueburger was
made? Sheepishly, staff inform him that
the patty—supplied by Beyond Meat, a Cal-
ifornia-based company—has been flown in
from America.
To be fair, Beyond Meat has plans to be-
gin production of its foods in the Nether-
lands. The company’s expansion is just one
sign of a step-change in the demand for
foods aiming to replace meat on people’s
plates. A niche business is becoming main-
stream. Startups and established food con-
glomerates are hungry for a share of a rap-
idly growing market for plant-based
meats—foods that mimic the taste, texture
and nutritional qualities of meat, without a
single animal in sight.
At the moment, the market for meat
substitutes is tiny. Euromonitor, a market-
research firm, estimates that Americans
spend $1.4bn a year on them, around 4% of
what they spend on real meat. Europeans
also chomp through about $1.5bn-worth of
meatless meat a year, but this is 9-12% of
what they spend on animal flesh.
Euromonitor expects the market for
meat alternatives in both Europe and
America to double by 2022. Analysts at Bar-
clays, a bank, estimate that global sales of
alternative meats could grow from 1% of
the total market for meat to 10% over the
next decade.No bones about it
If so, the implications are vast. Until re-
cently, the only way to make meat was for
an animal to eat a plant and then be killed.
Now, with better technology, it may be pos-
sible to create radically different, animal-
free food chains. And boffins are constant-
ly improving what bogus burgers taste like.
Demand for plant-based meat is drivenby a combination of environmental, ethi-
cal and health concerns. Raising animals
for meat, eggs and milk is one of the most
resource-intensive processes in agricul-
ture. According to the un’s Food and Agri-
culture Organisation, it generates 14.5% of
global greenhouse-gas emissions. Global-
ly, demand for meat from animals is shoot-
ing up as people in developing countries
grow richer and can afford to feast on flesh.
In rich countries, by contrast, an increas-
ing number of people say they would like to
eat fewer animals. They may even mean it.
Nearly two-fifths of Americans who de-
scribed themselves as carnivores told a
survey by Mintel in February that they
wanted to add more plant-based foods to
their diet. Some call themselves “flexitar-
ians”: not wholly vegetarian or vegan, but
anxious to reduce their meat consumption
nonetheless. Young people are the most
fervently flexible. Around a third of those
under the age of 35 in Britain told a poll by
Mintel in September 2018 that they wanted
to cut the amount of meat they eat, com-
pared with less than a fifth of older people.
Partly because of this, demand for meat
substitutes has grown by 37% in America in
the past two years and by 30% in western
Europe. Beyond Meat and Impossible
Foods, another plant-based food company
in Silicon Valley, have entered the market.
Impossible has raised $700m in private
funds; its backers include Bill Gates. Since
Beyond Meat went public in May its valua-Pseudomeat
Fake moos
Plant-based meat offers the potential to create a radically different food chain
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