The EconomistOctober 12th 2019 International 632 their products. Their findings are encour-
aging. “The main message is very clear—
the two plant-based burgers represent very
large, often ten-fold, savings in the envi-
ronmental burdens of food consumption,”
says Ron Milo, a biologist who studies sus-
tainability at the Weizmann Institute of
Science in Israel. “These savings are true
for greenhouse emissions, land use and
water use.” (See chart on previous page.)
Such greenery appeals to the young, the
urban and the wealthy. However, to make a
difference to the planet, meatless meat
needs to be on billions of plates, not just
millions. Over the past two years both Be-
yond Meat and Impossible Foods have
worked with chains such as Burger King,
Dunkin’ and Kentucky Fried Chicken, mak-
ing sure that their brands feature promi-
nently on menus. The Impossible Burger is
also served in the British Airways first-
class lounge in New York; the Beyond Bur-
ger, in business class on some Virgin Atlan-
tic flights. (Before they start feeling smug,
passengers should bear in mind that eating
plantburgers on a flight is not a meaningful
way to offset the carbon emissions of a
transatlantic journey.)
Selling alternative meat in restaurants
allows customers to try it in a setting where
they are less price-sensitive, says Justin
Sherrard of Rabobank, a Dutch lender. A
bigger test, he says, will be how these pat-
ties fare in supermarkets, where shoppers
watch pennies.
Hoping to mimic the success of plant-
based milks, Beyond Meat insisted that its
products were placed in the same refriger-
ated aisles in supermarkets as its animal-
based competitors—a condition that
Whole Foods, a supermarket chain, ac-
ceded to in America in 2016. Sainsbury’s, a
British supermarket, now stocks plant-
based meat in the meat aisle.
Price, however, is still a problem. Ac-
cording to analysts at Bernstein, a research
firm, a Beyond Burger retails at $11.50 per
pound in supermarkets, compared with
$7-9 for posh meat patties. On September
20th Impossible Burgers made their debut
in America’s supermarkets, retailing for
around $12 per pound. But competition
should lower those prices. Consumers’ ap-
petite for plant-based meat is bound to at-
tract new entrants with cheaper offerings.
For its part, Beyond Meat hopes that as it
ramps up production, prices will fall. Peas,
the main source of protein used in its bur-
gers, are in plentiful supply worldwide,
thanks to an import ban in India last year.
But getting them from the field to the plate
has been tricky. The protein is extracted by
firms such as Puris or Roquette and then
transformed into burgers by Beyond Meat.
Bottlenecks in the pea-protein supply last
year delayed the firm’s launch in Europe.
Limited production capacity prompted it
to fly patties to Europe from its only plant
in America (hence your correspondent’s
peripatetic patty at Honest Burger in Lon-
don). Only more recently has production
capacity risen to meet demand. Beyond
Meat’s new Dutch plant will help. Puris has
teamed up with Cargill, one of the big four
grain traders, to expand capacity. Roquette
is investing €500m to do the same.
Smaller firms that specialise in ingredi-
ents for plant-based food have started to
spring up, and more established ones, such
as Ingredion, are moving into this space
too. Its researchers are investigating
whether other crops, such as yellow peas
and fava beans, can make good meatless
meat. They are also hoping to breed new va-
rieties of soya and wheat. Earlier this year
Motif Ingredients, a startup created by
Gingko Bioworks, a biotech firm in Boston,
raised $90m to develop specialised ingre-
dients for plant-based products. Jon McIn-
tyre, Motif’s boss, aims to make flavourings
and other additives (to improve texture orbite, say) by inserting specific dna se-
quences into the genomes of yeast. Fer-
menting that yeast will then produce their
desired products. Both companies hope
that their products will help even the
smallest firms to create their own plant-
based meats from scratch.
Plant-based-meat firms are ramping up
their research and development depart-
ments. Producing Impossible’s burger has
involved countless experiments and proto-
types, since 2011, to identify which proteins
could best bind the patty together or to un-
derstand the ratios of the various ingredi-
ents needed to produce a meaty flavour. Mr
Lipman, the chief scientist, boasts that his
company’s offices contain the tools of a
modern biotech lab. All this costs money.
Big food producers are getting involved.
Kraft, an American firm, funds an incuba-
tor that invests in “disruptive” food brands.
Unilever, a big conglomerate, bought the
Vegetarian Butcher last year for an undis-closed amount. When it comes to r&d,
Niko Koffeman, one of the founders of the
Vegetarian Butcher, says that Unilever will
invest as much as is needed to make the
company the “world’s biggest butcher”.
None of these developments has es-
caped the attention of traditional meat-
packers. Tyson Foods, a large meat proces-
sor based in Arkansas, was an early
investor in Beyond Meat. In June it joined
the fray more directly, launching a range of
plant-based “chicken” nuggets and “blend-
ed” burgers, made with both plants and an-
imal meat, which it claims are healthier
than the traditional kind.The impossibilities are endless
Other firms are trying to woo customers by
making animal husbandry greener. Danish
Crown, Europe’s largest pork producer, has
said it wants to halve its emissions by 2030
by using energy and water more efficiently,
and using greener packaging. More inves-
tors are demanding transparency on how
meat is sourced, says Aarti Ramachandran
of the fairrInitiative, a group that tells in-
vestors they might lose money if they back
environmentally dodgy meat producers.
Other meat makers are lobbying for pro-
tection. Terrified of the prospect of meat
grown from stem cells in labs, the beef in-
dustry in America has been urging legisla-
tures to restrict the use of the word “meat”
to that which comes from an animal car-
cass. At least nine American states—in-
cluding Arkansas, Missouri and Mississip-
pi—have now agreed. The National
Cattlemen’s Beef Association is also asking
the Food and Drug Administration, the fed-
eral regulator, to outlaw what it sees as mis-
leading labelling of plant-based meat. In
April the European Parliament’s agricul-
ture committee recommended the intro-
duction of a ban on plant-based meat pro-
ducers using such terms as “burgers” and
“sausages”, although the proposal has not
yet been debated or voted upon by the full
parliament. The European Court of Justice
ruled that many plant-based alternatives
could not be labelled “milk” in 2017, but
this did not noticeably affect demand.
The fight over labels is a sign that meat
producers are on the defensive, says Mr
Friedrich of the gfi. “The meat industry at-
tempting to define meat as something that
comes from a slaughtered animal is every
bit as absurd as trying to say that your
phone is not a phone because it doesn’t
plug into a wall any more,” he claims.
When plant-based meat becomes com-
mon, language will no doubt adapt. The
word “meat” may one day simply evoke the
sensory experience that comes from eating
a particular blend of fats, amino acids,
minerals and water. Whether that is made
by slaughtering animals or by some other
means depends on the ingenuity of the
new meat makers. 7