was trying to revise Brown’s plan for in-
troducing his burgers into China. Brown
said that he envisioned telling the cen-
tral government, “‘I want to help you
solve your biggest national-security
problem.’ Because China is the biggest
meat consumer in the world”—between
1961 and 2013, the average Chinese per-
son’s meat intake went up more than
fifteenfold—“but it’s completely depen-
dent on imports,” chiefly
from Brazil and Germany.
Chau had told me she
didn’t think Impossible
should attempt to eradicate
meat in China, or anywhere
else: “There’s not enough
supply to feed future de-
mand, so it’s a coexistence
scenario.” She suggested to
Brown that Impossible part-
ner with the tech-friendly
city of Shenzhen: “You must align your
interest with the local government, and
they will do your work for you and pro-
tect the investment. And they’d help
you with the regulatory issue!” Because
heme is a novel ingredient, Impossible’s
burgers require regulatory approval in
both Europe and China, which Brown
told me will take “probably two years in
Europe and eighteen months to infin-
ity in China.” Chau’s way would be
slower, but safer.
Brown waggled his head: he’d think
about it. He was well aware that a Chi-
nese company could entice him into a
joint venture and then hijack Impossi-
ble’s intellectual property. However, he
told Chau, “it’s just a risk you take. Ei-
ther you go there and reach some ac-
commodation that’s not complete ex-
ploitation, or you go there and maybe
they exploit you and you end up with
nothing, or you don’t go there and you
definitely end up with nothing.” Impos-
sible has explored a way to keep its
heme-production process from being
bootlegged. Nick Halla, the executive
in charge of new markets, told me, “We’d
send the buckets into China rather than
the recipe, just the way Coca-Cola sends
in the syrup.”
Brown assured Chau, “We’re not
going to give it away.” Yet his instinct is
to do exactly that, with companies
around the world. “In five or ten years,”
he told me, “I’d love to give small en-
trepreneurs free access to our technol-
ogy, with the idea that they’d pay us roy-
alties once they got to a million dollars
in revenue. The way I’d pitch it as a busi-
ness is ‘Now you have a million new
employees who are basically working
for free.’” Such a plan would cut into
Impossible’s profits, but, he said, “the
animal industry will be worth three tril-
lion dollars in ten years, and if we have
a small fraction of that we’ll be one of
the most successful compa-
nies on earth. And if we
tried to have all of it, and
we controlled the world’s
food supply, we would guar-
antee being the most hated
company in history.”
Brown sees himself as a
guide rather than as a mi-
cromanager—“I have no
idea if the company paid
taxes last year. The C.E.O.
is supposed to know that, I guess”—but
he is determined to retain control. When
Google made an early offer to buy the
company, he said, he turned it down “in
less than five seconds, because we would
have just been one of their suite of nifty
projects.” And he made it a condition
of his deal with Khosla Ventures that
Impossible couldn’t be sold without his
approval to any of about forty “disal-
lowed companies”—meat producers and
agricultural conglomerates.
Those companies, which like to say
that they’re in the business of provid-
ing whatever protein consumers want
to eat, have finally begun to respond to
the plant-based boom. Nestlé offers an
Incredible plant-based burger overseas
and is about to release an Awesome one
in the U.S., and Kellogg just announced
a plant-based line called Incogmeato.
Many of these new products seem aimed
less at meat-eaters than at flexitarians,
a dignifying name for the wishy-washy:
Perdue’s “Chicken Plus” nugget mixes
chicken with cauliflower and chickpeas,
and Tyson Foods is releasing a burger
that blends beef with pea protein.
The agribusiness giant Cargill re-
cently invested in Puris, which supplies
Beyond Meat with pea protein, and in
two cell-based startups. Brian Sikes,
who runs Cargill’s protein-and-salt
group, told me that “plant-based is part
of the solution” to the 2050 Challenge,
“and potentially cell-based is, too.”
Though Sikes repeatedly assured methat Cargill’s purpose is “to be leaders
in nourishing the world,” the company
recently said that—like many agricul-
tural conglomerates—it would miss its
target of removing deforestation from
its supply chain by 2020. And the envi-
ronmental group Mighty Earth just ex-
coriated Cargill as “The Worst Com-
pany in the World.” When I asked Sikes
if he’d learned anything from Impossi-
ble and Beyond, he said, “They’re mas-
ter marketers. They’ve made us realize
that we need to tell the story of tradi-
tional animal protein better.”
Samir Kaul, Brown’s original inves-
tor at Khosla Ventures, told me, “There
have to be ways to partner with the large
food companies,” but Brown remains
skeptical. “If Tyson called us, we wouldn’t
go into it with the naïve idea that they
want to help us,” he said. “The best out-
come for them, given their sunk costs,
would be to slow us down.” He allowed,
cautiously, that “if Tyson shut down
their meat-production operations and
broke all their artificial-insemination
rods and melted them down and turned
them into hoes—well, that would get
my attention.”A
few months ago, in Washington,
D.C., I visited the National Cat-
tlemen’s Beef Association, which
lobbies on behalf of American cattle
producers and feeders. Five of the
N.C.B.A.’s employees sat across from
me in leather chairs at a long confer-
ence table, surrounded by paintings of
cowboys performing their manly du-
ties, and explained why Pat Brown was
misguided. Danielle Beck, a senior lob-
byist, said, “Consumers like locally
grown, supporting the small rancher—
we have a good story to share, and our
product is superior. So I don’t think we
need a Plan B.”
“It comes down to taste,” Ed Frank,
who runs policy communications, said.
“Ed and I tried the Impossible Burger
for our podcast,” Beck said, referring to
a 2018 episode called “We Tried Fake
Meat So You Don’t Have To!” She made
a face: “Salty. Odd aftertaste.”
“We faced a moral and ethical di-
lemma. What if it was as good as ground
beef? What would we say then?” Frank
said. “Fortunately, it wasn’t, so I was able
to sleep at night.” I noted that Impos-
sible has since put out a much improved52 THENEWYORKER,SEPTEMBER30, 2019