HALT MEAT: Alternative meat is having a moment. Real meat may be done sooner than you think.
The pandemic was a test for two industries. The one that uses plant ingredients to replicate meat taste passed with flying colors. The meat industry, meanwhile, is failing the test.
CHRIS TAYLOR: Picture two industries. One is increasingly associated in the consumer’s mind with dirt and disease. Not only is much of its product pumped full of antibiotics and covered in fecal matter, not only does it come with an elevated risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer, but now its workers are testing positive for coronavirus in droves, and its supply chain is in pain.
The other industry makes a product that many consumers find just as tasty as the first industry’s product, but without the health risks. Even in the midst of a global pandemic, this industry is having no trouble sourcing its ingredients or forcing people to work. Its sales growth is eye-popping. Its stock is soaring. Its investors can’t open lines of credit fast enough. Which one do you think is going to thrive in a post-COVID-19 world?
The first industry, of course, is traditional meat production… Luckily, the second industry’s product is more widely available than ever, its supply chain having expanded at just the right time. To companies that are clearly doing well out of the pandemic, like Zoom and Amazon, you can add the two new leading lights of plant-based meat: Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods…
“This is the industry’s moment,” Beyond founder Ethan Brown told Yahoo News, while being careful to express all the usual regrets about the pandemic. Until recently, Beyond had one pandemic-ready advantage over rival Impossible: It was more widely available in supermarkets (around 25,000 of them), whereas Impossible burgers tend to be better known in restaurants (around 17,000 of them, including 1,700 Burger Kings). But Impossible Foods has been ramping up its grocery availability just in time.
Late last year, $10 bricks of Impossible beef were only available in a handful of chains in Southern California. In April, as the coronavirus crisis descended, Impossible — which is still a private company — announced a tentative rollout in 777 more grocery stores. On Tuesday, it added all 1,700 Kroger stores across the U.S. Impossible sales hit a new high in April, the company says…
All of which is not to say plant-based meats are going to overtake real meat in sales any time soon… But trends like this, once started, are hard to arrest. The coronavirus pandemic was a test for two industries. The one that uses food science and plant ingredients to replicate meat taste passed with flying colors… By the next century, at least, chances are you can stick a fork in the meat business. It may not be done quite yet, but it is certainly bloodied…
The meat industry, meanwhile, is failing the test. Its supply chain is brittle. Its product is ethically and environmentally compromised. You don’t have to see the horrors of the slaughterhouse to get a sense of just how wrong it all is; you don’t have to read up on all the antibiotics they pump into pigs. Just stand somewhere miles downwind of a major hog farm or cattle ranch and breath in. It’s a messy, nasty, murderous business. If a meat tycoon could sell the same product, made far cheaper in the long run, using plants and a little science, why wouldn’t they? SOURCE…
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