MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: Is plant-based meat science or food?
While Americans increase their consumption of animal meat, Impossible Foods remains committed to its food Manhattan Project of replacing animals in food production by 2035.
BRIAN COOLEY: Makers of plant-based meat deal with a constant balancing act between promoting their products as simple, wholesome food and also extolling the amount of science and technology that goes into them. Impossible Foods recently hired a new chief science officer who will spend a lot of time advancing that science while also working to convince more scientists that food is the most interesting and important problem they can work on…
The 50 or so scientists that Impossible wants to hire to work on projects that will show the plant-based movement isn’t just a bunch of burgers and sausages. “The problem of [animal] ag and its contribution to climate change is as big a problem as we face,” says John D. York, who is joining Impossible from his current post as biochemistry chair at Vanderbilt University. “You don’t have to be a foodie; you just have to want to use science and research as a way to help the planet.”
“It’s simple,” says Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown. “We are working on the most urgent and important science and engineering project: climate change and a catastrophic collapse of biodiversity. The use of animals in food tech is by far the most destructive technology in human history.”… “You can be, as I was, in academia doing research, following your curiosity and making important discoveries,” says Brown, “but it doesn’t matter if we destroy the biosphere on the only planet we know that supports life”…
Impossible says 72% of sales of its plant-based burgers comes from conventional animal meat sales, with another 8% coming over from other plant-based burgers. But the plant-based meat market remains the electric car of food — growing healthily, but still tiny — while Americans increase their per capita consumption of conventional animal meat. Still, Impossible remains committed to its food Manhattan Project of replacing animals in food production by 2035. SOURCE…
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