HOW MANY MEAT EATERS DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LIGHTBULB? - NONE AS THEY'D RATHER STAY IN THE DARK ABOUT THINGS

This morning when playing tennis the young steers, as usual came up to the fence to watch us.

They are very inquisitive and like to have their faces stroked. One, when a tennis ball sailed over the fence chased after it and began to eat it. I love these animals and it breaks my heart to know that they are there because the farmer is fattening them up before sending them to an abattoir somewhere.

I don't eat a lot of meat but I do eat it - chicken, lamb and some beef. I am cutting down on it but look forward to the time when I can eat a decent protein substitute.

Recently Air New Zealand caused an uproar when it decided to promote a meatless burger. See below excerpts from the AAP report:

"Air New Zealand this week announced it would be serving food tech start-up Impossible Foods' plant-based burger to business customers flying from Los Angeles to Auckland, producing a video and flying journalists over for the promotion.

It didn't take long for the news to ruffle feathers at home.
From politicians to industry lobby groups, patriotic sighs of disappointment came in, questioning why a taxpayer owned company was endorsing an American product over homegrown meat.
"We produce the most delicious steaks and lamb on the planet," the National Party's Nathan Guy declared.
"The national carrier should be pushing our premium products."
The head of industry lobby group Beef and Lamb New Zealand said Kiwi farmers would be justified in feeling upset and let down, and the Federated Farmers group said there were domestic products that could have been promoted instead.
And so the country's acting prime minister, Winston Peters, stepped in, his populist NZ First Party calling for the airline to review its decision and saying it was a "slap in the face".

"I'm utterly opposed to fake beef," Mr Peters, the deputy prime minister standing in for Jacinda Ardern - on maternity leave - told reporters.
"Some of the taxpayers are the farming industry who want to ensure they get top end of the product market offshore and our airline should be its number one marketer."


The Impossible Burger is sold in about 2500 restaurants across the United States and the company says its goal is to make food more sustainable. It says the burger creates about 87 per cent less greenhouse gas emissions than those made from cows.

AAP

Jul 5 2018

Meat substitution isn't new but it is getting better and 'The Impossible Burger is an example of this.

Read this very interesting report by Adele Peters:

Get Ready For A Meatless Meat Explosion, As Big Food Gets On Board
When the meatpacking giant Cargill sold off its last cattle feedlots in April, it said that it wanted to free up funds to invest in alternatives like insects and plant-based protein. Four months later, along with Bill Gates and Richard Branson, the company joined a $17 million round of investment in Memphis Meats, a startup that grows beef and chicken from cells instead of on farms.

It was one of several large deals in 2017 for meatless meats. Tyson Foods, the largest meat producer in the U.S., was part of a $55 million round of investment in Beyond Meat. Roughly a year after it started selling its meat-like burgers in mainstream grocery stores, Beyond Meat’s products are now in 19,000-plus stores. For Tyson, which also invested in Beyond Meat in 2016, it’s an example of a new direction for the company that is no longer focused solely on meat. “We’re talking about ourselves as a protein company,” says Justin Whitmore, executive vice president of corporate strategy and chief sustainability officer for Tyson.
Nestle acquired Sweet Earth Foods, which sells products like “Harmless Ham” and “Benevolent Bacon.” Maple Leaf Foods, a Canadian company known for selling Kam and Klik–the Canadian versions of Spam–along with deli meat, pork, poultry, and other meats, acquired Lightlife, a company that makes products like “Chick’n” and plant-based hot dogs, and is in the process of acquiring Field Roast, which makes both plant-based meat and dairy-free cheese. Major meat processors are reportedly in taks to license Hampton Creek’s technology for “clean” meat. (Clean meat, grown from animal cells, is also sometimes called “lab-grown” meat, though the industry says that’s inaccurate–when produced at scale, the products will be brewed like beer.) Unilever invested in university research to recreate the texture of steak. Walmart asked suppliers to provide more meat-free products.

IMPOSSIBLE BURGER PATTIES

 All of this signals that the meat industry is embracing the shift in the market, says Bruce Friedrich, executive director of the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that supports the plant-based and clean meat industry and researchers. He points to a January 2016 issue of a meat industry magazine–Meating Place – in which the letter from the editor says that the industry can see meat-free meat as an opportunity or a threat. “She implored the meat industry to see it as an opportunity,” he says. “She said what we believe to be true at GFI, that the meat industry is satisfying consumer demand.” By 2020, Nestle predicts that plant-based foods will represent a $5 billion market in the U.S.


“Plant protein is among the fastest growing categories in all of retail,” says Dan Curtin, president of alternative protein at Maple Leaf Foods, which sees the category as key to the company’s own growth and a way to meet sustainability goals. “Plant protein categories are experiencing double-digit growth, and in some categories high double-digit growth. Consumers are still eating meat, but they are also looking for additional protein choices, and plant protein is the natural solution to meet that demand.”

“When we think about investments like this, we’re thinking about an ‘and’ model, not an ‘or’ model,” says Tyson’s Whitmore. “So this investment does not cause us to rethink where we think the growth is in protein broadly in the other meat-based platforms. What it is, is access to new alternatives, innovation, and thinking that we think could be quite interesting and quite disruptive.”
Of course, investing in plant-based and clean meat is also a way to reduce any risk of losing market share. Tyson’s CEO predicts that in 25 years, 20% of meat will consist of these non-meat products. Rabobank, a major international agricultural financier, said that the growth of these foods should be a “wakeup call to the animal protein sector.” The president of the Meat Industry Hall of Fame called the new meat substitutes one of the “greatest ag challenges” for 2018 in a recent post, writing that the influx of new cash means that “several companies now have the money to do the serious research to make fake meat taste more like the real thing rather than what you put in a horse’s feed bag. All that new money buys lots of shelf space at the local HyVee or Piggly Wiggly, too. If you’re raising the grains that are often the raw materials for this stuff, good for you. If you’re raising cattle, you’re battling still another unwanted competitor for the center of the consumer’s plate.”

Richard Branson predicts that the new meat will go even further, fully replacing traditional meat in roughly three decades. Friedrich thinks that won’t quite be true–subsistence farmers will likely still raise livestock, he says, and some people will want to pay a premium for humanely, sustainably raised meat from farms that use practices like regenerative agriculture. But the majority of the market could make the shift. “I think that all industrial meat will be plant-based meat or clean meat because plant-based meat and clean meat are so efficient–they will taste the same or better, and be cheaper,” he says.
Newer companies in the industry, such as Impossible Foods and Memphis Meats, aren’t targeting vegetarians with their products; instead, their burgers are designed to appeal to meat eaters who are concerned about issues like the carbon footprint of beef, or the overuse of antibiotics on farms. Companies that have been around longer, making veggie burgers for a niche market, are also realizing that their products can evolve. Technology is making meatless meat truly realistic and will continue to improve. In some cases, as Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown argues, the new products could be tweaked to taste better than meat, because they’re not constrained by the limitations of raising livestock. “I think we’re going to see huge research and development based improvements in plant-based meat in the very near future,” says Friedrich.
Plant-based dairy products, like soy and almond milk, have grown in recent years to make up a 9% or 10% share of the overall market, while cow-based dairy products have declined. Plant-based and clean meat products, which have only a tiny fraction of the meat market now at less than a quarter of 1%, may follow the path of dairy.
“It’s hard to turn back time and know for sure, but it sure looked to me in real time like Dean Foods buying White Wave was the precipitating factor that moved plant-based milk from the dusty nether-regions of the health food store into every Target, Walmart, Kroger, Safeway, and other grocery stores in the country,” says Friedrich. “So the fact that Cargill has purchased a stake in Memphis Meats, and Tyson has purchased a stake in Beyond Meat, and Big Food sees plant-based meat and clean meat as moving into the mainstream, will actually move plant-based meat into the mainstream.”

Adele Peters is a staff writer at Fast Company

Good on Air New Zealand for stirring this up. I personally will look forward to eating an Impossible Burger and will definitely buy 'meatless meat' when it becomes available.

Boo to Nathan Guy, Winston Peters and the various meat industry lobbyists in New Zealand for trying to put down this initiative.
That kind of Luddite behaviour is what the motor vehicle industry and solid fuel promoters  are guilty of. Change is inevitable and we have to embrace it.

What New Zealand is exceptionally good at is taking an established concept or industry and, by applying sound initiatives and a focus on quality, improving them. New Zealand needs to face up to the fact that the primary meat industry could well be on its last legs (pun intended) and needs to take this by the tail (pun wasn't intended) and run with it. We of course will need to continue with high quality meat production but will need to specialise on super premium quality albeit in smaller volumes kind of like our approach to wines where New Zealand wines are all of super quality standard when exported and captures the highest average price of any wine in the world.

At the same time New Zealand must embrace this new trend which may well soon cease to be a trend and become the norm and improve on it - market it, sell it and own it.