From Lab to Table
On a Wednesday evening in March, hundreds of people showed up at
Lau Pa Sat, the food centre in the heart of Singapore’s Central
Business District, to try a new kind of patty. It is made from
plants but claims to closely mimic the taste of beef - it even
bleeds. At that evening’s event, San Francisco’s Impossible Foods
launched its latest product in Singapore. In the two months since,
the plant-based “meat” patty has become available at more than 45
establishments throughout the city.
Social media is abuzz with posts decreeing that it was hard to
tell the difference between the fake meat patty and the real thing.
The Impossible 2.0 “beef” tastes and smells just like real beef,
and its manufacturer says eating it instead of regular beef can
save the planet because the production of beef, particularly cattle
farming, emits more greenhouse gases and uses more water than
plant-based alternatives and takes up vast tracts of land that
ought to be returned to the wild.
Impossible Foods is not the only player competing for a slice of
the US$1.5 trillion ($2.04 trillion) animal-based protein industry.
Its top competitor is Beyond Meat, founded by vegan Ethan Brown in
Los Angeles. The company launched its product in Singapore last
October. And, parallel to this plant-based meat industry is a
cultured meat one — where genuine meat is grown in labs using stem
cells from animals. This industry is still in the early stage, but
researchers are looking at growing “chicken”, “fish” and “beef” at
a price comparable with their farmed equivalents in the near
future.
Humans, it seems, no longer have to rely on farmed meats. And
that is good news for a world that international agencies think is
bursting at its seams. The global population is set to hit 10
billion by 2050, at which point the United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organization says meat consumption will increase by
73%. That demand cannot be met based on current livestock
production systems because the industry already uses 70% of global
agricultural land.
Yet, how plausible is it that consumers the world over will give
up actual meat for engineered proteins? Is the industry as
sustainable as it claims to be? What about food safety?
Rising to the bait
It seems to be going well for Impossible Foods at least, which
has grown its restaurant partners globally by six fold over the
past year. In Singapore, Three Buns Quayside, one of the first
restaurants to add Impossible Foods products to its menu in the
form of two burgers, says both have been top sellers. “Reception
has been really good. People are buying it because they are
intrigued and want to try and see if they can tell the difference,”
says executive chef Adam Penney. “Even after the hype has died
down, people will still go for it.” Bread Street Kitchen by Gordon
Ramsay and CUT by Wolfgang Puck are also reporting positive
responses from diners regarding the plant-based patties and say
they may add more of such options to their menus.
On the lab-grown meat front, also known as cultured meat or
clean meat, there are no consumer studies here yet. But a 2016
survey in the US of 673 respondents found that 65% definitely or
likely to try it. Of those, a third said they would consume the
meat regularly, though only about 15% would pay more for such meat
compared with conventional meat.
Still, for fake meat and cultured meat to replace the animal
protein consumers are used to is a stretch, says Paul Teng, a
professor at the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies at the
S Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang
Technological University (NTU). “People are used to eating animal
protein and even though plant-based protein has become so much more
attractive, to actually compete as a food preference with animal
meat, that’s going to require a generational change, and that takes
roughly 30 years.”
Another question is whether the new food is as nutritious and
sustainable as the companies claim. So far, there are no long-term
studies on the impact the new food has on human health, ecosystems
and food supply chains. Agriculture industry groups in Missouri
have pressed the state into passing a law banning the use of the
term “meat” for food not harvested from livestock or poultry.
The proponents of these meat-replacement products assert that
the alternatives are even better than the original. For one,
lab-grown meats are just like genuine meat since they are grown
from stem cells, says Kelvin Ng, head of strategic innovation at
the Bioprocessing Technology Institute under the Agency for
Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).
Plant-based options are even better than lab-grown meats since
they are without the cholesterol inherent in meat, according to
Ricky Lin, founder of Singapore plant-based meat company Life3
Biotech. He says the food can even be engineered to be good for
health, for example by adding ingredients that help reduce
cholesterol in consumers.
On the sustainability front, companies such as Beyond Meat and
Impossible Foods have conducted life-cycle assessments, which
compare the greenhouse gas emissions and water and electricity use
in the entire process of producing these products with those in the
production of regular beef. Impossible Foods says in producing 1kg
of its “beef”, it uses 96% less land, produces 89% less greenhouse
gas emissions and 92% less aquatic pollutants while Beyond Burger
uses 99% less water, 93% less land, generates 90% fewer greenhouse
gas emissions and requires 46% less energy than that needed to
produce a regular beef burger.
Plant-based meat is also more sustainable because the industry
cuts out the middle process of using crops to feed the livestock.
Rather, the crops are immediately turned into “beef” in a
production facility that requires less water and space than
livestock would require. Says Kim Stengert, communications director
at WWF Singapore: “In meat substitutes, we’re eating the crops we
grow instead of feeding them to animals that we later eat, so the
environmental footprint will be smaller.”
Elaine Siu from the Good Food Institute notes: “According to the
World Resource Institute, it takes nine calories of corn, soy or
wheat to get just one calorie of edible chicken meat. That’s an
800% food waste. Growing more food means using that much more land,
water, fertiliser, fossil fuels, pesticides and herbicides. It is
inherently more efficient and sustainable to produce meat either
directly from plants, or growing the cells directly, instead of
growing the animal.”
Proof of the pudding
Ultimately, the factors holding back the mass adoption and
consumption of meat-replacement products are price and taste.
Impossible 2.0, for example, costs Penney from Three Buns
Quayside three times as much as regular beef - although, on the
plus side, it can keep for longer than beef and is more consistent
in terms of taste and quality. Penney makes a smaller profit by
pricing the Impossible Burgers at a more palatable rate for
consumers, they cost $27 each compared with $17 for a conventional
one with comparable ingredients.
Lab-grown meats are even more expensive because they are grown
in pharmaceutical-grade nutrient media and placed in bioreactors
that simulate the temperature considerations of a live body.
Indeed, another issue that they face is the texture and taste of
the meat replacements. But these issues industry watchers believe
can be easily overcome. The first lab-grown burger presented in
August 2013 cost US$330,000 to produce. By March 2016, Memphis
Meats had unveiled a lab-grown meatball at a cost of US$18,000 a
pound. A year later, it had chicken nuggets that cost US$6,000 a
pound.
Still, industry watchers do not expect a complete replacement of
livestock meat with plant- based and lab-grown alternatives. While
the food industry is innovating with alternative meats, the
agriculture industry has not been idle. Says Teng from NTU: “The
money invested in outdoor farming far outstrips indoor and cellular
farming, so there will be a lot of progress in outdoor farming.”
Adds Ghazalli: “We expect that fake meats and cultured meats will
gradually command a larger slice of the pie as the adoption rate
goes up and alternative meats become more popular, but it is likely
that both traditional and alternative meats will coexist in the
supermarket aisles.”
Finally, there is the socioeconomic aspect to the consumption of
these foods. The concept of clean eating is still very much a
privileged preference of the First World. “In low-income countries,
there are no viable substitutes for meat that can offer the same
caloric value, and complete substitution could be detrimental to
health. In addition, livestock farming provides income to about one
billion people, most of whom are in the lower-income group,”
Ghazalli says. “While it is easy to see the positive environmental
impact of replacing farmed meat, we also need to ensure the
socio-economic impacts, which can be very profound, are
mitigated.”
(adapted for academic purposes from The Edge Singapore, 6 May
2019)
Question 1
Evaluate three (3) macroenvironment forces and explain,
with supporting information, one (1) trend each that will impact
the growth and success of Impossible Meats and Beyond
Burger.
(Note: It is necessary to conduct secondary research and
support your discussions with evidence.)
(45 marks)
