Millennials and Gen Z driving boom in faux meat investment

When it comes to healthy and compassionate eating it’s millennials and Gen Z who lead the way, driving booming investment into plant-and cell-based meat production.

They see the noxious impact of intensive animal farming, health, and carbon emissions and demand solutions; venture capital has taken note.  The global plant-based meat market is expected to reach $78 billion by 2025.

This is explosive.

“The use of animals as a technology in food production is, by a huge margin, the most destructive technology on Earth,” notes Pat Brown, CEO and founder of Impossible Foods, an award-winning plant-based meat company.

The Impossible Burger, named top plant-based burger by the New York Times, uses 96% less land, 87% less water, and 89% fewer emissions than a beef burger.

Growth has been huge, and European approval is pending. The US brand also applied for UK approval post-Brexit.

Impossible Foods has raised billions since it was founded in 2011, and investors are eagerly anticipating an IPO – possibly this year.

This success is mirrored by other providers. US plant-based animal-protein alternatives raised $2.7 billion in venture capital in the last decade, according to the Good Food Institute (GFI). The Washington-based non-profit says 45% of that was raised in 2019 and Q1 of 2020.

Making money from plant-based alternatives can be lucrative. Beyond Meat went public in May 2019 at $25/share; savvy investors, according to Yahoo Finance, sold shares three months later at $160/share.

Despite growth in faux meat, global meat consumption has never been higher, and is forecast to soar 70% in the next seven years.  EU citizens on average munch through 152 pounds of meat each year; Americans consume a staggering 200 pounds.

“Convincing the world to eat less meat hasn’t worked. For 50 years environmentalists, global health experts, and animal activists have been begging the public to eat less meat. And yet, per-capita meat consumption is the highest it has been in recorded history,” Bruce Friedrich, GFI Executive Director told a TEDx audience.

Friedrich says the solution is for meat to be produced in a whole new way, either from plants or grown from cells. While it takes six weeks to grow a chicken for slaughter, from cells it takes ‘three weeks.’

Cell-based meat is for consumers who enjoy meat and fish but want to minimise the effect of intensive animal farming and fishing on the planet – it’s a burgeoning industry and investment in cultured meat start-ups is rocketing.  Cultivated meat companies, says GFI, raised 417% more in all of 2019 than they had before. Leading the way is US-based Memphis Meat which raised $186 million in January.

“We love meat. We see it as an essential part of a balanced diet. However, we are pioneering a way to produce real tasty meat without harming animals or the planet. It isn’t like meat, it’s meat,” says Dutch-based company Meatable. The company is on track to present its first prototype in late 2020 and aims to have its products in stores by 2025.

Globally, over a dozen companies are working on faux meat and fish prototypes with big business and venture capital weighing in. However, production costs, while dropping, are still high and large-scale production will be a challenge. There are governmental barriers to commercialisation, and tough competition from the heavily-subsidised global farming industry.

Some forward-thinking governments, though, have spotted an opportunity. Japan has awarded a $2.2 million grant to IntegriCulture to build a commercial site for cell-agriculture projects. And in Brazil, GFI has partnered with a leading university to offer the first-ever postgraduate course in cultivated meat – Brazil is a huge consumer and producer of meat.

“We need to feed a population of nearly 10 billion by 2050 and learn to reduce food production’s negative impact on the environment,” says Katherine de Matos, a scientific advisor and course creator at the Federal University of Parana, Brazil.

The future of meat has arrived.

Article written by Julia Thompson- United Kingdom