If the American fake-meat darlings Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have their way, chef Raymond Xie will soon be able to use their meatier patties. The problem is, he doesn’t want to. “I want to use real fruits and vegetables,” he said.
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Plenty of Chinese people share the skepticism about American-style, plant-based imitation meat, a fact Beyond Meat and Impossible are about to confront. Both are hungrily eyeing China, which accounts for 27% of the world’s meat consumption by volume. The recent outbreak of African Swine Fever has driven up the price of pork and primed consumers for alternatives, and if the American companies can win over even a small fraction of the country’s 1.4 billion people, the opportunity is massive.
“We want to be as aggressive as we can,” Beyond Meat Chief Executive Officer Ethan Brown said in an interview with Bloomberg in October. The company …. wants to have production running there before the end of 2020.
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In November, [Impossible Foods] brought almost 50,000 samples of its eponymous meatless beef to attendees at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai. Chief executive officer Pat Brown told Bloomberg that it already had a “very good” prototype of plant-based pork.
Read full, original article: US firms Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods eye China for growth
