Patrick Brown is on a mission: to eradicate the meat and fish industries by 2035. The CEO of Impossible Foods, a California-based company that makes genetically engineered plant-based meat, is deadly serious. No more commercial livestock farming or fishing. No more steak, fish and chips or roast dinners, at least not as you know them.
In their place, his company’s scientists and food technicians will create plant-based substitutes for every animal product used today in every region of the world, he promises.
“I want to put the animal agriculture industry out of business. It’s that simple. The goal is not because I have any ill will toward the people who work in that industry, but because it is the most destructive industry on Earth,” Brown says.
Impossible Pork and Impossible Sausage were added to its portfolio of GMO plant-based meat substitutes in 2020, part of the company’s “worst first” approach that targets the most environmentally damaging livestock consumed by humans. Milk and fish equivalents are in development in its laboratories.
“To the outside world, Impossible Foods is a food company – but at its heart [it] is an audacious yet realistic strategy to turn back the clock on climate change and stop the global collapse of biodiversity,” Brown wrote in the company’s 2020 impact report.
