The future of meat made from vegetable protein and also that created with animal cells grown in bioreactors seems uncertain. Consumers are turning their backs on it, if we look at the economic results of many of the companies that in their day were the pioneers and leaders in this sector, which promised to offer a product that had the same flavor and texture as meat -and that it even bled–, but that it did not come from a slaughtered animal, with the advantages that this implied for the environment, health and animal welfare.
In the opinion of Francesc Xavier Medina, anthropologist and director of the Unesco Chair for Food, Culture and Development, "the boom in novelty that these products brought about has passed, without them being able to be competitive and do well in comparison with animal meat”.
In addition, the chorus of the song that repeated that vegans and veggies did not eat meat exclusively for these three reasons – health, environmental concern and animalism – and not because they did not like its taste also seems worn out today like that of a song from the summer in the middle of november.
A refrain that said that this fake meat tasted the same as that of animal origin and that it has ended up presenting a double problem. For one thing, it wasn't true. It is one thing that many people do not back down from its flavor and eat it, and another that thanks to flavorings such as valerian, it has an earthy flavor that can be reminiscent of meat. On the other hand, many people have ended up assuming a cognitive dissonance to eat something that tastes like a food that they are ethically convinced is bad to eat, for no matter what the reason. In the end, the taste has been important.
But things are better understood in their context and what families have had to face since the war in Ukraine began has not been the best. Inflation has hit family budgets hard, especially because of the rise in food prices and the rise in interest rates. This general increase in the cost of living has meant that the most expensive products have seen their demand cut.
And imitation meat can be much more expensive. Two Beyond Meat hamburgers of 113 g each cost 5.95 euros, which puts the price per kilo close to 25 euros, far from the 10 to 15 euros that animal meat can cost to make hamburgers. In this sense, the main problem "is that there is not a sufficient mass of customers to make this an economically profitable product," says Medina.
In this way, for example, the quarterly sales of Beyond Meat – one of the pioneering companies – have fallen by 31% in the last quarter. This company that in 2019 had a value of more than 10,000 million dollars, five years later is worth less than 1,000 million and the value of its shares has been reduced by 85%.
The unknown is, if once this subsistence crisis is over, "demand will recover, which could happen" -says Medina- or it will be confirmed that plant-based meat has definitely lost favor with consumers, because what also It is indisputable is that there is beginning to be a certain distrust of its benefits.
This was acknowledged by Beyond Meat's own executive director, Ethan Brown, who in a videoconference with his investors assured that the company was struggling to attract new customers due to the perception that its products are unhealthy and excessively processed. "Consumers look for products that solve their problems, if they don't, they don't buy them," adds the anthropologist.
The reality is that reading the label of a package of its hamburgers –or those of any product in the same sector– is to find that among its 20 or 30 ingredients many are additives –the famous E-XXX– commonly used by the large food industry. of the ultra-processed. Comparisons can be difficult if when you buy hamburgers in a supermarket and check the ingredient label it reads only “100% beef”, regardless of whether or not it is true and what type of meat is not specified. exploitation –macrofarms or extensive livestock– comes the meat. Everything is further complicated because for a long time there have been products that are also an alternative to protein of animal origin and that are also much cheaper and are little or not processed at all, such as tofu, tempeh (fermented soybeans and mold) and legumes. If the argument that they are healthier products than the original is dropped, serious problems really begin, as Brown recognized.
In this sense, the great explosion of meat substitute products that has occurred has not helped either. Companies like Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods were born in the heat of Silicon Valley and presented themselves as disruptive companies that were going to change the food industry, making it cleaner, healthier and even fairer. But there was the large traditional food industry that immediately saw another business niche. Seeing yourself on the refrigerated shelves of supermarkets next to the products of large corporations has ended up contaminating the image of these companies that presented themselves as something new and different, and the consumer has ended up putting them in the same bag.
And of course, we are not talking about a common consumer. To think that fake meat burgers are only for vegans is a mistake. In fact, they do not eat those that are made from animal cells. Vegans, for example, represent barely 1% of the population in Spain. There is no business there and that is why the target is between 10 and 15% of people who define themselves as flexiterian or veggie friendly. People for whom issues such as health and the environmental cost of what they eat are important. If the perception of this type of consumer is that a product does not meet these characteristics, they will not buy it, explains Medina.
In this sense, the American organization Center for Food Safety insisted on this aspect, when it said that "replacing conventional animal products with ultra-processed, little-studied and little-regulated genetically engineered products is not the solution to our climate crisis and factory farms." ”.
Finally, in recent years the meat industry has put its batteries to convince consumers that another livestock is possible. A good handful of scientific studies have appeared that question whether meat production cannot be more respectful of the environment. There is no denying their environmental costs, but perhaps another reason for declining sales of these products is that the general public is coming to a more nuanced position on the meat production process.
