We don't have time to wait for an
international consensus on something as
disastrous as climate change. We need to
employ every single lever at our
disposal and frankly that includes one
of the most powerful levers we have
which is capitalism and consumer choice. Impossible foods creates plant-based
alternatives to meat. Its first product,
the Impossible Burger, closely
approximates the look texture and taste
of traditional ground beef by using some
of the same molecules found in animal
meat but extracting them from plants instead.
It debuted in July of 2016 and
is now sold in roughly 17,000
restaurants worldwide. The company's
chief communications officer,
Rachel Conrad, says that impossible foods
mission is to help save the environment
through innovation. We have prioritized
cows over every other living species
they require massive amount of land
water and energy to produce a fairly
trivial amount of high-quality protein
so we want to do it much more directly
take high-quality protein from plants
and make it delicious and nutritious and
sustainable you can buy impossible
products at Dunkin Donuts White Castle
Burger King Whole Foods kotoba Red Robin
and other restaurants as of now it's
significantly more expensive than
traditional me but Conrad says that will
change the impossible burger uses about
80 percent less water about 90 percent
less energy and about 95 percent less
land okay great that's great by way the
environment but that also means we don't
need vast tracts a real estate for
pasture land and slaughterhouses and
transport and we don't need as much
water and we don't need as much energy
and so that actually over the long term
pushes the cost for us and ultimately
for the consumer down Conrad says
impossible Foods is introducing new meat
products in order of their potential
environmental and public health impact
the company's first priority was beef
but in January of 2020 the company
announced that the Consumer Electronics
Show in Las Vegas that it was adding two
new products impossible torque and
impossible sausage the company hasn't
yet announced when they'll be available
in stores pigs are a disaster for Public
Health when you look at these strains of
flu the current problems with African
swine fever is very clear that growing
pigs for meat in these concentrated
animal feeding Lots are creating huge
problems pigs consume a huge amount of
the antibiotics in the whole world which
is a leading cause of the antibiotic
resistance disaster that we are all
facing we need to really address the pig
question from both a sustainability
perspective and a public health
perspective Conrad says that the
impossible burger appeals not just to
the social consciousness and health
concerns of consumers but to their taste
buds about 95 percent of people who buy
the impossible burger are regularly
consuming animal derived products
whether that's dairy fish chicken or
conventional burgers from cows and and
we love that step and we we think that
it's great it really shows that we are
penetrating the actual market of meat
lovers impossible foods isn't the only
company with the mission of creating
more environmentally friendly
alternatives to raising and slaughtering
livestock others are attempting to grow
meat in a laboratory and aiming to
create whole cuts not just around me
Conrad is skeptical that these ventures
can be competitive in their pricing any
time soon we don't have time for $50,000
chicken nuggets you know we have time to
do something that that is immediate and
urgent and solves the biggest problem
that humanity faces you can do that by
eating plant-based meat do you foresee
going into let's say like steak or a
whole fish is that is that a different
ballgame when it's not ground meat that
you're talking about so yes know it we
definitely plan to go after those
markets there's no question that ground
beef is the biggest sector of of the
beef market in America it is obviously
best known in the form of the classic
American burger but it's in all sorts of
things from you know chili to meatballs
to tacos right so we wanted to go after
that first impossible food says it's
plant-based meat cooks and tastes like
the real thing the company's key
innovation here is heme the same
protein that makes blood red which
allows it simulated meat to bleed and
sear like a beef burger impossible foods
isolated the protein from soybeans and
developed a genetic engineering process
to manufacture it in bulk
impossible foods is super proud of our
genetic engineering a lot of the value
of the company a lot of the intellectual
property of the company comes from the
fact that we use cutting-edge R&D
including genetic engineering which is
probably one of the most significant
important advances of the 20th century
again there's been thousands of meta
studies around genetic engineering there
is absolutely zero negative consequence
to human health and well-being because
of genetic engineering what would you
say to people that are concerned about
let's say the long-term impacts of GMOs
that we can't measure yet the alarmist
concerns about about using GMOs we
haven't measured the negative
implications of GMOs because there
aren't any
we have tried again show me some data
that that shows that these are somehow
negative the actual body of scientific
literature on this shows that they are
completely safe meanwhile the meat
industry has been pushing for labeling
laws that clarify that impossible foods
products aren't the real thing on the
grounds that consumers might be confused
about what they're actually buying
that's obviously complete bullshit
consumers are absolutely certain of what
they're buying when they buy our product
which is why we've seen such
stratospheric growth they're really
talking about how either meat or milk
should be reserved for products that
come from animals harvested from
traditional livestock I i've breastfed
my children I know this is like way too
much information for you but you know
according to the actual labeling laws
that were starting to see pitched in
various states I would actually have
been serving my infants I don't know
breast beverage so basically something
as unappealing to a consumer as possible
exactly yeah this is again it's all part
and parcel of this idea that man
combin industry we know we're facing an
existential threat we can't fight them
on the sustainability on the taste
because you know we are really rivaling
animal products for for taste they are
trying to fight us from a marketing and
communications perspective fighting by
spreading fear uncertainty and doubt and
as you said there's this whisper
campaign and like there was an article
published in an livestock industry
publication that claimed that for
impossible whoppers contained enough
estrogen to grow boobs on a male so can
you just respond to that claim and maybe
any of the others that you've seen
floating around the reality is that
there is no estrogen in our product you
know I mean this is all bs there's sort
of phytoestrogen from plants but
thousands of scientific studies show
that that that's totally healthy and in
fact you know most Asian societies
consume vastly more than we do and not
only are they totally safe the men of
Japan aren't growing boobs but the
reality is that they're living longer
and they're healthier than we are a lot
of environmental groups or climate
action groups have explicitly embraced
the idea that capitalism is at the root
of all these problems and that it's sort
of an evil system that needs to be
toppled before we can do anything about
that
you've explicitly taken sort of the
opposite approach so what would be your
response to those types of arguments I
mean I would actually sideline that
entire debate the reality is that we
don't have time to shift the economic
system in the entire world in order to
fix it in order to then fix climate
change if governments and international
protocols and consensus is could somehow
be employed awesome that would that
would be great
but but I really do think that we need
to leverage every single thing that we
can and I don't know if you're gonna
find a more powerful lever right now
than capitalism
and consumer demand and consumers
rational behavior
