Impossible Pork competitor says its vegan pork could make Asia more climate-friendly

For years, Jack Yap struggled to win meat lovers for his vegetarian restaurant chain in his home country of Malaysia. He offered discounts, spent more on marketing, and worked closely with in-house chefs to put creative dishes like a vegetarian Philly cheesesteak on the menu.

After working “without a penny” for four years, Yap began to accept the reality: conventional vegetarian food did not convince Malaysia’s carnivores to reduce their meat consumption or to eat in his restaurant. He finally realized that this would be a product that looked, tasted and smelled of meat.

Jump ahead until 2019 and Phuture foods, a company that produces vegetable “pork” is born. The 30-year-old Yap was the co-founder of the company with the vegetarian colleague and former real estate professional Jin Yin Lim. This month the company launched its first alternative meat product in Singapore despite the Corona virus Pandemic that forced Singapore to partially block and infected more than 2 million people around the world.

The Phuture Mince 3.0 product is a herbal alternative for ground pork and consists of more than 20 ingredients, including shiitake mushrooms, chickpeas, soybeans, peas and rice. It is available in a handful of restaurants in Singapore, where it is prepared in dishes such as dumplings and a traditional Asian noodle dish in a peanut broth called dandanmian. But it can be used in any recipe that requires ground pork.

Phuture Foods is part of a growing wave of startups worldwide looking for alternative meats to convince carnivores to eat less meat, or even to give it up entirely for a plant-based lifestyle. Like its well-known American competitors Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, Phuture Foods markets its products as more sustainable and environmentally friendly than conventional meat. This is especially important to take into account during the coronavirus pandemic, says Yap.

“COVID-19 has done so much damage in the past few months and disrupted the global food supply chain,” said Yap, who also serves as CEO of Phuture Foods. “We hope that plant-based meat can help reduce animal meat production. Instead of using valuable land resources to house animals and grow plants to feed animals, plants can be our new food source for meat production be plant-based. “”

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Reduction of animal husbandry

One of the main goals of many alternative meat proponents is to reduce animal husbandry, which is associated with a number of environmental problems, including the production of greenhouse gases that contribute to this Climate change, Lack of water and deforestation, experts say. Cattle matter Almost 15% of annual greenhouse gas emissions worldwide after United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Cows release a greenhouse gas called methane when they digest their feed, while deforestation to clear land for agriculture adds more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

“I can see that for people who are against meat consumption for moral, ethical or ecological reasons [meat-free] Products solve a problem, “says Marion Nestle, emeritus professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University. “”For me, they’re just another ultra-processed techno food. “

In addition to concerns about environmental damage, animal husbandry, and slaughter, the coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the threats the meat and wildlife trade industry poses to public health. After all, it is Corona virusIt is believed that COVID-19 disease came from a live animal market in central China’s Wuhan city last December.

“Animals bred to achieve an unnaturally high level of production and raised in exceptionally high population densities with unnatural diets and living conditions form the perfect seedbed for zoonotic diseases,” said Elaine Siu, executive director of the Good Food Institute Asia Pacific, a nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of the vegetable and cell-based protein alternative industry. “It is a coincidence when or which of these diseases take the plunge into the human species.”

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Decompose alternative proteins: plant-based versus cell-based

There are two main types of companies that produce alternative meat: vegetable and cell-based. Plant food startups such as Phuture Foods, Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat examine animal products at the molecular level and source plants with similar proteins and nutrients to produce “meat”. In the meantime, “clean meat” companies are growing meat in a laboratory from the cells of a live animal like a pig, which still leads to 100% real pork, but eliminates the need for animal slaughter and animal husbandry.

The exact recipe for Phuture Mince 3.0 is classified intellectual property, which, according to the company, took more than a year to develop with a team of food scientists in the United States.

“Pork is made from fat and lean meat. Our proprietary processing technology, which incorporates rice into our Phuture blend, gives the product a pleasantly greasy, juicy mouthfeel while maintaining a low-fat product,” said Alfred Cheung, chief science and technology officer at Phuture Foods. “The difficulty is to reproduce the greasy mouthfeel.”

According to Cheung, Phuture used “a blend of thermal processing, natural umami flavors and reaction flavors to give our product a really nice aromatic, crackling pork fat taste” after examining minced pork on a molecular level.

Proponents of alternative proteins say that they not only kill animals and simplify the meat supply chain, but also have less impact on the environment. According to the nonprofit organization Good Food InstitutePlant-based meat like Phuture Foods uses less land, less water and emits up to 90% less greenhouse gases than conventional meat processing.

“The main ingredients in vegetable meat have very low greenhouse gas emissions, and the additional processing accounts for only 13 to 26% of the climate impact of vegetable meat,” says the GFI website.

Greater appetite for alternative meat

With growing investment and research in the alternative meat industry, some environmental scientists have raised skepticism that alternative meat is better for the environment than red meat, but its production may emit more carbon than an unprocessed plant-based diet.

“Beyond and Impossible helps reduce your carbon footprint, but saying that this is the most climate-friendly – that’s a false promise,” said Marco Springmann, senior environmental researcher at Oxford University CNBC.

However you slice it, the alternative meat industry seems to be booming. It is estimated to be worth $ 140 billion over the next decade. after Barclays. It is expected to make up a larger share of the broader $ 1.4 trillion meat industry, driven by a growing population and appetite for meat.

In one 2018 report published in NatureSpringmann and a team of international researchers warned that a global shift to a “flexitarian” (vegetarian) or predominantly vegetarian diet is necessary to maintain a healthier planet. A 2019 Report of the UN climate panel also called for reduced meat consumption to support the fight against climate change.

The founders of Phuture Foods say they have ambitions to launch their meat-free product across Asia, particularly China, and to use Singapore as a springboard to the rest of the region. While beef and chicken are popular in the West, pork is essentially the king of meats in Asia according to some estimates The world’s most consumed meat, driven by demand in China.

“People like meat too much to give it away completely,” says Yap. “So I think this could be a game changer.”