Impossible Dumplings and Beyond Buns: Will China Buy Fake Meat?
Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat want to expand to the Chinese market but face significant governmental and cultural hurdles.
nytimes.com
As an early sign of how Impossible Foods’ plant-based meat may fare in China, the placement of the company’s booth at the International Import Expo in Shanghai was not particularly auspicious.
Impossible Foods was relegated to the fringes of a cavernous convention center, surrounded by entrepreneurs with far less expansive ambitions than the transformation of the global meat industry. To one side of its booth in November was a company that sells sliding glass doors. Also nearby: a purveyor of Persian rugs.
“It was kind of obscure,” said Pat Brown, the chief executive of Impossible Foods. “Some far corner of this vast, insanely huge space.”
Over the last couple of years, Impossible Foods and its main rival, Beyond Meat, have gone from start-ups with niche followings to major American food companies. They have struck deals with fast-food chains like McDonald’s and Burger King, and earned plaudits for their efforts to replace animal products with plant-based substitutes that are healthier and less harmful to the environment.
Now the companies are looking to make inroads in a potentially even more profitable market with a major environmental footprint: China, the world’s largest consumer of meat. Meat production is a leading cause of climate change, experts say, and the growing demand for pork and beef in China has fueled much of that environmental damage, from water shortages and heat waves to deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.
“Every time someone in China eats a piece of meat, a little puff of smoke goes up in the Amazon,” Mr. Brown said. “It is an absolutely essential and extremely important market for us.”
But selling plant-based meat to mainland China will not be easy. Beyond Meat is available in dozens of countries, while Impossible Foods has sold its product in Singapore, Macau and Hong Kong. And the two companies have overcome pushback in the United States from cattle farmers, meat lobbyists and restaurants like Arby’s.
China, however, presents a different set of political and cultural hurdles, which other American food brands have found difficult to overcome. The complex regulatory process involves a web of state agencies that Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat will have to navigate. And then there is a more existential question: Will the Chinese public buy plant-based meat?
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