Fake meat sales plummet amid falling demand
Fake meat giant Beyond Meat’s revenue plunged over 30% for the second quarter compared to last year as consumers turn to real meat.
The California-based company also slashed its annual sales forecast from $375m–$415m to $360m–$380m “in light of greater than expected consumer and category headwinds and their anticipated impact on net revenues,” according to The Telegraph. Last year, the company was forced to cut a fifth of its workforce as its stock dropped nearly 80%.
Beyond Meat, founded in 2009 to “fight climate change,” counts globalist billionaire Bill Gates as one of its investors. It has since supplied its plant-based fake meat to McDonalds, Dunkin’ Donuts, Taco Bell, Walmart and PepsiCo. In 2013, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) named Beyond Meat “Company of the Year” and the company has been endorsed by several Hollywood celebrities.
Frontline News reported last year that Beyond Meat was distributing its fake Beyond Burger to 1,600 supermarkets throughout Germany as the country moves to reduce livestock to “fight climate change.”
Beyond Meat is not the only player in the fake meat industry. It primarily competes with Impossible Foods, which also provides plant-based meat, and Upside Foods, which provides lab-grown meat. All three companies are backed by Gates, who has clarified that government regulation may be needed to force people to transition to fake meat.
“I don’t think the poorest 80 countries will be eating synthetic meat,” Gates told the MIT Technology Review. “I do think all rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef. You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they’re going to make it taste even better over time. Eventually, that green premium is modest enough that you can sort of change the [behavior of] people or use regulation to totally shift the demand.”
But nutrition experts have been warning against fake meat. Nutritionist and Sacred Cow: The Case for (Better Meat) author Diana Rodgers says lab-grown meat, such as that sold by Upside Foods, is still not as healthy as McDonalds.
“I’d rather eat my shoe than lab-grown meat,” Rodgers stated.
British investigative food journalist Joanna Blythman warns against even plant-based meat, which she says sometimes contain up to 30 artificial ingredients.
“Artificial plant-based proteins tend to be loaded with 'anti-nutrients' - compounds that make it harder for our guts to absorb beneficial macro and micronutrients,” Blythman wrote in an article for the Daily Mail. “Essentially, it's less digestible than real meat, and certainly less nutritious.”
While Gates and his World Economic Forum (WEF) colleagues hope to significantly reduce meat consumption by 2030 and, ideally, phase it out completely by 2050, Blythman says the global real meat industry is forecasted to rise up to 7% annually.
There are also significant concerns about fake meat’s purported contribution to the climate. Plants require fertilizer, processing and shipping, too, and lab-grown meat is also expected to be environmentally taxing.
A preprint study published in April by University of California, Davis researchers found that if fake meat becomes as widely accepted as globalists would like, it could be extremely harmful to the climate.
The researchers found that the production process for fake meat emits 246 to 1,508 kg of carbon dioxide per kilogram of fake meat, while retail meat production produces only about 60 kg of CO2 per kilogram. According to the scientists’ estimates, producing fake meat is 4 to 25 times worse for the climate than real beef.
“Currently, animal cell-based meat products are being produced at a small scale and at an economic loss, however companies are intending to industrialize and scale-up production,” the scientists opine in the study.
“Results indicate that the environmental impact of near-term animal cell-based meat production is likely to be orders of magnitude higher than median beef production if a highly refined growth medium is utilised,” they concluded.
