Page 26 - Food & Drink Business August 2018

MEAT, FISH & POULTRY
Meat
the future
With the era of alternative protein upon us, Amanda Bryan explores the potential implications for Australian processors.
✷ FUTURE IN FOCUS
ALTERNATIVE proteins are flavour of the month as plant- based burger patties hit the market looking and tasting almost the same as their meat-based counterparts. The two big players in the space – Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat – are both now ramping up seriously in the US food service market.
Adding weight to the trend is the rise of a new breed of producers creating high protein food and feed ingredients from single-cell proteins (derived from cells of yeast, fungi, algae, and bacteria) and insects (from crickets, fruit flies, grass- hoppers, and mealworms).
Although still in their infancy, market growth in these industries is high, and experts are urging the world’s meat manufacturers to prepare now for inevitable disruption.
“In line with their processing partners, meat producers need to recognise what is driving these substitutes, and do what they can to tap into the desire for healthy, sustainable and novel products delivered through a supply chain that consumers trust,” Rabobank’s GM of Food & Agribusiness Research in Australia and New Zealand Tim Hunt says.
LAB-GROWN FUTURE
US meat giants Cargill and Tyson Foods are taking heed. These companies have taken
strategic stakes (alongside the likes of Richard Branson and Bill Gates) in California-based cultured meat company Memphis Meats. This company, and others like it, are preparing to scale up lab-grown meat products in coming years.
Mark Post, the co-founder of a Netherlands-based cultured meat startup Mosa Meat (see box), says the use of this technology in Australia makes sense in light of our harsh weather conditions, our
takes five or 50 years to get there, the industry needs to figure out what it wants to do about it,” Wiskar says.
Wiley recently created a short, animated video entitled Cows Might Fly that presented an (albeit unlikely) technology- focused future for the meat industry. The video aimed to provoke conversation, and to remind us that change and disruption is inevitable, according to the company.
FRESH FROM
THE LAB
Netherlands company Mosa Meat made the world’s first lab-grown hamburger in 2013. While the cost of that pattie was $330,000, the cost will fall to about $60 for a kilo in the next few years as the technology scales up, and is expected to eventually cost the same as regular meat.
Mark Post, the company’s co-founder, who was interviewed at The Australian’s 6th Global Food Forum in Sydney recently, says it’s not yet a great tasting product.
“The first versions had no fat in it, so it was kind of dry, but with the umami taste. When cooked, it has the same browning and the same sort of crust.
“However, moving from a hamburger to a rib-eye or a full thickness steak, that requires additional technology and will take another couple of years. Its more complex, but it’s doable,” Post says.
He predicts that demand will come first from western Europe, and that animal welfare concerns will drive uptake.
“In terms of traceability, this will also make life simpler,” Post says.
“ There are numerous companies now trying to synthesise protein products outside of an animal.”
proximity to Asia, and to ease animal welfare concerns.
“Australia is ideally positioned to be a big producer, and an exporter to Asian countries ,” Post says.
Unlike its overseas counterparts, however, the Australian red meat industry has yet to adopt a position on alternative proteins, notes Brett Wiskar, the R&D and innovation director at design build and consulting business Wiley.
“There are numerous companies now trying to synthesise protein products outside of an animal. Whether they take two per cent or 80 per cent of the market, and if it
UNLIKELY FRIENDS
According to Wiskar, the evolution of lab-grown meat could have potential advantages for traditional meat companies as an add-on to their operations.
“For a meat processor with a value-adding facility, lab-grown meat would be the ideal complementary product, as these companies already have the capability to keep their products cold and the packaging know-how.”
Moreover, he says, alternative protein production could provide processors with cost benefits when it comes to its lower requirements for land, transport,waterandpower. ✷
26 | Food&Drink business | August 2018 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au