Let’s be honest, many of us have a hard time resisting meat. We might have heard about the negative impacts of meat consumption, but we can’t help but be seduced by it – by its taste, its smell or even just by seeing it! This urge doesn’t come as a surprise when we look at the history of our species. It is believed that we owe much of our energy-hungry brains to the cooking and consumption of meat. Thus, according to Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham, we are a species “designed to love meat”. Unfortunately, traditional meat production comes with serious drawbacks such as energy-inefficiency, contribution to climate change, excessive land use, water waste, and the breeding of super pathogens.

A solution to these problems would be to provide a substitute, something which still tastes like meat, but doesn’t quite have the negative consequences tied to it. Here plant-based and cell-based meat come in and may very well revolutionize the industry. Plant-based meat boasts a track-record of growth in China and a tradition reaching back hundreds of years. Buddhist monasteries offered vegetarian food as early as a thousand years ago. Pilgrims could feast on sophisticated imitations of anything from “shark’s fin” to “abalone”. What’s more, plant-based products appeal to a large portion of today’s population, with Chinese customers almost twice as likely to spend money on these products than customers in the US. With China’s plant-based meat industry still in its infancy, product quality is bound to improve and become more competitive in the future.

The other big meat alternative is meat grown from stem-cells, often referred to as cultivated or clean meat, since it doesn’t harm any animals in the process. Since the first lab-grown burger was presented in 2013, prices of cultured meat have been falling dramatically. In 2018 the Dutch start-up Mosa Meat projected the cost of a hamburger to be around 10 USD within a year from now, based on technologies currently available. Being tightly controllable during production, cultured meat has the potential to offer a superior product in terms of taste, variety and quality of ingredients. Moreover, it will be vastly more sustainable than its traditional counterpart and a dramatic improvement from an animal welfare perspective. Most importantly, its underlying technologies have been successfully demonstrated with investments and research ramping up to bring it to market.

Mounting a significant challenge to the status quo of the industry, meat alternatives are likely to change the market forever – and benefit us in the process of it. Join us to learn more about Planted Foods and Avant Meats, two up-and-coming players in this field.

16:00-16:05               Introduction
(Tobias Bolli – Junior Project Manager Academic Relations at Swissnex in China)

 

16:05-16:30               Presentation and Q&A
(Carrie Chan – Co-Founder & CEO of Avant Meats Company Limited)

 

16:30-16:55               Presentation and Q&A
(Pascal Bieri – Co-Founder at Planted Foods)

 

16:55-17:00               Conclusion