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After exiting Beyond Meat, Tyson Foods will launch meatless products this summer
After exiting Beyond Meat, Tyson Foods said that it will roll out its own plant-based meat substitutes beginning this summer.
The Jimmy Dean owner sold its stake in Beyond before the company went public, citing its desire to produce vegetarian meat substitutes under its own umbrella of brands. CEO Noel White told analysts on the quarterly conference call Monday that the plant-based product will launch this summer on a limited basis, with a wider rollout in October and November.
[...] Beyond made the strongest market debut so far this year on Thursday, surging 163%. The stock has a market value of $3.97 billion, dwarfed by Tyson's own market value of $22.66 billion. Tyson shares gained more than 2% Monday.
Despite the difference in market value, Beyond and other makers of plant-based meat alternatives — such as Impossible Foods — pose a threat to Tyson. Beyond Meat's CEO, Ethan Brown, told CNBC that the company is trying to capture the meat industry's customers. Its gluten- and soy-free products are meant to more closely resemble and taste like meat than previous iterations of veggie burgers.
Also at CNN.
See also: Beyond Meat goes public with a bang: 5 things to know about the plant-based meat maker
Competitors Sink Their Teeth Into The Meatless-Meat Industry
(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday May 10 2019, @02:16AM (2 children)
I grew up in rural Queensland, Australia... cattle properties (ie. rangeland) could be mistaken for wilderness. I used to camp as a child along breathtakingly beautiful rivers and wetlands, surrounded by rugged and sparsely wooded hills interspersed with the occasional ancient lava flow - all rangeland. Cropping on the other hand has destroyed whole ecosystems, even down to worms, insects, fungus and bacteria - the dirt is dead, let alone the wildlife... (though in recent years they're trying zero till with grain crops to in an attempt to be less harsh on the soil). Land rich and wet enough for cropping is rare, especially in this part of the world. Unfortunately this rare land has largely been cleared of the rainforest habitats it once supported to grow bananas, pineapples, and especially sugar cane... and now 90% of Queenslands rainforrest is gone. We've certainly got plenty of semi-arid land, but this is good for cattle and not much else. In the cooler parts of Australia farming these more marginal lands happens, but is very [theguardian.com] ecologically [sa.gov.au] destructive [sa.gov.au]. It's the same story in east vs west Africa : the Maasai Mara had to be set aside after trophy hunting and poaching got out of control, but large scale nomadic cattle herding itself didn't endanger the ecosystem. There is some evidence that this part of africa was quite densely populated before the arrival of europeans, with early visitors commenting on its remarkable biodiversity. Recently however the Maasai have started becoming more sedentary and have started subdividing the land into tiny plots, but that's another story. West Africa slashes and burns the bush to grow plantains etc... , and pillages what remains for the bushmeat trade to satisfy the protein hunger that comes from living on such a diet. I'm all for animal welfare, and think best practice should be enforced, but I think replacing grass fed animal protien with a plant based diet is ecologically stupid - it requires destroying what little rainforrest remains, and making poor use of semi-arid grasslands. To my mind it's up there with making biodiesel from palm oil.
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Friday May 10 2019, @02:07PM (1 child)
Also, I can't imagine anyone but government being the primary enforcer of best practices and I can't imagine how bad the government definition of "best" is.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday May 10 2019, @03:03PM
Historically government in Australia has done a good job with the environment, and even with the economy... but we're starting to catch up with the rest of the world with corruption eg. the Darling River system is dying because a few large cotton farmers bribed the government to be able to overextract irrigation water... and then went on to illegally extract beyond their overgenerous allocation (which went unpunished). Huge stretches of river are now stagnant and dead, which is unprecedented.