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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: 3, Funny) by ilPapa on Thursday May 09 2019, @03:33PM (21 children)
They should have called it, "MyMeat". Think of the advertising possibilities.
I give them credit for not going with "iMeat", which you know someone in marketing suggested, but "Beyond Meat" kind of creeps me out.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Alfred on Thursday May 09 2019, @04:05PM (19 children)
(Score: 3, Funny) by nitehawk214 on Thursday May 09 2019, @04:37PM (5 children)
I had a vegan waitress tell me she doesn't eat the Impossible Burger because she heard it tastes too much like meat.
I had to try it, and she is right, it really does replicate the texture of a medium burger. I rather liked it.
I'm not sure if she found it funny when I ordered it with bacon.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 09 2019, @05:03PM (3 children)
Beyond Bacon.
People won't know it's not bacon.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2, Informative) by nitehawk214 on Thursday May 09 2019, @05:35PM (2 children)
I have tried "Turkey Bacon".
It is an abomination that should be banned from Earth. It tastes wrong, the texture is wrong, it burns easily. It isn't even healthier than regular bacon, too.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday May 09 2019, @06:04PM (1 child)
It's shocking how bad of a copy turkey bacon is. I can tolerate eating it, but I definitely don't seek it out, and it gives other meat substitutes/swaps a bad name.
Ground turkey is actually a decent replacement for ground beef, and its milder flavor could be better in some dishes. But turkey bacon is a weird thing, probably because the fat portion is done completely wrong (and there's 1/3 less fat). It turns into a chip instead of crispy. And I know people who microwave it...
But what's this about it being less healthy than regular bacon? This page [clevelandclinic.org] claims that you could eat too much of it because you perceive it as healthier, but I haven't heard of turkey bacon being worse for you ounce for ounce.
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(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday May 10 2019, @07:13PM
The thing I looked at showed there was about the same calories in Turkey Bacon as Bacon Bacon. However, I did not delve much too deeply into it.
If you chop it up and toss it into a soup or something, it is fine. That is what I ended up doing with the rest that I had. But for the traditional bacon applications it is entirely inappropriate.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 09 2019, @05:04PM
Whenever someone tells me they are vegan my first thought is "welcome to planet Earth".
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday May 09 2019, @05:57PM (9 children)
I personally do want to move that way, eventually. We should have plant/fungi-based substitutes or lab-grown meat, especially if we are talking about living and working in space, on Mars, etc.
Ground rules include: the substitute or lab-grown version ought to be cheaper than the meat it is replacing. No virtue signaling expensive purchase for me, like "organic" food.
The heme-bleeding Impossible Burger seems like a good direction to go in. Not that the substitutes need to precisely mimic meat to the extent that you can be fooled into thinking it is meat (a black bean burger is fine too), but they should give it a shot.
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(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Thursday May 09 2019, @06:47PM (2 children)
Lab-grown meat is still meat. Perhaps a better name would be Beyond Sentience or Beyond Biological?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday May 09 2019, @07:31PM
It's a qualifier. You've got Kobe beef out there, and you have pink slime. Lab-grown meat could encompass the whole spectrum, but it is made in a non-traditional way and is already facing intense opposition from the established livestock industry.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 09 2019, @08:22PM
Soylent Green?
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Thursday May 09 2019, @07:10PM (3 children)
You are right on about developments for space travel and having products that have a status/signal attached to them. Seeing how they couldn't get the biosphere 2 thing to work out right I don't want to be on a spaceship unless there have been significant strides in food quality and production.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 09 2019, @08:21PM (2 children)
I haven't ditched meat. I just had some today. But I am pretty sure that I could go weeks, months, or years without it, and that is what I will shoot for at some point down the road. One way to look at it is: if shit hit the fan and you had to become a subsistence farmer (maybe with some robot assistance), would it be more efficient to raise livestock or grow plants for meat substitutes? There's also an animal suffering argument that is compelling for some people, although we can only care about that so much (it's a first world problem).
We are entering a golden age of meatless products. Early versions like Boca and Morningstar were tolerable or kinda bad, rubbery nonsense. The marketing was very premature, laughably portraying people fooled into eating meatless products, when the actual difference was obvious. Just like nobody would mistake turkey bacon for the real thing. But in the last decade or so there was a lot of engineering as Silicon Valley types started pursuing the ideas further and throwing money at it (you've got Bill Gates investing in egg substitutes [npr.org], for example), and that has resulted in a new generation of meat substitutes that can credibly replace actual meat [pri.org]. To the extent that eating it would probably disgust some vegans/vegetarians as they are not used to it. Check out the photo [pri.org] in the article, showing a technician pouring heme. Lol.
There is probably some unnecessary tension between meat eaters and vegetarians/vegans because of activism [youtube.com], PETA, and meat eaters having bad experiences with overhyped beta-version meat substitutes. But now people are getting curious again and finding that Impossible Burger tastes like meat. Dressing it up also helps disguise it. Apparently, I tried someone's leftover Impossible Burger from Cheesecake Factory two days ago. It was good, but I'll have to try it fresh sometime.
Lab-grown meat is a whole different story. With lab-grown meat, there is the potential to precisely replicate traditional meat, create novelty cuts of meat (rearrange meat, fat, and bone cells in new ways), with no ambiguity (other than industry FUD) that the substance *is* meat. It obviously isn't ready for the prime time, and if it was we would probably have similar stuff like 3D printed organs and bones in widespread use, when we clearly don't. But it's probably coming, and we could eventually see a situation where the market says you can't have anything but lab-grown meat unless you make a special order to a small farm or go to a fancy restaurant. Meat substitutes and meat can co-exist, meat substitutes and lab-grown meat can co-exist, but will all three co-exist after a few decades? Not for most people.
Of course, there is another option. Be like Gaaark and eat mealworms and crickets. Some people are used to this and even enjoy it, others see it as a slap in the face or a globalist plot (refer to Snowpiercer for more... details). We'll see if space travelers and Martians are forced to eat bugs.
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(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday May 09 2019, @11:35PM (1 child)
Oh, you mean that shiny yellowish luster? That's fools gold
(grin)
Seriously though, the Chinese developed their cooking so that will eat things well beyond what the Westernized world would (i.e. they could adjust to a lack of meat in their food easier than the westerners). And I don't see them giving up meat as yet, on the contrary.
What this says about the "golden age of meatless products " is left as a homework.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 10 2019, @12:02AM
I say golden age because there are more choices, more investments, consumers spending more money on it, better taste, etc. More fast food places carrying these is also a very interesting trend, with a lot of action in just the last few months.
https://vegnews.com/2016/2/meatless-meat-market-will-reach-52-billion-by-2020 [vegnews.com]
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/07/business/mcdonalds-meatless-burger-germany/index.html [cnn.com]
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(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Friday May 10 2019, @02:22AM (1 child)
I give the substitutes a free pass on high price for a few years because the meat industry has huge economies of scale and government subsidies (free access to public water and land in some places, etc...) But if these things become more popular and the price doesn't go down, the free pass will be revoked.
I haven't had the Impossible Burger. I find veggie burgers that don't even attempt to taste like meat to be decent, but not as good as a good beef burger. I find most veggie burgers that try to be meat substitutes to be awful. The Beyond Meat Burger is the first vegan burger that provides a texture identical to a good beef burger and a taste close enough that I can tell there's a difference but I don't mind it.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 10 2019, @02:34AM
It's at various places and it might cost double that of a regular burger.
https://www.thecheesecakefactory.com/menu/glamburgers-and-sandwiches/impossible-burger/ [thecheesecakefactory.com]
The real tipping point will be when it comes to all ~7,200 U.S. Burger King locations, expected sometime this year:
https://www.denverpost.com/2019/05/07/burger-king-meatless-impossible-whopper-nationwide/ [denverpost.com]
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(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.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Thursday May 09 2019, @05:50PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings