![]() Some entrepreneurs say they’re learning from the recent hardships in the sector. ![]() Making money in the current financial environment is still hard, though the company laid off 20% of its staff in September to cut costs.Ī version of this story also appears in the Climate is Everything newsletter. “That's what Meati is doing right now, is becoming the brick and mortar of the alternative meat category,” Fadel says. The alt-protein space, he says, is akin to boomtown Denver in the 19th century, when the gold rush attracted settlers who built wooden structures, which later burned down and were replaced by more sturdy brick and mortar buildings. But over a beer at the Denver Westin, Morrad Fadel, VP of innovation and commercialization at vegan chicken and steak company Meati, said that thinning out the competition can give good products more room to shine. Meati, a company that makes vegan chicken and steak alternatives out of mycelium, the thin, rootlike structures grown by mushrooms, laid off 20% of their staff in September to cut costs. It seemed that sophisticated faux-burgers would be able to cut into meat’s market share-and its environmental impacts-where tofu and tempeh couldn’t, and the era of peak meat seemed to be at hand.įor some people at the conference, though, it wasn't all bad news. That innovation, and the big money fueling it, buoyed spirits amongst people who wanted to cut meat consumption for ethical or environmental reasons. Big early players like Beyond Meat and Impossible were growing fast, while venture capitalists were plowing cash into new, smaller competitors. This is a stark contrast to just a couple years ago when spirits were high across the alt-meat world. “I can’t stand up onstage and tell people that everything is going perfectly well, because at the end of day, that’s the number I look at,” he says. What really matters to Kateman is how much meat is being consumed globally each year-and despite all the much-hyped alt-meat startups, that number is rising. “It’s been a tough year,” says Brian Kateman, director of the Reducetarian Foundation. But recently, sinking fortunes in that world have made their shared goal of cutting global meat consumption seem much farther off, or almost out of reach. The foundation speaks for a coalition of animal welfare advocates, climate activists (meat production is responsible for about 14% of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions), and alt-protein entrepreneurs. The conference’s host, the Reducetarian Foundation, is one corner of the broader universe of groups opposed to factory farming. ![]() “No matter the odds, we must strive to create a more sustainable, healthy, and compassionate world.” Signs posted around the event contained somber messages: “Giving up on reducing societal meat consumption is not an option.” At the opening ceremony, one slide pointed to the adversity ahead. Resilience,” were posted on the covers of schedule handouts. But at an anti-factory-farming summit last month in Denver, the tenor of discussions was more like a group therapy session. The general tone of most industry conferences tends to be akin to a sector-specific pep rally.
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