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Category: Vegan

  • Vegan Ready Meal Leader Allplants Seeks Buyer to Rescue Business After Mounting Losses

    allplants
    4 Mins Read

    British plant-based ready meal maker Allplants has moved to appoint administrators after recording continued losses, though one potential buyer is lined up.

    Allplant, the UK’s largest vegan ready meal brand, has filed a notice of intention to appoint administrators, following heavy losses over the last couple of years.

    The move is typically used to give companies a chance to assess options for saving the business from liquidation, including creating a rescue plan or creating a sale.

    The company is working with insolvency firm Interpath to explore “all possible options for restructuring, refinancing and ensuring the sustainability of Allplants”, founder and CEO Jonathan Petrides told the Grocer.

    The trade publication reported that there’s one potential buyer lined up to rescue the firm, but a failure to reach a deal would see Allplants’s remaining stock be traded to secure funds for creditors.

    Cocktail of factors led to a period of ‘choppy waters’

    allplants meals
    Courtesy: Allplants

    Allplants started off as a direct-to-consumer brand in 2016, and capitalised on the meal delivery boom a few years later during the Covid-19 lockdowns.

    Its lineup ranges from breakfast and mains to sides and smoothies, and it currently has a collaboration with cookbook author Melissa Hemsley. The meals include Protein Power Buddha Bowls, Queen Butter Bean Puttanesca, Okonomiyaki Rainbow Bowl, and Tiramisu Cheesecake, among others.

    The brand made its retail debut in November 2022, listing its meals at Planet Organic and several independent stores, as well as online grocer Ocado. It witnessed instant success, selling six million meals within the first three months and becoming the second-most purchased frozen meal brand on the latter platform.

    But behind the scenes, there were financial troubles brewing. It registered losses of £9.7M in the seven months to March 2023, with revenues declining to £4.1M, a period Petrides described as “the most intensely choppy waters we’ve ever sailed the Allplants ship through”, according to the company’s latest accounts.

    He ascribed the sales performance to the rampant inflation across energy, transport, ingredients and salaries, the cost-of-living crisis that “led to the lowest consumer confidence since the 1970s”, post-Brexit supply chain disruptions, rising global interest rates, and the sudden and fundamental shift from growth stage to the pursuit of profitability.

    Reflective of wider category decline, but hope persists

    vegan ready meals
    Courtesy: Allplants

    Allplants has raised £67M ($81M) across several financing rounds from investors including Molten Ventures, Felix Capital, Octopus Ventures, The Craftery, and professional footballers Chris Smalling and Kieran Gibbs.

    But during a £10M raise for a factory extension in June last year, Allplants slashed its valuation significantly, going from £54.5M to £17.5M, representing a 58% drop.

    “As board directors, we recognise the gravity of the situation. Along with our senior leadership team, we are working tirelessly to explore all possible options for restructuring, refinancing and ensuring the sustainability of Allplants,” Petrides told Sifted.

    “While we are navigating the best path through, our focus is on continuing to deliver the best possible service to our customers while protecting the interests of our creditors, employees, and shareholders,” he added.

    Allplants’s move to appoint administrators is indicative of the distressed vegan ready meal category in the UK. It was among the categories that have witnessed a drop-off in sales recently, falling by 20% between 2022 and 2023, according to Circana data commissioned by the Good Food Institute, which attributed it to cost-of-living pressures that led shoppers to cut back on non-essential and convenience items.

    It reflected a wider problem for the UK’s vegan market, where sales value was down by nearly 3%, and units decreased by 10%. The country’s largest meat-free company, Quorn, posted pre-tax losses of £63M in 2023, a fourfold increase from the £15M it lost the year before. But there have been positive signs too, with plant-based meat startup This closing a £20M Series C round in June, following a 47% hike in sales last year.

    Allplants isn’t the only British plant-based business to reach this point. Meatless Farm and VBites also came close to the brink, before being rescued by VFC (now the Vegan Food Group) and owner Heather Mills, respectively. Allplants will hope for a similar fate.

    The post Vegan Ready Meal Leader Allplants Seeks Buyer to Rescue Business After Mounting Losses appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Wendy’s Partners with Beyond Meat to Launch Plant Burger in Georgia

    wendy's beyond meat
    4 Mins Read

    Beyond Meat and Wendy’s Georgia have announced a new menu item, the Plant Burger, a marker of the vegan giant’s European focus this year.

    Californian plant-based pioneer Beyond Meat has struck its latest QSR partnership with fast-food giant Wendy’s, which is launching a vegan burger in Georgia.

    The Wendy’s Plant Burger will be rolled out at all 19 of the chain’s stores in the Eurasian country on Saturday (November 23). It is unclear whether the bun or mayo used are vegan-friendly, but the menu item will be available for a limited time, while supplies last.

    The collaboration was facilitated by the Wissol Group, which is a Wendy’s franchisee in several markets in the region, and Gastronome, a Tbilisi-based food business that represents Beyond Meat in Georgia.

    “We’re proud to be partnering with Wendy’s Georgia to introduce our plant-based meat to a new market,” said Hameed Jagani, VP of global strategic partnerships at Beyond Meat.

    Wendy’s Beyond Meat burger aimed at meeting ‘local demand’

    wendy's plant based burger
    Courtesy: Beyond Meat/Wendy’s

    The Plant Burger, which was unveiled in a launch ceremony yesterday, features Beyond Meat’s signature beef patty at the centre, and is topped with fresh lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, onions, ketchup and mayo.

    “The Wendy’s plant-based meat burger offers the same great taste and texture customers have come to expect, no sacrifice required,” remarked Jagani. “This partnership aligns with our mission to make plant-based eating more accessible for consumers around the world.”

    Wissol Group president Samson Pkhakadze added: “Wendy’s Georgia and Beyond Meat share a commitment and mutual passion for food quality and corporate social responsibility. We’re excited to deliver on Wendy’s Quality is our Recipe promise by offering customers a wider range of choices.”

    He noted the partnership “will allow Wendy’s Georgia to cater to the local demand for vegetarian and flexitarian options, providing even more choices for today’s conscious consumers”. According to one survey, six in 10 university students are interested in trying new plant-based foods.

    “By partnering with Beyond Meat, we can provide a plant-based meat offering that tastes great and can help make a positive impact,” Pkhakadze said.

    “Georgia is the first country in the world to offer this incredible product at Wendy’s, and we are so proud to be part of this milestone,” said Lika Shalikashvili, head of imports and logistics at Gastronome. “We look forward to seeing this project succeed not only in Georgia but as a model of success that can inspire the rest of the world.”

    Georgia launch a sign of Beyond Meat’s European focus

    beyond meat georgia
    Courtesy: Samson Pkhakadze/LinkedIn

    Entering the Georgian market is an extension of one of Beyond Meat’s top business priorities this year: investment into its European expansion. “We just don’t have that large of a presence out in Europe at the moment,” the company’s COO, Lubi Kutua, had told investors in its Q2 earnings call.

    One of its biggest successes has come through its deal with McDonald’s. The world’s largest restaurant chain has made waves with the McPlant burger, which has been a catalyst for Beyond Meat’s European growth. The McPlant (alongside several variants) is also available as a permanent menu item in Austria, Malta, the Netherlands, Slovenia, the Baltics, the UK and Ireland.

    In Germany, Europe’s largest plant-based market, the McPlant was part of the Famous Order meal promotion, featuring on menus curated by Tokio Hotel members Bill and Tom Kaulitz. Meanwhile, has boosted its retail performance here by tweaking its product formulations to satisfy local shelf-life requirements. “With a clear caution that it is very early days, we are seeing encouraging initial sell-through in this important market,” CEO Ethan Brown said in the latest earnings call.

    In addition, it launched the Beyond Steak at retail in Belgium and for foodservice in the Netherlands (where it also rolled out the Beyond Smash and Beyond Burger Jalapeño), and expanded the availability of its signature burger at Coop stores in the UK.

    While Beyond Meat’s chicken hasn’t performed as strongly in Europe, the company is aiming to change that with the rollout of Veggie McPlant Nuggets at McDonald’s France last month. The vegan nuggets are also a permanent menu item in Germany.

    That said, Beyond Meat’s foodservice record is somewhat patchy. Its deal with Yum! Brands, for example, saw short-lived partnerships with Pizza Hut, KFC, and Taco Bell, while the McPlant famously failed to gain ground in the US. Meanwhile, international foodservice was the only channel where its revenues continued to slip last quarter, largely due to “decreased sales of burger and chicken products to a large QSR customer in the EU”.

    So by entering a new market and a new fast-food partnership, Beyond Meat is looking to turn its global foodservice sales in the same direction as the rest of its business, where year-on-year revenue grew for the first time in two years in the July to September period.

    The post Wendy’s Partners with Beyond Meat to Launch Plant Burger in Georgia appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Danish Parliament Agrees Green Deal to Tax Meat Production & Promote Plant-Based Foods

    denmark green tripartite
    5 Mins Read

    After months of negotiations, Denmark’s policymakers have agreed on how to implement the livestock emissions tax they announced in June.

    Denmark’s bid to tax livestock farmers and turn farmland into forest has received a broad majority in the parliament, paving the way for a greener agriculture sector.

    Following negotiations between the country’s major parties, farmers, trade unions, and climate groups, Denmark will channel 43 billion Danish kroner ($6.1B) to buy land from farmers and convert it into forests, with a plan to plant a billion trees on agricultural land in the next two decades.

    The stakeholders have also agreed on how the country will implement the greenhouse gas levy on meat and dairy farmers it announced in June, while amping up support for plant-based foods.

    The deal is based on the Green Tripartite, an association between the government and trade groups that had been discussing the carbon tax since February and evolved into a ministry in August to introduce the green deal.

    A focus on nitrogen pollution and livestock emissions

    denmark carbon tax
    Courtesy: Kravcs/Getty Images/Green Queen

    Agriculture is Denmark’s largest source of emissions, contributing to over 22% of its climate footprint. And if left unabated, the sector will account for 46% of its emissions by the end of the decade – this is why addressing agriculture is key for the country to meet its legally binding target of cutting emissions by 70% by 2030 (from a 1990 benchmark).

    This is why the Green Tripartite was formed. Under the agreed deal between the government, farm industry and climate groups, Denmark is aiming to curb nitrogen pollution, which has damaged its coasts and fjords, where oxygen levels have reached alarmingly low levels due to nutrient runoff from fertilisers. The country isn’t on track to meet the targets set by the Water Framework Directive by 2027.

    The green deal will give farmers with large quantities of peatland or nitrogen-leaching areas an incentive to turn from intensive land use towards afforestation, efforts that would be supported by the Green Land Fund. This will funnel 30 billion kroner ($4.3B) into reforesting 250,000 hectares of farmland by 2045 and extracting 140,000 hectares of lowland by 2030 to make at least 20% of Denmark’s nature protected.

    Currently, around 60% of Denmark’s area is cultivated, making it the country with the joint-highest share of arable land (alongside Bangladesh).

    “Danish nature will change in a way we have not seen since the wetlands were drained in 1864,” said Jeppe Bruus, the minister for the green transition, as quoted by AFP. He stated that a “huge, huge task” was underway now, involving the transformation of “large parts of our land from agricultural production to forestry, to natural spaces, to ensure that we can bring life back to our fjords”.

    One of the other major tenets of the green deal is the agriculture tax, which made up the bulk of the headlines in June. Denmark is the first country to take such a stand against the impact of livestock agriculture on the planet. The move couldn’t have come more quickly: it is a major exporter of pork and dairy, and beef consumption alone equates to 45% of its emission reduction targets.

    As part of the agreement, farmers will have to pay 300 Danish kroner ($43) per tonne of CO2e from cows and pigs starting 2030, which will rise to 750 kroner ($108) in 2035. But since farmers will receive an income tax deduction of 60%, the actual levy will be 120 kroner ($17) per tonne of CO2e initially, increasing to 300 five years later.

    According to Danish think tank Concito, the average cow in the country produces six tonnes of CO2e per year, meaning livestock farmers will have to pay over $100 for their herd’s emissions in 2030, and more than $250 from 2035.

    Denmark doubles down on plant-based transition

    denmark plant based
    Courtesy: Naturli’

    But Denmark isn’t just stopping at addressing livestock – it’s actively pushing for a transition to a plant-based food system, for which it rolled out a national action plan last year. This was part of the 2021 green agriculture plan, which set aside 675 million kroner ($96M) for the creation of a Fund for Plant-Based Foods (Plantefonden).

    During the negotiation of the green deal, the Green Left and Danish Social Liberal Party advocated for the plant-based transition to be a long-term priority, according to the Vegetarian Society of Denmark. The lawmakers have agreed to add 420 million kroner ($60M) to the Plantefonden between 2025 and 2030. But the fund is now permanent (it was previously set to end in 2030), and can see the investment value jump to one billion kroner ($142M).

    An additional 15 million kroner ($2M) has also been allocated to other plant-based initiatives, with specific details to be agreed upon by the negotiators. Further, Denmark has committed to advocating for an EU-wide plant-based action plan, something even farmers have been calling for.

    “What we hear from scientists and NGOs in other countries – and at this year’s climate summit – is that it is of tremendous importance for Denmark to continue prioritising plant-based solutions and to take responsibility for advancing this agenda internationally,” said Rune-Christoffer Dragsdahl, the head of the Vegetarian Society of Denmark.

    “Therefore, we are particularly pleased to see that the Danish government is now committed to advocating for this at the EU level. The timing is perfect, as Denmark holds the EU presidency next fall,” he added.

    “There is still much work ahead, and we have not yet crossed the finish line. Agriculture must and will transition, and now there is clarity on direction and investments,” remarked climate and energy minister Lars Aagaard. “This is green action that works. The agreement is a milestone, deeply rooted both in Parliament and among stakeholders and organisations. This is Denmark at its best.”

    The post Danish Parliament Agrees Green Deal to Tax Meat Production & Promote Plant-Based Foods appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Future Food Quick Bites: Greggs x Nigella, Tyson vs Paul & A Whole Lotta AI

    6 Mins Read

    In our weekly column, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers new vegan parmesan products, an oat milk cocktail listing, and a bunch of AI developments.

    New products and launches

    French dairy giant Bel Group has rolled out a new iteration of its plant-based Boursin Garlic & Herbs cream cheese in the UK, swapping the plastic tub for the classic aluminium-wrapped packaging encased in a paper box. It’s priced at £2.99 for each 150g pack.

    UK fast-food chain Greggs has brought back its Vegan Festive Bake in response to popular demand, which features Quorn pieces in an improved recipe. It has launched an ad with chef and cookbook author Nigella Lawson to announce its Christmas menu.

    Oat milk liqueur company and Dragons Den alum Panther Milk will land on the shelves of 50 Co-op and Asda stores in the UK this Christmas.

    South Korean vegan brand Unlimeat has transcended beyond meat analogues to launch a chocolate spread made from soybeans, Stevia and xylitol.

    Fellow South Korean startup Armored Fresh has introduced vegan grated parmesan and kimchi parmesan SKUs. They’re available on its website and will be stocked at Walmart and on Amazon by the end of the year.

    armored fresh parmesan
    Courtesy: Armored Fresh

    Advocacy group World Animal Protection has released an AI chatbot to answer questions about cultivated meat. Called The Cultivator, it was created in partnership with PubTrawlr and is constantly updated with new studies and insights.

    Another virtual chatbot comes from tofu maker Nasoya, whose AI-powered assistant Tofie sits on its website to answer questions about the plant protein.

    pkn milk
    Courtesy: PKN

    Pecan milk maker PKN has launched a barista edition called PKN Joy, which is certified by the Upcycled Food Association. It’s available on the company’s website and select retailers across the US.

    And Californian giant Beyond Meat‘s veggie-forward Sun Sausages have expanded into Whole Foods Market stores nationwide.

    Finance and business developments

    Sustainability non-profit Food Systems Innovation‘s Nectar, a sensory testing initiative centred on the protein transition, has acquired the data assets of alternative protein discovery platform Taste Like.

    KP Snacks, the UK’s leading peanut supplier owned by Intersnack, is foraying into nut butter with the takeover of bestselling peanut butter brand Whole Earth Foods from Ecotone.

    whole earth kp foods
    Courtesy: Whole Earth Foods

    State organisations Innovate UK and Protein Industries Canada have announced two projects as part of a bilateral R&D partnership, which involve plant-based meat ingredient solutions and nutritionally superior vegan products.

    Another alliance on plant proteins comes from ingredient giant Ingredion‘s partnership with Sweden’s Lantmännen, which will focus on accelerating the development of pea protein isolates for the European market.

    oatly china
    Courtesy: Oatly

    Swedish oat milk giant Oatly recorded a 11% revenue growth in Q3 2024 compared to the corresponding period last year, with a positive sales performance in each of its markets (including Greater China, where it has struggled recently).

    University of Potsdam‘s centre for knowledge and tech transfer, the Potsdam Trust, has won a €1.8M grant from the German economic affairs and climate protection ministry and the European Social Fund Plus to establish an impact incubator for sustainable startups.

    vegan eel
    Courtesy: Steakholder Foods

    Israel’s Steakholder Foods has secured $270,000 in the second payment of its $1M Singapore-Israel Industrial R&D Foundation grant. It has so far received $490,000 as part of the funding.

    Dutch bottling giant Refresco has completed its acquisition of Spanish plant-based milk company Frías Nutrición, a deal that was first announced in July.

    plant based news
    Courtesy: Brevel

    Israeli microalgae protein firm Brevel has successfully implemented a first-of-a-kind model for building a facility for industrial-scale fermenters, completing construction of its first plant and securing offtake agreements with two leading food and drink companies.

    Policy, research and events

    The APAC Regulatory Coordination Forum has released two white papers covering cellline development and culture media developments to help companies tackle safety assessment as part of regulatory procedures for cultivated meat.

    lab grown chicken meat
    Courtesy: Upside Foods

    Cultivated chicken maker Upside Foods has appealed a Florida judge’s decision to deny a preliminary injunction in its lawsuit against the state’s ban on cultivated meat. Green Queen revealed the firm’s intention to do so last month, but it does mean a planned exhibit at next month’s Art Basel fair in Miami is likely scrapped.

    Australian counterpart Vow, meanwhile, has now progressed to a second round of public consultation in its home country, after Food Standards Australia New Zealand updated its standards to allow the sale of any cultivated meat product that passes premarket approval (rather than authorising as a novel food).

    vow lab grown meat
    Courtesy: Vow

    Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark have collaborated with Alchemist, a two-Michelin-starred eatery in Copenhagen to show how nutrient-rich mycelium can grow on discarded coffee grounds and wood, serving it to customers in the restaurant.

    In response to the cow abductions in Mexico, Chilean vegan startup NotCo created a decoy NotCow filled with its burgers as part of a marketing campaign, resulting in the fake cow being abducted.

    During the Netflix fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul, vegan burger chain Mr Charlie’s was serving up plant-based chicken nuggets and sandwiches in partnership with TiNDLE Foods. Tyson recently invested in the restaurant company.

    Nearly 2,000 students took to the streets in Taipei on Sunday to urge the Taiwanese government to introduce vegan meals at schools.

    In France’s Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, Pessac has become the third town to ban foie gras from municipal events this year, joining Poitiers and Montpellier. Before 2024, 12 other cities had introduced this ban.

    berkeley factory farming
    Courtesy: Michelle Del Cueto

    Finally, speaking of bans, Berkeley has become the first US city to outlaw factory farming, with 60% of votes in favour of the move.

    Check out last week’s Future Food Quick Bites.

    The post Future Food Quick Bites: Greggs x Nigella, Tyson vs Paul & A Whole Lotta AI appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Oatly Whips Up Cake & Custard Giveaway with UK Rapper Giggs

    oatly giggs
    4 Mins Read

    Swedish oat milk giant Oatly has teamed up with British rapper Giggs for a limited-edition drop of dairy-free cake and custard kits.

    A ceramic plate, a steel spoon, a textile napkin, and some custard – all are on the table in a giveaway contest by the world’s largest oat milk company and the UK’s “rap landlord”.

    Oatly’s latest quirky marketing campaign features Giggs, the British rapper behind Walk in da Park and Landlord, and his love for the brand’s hard-to-find vanilla custard.

    Born out of “a shared inability to digest dairy”, Custard by Giggs involves 500 limited-edition dairy-free cake and custard gifts, featuring custom tableware, which will be dished out at Ayres Bakery in his hometown of Peckham in south London tomorrow. For those who miss the drop, 30 kits are available online too.

    The campaign intends to raise awareness about the prevalence of lactose intolerance in the UK, and calls on retailers to embrace Oatly’s custard much more widely.

    Catering to Brits’ lactose intolerance

    oatly vanilla custard
    Courtesy: Oatly

    The idea for the collaboration came from Giggs, who approached Oatly after struggling to find its vanilla custard in supermarkets. “I grew up on cake and custard, but when my lactose intolerance kicked in when I was around eight years old and started making me sick, the dessert I loved had to leave my life,” he said.

    Giggs is among the five million Brits who suffer from intolerance to this sugar, making up 8% of the population. And as is the case globally, its prevalence is much higher in Black, Asian and other ethnic minorities – twice more, in fact, than white groups in the UK, according to a 2,000-person survey commissioned by Oatly.

    The research further revealed that two-thirds of people who have lactose intolerance miss out on their favourite desserts, and over half (52%) have to overlook key food experiences due to a lack of alternatives. “When I found out my son was lactose intolerant too, we used to go all over the place looking for dairy-free alternatives so he wouldn’t miss out,” recalled Giggs.

    “There’s not a lot of options out there, but one day we found Oatly’s Vanilla Custard, and it tasted banging. Not enough people know about it, so I reached out to Oatly, and here we are a few months later,” he added.

    “When Giggs messaged us at the start of the year expressing his love for our Vanilla Custard, we knew this could lead to great things,” said Bryan Carroll, general manager of Oatly UK. “With more than five million people suffering some form of lactose intolerance, it’s actually mad that the default is still so often dairy and nothing else.”

    A series of films and a custard-finding tool

    To mark the partnership and giveaway, a series of Custard by Giggs films will be rolled out across Oatly and Giggs’s social channel over the next month, which depict several scenes where the rapper plays a bakery owner in south London.

    In one spot titled ‘The Queue’, Giggs skips the line outside his bake shop to open the giveaway, while he seems visibly perplexed that he’s served cake without custard in ‘The Doorbell’. And in ‘Cake and Custard Tasting’, viewers see the rapper struggling to decide how best to judge different cakes, before a pour of Oatly custard gets him (almost) going.

    “It’s rare to see Giggs lend his face to a brand, so we wanted these films to make this drop feel exclusive and also bring out a side of Giggs the world doesn’t see,” said Kelvin Jone, who directed and co-created the shorts.

    The campaign also plays on the lack of availability of certain non-dairy alternatives in the UK, despite the country’s vegan dessert market set to double by 2027 (from a 2022 baseline). Oatly’s research found that 68% of Brits encounter difficulties finding non-dairy alternatives in supermarkets, shops or restaurants.

    oatly custard
    Courtesy: Oatly

    Since Oatly’s vanilla custard is found only in select retailers in the UK – “I even sent my Mum on quests trying to hunt it down,” Giggs said – the company has launched a Custard Finder tool to help locate the product. “This collaboration aims to encourage retailers to think outside the dairy box,” noted Carroll.

    “Giggs has a big personality, so by combining this with the community feeling of bakeshops and the taste of Oatly Custard, we crafted films that build mouthwatering anticipation whilst calling for dairy-free foods like Oatly Custard to be much more widely available, given the prevalence of lactose intolerance in our community,” said Jones.

    The Custard by Giggs marketing drive comes shortly after Oatly’s Q3 earnings report, which saw the business’s revenue grow by 11% from the corresponding period in 2023. The UK has been at the forefront of its barista milk evolution, with Oatly rolled out 1.5-litre cartons as well as a Lighter Taste edition made specifically for light-roasted coffee.

    The post Oatly Whips Up Cake & Custard Giveaway with UK Rapper Giggs appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • PETA Supporters Call Out Hypocrisy at Women’s Marathon in Georgia

    Bearing a 10-foot banner showing the suffering behind every drop of cow’s milk, a pack of PETA supporters will descend upon the Every Woman’s Marathon in Savannah, Georgia on November 16 to call out the hypocrisy of the organizing of a women’s race by the dairy industry—which only keeps female cows alive as long as they can have babies and lactate.

    The animal allies will carry signs reading, “The Milk Marathon Runs on Cruelty,” to inform participants that the dairy industry runs on cruelty. We’ll also have a mobile billboard circling the event with heartbreaking footage of anguished mother cows chasing after their stolen babies. In the dairy industry, workers tear newborn calves away from their mothers so that they can take the milk meant to nourish them to sell to humans.

    This action will be preceded by a pre-race Wellness Fair & Expo the day before the race, where PETA allies will urge attendees to stand in solidarity with all females—including cows in the dairy industry.

    Animal Advocates and PETA Have Been Pushing Race Organizers and Sponsors for Months

    In anticipation of the race, we sent public letters to National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman and members of the Every Woman’s Marathon advisory board—including paratriathlon champion Danielle McLaughlin and Olympic medalist Deena Kastor—pointing out that there’s no such thing as a pro–dairy industry feminist.

    We also sent letters to other race sponsors in September urging them to reconsider their support for the race. When they didn’t respond, more than 47,000 PETA supporters took action to put the pressure on.

    A Cow’s Milk is Meant for Her Babies—Not Humans

    Like human mothers, female cows produce milk only when pregnant or nursing, have deep maternal instincts, and will go to great lengths to protect their babies. Female cows are repeatedly forcibly inseminated (raped)—workers insert an arm into the cow’s rectum and a metal rod to deliver semen into her vagina to keep her pregnant. Newborn males are routinely slaughtered for veal, while female calves endure the same fate as their mothers until their bodies wear out from repeated pregnancies.

    brown and white mother and baby cow in grass

    Each person who goes vegan spares nearly 200 animals every year, dramatically shrinks their food-related carbon footprint and slashes their risk of suffering from cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and obesity. PETA’s free vegan starter kit is filled with tips to help anyone looking to make the switch:

    Send Me a Free Vegan Starter Kit!

    The post PETA Supporters Call Out Hypocrisy at Women’s Marathon in Georgia appeared first on PETA.

    This post was originally published on Animal Rights and Campaign News | PETA.

  • Victory! Whole Foods Is Now Monkey-Free—No Thanks to Whole Foods

    Today we’re celebrating a huge victory: The 365 by Whole Foods Market brand coconut milk supplier no longer abuses monkeys through forced labor!

    Group of protesters dressed in chained monkey costumes protesting whole foods

    Whole Foods failed to take action to eliminate the cruel monkey labor from its supply chain, but our investigators and negotiators worked tirelessly to get rid of it.

    Whole Foods Didn’t Lift a Finger to Help Monkeys

    In January 2024, we sent Whole Foods evidence that endangered pig-tailed macaques were being illegally kidnapped from the wild, kept chained up, and abusively trained to produce its store-brand 365 coconut milk, but it didn’t respond to any of our pleas to fix its supply chain.

    In the face of Whole Foods’ callous disregard for these monkeys’ suffering, PETA launched a massive campaign—which included three damning PETA exposés, dozens of demonstrations across the U.S., creative advertising campaigns, hundreds of phone calls, a heartfelt plea from singer Morrissey, and e-mails from more than 100,000 concerned consumers.

    PETA’s Whole Foods Campaign

    Investigation: PETA and Entities Did Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel’s Job for Him

    Since Whole Foods remained unresponsive, PETA Asia took matters into its own hands. It identified Merit Food Products as the supplier of Whole Foods’ 365 brand coconut milk and found that this supplier sourced some of its coconuts from third-party farms in Thailand that were using monkey labor.

    Video: The Thai Government Covers Up Forced Monkey Labor

    Sure enough, when PETA Asia’s investigators visited the Thai third-party farm that supplied Merit Food Products, they found rampant monkey abuse.

    Whole Foods once again failed to act on PETA Asia’s evidence, so PETA’s own investigators and negotiators went straight to Merit Food Products. The company was eager to help monkeys, so we worked together to remove monkey labor from its supply chain, and it committed to sourcing third-party coconuts only from countries that don’t use monkey labor.

    Urge Thai Officials to End Monkey Labor!

    Now that Whole Foods’ 365 brand coconut milk is free of monkey labor, we’re demanding that Thai officials take immediate action for the countless monkeys who are suffering in Thailand, including by doing the following:

    • Closing all “monkey-training schools”
    • Making it illegal to breed or sell monkeys
    • Investing in a law-enforcement team to end the illegal capture of monkeys from the wild
    • Developing a plan to retire monkeys currently used by the coconut industry
    • Replacing all tall-tree varieties with shorter ones and offering picking poles free of charge to coconut farmers

    Please help us put an end to monkey labor by urging the Thai government to make it illegal and to shut down “monkey-training schools”:

    Urge Thai Officials to End Monkey Labor!
    © Catalin Biedron

    When Thailand finally ends its rampant abuse of monkeys, it will regain the trust of socially conscious importers and consumers, who are dropping Thai coconut milk in record numbers.

    The post Victory! Whole Foods Is Now Monkey-Free—No Thanks to Whole Foods appeared first on PETA.

    This post was originally published on Animal Rights and Campaign News | PETA.

  • No More Meat Industry Malarkey! PETA Pushes President Biden to End Shameful Turkey Pardon Before Oval Office Exit

    President Joe Biden, c’mon man—protect ALL turkeys! PETA is urging the 46th president to leave a legacy of kindness by canceling the shameful White House Turkey Pardon—because, as he might say, they didn’t do a “damn thing” to be pardoned for.  

    turkey on grass next to image of president joe biden

    Our letter points out that Biden’s time in the Oval Office is drawing to an end, which means he is free to cancel greedy factory farm lobbyists’ annual invitation to the White House and do right by our fellow animals.

    As a ‘lame duck,’ you no longer need to heed the interests of factory farms and, instead, have a joyous opportunity to spare Americans and turkeys this humiliating meat-industry stunt that uses the White House as its public relations backdrop.”

    turkey from turkey pardon WH event now living at gobblers rest at virginia tech
    As shown here, previously “pardoned” turkeys were so deeply stressed by being confined to cement-floored kennels in a university laboratory—unable to dust, bathe, roost, breathe fresh air, or feel the sun on their backs—that they pulled out their own (and each other’s) feathers.

    Turkeys are sensitive, intelligent, social birds who want to spend their days taking dust baths, raising their families, and nesting. As our letter notes, the industry that raises and slaughters birds for their flesh “is a dirty business that’s unpardonably guilty of contributing to the climate catastrophe and water contamination as well as pumping birds full of antibiotics that are passed on to consumers, maximizing profits at the expense of even minimal animal welfare.”

    Farms force turkeys to live in severely crowded conditions, mired in their own waste, risking the spread of zoonotic diseases like bird flu—the most recent outbreak of which has led to the slaughter of more than 100 million birds and burdened taxpayers because factory farms receive millions of dollars in compensation for the industry’s irresponsibility. 

    This industry is guilty of astounding cruelty, as evidenced by PETA’s recent investigation into Plainville Farms—a “humane” turkey supplier, where workers kicked, stomped on, tossed, and beat turkeys—resulting in the largest number of cruelty charges in a factory-farming animal case in U.S. history.

    turkeys huddled together with worker holding orange bag

    A PETA investigation into a Butterball slaughterhouse found workers bludgeoning and sexually assaulting the birds. The president of the U.S. shouldn’t be sanctioning or humane-washing this abuse, which is particularly offensive to Americans who don’t eat meat for ethical, environmental, health, religious, or other cultural reasons.

    Ben Franklin may or may not have lobbied for the turkey to be our national bird, but either way, turkeys don’t deserve the slaughterhouse knife or a patronizing pardon humane-washed by the president.” – PETA President Ingrid Newkirk.

    No More Meat Industry Malarkey! Go Vegan

    Here’s the bottom line: Every animal is someone with feelings, interests, and a unique personality. YOU can spare turkeys and other animals exploited and killed for their flesh by going vegan. Make the compassionate switch today:

    Order PETA’s Free Vegan Starter Kit

    The post No More Meat Industry Malarkey! PETA Pushes President Biden to End Shameful Turkey Pardon Before Oval Office Exit appeared first on PETA.

    This post was originally published on Animal Rights and Campaign News | PETA.

  • Future Food Quick Bites: Vegan Tiramisu, Dave Chang & A Political Breakfast

    oatside
    5 Mins Read

    In our weekly column, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers a vegan tiramisu collection in Hong Kong, Dave Chang’s cultivated meat podcast episode, and a ‘super yoghurt’.

    New products and launches

    Good Food Technologies, the Hong Kong company behind Plant Sifu, has partnered with famed Japanese ramen restaurant Menya Musashi. The latter’s Hong Kong menu features a Veggie Chicken Tomato Tsukemen Set and Deep-Fried Veggie Pork Cutlet Teishoku Set, as well as three sides.

    menya musashi vegan
    Courtesy: Menya Musashi/Plant Sifu

    Singaporean oat milk brand Oatbedient is hosting a pop-up at K11 Art Mall in Hong Kong (November 19 to December 2) to celebrate the launch of its Café series in the city. Visitors will get access to discounts and offers on its entire oat milk range.

    In similar news, The Cakery, a plant-forward cake shop in Hong Kong, and its vegan sister bakery Maya have teamed up with Singaporean oat milk leader Oatside to introduce a tiramisu collection, which includes a cake, cupcake, overnight oats, and drinks like tiramisu chocolate and a tiramisu Biscoff latte.

    the cakery hong kong
    Courtesy: The Cakery/Oatside

    In the UK, discount retailer Aldi has rolled out an Ultimate No Beef Flank Steak, a private-label whole-cut meat alternative. The vegan beef product isn’t part of its Plant Menu range, but instead will be marketed under its Specially Selected label with a price tag of £6.99 for a two-pack.

    British startup The Coconut Collab has launched two new desserts: Choc and Caramel (£1.50 per 110g) and White Choc Pots (£2.95 for four 45g packs). They’re available at Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and/or Ocado.

    coconut collab chocolate pots
    Courtesy: The Coconut Collab

    Carbon calculator and labelling startup My Emissions has unveiled its second product, Company Carbon Footprints, a platform to help food companies measure their emissions more quickly and accurately. It has already been trialled by restaurant chain Wahaca and caterer Simply Lunch.

    Armed with a new ambassador in Maya Jama, Swedish pea milk brand Sproud has introduced its Barista Zero SKU, debiting the product at the European Coffee Symposium in Berlin this week.

    sproud barista zero
    Courtesy: Sproud/Green Queen

    Israeli entrepreneur Ola Baker has launched Eggless, a new company focused on innovating in the plant-based egg space.

    Company and finance updates

    South African cultivated meat startup Newform Foods hosted its biggest tasting event in Cape Town last week, showcasing its lamb meatballs to visitors.

    newform foods
    Courtesy: NewForm Foods

    Israeli startup Phyloton, which makes natural food colours from precision fermentation, has received funding from Rich Products Ventures, as well as additional financing from existing investors EIT Food, Arkin Holdings, and Yossi Ackerman (among others).

    US-cultivated protein startup Jellatech, whose flagship product is a bioidentical collagen, has opened a 9,000 sq ft facility in Morrisville, North Carolina. It plans to obtain the FDA’s Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) certification by 2026.

    Happy Plant Protein, a spinout from the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, has secured €1.8M in a pre-seed funding round led by Nordic Foodtech VC, alongside participation from Butterfly Ventures and Business Finland, to develop and license its patented vegan protein production tech.

    Research, policy and events

    In India, tempeh producer Tempeh Today, the Freedom Project India and the Netherlands Enterprise have launched the Tempeh for Education project. It involves the use of micro fermentation units to produce up to 100kg of tempeh per week, and the goal is to economically empower women through training and a guaranteed buyback programme.

    tempeh today
    Courtesy: Tempeh Today

    Accor Group, Europe’s largest hospitality company and parent company of hotels like Novotel, Sofitel and Ibis, has announced its goal to introduce plant-based menu options at all of its locations in the coming years. It aligns with its Good Food Feels Great push to make 50% of its menus vegan by 2030.

    In Germany, retail giant Rewe Group and fermentation companies Infinite Roots and Formo hosted a “political breakfast” at the parliament. The discussion, which featured MP Albert Stegemann, explored how fermentation can help boost food security and lower climate impacts, while also touching upon regulatory sandboxes and farmer collaboration.

    formo cheese
    Courtesy: Formo

    Also in Germany, plant-based shopping baskets are now only 9% pricier than their animal-based counterparts, with own-label milk alternatives now cheaper than dairy, according to a ProVeg International study. At Lidl, which has made major sustainability strides this year, buying vegan private-label products is now more wallet-friendly.

    At the Technical University of Munich‘s 2024 TFoodS Conference in Singapore, global experts explored alternative proteins and their potential to help the island nation achieve its 30 by 30 food security vision.

    tumcreate
    Courtesy: TUMCREATE

    As Israeli-cultivated meat startup Aleph Farms continues to host tasting events ahead of the launch of its cultivated beef, five out of six chefs say they’d serve the Aleph Cuts product in their restaurants.

    Researchers at Australia’s Monash University have created a “super yoghurt” made from sweet lupin beans and oats, which they say rivals both dairy and other plant-based yoghurts on taste, texture and nutrition.

    Momofuku founder Dave Chang featured cultivated meat on his podcast, The Dave Chang Show, interviewing the Good Food Institute‘s Eric Schulze about this future food.

    Check out last week’s Future Food Quick Bites.

    The post Future Food Quick Bites: Vegan Tiramisu, Dave Chang & A Political Breakfast appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Korean Startup Debuts Fermentation-Derived Marbled Wagyu Steak Ahead of US & Europe Launch

    plant based whole cut
    4 Mins Read

    South Korea’s Millennial Flavor Town, a startup born out of a restaurant, has unveiled a marbled steak and shredded beef products made from traditional fermentation.

    Rivalling the growing crop of whole-cut meat alternative producers, Seoul startup Millennial Flavor Town has developed two beef innovations derived from time-honoured Korean fermentation techniques.

    The company will showcase its marbled Wagyu steak and shredded beef products (which come in soy sauce and truffle flavours) at the Plant Based World Europe expo at Excel London this week (November 13-14).

    The event is a precursor to Millennial Flavor Town’s entry into the European and US markets, where whole-cuts have gained popularity lately thanks to their flavour and textural advantages over second-generation plant-based meat products.

    millennial flavor town
    Courtesy: Millennial Flavor Town

    Using fermentation and marbling to take vegan beef to the next level

    Millennial Flavor Town is an offshoot of Bakrin Ahn’s Millennial Dining eatery in Seocho, which has been serving up vegan versions of Korean classics since 2020.

    The restaurant’s menu comprises dishes like a five-hour braised carrot dish, tteokgalbi (grilled short rib patties), and pasta with apple jam. It also serves and sells several versions of the beef analogues, from tenderloin and ribs to strip loin and sirloin steaks.

    The startup uses a five-step patented fermentation process to transform a base of soybeans, button and shingled hedgehog mushrooms, red beet powder, rice koji and olive oil (among other fats) into high-protein, cholesterol-free beef alternatives.

    The shredded beef products come ready to eat in jars, and the soy sauce version contains nearly 11g of protein per 100g, alongside all essential amino acids.

    The whole-cut Millennial Marbles (MM) steak takes things a step further. Using red beet powder and coconut oil, it mimics the fat marbling found in conventional beef, complemented with aroma from Korean charcoal grills to entice meat-eaters who are looking for better-tasting meat analogues with a more realistic texture.

    Millennial Flavor Town’s potential was recognised at the Korea-ASEAN Business Model Competition for Sustainable Development Goals in Indonesia last month, where it won a $6,000 award for its meat analogues.

    millennial marbles beef
    Courtesy: Millennial Flavor Town

    Startups magnify focus on whole-cut meat alternatives

    Research has shown that consumers prefer steaks with higher-marbled textures. A survey of US consumers found that 42% of respondents are deterred from trying meat alternatives because they feel they’ll dislike their texture.

    Separate polling has revealed that more than one in five (22%) of Americans have cut back their purchases of vegan food due to their texture. And in the UK, 51% of people say taste and texture are the biggest factors driving them away from meat alternatives.

    This is why whole cuts and fat marbling have been described as ‘holy grail’ technologies for alternative proteins. It has prompted one Swiss researcher to create marbling tech by processing pea protein with biochemical engineering techniques, and startups like Sweden’s Melt&Marble and Australia’s Nourish Ingredients to use precision fermentation to create fats and lipids that can enhance these products. Meanwhile, German companies Planeteers and Handtmann have teamed up to help producers develop marbled meat analogues with fine fibrous structures.

    Several startups have made whole-cut vegan meats their entire focus. Israel’s Redefine Meat, for example, was one of the first to debut such a product. It employs 3D printing to develop fibres that resemble animal muscle tissues and has been endorsed by the OG celebrity chef, Marco Pierre White.

    Slovenia’s Juicy Marbles similarly came to the scene in 2022. It layers plant protein fibres on top of each other to mimic animal muscle fibres, with deposits of hardened sunflower oil adding a realistic fat-marbling mouthfeel to its steak.

    US startup Chunk Foods also makes whole muscle steaks (using cultured soy and wheat), and recently debuted four SKUs in US retail. In Spain, Novameat raised €17.4M earlier this year for its MicroForce technology for whole cuts, while Libre Foods unveiled its whole-muscle mycelium chicken breast last year. UK-based Adamo Foods is similarly developing whole-cut mycelium meat, while Sweden’s Planted and Indonesia’s Green Rebel Foods both offer plant-based versions.

    Germany’s Project Eaden and Massachusetts-based Tender Food, meanwhile, are innovating with fibre-spinning technologies inspired by the textile industry to produce marbled whole-cut meat.

    The post Korean Startup Debuts Fermentation-Derived Marbled Wagyu Steak Ahead of US & Europe Launch appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • 5 Takeaways From the First Six Months of Rewe’s Fully Plant-Based Supermarket in Germany

    rewe vegan
    5 Mins Read

    It’s been six months since German retailer Rewe opened Voll Pflanzlich, a fully vegan supermarket in Berlin. Here are the company’s major learnings.

    There have been a number of progress markers for Rewe, the German retail giant, and its 100% plant-based supermarket on Berlin’s Warschauer Brücke since it opened in April.

    Rewe Voll Pflanzlich, or Fully Plant-Based, houses more than 2,700 products from over 300 brands in the 212 sq m space, including its own-label ranges Bio, Rewe Beste Wahl, Vivess and ja!, industry leaders like Oatly, Alpro and Beyond Meat, and challenger brands such as Not Guilty, For Foodies and Greenforce.

    The company has conducted a six-month review of the store, which offers nearly twice as many animal-free products as even the most vegan-friendly Rewe locations, to find which products sell best, what consumers like most, and what the future of the concept looks like.

    Here are the key takeaways:

    1) The ‘fully plant-based’ marketing works

    germany plant based market
    Courtesy: GFI Europe

    Germany remains Europe’s largest market for vegan food, and it’s one driven largely by the growth of private-label brands. Retail sales were up by 8% in 2023, reaching €2.2B, but branded products only increased their value by 5% – the rest was thanks to a 20% rise in own-label sales.

    While there have been lots of debate around the use of terms like ‘plant-based’ and ‘vegan’ in a bid to court flexitarians, Rewe suggests the ‘Fully Plant-Based’ moniker appeals to its clientele. Around 5,500 shoppers flock to the store each week, and are most heartened by the fact that they can find a full range of vegan products, from produce and baked goods to chilled products and drug store items without having to question labels.

    Being able to “simply reach for all shelves” without hesitation, it seems, is a major plus point for consumers.

    “In my regular [super]market, plant-based products also sell very well. But flexitarians tend to shop there, and the shopping baskets are a mixed bag,” explained store manager Dennis Henkelmann. “In the plant-based [super]market, it is more vegans who consciously only want to buy purely plant-based products.”

    2) Convenience is, as always, king

    rewe fully plant based
    Courtesy: Christoph Grosse/Pivopix

    Looking at the top-selling products at Rewe Voll Pflanzlich, it’s clear that Germans hold convenience dear to their purchasing decisions. The store sold around 6,000 chocolate croissants and Franzbrötchen (a kind of cinnamon roll) in the first six months, making these baked goods the most popular options among shoppers.

    Homemade snack rolls like spelt schnitzel, smoked tofu, and fresh coconut-almond-based cream cheese were also among the bestsellers, as were fruits and vegetables – Rewe Bio’s own-brand cucumbers and bananas were the most popular produce items.

    It chimes with research suggesting that 72% of Germans are buyers of convenience food and drink products, a number that rises to 90% among 16- to 34-year-olds, a demographic more likely to be cutting back on animal protein.

    3) The cream cheese shift is real

    vegan cheese germany
    Courtesy: GFI Europe

    The success of the non-dairy cream cheeses prompted the team to expand from its savoury spring onion and pepper varieties to offer sweet options like mango and raspberry.

    This should come as no surprise – cream cheese has taken over hard cheese as the most popular type of branded vegan cheese in Germany this year, accounting for 45% of the segment’s sales in the first four months of 2024 (versus 39% in 20230). It makes good business sense for Rewe to develop its own at a cheaper cost, given that private-label plant-based cheese is 36% cheaper than branded versions in the country.

    Speaking of dairy alternatives, Rewe’s creamy oat-based Sovteis (soft-serve), which is also self-serve, was among the top 10 products too.

    4) Listening to shoppers will only help supermarkets

    rewe voll pflanzlich
    Courtesy: Christoph Grosse/Pivopix

    Shortly after the store opened, the marketing team at Rewe placed a wish board at the entrance, where customers could write what kind of products they wanted. “We also receive really good suggestions via our Instagram profile, which we check out,” said product manager Isabell Kroll.

    “We are all about getting new items onto the shelves as quickly as possible,” she added. Potato milk, vegan broths and tofu finishes all began appearing on-shelf in the last few months. “We also want to fulfil customer requests, which is why we added pickles, regional mustard and various types of liquid smoke,” Kroll revealed.

    5) The concept is a testbed for future vegan stores

    vegan supermarket germany
    Courtesy: Christoph Grosse/Pivopix

    While Rewe has made a number of gains with the new store, the company indicated that it is still only six months in and the concept remains in the test phase. “We will see in the coming year whether customers will accept a purely plant-based food range in the long term,” said Henkelmann.

    Rewe CEO Peter Maly said he was satisfied with the development of the Fully Plant-Based store: “Opening a purely plant-based store in the current market environment was a bold step. But we knew that we have great expertise in the vegan range and a lot of experience from our more than 3,800 supermarkets nationwide.

    “So far, the initial figures and feedback from customers have confirmed that the idea of ​​a plant-based full-range store can work in the right location and in the right space.”

    Over 90,000 people cross the bridge the store is located on every day, and with an S-Bahn station and a large number of office buildings in the immediate vicinity, there’s ample potential for greater footfall.

    “We will decide at a later date whether we will open further purely plant-based supermarkets,” said Maly. “Our REWE Rewe and customers nationwide are already benefiting from the products that we are testing first at Rewe Voll Pflanzlich in Berlin and then making available to everyone in the product range.”

    The post 5 Takeaways From the First Six Months of Rewe’s Fully Plant-Based Supermarket in Germany appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • UK Must Halve Meat & Dairy Consumption to Meet 2050 Net-Zero Target, Says Climate Change Committee

    this isn't chicken
    5 Mins Read

    The UK’s Climate Change Committee is calling on the country to cut back on meat and dairy in an effort to meet its net-zero emissions goal.

    Ahead of COP29, the UN’s annual climate summit, the UK’s energy secretary is facing calls to step up the country’s emissions reduction efforts and accelerate its path to net zero.

    In a letter to Ed Miliband, the UK’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) said meat and dairy consumption should be slashed by up to 50% by 2050 to help meet its climate target, advocating for replacing these proteins with plant-based alternatives.

    The recommendation is part of new net-zero actions proposed by the CCC, months before the UK publishes its Seventh Carbon Budget. The committee said that by 2025, the government should curb emissions by 81% (from a 1990 baseline), which would reduce emissions from the current 384 million tonnes to 200 million tonnes.

    It comes after Miliband asked the CCC to set guidance on the UK’s nationally determined contribution (NDC) targets under the Paris Agreement, as part of the new Labour government’s climate plans.

    The call to reduce the consumption of animal products in favour of low-carbon plant-based options, as reported by the Telegraph, would lead to a dramatic reduction in national emissions, allowing the UK to inch closer to the CCC’s recommended goal.

    How the UK could embrace dietary shifts

    uk methane emissions
    Courtesy: Defra

    The UK’s current Carbon Budget for 2035 had set a goal of cutting emissions by 78%, but the slight increase in the new recommendation reflects the escalating threat of the country’s production and consumption on the environment.

    The CCC recently warned that the UK is not on track to meet its 2030 target (a 68% decrease in emissions) either, achieving only a third of the reductions required. “Setting a target is not enough. The UK must back up its international commitments through actions here at home,” the letter reads.

    CCC chairman Piers Forster said encouraging dietary shifts among UK consumers would play a key role in achieving the 81% reduction by 2035, with one measure being to cut livestock numbers given their high methane output.

    Forster did not specify other actions that could help Brits eat less meat. But the UK could benefit from a carbon tax on meat and dairy – as Denmark has introduced – to reflect the true planetary cost of animal proteins.

    Another way to lower meat and dairy consumption is through regulating misleading adverts. The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB), which falls under the wing of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), has been running a campaign to promote red meat and dairy, touting their supposed health and environmental credentials.

    The AHDB suggested that “sustainability isn’t just about carbon”, and there are “many other things to consider”, citing data showing that transport and energy emissions are higher than livestock in the UK. But it failed to account for the livestock industry’s methane emissions, which make up nearly half (48%) of the country’s total, and have not been reduced since 2009.

    Lowering the amount of methane, a gas 80 times more potent than carbon over a 20-year period, in the atmosphere is pivotal to averting global temperature rises, bolstering crop resilience, and boosting food security.

    A group of British doctors have therefore called on the UK government to retract the AHDB’s campaign and stop promoting the “increased consumption of meat and dairy using misleading and un-evidenced marketing”.

    Policy support for plant-based food crucial

    is kier starmer vegetarian
    UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer, a pescetarian, and his vegetarian wife Victoria | Courtesy: Number 10/Flickr/CC

    Agriculture contributes to 10% of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions, but 62% of this comes from livestock farming. Meat and dairy production also uses up 85% of the UK’s farmland, despite only providing 32% of its calorie supply and 48% of its protein.

    Meat and dairy analogues, meanwhile, have significantly smaller climate footprints. Last year, a landmark UK-specific study showed that vegan diets can reduce emissions, land use, and water consumption by 75% compared to diets rich in meat.

    This is why activists have been urging Kier Starmer’s government to adopt policies to greenify the UK’s food system. The Plant-Based Food Alliance has called on lawmakers to develop a national action plan for vegan food, align the national Eatwell Guide with sustainability, reform public procurement to highlight climate-friendly food, and level the playing field for alternative protein companies (by removing restrictions on alt-dairy labelling and helping achieve price parity with animal proteins).

    There is evidence that citizens would back such policies. Polling reveals that 63% of Brits would support policies that would help people eat healthier diets by reducing meat consumption and harmful emissions. This comes on the back of a year where the UK ate the lowest amount of meat and dairy in half a century.

    Among the CCC’s other recommendations to deliver the NDC target are making low-carbon electricity cheaper, introducing plans to decarbonise public sector buildings, removing planning barriers for heat pumps, electric vehicle chargers, and onshore wind, and publishing a strategy to support skills in sectors that need to transition and communities that are adversely impacted by climate change.

    “The Climate Change Committee has given ministers a useful benchmark for climate action but they may want to aim higher to show true global leadership and take full responsibility for the UK’s historic role as a major carbon polluter,” said Doug Parr, policy director at Greenpeace UK. “Actions speak louder than words, and true leadership means the government must also set out tangible plans to deliver on its 2035 target.”

    The post UK Must Halve Meat & Dairy Consumption to Meet 2050 Net-Zero Target, Says Climate Change Committee appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Future Food Quick Bites: Lighter Oatly, Vegan Shortening & Plant-Forward National Trust

    oatly barista lighter taste
    6 Mins Read

    In our weekly column, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Oatly’s new barista milk for light-roasted coffee, European precision fermentation developments, and the world’s best vegan chef.

    New products and launches

    First announced to investors in its 2023 earnings call, Swedish oat milk giant Oatly has rolled out a new version of its barista milk, formulated specifically for light-roasted coffee. The Barista Lighter Taste offering has 2.1% fat content (versus 3% for the regular barista edition) and enables the more nuanced flavour notes of specialty coffee to shine.

    grubby bosh
    Courtesy: Grubby

    After delivering over 100,000 dishes together, UK vegan meal kit startup Grubby has extended its partnership with plant-based chef duo Bosh! They have developed a new range of 10 dishes that can be made in under 30 minutes, including Gochujang Tofu Mac & Cheese and Peanut Butter & Tenderstem Udon Soup.

    Months after acquiring Swedish mycoprotein startup Mycorena, Belgian animal protein company Veos Group‘s Naplasol has expanded the former’s Promyc line with two new ingredients at the Food Ingredients Europe event in Frankfurt (November 19-21).

    chosen foods shortening
    Courtesy: Chosen Foods

    US avocado oil startup Chosen Foods has debuted a vegan shortening made with just one ingredient: fractionated avocado oil. It’s available online and at Target for $10.99 to $12.99 per 16oz tub.

    Fellow US firm the Plant-Based Seafood Co. has added Crispy, Crunchy, Fried Shrimp to its Mind Blown range of vegan seafood products. It’s available online for D2C and foodservice for a limited time.

    Seattle-based vegan chicken player Rebellyous Foods has launched a Spicy Kickin’ Patty for K-12 schools, restaurants, and food service providers. It meets the USDA National School Lunch Program’s requirements for two meat/meat alternate credits and offers 1/4 grain credit as well.

    rebellyous foods chicken
    Courtesy: Rebellyous Foods

    And German startup Ohly, which makes yeast-based bionutrients for the food industry, has expanded its X-Seed product line with new nutrients designed to boost enzyme production.

    Company and finance updates

    UK vegan confectionery brand Doisy & Dam has been sold by Nurture Brands to organic cocoa company Food Thoughts. The deal will see the formation of an ethical plant-based chocolate offering for home bakery and snacking goods.

    doisy and dam
    Courtesy: Doisy & Dam

    Across the Atlantic, vegan baked doughnut maker Drumroll has received a $3M investment from CPG incubator 7 Mile Brands.

    The Global Agri-Food Advancement Partnership (GAAP), which supports agrifood companies with funds, incubators and labs, has invested an undisclosed amount in Argentinian molecular farming startup Ergo Bioscience. GAAP will host Ergo in its Saskatoon labs in the coming months to help expand its operations to North America.

    polopo egg protein
    Courtesy: PoLoPo

    Another molecular farming startup, Israel’s PoLoPo, has signed an MoU with CSM Ingredients to bring its egg protein grown in potatoes to the commercial baking market. It is already awaiting regulatory approval in the US.

    Chipotle is the top US restaurant chain when it comes to plant-based options and meat reduction policies, according to a report by World Animal Protection that ranks 23 major companies on these metrics. McDonald’s, Wendy’s and chicken chains like KFC and Popeyes received a failing grade.

    In Chicago, PlantX‘s XMarket Food Hall – the largest vegan food court in the Midwest – has closed after a year of operations.

    Since opening in Berlin this April, the fully plant-based Rewe store has been welcoming 5,500 visitors every week.

    Speaking of Berlin, fermentation-derived dairy startup Formo has kickstarted its first out-of-home marketing campaign.

    formo cheese
    Courtesy: Formo/LinkedIn

    Also in Germany, the federal food and agriculture ministry has invested €400,000 in sausage producer Metten Fleischwaren‘s project to develop a blended sausage with mycoprotein and meat.

    Meanwhile, Dutch meat giant Nutreco has opened what it claims is the world’s first facility dedicated to food-grade powder production for cell feed, in an inauguration event attended by several cultivated meat companies.

    nutreco lab grown meat
    Courtesy: Nutreco

    New Zealand startup Daisy Lab, which makes precision-fermented dairy proteins, has partnered with two dairy processors to supply its plug-and-play technology for large-scale production of bioidentical proteins.

    Speaking of precision fermentation, French player Bon Vivant has released a life-cycle assessment that shows its animal-whey protein cuts greenhouse gas emissions by 72%, reduces water use by 81%, and requires 99% less land compared to conventional dairy.

    precision fermentation lca
    Courtesy: Bon Vivant

    In further news from this industry, Belgian precision fermentation startup Paleo and Austrian 3D-printed seafood producer Revo Foods have received a €2.2M grant from the EU’s Eureka Eurostars programme to develop animal-free myoglobin for vegan salmon.

    British peanut butter maker ManiLife has invested over £1M in a new 13,5000 sq ft manufacturing facility that can store up to 15 million jars of peanut butter. Raising £500,000 to fund the move, the factory is set to begin production in early 2025.

    the better meat co
    Courtesy: The Better Meat Co

    Californian mycelium startup The Better Meat Co has received its patent from the US Patent and Trade Office, which covers its innovative shelf-stable mycoprotein production process, methods of sizing and separating mycelium particles, and million process to turn the dry mycleium into a powder.

    Policy developments and awards

    In the UK, conservation agency the National Trust will make menus at its 300 food and drink outlets at least 50% plant-based, after 75% of its 2.6 million members voted in favour of the move to speed up its path to net zero. Around 40% of its existing catering options are plant-based.

    Alternative protein think tank the Good Food Institute has been recognised as one of Giving Green‘s top six climate impact charities globally for the third year running. It has recommended philanthropists to provide $2.1M in grants to the charity, contributing to its ongoing three-year raise of $125M.

    Luxembourgish chef Steve Lentz has won the Best Vegan Chef title at the Global Chefs Challenge, who won over judges with a vegan foie gras and a cabbage-based dessert.

    Check out last week’s Future Food Quick Bites.

    The post Future Food Quick Bites: Lighter Oatly, Vegan Shortening & Plant-Forward National Trust appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Brew Up Some Love for Starbucks’ Big Move for Cows on November 7—Here’s How

    The post Brew Up Some Love for Starbucks’ Big Move for Cows on November 7—Here’s How appeared first on PETA.

    This post was originally published on Animal Rights and Campaign News | PETA.

  • The Nutritarian Diet: Could Plant-Rich Eating Slow Biological Ageing in Women?

    nutritarian diet
    4 Mins Read

    A new study shows a range of health benefits for women who follow a plant-rich “nutritarian” diet, including significantly slower biological ageing.

    In yet more evidence of the positive effects of plant-based eating on human health, a new study suggests that nutrient-rich, whole-plant-forward diets can reduce inflammation and biological ageing markers in women.

    Conducted by researchers from the Nutritional Research Foundation, Northern Arizona University, and epigenetics company TruDiagnostic, the study explores how such “nutritarian” diets – emphasising cruciferous vegetables, beans and legumes, onions and garlic, mushrooms, berries, nuts, and seeds – can improve women’s health.

    The anti-ageing benefits of a nutritarian diet

    plant based diet aging
    Courtesy: Jul Po/Getty Images

    The study, published in the Current Developments in Nutrition journal, contrasted 48 American women who adopted the nutritarian diet for five years or more with 49 women who followed the Standard American Diet (SAD).

    According to the US dietary guidelines, the SAD is characterised as too high in red meat, high-fat dairy, processed and fast foods, refined carbohydrates, added sugars, salt and calories, and too low in fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lean protein and healthy fats.

    The nutritarian diet, on the other hand, focuses on specific foods linked with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-tumour, anti-cancer and heart-healthy properties. These plant-based foods have high-viscous and fermentable fibre content, and are associated with healthy lipid levels and lower risks of mortality from all causes.

    The research found that the plant-rich diet significantly slowers epigenetic ageing, as measured by DunedinPACE, a DNA-based clock tool that tracks the pace of biological ageing. The nutritarian diet also exhibited lower dietary inflammatory potential than the SAD, as indicated by the scores on the Empirical Dietary Inflammatory Pattern (EDIP) and the Dietary Inflammatory Index (DII).

    The higher presence of T regulatory cells (which regulate your immune system) and lower levels of neutrophils (which can be detrimental to inflammation) presents better cardiovascular health benefits for women following the nutritarian diet.

    Additionally, greater levels of DII – as was the case with women on the SAD – are linked to increased risk of frailty, type 2 diabetes, higher total and LDL cholesterol levels, cancers, and all-cause mortality. Similarly, a high EDIP score is also associated with greater cancer and mortality risks, alongside hip fracture and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

    Nutritarian diet followers were further found to have lower body mass indices, insulin-like growth factors, and blood glucose levels than women eating high amounts of red meat and processed food.

    Growing evidence of plant-based diets and longevity

    netflix you are what you eat
    Courtesy: Netflix

    “These findings suggest that the Nutritarian diet not only reduces inflammatory markers but may also slow biological processes associated with ageing,” said lead author Deana M Ferreri. “This research aligns with the growing body of evidence supporting the role of plant-rich diets in promoting long-term health.”

    Indeed, the study joins mounting evidence of the anti-ageing benefits of plant-based diets. Last year, a Stanford University School of Medicine study of identical twins (which also involved TrueDiagnostic) found that vegan diets can lower LDL cholesterol, fasting insulin levels and weight while reducing telomere loss, which slows ageing in the body. That research formed the basis of the Netflix series You Are What You Eat.

    Another study by Stanford University and TrueDiagnostic, published in July, focused solely on ageing, and revealed that vegan diets can lower biological age in as little as eight weeks, much faster than an omnivore diet.

    It follows research from 2021 that linked plant-based diets to longer life expectancy, noting that US women aged 20 and above can live over 10 years longer with these eating patterns. Even in older populations, veganism lowers the use of medication by 58%, a separate study has found.

    The nutritarian diet chimes with the philosophy of the Blue Zones, six regions across the world where people live longer than average due to regular exercise or movement and whole-food plant-based diets.

    This latest study comes just as scientists advising the US government on its next dietary guidelines have drafted recommendations to reduce red meat and encourage a shift to plant proteins like beans, legumes and peas, prioritising them (along with nuts, seeds and soy products) above animal proteins in the official guidelines.

    The post The Nutritarian Diet: Could Plant-Rich Eating Slow Biological Ageing in Women? appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Huge PETA Win! You Can Now Enjoy Guilt-Free Sips Without the Upcharge at Starbucks

    The post Huge PETA Win! You Can Now Enjoy Guilt-Free Sips Without the Upcharge at Starbucks appeared first on PETA.

    This post was originally published on Animal Rights and Campaign News | PETA.

  • Future Food Quick Bites: Yelp’s Best Vegan Restaurants, Alt-Milk Launches & Fermentation Wins

    lil vegerie
    7 Mins Read

    In our weekly column, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Beyond Meat’s European exploits, a big week for plant-based milk in the US, and cultivated seafood’s national TV debut in Japan.

    New products and launches

    Plant-based giant Beyond Meat has partnered with foodservice operator SSP Group to bring the Beyond Burger to UK airports and train stations. It is available at 13 locations, including The Camden Bar & Kitchen at London Stansted and Brigg & Stow at Bristol Airport, and will be rolled out at another six in December.

    beyond meat uk
    Courtesy: Beyond Meat/SSP

    Beyond Meat is also delivering on its promised expansion in Germany, expanding from freezers into the chilled aisles of Edeka, which now stocks burgers, hack (mince), sausages, and more.

    Speaking of Bristol, local favourite VeBurger is opening a second location on Whiteladies Road in Clifton. It will give away 100 free vegan burgers on day one.

    Across the Atlantic, Slutty Vegan‘s location in Birmingham, Atlanta is reopening months after it was temporarily shut, but this time under new ownership. Company founder Pinky Cole has gifted the restaurant to its former general manager Reatta Hall, a local resident who has been at the company for three years.

    London-based Grounded has brought its clean-label plant protein milkshakes to the US, with Whole Foods Market carrying its chocolate and mint-chocolate variants in 150 stores across both coasts.

    rebbl protein shake
    Courtesy: Rebbl

    In more milkshake news, Californian functional beverage maker Rebbl has launched a line of vegan protein shakes with 26g of protein per bottle. They are powered by EverPro, an upcycled barley protein developed by AB InBev’s EverGrain, and come in chocolate, vanilla, and cookies and creme flavours.

    Californian juicer manufacturer Nama has unveiled its M1 Plant-Based Milk Maker, which can produce “barista-quality milk” in under two minutes, alongside infused oils, soups and flavoured waters. It’s available in North America for $400.

    nama plant based milk maker
    Courtesy: Nama

    On the opposite coast, New York-based Edenesque has introduced its debut line of “chef-crafted” milk alternatives, featuring unsweetened and barista oat milks, and a barista pistachio-cashew milk.

    Also in New York, Elmhurst 1925 has released a limited-edition OatNog for the holiday season, made from a base of oats and cashews.

    silk kids milk
    Courtesy: Silk

    Another US alt-dairy launch comes from Danone-owned Silk, which has rolled out an oat milk for kids aged five and over with 8g of protein per serving, alongside DHA omega-3, choline, and prebiotics.

    In Italy, vegan cheesemaker Dreamfarm has expanded its lineup with a new almond and cashew ricotta, which is currently available exclusively at Esselunga ahead of an EU-wide launch.

    dreamfarm ricotta
    Courtesy: Dreamfarm

    And Australian firm Pectin 360 has teamed up with The Original Juice Company to transform food waste into pectin and fibre. The two will set up a pilot plant with an undisclosed research and commercialisation entity, with the aim of saving over 10,000 tonnes of citrus peels and apple pomace waste annually.

    Company and finance updates

    In Canada, Modern Plant-Based Foods has acquired vegan pet food startup AnimalKind, marking its expansion beyond human food products.

    vegan pet food
    Courtesy: AnimalKind

    French firm C&DAC has brought in €1.6M ($1.7M) from Yeast, ILP Group, and Alsace Business Angels to speed up the development of its fermented legume-based flour for the plant-based industry.

    Polish food waste platform Foodsi, which allows restaurants and stores to sell discounted surplus food, has raised €1.2M ($1.3M) in a seed extension, taking its round’s total value to €2.5M ($2.7M).

    US biomanufacturing firm Liberation Labs has secured a $3.5M investment to support the ongoing construction of its large-scale precision fermentation facility in Richmond, Indiana. It comes ahead of its Series A round, which is expected to close at $37.5M.

    liberation labs
    Courtesy: Liberation Labs

    Also in the precision fermentation realm, Chicago’s Hydrosome Labs – whose H2O technology can double yields and decrease production time by up to 25% – has bagged $3.7M to scale up operations to improve nutrient uptake in skincare and provide enhanced hydration in performance drinks.

    German dairy giant Hochland, which has been around for almost 100 years, has joined Food Fermentation Europe, a coalition of companies aiming to advance regulatory approvals of novel fermentation-derived proteins.

    In sadder news, molecular farming startup Tiamat Sciences has announced that it ceased operations a few months ago, a decision it attributed to “financial constraints”. As of last year, it had raised $5M in total funding.

    meatable lab grown meat
    Courtesy: Meatable/Green Queen

    Dutch cultivated pork startup Meatable, Chilean biotech firm Sticta Biologicals, and the University of Chile‘s Center for Mathematical Modeling have been awarded a research grant by the Good Food Institute to develop a precise and genome-scale metabolic model of porcine cells.

    Finnish state investor Business Finland has granted €10M ($10.8M) in R&D funding to FoodID and FinBioFAB for projects to create alternative proteins and materials, which have been accepted into the Global Centers research programme led by the US National Science Foundation. Participating collaborators include Onego Bio, Enifer, Fazer, MeEat, and others.

    The US Department of Agriculture has announced $1.5B in grants for 92 partnership projects to advance nature conservation and climate-smart agriculture, as part of the Inflation Reduction Act and the Farm Bill.

    melbourne city vitasoy
    Courtesy: Melbourne City FC

    Hong Kong-based alt-dairy giant Vitasoy has agreed to be a shirt sponsor for A-League club Melbourne City FC. The brand’s logo will appear on the men’s team’s training shirt and shorts for the 2024-25 season, alongside LED signage at AAMI Park.

    Alternative protein advocacy group ProVeg International has opened an outpost in Brazil, its first office in South America. It comes months after it set up an office in Portugal.

    Policy and research developments

    New York startup Pureture, which has been working on a vegan casein alternative, has developed a yeast-based protein with a complete amino acid profile to match the muscle recovery and growth attributes of casein and whey.

    vegan casein
    Courtesy: Pureture

    The China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment has released new safety assessment materials for GMOs used in food processing trials, a regulatory step that can help commercialise precision-fermented foods in the country.

    Further progress for precision fermentation comes from the Netherlands, whose House of Representatives has voted in favour of allowing public tastings of foods made from this technology. The agriculture ministry will now consult with stakeholders on the motion’s contents.

    lab grown pork
    Courtesy: Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry

    Researchers in the US have created a prototype of cultivated pork grown on a new scaffold: kafirin proteins isolated from red sorghum grain.

    The City of West Hollywood, California has unanimously voted to endorse the Plant Based Treaty, calling on the federal administration and other national governments to negotiate a Global Plant Based Treaty.

    oato oat milk
    Courtesy: Oato

    PETA UK has announced the winners of its Vegan Food Awards 2024, with La Fauxmagerie, Oato, Strong Roots, One Planet Pizza, and Lurpak among those receiving honours.

    Yelp, meanwhile, has published its list of the best 100 vegan restaurants in the US, based on user reviews. Lil’ Vegerie in Redondo Beach, California bagged the top spot.

    yelp vegan restaurants
    Courtesy: Yelp

    Finally, cultivated seafood has made it to Japanese TV, with actor Keita Machida explaining the concept on featuring on an episode of Manga Artist Ienaga’s Complex Society Redefined.

    Check out last week’s Future Food Quick Bites.

    The post Future Food Quick Bites: Yelp’s Best Vegan Restaurants, Alt-Milk Launches & Fermentation Wins appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • If Universities Went Vegan, They Could Save As Much As £1.4M in Catering Costs & Cut Emissions by 80%

    plant based universities uk
    4 Mins Read

    UK universities could benefit from massive cost and emissions savings if they switched to 100% plant-based catering, a new study has found.

    If British universities transitioned to a fully vegan catering menu, they could save up to £1.5M annually and lower emissions by 80%, with meals using up a third of the water and nearly 90% less land.

    This is because plant-based meals are 30% cheaper than meat and 21% cheaper than vegetarian dishes, while emitting 84% fewer greenhouse gases compared to meat-rich options, according to analysis by UK consultancy Bryant Research.

    The firm compiled the climate impact data, wholesale price, and portion sizes of 140 different ingredients to estimate the environmental footprint and food procurement costs for a range of meals at universities.

    “Our model found that plant-based meals are consistently the most sustainable across various environmental measures, compared to vegetarian and meat-based meals. Crucially, we also found that a plant-based transition provides an opportunity for caterers to reduce their food procurement costs,” Bryant Research director Chris Bryant and political researcher Billy Nicholles said in a joint statement.

    Vegan meals much cheaper and better for the environment

    vegan university
    Courtesy: Bryant Research

    The average costs and environmental footprints were calculated based on three weeks of sample menus, with one plant-based, vegetarian and meat-based meal each day, totalling 45 meals. The researchers found that the average price of a meat-rich dish was £3.02, versus £2.68 for vegetarian meals, and £2.10 for plant-based.

    “All environmental measures demonstrated a clear and consistent trend: the plant-based meals performed better compared to meat-based and vegetarian meals, often by a significant margin,” the authors wrote.

    In every example, vegan meals were associated with the lowest emissions. Even vegetarian meals generated three times as many emissions (1.5kg CO2e on average) as vegan options (0.5kg CO2e). Meat-based dishes were linked with 3.2kg of CO2e on average. For example, a beef lasagna with cheesy garlic bread, fries and a side salad emitted 11.4kg of CO2e, much higher than what a chestnut and oyster mushroom kebab with chips, pickled onions and chillies generated (0.5kg CO2e).

    Similarly, plant-based fare used 69% less water (115 litres) than meat-heavy dishes (370 litres). But unlike other metrics, vegetarian dishes weren’t far away from the water footprint of meaty ones (350 litres). This is because dairy – and cheese, in particular – demand high volumes of water.

    The greatest difference between vegan food and meat comes with land use. The average amount of land used to produce a meat-based meal is 12.3 cubic metres, versus 1.2 cubic metres for plant-based dishes – this means the former uses over 10 times as much land as the latter. Vegan lunches also need 73% less land than vegetarian ones.

    This echoes other studies that show the outsized environmental impact of meat production. Livestock farming makes up 57% of agricultural emissions, while using up 80% of all farmland and 30% of the world’s freshwater supply – all while providing just 18% of the world’s calories and 38% of its protein.

    How universities can embrace plant-based catering

    university plant based
    Courtesy: Bryant Research

    The report worked out the total savings different-sized universities can make across five scenarios, ranging from business as usual to a transition towards a 100% plant-based menu.

    These institutions can cut food procurement costs by 27% and reduce emissions by 79% if they transition to a fully vegan catering menu. The associated water consumption would also be decreased by 67%, while land use would be down by 87%.

    A small university of 5,000 students could therefore save around £280,000 per year, which rises to £50,000 for a medium-sized institute of 10,000 students. For larger universities (up to 25,000 people), this would amount to £1.4M in budgetary savings.

    To bring about these changes and reap their benefits, Bryant Reserach has outlined four recommendations for universities. First, they should publicly commit to a phased shift to a 100% plant-based menu by 2030, setting clear annual targets for increasing the proportion of such meals.

    Then, they should engage and educate stakeholders, from Students’ Union leaders and prospective and current students to catering managers, commercial directors, chefs, and sustainability managers. The menu options they decide on should be “diverse, nutritious and appealing as well as environmentally and financially advantageous”.

    The report also encourages them to implement a plant-based by default approach, which involves offering vegan dishes as the main choice, with meaty meals available if diners ask for them. This choice architecture strategy can normalise plant-based eating and is relatively easy to implement.

    Finally, universities should utilise support services to increase the plant protein ratio, like Humane Society International’s Forward Food programme, which has already supported over 30 universities with hands-on culinary training, evidence-backed menu formulation strategies, and bespoke food sustainability reports.

    Caterers like Sodexo and Compass Group have both pledged to reduce meat and dairy in favour of vegan meals to meet their climate commitments. And last year, over 650 academics and campaigners penned an open letter to UK universities demanding a switch to 100% vegan catering menus, comparing the shift to fossil fuel divestment commitments by 101 institutes in the country.

    So far, the students’ unions of the University of Stirling, Birmingham University, Queen Mary University, London Metropolitan University, Kent University, Cambridge University, and Newcastle University, among others have all voted to introduce 100% plant-based menus.

    The post If Universities Went Vegan, They Could Save As Much As £1.4M in Catering Costs & Cut Emissions by 80% appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Mr Charlie’s: Mike Tyson, Ric Flair Invest in ‘Vegan McDonald’s’ to Fuel Expansion

    mr charlie's
    5 Mins Read

    Los Angeles-based vegan fast food chain Mr Charlie’s has secured an investment from Carma HoldCo, parent company of sports legends Mike Tyson and Ric Flair’s brands.

    Mr Charlie’s Told Me So, home of the McDonald’s-spoofing vegan Frowny Meal, has received a “strategic investment” from Carma HoldCo, the parent company of several brands from cultural icons.

    The plant-based fast-food chain, which has locations both in Los Angeles and in San Francisco stateside, as well as in Sydney, Australia, is now eyeing expansion both domestically and internationally via a franchise model.

    This will be facilitated by the investment from Carma HoldCo, whose portfolio brands specialise in the cannabis and wellness sector. These include Tyson 2.0, founded by boxing legend Mike Tyson; Ric Flair Drip and Wooooo Energy from wrestling icon Ric Flair; and Evol by the rapper Future.

    “Mr. Charlie’s is a natural choice for Carma Holdco, as we diversify into the food industry. I very much believe in the healthy benefits of a vegan diet and was a strict vegan for many years,” said Tyson. “I’m proud to align myself with partners bringing healthy alternatives that taste good to the fast food space.”

    A vegan McDonald’s with a strong community mission

    mr charlie's frowny meal
    Courtesy: Mr Charlie’s

    Established in 2020, Mr Charlie’s gained popularity on TikTok, where users dubbed it the “vegan McDonald’s”, thanks to its menu and branding.

    Instead of a Happy Meal, diners can choose the Frowny Meal, which includes an Impossible Burger or TiNDLE chicken patty, TiNDLE nuggets, fries, and a choice of drink.

    The beef burger menu features Not A Hamburger, Not A Cheeseburger, Mr Chuck, and the recently launched Mr Royale with Cheese (among others), alongside Mr Sunday and Not A Chicken Sandwich as the chicken options. Aside from the latter, all feature vegan cheese. In addition, it has a breakfast menu comprising Mr Muffin – a take on the iconic McMuffin with vegan egg, cheese and mayo – and Mr Muffin Deluxe (which adds a TiNDLE sausage to the mix), as well as tater tots.

    The red and yellow packaging is paired with a parody of the famous Golden Arches, with each box featuring a sad face and crossed eyes to feign an ‘unhappy’ brand aesthetic, complemented with the tagline: “Turn that frown upside down.”

    But behind the tongue-in-cheek messaging, there’s a serious community-focused mission underscoring the business. Founders Aaron Haxton and Taylor McKinnon have been committed to providing second chances to employees from underprivileged backgrounds, including those overcoming addiction or homelessness.

    Mr Charlie’s has previously partnered with the Dream Center, a non-profit that helps homeless and formerly incarcerated people find accommodation and employment. For its Los Angeles eatery, the restaurant chain has hired around 60 workers from the organisation, which helped McKinnon through a dark time once too.

    It pays employees above minimum wage, with management-level staff receiving a $300 credit card allowance to build up a credit score. The chain aims to create more jobs through similar collaborations with community organisations as it expands.

    “Mr Charlie’s mission to help and hire those from the homeless community is something that I am truly passionate about, and I look forward to helping many people and communities with the expansion of Mr Charlie’s across the globe,” said Tyson, who is vegan and whose wife heads a homeless shelter in Los Angeles to help victims of domestic violence find work.

    Mr Charlie’s eyes expansion amidst challenging times for vegan F&B

    vegan mcdonald's
    Courtesy: Mr Charlie’s

    Mr Charlie’s says it has several locations lined up in the US, and wants to use the investment to rapidly grow its footprint. To do so, it has developed a franchise model targeting area developers and master franchisees in large US territories, with plans in place for international expansion.

    It has leveraged its partnerships with data-driven delivery platforms like Uber Eats and Postmates to use robust market data to pinpoint ideal locations for franchise expansion. This would allow for faster rollouts of new branches, and more effective penetration of local markets.

    “This isn’t just an investment in a plant-based food concept – it’s a smart business decision,” said Carma HoldCo CEO Adam Wilks, who has previously worked at Cold Stone Creamery, Pink Berry, Buy N Bulk, and more. “The QSR space is ripe for innovation, and Mr Charlie’s combination of bold brand identity, crave-worthy menu, and scalable business model makes it a compelling opportunity for franchisees. We’re excited to help bring this innovative brand to more markets.”

    In a joint statement, McKinnon and Haxton said Mr Charlie’s would be helped by Carma HoldCo’s experience in building disruptive brands. “Both Carma and Mr Charlie’s are about creating meaningful change – whether it’s providing second chances to our employees or delivering plant-based food in a fun and novel way,” they noted.

    The investment comes at a time when plant-based and quick-service restaurants have been struggling. Kevin Hart’s fast-casual chain Hart House suddenly closed all its locations last month, joining a trove of other plant-forward Los Angeles eateries that have shut their doors in the past year, such as Vegan Drip Burger, Shojin, Nic’s on Beverly, Flore Vegan, Jewel, and Matthew Kenney’s VEG’D and Plant Food & Wine.

    In fact, the Los Angeles Times reported that at least 65 well-known restaurants closed in the city last year, with high inflation rates prompting consumers to spend less on dining out – a recent survey showed that American families spend 10% less of their eating-out budgets than they did in 2022.

    Restaurants themselves are also facing thin margins on top of high labour and ever-increasing ingredient costs. In 2023, pound sales of meat analogues dipped by 8% in the US foodservice sector, versus a 4% drop for conventional meat, according to Circana data cited by the Good Food Institute.

    Whether they’re backed by celebrities or otherwise, restaurants – especially plant-based ones – face an uphill challenge in the current landscape. Mr Charlie’s would do well to turn the frown upside down.

    The post Mr Charlie’s: Mike Tyson, Ric Flair Invest in ‘Vegan McDonald’s’ to Fuel Expansion appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Chunk Foods Brings Whole-Cut Steak to US Supermarkets

    chunk foods steak
    4 Mins Read

    US food tech startup Chunk Foods is rolling out its whole-cut vegan steak products at independent retailers, before a wider launch in 2025.

    Chunk Foods, which makes plant-based steak products that replicate the whole muscle structure of beef, is making its retail debut in the US.

    It is introducing four cuts of its vegan steak that lean into consumer demand for high-protein and clean-label options, containing eight ingredients (plus fortifications) and up to 37g of protein per serving.

    “We are focusing on local and independent grocers in Los Angeles and New York City as part of our initial retail strategy,” founder and CEO Amos Golan tells Green Queen.

    “These retailers align with our goal of engaging with communities that are passionate about high-quality, plant-based options. E-commerce will follow in late November, with plans to expand to national retailers in 2025.”

    Asked what supermarkets could stock the steak SKUs next year, he says: “We are currently in discussions with Whole Foods, Sprouts, Wegmans, HEB, and several other national retailers.”

    Appealing to consumers with high-protein, clean-label meat analogues

    chunk foods
    Courtesy: Chunk Foods

    Golan founded the startup in 2020, targeting what many have described as the “holy grail” of meat analogues: whole-muscle cuts.

    Chunk Foods’s USP lies in its solid-state fermentation tech, through which it creates its cultured soy protein base for the steaks (made from defatted soy flour, soy protein isolate, and wheat gluten.

    The startup took a foodservice-first approach for its initial launch, appearing on the menus of New York establishments like Coletta, Anixi, The Butcher’s Daughter, Leonardo DiCaprio-backed chain Neat, and Pastrami Queen.

    It has also established a partnership with the Florida-based restaurant group Talk of the Town, having launched into Charley’s Steak House in Orlando last year. Last December, it headlined a culinary experience at Art Basel Miami Beach, as part of a Philly cheesesteak.

    Chunk Steak is in Philadelphia too, appearing in a short rib ragu at Monster Vegan. And it has an ongoing partnership with popular fast-food chain Slutty Vegan and its sister establishment Bar Vegan.

    These collaborations have proved to be a testament to the whole-cut steak’s pedigree, which won the Plant Based Meat Product of the Year honour at the 2023 AgTech Breakthrough Awards.

    Among the products being launched in retail are 4oz fillets ($8.99 for a two-pack) and a pulled format ($7.99 per 8oz pack), both of which contain 25g of protein per serving. There’s also a steakhouse cut ($9.99 per 6oz), which delivers a whopping 37g of protein, and a 10oz slab with 31g of protein ($12.99).

    The prices of these products are on the higher side, at a time when inflation continues to squeeze consumer budgets and price becomes an increasingly important purchase driver.

    “We are confident in our value proposition,” says Golan. “While price is undoubtedly a critical factor for consumers today, we believe that offering delicious, whole-cut plant-based alternatives that deliver on taste and texture will resonate with shoppers seeking quality and convenience in their food choices.”

    He adds: “We’ve been mindful in positioning our pricing to remain competitive within the plant-based category and traditional beef products.”

    Chunk Foods enters a stagnating retail market for meat alternatives

    chunk slab
    Courtesy: Chunk Foods

    Chunk Foods’s move into retail comes during a sustained decline in sales of meat analogues. In 2023, these products suffered from a 12% drop in revenue compared to the year before. And this year, too, sales were down by 9% in the year ending July 2024.

    So for any meat alternative brand to enter the grocery sector right now is a bit of a risk. “Despite the broader market challenges, there is still strong demand for high-quality, healthy, and delicious plant-based products,” argues Golan.

    “We’ve received significant interest from consumers and retailers alike, which has been a driving factor in our decision to enter the retail space,” he adds. “Our clean-label, high-protein whole-cuts offer a unique edge in the market, and we believe the timing is right to bring something new and exciting to the retail landscape.”

    Asked how companies in the space can turn things around, he believes delivering on consumers’ expectations for taste, texture and nutrition is critical. The industry needs to focus on making plant-based foods more approachable and satisfying, and that’s exactly what we’re doing at Chunk Foods,” he suggests.

    “Continued education about nutritious plant-based options, clearer product differentiation, and better storytelling about the benefits of our clean label products will help reinvigorate the category.”

    Last year, Chunk Foods completed the construction of what it says is one of the world’s largest factories of its kind. It has also teamed up with plant protein company Better Balance to create new whole-cut meat analogues for the Mexican market.

    And to date, it has raised $24M in funding (including a $7.5M round earlier this year). Golan confirms that the business is well-capitalised for now, so it isn’t actively fundraising. “Over the next year, we’re focused on our retail expansion,” he says of the company’s immediate plans. (It is also working on pork, lamb and poultry alternatives.)

    “Additionally, we’ll continue to grow our presence in foodservice, with new partnerships and menu innovations,” he continues. “There’s also a lot of excitement around an e-commerce partnership, which will launch by late November, allowing us to reach more consumers directly.”

    The post Chunk Foods Brings Whole-Cut Steak to US Supermarkets appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • In Europe, Sales of Plant-Based Meat & Dairy Grew by 6% – But Price Parity Holds the Key

    plant based market size europe
    5 Mins Read

    Despite the industry’s headwinds, retail sales of plant-based food in six major European markets increased by 5.5%, and lower prices can help bring a windfall for companies in this space.

    There have been a few too many doomsday-like headlines about the plant-based world in recent months, adding to a divisive narrative that the industry’s best days were behind it.

    The reality is, in the US, all but four categories in the vegan sector saw sales plummet last year. And in Europe, retail sales of meat and dairy analogues collectively increased in 2023 compared to the previous year.

    This is according to analysis of previously unpublished Circana data by the Good Food Institute (GFI) Europe, which found that in are athe six largest European economies – Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands – the sales value of plant-based food rose by 5.5% in 2023, reaching €5.4B. At the same time, the volume of sales measured by weight also grew by 3.5%.

    “Europe’s plant-based sector has continued to make headway despite a difficult few years for the wider food industry,” said Helen Breewood, research and resource manager at GFI Europe.

    “Plant-based meat and dairy are becoming mainstream options in many European countries, emerging plant-based categories are growing, and some products are beginning to compete with their animal-based counterparts on price.”

    Here are our five major takeaways from GFI Europe’s analysis of vegan food sales in Europe.

    Alt-milk remains king

    plant based sales europe
    Courtesy: GFI Europe

    Like the rest of the world, plant-based milk has remained the largest category in Europe, accounting for 41% of all sales in 2023. This was facilitated by a 7% hike in sales value, reaching €2.2B. Unit sales also grew by 4.7%, and product volumes were up by 5.2%.

    Germany is the largest plant-based milk market, netting €805M in sales value (a 37% share). This is explained by the shrinking price gap between milk alternatives and conventional dairy, which was down from 35% in 2021 to just 3% in 2023. If the VAT on the former (19%) was the same as the latter (7%), price parity would have already been achieved.

    Meat analogues are second on the list with a 37% share of Europe’s vegan sales. Between 2022 and 2023, the sales value of these products was up by 3.2%, reaching €2B, while units were steady and volumes declined.

    Germany retains top spot for plant-based

    germany plant based market
    Courtesy: GFI Europe

    The land of bratwurst was already the largest in Europe, and it continued to dominate, taking up 40% of the market (€2.2B) among the countries analysed.

    Despite being the most profitable nation for plant-based milk producers, Germany bucks the continental trend by selling more meat analogues than alt-dairy. This is because it is also the largest market for meat-free products, accounting for nearly half (46%) of all sales.

    The number of households these products are reaching is also rising steadily, if gradually – plant-based milk penetrated 37.4% of households last year (versus 33.8% in 2021), and milk alternatives were bought by 36.5% (up from 36.3% two years prior).

    The UK is next on the list in terms of market size, with sales reaching €942M. It was followed by France (€648M), Italy (€641M), Netherlands (€452M) and Spain (€309M).

    Where sales declined, the slump may be over

    plant based meat sales
    Courtesy: GFI Europe

    In only two markets did plant-based products perform worse in 2023 than the year before: the UK and the Netherlands. The former saw sales decline by 2.8% (with a larger 10% drop in volume), while in the latter, volume sales were down by 5%, with units dipping by 1%.

    However, there are signs that this slowdown started to level off in 2023 and the early months of this year. For starters, the sales value of plant-based products in the Netherlands actually grew by 1%, and volumes have shown a slight rebound after two years of decline.

    In the UK, weekly unit sales of meat analogues fell by 7% in early 2024, compared to a 12% decrease last year. And plant-based milk experienced a 1% decline in unit sales per week this year, versus 9% in 2023. And just this week, discount retailer Lidl announced it is tripling its own-label plant-based offering after seeing demand grow by 12% last year.

    Europeans love non-dairy cheese and cream

    vegan sales europe
    Retail sales of vegan cheese in Europe from 2022-23 | Courtesy: GFI Europe

    Two categories that shone last year were cream and cheese alternatives. Vegan cheese, taking up 3.6% of the total share, was the fastest-growing product in Spain, France and Italy, and plant-based cream (comprising 2.6% of the market) experienced the quickest growth in Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK.

    The latter made 24% more money in 2023, representing the highest sales hike of any category, albeit being a much smaller category than vegan milk, meat, and yoghurt.

    On the other hand, plant-based desserts (-3%), non-dairy ice cream (-8%), and vegan ready meals (-10% in France, Germany and the UK) have witnessed drop-offs, which GFI Europe ascribed to cost-of-living pressures that led shoppers to cut back on non-essential and convenience items.

    Price parity is priceless

    plant based meat price
    Courtesy: GFI Europe

    A major finding of the analysis was that with certain products and in certain markets, the price gap between animal proteins and their vegan versions has closed – and this has been associated with better sales.

    For example, branded dairy-free creams are cheaper than their conventional counterparts in Germany and the UK, spurring a 23% sales hike in the latter. In fact, private-label plant-based milk costs an average of €1.12 per litre, 13% cheaper than own-label dairy milk (€1.30).

    Likewise, higher prices mean middling sales. With volume sales of plant-based meat down, manufacturers need to develop products that meet consumer expectations on both taste and price.

    So finding ways to lower prices is key to the success of plant-based meat and dairy in Europe. “Our analysis finds that lower prices and higher quality can power the growth of these more sustainable options, so policymakers and manufacturers should continue to invest in innovation and infrastructure to develop tastier, more affordable products capable of building a diversified, resilient and healthy European food system,” said Breewood.

    The post In Europe, Sales of Plant-Based Meat & Dairy Grew by 6% – But Price Parity Holds the Key appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • MeliBio Bags Pre-Series A Investment to Expand Bee-Free Mellody Honey

    mellody vegan honey
    4 Mins Read

    Californian food tech startup MeliBio has secured a “strategic investment” as part of a pre-Series A round to accelerate the growth of its vegan honey.

    As it makes inroads on its precision-fermented honey, San Francisco-based MeliBio has obtained fresh capital to scale up the distribution of its plant-based sweetener, Mellody.

    The “strategic investment” from Future Food Fund by Oisix, a food tech investor from Japan, is part of MeliBio’s pre-Series A financing round. It means the company has raised around $10M in total funding since it was established in 2020, co-founder and CEO Darko Mandich tells Green Queen.

    MeliBio was initially planning a Series A round this year – as revealed by Green Queen – which was expected to bring in a further $10M. But the challenges of the food tech market, where investment dropped by 61% last year, made it difficult to do so. “We shifted to [the] pre-Series A round, and will reopen Series A next year,” says Mandich.

    Mellody honey now available nationwide

    vegan honey
    Courtesy: MeliBio

    The startup initially launched Mellody through foodservice partners, before debuting the product in the D2C channel via a partnership with famed New York eatery Eleven Madison Park’s online store.

    Since then, the product has been introduced across the US (alongside a new hot honey variety), available at independent retailers and a growing list of restaurants – recent partnerships include Palmetto Superfoods and Joyride Pizza in California and Moto Pizza in Seattle. Moreover, MeliBio has also expanded its distribution through KeHE, UNFI, Greco and Sons, and ACE Natural.

    Unlike other vegan honey products, which make use of apples and lemons, elderflower, carob, or other ingredients, Mellody aims to replicate the honey through a combination of fructose and glucose, complemented by a range of plant extracts (red clover, jasmine, passionflower, chamomile, and seaberry), gluconic acid and natural flavours.

    It aims to solve a key biodiversity problem. The demand for money has proliferated honey bee populations, and that has plunged wild bees into chaos. Many of the 20,000 wild bee species are endangered, and some are facing the threat of extinction, but they’re important pollinators (even better than honey bees) and protecting them is crucial for the survival of natural habitats.

    This makes them a major cog in preserving the planet’s biodiversity and maintaining its ecosystem. But continued honey production spells grave trouble for these bees. And as for honey bees, their own ability to produce the sweetener itself has declined, thanks to widespread herbicide use, conversion of flower-rich land into monocultures, a drop in soil productivity, and climate change. It’s why plant-based and precision-fermented alternatives like MeliBio’s are needed.

    The company, which can produce 10,000 lbs of Mellody per day, has also launched vegan honey in Europe through a partnership with Slovenia’s Narayan Foods. In the UK, this is in the form of Vegan H*ney under the Better Foodie, whereas it sells as Vegan Hanny or Ohney under Aldi’s private label, Just Veg. The $10M, four-year deal aims to put MeliBio’s vegan honey into 75,000 stores eventually. Additionally, it recently secured a patent win in Germany for its plant-based honey technology.

    MeliBio makes gains in precision fermentation

    melibio honey
    Courtesy: MeliBio

    MeliBio began as a precision fermentation company, and that remains its core target in the long term. The technology combines the process of traditional fermentation with the latest biotech advancements to efficiently produce compounds like proteins, flavour molecules, vitamins, pigments, or fats.

    It involves inserting a molecular sequence – derived from digitised databases rather than the relevant animals or plants – into microorganisms to give them instructions to produce the desired molecule when fermented. This enables companies like MeliBio to produce bioidentical versions of animal-derived products like honey.

    While its plant-based products have been expanding, MeliBio has been working on the precision-fermented product in the background, and recently made some advancements. Aaron Schaller, the startup’s co-founder and CTO, recently announced that the team has taken three of its protein and enzyme targets from ideation to proof-of-concept to bioreactors, with a fourth soon to come.

    And this week, he noted that MeliBio has increased the titer – the amount of product per unit volume at the end of the fermentation process – of its main enzyme target by 1,300%. “Taking our strains from the bench to bioreactors sent our strain productivity through the roof across only two runs,” he said. “With ample room to further optimise our bioprocess, future titer and yield improvement is imminent.”

    This was a result of its collaboration with AI-led biomanufacturing startup Pow.Bio, with whom it has been engaging in scale-up efforts since March. The firm is now evaluating further biomanufacturing partners for the next phase of its precision-fermented honey.

    “This investment from Future Food Fund is an exciting step forward for MeliBio. It aligns perfectly with our mission to not only transform the honey industry but also to make a measurable impact on biodiversity and the environment,” says Mandich.

    “At Future Food Fund, we are excited to support MeliBio’s vision of giving bees a break while offering a new model for food production through their exceptional products,” adds Hiro Hasegawa, venture partner at the VC firm.

    The post MeliBio Bags Pre-Series A Investment to Expand Bee-Free Mellody Honey appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Health is ‘Main Reason’ Americans Eat Plant-Based Meat Now – Cheaper, Tastier Products Are Key for Growth

    plant based meat health
    5 Mins Read

    Americans are attracted to meat analogues mainly for their health benefits, but to overcome the sales slump, plant-based companies must offer better-tasting and cheaper products.

    The health halo created by meat producers is fluttering. People are now actively moving away from animal proteins as they realise the burdens they put on the human body – after all, red and processed meat have been labelled carcinogens by the WHO, adding to their contribution to heart disease, diabetes and obesity risks.

    Plant-based meat, of course, provides a viable alternative. And in the last year, there has been a notable shift in this industry’s marketing playbook. Climate change, the reason why most companies say they exist, is no longer the top message anymore. Now, it’s health first.

    And this is an intentional effort. For Americans, health is now the top reason to shift from animal proteins to plant-based analogues. Despite their sales dwindling over the last couple of years, consumers remain interested in vegan meat products because they believe they are better for their personal health and don’t pose disease risks.

    That said, there remains a large gap in purchase drivers and barriers – some households have decreased their consumption of plant-based meat due to their taste or texture and higher prices.

    This is according to a new study by Kroger, the Plant Based Foods Institute (PBFI), and 84.51°, which revealed that flexitarians are gradually reducing their spending on animal proteins for the fourth year in a row. The Plant-Based Migration Analysis analysed the behaviour of over seven million US households in 2022-23 and carried out a survey this year to provide a blueprint for retailers to expand their vegan offering and drive the category’s growth.

    “Despite economic challenges in the past few years, we continue to see that shoppers have remained engaged and interested in plant-based foods,” said Linette Kwon, data and consumer insights analyst at the Plant Based Foods Association, the site organisation of PBFI.

    Health attitudes mirror plant-based brand messaging

    The research revealed that 48% of US shoppers think plant-based foods are healthier than animal proteins and 45% want to eat less meat and dairy due to personal health concerns, the latter sentiment representing a 7% rise since 2023. Meanwhile, 29% of Americans are also concerned about the presence of antibiotics and hormones in conventional meat.

    Three in 10 respondents say they’re enthused by the greater availability of plant-based products, and their climate credentials. And 28% want to eat fewer animal proteins because of their rising costs – beef prices reached record highs last month. In fact, the number of consumers concerned about the price of meat has grown by 9% since last year.

    On the other hand, a third of Americans (32%) have been buying fewer plant-based products because they don’t like how they taste, highlighting a key hurdle for manufacturers in the space. The same percentage of people moving away from animal proteins due to high costs are deterred from plant-based options for budgetary reasons (28%), a 12% rise from 2023.

    While only 14% dislike the nutritional profile, 23% feel there are fewer vegan products in-store, and 16% were dismayed by the decreased amount of convenience options like ready meals. Meanwhile, 19% have trouble finding them in the store.

    “Making plant-based foods more affordable, improving the taste/texture, offering greater variety and providing more nutritional benefits would make them more likely to purchase plant-based foods,” the report says.

    Industry giants like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have been doubling down on their products’ health benefits, with revamped recipes and packaging, new health-forward products, certifications from health organisations, targeted marketing campaigns, and even online resources dedicated to fighting misinformation.

    “It’s not necessarily that sustainability has become less important, but we have to meet our consumers where they are. Health is a major driver when it comes to purchasing plant-based food,” Sherene Jagla, chief demand officer at Impossible Foods, told Green Queen this week. “It’s important that we’re educating consumers about the nutritional value of our products so they can understand how it might fit into their lifestyles.”

    Sales are still down, and improvements are crucial

    In line with sales data, milk alternatives seem to be the most popular plant-based product. More than a third (37%) of Americans are drinking more alt-milk now, and in place of dairy. Around a quarter are doing the same with frozen meat analogues (26%), refrigerated vegan meat, yoghurt, and frozen meals (24% each).

    The share is slightly lower for vegan cheese (18%)- it has jumped by 7% from last year. “Shoppers who are increasing their spend on plant-based milk, cheese, and fresh meat are actively decreasing their spend in corresponding animal-based categories,” the report states. “This indicates their dedication to making a switch to more plant-based foods.”

    Julie Emmett, VP of marketplace development at PBFA, said the research showcases evidence of a protein transition for a variety of reasons: “Retailers can use this extensive research to develop merchandising and marketing strategies for long-term growth.”

    In Europe, this shift is already in motion. Lidl and Ahold Delhaize are aiming to become the first supermarket groups to set sales goals in line with their climate ambitions by setting ‘protein split’ targets, which involve increasing the share of plant-based food sales while decreasing animal protein sales. The WWF last week published a methodology for retailers to measure protein sales, urging them to make 74% of all food sold plant-based.

    The PBFI report recommends manufacturers and retailers optimise pricing and promotion strategies to make plant-based foods more affordable to a wider group of consumers and improve the taste and texture of products while offering unique items and cleaner labels.

    They also write that making vegan food easy to find in-store and online is critical, and can be helped by digital and in-store signage. In addition, the report says companies should provide recipe inspiration and education about the health benefits of these products to pique consumer interest.

    These measures are important when you consider the continued struggles of plant-based meat, whose sales fell by 12% in 2023, according to SPINS data crunched by the Good Food Institute. This decline has not been stemmed, with meat alternatives down by 9% in the year ending July, per Circana. And since 2020, the number of alt-meat brands has shrunk by 28%, from 116 to 83.

    Prices of vegan meat and seafood also swelled by 9% in 2023, compared to 3% for their conventional counterparts – this meant there was a 77% price premium on the former. But consumers haven’t permanently turned away from these products. Cutting prices will attract more of them back, as was evidenced by Lidl’s trial in the Netherlands.

    “As the challenges of price and findability improve, we believe different plant-based categories will have many more opportunities to better reach shoppers,” said Kwon.

    The post Health is ‘Main Reason’ Americans Eat Plant-Based Meat Now – Cheaper, Tastier Products Are Key for Growth appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • PETA Condemns ASPCA, Humane Society Endorsement of Factory Farms—Here’s How

    The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), and Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) promote the factory farming industry. Representatives from these “animal protection” organizations presently sit on the board of directors for the Global Animal Partnership, the group behind misleading “animal welfare certified” labels at Whole Foods Markets. Unfortunately, these marketing buzzwords mean nothing for animals raised and killed for food.

    The Global Animal Partnership betrays animals by lying to consumers, falsely assuring them that its certifications mean that animals are being treated humanely. HSUS, the ASPCA, and CIWF continue to support this humane-washing scam in the misguided hope of changing it from the inside, even though other groups, including PETA and Farm Forward, have cut ties with the Global Animal Partnership and urged them to do the same.

    PETA investigators have documented systemic cruelty and suffering at 12 Global Animal Partnership–certified facilities.

    A PETA investigation into Sweet Stem Farm—which was certified by the Global Animal Partnership at the time—revealed that pigs were crammed into severely crowded sheds and had painful, bloody rectal prolapses.

    A separate PETA investigation into Plainville Farms—which also was, at the time, Global Animal Partnership–certified—documented that workers there kicked, beat, and threw turkeys and left ailing birds to suffer without treatment. PETA’s investigation resulted in former Plainville Farms workers being charged with six felonies and a total of 141 counts of cruelty to animals—the largest number in any factory-farmed animal case in U.S. history. Ten former workers have been convicted so far.

    Campaign History: PETA Urges HSUS, the ASPCA, and Others to Cut Ties With the Global Animal Partnership

    Full-Page PETA Ads in Top Papers Put ‘Humane-Washers’ on Blast

    On October 13, PETA ran full-page ads in The Washington Post and The New York Times, calling out HSUS and the ASPCA for betraying animals and kind consumers.

    Many of these organizations’ online followers were also served digital ads critiquing the Global Animal Partnership’s lies.

    Similar ads targeting the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals have also been spotted in the U.K.

    Ad spotted in the UK criticizes the RSPCA over its ties to the Global Animal Partnership

    PETA Supporter Arrested at ASPCA Annual Humane Awards Luncheon

    On October 10, a PETA supporter wearing a pig mask and holding a sign reading, “Stop Betraying Us!” was dragged out of the Plaza Hotel in New York City and arrested on its steps after interrupting the ASPCA’s Annual Humane Awards Luncheon.

    PETA supporter in a pig costume is arrested while protesting the ASPCA

    The pig defender apologized to the awardees for the interruption but condemned the group for pimping for the factory farming industry at the expense of animal suffering and deaths. Dozens of others joined in the protest.

    Before being hauled out by security, the protester implored the ASPCA’s top brass to resign immediately from the Global Animal Partnership’s board of directors.

    HSUS Attempts to Defend the Indefensible

    PETA has repeatedly shared our findings and concerns with the Global Animal Partnership and the organizations that serve on its board, including in a September 2024 letter that was covered by Bloomberg.

    We blew holes through the flimsy arguments HSUS offered in response one by one.

    Help End the ‘Humane’ Lies

    Kind consumers can take steps to end this cruelty and the “humane” lies—first, by going vegan, and second, by making sure these organizations know that you won’t support them until they end all their factory farm endorsements.

    Please shun all animal-derived foods and remember that “organic” and “free-range” labels mean nothing to animals. They certainly don’t mean a humane life or death.

    And please sign PETA’s petition telling HSUS, the ASPCA, and CIWF to resign from the Global Animal Partnership’s board of directors immediately and end their affiliation with the partnership and all factory farming of animals:

    Take Action Now!

    The post PETA Condemns ASPCA, Humane Society Endorsement of Factory Farms—Here’s How appeared first on PETA.

    This post was originally published on Animal Rights and Campaign News | PETA.

  • Future Food Quick Bites: Vegan Holiday Meals, Cultivated Leather & Cheap Alt-Milk

    aldi vegan christmas range
    5 Mins Read

    In our weekly column, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers a new oat milk dessert brand, Next Level Burger’s holiday feast, and price parity for plant-based milk.

    New products and launches

    Discount retailer Aldi has introduced its largest vegan Christmas range in the UK, including a plant-based version of its footlong pig in blanket, a sprouted gratin, a nut roast, a brie and butternut wellington, and a dairy-free cheese board.

    aldi vegan christmas food 2024
    Courtesy: Aldi UK

    Fish-free seafood maker Aqua Cultured Foods has landed on the menu of Chicago eatery Mama Delia, owned by Michelin-starred chef Marcos Campos Sanchez. The dish, called Atún Crudo, features the vegan raw tuna topped with a fried egg and potato strings.

    If you’re after oat milk desserts, Kaiser is a new brand by Canadian oat farmer Nathan Kaiser. The company has introduced a bunch of ice cream tubs and bars, all but one of which are vegan. They’re available at select grocers in Quebec and will enter the Greater Toronto Area later this year, before a national rollout in 2025.

    kaiser oat ice cream
    Courtesy: Kaiser

    Oatly has signed a multi-year deal with UK café chain Black Sheep Coffee, which will serve its barista oat milk as the default dairy alternative across its 100 stores.

    Mushroom meat maker Myco has struck a deal with Brakes, the UK’s largest wholesaler, to supply burgers, sausages and mince – made from vertically farmed oyster mushrooms – to the latter’s 20,000+ clients.

    myco burger
    Courtesy: Myco

    And vegan fast-casual chain Next Level Burger and its subsidiary Veggie Grill have introduced a take-home Holiday Feast menu, which features its Holiday Harvest wellington and five sides. Each $130 set feeds four to six people and requires a 72-hour notice, with the option to add dessert.

    Company and financial updates

    Swiss cultivated meat startup Sallea, which has created edible scaffolds for manufacturers to produce whole-cut meat and seafood from animal cells, has raised $2.6M in a funding round led by Founderful.

    sallea
    Courtesy: Sallea

    London-based New Wave Biotech has won the €20,000 EIT Food Accelerator Network Tech Validation Award to validate its technology with research organisation CPI. It has created an AI-powered software to help precision fermentation companies optimise their downstream processing.

    Fellow UK company Vegan Food Group has sold the Weisbaum production facility it acquired in the takeover of Tofutown earlier this year to another German tofu producer, New Originals Company. It will allow the firm to focus on scaling up at its larger plant in Lüneburg.

    vegan food group
    Courtesy: Vegan Food Group

    At British meat-free brand Gosh Foods, sales decreased by 7% in 2023, mostly from declines in Europe, with pre-tax losses widening from £1.3M to £3M.

    Meanwhile, Framptons, another UK plant-based company, has reported a profit of £1M for the financial year ending April 2024, overturning a £3.7M loss from the previous year. It comes after its acquisition by German investment firm Profura. The manufacturer launched the Wessex Oat Company in July.

    wessex oat company
    Courtesy: Framptons

    Dutch crop solutions provider AgroSpheres has closed a $37M Series B round to scale up its AgriCell technology, which protects active ingredients in pesticides from environmental pressures, and bring its biopesticides to market.

    Also in the Netherlands, Qorium, led by Mosa Meat founder and cultivated meat pioneer Mark Post, has produced a 35x35cm sample of cultivated leather using a newly scaled-up tissue bioreactor.

    lab grown leather
    Courtesy: Qorium

    Massachusetts continues to invest in the future of food, awarding $2.1M to the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture to establish the Foodtech Engineering for Alternative Sustainable Technologies (FEAST) centre, which will advance cultivated meat R&D.

    Agricultural giant Royal Cosun has invested $3.5M in Planetary to scale up the development of cost-effective ingredients derived from fermentation, convert the former’s feedstock into mycoprotein ingredients, and create new applications for plant-based food.

    Policy, research and awards

    The Vegan Society’s VEG 1 Baby & Toddler supplement, a liquid multivitamin for children aged six months to four years, has won a three-star rating in the supplement category of the 2024 Nourish Awards.

    veg 1 supplement
    Courtesy: The Vegan Society

    In the Netherlands, plant-based milk is almost at price parity at Lidl (where dairy is only six cents cheaper) and Aldi (a 16-cent difference), according to research by animal rights organisation Wakker Dier.

    Japanese researchers have conducted a life-cycle assessment of IntegriCulture’s serum-free, food-grade culture media for cultivated meat, revealing that electricity, animal inputs and single-use items like “lab consumables” were the main emissions hotspots.

    cultivated meat lca
    Courtesy: Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology

    Finally, is our brain chemistry to blame for the climate crisis? That’s the perspective of a new white paper, which suggests that humans are hardwired to desire status (which translates to material wealth and consumption), and dopamine continually craves greater rewards.

    Check out last week’s Future Food Quick Bites.

    The post Future Food Quick Bites: Vegan Holiday Meals, Cultivated Leather & Cheap Alt-Milk appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • The Newest Plant-Based Milk is Made from Watermelon Seeds

    watermelon seed milk
    5 Mins Read

    Força Foods, a California-based startup, is making watermelon seed milk to combat the water footprint of traditional dairy alternatives. It’s among a host of new-age alt-milks keeping consumers invested in the category.

    Let’s get one thing out of the way: whatever way you put it, dairy is much worse for the planet than any plant-based milk alternative.

    A famous 2018 study from two Oxford University researchers proved as much, revealing that cow’s milk uses 11 times more land than the next on the list, oat milk, while generating nearly three times as many emissions as rice milk, the most carbon-intensive plant-based milk.

    But one metric where plant-based milk could perform better was water use. While still much lower than the 628 litres of water needed to make a litre of cow’s milk, almond and rice milks both require a ton of water (371.5 litres and 270 litres, respectively) for the same amount.

    These are numbers that have fuelled the rhetoric against plant-based milks, especially almond milk, by far the most popular alternative in the US. Addressing the water issue would help the segment hold its own against these criticisms.

    Now, one Californian startup has made water waste its main focus – that too through an anti-almond narrative – with what it labels the “world’s first” milk alternative made from watermelon seeds.

    Going in on other plant-based milks with bold messaging

    milkish
    Courtesy: Forca Foods

    It began when Guilherme Maia Silva, a Brazilian researcher who studied Plant Sciences at UC Davis, deepened his knowledge about organic farming and sustainable agriculture. It spurred him on to establish Força Foods in 2021.

    “I became fascinated by how the food we grow impacts [the] environment,” he says on the website. “Realising that many plant-based foods rely on water-intensive ingredients, such as almonds, I set out to find a better alternative.”

    What began as a snack company has now turned into an alt-dairy startup. “I discovered that watermelon seeds are not only nutritious, packing more protein than almonds and rich in antioxidants, but also require 99% less water to grow than almonds,” says Maia Silva.

    Força Foods’s flagship range, called Milkish, isn’t just dissing almonds. It also notes that watermelon seeds need 72% less water than oats and 53% less than soy, which are both among the mainstream plant-based milks.

    The range – which comes in original and vanilla flavours – combines watermelon seeds with MCT oil, sunflower lecithin, pea protein, cellulose gel and gum, and natural flavours. They are sugar- and carb-free, have 42% fewer calories than low-fat milk, and are fortified with calcium, potassium, and vitamins A, D and E. (That said, the use of MCT oil means the saturated fat content is higher than 1% milk.)

    The company is taking on competitors in a bold manner, asking consumers to “ditch the others” and declaring that “almods suck”. In a comparison with Malt Organics and Oatly, it labelled Milkish as the only product that is “delicious by itself”, noting how it can be used in frothed coffee beverages, cereals, smoothies and baking, or consumed straight up.

    But despite this messaging, it seems Força Foods will follow the Oatly playbook, expanding first through foodservice locations before venturing into retail.

    Força Foods isn’t the first alt-dairy company to innovate with watermelon seeds. Miyoko’s Creamery, an industry pioneer, has been selling a pourable mozzarella made from a combination of watermelon seeds and oats since 2022, and has previously introduced watermelon and sunflower seed cottage cheese. In India, Katharos Food (now owned by Nourish You) makes vegan mozzarella and Cheddar from watermelon seeds.

    New-format milk alternatives to save the day

    forca foods
    Courtesy: Forca Foods/Instagram

    “Water scarcity is one of the biggest limiting factors to our global food supply and agriculture directly contributes to over 70% of the world’s freshwater use. Consuming lower footprint alternatives is an easy and delicious way to live more sustainably,” the company says.

    This is true. Just last week, a major report found that the global water cycle is “increasingly out of balance”, and the crisis could threaten more than half the world’s food supply by 2050. One of its key recommendations is to reduce agricultural reliance on water and dependence on water-intensive foods.

    But brands like Força Foods may also be appealing to something else. More and more companies are coming up with ‘non-traditional’ plant milks, or those outside the Big Four of soy, oat, almond and coconut.

    Pistachio milk has become a social media darling ever since Táche burst onto the scene in 2020, while Dug’s potato milk began making waves a year later. Today, consumers can also buy buckwheat milk from Bam, sunflower seed milk from Lattini, pecan milk from THIS PKN, sesame milk from Hope and Sesame, and even banana milk from Mooala.

    These brands are hoping to offer consumers something different. A new base, sure, but also cleaner labels, better nutrition, lower sugar content, and greater sustainability credentials than the status quo.

    And they may be on to something. Research has shown that despite the widespread adoption of milk alternatives – 44% of US households bought these products last year, and nearly 80% went back for more – a third of Americans still haven’t found a plant-based dairy product that meets all of their needs.

    “This is a call to action to the food and beverage industry. You need a fresh, creative approach to flavour creation, colour, and texture development to make products that captivate consumers,” said Sonali Dalvi, VP of innovation at Ofi, which conducted the survey last year.

    Milk alternatives alone make up 36% of all plant-based sales in the US, and almond still reigns supreme. But outside of the Big Four, blends – think NotCo’s use of peas, cabbage and pineapple in NotMilk – rpreent the fifth-largest segment. Retail sales of plant-based milk dropped by 5.2% in the year ending July 14, with almond and soy milk on the decline and oat milk purchases remaining flat.

    Can blends and newer options like Milkish turn the tide for the category?

    The post The Newest Plant-Based Milk is Made from Watermelon Seeds appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • 10 Quotes From ‘Consider the Turkey’ That Could Change Your Thanksgiving Plans

    In his groundbreaking book Animal Liberation, philosopher and bioethicist Peter Singer defined speciesism as “a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species.” Now, in a new book, Consider the Turkey—out on October 22—Singer examines how this insidious mindset directly impacts gentle turkeys, millions of whom are killed for Thanksgiving alone every year.

    “This small but powerful book is full of riveting facts, including some jaw-droppers. Readers will be left wondering how, if cruelty to animals is a crime (and it is), anyone can be excused for subjecting a turkey to a raft of pain and misery so that he—invariably he—can be reduced to a carcass for the carving. Consider the Turkey promises to convert many a Thanksgiving dinner into a celebration of life.”

    —PETA President Ingrid Newkirk

    10 Shocking Quotes From Peter Singer’s Consider the Turkey

    1. “The United States is the world’s largest turkey producer and the largest exporter of turkey products.”

    “In 1970, Americans ate just over 8 pounds per person annually; by 2021, that figure had nearly doubled to more than 15 pounds. In 2023, US turkey meat production for the domestic market was estimated to be a little more than 5 billion pounds a year, with another 400 million pounds exported.”

    2. “Economics overrides the suffering of the turkeys, every time.”
    3. “If you enter the shed, the first thing that will hit you is a burning sensation in your eyes and throat, as they react to the ammonia in the air, which in turn comes from the droppings of thousands of birds, accumulated for up to a year in the sawdust or wood shavings that cover the floor.”

    “Although each batch of birds is sent to slaughter after about 3 or 4 months, in the United States, unless there is an outbreak of disease, sheds are typically only cleaned out once a year.”

    4. “[If] you know how most US turkeys are conceived, you also have a way to fill those awkward silences that can occur around the Thanksgiving table.”

    “Just ask the family and friends gathered together if they know how the bird they are eating was conceived. If they don’t, enlighten them. Then ask them whether ensuring that everyone can get a generous slice of turkey breast is worth breeding a misshapen bird who cannot mate, requiring poorly paid workers to spend all day masturbating male turkeys and pushing open the vaginas of female turkeys, who hate the procedure, but have no escape from it until they are sent off to be killed.”

    5. “The food the animals eat frequently has to be transported long distances, and the animals use most of its nutritional value just to keep their bodies warm and hearts pumping, move around, and develop parts of their bodies that we do not eat, like bones and some internal organs.”

    “The extent of this wastage varies from species to species, but for all of them, whether we are focused on calories or protein, from eating their flesh we get back less than one-third of the nutritional value of the feed we provide for them.”

    6. “Removing the end of the beak of a turkey or chicken used to be known in the poultry industry as ‘debeaking,’ but in the interests of better public relations, it is now referred to as ‘beak trimming.’”

    “If that term suggests that it is a simple and painless procedure, like trimming your fingernails, then once again, the industry has misled you.”

    7. “Turkeys may also be mutilated in other ways.”

    “[T]heir snoods may be removed because the bright red flesh may attract pecking from other birds; sometimes the long claw or spur on the back of the leg is amputated; and the wing feathers may be trimmed to prevent the birds from flying and so decreasing flightiness in the flock.”

    8. “Sometimes, the birds get loose and run under the truck’s tires.”

    “The workers were instructed not to go under the trucks, and the investigator could hear popping sounds when the truck moved forward. Once the truck had left, there were squashed remains of birds where it had been. We’ve seen this before: individual birds do not count. To take the time to save them just doesn’t pay.”

    9. “At a plant that shackles and kills about 50,000 birds every day, [a] PETA investigator saw a worker trying to get a turkey [whose foot was stuck] out of a crate.”

    “The worker simply ripped the turkey’s foot off.”

    10. “The US Constitution authorizes the president to grant a pardon for a federal crime, but no one has ever suggested a crime for which the turkeys are supposedly being pardoned.”

    “Presumably, that’s because turkeys don’t commit crimes. Does it make families in the United States feel better, as they chew on the corpse of one of the 46 million turkeys killed annually for Thanksgiving dinners, to know that somewhere, two of them are still alive?”

    Consider These Fascinating Turkey Facts

    When given a good life at a sanctuary, turkeys often follow humans around looking for treats and affection. They’ve also been known to fall asleep in people’s laps while being petted.

    colorful turkeys outdoors

    Turkeys are caring parents and spirited explorers who can live for up to 10 years, but humans kill those raised for food when they’re between 12 and 26 weeks old—millions each year for Thanksgiving alone.

    Slaughterhouse workers hang the young birds by their feet from metal shackles and drag their bodies through an electrified bath. They’re often still conscious when workers slit their throats and dump them into scalding-hot tanks.

    Skip the Turkey and Host a Vegan Thanksgiving—Here’s How

    Turkeys aren’t the only animals who suffer on massive farms. Humans exploit cows, chickens, and other animals in the meat, egg, and dairy industries to produce broth, butter, and other products. These animals aren’t so different from the cats and dogs we lovingly share our homes and lives with.

    Holiday traditions are comforting, but sometimes we have to get creative and find new ways of doing things. This is nothing new to vegans, who excel at improving their families’ traditions and cherished recipes by ensuring that they don’t harm animals. Most supermarkets, including Safeway and Meijer, now stock a variety of vegan options—from dairy-free butter to vegan poultry—so swapping ingredients is a snap.

    Create a Delicious ‘ThanksVegan’ Feast

    The post 10 Quotes From ‘Consider the Turkey’ That Could Change Your Thanksgiving Plans appeared first on PETA.

    This post was originally published on Animal Rights and Campaign News | PETA.

  • American Airlines to Take Off With Vegan Creamer Following PETA’s Push

    Attention, passengers: After hearing from PETA and receiving nearly 150,000 e-mails from our dedicated supporters, American Airlines—the world’s largest airline by daily flights—just announced that it will launch a vegan creamer option on its in-flight beverage menu in November!

    A calf and cow next to a cup of coffee with heart-shaped steam

    Because vegan options are kind to cows, healthier for humans, and better for the planet, the number of people ditching dairy is soaring. PETA applauds American Airlines for getting on board with oat milk creamer and urges Southwest Airlines to do the same.

    Tell Southwest Airlines to offer vegan creamer

    American Airlines will be the fifth major U.S. airline to begin offering vegan creamer in less than two years.

    PETA awarded Delta Air Lines and Alaska Airlines for being the first to widely offer oat milk options last year, and United Airlines and JetBlue added oat milk creamer this year.

    Cows make friends, hold grudges, and mourn their loved ones when they pass away or are separated from each other.

    Mother cows form intense bonds with their babies and often call and search frantically for them after they’ve been taken away. The demand for dairy-free milks has skyrocketed as consumers learn that cows used for dairy are forcibly inseminated and their beloved calves are torn away from them so that the milk meant to nourish their babies can be used by humans. Once their bodies wear out after repeated pregnancies, they’re sent to slaughter.

    mother and baby cow in field of short grass

    It’s Easy to Show Compassion to Cows

    Each person who goes vegan saves nearly 200 animals a year, dramatically shrinks their carbon footprint, and reduces their risk of developing cancer, heart disease, and other illnesses. PETA’s free vegan starter kit can help anyone thinking of making the switch.

    Want to do more? Click below:

    Take Action for Cows!

    The post American Airlines to Take Off With Vegan Creamer Following PETA’s Push appeared first on PETA.

    This post was originally published on Animal Rights and Campaign News | PETA.

  • Feminist Icon and Rock Legend Joan Jett Has a Message in Behalf of ALL Animals: ‘We Are All Sisters Under the Skin’

    Feminist icon Joan Jett, a queen of rock ’n’ roll, gives a damn about reproductive rights for everyone—including the hens, cows, and other animals who are abused and exploited by the cruel meat, egg, and dairy industries. In a new PETA video, which will air during a commercial break in The Rachel Maddow Show on Monday, October 21, the rock legend and longtime vegan morphs into images of different women and other female animals, saying, “We are all sisters under the skin. End speciesism.”

    As discussions rage over women’s rights, equal pay, abortion access, and more, Jett’s video is a powerful display of solidarity with all females. 

    We are daughters, sisters, and mothers. … And if any of us were forcibly bred or had our breast milk or eggs taken and sold or our children stolen from us to be experimented on, we’d all feel violated and angry and heartbroken.”

    Real Feminists Support Animal Rights!

    Our fellow animals can feel love, pain, and fear, yet the meat, egg, and dairy industries exploit them as if they were objects. In the dairy industry, workers forcibly inseminate (rape) cows by inserting an arm into the animal’s rectum to deliver semen with a metal rod into her vagina. Like all mothers, cows are nurturing and protective of their precious babies—but on dairy farms, workers often tear newborn calves away from their mothers within hours of birth.

    In the egg industry, farms—even the ones labeled “cage-free”—typically confine hens to no more than a square foot of space and cut part of their beaks off with a hot blade. Once their bodies wear out and they’re no longer deemed profitable, workers kill them on site or send them off to slaughter.

    The meat industry confines mother pigs to cramped metal crates for their entire adult lives—and a PETA exposé of a pig farm revealed that piglets slowly died just out of reach of their distraught mothers.

    Ask yourself: Would I wish this fate on my mother? Or my sister? Or me?”

    joan jett and a cow over a colorful tie dye background

    Join Jett and Help End the Meat, Egg, and Dairy Industries’ Dirty Deeds

    Every animal is someone. You can speak up for all the sensitive animals used and killed for their flesh, eggs, and milk simply going vegan. Order a free vegan starter kit today:

    go vegan!

    The post Feminist Icon and Rock Legend Joan Jett Has a Message in Behalf of ALL Animals: ‘We Are All Sisters Under the Skin’ appeared first on PETA.

    This post was originally published on Animal Rights and Campaign News | PETA.

  • Lidl Becomes First UK Retailer to Set ‘Protein Split’ Targets, Committing to Sell More Plant-Based Meat & Dairy

    lidl vegan
    5 Mins Read

    With a new plant-based private label, Lidl GB has announced that it will make a quarter of its meat and fish sales vegan by 2030, whilst also doubling the current share of non-dairy alternatives.

    German discount supermarket Lidl is truly leading the future food shift amid Europe’s retailers. Just weeks after it set targets to reduce scope 3 emissions (which make up almost all of its climate footprint), it has now committed to selling more plant-based food in the UK.

    The company has pledged to have 25% of its meat and seafood sales in the UK sourced from plants by the end of the decade, versus a 14% share in 2021. It will simultaneously double the sales share of non-dairy milk, cheese, butter and yoghurt by that time, from a baseline of 6.4% in 2021.

    It makes Lidl the first retailer in the UK to set a protein split target, committing to increase the share of vegan products over animal proteins to mitigate its impact on the environment and reach net zero by 2050.

    “We know that as a society, we need to incorporate more plant-based foods into our diets to ensure balance,” said Richard Bourns, chief commercial officer of Lidl GB. “That’s why we are proudly standing behind the Planetary Health Diet, which is key to achieving a more healthy and sustainable future and supports our net-zero ambitions.”

    To kickstart the shift, Lidl GB has launched a new Plant! range under its vegan private-label brand Vemondo, which will help triple the number of plant-based products on offer.

    “Make no mistake, this is a game-changer,” said Emily Armistead, interim director of think tank Madre Brava. “We applaud Lidl for being the first supermarket in the UK to take this bold but essential step towards a more sustainable, healthy food offering.”

    Price parity a key focus for Lidl GB

    lidl vemondo
    Courtesy: Lidl GB

    Lidl says it has witnessed a 12% increase in demand for vegan products over the past year, which pushed it to expand its plant-based offering with the new own-label range.

    The Vemondo Plant! lineup features 28 new products that will be rolled out to select stores this month, ahead of a national launch in January 2025. These include multiple tofu varieties (from £1.75), burgers and sausages (from £1.89), nuggets (£1.99), and mince (£2.49), alongside vegan cheese, yoghurts, deli meats, and ready meals like lasagna and cordon bleu.

    Besides the product expansion, Lidl has pledged to offer “market-leading” prices for plant-based products to amp up its protein shift. It is endeavouring to increase in-store visibility by displaying meat and dairy analogues alongside conventional products, a dedicated plant-based fixture, and increased marketing of its animal-free products.

    The discounter is also focusing on the nutritional value of these products to ensure they contain micronutrients like B12 and iron, and are high in protein and low in fat and calorie content, according to Madre Brava.

    “We’re the first UK retailer to set specific plant-based protein targets and are committed to breaking down key barriers that currently exist within the category, like price, quality, and availability,” said Bourns.

    This speaks to consumer trends in the UK, where two in five people eat plant-based meat for its nutritional benefits, but one in five are deterred due to high prices.

    “With the launch of our new own-label Vemondo Plant! range, and the expansion of our branded offering, all at market-leading prices, we’re making high-quality plant-based foods accessible to everyone, ensuring that more customers can afford to make healthy and sustainable choices,” Bourns added.

    The retailer will today be honoured with the Bronze Planet Friendly Award from animal welfare organisation Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) at the Good Farm Animal Welfare Awards. “Lidl is setting an example in the UK retail sector, and we hope their initiative inspires other supermarkets to consider the impact their business has on planetary health,” said CIWF director of food business Tracey Jones.

    Lidl labelled ‘pioneer’ as experts hail plant-based shift

    lidl plant based
    Courtesy: Lidl GB

    The move is the latest in a series of initiatives over the last 12 months, through which Lidl is aiming to greenify its own portfolio and lead the protein transition race among retailers globally. Just this month, the supermarket expanded its scope 3 reduction targets, aiming to cut these emissions by 35% in the next decade, and curb emissions from agriculture, forestry and land use by 42.4%.

    The most effective way to do this is to replace climate-harming animal proteins with planet-friendly plant-based foods, and Lidl has recognised this by lowering the prices of plant-based analogues to match their conventional counterparts (or even beat them on price) in Germany, Denmark, Hungary, Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands. It has positioned these products next to conventional meat and dairy items on shelves as well, which has brought sales success.

    “Our commitment to sustainable proteins will contribute to significantly reducing our scope 3 CO2 emissions and support a more balanced and sustainable food system for the future,” said Bourns.

    The UK is the seventh market where it has set a protein ratio target, although Madre Brava has repeatedly called for a 60-40 split in flavour on plant proteins by 2030. Still, the current target is a start, and a further sign of Lidl’s intentions.

    “We can legitimately call Lidl GB a pioneer in this country, and it is notable that a discounter is publicly leading the way. All eyes will be on which supermarket will be the next to take the opportunity to offer more healthy, sustainable food,” said Armistead.

    “All the solar panels and electric delivery vans in the world are of no use if supermarkets don’t also tackle the emissions from the products they sell, and shifting sales to more plants and less meat is the truly effective way of doing this.”

    Rebecca Tobi, senior business and investor engagement manager at the Food Foundation – which recently published research finding meat analogues better for human and planetary health – echoed this sentiment. “Setting targets is a hugely important step, serving as a North star for driving meaningful change in shifting the food on offer so that supermarkets are better supporting both people’s health and the plan,” she said.

    Lidl GB is also working with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on a five-year, 31-country project to make the retailer’s supply chain more eco-friendly, advocate for sustainable diets, and reduce food waste. The WWF itself published a methodology for retailers to measure protein sales last week, urging them to make 74% of all food sold plant-based.

    The post Lidl Becomes First UK Retailer to Set ‘Protein Split’ Targets, Committing to Sell More Plant-Based Meat & Dairy appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.