Meat the new burger patty – it’s made out of a plant

JULIE LEIBOWITZ

Even better, in the United States, it is kosher, and may well be kosher here soon.

For the past four months, burgers have been available in South Africa that look, feel, and taste like meat, having been imported by Infinite Foods. They are made out of peas and lentils and many other complex ingredients such as wheat, potato protein, coconut oil, heme, and binders like konjac and xanthan. The website of Beyond Meat, the United States maker of these products, says that they are made without soy or gluten, and are GMO (genetically modified organism) free.

It sounds like a mouthful, but consumers in the US – where it has been available for some time – say that it actually tastes better than meat. The developers of this product describe it in futuristic, almost messianic terms. Impossible Foods, a competitor to Beyond Meat in the US carries the tagline, “We’re on a mission. And it’s not to Mars”. The point is that this isn’t just a “veggy” burger, it’s just like meat – just not meat produced by an animal.

Beyond Meat Chief Executive and Founder, Ethan Brown, says: “Meat contains elements such as amino acids, lipids, carbon dioxide, trace minerals, and water. These are all present in the plant kingdom as well. Animals are bioreactors. We have the ability to take plant matter, run it through our system, and create muscle.”

Brown is a vegan who does not wear animal products. He previously worked in the hydrofuel cell, or clean tech industry. He is obsessed with sustainability.

Animal agriculture has been damned by environmentalists for its negative effects on the planet and cruelty. Recent documentaries like Cowspiracy and Forks over Knives tell that 51% of greenhouse gas emissions are caused by livestock. The effect on our water resources is devastating. According to the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, it takes 5 000 litres of water to produce 1kg of beef. These figures don’t take into account the fact that we slaughter about 66 billion animals a year, many of whom are kept in cruel factory farming conditions.

Brown is unapologetically futuristic, saying that he hopes that these products, which extend to chicken, scrambled eggs, even (kosher) bacon, will do nothing less than change the way we think of food. While realistic about the fact that we are “hard-wired” to eat meat, he believes that in 200 years, eating animals will be seen as something we used to do (like riding in horse-drawn carriages).

Dovi Goldstein, the Managing Director of South Africa’s Beth Din Kosher Department, says the Beth Din would “love to look into” these products, saying that they could be positive as they could encourage more people to eat kosher.

However, he says, “We would have to go through the full process of checking ingredients.” If the products come to South Africa with a reliable hechsher on them, and are not repackaged, the Beth Din would rely on this status, he says.

Goldstein insists that because the product doesn’t come from an animal, the Beth Din would not consider it to be meat. The term “meat substitute” would need to be used. Similarly bacon – which could be kosher and parev in these circumstances – must be termed “bacon flavoured” so as not to confuse consumers.

He says the product is not kosher if it is prepared, cooked, and served in non-kosher restaurants. This is currently the status quo in South Africa, as Beyond Meat burgers are available only in some restaurants.

Making meat from vegetables isn’t the only futuristic alternative-meat technology attracting large-scale funding from powerful investors like Bill Gates. Israeli startups such as Aleph Farms and SuperMeat are producing meat in laboratories through cultivation of cells. So far, they have managed to make steak and sausages, and they plan to start selling produce by the end of this year.

So called stem-cell meat has been attracting the attention of religious authorities worldwide. Goldstein says the topic has come up at the last two international AKO (Association of Kashrut Organisations) conferences, and the current Orthodox Union position is that it would be considered a meat product.

He is optimistic that this product will ultimately bring the price of meat down. “Currently only a tiny percentage of the animal is considered kosher,” he says. “Once we get stem-cell production right, 100% of the product would be kosher.”

Jews are permitted to eat meat, says Goldstein, but it’s not an ideal situation. “In the ideal situation, before the sin, Adam was commanded not to eat animal products… In the future, after the world will be corrected, heaven and earth will be renewed, the nature of man and animals will change and become more spiritual. At that point, we will revert back to that ideal moral sensitivity according to which it will be forbidden to kill animals to eat their flesh,” says Eliezer Melamed, an orthodox rabbi and a rosh yeshiva in Israel.

Could we be on the verge of some kind of breakthrough?