Swiss multinational corporation Nestle announced its intention to invest in the production of alternative meat. Together with two other major investors (the British Tesco and the Dutch-British Unilever), Nestle began to develop a project that over time will ensure the replacement of natural meat with artificially created analogues.
According to the project supporters, now 87 retailers have their own meat production and about 64% of the network retailer sell meat and meat products under their own brand. However, they are also ready to consider new possibilities to replace them with alternative protein products. It is known that the owners of fast food restaurants Burger King and McDonald's show interest in the project.
But Germany in the first half of this year for the first time in several years again shows the demand for meat substitutes. An example is a vegetarian sausage, which the Germans began to buy more often than usual. During this time, German consumers bought about 12,500 tons of this product, or almost 10% more than in the same period last year. Most strongly in recent years, demand fell by almost 7.5% in 2017, but subsequently grew by more than 10%, which almost normalized the market. According to the Helmut Hübsch, Key Account Manager GfK Panel Services, for a long time the market for these products was negative, but soon the discussion of the topic about replacing meat ingredients in food again aroused interest in the product.
In 2019, a real boom of these products began on the market. More and more companies began to appear that use more and more new plant components in ordinary burgers, sandwiches and other fast food. Recently, food retailer Lidl and company Beyond Meat held a campaign to promote vegan fast food with meat substitutes. Major projects this year are being prepared by Just and Impossible Foods. This has affected even large manufacturers of meat fast food for restaurants, for example, McDonald's and Burger King.
This spring, McDonald's began selling vegan burgers from more than ten plant-based ingredients at their restaurants in Germany, and Burger King followed suit with colleagues and launched a vegetable burger for 59 locations in the United States. Meat substitutes are vegetarian products that do not contain a meat base, but have a taste and even shape close to meat. However, they contain more protein and less harmful elements than meat. At the same time, more than 75% of these products contain such meat terms as fillet, sausage, and many others. However, this does not frighten the consumer due to the high quality of the products and the great demand due to the benefits and originality.
Based on meatbranch.com and agronews.com.
