Tofurkey for Thanksgiving and mock roast suckling pig? How the world can eat less meat

Given global warming and the emergence of pseudo meats, more of us should be replacing the Thanksgiving turkey with meatless alternatives
Meanwhile, China’s meat prices have surged in pork crisis: a chance for pseudo-meat makers to enter the world’s biggest meat-eating market. But it won’t be easy

David Dodwell

Published: 1:00am, 30 Nov 2019

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Think of Thanksgiving and it is hard not to think of guilty, self-indulgent excess. Its image was distilled by New Englander Sarah Josepha Hale, who described the feast in detail in her 1827 novel Northwood: turkey flanked by a loin of pork and a leg of mutton, a chicken pie, mounts of stuffing and cranberry sauce, plum pudding, pumpkin pie, ale and cider.

For a feast first indulged in 1621 when the Pilgrim Puritans, less than a year off the Mayflower, partied on wildfowl and venison for three days with 90 native Indians from the Wampanoag tribe, no celebration so symbolises the gratitude Americans share for the God-given abundance they had found – even though Abraham Lincoln did not proclaim it a national holiday until more than 240 years later.

As an English kid who did not grow up with Thanksgiving, I never fully appreciated its scale and symbolism – even though we had the Harvest Festival at the local church, and many communities worldwide have festivals to celebrate the safe completion of the year’s harvest. In China too, mooncakes and the Mid-Autumn Festival were as much about a safe harvest as poems about the moon.

But amid the Thanksgiving excesses of this past week, I could not help but think about the global warming imperative to eat less meat, which is linked to the cultish emergence of pseudo-meats such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, and the pork crisis in China caused by African swine fever.

I have long been saddened by the reduction of chicken to what can be a 46-day industrial process from hatching to table-ready meat. Turkeys do not fare better.

English historian Simon Schama wrote recently in the FT: “Their pumped-up breasts preclude natural mating, so they are artificially inseminated, fed hormones to get them to slaughter weight at 12 weeks, have their beaks and nails cut away and are stuffed with antibiotics to deal with the infections that are rife in their packed barns. They never see the light of day.”

No wonder you end up with a “dry bland mass of grim white meat”.

Given that much of the US meat industry – and the pseudo-meat industry that has grown up around vegan and vegetarian pressures – is built around trying to disguise meat as far as possible from the animal it comes from, I am surprised there is not a louder outcry for Thanksgiving turkey substitutes.

Tofurkey was invented about 25 years ago but this never caught on, perhaps unsurprisingly, given the name. Neither Impossible Foods nor Beyond Meat seems willing to tackle a vegetarian substitute for turkey.

Impossible Foods said this will be a long-term goal. Leading turkey producer Butterball said it will try limited tests next year. Mike Leonard, head of plant-based food company Motif Foodworks, said no one has yet “cracked the code”.

But if we are to get the whole grim meat-production process back into some form of equilibrium, and reduce the appalling climate impact of mass meat production, then surely, progress needs to be made, even if it does dampen some of the Founding Father nostalgia that seethes around the Thanksgiving table.

Meanwhile, I suppose I should be encouraged that in the US at least, pseudo-meat manufacturers such as Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat account for an estimated 5 per cent of meat consumption.

China’s pork crisis provides an opportunity to stare at the global meat market through a different prism. While China’s per capita meat consumption is barely half that of the US, the country’s sheer size means that it is the world’s biggest meat consumer. As incomes rise, demand for meat is expected to soar – unless there is creative intervention.

With perhaps half of China’s 360 million pig population either dead or culled, meat prices have soared. Wholesale prices for pork were up 159 per cent in October from a year earlier.

The challenges of selling mock meat to China

Chicken prices are up by a third. National reserves of pork have been released, and obstacles to imports removed – even in the midst of the US-China trade war.

As Chinese people consume about 46 per cent of the world’s pork, the impact on global meat markets has been massive, affecting markets for chicken meat and beef, too. There could be no better moment for pseudo-meats to capture a significant market share.

In some ways, the potential for pseudo-meats to take flight in China is high. From as far back as the Tang dynasty, the Buddhist-driven passion for tofu-derived meat substitutes has been strong. But differences between Western and Chinese food habits complicate any large-scale transition.

US consumers’ preference for “disguised” meat products like burgers and sausages makes the transition to pseudo-meats comparatively easy. But the Chinese preference for eating chicken or fish with the head and bones visible, and their fondness for liver, kidneys, stomach lining and other kinds of offal, present fascinating challenges for the pseudo-meat industry.

There seems to be an opening for a big surge in Chinese demand for meat substitutes and, environmentally, that surely must be a good thing – especially if it slows demand for beef, that most environmentally unfriendly form of meat.

Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are both eagerly knocking at the door in spite of the ongoing trade war. Given China’s very different dietary preferences, they will probably need to partner with local food industry pioneers, such as Zhenmeat and Starfield, or plant-based meat makers such as Whole Perfect Food, which traditionally served Buddhist customers.

Growth will first probably come with simple fare such as dumplings, meatballs, mooncakes and other “disguised” forms of a carnivorous diet. I wonder who might be up to the challenge of synthetically engineering roast suckling pig or chicken feet?

David Dodwell researches and writes about global, regional and Hong Kong challenges from a Hong Kong point of view

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