Turning the impossible into impact

Why did you name your company “Impossible”?

I wanted the name to be provocative, intriguing and memorable.  It was widely believed at the time that meat could only come from animals and that it would be impossible to create meat using only ingredients made from plants or produced by fermentation, so “Impossible” was also kind of an ironic way of thumbing our nose at the doubters.  We were going to do the “Impossible.”

In many ways, you’ve revolutionized our food choices at the grocery store. Yet, plant-based alternatives to meat – and dairy alternatives as well – are being vilified by misinformation campaigns. What do you think is the best way to combat this trend?

The disinformation campaign is very well financed by the slaughter cartel, primarily trying to raise doubts about their nutritional quality by vilifying plant-based meats as “ultraprocessed.” “Ultraprocessed” is not a scientific term - it’s an artificial and, from a nutrition and health perspective, useless, classification of foods. The negative perception is based on badly-designed studies in which people were fed diets of “ultraprocessed” foods, compared to less-processed foods.

In fact, a study by the Harvard School of Public Health that took a closer look at the evidence from those shows that of all the foods commonly binned in the “ultraprocessed” category, only sweetened drinks, ready-to-eat meat, poultry and fish products, sweetened breakfast cereals and dairy-based desserts  were associated with any negative health outcome. Several studies that have looked directly and specifically at plant-based meats have concluded that they are actually nutritionally superior. More and more of these will be coming out.

Re:wild is a vocal advocate for plant-based eating because of the role industrial animal agriculture plays in deforestation, pollution, and human rights. We are working on several pilot projects in South America to help communities transition from a reliance on animal agriculture to more viable ways of making money, with less impact on the land. You are doing something similar in the United States. What are you trying to accomplish? What is your hope for this work?

The biggest opportunity for reversing the catastrophic collapse of terrestrial ecosystems and biodiversity and the biggest opportunity to put the brakes on global heating is to phase out animal agriculture as quickly and completely as possible. The first essential step is to eliminate the demand that provides the economic incentive for farmers to raise animals for food – that’s why I founded Impossible. 

But the truth is that nobody knows how to successfully restore native ecosystems on land degraded by agriculture, because nobody has done an experiment to compare the effectiveness (in terms of ecosystem restoration and carbon sequestration) and the cost-effectiveness of alternative approaches. There are small anecdotal successes and failures, but no evidence-based guidance. Which means doing carefully controlled experiments to answer these questions in the diverse climates, geographies. cultures and biomes where animal agriculture is practiced, ASAP, is critical to the future of our planet.

The Carbon Ranch project aims to kickstart such experiments. So far we’ve launched one on a former cattle ranch in Arkansas and we’re about to launch a second in a different climate/geography/biome in California, and we’re incubating a third in Madagascar. The main limiting factor is funding, since there’s virtually no government money for this kind of experiment and even mainstream conservation groups prioritize preservation and eschew restoration projects. In fact, restoration experiments are even more off the radar than purported restoration projects.  

I’m actively applying for grants now, with limited expectation of success. As for financial incentives for farmers and ranchers, I wrote an opinion piece for the Guardian arguing that from a macroeconomic perspective, paying farmers and ranchers to transition to ecosystem restoration would be one of the all-time bargains. (But they would need to know how to actually do an ecosystem restoration project on their land).

Thinking about the vision you had for the future when creating Impossible vs your vision now - how has it evolved? Do you see a future where plant-based options are more dominant for consumers than meat options?

Absolutely. It’s inevitable. Animal agriculture has been the dominant technology for meat production for millenia. But in less than a decade, Impossible proved that it’s possible to create plant based meats that are not only nutritionally superior, but are actually preferred by mainstream meat-eating consumers over their animal-derived counterparts and recognized by hard-core meat lovers as their animal counterpart. And the technology for making plant-based meat is in its infancy with massive opportunity for further improvements in deliciousness, nutrition and cost - the primary drivers of consumer food choices.

Right now, plant-based meats are generally more expensive than their animal-derived counterparts, which is typical for a new technology and a growing industry. Unlike the long established, commoditized and subsidized animal-based meat industry, which paid for its production capacity long ago and is investing essentially nothing in research and development, new plant-based meat companies require continuing capital investment in production capacity, and significant investment in R&D, which is the key to ultimate success.

But plant-based meats will be far cheaper at sufficient scale, when the gross margins on sales are sufficient to cover the capital costs of production capacity and fund the R&D, because it is structurally more economically efficient:  far less land (1/25 the land area for beef), far less water (about 1/10), far less fertilizer and agrochemicals (less than 1/10), no farm labor managing the animals, less farm labor growing the crop inputs (because they are converted to meat much more efficiently) and less labor producing the final product (because a slaughterhouse requires far more labor per unit of output than a well designed plant-based meat facility).

How can we better educate consumers about the environmental benefits of plant-based foods?

First task is educating them to understand the environmental crisis we’re facing (which even highly educated people underestimate), we’ve destroyed a large majority of “Nature,” i.e. the biosphere that has kept our planet viable for millions of years and we’re continuing to destroy more every day.

People take nature for granted and don’t realize that human survival depends on it. And people are remarkably complacent about climate change – again because they see it as a he-said, she-said debate and never bother to look at the evidence.  That starts with educating the educators and “influencers” who have highly visible platforms for communicating to the public. A hard task.

That was actually the goal of Wild Hope: Mission Impossible. To educate the (small) audience about the catastrophic impact of our use of animals as food technology AND to show them that there’s a realistic solution: creating the world’s best meat from plants so that people don’t have to depend on animals to satisfy their craving for meat, and enabling farmers and ranchers to transition to ecosystem restoration.

What was your favorite part of filming Wild Hope: Mission Impossible?

The crew and the production team were great to work with.

Why do you think Wild Hope is an important series to share? Who do you hope it reaches?

As wide an audience as possible, especially young people who are still curious about the world and still believe in their ability to change the world and motivated to have a positive impact, and whose future is at stake. Also policy makers (the large majority of whom are completely ignorant about the problem it addresses or that there’s a realistic solution that’s a win for consumers, for farmers and for the economy.

The Wild Hope series is all about solutions and positive outcomes in the environmental field. Why do you have hope in these dark times? What words of inspiration would you offer others?

Because even though we’ve made a horrible mess of global ecosystems and the climate system, (not to mention the incredible cruelty to other creatures), it’s still solvable and the solutions are not far-fetched utopian bullshit but will be within our reach. And I sincerely believe we will largely have replaced the use of animals as food technology within 2 decades and we’ll look back in horror and wonder why we kept doing something so horrific for so long. 

I’m not great at words of inspiration. 

Last but not least, what are your favorite toppings on an Impossible burger??

I’m actually not much of a burger connoisseur but Impossible Bolognese, Impossible Bibimbap and Impossible Wellington (preferably made by my (adult) kids) are awesome. On a burger, I guess I go with avocado, tomato, lettuce and spicy relish.