CALF_News_April_May_2021

15 CALF News • April | May 2021 • www.calfnews.net by 2030, and 60 percent of the $1.8 tril- lion meat market by 2040. If their projections are to become reality, consumer preferences will need to change dramatically – or government intervention will need to be applied. Demand shows consumers are not yet sold on replacements for good old-fash- ioned ground beef. While nearly half (48 percent) of consumers say plant-based meat definitely or probably should be part of a healthy diet, a whopping 70 percent of consumers believe conven- tional meat belongs in one of those two categories. According to a 2019 survey conducted by NCBA’s Consumer Beef Tracker, when ranking sources of protein, 33 per- cent of consumers ranked beef as one of the top three. Four percent ranked plant- based meat substitutes in the top three. Furthermore, even people who eat these meat alternatives eat traditional beef products at a really high level, he says. When retail stores added meat alternatives, about $11.5 billion was added to the meat department. Meat substitutes constitute 1 percent of that; 50 percent of the increase has been beef. Makers of fake meat products were bragging that in a nine-week period up to May 2, 2020, retail sales of their products had soared 264 percent, or a whopping $25.7 million, while retail sales of traditional meat had only risen 45 percent. That increase, of course, would amount to $3.8 billion, or about 147 times the increase in fake meat sales. Producers of fake meat, which has been more expensive than traditional products, have expressed their hope that prices of their products could be lowered to more competitive levels. That’s advis- able, since research shows consumers are willing to pay more for animal proteins in restaurants than for plant-based sub- stitutes – the products they are intended to replace. At Burger King, the Impos- sible Whopper commands a nearly $1 premium on the traditional burger. But not even those who aren’t con- firmed carnivores are sold on the pseudo “solution” to eating beef. John Mackey, FIRE UP THE GRILLS Continued from page 11 CEO of Whole Foods, has said he considers plant-based burgers “ultra-pro- cessed junk foods,” while Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol has said fake beef products “wouldn’t fit in our ‘food with integrity’ principles because of processing.” Apparently hard-core vegans aren’t all that pleased, either. In November 2019, Burger King was sued by a man from Georgia who alleged the burger chain duped customers into eating Impossible Whoppers without telling them the pat- ties were cooked on grills that also cooked traditional Whoppers. The strict vegan said the product, therefore,“was covered in meat by-product.”The suit is pending. Nutritionally inferior, environmen- tally suspect and tasting nothing like the real thing, fake beef has a lot of ground to cover. But it isn’t difficult to see why companies want to try. Ground beef is embraced and enjoyed widely by con- sumers throughout the country. As those consumers are exposed to the whole story, they’ll be even bigger fans of the meat they have come to love.  REAL BURGERS FOR REAL CONSUMERS A grizzled elderly man does yoga on the beach, extolling the virtues of a Carl’s Jr. Famous Star Beyond Burger. A wannabe cowboy expresses his amazement that he can’t tell the difference between a regular Burger King Whopper and the new Impos- sible Whopper. Though I’m not a marketing expert, these television commercials in the spring of 2019 had me scratching my head. Why would companies bash their own brands to tout inferior sandwiches that cost more to buy? It was certainly a coincidence that, as the year went on, Burger King and Carl’s Jr. restaurants in my neighborhood were closing. It was just the trend toward fewer burger restaurants in general, right? California’s In-N-Out Burgers announced they were opening a restaurant in south- east Denver, and when it opened, people lined up for miles to get their hands on their burgers – some getting in line the night before the opening to make sure they got some. The diners waited hours that first day. In-N-Out would announce their plan to open other restaurants in the area soon. To slightly less fanfare, Midwest chain Culver’s – which has long supported U.S. agriculture – opened restaurants in the Denver area to huge success. Other local and regional burger chains welcomed consumers thrilled to experience good old-fash- ioned burgers. Do these restaurants also sell fake meat burgers? Maybe. But they know what their customers want, and that’s honest food sold with integrity. In the mid-1980s, before the beef industry determined that beef was What’s For Dinner, they had another slogan: Beef. Real Food for Real People. Up-and-coming burger chains seem to grasp this concept, while some larger, more established chains appear to be stray- ing from it. The fact is, though, real consumers are getting into really long lines to get their hands on real, authentic beef burgers. 