Why Plant-Based Meat Hasn’t Stopped Climate Change (–Yet)

Meat production and global temperatures are both on the rise. This isn’t a coincidence. Much has already been written about the link between animal husbandry and climate change, and I won’t rehash it all here. 

We already know we’re facing a global problem. So what’s the global solution?

I may not be a climate scientist, but as an engineer, I’m both deeply troubled by the climate impact of factory farming and impressed by its wicked efficiency. Despite the dire warnings to change our diets, the machinery of meat production keeps churning out cheap food. But the machinery used to produce factory farming’s sustainable alternative – plant-based meat? That’s an entirely different story. 

In the United States, we produce more than 105 billion pounds of animal meat each year. Best estimates of U.S. plant-based meat production hovers just around 200 million lbs per year. That’s a fifth of one percent (0.2%) of the total U.S. meat production by volume*.  

That equates to having access to plant-based meat for about 0.2% of the meals each year (about 2 meals per year). Imagine calling public transit a global solution if it was only accessible 0.2% of the time! That once-a-year bus ride wouldn’t come close to offsetting the emissions from the other 364 days sitting in traffic.

Despite the clear and growing demand from the mainstream, plant-based meat is still priced like a luxury good for a niche consumer group, and it remains unavailable in many areas of the country.  

So why is there so little plant-based meat available in the U.S.? To see the answer, we have to explore how the (veggie) sausage gets made.   

Today, most plant-based meat is either made using a food “extruder” (a machine that uses heat and pressure to mix and form foods like pasta and cheese puffs) or off-the-shelf meat processing equipment designed for foods like hamburgers and chicken nuggets. Extruders are hard to find and expensive, with price tags that can reach into the millions. On the other hand, generic equipment designed for the meat industry isn’t optimized to process a very different kind of raw material (plant protein). 

As a result, plant-based meat is made inefficiently, at low volume, or at a high cost. Visit any grocery store today, and if you do find plant-based meat on the shelf, it will cost two-to-five times as much as its animal-based counterpart. 

This leaves consumers reliant on factory-farmed meat for cheap, convenient protein. 

Since plant-based meat first hit the commercial market in 1899, there have only been isolated and inconsistent attempts to tweak this inefficient production technology and scale to meaningful volumes. Contrast that with the factory farming model, which has been on a constant track toward greater efficiency, volume, and production optimization, and you can see how we’ve ended up where we are today. 

In the 1960s, the world celebrated the introduction of the first poultry “factory farm,” with birds crammed in tighter quarters than farmers ever thought possible. Today, we have almost completely automated, mechanized, and robotized slaughter and carcass deconstruction of animal processing. 

The scale of meat production is, put simply, a result of the development of manufacturing technology.  

Plant-based meat will only truly become widely available when it can be produced and sold at a low cost and high volume. And that will only happen when the industry gets smart about scale and updates its production technology. 

This is why I founded Rebellyous Foods. 

It’s time to change how plant-based meat is made, so that plant-based meat can become a global solution to the global problems posed by animal agriculture and climate change. 

Our goal is to make meatless for the masses by transforming plant-based meat manufacturing to match the efficiency and automation of the meat industry – while producing high-quality, nutrient-loaded, delicious food free from the negative impacts of meat production. Through hundreds of engineering hours and partnerships with some of the best food scientists and engineers in our industry, we’ve developed a completely novel plant-based meat production equipment that accomplishes just that.

Since poultry farming was the first domino to fall in the intensification of animal farming, we’re starting with the humble chicken nugget. 

We believe that healthy, delicious, and sustainable options shouldn’t be reserved for people in big cities with money to burn. As such, Rebellyous is first bringing its delicious, nutrient-dense, and cost-competitive plant-based chicken to foodservice facilities at hospitals, schools, and more to reach the people that need more nutritious options the most. 

We’re dead set on crafting the tools necessary for a real, global food rebelly*ion, and bringing the resulting deliciousness to consumers around the world. We hope you’ll join us on the path to sweet, savory victory. 

You can learn more about our team, our work, and our perfectly crispy nuggets right here. 

 *Sales of plant-based foods have recently exceeded $3.7 billion, with plant-based meat at about one percent of meat sales in the U.S. However, since plant-based meat is more expensive than animal meat, the total volume sold still hovers around 0.2%