Impossible Foods CEO has a 'serious attitude' about 'making all food animals obsolete by 2035'

Patrick O. Brown, CEO of Impossible Foods, recently spoke at the Web Summit. WebSummit is a virtual conference attended by 100,000 people who discussed the future of food, which he believes is free of all animal products. "Our mission is to completely replace the use of animals as a food technology by 2035," Brown said at the conference. We are serious about this, and we think it is doable.

I was confident that when I started this company, we would succeed, and now, I am completely confident. Brown founded Impossible Foods in 2011 and launched the company's flagship product, the plant-based Impossible Burger, in 2016 at a high-end restaurant. The Impossible Burger is now on the menus of more than 17,000 restaurants nationwide, including major fast-food chains such as Burger King, White Castle, Red Robin, and restaurants within the Disney Empire.

In 2019, Impossible Burger entered the retail industry and quickly became the best-selling packaged food product in Gelson's Markets, its first retail partner in Southern California. From day one, Brown has been steadfast in his mission to phase out animal-derived foods within the next 15 years, a goal that has allowed the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to quickly move into the realm of possibility.Impact of COVID-19 Impossible Foods aggressively expanded its retail operations, dropping Impossible Burger to more than 8,000 retail locations by the fall of 2020, including Kroger, Trader Joe's, Target, and Walmart. Buying habits have changed as plant-based meat is becoming more readily available, with sales of refrigerated plant-based meat surging 241% (compared to last year) during the pandemic food buying peak in mid-March and continuing to grow 113% in April. and during the pandemic, workers increasingly contracted the virus while working side by side, leading to the closure of slaughterhouses across the country in April and meat shortages since.

As of Dec. 4, there were at least 43,000 positive COVID-19 cases associated with meat processing facilities and at least 222 worker deaths, according to the Midwest Survey Report. In a 2019 report, think tank RethinkX predicted that animal agriculture would fall into a "death spiral" by 2035. To replace it, RethinkX identified a "software-based" system (similar to the one currently being created by Impossible Foods) that is 100 times more land efficient, 20 times more time efficient, and 10 times more water-efficient, all of which significantly improve production efficiency.

Reduce waste. This month, Impossible Foods released its 2020 Impact Report titled "Turn Back Clock," detailing how ecologically friendly its plant-based Impossible Sausage (the second product released after Impossible Burger) is ecologically friendly compared to pig farming. Compared to pork sausages in the United States, impossible sausages produce 71% less greenhouse gases, 41% less land area required for a year, 79% less water footprint, and 57% less aquatic eutrophication. The biggest contributor to climate change and global biodiversity collapse is the use of animals as a food technology. Nothing comes close.

We have to get rid of it, Brown said. The Road to 2035 In the midst of Brown's meteoric growth through Impossible Foods, Brown reiterated that the company is not only creating consumer products, but also that it will vigorously change the new technology that will be realized on the Road to 2035. Food is produced. After tackling the beef problem with the Impossible Burger, the company turned to January 2020 with the launch of Impossible Pork and Impossible Sausage (a plant-based pork sausage), the world's most meat-consuming pork and currently available nationwide by Starbucks.

In October, the company revealed it was developing its first non-meat product, an as-yet-unnamed plant-based "functional" milk that is the same as dairy. Impossible Foods also uses its knowledge and technology to develop alternatives to whole cuts of meat such as shrimp, fish and steak. What if you could wave your wand and make the animal-based food industry disappear? Can we reverse the time of global warming, reverse the global collapse of biodiversity, and stop species extinction, deforestation, water pollution, and our public health crisis? Brown asked. Our planet needs a magic wand. That's why Impossible Foods invented this new technology platform to transform plants into delicious, nutritious, and affordable meat, fish, and dairy, replacing ancient animal-based technologies in the global food system. "To date, Impossible Foods has raised $1.