Do you think they are still doing a good job?
I do. I think they changed the narrative. I think they took something that was a threat to them and they characterized it in a negative way. And I think people believe it, so I think it was effective. Yes.
I’m in the UK, where the McPlant burger with Beyond patty has been available at McDonald’s for a few years. How did it end up being discontinued in the US?
Uhh. (Breaks.)
Without going into McDonald’s specifically – which I really don’t want to do – think about the structure of the United States. You have (Michigan), you have South Carolina and Tennessee as an automotive industry, right? These three states and several others can be really powerful in Washington, DC.
Now imagine you have a lobby that exists in almost every state. The agricultural industry lobby, right? The animal protein lobby. They have such a hold on Washington. So we’re going to have a different environment here in the United States in terms of the ability to communicate directly with the consumer. In general, we tend to do better with consumers in Europe than in the United States.
Speaking of Washington: RFK Jr. is Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services. He’s pretty anti-processed food. How does Beyond fit into the Make America Healthy Again agenda?
Honestly, it should be front and center, and a few things about some of the viewpoints I’m hearing actually excite me.
Firstly, you know this Nova system? Plant-based meat also belonged to the category of processed foods. This isn’t something out of the Sermon on the Mount or anything, it’s just a group of people putting together a characterization. And we don’t belong in this party. We don’t want to be there. We are a food that goes through a series of steps to get to a result, but it is a better process than the one people experience when they consume factory farmed meat.
When you consider the benefits to the human body and the environment, this is a strong win. I am confident that we can convey this distinction to this government.
The second piece is something that was earlier in Kennedy’s career, the concept of restoring nature. Our ability to enable the rewilding of a significant portion of the global landscape is unmatched. The only statistic you should pay attention to is the fact that our products use 93 percent less land to produce than animal protein. You can use this land to not only remove methane, but you can also use the remaining land for rewilding and removing carbon from the atmosphere.
Have you contacted RFK Jr.?
Not yet, but I assume so.
