Ranchers Keep Watch on Beyond Burger Retail Debut

Saskatchewan rancher Ross Macdonald isn’t afraid of the Beyond Burger

by Arthur White-Crummey – Regina Leader-Post

The meatless product is set to come to Canadian grocery stores in time for barbecue season this year, according to the California-based company that produces it from peas, beets and other vegetables.

It’s being touted as perhaps the best imitation burger to hit the market thus far, and Macdonald — who raises cattle on 3,500 acres near the U.S. border — says Saskatchewan ranchers are talking about what it means for them.

“I think its probably one of the most current topics,” he said.

He said he’s even tried one, and didn’t mind the taste. But that doesn’t mean he’s losing confidence in the Saskatchewan cattle industry’s future as more alternatives fight for room in Canadian shopping carts.

“The popular meatless burger is finally coming to Canadian grocery stores, and Saskatchewan’s beef sector will be keeping a close eye on the sales data”

 

“I don’t necessarily see it as a threat,” he said. “I see it as an opportunity for people like myself, who produce beef in a grassland environment, to tell a great story about the sustainability of our product.”

A photo of Ross Macdonald’s 98 Ranch near Lake Alma, Saskatchewan. ROSS MACDONALD / SUBMITTED
The Beyond Burger has already come to A&W, temporarily selling out last fall due to heavy demand. The company that makes it, Beyond Meat, frames its signature product as a more ethical and healthy substitute for the real thing.

“Our belief is that the best way to get people to eat less meat is by giving them more of what they love — in our case, juicy delicious burgers, sausages, and more — without so many of the health, sustainability, and animal welfare downsides of animal-based meats,” the company writes in its press package.

“Our task is to eliminate the need for meat from animals and find the same or analogous materials in the plant kingdom.”

And it seems like Canadians are interested. A study by market research firm Mintel suggests that more than half of Canadians eat at least some meat alternatives, while almost one in five eat them at least a few times each week.

That’s far more than the roughly 10 per cent of Canadians who say they are vegetarian and vegan.

Chad MacPherson, president of the Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association (SSGA), said the cattle industry will be watching the Canadian retail debut of the Beyond Burger “carefully.”

“We’ll see how it evolves,” he said.

MacPherson said the SSGA won’t have a specific response to the advent of Beyond Burgers, since he views the claims made by Beyond Meat as just the latest gust in PR headwinds facing the industry right now. He mentioned the new Canada Food Guide, which urges Canadians to “choose protein foods that come from plants more often,” as another example.

He said all of it goes to show that the cattle sector has to keep fighting what he called “misinformation” from its critics.

“I think, overall, there’s a bit of a frustration that our products, our healthy products, are often misrepresented by other groups for financial benefit, or to advance their their own agendas,” MacPherson said.

“We’re trying to educate our own members on to be able to talk to consumers and to be able to defend our operations.”

He said SSGA is bringing a dietitian to its annual meeting this year to speak to members, and is also planning a talk from a “sustainability expert” on greenhouse gas emissions.

Beyond Meat claims producing one of its burgers emits 90 per cent less greenhouse gases than an equivalent beef burger, and uses less land, water and energy. MacPherson said he “struggles” to believe some of those claims.

But he’s hesitant to criticize the Beyond Burger as a product (though he did note it has far more sodium than ground beef), since he fears it could “pit one sector of agriculture against another.”

That’s all the more true since the protein in Beyond Burgers is made from peas, a major pulse crop for Saskatchewan producers.

Carl Potts, executive director of Saskatchewan Pulse Growers, said his group has been pushing to increase awareness about the wide range of uses for peas, lentils and other protein-rich plants.

He sees “tremendous growth opportunity” in burgers and similar products. More demand for plant-based proteins means higher prices for pulse crops.

But he doesn’t want to fight the beef sector.

“We see that being in partnership with animal based protein,” Potts said.

Total pulse potential could be globally more than a million tonnes, possibly, in processed meats,” he explained. “But it’s really this combination of animal and plant based protein where we think the greatest demand opportunity really is in that space.”

He said he sees blended products as having wider appeal than fully vegetarian meat substitutes.

Macdonald and MacPherson are both skeptical of some of the arguments Beyond Meat makes to frame its product as more sustainable than theirs. They say it all misses the work ranchers do to maintain the grassland ecosystem.

But Macdonald isn’t upset. He views it as another reason for Saskatchewan ranchers to keep improving their practices, whether it comes to animal welfare or environmental sustainability.

“The fact that the discussion’s happening is fantastic, because there’s clearly a demand to be better,” he said.

“So if that’s the demand, why wouldn’t you want to meet that as opposed to just sticking your heels in and saying, ‘no, we’re already the best?’”