The challenges of selling mock meat to China

China is a prime market for the alternative meat phenomenon sweeping the West. The nation ticks all the right boxes – plant-based options help ensure food security, are environmentally friendly and, as a result of the way industry trends have moved, are hi-tech. Three years ago, in an effort to ward off health problems such as cancers, obesity and diabetes, Beijing also issued dietary guidelines recommending a halving of meat consumption. But a pressing reason would also seem to lie in the African swine fever outbreak that, since last year, has decimated the nation’s pork stocks.

A Hong Kong-based company is already making plans to sell its pork substitute products on the mainland. Prices of the white meat have skyrocketed as a result of the outbreak, which has forced the culling of, by some estimates, half of the country’s pigs. China is the world’s biggest pork consumer, accounting for 50 per cent of the global total. But the nation’s 1.4 billion people are lovers of all sorts of meat, last year consuming 86 million tonnes, more than any other country.

Demand increased by 14 per cent between 2017 and 2018, in keeping with global trends that the wealthier a society gets, the more it can afford meat. Companies that produce alternatives promote products as being plant-based, which sounds healthy, and eating vegetables is claimed to be better than livestock, which are sometimes raised inhumanely and cause 14.5 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. But firms trying to break into the Chinese market have to also be aware that alternatives are far from new; mock meat has been part of the culinary tradition for 1,400 years and the nation already has numerous players with a wide range of products. Nationwide sales of alternative meats are the biggest in the world.

The industry is not new to China, but science means there have been innovations that improve productivity and taste. That does not necessarily also mean healthier products, nor ones that are less expensive. But in a world with a fast-growing population and rising appetite for meat, with Asia and Africa the biggest growth areas, governments have to look to sustainability. Encouraging and welcoming competition and promoting plant-based meat alternatives makes good sense.