Fancy some hemp with your chicken nuggets tonight?
A New Zealand company plans to do just that to cook up its fake chicken offering.
Sustainable Foods, founded by Justin Lemmens, has raised $2.15 million to develop more plant-based meat products, including a chicken alternative made with industrial hemp.
It will market its product as Chick*n.
And the company plans on exporting the product to Australia.
Sustainable Foods has partnered with hemp grower Green Fern Industries in New Zealand in the manufacture of the fake chicken.
While others around the world are using cell cultures and other plant-based proteins to mimic chicken, Sustainable Foods has hit on fast-growing hemp.
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The company says it has taken three years to develop the hemp-based product.
In 2020 Australians chewed their way through about 44 kilograms of (real) poultry on average per year and chicken's popularity shows no signs of slowing.
Industry analysts say half of all meat eaten in Australia is chicken.
The company's plant-based meat products are already available across New Zealand and with the latest fund-raising it is looking to export its products to Australia, Mayalsia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines.
It says its "Chick*n" has a complete amino acid profile and as much protein as conventional chicken, while also having less fat.
Also in the world of fake food, one of the world's biggest maker of fake meats, Beyond Meat, has partnered with soft drink giant Pepsico and produce jerky.
Called Beyond Jerky the "shelf-stable plant-based jerky" is first to be sold across the the US.
Beyond Meat produced plant-based hamburgers, meatballs, sausages and its own fake chicken but now it wants to enter the snack market with jerky, long considered a traditional product hard to replicate.
Beyond Meat and PepsiCo will market three varieties of Beyond Meat Jerky - Original, Teriyaki and Hot & Spicy.
Beyond Meat says its jerky is marinated and slow roasted just like the real deal.
But instead of real red meats, this jerky will be mostly made from peas and mung beans to be gluten free.
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Chris McLennan
ACM national rural property writer based in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria. Career journalist. Multi award winner.
ACM national rural property writer based in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria. Career journalist. Multi award winner.
