Do you think they are still doing a good job?
Yes. I think they have changed the narrative. I think they took something that was a threat to them and characterized it in a negative way. And I think people believe it, so I think it was effective. Yeah.
I’m in the UK, where the McPlant burger, with a Beyond burger, has been available for a couple of years at McDonald’s. Why was it suspended in the United States?
Hey. (Pause.)
Without commenting specifically on McDonald’s (which I really don’t want to do), let’s think about the structure of the United States. You’ve got (Michigan), you’ve got South Carolina and Tennessee as an auto industry, right? Those three states, plus a few more, can be really powerful in Washington, DC.
Now imagine having a lobby in almost every state. The agricultural industry lobby, right? The animal protein lobby. They have such control over 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 have better consumer outcomes in Europe than in the United States.
Speaking of Washington, RFK Jr. is Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services. He is quite against processed foods. How does Beyond fit into the Making America Healthy Again agenda?
Honestly, it should be at the forefront, and a couple of things really excite me about some of the points of view I hear.
First, do you know the Nova system? That came to include plant-based meat in the processed food category. That’s not happening in the Sermon on the Mount or anything, it’s just a group of people putting together a characterization. And we do not belong to that party. We don’t want to be there. We are a food that goes through a series of steps to reach a result, but it is a better process than what people experience when they consume meat from factory farms.
If you look at the benefits to the human body and the environment, it’s a big win. I think we can convey that distinction to this administration.
The second piece is something that was earlier in Kennedy’s career, the concept of restoring nature. Our ability to enable the reconstruction of a significant percentage of the global landscape is unparalleled. The only statistic you should pay attention to is that 93 percent less land is used in the creation of our products than animal protein. You can use that land, so not only are you removing methane, but you can also use the remaining land to rebuild and remove carbon from the atmosphere.
Have you contacted RFK Jr.?
Not yet, but I hope to.