A few weeks before stepping aside from his longstanding position as CEO, Impossible Foods founder and current CVO (that’s chief visionary officer, as it were) Pat Brown published a research paper co-authored with UC Berkeley professor of genetics and development Michael B. Eisen.
The document carried a decidedly unwieldy title: “Rapid global phaseout of animal agriculture has the potential to stabilize greenhouse gas levels for 30 years and offset 68 percent of CO2 emissions this century.”
“Most people, when it comes to scientific papers, only read the title,” Brown noted during a panel at TC Sessions: Climate this week. As far as research papers go, this one does everything it says on the box.
The subject of animal agriculture — and its impact on biodiversity and climate — is a longstanding pet project for Brown. It’s one that significantly predates Impossible’s 2011 founding. In fact, in a lot of ways, it’s this drive that prompted the company’s creation. More than a simple alternative meats company, Brown views Impossible as an important step along the way toward decreasing human dependence on animal agriculture.
“The historical reduction in terrestrial biomass as native ecosystems were transformed to support grazing livestock and the cultivation of feed and forage crops accounts for as much as a third of all anthropogenic CO2 emissions to date,” the paper notes. “Livestock, especially large ruminants, and their supply chains, also contribute significantly to anthropogenic emissions of the potent greenhouse gases (GHGs) methane and nitrous oxide.”
Brown ultimately sees biodiversity as an even more pressing concern than climate change (though, obviously, one can’t entirely uncouple one from the other in a conversation like this). Habit destruction is the primary contributor to the extinction and reduction of animals across the spectrum, and farming, in turn, is the single largest driver of that.
In an event packed to the gills with startups looking to take a bite out of climate change, it’s clear that no single solution is going to fix this mess — but anything that can help reduce human dependence on animal agriculture and all that entails will undoubtedly be a step in the right direction.
Brown believes Impossible’s approach to solving the problem is a “subversive” one. It’s a strange word choice for an 11-year-old company whose recent $500 million raise valued it at $7 billion.
Perhaps “disruptive” is more in line with Impossible’s mission statement and approach, but either way, the notion of helping humankind significantly reduce its dependence on animal agriculture is a lofty — and seemingly insurmountable — goal. In addition to 10,000 years of human tradition, there are various lobbies and preferences to contend with.
“A lot of problems — the way you solve them — is not head-on,” Brown said. “You sneak around the back. Or you find a way of achieving the goal that minimizes the degree to which you have to confront an obstacle. In this case, the whole reason I started the company is, the only way we’re going to put the brakes on the collapse of biodiversity and turn back the clock on climate change, is we have to replace animals for food technology.”
The notion is made even more unfathomable by the time frame Brown and Eisen adopted. The hypothetical global phaseout mapped by the researchers is set for 15 years. Impossible’s stated mission as a company is similar: driving the complete phaseout of animal agriculture by the year 2035.
“I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing if I didn’t think it was realistic,” Brown said. “I think it’s completely realistic. There’s a lot of precedent for this. People always underestimate how fast technology replacement can happen. For example, from the very first time a commercial digital camera was sold until Kodak went bankrupt and the only time you could find a film camera was less than a decade.”
The time between the first commercially available digital camera and Kodak’s Chapter 11 was a bit longer than that, ultimately, but the point remains. With the proper motivation and the right combination of societal and market forces, paradigms can shift surprisingly quickly. Among other things, Brown believes Impossible can ultimately harness capitalist forces to accelerate such growth.
“I think the subversive way of solving the problem is, don’t argue with people,” he said. “I think the free market and the free enterprise system are the most subversive tools in our repertoire. If you want to change the world for the better, and you can figure out a way to drive that by serving consumers better than the thing that you’re trying to replace, nothing can stop you.”
R&D continues to be a large part of Brown’s role at the company. It’s a sometimes difficult balance of goals and pragmatism. The latter is part of the reason the company has not brought its own cheese alternative to market, though the executive notes that, as someone who has phased animal products out of his own diet, vegan cheese continues to be a major pain point. But despite raising huge sums (currently north of $2 billion, all told), Impossible remains a relatively small company compared to food giants and still has to be choosy about the projects it pursues.
Cell-based meat will almost certainly never be on that list. (Impossible describes its meat alternatives as “plant-based.”) Despite years of hype, Brown is quick to shoot down the notion of the technology as a viable meat alternative.
“If 200 years ago, someone said, ‘We’ve got to replace horses as a power train for transportation. Here’s what we’re going to do: We’re going to harness horse muscle cells and hook them up to gears and pulleys, and that’s going to be the power train of the future,’ you totally missed the point,” Brown said. “You don’t have to make something that’s just a baby step away from the current technology. If you take a big step away, that’s where you realize the real opportunity. You realize your economics are superior and you can make something that’s healthier than the animal version because you don’t need all of the problematic things that are hardwired into animal tissues.”
As for where Impossible as a company will be 15 years into the future? Brown envisions a different role in a food market less dependent on animals.
“I don’t think the company will have a monopoly on making meat, fish and dairy foods for the whole world, for a lot of reasons,” he explained. “The critical function that we service is basically serving the scientific problem and developing the technology platform that enables it. Right now, we’re the only company in the world that has seriously done that, and obviously to continue to fund the business, we’re in the food business. My guess is in 10 years or so, to accelerate the scaling, we’ll be working with a lot of partners licensing the technology and allowing partners to carry the ball for us.”