Canada’s Largest Meat Company on the Plant-Based Meat Movement
In 2021, executives from Canadian meat giant Maple Leaf Foods appeared on the Business for Good Podcast to talk about how a meat company thinks about the animal-free movement.
Maple Leaf acquired the Lightlife and Field Roast Grain Meat Co. brands in 2017, and it is now doing business under the Greenleaf Foods umbrella to build out business in the sustainable, plant-based sector. (The acquisition by Maple Leaf was the driving force behind Lightlife transitioning its products from vegetarian to vegan.)
The company is serious about future of the plant-based market: Maple Leaf has spent more than $1 billion developing its plant-based meat products. This investment includes a $100 million plant to produce tempeh, a popular soybean-derived meat analog, as well as a plant-based meat facility costing more than $300 million in Indiana. The company also recently announced a partnership with my own company, The Better Meat Co.
These initiatives allow more consumers to enjoy plant-based proteins. They also provide greater incentive for consumers who traditionally favor animal meat products to diversify their diets. Maple Leaf is working on putting plant protein not just into the grocer’s meat aisle, but into traditional animal-based meats themselves. Ironically, it just might be a meat company that has the industry clout to turn the dial more substantially in the direction of animal-free protein in all our diets.
Deep industry knowledge meets innovation
Jitendra Sagili supervises more than 90 people to develop both meats and plant-based foods at Maple Leaf. He earned a bachelor’s in veterinary medicine then a master’s in animal sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Jitendra’s first industry job was with Conagra Brands as a food technologist focused on R&D in the meat sector.
While much is said about sustainability and animal welfare, customers want really their proteins to be affordable, conventient, and tasty first. Jitendra contends that a variety of protein sources — cellular, cultivated, algae-based, and plant-based — have the potential to meet these criteria. He continues to focus on developing even better ingredient functionalities for his plant-based products and on moving towards simpler and more natural functional ingredients. He’s excited by today’s “reimagining” of traditional food-making processes like fermentation and extrusion as companies continue to develop new products.
Adam Grogan attended Harvard Business School’s High Potentials Leadership Program and earned an MBA from York University in Toronto. He’s worked in leadership roles with Maple Leaf for two decades, and wants to see Maple Leaf become the most sustainable protein production company in the world.
Diversifying protein options
But is the company going to entirely displace its animal protein production for plant-based meats? Animals have been a part of the human diet since humanity’s origins, and worldwide demand for protein in the form of animal meat continues to grow as developing middle classes increasingly demand it. So Adam and Jitendra both think the answer to this question is, “no.” But there are caveats.
Adam notes in the interview that humans as a species need to achieve a better balance between animal and plant proteins that will meet our dietary needs and support the long-term sustainability of our planet. Maple Leaf is working to diversify humanity’s protein diet by providing a wide range of plant-based proteins.
Jitendra noted the importance of developing “multiple protein sources” to meet varying consumer needs and wants. Field Roast, for example, will offer mainly soy-free protein products, while Lightlife is keeping Gimme Lean and other soy-based items. Throughout this process, Maple Leaf is working with expert partners to continually improve on that all-important selling point: taste.
Since acquiring these plant-based brands, Maple Leaf has tripled their revenue. It continues to emphasize brand modernization, marketing, and distribution and to focus on meeting consumer demands regarding not only taste, but cost. The company intends to delight people trying plant-based proteins for the first time, with the ultimate goal of shifting socially-desirable protein choices more sustainable.
About that ad…
If you follow the space, you may recall the provocative ad Maple Leaf published that was critical of the highest profile plant-based meat brands The company drew plenty of criticism for behavior some competitors in the sustainability food production space saw as “non-collegial.” Adam said in the interiew that the purpose of the ad was to provoke conversation, not only among industry players, but among consumers as well. And it certainly achieved that end.
He asserted in the podcast that by calling out ingredients that were not considered “clean label” in the sector, Maple Leaf was following the lead of many of the 11,000 consumers in a recent in-depth study it conducted. Person after person said that they wanted alternative meat products with simple, recognizable, and easily understandable ingredient lists. This was particularly true among respondents who were either uncommitted or intermittent plant-based protein consumers.
“We can do better” as an industry was, Adam said, the point of the ad.
On the other hand, some meat-production competitors have pointed to Maple Leaf’s use of methylcellulose — in this case, modified cellulose — in its plant products as a negative. It may not sound like a clean-label name, but Jitendra noted during the conversation that modified cellulose, a form of the binding agent methylcellulose, is derived from cell walls. It is actually the “magic ingredient” needed as a “skeleton for the entire matrix” of the plant-based protein product, he discussed.
Maple Leaf’s Lightlife brand, as of that early 2021 conversation, was focusing on eliminating dairy and the emulsifying additive carrageenan from its products by the end of that first quarter. Both Lightlife and Field Roast were concentrating on working on launching new products to add further diversity to the protein types each label offers.
“Consumers own these brands,” said Adam, “We’re just stewards of them.”
A sustainability business wish list
Jitendra sees two areas in the industry with huge potential. One is in developing plant-based functional ingredients that provide those things like taste, aroma, texture, and color that more closely match those of animal meat. Another would be in the space of B2B innovations designed to enhance the manufacturing of plant-based meats.
For Adam during our conversation, the barrier film used to protect food products from oxygen was the biggest pending issue. The worldwide food industry, he said, hasn’t yet come up with a recyclable alternative that will be an effective barrier while maintaining enough shelf life. It’s that barrier film problem that’s keeping Maple Leaf’s packaging from being 100 percent recyclable. While recent improvements have been made in this space, there remains plenty of room for innovation.
In all, the conversation was a riveting look at what two meat industry executives think about the plant-based meat movement, and it’s certainly still relevant today. So go take a listen!
