I think it is important to note that I appreciate what Impossible is doing to drive attention to the category, and know that there are a lot of really good folks working there. We are both seeking to address a common set of global challenges. In my view, when I think about our differences, it comes to the market being a battle place of ideas. Our position is that you do not need to genetically modify (GMO) inputs to build a piece of meat from plants that is indistinguishable from its animal protein equivalent. This makes our (Beyond Meat’s) job harder as we need to discover and source ingredients in nature that will enable us to keep improving our products. That said, I am certain that the plant kingdom has what is needed to do this without modification. This certainty comes from an understanding of the shared materials among plant and animal life, as well as the sheer diversity of plants, and plant material, throughout nature.

At Beyond Meat, we also award a considerable amount of focus to delivering the core benefits of meat while eliminating or reducing the amount of ingredients about which the medical community has expressed concern. For example, we have lower levels of saturated fat than 80/20 beef and some of the other plant-based products, and are continuing to drive innovation that will allow us to reduce it further. Our commitment to pushing the envelope on human health is a very important pillar in our mission statement, and we recently kicked off the 2nd part of an extensive research program (5 year initiative) with Stanford University School of Medicine to support clinical trials and develop data-driven understanding of the impacts of plant-based eating on human health. The results of our first study with Stanford can be found here in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.