Fears of plant protein missed opportunity
New Zealand needs to have a discussion about how to encourage the production of plant-based high-protein foods, according to a report by Massey Universitybased FoodHQ and its Dutch research partner, Foodvalley.
But that shouldn’t be seen as an attack on the meat and dairy industries, FoodHQ business development manager Amos Palfreyman said.
He described himself as a nonvegetarian ‘‘taste-atarian’’ who, like many others, still ate meat and dairy but had opened up more to alternatives.
FoodHQ said the Netherlands had set a target of reducing the proportion of protein that people derived from animal-based foods from 62 per cent to 50 per cent by 2025. In New Zealand, that proportion was last measured at about 60 per cent in 2009, according to a study referenced by the Ministry for Primary Industries.
But Palfreyman believed that was likely to have fallen over the past two years as concerns about global warming, health and animal welfare prompted more Kiwis to switch to plant-based and ‘‘flexitarian’’ diets.
A separate University of Otago study has estimated that the consumption of animal-based foods in New Zealand resulted in carbon emissions that were equivalent to 60 per cent of those produced by cars and vans.
FoodHQ, whose backers include Fonterra, AgResearch and Plant & Food Research, said more people were deciding to eat less meat and dairy while not necessarily going vegan.
‘‘It’s about a protein transition – a change in the balance of where some of their protein is coming from,’’ FoodHQ chief executive Abby Thompson said.
Palfreyman said a co-ordinated approach to building up an alternative-protein industry could help avoid a ‘‘chicken and egg’’ problem by creating new markets while also assisting in the diversification of agriculture away from meat and dairy.
Justin Hall, the director of Tahi Spirulina, one of a few dozen Kiwi and Dutch alternative protein producers highlighted by the FoodHQ report, said he would prefer to see more businesses join him in producing protein from algae, rather than the company having the local market to itself.
Animal and plant protein was not an ‘‘either/or’’, he said.
‘‘You could put a spirulina farm on 1 hectare of your property which is going to make a positive contribution to farm income.’’
Given the strength of the existing export industries, ‘‘I don’t ever see demand for New Zealand animal-based products being threatened,’’ he said.
‘‘At the moment we are missing an opportunity to fulfil demand for plant-based products because in some way we are rejecting that conversation.’’
Palfreyman expected more ‘‘progressive’’ European governments would follow the Dutch example by setting targets for a switch to plant-based proteins.
However, FoodHQ was not advocating for a target in New Zealand, he said. ‘‘To suddenly start setting targets would be unhelpful. When you come out too strong, traditional livestock producers see it as a threat.’’
At a maximum, plant-based protein producers might build up an export industry that was worth the same as the wine industry in five to 10 years, he said.