Do you think they’re still doing a good job?
I do. I think they’ve changed the narrative. I think they’ve taken something that was a threat to them and they’ve characterized it in a way that’s negative. And I think that people believe it, so I think it was effective. Yeah.
I’m in the UK, where the McPlant burger, with a Beyond patty, has been available for a couple of years at McDonald’s. How come it was discontinued in the US?
Uhh. [Pauses.]
Without specifically commenting on McDonald’s—which I really don’t want to do—think about the structure of the United States. You have [Michigan], you have South Carolina and Tennessee as the automotive industry, right? Those three states, plus a few more, can be really powerful in Washington, DC.
Now imagine having a lobby that is in almost every state. The ag industry lobby, right? The animal protein lobby. They have such a hold on Washington. So we’re going to have a different environment here in the United States in terms of ability to communicate directly with the consumer. In general, we tend to do better with the consumer in Europe than we do in the United States.
Speaking of Washington, RFK Jr. is Trump’s candidate for Secretary of Health and Human Services. He is pretty against processed foods. How does Beyond fit into a Make America Healthy Again agenda?
Honestly, it should be at the forefront, and a couple things actually excite me about some of the viewpoints that I’m hearing.
First, you know the Nova system? That happened to include plant-based meat in the category of processed foods. That’s not happening from the Sermon on the Mount or something, it’s just a group of people putting a characterization together. And we don’t belong in that party. We don’t wanna be there. We are a food that goes through a series of steps to get to an outcome, but it’s a better process than the one people are experiencing when they consume factory-farmed meat.
If you look at the benefits to the human body and the environment, it’s a strong win. My belief is we can get that distinction across 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 rewilding of a significant percentage of the global landscape is unmatched. The one statistic you should pay attention to is the 93 percent less land used in the creation of our products than animal protein. You can use that land, so not only are you taking methane out, but you can use the remaining land to rewild and take carbon out of the atmosphere.
Have you reached out to RFK Jr.?
Not yet, but I expect to.