Nicole Astra:
Welcome to Talking Plant Protein. I'm Nicole Astra. In the hot seat today is a guest that is going to be a part of a powerhouse panel ahead of Future Food Tech San Francisco this March, Nick Hazell, Founder and CEO of V2Food. Welcome to the program.

Nick Hazell:
Great to be here.

Nicole Astra:
Okay. So again, you're joining some very big names and you're talking about recreating the entire sensory experience of animal protein. How in the world do we begin to even approach that conversation?

Nick Hazell:
Yeah, it's tough. Isn't it? I mean, you talk about meat and you assume meat is some sort of homogeneous thing. But actually when you get into it, there's a whole lot of things going on in meat. So to recreate that, and that's kind of the job to be done because there's a lot of carnivores out there that really want to carry on eating meat. It's extraordinarily complex and this is going to be a journey for many, many years to absolutely get there.

Nick Hazell:
First of all, you want to understand what meat is and in V2Food in Australia, we work with the CSRO, which is a government research agency that's been doing research into meat for the meat industry in Australia for many decades. So they actually know pretty much what the component bits are in meat, what drives flavor, what drives texture. And that science is the science that we've used to recreate first a beef like plant-based meat, but then increasingly pork and chicken and other meats. You can break it down into its component bits. You can say, okay, it's flavor, it's texture. It's fattiness, fatty mouth feel. It's aroma. It's how does it cook? And it really is a deliciously complex area for a product development and R and D nerd like me. It's the most marvelous, marvelous experience over the last three years, getting there and getting there really quickly. I mean, for us, we don't have a lot of time to waste on this problem. We've got to get moving.

Nicole Astra:
Now, you're an R and D guy, so really a unique perspective on this, but we mentioned so many things that meat lovers want to see in order for them to dive into plant-based. Do you find that if you achieve one, we kind of drop off on the other end. And if we get maybe that texture, right? The taste is not right. I think in the last couple of years, we've achieved so much in this area. So how close do you think we are and what technology is missing maybe just to get us over that edge?

Nick Hazell:
I don't think it's a trade off. Look there're a lot of independence systems and systems that work together, but you have to look at the whole thing. So certainly from V2's perspective, the flavor that you create when you cook meat, that is a whole set of chemistry that's happening while you're cooking. And you've got to make your system perform well in that way. I don't think that it's a zero sum game. I think that actually the potential for plant-based meat is actually way beyond meat, because there are no biological constraints. There's no way you're going to change a cow anytime soon, dramatically, but there's no reason why we can't get better and better. So when do we sort of cross over? There's two big points of inflection for plant-based meat I think. One is that where the flavor is actually more delicious. So a red blooded carnivore would cross over the road to get a plant-based offering rather than a meat offering. We're not there yet.

Nicole Astra:
That's the goal.

Nick Hazell:
I don't think anyone in the world is there yet. I think we are knocking on the door where people are saying, "Well, it's good enough and it's not bad. And I would certainly buy it again." And that's where we are at the moment. But actually what you've got to get is you've got to be something that's preferred.

Nick Hazell:
And then the other point of inflection is the point at which we are cheaper than meat. And when you've got those two, your preferred in taste and you're cheaper, and of course it goes into those dishes that you like to eat, because we are very conservative with our food choices. You are going to be probably eating the same sort of dishes that your mom cooked you, which would probably be the same sort of dishes that your grandmom cooked your mom, where that conservatism is inherent in being human and eating food. If you get that together, cost, deliciousness, and ability to fit in with your cultural culinary habits, whether you're in China or in the US or in Australia, then this is where this thing goes off. And this is where this category will be not a niche, but this will be the mainstream meat category.

Nicole Astra:
So let's talk about your own diet, because you're a meat lover.

Nick Hazell:
Yeah. I've never become a vegan. I'm one of those, when I do a talk, I always ask for a show of hands and I say, "How many vegans?" And you get a pretty high percentage in the sort of people that are listening to me, but it's never more than sort of like 5% of the room. It's that sort of number. And then I say, "Well, how many people have tried to be a vegan or vegetarian at some point in their lives?" And you kind of get a third to a half of the room and these are people who've had a go, but it's just too hard. The environment is difficult and they don't know how to cook and so they give up. And I'm one of those. I've tried a couple of times when I was a student and so I still eat meat, but I eat a lot less meat than I used to.

Nick Hazell:
And from a sustainability perspective, that's the game. We need to get people eating less meat. And if every now and again, they have a steak and it's produced sustainably and it's grass fed from a sustainable perspective, not a problem. They're always going to be ruminant animals in the world. And it's okay for humans to eat ruminant animals from a sustainability perspective. There might be a sort of another ethical perspective that some people might have, but the bulk of humans that's fine. And so from our perspective, that's okay. And I think the moment I will stop eating meat is... I don't even think that it, for me, it's got to be effortless. It'll be the point at which, why would I ever eat meat? And I think we have to get to that point for all people, because our product's got to be more delicious and it's got to be cheaper. So why would I? And rather than force myself to be a vegan, because I know that doesn't work, I don't have the willpower, and good luck to those people who do.

Nicole Astra:
Well, I too want the world to eat less meat. Certainly, they don't have to be vegan to make a difference there. But I love when carnivores also see the value in what we're building. And so let's talk a little bit more about sustainability because that's something that V2Foods prioritizes.

Nick Hazell:
Yeah. I mean the angle of which we look at all of this whole problem is sustainability. It's frankly terrifying when you look at the trajectory of the world at this moment. It's really terrifying. I've done a lot of work in my career understanding sustainability, bringing the scientists together to advise. Mars where I was R and D director, this would've been about 15 or 20 years ago, organizing a big conference and asking the scientists, "You're in a friendly environment now. No one's going to actually try and critique your views. What do you actually think as opposed to what can you publish without a fit?" And they gave a very terrifying view of where they thought the world was going unless we really started working on it. And this was 20 years ago. We haven't actually made a lot of progress in 20 years.

Nick Hazell:
And a lot of what they said is coming true. And of course the scientists have always being right. They've been totally consistent with their view of what's happening to the planet. So from our perspective, reducing carbon and getting to sustainable ways of making food is job number one. And the meat bit is a big chunk of it. It's 70% of agricultural assets, essentially agriculture is... You could define agriculture as making feed stock for animals, because that's pretty much what agriculture is today. If you look at the land that is devoted to agriculture, it's all devoted with a small percentage which is not for feed stock, to feeding animals.

Nick Hazell:
So our meat habit is the reason why we are just destroying ecosystems around the world. It's the reason why there's mass deforestation in the Amazon and other places, it is the problem to be solved. So that's what we're going after. And when you take a sustainability point of view, you also realize that it's time bound. If we solve this problem in 20 years, we haven't solved this problem. We have to solve it now in the next 5 or 10 years, is the critical time because some of those tipping points are... You never know a tipping point until it's happened, but I suspect we are already entering those sorts of zones where there's no way back. So time to get a move on.

Nicole Astra:
Right. And that's exactly what the majority of people in this space are working towards. So I want to thank you for your time today. We've only scratched the surface, but again, be sure to check out V2Foods at Future Food Tech, March 24th and 25th in San Francisco. Thanks Nick.

Nick Hazell:
Thank you. Look forward to seeing you.