Originally published in the Listener, July 2018.
Rosie Bosworth looks at the risk to New Zealand's economy in a post-animal world of plant-based meat and dairy products.
You would have thought the sky was about to fall in. When Air New Zealand became the first airline in the world to announce it was offering a meat-free burger to business-class passengers on daily services – between Los Angeles and Auckland – there was a turbulent response from conservative politicians.
The patty in the airline’s “Impossible Burger” contains a protein called heme, or haem, which makes it bleed like ordinary ground beef and is what makes meat sizzle and smell “meaty”. But the burger contains no meat at all.
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