Mates at the table hoed in and said they couldn't tell any real difference between Impossible's pattie (coconut oil, spinach, wheat, soy, potato protein, heme) and the sort of meat pattie they were used to. Heme comes from the root nodules of legumes and provides the iron/meaty flavour, and also the blood colour.
"The ingredients are broken down and reassembled to provide the meat-like texture," Sarah told Feds conference delegates.
The heme is currently being recreated with a GE yeast "but they'll find a natural solution for that, knowing the money they can get, and their proven ability to scale up quickly".
This time last year the Impossible Burger was selling in four restaurants in the United States, now they are in 22 outlets across four states and counting. They recently opened a new factory to boost their production capacity by 250 times, and can now pump out 4 million patties a month.
One of many other players is Beyond Meat, which started out with chicken strips made from soy proteins as their signature product.
Their first Burger pattie was mediocre but the next iteration, the Beyond Burger, made from yellow peas, bamboo fibre, potato starch, coconut and canola oils and a bit of beetroot for colour, is going down well with consumers and was recently rolled out in the mainstream Safeway supermarkets.
These sorts of products are not sold in some 'alternative' aisle in the supermarket.
Shoppers find it right alongside our own real meat products in the chilled meat cabinet.
There's quite a bit of science behind binding the fat to protein (an extrusion process with heat and pressure) but Beyond is working on the ability to interchange the protein used to suit the availability of base product - and tastes - in the target markets.
Kiwi farmers shouldn't think they'll be able to compete on price, Sarah warned. The Impossible Burger sells in restaurants for USD$15, about the same as premium meat burgers, and with greater scale the synth-burger price will drop. The Beyond Burger retails for USD$5.99 for two patties, the equivalent of $NZ26 a kilo.
Silicon Valley money is often backing these growing number of ventures, with the likes of Bill Gates and Google Ventures involved.
"These are people with very, very deep pockets."
Another route being taken is cultured, cellular, or synthetic meat. Cells are harvested using biopsy, incubated and replicated, with a scaffolding provided to help form muscle fibre. For now, they're relying on bovine serum "but it's not a story they'll want to rely on, and they'll soon have a replacement for that as well".
In an effort to meet consumers' apparent desire for 'natural' and local, one company is focusing on meat generating appliances for use in restaurants, supermarkets and eventually even in home kitchens. You'll be sold a meat cells kit to pop into your appliance and, however many hours later, out will come the 'grown' meat product.
The amazing improvements that have got us where we are today won't be the same ones we need to get us to where we want to be in the future."
Dairy farmers, you are not off the hook.
Between 2012 and 2016, the growth in alternative 'milks' was 140 per cent, excluding soy. Extractions from everything from quinoa to oats, macadamia to cashew nuts, is being packaged and sold in supermarkets as milk.
US company Perfect Day pitches their product as real cow milk without having to use cows. Sarah said in a process similar to craft brewing, they use a standard yeast and 3D printing to place DNA from a cow into the mix. It's grown on a mix of plant-based sugars, fats and minerals, the yeast ferments and the sugars create milk proteins.
As with the lab-created and plant-based meats, these producers heavily push their environmental credentials - less greenhouse gas emissions, vastly less water and energy consumption, less land usage, "zero animal suffering".
Sarah said all of these overseas companies play on a dislike of conventional agriculture and factory farming - and that's the crux of it for us. We are not conventional agriculture as people in the US, Europe and many other nations perceive it.
"If we don't differentiate ourselves from their form of farming, there's every chance we'll be dragged down by the anti-animal narrative with them," Sarah said.
United States consumers are used to the idea that farm animals might be kept indoors or on vast feed-pads all their lives.
They resent that 30 per cent of land area is taken up with crops grown to feed animals. They're used to endless square kilometres of flat or rolling land devoted to the same crops, not our "huge biodiversity" and mixed geography, with steep hill country really only suitable for growing grass.
New Zealand has a positive 'story' to tell about natural products, animals free to roam and treated well, grass fed. We can use it to appeal to the premium end of the market. "We've got to back that story up with systems and science, to be authentic about what we say - and also to be really transparent."
Referring to the EU "food miles" argument, Sarah said we had "demonstrated ability on these sorts of things. But if we think this isn't reality, and we don't come together on it, it's a pretty scary future.
"Our [synthetic, plant] competitors have nothing to lose at the moment, some don't even have a product yet but the power of their story to the consumer is streets ahead of ours."
The way synthetic products have overtaken the wool carpet industry shows just having a great natural product isn't enough. "We have to position ourselves and back it up. We can't afford to let that happen again."
Part of the fight back will revolve around protecting the use of the terms 'meat' and 'milk'. Federated Farmers former dairy chairman Andrew Hoggard told the conference the EU Court of Justice had ruled substitute products were not allowed to be called milk in Union countries. Similar moves were happening in the US.
"We need to get that happening in other parts of the world," Andrew said. "There's a very clear definition: milk has to be from a mammal. With meat, we need to do (name protection) now, otherwise it's too late."
Answering a question about synthetic meat's shelf life, and whether the faux milk was full of preservatives, Sarah had no comforting words for local farmers. The products have a long shelf life and some are being frozen as well. Preservatives aren't involved.
Outgoing president William Rolleston said because the 'meat' products were vegetable based "they don't have to deal with guts when processing; the exposure to all the bacteria is going to be much more controlled".
Sarah saw other paths we could take. The world "sees New Zealand as just a big film set.
So why don't we give them that on-farm experience, utilising virtual and augmented reality? There are also niche products. They can recreate the meat, but can they recreate bone?"
The tomahawk steak (a cut of beef ribeye that has five or more inches of extra rib bone for presentation purposes) is a high end cut in New York that goes for NZ$50 a kilo.
"There are lots of opportunities ahead. The amazing improvements that have got us where we are today won't be the same ones we need to get us to where we need to be in the future."
