This “Hyper-Realistic” Vegan Foie Gras Sold Out in Less Than 12 Hours
The vegan foie gras alternative by Hello Plant Foods, a Spanish plant-based meat producer, has exceeded all expectations and taken the country by storm.
Credit: Hello Plant Foods
The controversial festive favorite, foie gras, has long come under fire for its production method of force-feeding ducks and geese to fatten up their livers. Now, one company has created a plant-based pâté alternative that could be one of the leading solutions to ending the cruel industry for good.
Spanish start-up Hello Plant Foods launched 5,000 units of their vegan foie gras alternative Hello Fuah! in Spain in mid-December. In just 12 hours, the product had sold out across the country, leaving the company rushing to restock another 30,000 units.
“We’re absolutely gobsmacked,” said the founder of Hello Plant Foods, Javier Fernández. “Our plan was to start slowly … but we’ve just increased our production sevenfold. It’s crazy.”
Fernández and his team spent over a year perfecting the recipe for the plant-based foie gras, recruiting over 150 people as taste tasters, and making more than 800 changes to entice even the most ardent carnivore. The end result: a ‘hyper-realistic’ pate, made from natural ingredients, including cashews, coconut oil, and beetroot extract.
“There’s a hidden consumer that loves foie. But what happens is that a photo of the ducks with the tubes sticking out of them flashes before them and they don’t want it,” he said. “When they try Fuah! their eyebrows shoot up and they go: ‘Madre Mia.’”
Credit: Animal Equality
To the surprise of Fernández, Hello Plant Foods have since received interest from across Europe and the US. “We weren’t expecting any of this. We hadn’t really done any advertising,” he said.
The Fight Against Animal-Based Foie Gras
The vegan delicacy comes as animal-based foie gras comes under increased fire from campaigners. In Europe, animal-based foie gras production is illegal, however due to a legal loophole relating to cultural tradition, five EU member states: Spain, Hungary, Bulgaria, France, and Belgium, are allowed continue to farm geese and ducks for the pâté. In the US, California first banned the production and sale of foie gras by force-feeding in 2004, while New York has fought to prohibit the product.
In the plant-based world where innovators are striving to create delicious cruelty-free alternatives, there’s also occasional pushback, said Fernández. “Sometimes people tell us: ‘You vegans are so tiresome, you always want to imitate animal products. Why do you have to describe lettuce as fillets?’
“What they don’t understand is that the only way that change happens is when the product is excellent and very similar to what people are going to give up. We’ve solved that.”
Credit: Hello Plant Foods
As well as Hello Plant Foods, various other companies are working to offer solutions that can help make the animal foie gras industry obsolete. California-based, The Better Meat Co. announced plans to introduce an analog of its foie gras made from its mycelium-derived Rhiza protein. Meanwhile Prime Roots’ vegan foie gras, which uses mycelium from Koji - the same fungi used to make products such as miso and soy sauce - launched in US supermarkets and restaurants last year, according to its website.
Cell-based companies including Japanese startup IntegriCulture and French startup Gourmet, are also racing to create cultivated foie gras. Made from duck stem cells and grown in vitro in large stainless-steel tanks known as bioreactors, this cell-based pâté is completely slaughter-free while being indistinguishable from the real thing. Both IntegriCulture and Gourmet expect to release their products once they receive regulatory approval.
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