Pig lovers, rejoice: Impossible pork and sausage are here

Pop quiz: What's the most popular meat in Europe and Asia? No, it's not beef; that's just the most popular meat in the U.S. It's pork, by a wide margin.

Which is why the Bay Area-based scientists at Impossible Foods, makers of the incredibly beef-like Impossible Burger, put pig-based products in their sights next. Impossible CEO Pat Brown has made it his mission to replace as many meat products as possible — the target audience is meat eaters, he says, not vegetarians or vegans. Specifically, the meat eaters Brown would encounter at trade shows in South East Asia. (The rapidly expanding company is now open for business in Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore).

"The number one question we'd get asked internationally is 'When are you going to have pork?'" Brown says. "It kind of became a no-brainer for that to be next."

The planet's favorite meat, now in animal-free form Credit: impossible foods

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Monday, Brown's company offered a "first taste" of Impossible Pork in various Asian cuisine forms (Bahn mi sandwiches and dumplings were on the menu). It was the only new food offering at a show that has aspirations to stretch the definition of technology beyond the usual gadgets.

Impossible pork is also present in the company's latest official offering: sausage.

Impossible Sausage will debut later this month, exclusive to Burger King, which will sell it in the form of an Impossible Croissan'wich. (Impossible and Burger King have been partners since the Impossible Whopper launched in August.) It's rolling out in six test locations first: Savannah, Georgia; Lansing, Michigan; Springfield, Illinois; Albuquerque; and Montgomery, Alabama.

The company was working on the flavor profile of pork alongside its beef when it launched as a startup out of Stanford five years ago. The pork project had to take something of a back seat this past year, while Impossible Foods scrambled to meet demand for its beef-free beef.

Indeed, demand for the Impossible Burger was such that the company's food science PhDs would chip in. Alongside working in the lab, they took shifts packing and stacking patties in giant coolers. But the CEO says that's all part of the missionary zeal of a company that really believes it can solve climate change by attacking one growing source of greenhouse gas emissions: agriculture.

"We won’t stop until we eliminate the need for animals in the food chain and make the global food system sustainable," says Brown.