Can oyster mushroom burgers from Wijnegem sort meat’s disastrous climate impact?

One of the quickest ways for people to reduce their impact on the climate significantly and quickly is to eat less meat. For Belgians, though, this switch has turned out to be quite a challenge. Flemings in particular have a hard time saying 'adieu' to a fine chunk of meat.

Now imagine a world in which you could greatly reduce the climate impact of the meat you eat, without having to give up hamburgers. That is exactly what meat company Equinox from Wijnegem is trying to achieve. It’s a family business that has been making "mince" from shredded oyster mushroom stalks since 2020. The stalks are a byproduct of oyster mushroom production that so far has no other use.

That oyster mushroom mince can then be mixed with a meat preparation, significantly reducing the climate impact of, say, a sausage or a hamburger.

"We thought the idea of a hamburger or sausage that you can cook in identically the same way and that looks precisely the same, would be a solution for consumers who want to consume less meat," Kristof Peeters, business manager of Equinox explains.

Climate benefits from mushrooms

Oyster mushrooms (and mushrooms by extension) are a rewarding meat substitute. They have a fibrous structure that somewhat resembles meat and they contain no fats.

Moreover, the flavour tends towards umami, one of the five basic tastes, neither sweet, sour, salty or bitter, but with a savoury taste that also characterises meat. As a result, oyster mushrooms require less seasoning and less industrial processing than some other meat substitutes.

In addition, mushrooms provide high yields per hectare of land. Meat has a poorer track record on that count. 80 per cent of the world's arable land is used for meat production, but it provides only 20 per cent of the calories produced.

Exactly how big the climate gain from oyster mushrooms is, Equinox have not yet calculated.

This is something that has been done at BonMush, in Ieper (West Flanders).  BonMush CEO Caroline Vercauteren turned her parents-in-law's charcuterie company into a producer of vegan spreads and sausages based on oyster mushrooms. Her products are on sale at several supermarkets including Delhaize, Colruyt and Jumbo.

According to Caroline, one kilogram of pork creates 12.5 kilograms of CO₂. That is 10 times more than 1 kilogram of oyster mushrooms that produces 1.2 kilograms of CO₂. Vercauteren claims that in this way BonMush saved 1,250 tonnes of CO₂ last year.

For beef, which has a greater climate impact than pork, the climate gain could be much higher. However, as yet really thorough research on the subject remains quite scarce.

In 2018, the World Resource Institute calculated what you could save if you replaced a third of all US burgers by mushrooms. It would save 10.5 million tonnes of CO₂ annually, roughly the equivalent of taking 2.3 million cars off the road.

Alas, consumers are less enthusiastic

Mixing oyster mushrooms with your minced meat seems like a brilliant idea, but convincing the consumer is another matter. After all, Equinox's "mushroom-mince burger" is not really catching on.

According to Norenca, the business which processes the burgers and sausages for Equinox over six months in 2022 the company produced some 60 tonnes. But that was two years ago, and demand has dropped since then.

The burgers were on shop shelves for a while under the brand name "Meat the Champions", (‘champignon’ being the French word for ‘mushroom’) but soon disappeared. Initially, day care centres and care homes had them on the menu, but that hasn’t been the case since November 2023.

How come? Equinox blames the pandemic and says it was this that thwarted the launch of "Meat the Champions". Back then, companies had to cut costs and it wasn’t a good time to launch a new product given all the investments required.

Marketing specialist Gino Van Ossel of the Vlerick Business School agrees to a point, but he also sees other possible explanations. "I don't know if this is a niche consumers want to see filled" he says.

"Icons like Sandra Bekkari, Pascale Naessens and Yotam Ottolenghi say: eat a healthier diet that includes more vegetables, but also eat what you like, and sinning is part of that. I’m not saying for a moment that oyster burgers are not tasty!"

Followers of this school either eat vegetarian or opt for meat and are less likely to reach for a mixture or for meat substitutes.

Is the consumer conscious of the need to be green?

Relatively few consumers consider the climate impact of meat, says Van Ossel. "What we in jargon call the dark green consumer. That is at most 10 per cent of the population. The majority are light green and they don't want to compromise."

Caroline Vercauteren of BonMush also notes that hybrid meat simply doesn’t sell as well as a wholly plant-based product. "When I talk to foreign customers, their first question is always ‘Do I still produce meat at the company?’ I have to be able to guarantee that my product is vegetarian, kosher and halal. That becomes much more difficult if we also process meat on the premises."

Unlike Equinox's oyster mushroom burgers, BonMush is managing to grow, according to its own figures by "20 to 25 per cent" last year.

So maybe mushroom mince burgers and sausages were just unlucky with the zeitgeist. Or greater investments need to be made in marketing before this king of burger can really catch on. At Equinox they still believe in the product. "We will continue to introduce mushroom burgers for our customers,"  Kristof Peeters concludes.