Substitutes changing appetite for pork

The high-tech approach really stands as the answer behind the aim of makers of animal-free products to revolutionize the idea of meat.According to Halla, the "magic ingredient" is an iron-containing molecule called heme, found in animals and plants, which gives meat its flavor.

The sheer power of technology gives the company's "bleeding "vegan meat patties a flavor, color and texture close to real meat, and even enables it to become a juicier and meatier version, he said.

Since Omnipork's debut in Hong Kong last year, it has been put on the menus of hundreds of restaurants around the city. It is now on sale in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, Singapore and Thailand. Right Treat, which developed Omnipork, plans to make inroads into the Chinese mainland by the end of the third quarter of this year.

As the world's biggest producer and consumer of pork, the Chinese mainland is a market where plant-based protein makers like Right Treat cannot afford to miss the boat, Yeung said. The sheer size of its vegan population and younger generation who care about "conscious consumption", make for a major driving force for a nationwide dietary shift.

"Fundamental change comes from two sources - what people want and what people fear. They are the pull and push," he said.

Yeung believes the desire for dietary change is already there. And fear has its roots in mounting concerns over food safety and African swine fever, which place the country's supply chain of protein in jeopardy and push the traditional animal husbandry industry to breaking point.

Initially, Omnipork will be rolled out in first-tier cities, where people tend to be more open-minded, more ready to try something new, and more connected to global trends, Yeung said.

But the nation's burgeoning e-commerce means geographical location is not really an issue for Right Treat, enabling the company to reach out to consumers in the smaller cities, towns and villages that more than a billion Chinese call home, he said.

Yeung has no doubt that the plant-based product will catch on in China.

"For 5,000 years, China was not a coffee drinking country. But today, coffee shops are everywhere," Yeung said. "In the past, Chinese people were not steak lovers. But now, McDonalds is everywhere."

"China is absolutely on our radar," said Halla, who, however, did not reveal specific timelines.

Yeung, an early investor in Beyond Meat and a longtime vegetarian, said Right Treat's mission is not narrowly defined as bringing veganism to the meat-eating masses. It creates a harmonious way that everyone can eat and go green together without much sense of personal sacrifice.

Price might be an issue. A 230-gram pack of Omnipork now retails for about HK$43($5.5). But an outbreak of African swine fever has already pushed up retail pork prices in China and Nomura forecasts prices of the staple meat will hit a peak of 33 yuan ($4.8) per kilogram in January 2020, from the 18.5 yuan-per-kilogram price point in February this year, representing a roughly 78 percent surge.