Csiro joins Hungry Jack’s kitchen

Main Sequence Ventures, the Australia-based manager of Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (Csiro)’s Innovation Fund, is to partner fast food chain owner Competitive Foods Australia to develop a plant-based burger product, Business Insider Australia has reported.
Main Sequence Ventures and Competitive Foods’ fast-food burger retail subsidiary, Hungry Jack’s, will establish a jointly-owned spinout, dubbed V2Food, to formulate a vegetarian iteration of Hungry Jack’s flagship product, the Whopper, based on Csiro’s food science expertise.
Hungry Jack’s is the Australia-based sister franchise of fast-food chain Burger King, which already sells a meat-free Whopper in the US created in partnership with Stanford-founded plant-based food company Impossible Foods.
The Australian product is being developed under the codename “v2whopper”, and is expected to contain a legume-like pea or bean base charged with protein.
Hungry Jack’s launched a range of vegan products in Australia in October 2018. The addition of the new Whopper will help further satisfy rising demand among Australian consumers for environmentally sustainable products, according to Jack Cowin, executive chairman of Competitive Foods Australia.
Cowin said: “We want to create an alternative version of the classic Whopper that Australians know and love, at a price ordinary consumers can afford, to answer to the environmentally sustainable movement that we are now seeing.”
Martin Cole, professor and deputy director for agriculture and food at Csiro, added: “The rapid growth of our population is straining our environment and putting food security at risk, and at the same time, our eating habits are less healthy than ever before.
“Industry needs to be part of the solution to developing innovative new foods that are healthier and more sustainable.”