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James Cameron and Peter Jackson Set up Plant-Based Food Business in New Zealand

In an interview with TVNZ, famous Hollywood director and vegan advocate James Cameron recently announced that he and Kiwi director Peter Jackson are launching into the vegan protein business. together with their partners Suzy Amis Cameron and Dame Fran Walsh, they founded “PBT New Zealand”, a company aiming to create plant-based meat alternatives and other vegan protein products.

“It’s still early days. We have a very small team and we’re basically in a research phase right now”, Cameron said about his new business. We’ve been looking at ways to make extraction of protein from alfalfa more efficient.”

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James and Suzy Amis Cameron; ©Verdient Foods

Cameron believes, plant-based innovation could contribute to economic growth in New Zealand and that it could transform the country’s farming sector into a world-leading hub for innovative plant-based foods. With their future plant meat factories, they also want to create new jobs in New Zealand – a country for which livestock farming is still an important economic pillar.

When asked what the problem with meat was, the director said: “There are a lot of problems with meat. I would say, from a sustainability standpoint, the problem is that getting your protein from meat requires anywhere from 10-40 times as much land as getting the same exact nutritional value from plants.”

While well aware of the reserves within NZ’s farming community, Cameron also sees the negative effects livestock farming already has on New Zealand’s environment. So he wants to challenge people to look at the bigger picture. And this does not only concern New Zealanders.

Cameron, who also produced the upcoming documentary “The Game Changers”, added: “I think what we need is a nice transition to a meatless or relatively meatless world in 20 -30 years.”

You can watch more of the TVNZ-interview here.

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