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Another company wants to get in on the animal-free meat trend. The Swiss company Planted hopes to do for chicken what Impossible Foods did for beef. It claims its planted.chicken -- made from pea protein, pea fiber, water and sunflower oil -- is indistinguishable from the real thing, and as a meat alternative, it avoids some of the ethical and environmental concerns that come with raising poultry.

According to TechCrunch, the team behind Planted has been working on the product for more than a year and a half, but the company only formally came together a week ago. It grew out of research into, of all things, slime excreted by hagfish. Supposedly, that helped Planted's founders better understand the structure of imitation meats and led to planted.chicken. If you're not ready to taste slime-inspired imitation chicken, that's okay. For now, this first product can only be found in a handful of restaurants in Switzerland.

Planted certainly isn't the only company pushing a plant-based meat alternative. While Impossible Foods has attracted the most attention, even Tyson offers chicken-free nuggets and Nestle has a plant-based Awesome Burger. And you can pick up meat-free Beyond Burgers in grocery stores across the US. While vegans and vegetarians have long turned to meat alternatives, there's a growing wave of consumers who are concerned about the environmental impacts of meat consumption, and these companies are looking to capitalize on that.

Source: TechCrunch

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, Khareem Sudlow