The days of meat processing are long gone here. However, much of the equipment in the former meat factory in the small village of Kernen, about 14 kilometers from Stuttgart, could continue to be used for its original purpose. Smokehouses, mixers, meat grinders: The production of Topaz's vegan meat substitutes is strongly reminiscent of their animal predecessors - right down to the spicy smell. However, the peeling machine will soon have less to do.
Benjamin Fischer
Editor in business.
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For a long time, the skin of vegan sausages has been a headache for Klaus Gaiser. Whereas in the previous variants the plastic casing always had to be removed before they were packaged, the 71-year-old founder now proudly shows off the freshly smoked "new generation" with plant-based casing. For years, they had been tinkering around with a specialized company. After the first attempt in 2018, the characteristic crack when biting into it is now finally satisfactory.
First tofu, then meat substitute made from seitan
Gaiser founded his company Topas in 1993 and is still responsible for product development. Before turning to meat substitutes in the early 1990s, he had produced tofu and sold his company in 1989. In order to regain his former place in the tofu business, he would probably have had to invest a lot in marketing a few years later, Gaiser looks back. So from then on, the sinologist and Japanologist preferred to concentrate on the other great vegan Asian food tradition: seitan, which consists primarily of wheat protein, i.e. gluten.
"From the very beginning, I have tried to use seitan – unlike tofu before – to explicitly reach meat eaters who do not want to miss their usual taste and meat-eating experience, but who specifically want to eat no or less meat," he says. Gaiser is not a vegan, nor did he eat a vegetarian diet at first. "It would be a wonderfully well-rounded story if one day I had decided for myself that meat is the devil's, and I am now proselytizing with my products. But it wasn't like that at all. I slipped into vegetarianism through my wife, who had never liked meat, and over time I became more and more convinced."
After difficult early years, Topas benefited greatly from the BSE scandal. Sales increased by 82 percent in 2001. Of course, these jumps could not be repeated, but it was also uphill afterwards. He cannot report on the criticism that some meat substitutes experience today. For a while, they had a comment function on the website, and sometimes there were insults to read. But all this was far from the dimensions that recently occurred in the case of the "Vegan Butcher's Shop" in Dresden. The owners there received a series of negative comments on social media and even death threats. In addition, some products were subsequently renamed due to an alleged risk of confusion – not a new issue for substitute product manufacturers. Of course, Gaiser is familiar with the debate, it is not for nothing that topaz products clearly say "vegan" or "Lyon-style cold cuts", but he is hardly on social media anyway, he says.
Meat consumption is declining – substitute products are still niche
In any case, the trend seems to prove Topaz right. According to the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE), Germans consumed an average of 52 kilograms of meat per capita last year. This is around 4.2 kilograms less than in 2021. At the same time, the production of meat substitutes is growing. Most recently, the figure was a good 104,000 tonnes, 6.5 percent more than in the previous year. However, the increase remained well below the previous increase (17 percent), and the value of meat products produced in 2022 was 42.4 billion euros, about 80 times higher than that of the alternatives.