Cathay Pacific First Major Airline To Serve Vegan Pork On Inflight Dining

After multiple successful collaborations with Hong Kong’s most iconic food service chains, including Tsui Wah Restaurants, Fairwood, Teawood and Maxim’s Treats Food Hall, Green Monday’s plant pork alternative Omnipork will now also be served on Cathay Pacific flights. This marks the first time that the vegan minced pork analogue will be available to passengers on air.

For the first time, in partnership with Green Monday, Omnipork will be served in on-board meals on Hong Kong’s flag carrier Cathay Pacific. This comes after Cathay began serving plant-based beef alternative Beyond Meat in the The Pier Lounge at the Hong Kong International Airport. For the month of October this year, Business Class travellers on a Cathay Pacific long-haul flight departing from Hong Kong can enjoy Omnipork Bolognese with Garganelli Pasta. Cathay will continue to experiment with different Omnipork dishes in the coming months to cater to growing number of plant-based and flexitarian diets. 

Speaking to Green Queen about the partnership with Cathay, Green Monday CEO and Founder David Yeung said: “One of the most frequently received requests by our team is to collaborate with airlines to increase and improve in-flight plant-based options. We appreciate that the Cathay Pacific team sees the need to cater to passengers with various dietary needs…as it sets an example for its industry peers. We are confident that when it comes to the possibilities of new-generation plant-based food, the sky is not the limit!”

Omnipork is a completely plant-based blend of pea protein, non-GMO soy, shiitake mushrooms and rice that looks and tastes like real minced pork, but comes without the cholesterol, animal cruelty, carbon footprint and waste run-off associated with traditional livestock farming. As the most consumed meat in the world, accounting for almost 40% of global meat production, pork substitutes will be one of the key solutions to our climate crisis.

This is particularly relevant to Asia, where many local cuisines commonly feature pork as a key ingredient in many dishes. In addition to being embedded in traditional food culture, pork is also in high demand in Asia due to the African swine fever. In China alone, the largest consumer of pork in the world, over 100 million pigs have already been culled since the epidemic swept the region. Pork substitutes could therefore support dietary shifts in Asia without sacrificing on regional cultural roots and local Asian appetites. 

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This may explain why Omnipork has seen such record growth since its first debut on Hong Kong’s stores and restaurants. Within months of its launch earlier this year, the vegan pork mince is now available in Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and is set to launch in China soon as well. 

Cathay Pacific is only the second airline ever to serve a plant-based meat as part of its inflight dining offering, after Air New Zealand began serving Impossible Foods as part of its Business Premier menu on their Los Angeles to Auckland routes back in July 2018.

Lead image courtesy of Green Monday / Cathay Pacific.