Jamie Mackay: The Country host on what the 'protein boom' means for Kiwi farmers

Protein is seeing a surge in popularity all over the world, and that's great news for Kiwi farmers.

Reports claim a boom industry has developed around supplying high protein calories for those who are losing muscle mass from taking weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. 

The Country's Jamie Mackay explained further.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Joe McKay, hosts of the Countries of US. Hallo, Jamie, Hello, Heather,
I heard you talking about going to see Split Ends.
You'll love him. And I think Tim Finn's in his
early seventies. But how about Mick Jagger. We were talking
about him on our show today at eighty two are
releasing not only a new single, but a new Album's
Life and the Old Guy. Yet Yeah, he's looking good

(00:20):
as well. Ah, Like I saw the three of them,
the three remaining members of three Am, I imagining that
one of them is missing, one of them is missing. Hey, Jamie, Charlie,
Charlie Watt the drama unfortunately passed away. And Keith Richards,
as I said today, he hasn't aged in the last
thirty years because he looked eighty when he was fiftheight, right, Yeah,
they're looking great in their little he has two. Now,

(00:42):
why are you excited about this worldwide protein boom? Well,
I'm very excited about it, and I was just talking
to a guy who's just back from the States, a
guy I used for a lot of my dairy commentary,
Mike McIntyre from Jarden. So I'm sort of paraphrasing what
he said, but look, it's great that this protein for
Kiwi farmers, especially dairy farmers, our biggest sector. And the

(01:04):
irony here is, believe it or not, Heather, we've got
overweight Americans to think courtesy of probably eating too many
hamburgers with our an inverted commas lean grinding beef in them.
A boom has developed around supplying high protein calories for
those who are losing muscle mass from taking these weight

(01:24):
weight loss drugs such as ozepic, and Mike told me
that up to I think it was like nineteen percent
of US adults had already tried or existing customers of
these weight loss drugs. So we've got this whole new
business in supplying high quality protein for these people so
they don't lose muscle mass when they're losing weight. Some

(01:47):
of his other observations, Heather, if you don't mind me
just going on. Recently the focus was on snacking. This
year's theme in the States is very much about calories
delivered from protein. Several of these weight loss products are
coming off patent. There's up to fourteen companies currently developing generics.
They're going to get a whole lot cheaper and the

(02:08):
delivery methods are going to be a lot more efficient
and a lot more user friendly. I pills rather than injections. Way,
which is the liquid buy product of cheese or caseine
production has doubled in priced from eight thousand to seventeen
thousand US dollars per metric tone and Mike said he
was talking to a couple of cheese companies in the

(02:30):
US who said, somewhat perhaps tongue in cheek, they are
now protein plays with the cheese buy products. So the
way that they get when they're making the cheese to
put into these protein bars and all that sort of
stuff for muscle building powders, that is where the money is.
And look, honestly, this is just great news for the

(02:50):
New Zealand airy industry. Yeah. How cool is that? Hey?
Thank you, Jamie appreciated. Look After Yourself. Jamie McKay hosts
of the Country. For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive,
listen lived use Talk SIB from four pm weekdays, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.