Bovril has announced that it will be launching a new plant-based version of its classic meat extract paste next year.
After 120 years of making the meat extract, the Bovril Company has partnered with the world’s first vegan football club, Forest Green Rovers (FGR) to create the very first vegan alternative to the drink.
The high-protein drink, made from beetroot paste rather than beef stock, will be served exclusively at the football team’s ground in in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire at the start of their 2021 season.
Bovril has announced that it will be launching a new plant-based version of their classic meat extract drink next year made of beetroot paste
Sharing the design for the new product on Instagram, Bovril penned: We’re working with @FGRFC_Official to make sure NO football fans are left out in the cold this season. This bespoke and totally VEGAN formula can’t be beet. Coming to the Forest Green stadium in 2021.
Social media users were divided over the new drink, with some calling the vegan alternative one of the ‘worst things about 2020’ while others were delighted, and thanked the company for launching the plant-based drink.
‘Well isn’t this exciting’, wrote one thrilled user, while another penned: ‘Nice one Bovril!’
‘Omg Bovril was like my desert island must have, would love to be able to try this someday. Hope it lives up to the original’, wrote a third.
Social media users were divided over the new drink, with some thrilled about the existence of the vegan alternative
However others weren’t as keen, with one Instagram user commenting: ‘2020 couldn’t get any worse…’
However others weren’t as keen, with one Instagram user commenting: ‘2020 couldn’t get any worse…’
A second said: ‘No. Just no. If people want to be vegan – eat vegetables, don’t eat fake meat.’
‘Nooooo bovril is meat and that can’t change’, moaned a third.
The original Bovril is a thick and salty meat extract paste similar to a yeast extract, developed in the 1870s by John Lawson Johnston.
In 2017, FGR was officially recognised as the world’s first vegan football club, after receiving a trademark from the Vegan Society.
The original Bovril (pictured) is a thick and salty meat extract paste similar to a yeast extract, developed in the 1870s by John Lawson Johnston
Known by Fifa as the ‘greenest football club in the world’, FGR is the first to be certified carbon neutral by the United Nations.
Their 5,141-capacity ground, The New Lawn, is powered by 100 per cent green energy from Ecotricity, the company founded by Vince. Some of the energy is generated by the solar panels on the stadium roof.
The club only serves vegan food, replacing dishes such as burgers and hotdogs with vegan fajitas and veggie burgers in order to help improve the environmental and animal welfare impacts of livestock farming.
Their 5,141-capacity ground of Forest Green Rovers’ football picth, The New Lawn, is powered by 100 per cent green energy from Ecotricity
The vegan club’s chairman and Veganuary ambassador, Dale Vince, told that while the club already have great meat alternatives, they have long been waiting for a vegan version of Bovril.
‘We’re famously not fans of tradition but – a pie and a mug of Bovril are for many people a football tradition – and while we have great pies without animals in them, we’ve no Bovril alternative.
‘That may be about to change, with the advent of plant Bovril. I think that would be fantastic.’