Would you eat a Merck burger?

“Chicken” fingers made by Frito-Lay. BP-branded ribeyes. A Merck burger.

So far, companies venturing into the alt-meat sector have been primarily start-ups or units of conventional meat companies. But the nature of an alt-meat manufacturing operations is such that companies today considered far afield of food processing could, conceivably, produce an analogue product and be just as competitive for market share as Beyond, Impossible, Tyson or ADM.

In fact, panelists for “Tomorrow's Foods Today:…