OMAHA – Food scientists working for members of the U.S. beef industry announced a breakthrough this week, successfully engineering a new strain of Beyond Meat plant protein products capable of feeling pain.

“We’re just so proud of bringing Beyond Meat that much closer to resembling the real thing!” said Todd Barnable, lead nutritionist with the development team, “Now customers looking for that authentic meat-eating experience can rest assured that their fake-meat burger suffered just as much – if not more – than their friend’s cheeseburger.”

While the process for creating the ability to experience pain is a closely held secret, Barnable was willing to share the whole range of agony that the Beyond Meat feels before it makes its way to your plate. He confirmed that they have successfully simulated and infused the meat substitute with physical pain, fear of impending death, the emotional torture of being ripped away from your mother at a young age to be used for food, and at least seven other types of writhing torment unique to false meat products.

“The pain experience does nothing to change the taste, texture, or anything else about Beyond Meat,” Banable explained, “but in our quest to provide vegetarians and health conscious people a viable alternative to eating meat, we felt this was a necessary step.”

“Look, it wasn’t easy giving the pea proteins nerve endings and an emotional attachment to it’s non-existent mother, but we knew it was important to our commitment to reproducing all aspects of the meat-eating experience without harming poor, defenceless animals,” he continued.

In order to fully replicate the production of real meat, the shrink-wrapped containers of pea protein and corn oil will be kept in small cages with no room to move in total darkness, and occasionally zapped with electric prods. Future development plans include giving the brick of processed plant mush the ability to beg for its life.

So far, customers agree that knowing that their Beyond Meat felt some form of pain before being consumed has made them more likely to buy the product and explore non-meat alternatives. 74% of people polled said that the knowledge that their veggie sausage had a horrible, terror-filled ‘life’ for every moment of its existence prior to being consumed made them more likely to describe it as being truly identical to real meat.

“Finally, I can avoid all the ethical quandaries of harming a living, sentient being while still knowing that something out there suffered for the sake of my dinner,” said Rita Patrick, long-time vegetarian.

But the project team isn’t done yet. Seeking to more completely capture the simulation of real meat, the injection of Beyond Antibiotics into the fake meat is about six months away from being ready for introduction.