A mate of the Hound reckons he's not surprised by the recent announcement the Government is 'partnering' with Lincoln-based company Leaft Foods on a $20 million R&D programme in the alternative protein sector.
He suggests that Leaft Foods founder John Penno, who made all his money setting up Canterbury dairy company Synlait and pimping it off the overseas interests, may finally be getting rewarded for helping sell the Government's deeply contentious and unpopular freshwater regulations to farmers up and down the country a year or so back.
Your canine crusader's derisive colleague believes this is all the more galling considering Penno's company probably did more to increase Canterbury's dairy cow numbers and degradation of the region's water quality than anything else in the past 20 years.