(New York) An American champion of a famous hot dog eating contest will not be able to participate in the competition on July 4 in New York because he promotes a competing brand of plant-based meat, the organizer of this competition announced more than a hundred years old.

“We are devastated to learn that Joey Chesnut chose to represent a rival brand that sells plant-based hot dogs rather than compete in the Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest,” Major said Tuesday. League Eating (MLE) in a press release on the X network.

The famous competition has been organized since 1916 every July 4, a national holiday in the United States.  

Nearly 35,000 fans gathered in the Coney Island neighborhood, on the Atlantic coast in the southern borough of Brooklyn.

A 6’1″ and 230 lb Californian, Chestnut has won the competition 16 times and holds the record for most wins.

In 2021, he devoured 76 hot dogs in ten minutes, breaking his own record from the previous year.  

But the competition refuses to allow its participants to represent brands other than its own, Nathan’s.

“It seems that for Joey and his agents, another brand of hot dogs takes precedence over our long-standing relationship,” lamented the MLE, denouncing an agreement between its champion and a brand of plant-based meat alternatives, Impossible Foods.

“Joey Chestnut is an American hero. “We would love nothing more than to have him” in the competition this year, the MLE argued.

The person said on Instagram that he was “very disappointed to learn (of his) exclusion from the media after almost 20 years” of competition and warned that he had “no contract with the MLE or Nathan’s”.  

Each year, the five biggest eaters share $40,000 and the first place winner wins the “mustard belt” with $10,000 more.

According to the American press, Chestnut, nicknamed “Jaw”, has pocketed hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars in recent years by also devouring 30 Greek sandwiches in ten minutes or 182 chicken wings in 30 minutes.

The MLE had already excluded a participant from the Nathan’s competition: in 2010, the Japanese Takeru Kobayashi, rival of Joey Chestnut, did not compete following a disagreement over the exclusivity of a contract.