Vegan pet food startup Wild Earth, which shot to fame after landing a Shark Tank deal with Mark Cuban, has filed for bankruptcy. But co-founder Ryan Bethencourt says it’s not the end of the brand’s story.
Wild Earth, one of the leading plant-based pet food brands, has filed for Chapter 11 reorganisation bankruptcy in North Carolina.
The company, which made national headlines after finding success on ABC’s Shark Tank in 2018, reported $2.4M in assets and $12.6M in liabilities in the court filing. The business will continue to operate, with the Chapter 11 filing allowing it to restructure its debt.
“We just couldn’t find any venture investors,” co-founder and CEO Ryan Bethencourt told Triangle Business Journal, which first reported the news. He noted that Wild Earth couldn’t keep up with its venture debt despite months of negotiations, with its largest creditor, Espresso Capital, set to take over the business.
Bethencourt, who owns 9.2% of the company, hopes to stay at the firm, which will become a “leaner, meaner” operation. “I don’t think this is the end of the Wild Earth story,” he said.
Wild Earth CEO predicted challenges last year
Courtesy: Wild Earth
A serial investor in the alternative protein ecosystem, Bethencourt established Wild Earth in 2017 after he “obsessed about pet food” and learnt about the industry’s environmental and health harms.
A year later, he appeared on Shark Tank and convinced Cuban to invest in the startup. The Dallas Mavericks owner agreed to pay $550,000 for 10% of the company – and unlike many deals that fall through after airing on the TV, this one came good. (Cuban still owns about 0.5% of the business.)
Its portfolio is dominated by dog food, treats and supplements, but it recently diversified into cat food too, launching a Unicorn Pate SKU in August. The company has dabbled with cultivated meat as well, working to develop a chicken broth topper for dogs – but it paused development efforts due to financial challenges, Bethencourt revealed in an interview with Green Queen last year.
Plant-based meat had already seen sales and investment slump by then, which he called “brutal, but inevitable”. “I think one of the biggest challenges for all of us is competing with some of the planet’s largest companies in the food category,” he said at the time.
“Most plant-based food companies are tiny in comparison to today’s food giants, but if we focus on making incredible products, with great customer benefits and very competitive prices, we can win.”
He added: “People will want to buy tasty, healthier and cost-competitive products – we just have to push our industry harder to deliver on these, and that’s a hard challenge for us all,” he notes.
Wild Earth has raised nearly $50M from investors since its inception, and at the time of the interview, had sold about $42M worth of pet food, according to Bethencourt. The company was targeting $15M in annual sales in 2024, though he stressed that the focus was on cost-efficient growth.
What led Wild Earth to file for bankruptcy
Courtesy: Wild Earth
According to the Chapter 11 filing, Wild Earth had made $10.7M in revenue in 2023, which dipped to just under $7.6M in 2024. So far this year, it has recorded $590,000 in sales. Moreover, Bethencourt had told Triangle Business Journal in 2024 that the company was profitable.
Currently, it owes $259,000 to Animal Nutrition for a trial production of kibble, $319,000 to Barrett Petfood Innovation for inventory supplies, and $110,000 to entrepreneur Scot Wingo’s Triangle Tweener Fund. And the company’s largest venture investors are VegInvest Trust (a 25% share) and At One Ventures ($12.8%).
The bankruptcy document suggests that the business’s supply chain was disrupted due to COVID-19, while sales have been down due to inflation (its products cost 20-30% more than conventional pet food). Wild Earth has also been looking to expand into big-box retailers and expand into 300 stores, for which it was planning a costly rebrand and packaging redesign.
“Despite the debtor’s profitability, the debtor was unable to generate sufficient capital to address its outstanding secured debt,” the filing reads. “When it became clear that the Debtor would not be able to raise sufficient funds to address its outstanding obligations, while continuing to operate, the Debtor began seeking potential purchasers for its business.”
Wild Earth’s struggles mirror the larger investment landscape in the industry, with plant-based startups receiving 64% less venture capital in 2024 than the year before. In the last 12 months, several companies have been forced to cease operations or declare bankruptcy before being rescued, including Akua, Sunfed Meats, Willicroft, Mycorena, and Allplants.
Unilever’s struggle to sell The Vegetarian Butcher and Nestlé and Monde Nissin’s slowing meat alternative sales are bad news for the plant-based market.
In the span of seven months, the CEOs of Nestlé, Monde Nissin, and Unilever have all left their roles amid weak sales, as the company’s boards look to accelerate strategy executions with fresh leadership.
Each of these Big Food companies owns some of the largest plant-based meat brands in the world, which have been a talking point in their financial discourse. The bottom line is, it feels like they’re not getting what they want out of meat alternatives.
Quorn, the mycoprotein pioneer that Monde Nissin acquired a decade ago, has been struggling for several years now, posting double-digit losses in the last quarter after sales hit a six-year-low the year before.
Nestlé, which pulled its Garden Gourmet brand from the UK in two separate instances, has been forced to slim its meat-free offerings under the Sweet Earth brand.
And Unilever, whose CEO Hein Schumacher is stepping down this weekend, is in a bind with The Vegetarian Butcher. The CPG giant has been looking to offload the vegan meat brand as part of its strategy to “prune” its vast portfolio, and is facing an uphill battle to find buyers at attractive prices.
It paints a dim picture of the plant-based meat industry. Big Food hopped on the bandwagon in the late 2010s on the back of the explosive success of Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, but now, it’s stuck in limbo with meat alternatives.
Quorn sales shrink further as Nestlé withdraws alt-meat offerings
Courtesy: Quorn
In September, company accounts showed that the pre-tax losses of Marlow Foods – the parent division of Quorn and Cauldron Foods – quadrupled in 2023, surpassing £60M. And while the business slashed its selling and distribution costs by nearly half, the soaring cost of goods caused its gross profit to plunge from £65M in 2022 to just £1.4M in 2023.
Shortly after, Quorn CEO Marco Bertacca stepped down and was replaced by former Heineken UK managing director David Flochel, who called 2025 a “reset year” for the firm.
However, according to Monde Nissin’s latest earnings report published on the Philippines Stock Exchange, Quorn’s losses kept widening in the latter half of 2024, from single-digit declines in Q3 to a decrease in the mid-teens in Q4, compared to the corresponding periods in 2023. The company said it “continues to operate in a challenging environment”, but in spite of the topline weakness, it expected to achieve positive EBITDA – revenue excluding all non-operational expenses – in Q4.
Still, Monde Nissin noted that it may book £80-100M in impairment charges for Quorn – these are reductions in the recoverable value of an asset. “Although substantial, this figure is notably lower than last year’s impairment,” the company said. (It wrote down £145M in 2023 and £290M in 2022, and has pledged to make up the impairment value for Quorn every year until 2032).
Quorn remains one of the best-selling meat-free brands in the world, though its financial turmoil in recent years is a marker of the troubles that befall plant-based companies today.
It’s a problem illustrated by the world’s largest food company too. Nestlé CEO Laurent Freixe – who was appointed in August – has said that the business excessively focused on meat alternatives, subsequently finding that the market wasn’t as big as initially thought, according to Reuters.
A Nestlé representative told the news agency that its Sweet Earth label now only sells bowls like General Tso’s tofu and bulgogi, having discontinued items like plant-based chicken strips and bacon.
Can Unilever find the right price for The Vegetarian Butcher?
Courtesy: The Vegetarian Butcher
Faltering sales have also decreased the value of industry-leading brands. You’d think the plant-based meat supplier to Burger King and Subway in multiple markets would be hot property for potential buyers, but Unilever is finding it hard to offload The Vegetarian Butcher at the price it wants.
Sky News reported in November that Unilever had hired Piper Sandler to run an auction for the sale of the Dutch vegan business, with “a number of potential buyers” in talks for the deal. Unilever declined to comment on “market rumour or speculation” when approached by Green Queen.
The move followed the consumer goods company’s decision to scale back a number of its key climate goals and focus on its “power brands”, which collectively represent over three-quarters of its turnover. It had already begun demerging its ice cream units in India and Indonesia, and is mulling a sale of its global ice cream division, which includes Ben & Jerry’s and Magnum.
But Reuters reports that The Vegetarian Butcher – which Unilever bought in 2018 – only records around €50M in annual sales and is loss-making, according to analysts, who suggest that it may appeal to trade buyers like meat producers looking to diversify into plant-based alternatives.
Unilever this week ousted Schumacher who said the board was keen to “step up the pace of our strategy execution and realise swift value creation underscored by a change in leadership”, installing CFO Fernando Fernandez as the new chief executive.
Big Food losing faith as UPF discourse heats up
Courtesy: Ben Curtis/AP
These are the latest signs of uncertainty for plant-based companies, whose sales and valuations have been hurt by the ultra-processed food (UPF) debate. Consumers have been moving towards fresher, more ‘natural’ foods, leaving processed meat analogue makers like Quorn and The Vegetarian Butcher scrambling.
All this has led several commentators to mourn an apparent demise of the industry, which they ascribe to an “anti-vegan backlash”. But for all the criticism, while retail sales of meat alternatives have continued to decline in the US, they grew by 3% between 2022 and 2023 in Europe’s largest markets.
For the world’s biggest food companies, plant-based meat still remains an impediment to their aggressive growth strategies, and that’s a problem for the alternative protein sector.
Could a sales turnaround for Quorn and a successful exit for The Vegetarian Butcher convince investors and businesses otherwise?
In our new interview series, we quiz future food investors about the solutions that excite them the most, their favourite climate-forward restaurant, and what they look for in successful founders.
Nadav Berger is a Founding General Partner at PeakBridge.
What future food technologies most excite you?
AI applications in food tech, but not just for the reasons you might expect. The food industry has relatively low gross margins – it’s not even in the ballpark of software, pharma and biotech. Artificial intelligence applied right has potential to make all the highly complex (and sometimes archaic) processes in the food system far more efficient and accurate.
That means a huge potential change, from a better topline, to better processes across the value chain to more precisely-tailored products. And bigger margins mean more money to put into innovation. Into food tech. Right now, that’s a hurdle.
Solid-state fermentation is another technology I’m excited about, already being used by MFL for example to create thousands of taste and aroma molecules from real food ingredients. SST requires less capex and production is more efficient, but does deal with complex ingredients so you need the knowhow to master the composition.
What are three future food verticals you are actively looking at for 2025?
I’m excited about health & nutrition, specifically the intersection of health tech and food tech. That includes several directions, like AI for fully personalized nutrition and natural GLP-1 inducers. I’m also always looking at companies that address food security, because that’s a massive issue that nations around the world are grappling with and will only become more urgent – climate change, population growth, geopolitical tension and more are all at play. Scalable agri-food technologies are absolutely key in addressing that.
What do you consider the food tech sector’s greatest achievement in the past five years?
It might surprise you, but I’d say alternative proteins – no question. The alt-protein market was around $8B in 2016, and worth around $80B seven years later. And I think it’s not just here to stay, but will always grow, because there’s simply not enough water and land to sustain the animals we raise for our food. That’s without mentioning the ongoing shift in consumer preferences around health and our food.
Think about just alternative dairy; plant-based milk is a $17B market that’s growing, and add to that fermentation and now cell-based technologies to replace real milk proteins. It’s not about if a particular company fails or succeeds. It’s about the greater shift in tech that’s undeniable, and critical given the reality we face.
If you could wave a magic wand, how would you fix plant-based meat?
Easy. I’d make it 20% cheaper than real meat. If it’s a really magic wand? 40% cheaper. Texture and flavour are the other keys, but that’s already well on its way. The technology is there.
What’s the top trait you look for in a founder?
I’d say the ability to raise money, because you simply can’t survive without it. What’s behind a founder who’s great at fundraising? At the core, it comes from selling something they wholeheartedly believe in, and are deeply invested in themselves.
The One That Got Away: What is the deal you wish you had gotten into, but didn’t?
InKind, an Austin-based company doing financing solutions for restaurants. Restaurants are ultimately small, risky businesses that struggle for backing – banks aren’t interested in that risk. They have an interesting model with a lot of potential.
What do you consider your most successful future food investment so far?
Since you’re limiting me to one here, I’d say BE WTR. It’s a company with an exceptional, mission-driven founder (and two-time unicorn builder); a worthy mission of taking plastic bottles out of the equation along with global shipping of water; a killer application, IP, and beautiful design; JVs and partnerships all over the world, and a deep understanding of what the customer is looking for. PeakBridge was their first investor.
What has been your most disappointing investment so far?
Prenexus Health, the only company in our portfolio that’s had to file for bankruptcy. They had a great team, great tech, and strong backers, but we failed to understand the magnitude of scale-up costs, especially capex. But of course, there’s a lesson in everything, and that one was valuable. We’ve since been far more cautious with capex-intensive investments because at the end of the day, you need to scale.
What do people misunderstand/get wrong most about VC?
Founders often don’t understand a VC’s agenda and thinking: that there are specific multiples that need to be achieved, according to a specific timeline. Founders need to do due diligence on their investors just as much as investors do on them.
What is the most ‘future food’ thing you have eaten this month?
I got a chance to taste Forsea’s unagi, or cultivated eel, for the second time – and it did not disappoint. The taste of real (endangered) eel that you find in Japan is something chefs are really looking for, and they’ve done it. Incredible taste, a breakthrough technology behind it and soon at price parity.
Where is your favourite climate-forward restaurant/dish/place to eat anywhere in the world?
The first that comes to mind is one of my favourite spots in general, Au Père Lapin just outside Paris. Au Père Lapin was one of the first restaurants to fully integrate Mediterranean Food Lab’s SHO stocks in all kinds of dishes – meat, fish, vegetables. Their stocks are super flavorful, those kinds of meaty flavours that stick with you – but are plant-based and made from real food without all the junk.
What’s your ‘why’? What motivates you to do what you do?
Where do I begin? Think about where we gather with the people we love most: around the table. Food is a fundamental language, and also one that’s brought me to meet the most inspiring people to whom I’ve become closest to.
On a broader level, the food industry is the only one in the world that touches literally everyone on the planet, in one way or another. And there’s so much to improve. All of that combined gives me (so far!) endless energy to do what I do.
Beyond Meat is making cutbacks and suspending its China business after revenues jumped in Q4, with the plant-based leader taking aim at regenerative agriculture.
Californian plant-based pioneer Beyond Meat will lay off 9% of its global workforce, including most of its China employees and “changes to the executive leadership team”, after increasing revenues and narrowing losses in Q4 2024.
The company will reduce its North American and EU headcount by 44, in addition to making 20 employees redundant in China, where it will suspend operations by mid-2025. The move is part of its strategy to reduce operating costs, and one that “is not done lightly”, according to CEO Ethan Brown.
It comes after the firm posted $76.7M in revenues in Q4, a 4% hike from the corresponding period in 2023 – it was Beyond Meat’s second consecutive quarter of year-on-year revenue growth, following two years of declines. It simultaneously cut losses by 71% in the final quarter of 2024, reaching $45M.
For the full year of 2024, too, net losses shrunk to $160M, a 52% improvement from the year before. And while overall revenues were down by 4.9% at $326.5M, “the rate of decline slowed substantially versus the previous two years”, noted Brown. Moreover, the Beyond Burger maker recorded a gross profit of $41.7M, versus a loss of $82.7M a year prior, thanks to a major reduction in selling costs.
Graphic by Green Queen
This year, Beyond Meat predicts its revenues for Q1 to be comparable to the corresponding period last year, and expects full-year sales between $320M and $335M.
The business has outlined four priorities for 2025: delivering comparable annual top-line revenues, improving gross margin to 20% (versus 13% last year), further reducing operating expenses over the next two years, and improving liquidity and optimising its capital structure to strengthen its balance sheet.
“[We] remain highly confident in our ability to lead the category through what has been a challenging correction born in manufactured ambiguity, and believe unequivocally in the inevitable and central role that plant-based meat will play in our global future,” Brown told investors in an earnings call.
Price hikes and international foodservice deliver wins
Courtesy: Lika Shalikashvili/LinkedIn
Beyond Meat’s improvement in performance was driven by growth in the US retail and international foodservice channels. The company saw an increase in net revenue per pound due to lower discounts and price hikes on certain products, though its volumes were down due to ” weak category demand” in the US and “lower sales of ground beef and chicken products” in global supermarkets.
In its home country, retail sales were up by 5.7%, representing its biggest channel. Foodservice revenues decreased by 2%, meanwhile, largely due to “lower burger sales to a large QSR customer”.
Internationally, revenues in the retail channel trimmed slightly by 1.7%, while climbing by 9% in foodservice, thanks to an increase in sales of Beyond Chicken to a large QSR chain.
Brown was optimistic about Beyond Meat’s fortunes in France, where it introduced Veggie McPlant Nuggets at over 1,500 McDonald’s locations. “Moreover, in France, beginning this month, we launched Beyond Steak in retail,” he said.
Other areas of international expansion came via the debut of its Smash Burger at Tesco and the rollout of its steak at Mexican-inspired chain Tortilla in the UK, alongside the introduction of the Plant Burger at Wendy’s in Georgia.
Misinformation won’t deter Beyond Meat’s health push
Courtesy: Beyond Meat/Green Queen
Asked what a Beyond Meat customer looks like today, Brown said the company is “getting much more focused on the health-oriented consumer”, reflecting its renewed nutrition focus in product development and marketing. “It is extraordinarily important to me that this product furthers human health,” the CEO said.
He highlighted the numerous “puts and takes” about where the plant-based category is headed – particularly with the ultra-processed foods debate, which has magnified since the appointment of Robert F Kennedy Jr as health secretary – though he underlined that consumer interest in Beyond Meat remains “extremely high”.
“There’s also a very strong countercurrent, which is this narrative around being highly processed and full of questionable ingredients, which is a manufactured narrative,” said Brown. “It’s not one that actually has science behind it or much truth to it.”
He added: “But it is a very powerful incumbent industry campaign that’s gotten picked up by certain punnets and what we call the carnivores on Instagram and podcasts that are misinformed. And so our consumer is increasingly […] more educated, someone who can see through that noise, and they are the ones that are carrying us back to growth.”
While misinformation and misdirection “do a serious disservice” to consumers looking to make positive changes, Brown is resolute that Beyond Meat would stay its course and ultimately prevail.
“I’m very confident over time that percentage will continue to increase where […] Beyond Meat makes sense,” he said. “I can have a burger and I can have 75% less saturated fat. I can have fat from avocado oil versus stuff that’s going to fill my arteries and require me to have my chest opened up when I’m 60 years old.
“I mean, knock yourself out if that’s the outcome you want, but if you want a different outcome, come over to Beyond Meat and have a burger that tastes great and has a clean source of oil… Again, if you don’t want that, don’t have it. But if you’re concerned about your health and want to have a great dinner, go ahead and get Beyond Steak and have it. I mean, it just makes sense.”
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
Beyond Meat CEO slams ‘regenerative beef’
The cost of plant-based meat has become increasingly important over the last couple of years, even surpassing taste or health for some consumers. In the US, meat alternatives have a 77% price premium over conventional meat, with the smallest gap seen in beef (20%).
Beyond Meat itself raised prices with its new Beyond IV lineup of products last year. Brown pinpointed volume as the major factor behind the difference in costs. While the company did reach price parity for a product line “with a particular customer in a particular market”, it’s focusing on providing “very clean, very simple, very healthy ingredients to the consumer”, according to Brown.
“There are other products that lend themselves more to reaching [price parity] and primarily in the food service category,” he said. “So it does remain a goal, maybe it’s a little more differentiated and sector-specific than it was at the onset.”
Expanding on the cost question, Brown noted that animal agriculture is facing some existential threats: “If you look at the beef prices today, they’re starting to rise. What’s that about?” US consumer price index data shows that beef was 13% more expensive in January than it was two years ago. “In part, that’s about drought,” he said. “So that’s not something that a government or industry can solve.”
Speaking of the government, RFK Jr has been a major proponent of regenerative farming, which can have several benefits for soil and nature. However, the Beyond Meat CEO pointed to Big Beef’s misuse of the term, which climate activists have outlined as a greenwashing tactic.
“All of this posturing around: ‘We’re going to do regenerative agriculture.’ Any serious scientists around regenerative beef will tell you that’s just a non-starter. Sure, you can have some beef out on the pasture, but you have to have far, far less,” said Brown. “So that’s not going to serve to provide a global protein solution.”
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
Would Beyond Meat embrace cultivated fats?
During the call, Brown addressed a question about whether Beyond Meat would consider ‘hybrid’ or ‘blended’ proteins, mixing its plant-based meat with cultivated fats. “We certainly look at everything. We’re agnostic to technology. It’s really about the outcome,” Brown said.
“But I think the trend is actually in the opposite direction. How simple can we make these products? How much can we assure the consumer that the noise they’re hearing about being processed is an incumbent industry trying to protect itself?”
He continued: “We’re coming out of the trough where we’re starting to go up what they call the slope of enlightenment in innovation literature. And what will bring the consumer back is a fundamental understanding that this is a very simple and clean product, tastes great, and it’s really good for you. And the more and more consumers understand that, the more you see the market come back.”
German retailer Rewe Group has developed a protein strategy to increase its share of plant-based sales and has called for a shift in policies to encourage investment in the sector.
While investors and Big Food are turning their backs on plant-based food, Europe’s retailers are leading the charge towards the protein transition.
Rewe Group, whose stores include Rewe, Penny and Billa, has become the latest supermarket company to announce a protein strategy in favour of plants.
While details of the plan are still under wraps, the group’s public affairs director, Emilie Bourgoin wrote on social media: “As one of the retail companies in Europe with an ambitious climate goal, we have committed ourselves to a holistic protein strategy.”
She added: “One thing is certain: our food production must become more climate- and resource-friendly. At Rewe Group, we align ourselves with the Planetary Health Diet, a scientifically backed nutrition plan. And we have developed an ambitious protein strategy.”
Bourgoin stressed the need for a change in Germany’s “political framework” to support greater investment in alternative proteins, the same week the country elected a new conservative government, with the far-right making major gains.
European retailers go nuts for plants
Courtesy: Madre Brava
Climate activists have been pushing for Europe’s retailers to more fully embrace plant proteins. In Germany, the continent’s largest market for plant-based food, the national dietary guidelines advocate a diet where 75% of food intake comes from plants and meat consumption is halved.
Research by climate advocacy group Madre Brava and consultancy firm Quantis revealed that the best way for German retailers to meet their climate targets without breaking the bank is to replace 30% of their meat and dairy offerings with plant-based alternatives.
The study focused on the Big Four supermarket groups in Germany: Edeka, Rewe, Lidl, and Aldi. Discount grocer Lidl has been spearheading the shift, having announced a ‘protein split’ target in several markets, before committing to increase the share of plant-based sales by 20% in all 31 countries it operates in.
Dutch retailer Ahold Delhaize followed up with its own goal to achieve 50% of its protein sales from plant-based foods across Europe by 2030. Now, Rewe Group – which has over 3,800 stores in Germany – has indicated that it’s joining that list.
To help more retailers make the shift, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) recently released a methodology to measure plant-based sales and increase their impact on the bottom line, suggesting that 74% of supermarket sales should come from plants.
Rewe Group extends vegan leadership
Courtesy: Christoph Grosse/Pivopex
Rewe Group was the first German supermarket to pledge a reduction in its Scope 3 forest, land use and agriculture (FLAG) emissions, and aims to reach net zero by 2050. It has also committed to cutting food waste in half by the end of the decade.
When it comes to vegan products, it’s already a leader. In its 2023 sustainability report, it acknowledged that plant-based private-label offerings “save emissions during production” when compared to “similar animal products”.
Between its own labels and third-party brands, Rewe Group offers over 1,900 vegan products in Germany and was recognised as the ‘vegan-friendliest store’ by the Albert Schweitzer Foundation. It has opened the country’s first fully plant-based grocery store in Berlin, which stocks over 2,700 products and is serving as a testbed for future vegan stores.
“This is a hugely significant move from Rewe. As Germany’s second-biggest food retailer with branches across Europe, the company has the potential to help shape food systems,” Florian Wall, Madre Brava’s senior associate for Germany, said of the new plant protein strategy.
“We can see real competition building here, as companies vie to offer healthier food to their customers while reducing their climate emissions. With Rewe and Lidl both pushing on this, it is clear rebalancing protein offerings is not limited to a niche market. With their actions, it is becoming mainstream. We’re eager to see how the likes of Aldi and Edeka react to this news.”
Policymakers need to step up
Courtesy: Rewe Group
Rewe Group’s investment into animal-free food comes at a time when venture capitalists are turning their back on it – plant-based startups received 64% less funding in 2024 than the year before. Meanwhile, giants like Unilever and Nestlé are looking to sell off their plant protein businesses and withdrawing meat alternatives from shelves.
It’s why Bourgoin is calling for a policy transformation for alternative proteins. She believes the WWF’s methodology should be established as an industry standard – Rewe Group will evaluate its own product range and set clear targets based on those results.
In addition, she advocated for a standardised labelling strategy to guide consumers (think the V-Label), and support for new product and tech innovations to strengthen the food tech ecosystem.
“Our goal is a conscious and resilient food system, with strong local agriculture at its core. We will support bold businesses that embrace diversification by increasing the use of regionally and domestically sourced ingredients for our plant-based private-label products,” Bourgoin said.
This requires support from the German Food and Agriculture Ministry’s protein strategy, which can help open up new sales channels. “Policymakers should create the right conditions to encourage private investment in alternative proteins,” she stressed. “This includes providing additional research funding, supporting startups, simplifying and accelerating approval processes for novel foods, and establishing clear, science-based regulations with minimal bureaucracy.”
Bourgoin said the playing field for plant-based and other innovative proteins should be levelled to give consumers “genuine freedom of choice”. For example, milk alternatives should have the same reduced VAT rates as dairy – currently, the former carry a 19% levy, compared to just 7% for the latter.
“A comprehensive food transition is only possible if all stakeholders – industry, retailers and policymakers – work together,” added Bourgoin. “Sustainable and diversified protein production and consumption in the EU require more collaboration, not polarisation.”
Brits need to drastically reduce their meat and dairy consumption to help the country meet its climate goals, and experts say plant-based and alternative proteins are the key to this shift.
Sunday roasts will need a major makeover if the UK is to make good on its environmental promises, according to its Climate Change Committee (CCC).
As part of a Balanced Pathway in its seventh carbon budget, climate experts have urged the UK government to introduce measures that encourage Brits to cut back on meat and dairy, and pointed to plant-based alternatives as a critical lever for this shift.
The emissions reduction roadmap, which would begin this year and bring the UK in line with its net-zero target for 2050, suggests that meat intake in the UK needs to fall by 35% by mid-century, with a steeper 40% decline in red meat consumption “to reflect the higher carbon intensity of ruminant livestock”, from a 2019 baseline.
Average dairy consumption, meanwhile, must come down by 20% in the next 10 years, a level that would need to be maintained through to 2050.
The CCC’s pathway sees meat products mainly being replaced by existing alternative proteins, some plant-based whole foods, and in time, novel foods made via precision fermentation or cell cultivation.
“We are absolutely not saying everyone needs to be vegan,” Emily Nurse, head of net zero at the Climate Change Committee, told the Guardian. “But we do expect to see a shift in dietary habits.”
At a time when alternative proteins are seeing sales and investment drop amid a backlash against ultra-processed foods, the latest climate advice to the UK government is a ringing endorsement of these foods and their potential to safeguard the planet’s future.
Why is the Climate Change Committee calling for meat reduction?
UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer, a pescetarian, and his vegetarian wife Victoria | Courtesy: Number 10/Flickr/CC
Animal agriculture is a highly resource-intensive industry, taking up a lot more land and water than plant-based foods, and generating far higher emissions.
A landmark UK study in 2023 found that plant-based diets can reduce land use, water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions by 75% compared to diets rich in meat.
Ruminant livestock particularly emits high amounts of methane, a gas 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period. The CCC’s pathway would see the UK achieve net-zero methane emissions by 2045, falling steeply in the late 2020s and early 2030s mainly due to on-farm measures and shifts away from red meat and dairy.
Around half of the country’s methane emissions come from agriculture, but reductions from other sectors would occur more quickly, underscoring the need for a rapid shift away from meat and dairy.
The health implications of meat and alternative proteins
Courtesy: THIS
This goes beyond just climate impacts. The CCC notes that many of its measures can deliver health benefits while improving the climate resilience of agriculture. The pathway’s suggested substitution relies more heavily on alternative proteins than legumes or pulses, but these can reduce the risk of death from colon and rectum cancer, ischaemic heart disease, and type 2 diabetes.
The recommended alternative proteins can have estimated health impacts with a net benefit of £900M in 2040. While the biggest benefits come from swapping meat for plant-based whole foods, this will “only happen some of the time”.
Replacing processed meats with processed plant-based alternatives still delivers health and nutritional gains. And while the effect of precision-fermented or cultivated proteins will “depend on their overall ingredients and processing methods”, the CCC says they’re associated with “potential positive nutrition and health impacts”.
Importantly, it states that reducing meat consumption will only make your health worse if your diet is unbalanced, or if it isn’t substituted with alternatives at all, allaying concerns that cutting back on animal protein can be detrimental.
It’s also a vote of confidence for plant-based meat products, which have been criticised for being ultra-processed, despite the term being unrelated to the nutritional value of a product.
“Changes to diets are expected to have minimal impacts on household food costs in the short term and lead to slight reductions in food costs in the longer term as alternative proteins develop that are cheaper to buy than meat and dairy,” the report notes.
What do British citizens think?
Courtesy: Ivy Farm Technologies
The CCC convened a citizens’ panel to explore what an accessible and affordable vision of net zero would look like for households.
Overall, Brits accepted the need for dietary change, though what was considered possible or acceptable varied from person to person. They were surprised about the emissions impact of certain foods, and conceded that government-backed awareness schemes would be key to supporting a shift to plant proteins.
There was a clear preference for a shift towards healthier, home-cooked options, with greater education around plant-based meal preparation as another measure to help the transition.
Some of the members tried plant-based meat for the very first time as a result of the panel, and there was a consensus that there needs to be a variety of meat and dairy alternatives available. Some were uneasy about precision-fermented proteins and cultivated meat, but thought the government could still support these to ensure a larger range of products.
One of their biggest concerns was about a potentially negative impact on farmers. But they were surprised to learn about the share of subsidies directed to livestock farmers, and wanted to see public spending going to plant-based producers too, which would lower end costs. Separate research has found British farmers to be receptive to cultivated meat.
“Livestock farmers face some reduced demand for their products, while some farmers have new opportunities in land stewardship,” the report says, but adds that the replacement of meat and dairy with alternative proteins, fruits and vegetables “could support new jobs and industrial opportunities”.
Brits were also open to replacing a small amount of meat in pre-prepared meals with other ingredients, like plant-based whole foods or alternative proteins, but expressed concerns about the impact on taste and the wallet.
UK government must make alternative proteins more affordable
Courtesy: Meatly
The climate change experts emphasised the need for lowering the cost of animal-free proteins, which would encourage more consumers to buy them, and help the country slash its emissions.
“Reducing the costs of plant-based alternatives to meat that are comparable in taste, texture, and preparation method could enable more people to choose these options for some of their meals,” the CCC says. “There is potential for innovation to make some low-carbon alternatives (for example, alternative proteins) more substitutable for high-carbon choices and to bring down prices.”
Other promising policy levers include increasing the choice and availability of low-carbon foods in public procurement settings, restaurants, and supermarkets, and supporting innovations in novel foods to improve taste and texture.
The UK government has invested £75M towards the development of sustainable proteins, and has been overhauling its regulatory framework to allow novel food companies to get to market faster. And earlier this month, it became the first European country where people could buy cultivated meat on supermarket shelves, with Meatly and The Pack co-launching cell-cultured dog treats at Pets At Home.
Sales of meat fell by 10% between 2020 and 2022 in the UK, representing a faster rate of decline than even what’s outlined in the CCC’s Balanced Pathway. “It is too early to tell whether this steeper-than-projected trend will continue in the long term or is a temporary response to the cost-of-living crisis, which saw an 11% decrease in overall food purchases by weight between 2020 and 2022,” the report reads.
Carbon budget advisors hail CCC’s recommendations
Courtesy: Hoxton Farms
Experts from the Food and Trade Advisory Group (FTAG), an independent advisor for the seventh carbon budget, echoed the CCC’s calls for alternative-protein-led dietary transition.
They called on the government to invest in technical innovation and scale up the supply of alternative proteins, which could disrupt the food system in two ways. “Plant and precision-fermentation derived products that displace dairy and processed meat, and cellular meat that displaces complex cuts. The former is much more likely to be cheap and displace the volume end of the market,” they wrote.
The food advisory group further urged policymakers to raise the prices of meat and dairy while simultaneously lowering the costs of plant-based alternatives. This can be done through carbon taxes – as Denmark has shown – which can regulate higher agriculture standards to achieve climate goals.
“For this not to adversely affect farmer livelihoods, it implies a more regulated import policy… or an overtly protectionist trade policy. In the absence of the trade barriers and acceptance of higher costs, raising domestic standards may simply mean citizens switch to cheaper imported goods, farmer livelihoods are affected, with the political costs associated,” the FTAG added.
The Vegan Society welcomed the CCC’s report. “The more meat and dairy we cut, the greater the benefits are, and these recommendations can and should go further,” a spokesperson for the charity said. “Dietary change is a win-win solution that improves people’s health and offers the opportunity for billions of pounds of savings to the NHS, as well as cutting emissions and protecting nature.”
They added: “As it prepares to develop a new food strategy, this government has the opportunity to implement practical policies which encourage dietary change.”
The FTAG acknowledged that food is highly political – and for every potential intervention, there will be winners and losers: “Ultimately, though, without tackling climate change, everyone becomes a loser.”
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Magnum’s revamped vegan recipe, Heura’s new Tex-Mex Chunks, and a cultivated seafood tasting in Japan.
New products and launches
Unilever has changed the recipe for its vegan Magnum ice cream range, replacing pea protein with soy. It has also refreshed its packaging to a more premium design, after sales of the dairy-free ice creams grew by more than 75% in the UK last year.
Courtesy: Magnum
Shortly after raising $4M from investors, California’s PlantBaby has gained a listing at Sprouts Farmers Market for Kiki Milk, its kid-friendly plant-based milk line. The 32oz packs are now available at all 440 locations nationwide for $6.99.
Also in the US, Nepra Foods has developed a proprietary hemp protein initially targeted for the egg-free baking sector, with early production already underway. The technology, set to be patented, is shared with an unnamed industry expert.
San Antonio-based Good Eat’n, owned by NBA star Chris Paul, has launched Dairy Free White Cheddar Popcorn. After debuting at Expo West in March, it will be available on its website and GoPuff for $4.99 per 4.40oz bag and $1.99 for 1oz bag.
Courtesy: Heura
Spanish plant-based meat leader Heura has added a Tex-Mex flavour to its chicken chunks, which contain 27% of the daily recommended intake of protein.
British meat-free brand Cock & Bull has secured a listing with wholesaler Cotswold Fayre, with six of its products – from a Traditional Porky Pie to a Saus-ish Roll – sold unbaked and frozen, alongside a packaged range for retail.
Dutch retailer Jumbo has rolled out a range of dairy-free yoghurts made from whole soybeans, which help retain a greater amount of protein and fibre. Produced by De Nieuwe Melkboer, they’re marketed under the supermarket’s Direct van de Boerderij label, and come in natural, vanilla, and first fruit flavours.
Courtesy: All Nippon Airways
Japan’s largest airline, All Nippon Airways, has introduced two vegan ANA Original Ramen options for First and Business Class flyers on international routes. Flights departing from Japan will serve the Negi Miso Ramen, and those coming from overseas will feature the Tonkotsu Style Ramen.
Company and finance updates
French firm SeaWeed Concept has received €2M from investors to develop its lacto-fermentation process, which would be able to produce 5,000 tonnes of algae per year.
Scottish biotech startup uFraction8 has raised £3.4M in a financing round for its microfiltration technology, which optimises cell and biomass production and provides an energy-efficient alternative to conventional manufacturing methods for bio-based food products.
Israeli startup Forsea Foodshosted a tasting for its cultivated unagi in Japan, the world’s largest market for freshwater eel, with support from the Israeli embassy in Japan and the Israel Export Institute.
Fellow cultivated meat producer Simple Planet – based in South Korea – has successfully developed a serum-free culture medium that can potentially reduce costs by 99.8%. It is also working with the Halal Science Center at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University to achieve halal certification for its cultured meat products.
Germany’s Esencia Foods, which makes whole-cut seafood analogues from mycelium, has received €2M in funding as part of the European Innovation Council’s blended finance scheme. It comes months after it won a €50,000 grant at EIT Food’s Next Bite event.
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
Plant-based meat giant Impossible Foods has appointed Meredith Madden as its new chief demand officer. She previously worked at Chobani with current Impossible Foods CEO Peter McGuinness.
Its chief rival Beyond Meat is looking to borrow up to $250M from private credit lenders to shore up liquidity and tackle some of its $1.15B of convertable bonds due in 2027. It is the firm’s second such attempt in 12 months.
Finnish gas protein pioneer Solar Foods has begun pre-engineering work on its Factory 02, which is set to be operational by 2028. Along with the Factory 01 opened last year, it will produce Solein protein on a commercial scale.
Courtesy: I Am Nut OK
British artisanal vegan cheesemaker I Am Nut OK has experienced a 24% hike in year-on-year sales in 2024, with a 39% uptick in January 2025 thanks to Veganuary.
Plant-based ingredients supplier Nutraland USA has joined the National Animal Supplement Council as a Preferred Supplier, which recognises its dedication to ingredient quality, safety and efficacy for pet food.
After being selected in Nestlé’s Unleashed by Purina 2025 accelerator programme, Singaporean firm Umami Bioworks has introduced a cultivated seafood protein platform to tackle supply chain instability, nutrition and sustainability challenges in the pet food sector.
Courtesy: Iggy Diez/LinkedIn
Swedish oat milk giant Oatly has collaborated with Madrid’s East Crema Coffee to set up a coffee bar at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Madrid (February 20-23).
Policy and research developments
Austrian precision fermentation startup Fermify has submitted a regulatory dossier for its animal-free casein to the Singapore Food Agency. It comes months after it earned self-determined GRAS status in the US.
Courtesy: Fermify
In Europe, the number of alternative protein patents has surged by 960% since 2015, surpassing 5,300 in total. In 2024 alone, 1,200 patents were published, according to analysis by the Good Food Institute Europe.
British food producer Ark34‘s Tater Cheezz Nuggetz, made from Dutch supplier Aviko Rixona‘s potato-based cheese alternative, has won the Best Frozen Product award at Gulfood 2025.
Meat-free diets are among the most affordable in the US, with the average vegan shopper saving $34.24 per month on groceries, according to research by CouponBirds.
Courtesy: CouponBirds
Scientists in Israel have developed a way to use aloe vera as a natural scaffold to grow bovine fat tissue for cultivated meat production, which could address cost and scalability issues.
With Robert F Kennedy Jr becoming the new Health and Human Services Secretary, alternative protein leaders exhibit optimism, as well as caution.
Stakeholders in the alternative protein ecosystem are largely optimistic about the confirmation of Robert F Kennedy Jr as the new US health secretary, at least on the surface.
The former environmentalist has been given free rein of the American food and health system by President Donald Trump, and has pledged to clamp down on genetically modified (GMO) and ultra-processed foods (UPFs), categories directly associated with sustainable proteins like plant-based meat or precision-fermented eggs.
Other novel foods like cultivated meat face a threat too. The category is already weathering a storm of legislative measures trying to ban these proteins in over 20 states. There are suggestions that RFK Jr won’t push forward for a nationwide ban – though his appointment could make the regulatory pathway for these foods much more complicated, with multiple sources telling Green Queen they believe the sector will be dormant for the next four years.
Still, alternative protein leaders say they have promised to work with RFK Jr to drive their industry forward and welcome many of his policy positions on the food system.
“While I won’t agree with every policy, I believe RFK Jr will push for much-needed reforms in our food system. It’s broken and overdue for an overhaul, and I see him taking steps in the right direction,” says Robert Dupree, general partner at VC firm Alwyn Capital.
Courtesy: MAHA
Arturo Elizondo, co-founder and CEO of animal-free egg maker The Every Company, welcomes the government’s “commitment to improve the health of Americans through RFK’s confirmation and the new Executive Order establishing the Make America Healthy Again Commission”.
“With over 88,000 employees and the largest department in the federal government by budget, we are optimistic that the escalating health crisis can be routed,” he says.
In an exclusive op-ed for Green Queen, Daily Harvest CEO Ricky Silver wrote: “While RFK and the MAHA movement gained momentum by joining forces with President Trump and his campaign, I’m sceptical that the new administration – which governs and recently campaigned on massive deregulation, climate change scepticism, and a cosiness to billionaires and massive corporate interests – will remain committed to the movement and act accordingly.”
How will the UPF debate fare for plant-based meat?
Food awareness organisation ProVeg International believes any new US health secretary presents a chance to promote healthy and sustainable diets, citing RFK Jr’s statement at his confirmation hearing: “Our country will sink beneath a sea of desperation and debt if we don’t change course and ask: ‘Why are healthcare costs so high in the first place?’ The obvious answer is chronic disease.”
Josh Bisig, senior policy research manager at ProVeg, agrees. At the same time, he notes that in the past, RFK Jr has “over-emphasised” the role of UPFs in chronic disease, while “ignoring the importance” of cutting back on meat and eating more plants. “We hope RFK Jr will see the importance of plant-based diets in enhancing the health of US citizens,” he says.
Courtesy: Anay Mridul/Green Queen
“He has framed [UPFs] as a root cause of modern health crises and is pushing for stricter controls, including labelling and ingredient bans,” Chiara Cecchini, business development director at Bill Gates-backed company Savor, wrote in an opinion piece for Green Queen. “If his vision shapes future food policy, synbio companies have the opportunity to prove their products belong in a different category – one that delivers both undeniable health and sustainability benefits.”
One company leader is embracing the scrutiny on UPFs and “misleading health claims in the plant-based space”. Phil Graves, CEO of mycelium meat maker Meati, says: “Consumers are demanding real, whole-food nutrition, and we see this as an opportunity to differentiate Meati from both factory-farmed meat and ultra-processed plant-based alternatives.”
He sees it as an opportunity for his products – which he describes as “functional, whole-food protein with prebiotic fibres that support gut health” – to help “change the protein paradigm”.
However, he adds: “Consumer scepticism towards plant-based foods could impact the entire category. It’s on brands like Meati to lead with transparency and science-backed benefits to gain trust.”
AI vs agriculture makes biomanufacturing more critical
Jessica Almy is the senior VP of policy and government relations at the Good Food Institute, an alternative protein think tank. She believes the US now has a “unique opportunity” to lead the world in agricultural innovation and “build the bioeconomy of the future”.
“We remain committed to engaging with the administration on policies that strengthen food safety, safeguard public health, and empower consumers with more food choices,” she says.
Elizondo, whose company received a $2M biomanufacturing grant under the Biden administration, points out that Trump has “always been an advocate for biotechnology and advanced bioindustrial manufacturing”. He says: “We’re hopeful what was true during the first administration and allowed us to move confidently forward in obtaining regulatory approval for our products remains true in this second administration as we look to build our first biomanufacturing facility here in the US.”
Courtesy: The Every Company
For investment firms like Alwyn Capital, RFK Jr being health secretary doesn’t change their strategy. Dupree says the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and subsequent energy demand has ushered in a new arms race, with both the US and China racing to secure stable power and water supply.
“Water, alongside food, can become a strategic weapon. In drought-prone US states, scarce water supplies will pit agricultural interests against AI development,” he explains.
Most water from the Colorado River is currently used for agriculture, particularly for animal feed. “Data centres and their energy sources will directly compete with agriculture for this vital water supply. Adding to the tension, states with the highest farm revenue are also offering tax incentives to attract new data centres,” Dupree says.
He continues: “A conflict is brewing between AI development and animal agriculture. If we believe AI is key to maintaining global leadership, we must prioritise resources for that industry. But how can we achieve this while continuing to feed our nation’s citizens? The answer is biotechnology.”
A blow for factory farming
RFK Jr’s turn as health secretary could spell trouble for factory farms. He has spoken of his wish to “reverse 80 years of farm policy and end our reliance on industrial meat production, factory farming, and chemical-based agriculture”.
“He seems to be aware of how industrialised systems of animal farming wreak havoc on the environment and our health,” says Josh Tetrick, co-founder and CEO of Eat Just, the company behind plant-based egg maker Just Egg and cultivated meat pioneer Good Meat.
“He’s talked about antibiotic usage. He’s talked about how when you need to pack animals in tiny spaces, you need to vaccinate the heck out of them, and how it’s indicative of a broken system – and I think all those things he’s right on. I couldn’t agree with him more on all that,” Tetrick outlines.
His company’s recent success is an example of the ills of animal agriculture. Sales of his mung-bean-based Just Egg grew five times faster this January than 12 months prior, as retailers and restaurants ramp up their demand for the product amid the national egg crisis.
Courtesy: Eat Just
“This creates an opportunity for technologies that can bring back egg supply quickly,” notes Dupree. “By building redundancies in the food supply with alternative proteins, we position ourselves for strong market opportunities.”
Tetrick hopes RFK Jr’s run as the health secretary “really focuses on moving us away from these large industrial systems” where you need to over-vaccinate animals and put antibiotics in their food. “I think those are all things that he’s looking at really clearly, and it’s very evidence-based,” he says. “Anything that we can do to support him in that, we’ll stand by and work with him to do so.”
The risks and opportunities of RFK Jr’s confirmation
Meati is looking to capitalise on the UPF backlash and emphasise “functional, clean-label nutrition”, as Graves puts it. “While some plant-based brands rely on isolates, artificial additives, and complex processing, Meati is made from a single, minimally processed whole-food ingredient – mycelium,” he says.
“We’re doubling down on educating consumers about why food processing matters just as much as ingredients,” Graves adds.
With the US plant-based market set to triple by 2023, ProVeg’s Bisig expects the new HHS secretary to support policies that will further accelerate this growth. “We were encouraged to hear incoming RFK Jr’s promise in his confirmation hearings that his ‘approach to administration at HHS will be radical transparency’ and that he wants ‘to make sure that science is unobstructed by vested economic interests’,” he says.
“In this spirit, he should guide HHS to develop the dietary guidelines to reflect the committee’s recommendations in their scientific report to increase plant sources of protein, and to prioritise plant sources of protein above animal sources.”
Courtesy: Alex Brandon/AP
For The Every Company’s Elizondo, RFK Jr’s charge of HHS could increase demand for its chicken-free egg proteins, which “help eliminate the use of gums, fats, oils, salt and other harmful or non-clean label ingredients in line with the objectives of this administration’s attack on chronic disease”.
Under Trump, though, there’s also a big risk in “any retaliatory tariffs which might affect our supply chain”, he says. “But we’ve planned ahead by building redundancy.”
Dupree, meanwhile, feels time is of the essence. “The greatest challenge is aligning urgency with action. Educating people and driving real implementation is slow, but the need for change is undeniable,” he says. “Regardless of RFK Jr’s views on precision fermentation, plant-based proteins, or cultivated meat, these technologies will be essential and strategically advantageous for the US.”
Israel’s Aleph Farms, a pioneer of cultivated meat, has lowered its valuation by 73% in its upcoming funding round, but the firm says adapting to “changing market conditions” is necessary.
As food tech companies feel the pinch, Israeli cultivated beef producer Aleph Farms has been forced to slash its valuation as part of an “emergency fundraising” round, according to tech publication Calcalist.
The company has reportedly been aiming to secure $25M from investors “to stay afloat”, but is so far expected to raise only $10M in the coming weeks, based on reports from shareholder Millennium Food-Tech.
As per Calcalist, this new round would be based on a valuation of $80-100M, representing a 73% drop from the $300M valuation in its Series B funding round in 2021. Millennium Food-Tech itself slashed the value of its stock in the company by 75%, suggesting that Aleph Farms “does not have sufficient cash reserves to continue its operations in the coming year”.
“Aleph Farms is in the final stages of closing the first round of a fundraising cycle that began in 2024, adding to the bridge investment secured in 2023 – a testament to the company’s resilience and the confidence of its investors,” the company said in a statement sent to Green Queen.
“This funding will strengthen financial stability, extend cash reserves, and enable the launch of the world’s first cultivated beef steak in restaurants, in collaboration with Chef Eyal Shani.
“Like all companies in our industry, Aleph Farms is adjusting its valuation to reflect market conditions in 2024-25, proactively aligning with broader market trends. We view [this] as a natural and healthy adjustment following the enthusiasm of 2020-21.”
‘Our situation isn’t unique’
Graphic by Green Queen
Since it was established in 2017, Aleph Farms has raised over $118M from investors. This included the $105M Series B round in 2021 (with Leonardo DiCaprio joining as an investor), reflective of the mid-pandemic venture capital boom in alternative protein.
But inflation – a result of both Covid-19 and the ensuing wars in Gaza and Ukraine – and misinformation campaigns from the meat lobby have scuppered the momentum since. In 2021, cultivated meat startups raised $1.3B globally. Last year, however, they secured just over a tenth of that, raising $137M (and only $6M in the second half), according to Net Zero Insights data obtained by the Good Food Institute.
“Like any organisation, and especially one developing innovative and groundbreaking technology from Israel, we are also affected by market conditions and the geopolitical situation. We must adapt to the global economy while focusing on leaner budget management,” the company said.
A spokesperson for Aleph Farms told Green Queen: “I don’t believe our situation is unique – companies in our field must demonstrate a clear path to short-term profitability, alongside low-cost production, and strong customer demand.”
They added: “As we anticipated a few years ago, consolidation is inevitable and represents a natural evolution for an industry like ours. Those who can adapt to changing market conditions will be the ones who thrive in the long term.”
Aleph Farms tightens focus with three-pronged strategy
Courtesy: Aleph Farms
In the last year, Aleph Farms has been looking to expand its operations globally, after receiving the go-ahead to sell its cultivated beef steak in Israel in December 2023. That was contingent on the company clearing a Good Manufacturing Practices inspection for its production facility, on which there has been no public update yet.
The startup, which has previously outlined its aim to reach $1B in revenue by 2030, is currently awaiting regulatory approval in Singapore, the UK, Switzerland, and Thailand, and has also been in “advanced pre-submission consultations” in countries including the US. It has plans to eventually expand into Japan, South Korea, Australia, China, and Hong Kong too.
In 2022, it opened a 65,000 sq ft plant in Rehovot, Israel, allowing it to initially produce 10 tonnes of cultivated steak annually, before acquiring another manufacturing facility in Modi’in and signing co-manufacturing deals with ESCO Aster in Singapore and biotech firms in Thailand.
However, it is now focusing on three strategic priorities: optimising production and reducing costs, commercialising its first product and demonstrating market demand, and achieving profitability. “These goals now take precedence over the aggressive expansion of production capacity, which was a central part of our plan in 2021,” the company said.
Courtesy: Aleph Farms
“In recent months, Aleph Farms has achieved significant breakthroughs, including a 97% reduction in production costs compared to 2022, signing commercial agreements with leading global food corporations, and demonstrating market demand through collaborations with chefs in four countries,” it added.
“Additionally, following regulatory approval from the Israeli Ministry of Health, we are preparing to launch our product in Israel, leveraging an improved production platform and building our brand in collaboration with key industry players.
“Aleph Farms continues to lead the field of cellular agriculture worldwide, driving meaningful change in food systems – towards a safer, more sustainable, and resilient future.”
How do regional differences and economic disparities affect interest in cultivated meat in the world’s largest beef exporter?
Brazil is the world’s largest beef exporter, second-largest meat producer, and third-largest consumer of beef per capita. But with the food system making up nearly three-quarters of its GHG emissions, a protein transition is crucial in the country.
Home to meat giants like JBS, Minerva and Marfrig, several of these companies have joined startups like Fazenda Futuro (Future Farm), The New, and Vegabom in offering alternative proteins to Brazilians.
In fact, retail sales of meat and seafood analogues increased by 38% in 2023, reaching $226M. And a third of Brazilians are either flexitarian, pescetarian, or meat-free.
Courtesy: Quorn
Does the growing interest in plant proteins extend to technologies like cultivated meat? It’s a question explored by researchers at the Federal University of Paraná, who examined how regional disparities impact attitudes towards such novel foods in a study published in the PLOS One journal this month.
“As agriculture and animal production constitute a major component of the country’s GDP, the introduction of meat alternatives nationally, e.g. cultivated meat, seems essential to maintain its market share in the future, requiring careful planning to maximise the benefits and mitigate the disadvantages,” wrote the authors.
Health awareness gap a major barrier for cultivated meat
The 800-person study focused on two vastly different Brazilian cities, São Paulo and Salvador. The former is the most populous and economically developed area in the country, while the latter is ranked with the weakest economic and employment indicators among Brazilian state capitals.
Nearly two in five (38%) of respondents had heard of cultivated meat, with familiarity higher in São Paulo (45%) than in Salvador (32%).
This trend extended to consumption too. A third of survey participants said they’d eat cultivated meat, while 41% were unsure. In São Paulo, 41% were interested in trying these proteins, versus 24% in Salvador.
Among those who showed a willingness to eat cultivated meat, nearly a third said they were simply curious about it, a quarter cited animal welfare, and one in 10 said they were motivated by health reasons.
On the other hand, 26% indicated they wouldn’t consume these foods, with neophobia – a fear of the new – the strongest detractor. These respondents also cited “artificiality”, a lack of knowledge about the product and the process, and health impacts as factors holding them back.
Courtesy: PLOS One
Aligning with this, the study found that interest in consumption increases with knowledge. Half of those who had heard of cultivated meat wanted to try it, and 29% were uncertain. But among those unfamiliar with it, only 22% said they’d eat it, and nearly half (49%) were unsure.
While a majority of those aware of cultivated meat believe it’s better for the animals and the planet, only a third say the same about human health, highlighting the knowledge gap about the health implications of these proteins. This worsens among people who haven’t heard of these products – only 15% of them see benefits for human health, while 23% believe they’re harmful, and a third say they don’t know.
Regional and cultural context key for marketing and policies
The study showed that men (37%) are more interested in eating cultivated meat than women (30%), and these foods are more popular among Gen Z (39%)and millennials (32%) than those aged 50 and above (22%). Meanwhile, interest in cultivated meat remains similar across education and income levels, though higher-earners are more likely to eat cultivated meat.
However, there’s a significant disparity between people who eat meat frequently and those who don’t, with folks who eat meat more often more likely to be interested in trying cultivated meat. Only 9% of non-meat-eaters want to try cultivated meat, but this rises to 29% for people who eat meat up to three times a week, and 38% for those who consume meat four to seven times a week.
Respondents associated cultivated meat more positively with the environment than they did conventional animal proteins, even those who hadn’t previously heard of cultivated proteins. This is an important finding, considering that meat makes up the majority of Brazil’s agrifood emissions. Beef alone is responsible for 78% of this footprint.
Courtesy: Getty Images/Billion Photos
The researchers highlighted the importance of regional considerations for cultivated meat stakeholders. They noted that São Paulo has a more diversified economy and greater access to technologies and innovation. Combined with higher purchasing power and greater climate awareness, its residents are more likely to be informed and accepting of cultivated meat.
“In contrast, citizens of Salvador, facing economic challenges such as a higher unemployment rate and lower purchasing power, may encounter barriers to accessing information about these new products, which could result in a lower intention to consume,” the study stated.
The researchers argued that public policies can be made more efficient through targeted educational initiatives that address the specific concerns of different regions, and industry stakeholders should adapt their marketing to be more culturally sensitive. “In addition, collaborating with local institutions is likely to foster a more productive approach to introducing cultivated meat,” they added.
The study comes just as Brazilians cut back on beef. According to the Good Food Institute, 36% of consumer have reduced their red meat intake between 2023 and 2024, mainly due to health detriments and high costs. It also chimes with a 2021 study, which found that 66% of Brazilians are interested in trying cultivated meat.
Synbio must prove itself as a superior alternative and win consumer trust to succeed amid the battle against ultra-processed foods, writes our columnist Chiara Cecchini.
By Chiara Cecchini
Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are under fire, and as policymakers crack down, synthetic biology (synbio) foods risk being caught in the crossfire. In the rush to overhaul the American food system, are we discarding innovation along with industrial excess? As regulatory scrutiny tightens around artificial ingredients and processing techniques, synbio faces an urgent challenge.
The reality is sad: over half of Americans’ caloric intake comes from UPFs, a cultural problem that cannot be ignored. The rise of UPFs was not accidental – it was an industrial response to feeding an ever-growing global population. UPFs enabled human expansion to over 8 billion people, a scale unimaginable even just 100 years ago. But this came at a global health cost. The challenge now is not just to reject UPFs but to find better alternatives that ensure precision, scalability, consistency, and efficiency – without sacrificing human health and planetary stability.
The ultra-processed villain narrative
The war on UPFs is intensifying. Major media outlets, including the Guardian and the Times, have reinforced the growing consensus that UPFs fuel chronic disease. Policymakers are responding aggressively.
California Governor Gavin Newsom’s executive order calls for measures to restrict UPF purchases, possibly requiring warning labels. This move could set a national precedent, broadening regulatory scrutiny beyond junk food to include all processed foods – including synbio innovations.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, now confirmed as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, has made UPFs a central battleground. He has framed them as a root cause of modern health crises and is pushing for stricter controls, including labelling and ingredient bans. If his vision shapes future food policy, synbio companies have the opportunity to prove their products belong in a different category – one that delivers both undeniable health and sustainability benefits.
Courtesy: Beyond Meat/Green Queen
So, is synbio all ultra-processed food?
One of the biggest risks to synbio’s future is its classification. As the crackdown on ultra-processed foods intensifies, many are questioning whether synbio belongs in the same category. While synbio foods undergo industrial processing, they do not necessarily share the problematic characteristics of traditional UPFs – namely, reliance on artificial additives, refined sugars, and hyper-palatable formulations designed for overconsumption. Instead, synbio represents a number of production approaches that enable the precise engineering of food ingredients, making it very distinct from traditional ultra-processing.
It is fundamental that the industry actively defines its position before regulators do. If synbio is perceived as just another form of processed food, it risks being caught in the sweeping regulatory backlash against UPFs. However, by prioritizing rigorous nutritional research, transparency, and clear communication, synbio can establish itself as a separate category – one focused on health, precision, and sustainability rather than industrialised over-processing. This also represents an opportunity for leaders in the space to leave the sustainability cocoon and address the real question: how do synbio ingredients impact human health at scale?
The stress of broadening the message beyond sustainability is an important one. Besides clear positioning against UPF, sustainability alone doesn’t sell. The consumer reality is clear: taste, price and health drive food choices. Without a compelling safety and health-centric value proposition, synbio risks being dismissed as just another form of industrialised food.
Preserving small, hyperlocal, diverse food systems is essential, and feeding a global population of 8 billion requires also scalable, climate-efficient solutions. Synbio now has the opportunity to provide that global reach, jointly with safety, nutritional value, and a distinct advantage over UPFs. And it will be a matter of communication.
Earning consumer trust
But yet, consumer scepticism towards synbio exists. While younger demographics, particularly Millennials and Gen Z, show greater openness to these innovations, many consumers remain wary. Multiple studies indicate that many consumers view cultured meat as unnatural, which negatively impacts their acceptance of these products. Meanwhile, research from the Good Food Institute confirms that while sustainability is valued, it is not the key driver of purchasing decisions.
To overcome this, synbio companies must embrace transparency and third-party validation. Certifications such as the Non-GMO Project’s Non-UPF Verified label have helped distinguish minimally processed foods from industrially engineered ones. Synbio must take a similar approach – educating consumers and regulators, demonstrating its health benefits, and ensuring it is seen as an advancement, not just another iteration of processed food.
Investing heavily in nutritional studies, safety research, and clear communication is a non-negotiable. Without robust, independent data proving health benefits and safety, synbio will struggle to gain consumer trust and regulatory approval. The companies that prioritise scientific rigour and transparency will define the next era of food systems.
The UPF backlash is forcing a cultural shift in American food policy, and synbio companies cannot afford to be passive. The term “natural” remains one of the most powerful marketing claims in the industry, driving billions in consumer spending, yet it has no regulatory definition. Synbio companies must proactively define their place within this evolving landscape – aligning with consumer trust, prioritizing clear health benefits, and ensuring their innovations do not get swept away in the fight against UPFs.
The message is clear: the future of food systems will not be determined by sustainability claims alone. Synbio must prove itself as a superior alternative – not just to industrialised food, but to the very system that made UPFs dominant in the first place. If it fails to make this case, it risks being cast aside with the processed foods of the past. If it succeeds, it could become the defining food innovation of our era – a legitimate, forward-thinking solution for healthier humans and a thriving natural ecosystem.
Some headline writers and critics suggest an “anti-vegan backlash” is growing – protein and politics are key factors, but these narratives are missing the point.
Veganism is dead, long live veganism!
This month, the Daily Telegraph and Financial Times both suggested that an “anti-vegan backlash” has begun, one that has “made Britain fall back in love with meat” and is a clapback from carnivores. In response, The Spectator came out with its own take: “Blame vegans for the ‘anti-vegan backlash’.”
It comes just as research shows that the popularity of veganism today has “returned to pre-2020 levels”, according to food magazine Chef’s Pencil.
That assertion is based on Google Trends data, which found that the searches for related topics fell to levels last seen in 2016. Social media analysis also showed that the Instagram account for Veganuary witnessed a “dramatic slowdown in growth” from 49,600 new followers in January 2020 to just 5,500 in January 2025.
Courtesy: Chef’s Pencil
To make matters worse, sales of plant-based meat fell by 9% between July 2023 and 2024 in the US (though it’s still selling better than pre-pandemic levels), and 7% in the UK. And yes, a host of vegan restaurants have closed, including those owned or backed by celebrities, while others have put meat on their menu and then closed.
Moreover, investment in plant-based startups is down. Compared to 2022, when vegan companies raised $1.2B, venture capital flowing into this category has fallen by 74%, attracting just $309M last year.
So how have we got to this point? And is it truly all over for vegans?
People seem to want more protein, and not from plants
Graphic by Green Queen Media & Robbie Lockie.
One of the biggest criticisms of vegan meat alternative products today is that they’re processed. The same way hot dogs and whiskey are.
In the US, 73% of the food supply is made up of ultra-processed foods (UPF), contributing to 60% of the country’s calorie consumption. Plant-based meat has suffered due to its classification as a UPF, even though the real problem lies with fizzy drinks, sugary bakes, and salty snacks.
But as Americans try to eat healthier in the Ozempic era, questions about the health impacts of meat alternatives are louder than ever – however unfounded they may be.
Then there’s the protein brigade. For as long as they’ve been around, plant-based products have been attacked for not having enough protein. It doesn’t matter that most meat analogues actually match the protein levels of the products they’re trying to replace, and some overtake them.
Americans already eat too much meat – red meat consumption alone is 10 times higher than what scientists recommend. In fact, most of the Global North does. At the same time, we’re not eating enough fibre, a crucial nutrient for the gut microbiome and overall wellness (which conveniently, many plant-based meat products have in spades, along with equivalent amounts of protein). For some reason, though, we want more protein than ever.
Courtesy: Madre Brava/Profundo
In 2024, protein was the nutrient Americans were most interested in consuming, as cited by 71% of respondents to a large survey. However, we’re not turning to plants for this – instead, online influencers have us gorging on meat, raw milk, and beef tallow.
In the UK, too, more youngsters are increasing their meat intake (19%) than reducing it (16%) – despite half of them acknowledging that it causes harm to the planet. Meanwhile, only 45% of Brits say they trust plant-based proteins.
Across Europe, less than one in five people (18%) avoid animal products. And moving forward, only a quarter would like to phase out meat and dairy, while 12% would like to increase their consumption.
We’re eating crisps made from chicken breast, tortilla chips fried in tallow, shakes containing bone broth, and unpasteurised milk. And we’re doing so in the name of freedom and nutrition, it seems – despite experts warning about bird flu, saturated fat intake, and fibre deficiencies.
Politics plays its part
Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons/CC | Composite by Green Queen
Spearheaded by figures like Elon Musk – never one to shy away from a culture war – the pro-meat movement is reflective of the larger political landscape, one where wokeism is unwelcome and DEI policies are blamed for plane crashes.
But it’s not just alpha males and ultra-masculine gym bros who are leading the carnivorous diet charge – women from their late 20s to early 40s make up the majority of the market for brands like Equip Foods, which sells products like grass-fed beef protein and colostrum gummies, as per the Financial Times.
Then there’s the backlash against climate change. With President Donald Trump back in the White House, the US is once again pulling out of the Paris Agreement, which should come as no surprise given that the climate-denying president did so in his first term too. Moreover, Trump has demanded all mentions of the climate crisis be scrubbed from government websites.
He may be flanked by former environmentalists in Musk and Robert F Kennedy Jr, but these two are figureheads for the people who’ve put personal power over the planet. The former has raised doubts over the scientifically established climate harms of animal agriculture and added information from a climate alarmism think tank on his Department of Government Efficiency website. The latter, now the health secretary, has railed against “fake meat” products despite their environmental superiority.
It aligns with the narrative pedalled by the meat industry, which would have you believe that plant-based food isn’t sustainable, despite animal agriculture accounting for up to a fifth of global emissions. In addition, the meat lobby will dupe you into thinking that overlong ingredient lists are 1. universally bad (they’re not) and 2. only found in vegan products (they’re not).
Vegan numbers have remained steady, and it’s not all about diet
These arguments have been successful in turning people against and away from meat alternatives, gutting sales and sometimes entire businesses. But it doesn’t mean veganism is dead.
“We are definitely in an adjustment phase. Health-conscious consumers are also seeking less processed meat alternatives, so we are seeing natural protein sources such as tofu, tempeh, chickpeas, and lentils grow in popularity,” Toni Vernelli, Veganuary’s head of communication and policy engagement, told Chef’s Pencil.
That’s just it though – plant-based isn’t all about meat analogues. Heck, these products aren’t even the largest part of the market. That distinction goes to non-dairy milk, which is bought by nearly half (44%) of homes in America, and over 35% in Germany and the UK.
And in any case, vegan population numbers have remained steady over the years. In the UK – where these headlines have originated from – between 2-3% of consumers say they follow a vegan diet, a trend that has been consistent since 2019, according to YouGov surveys. Government data, meanwhile, puts this at 1.5%, according to The Vegan Society.
Courtesy: YouGov
Veganism has been growing in Asia too. In 2021, a tenth of Indians identified as vegan, and this has remained steady this year too. Similarly, the number of vegans in Singapore has grown from 7% in 2020 to 9% today.
But perhaps the most crucial misconception of this argument is that veganism is all about diet – it’s not. Veganism is, as The Vegan Society explains, a “philosophy and way of living” that excludes all forms of animal exploitation – for food, clothing and other purposes.
It’s why we see companies making animal-free leather and silk, cruelty-free cosmetics, and vegan toothpaste and shampoos. Veganism isn’t dead – if it were, investors and companies wouldn’t still be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on these products.
Most of the population may not change their way of living. But as media investigations and social media continue to shine a harsh light on how we treat animals – which remains shocking, cruel and inhumane – and the true environmental impact of farming them, it’s likely the philosophy of veganism will continue to attract adherents.
As anti-cultivated-meat legislation heats up in the US, Nebraska and South Dakota’s efforts to ban these proteins are facing opposition from some policymakers – and farmers.
For Americans in government office, it’s almost become fashionable to attempt a ban on cultivated meat.
The ball went rolling with Ron DeSantis and Florida, which outlawed the production and sale of cultivated meat last summer, followed shortly by its neighbour, Alabama.
These bills got through state legislature pretty quickly, positioned as efforts to safeguard the local cattle industry and public health. But they’re also so far the only instances of such efforts being successful.
More than 20 states across the US have floated measures to ban cultivated meat or restrict how these proteins are labelled. A lot of it feels like a publicity stunt – some of it probably is.
A few of these legislative attempts have come and gone without posing any real threat of being passed. This week, two bills in Nebraska and South Dakota hit a snag too, facing pushback from fellow legislators, and surprisingly, cattle farmers.
South Dakota votes against cultivated meat ban
Courtesy: South Dakota Governor’s Office
There are three anti-cultivated-meat-bills of note in South Dakota, all introduced in January. The first originated in the House, and requires cell-cultured proteins to be clearly labelled as such to prevent any “misbranding”. This passed unanimously, and was signed into law by Governor Larry Rhoden – it will come into effect on July 1.
The second bill sought to prohibit the state from financing any research, production or distribution of cultivated meat. This was unanimously passed on Thursday, and is on its way to Rhoden’s desk – but it includes an exception for public universities conducting research on these proteins.
However, the same day, HB 1109 also went to a vote in the Senate. This bill went the furthest, replicating Florida and Alabama’s measure to put an outright ban on the sale of cultivated meat within the state. Anyone found violating the law – if the bill became one – would be charged with a Class 2 misdemeanour.
Unlike the other two bills, this last one failed to pass through the Senate. Previous votes in the House and agricultural committees were also far from unanimous. On Wednesday, there was a 17-17 in the Senate, and upon reconsideration a day later, senators voted 19-16 against the legislation.
It came after two Republican senators who had previously voted in favour of the ban chose to oppose it in the subsequent vote. One of them, Amber Hulse, told South Dakota Searchlight: “I think the constitutionality of the bill, if I’m being quite honest, is questionable.”
Nebraska bill faces pushback from the meat industry
Courtesy: Governor Jim Pillen/X
In Nebraska, Governor Jim Pillen’s mission to outlaw cultivated meat has been particularly aggressive. He introduced an executive order back in August to put restrictions on these proteins and named a ban one of his top priorities for 2025.
At his request, Senator Barry DeKay brought forward LB 246 last month to keep cultivated meat from being manufactured or sold in Nebraska, and requiring it to be labelled as an “adulterated food product” under the Pure Food Act.
The bill is still in its early stages, with the Agriculture Committee hearing the proposal earlier this week. It’s already encountering pushback – and not from who you expect.
According to the Associated Press, some of its most prominent opponents are the very people Pillen said he’s trying to protect. Nebraska’s ranchers and farming groups say they don’t need the government’s help to compete with cultivated meat.
One farmer told the AP that he welcomes cultivated meat producers to “jump into the pool” and try to compete with his Waygu beef, going on to describe his disdain for lawmakers’ efforts to stifle competition in a free market.
He noted that governments should only be limited to regulating product labels and facility inspections – something that the US Department of Agriculture already does when assessing novel food dossiers. “After that, it’s up to the consumer to make the decision about what they buy and eat,” said the beef farmer.
Latest in a long list of failed cultivated meat bills
Courtesy: Eat Just
These are just the latest examples of industry criticism and failures of bills hoping to ban cultivated meat. In Ohio, for example, two House Representatives introduced HB10 to prohibit the sale of “misbranded” alternative proteins; this came after their previous bill designed to restrict labelling, which died in the House Agriculture Committee last year.
And even in Congress, a bipartisan bill to ban cultivated meat in schools – co-sponsored by Democrat Jon Tester and Republican Mike Rounds – never made it past the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
This year, a spate of new proposals from legislators in states including South Carolina, West Virginia, Montana, Georgia (among others) have come under consideration – though based on the path of these other bills, they just feel like a waste of time and resources.
Florida is already facing legal action against its ban, after receiving criticism from the country’s oldest and largest trade association, which represents 95% of the US’s meat output. In a letter sent to DeSantis in March 2024, the North American Meat Institute called the ban “bad public policy”.
“These bills establish a precedent for adopting policies and regulatory requirements that could one day adversely affect the bills’ supporters,” it said, emphasising the importance of consumer choice.
The EU has published its much-anticipated food and farming vision, raising alarm bells among climate experts and ignoring calls for a shift to plant-based proteins.
These are just some of the reactions to the EU’s new vision for agriculture and food, unveiled yesterday by ag commissioner Christophe Hansen.
The policy document is set to define how the future of food and farming is governed in the region and is centred on simplification, digitalisation, and research and innovation.
What it doesn’t focus on is the climate, a marked departure from Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s first-term flagship European Green Deal, which included the Farm to Fork strategy.
Grateful to the Strategic Dialogue & Chair Prof. Strohschneider.
For their vision and concrete recommendations for an agriculture that works with and for nature.
And that promotes a competitive European food value chain.
While von der Leyen promised that the agrifood vision would be based on the conclusions of the Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture, in which stakeholders including farmer lobby groups and climate activists advised the Commission to shift towards a more sustainable agrifood sector and create an EU-wide action plan for plant-based foods.
But the final vision ignores the outcome of the Strategic Dialogue, despite calls for the EU to stick to it by everyone from doctors, consumer groups, climate experts, and even some of the largest food companies.
It leaves the EU’s protein diversification in limbo, and keeps out future food innovation (like alternative proteins), at the same time its member states are actively encouraging citizens to eat less meat and more plants, and implementing carbon taxes on livestock farming.
What did the Strategic Dialogue recommend?
Graphic by Green Queen
The 29 organisations behind the Strategic Dialogue had five broad recommendations to advance the EU’s food system: creating a more competitive future, advancing towards a sustainable agrifood sector, promoting climate resilience, building agricultural diversity, and broadening access to knowledge and innovation.
The document acknowledged that meat consumption is too high in the EU, and called for a transition from animal proteins to plant-based options. “The sustainable choice needs to become the choice by default,” the report said, asking the Commission to develop a plant-based strategy to strengthen the agrifood chain “from farmers all the way to consumers”.
It also namechecked other alternative protein technologies like precision fermentation and products such as cultivated meat, as part of a range of “concrete technological innovations” that stakeholders debate over – whether to call for faster approval or raise questions about their potential safety risks.
The spotlight on sustainable diets didn’t set any targets for cutting back meat production, though the report advised policymakers to update food labelling regulations to let consumers make informed food choices around sustainability and animal welfare – the EU currently doesn’t allow food producers to use terms like ‘milk’ and ‘cheese’ on alt-dairy labels.
These recommendations came in light of the fact that agriculture is responsible for 11% of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions, and 84% of these come from livestock. That’s despite animal-based foods providing 35% of calories and 65% of proteins in the region.
The meat and dairy sector is also heavily subsidised, receiving four times as much public money as plant-based farming, and around 82% of the subsidies under the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP).
What does the agrifood vision include?
Courtesy: Getty Images | Composite by Green Queen
Essentially, none of the above.
Despite the Dialogue’s strong focus on plant-based proteins and diversification, these terms don’t appear in the agrifood vision at all. ‘Livestock’, however, appears 19 times.
“Livestock is and will remain an essential part of EU agriculture, competitiveness and cohesion,” the Commission wrote, acknowledging that “sustainable livestock” is crucial to the bloc’s economy.
The only reference to protein production and consumption imbalances reads: “We need to consider both the way protein is produced and consumed in the EU.” The Commission promised to deliver a “comprehensive plan” to address these challenges.
The document noted that the European Food Safety Authority would need reinforcements to speed up safety assessments and clear regulatory bottlenecks – at the same time, there was a pointed dig at novel technologies like cultivated meat.
“Keeping Europe’s innovation edge in such new technologies is paramount for the sector to remain competitive and for the EU to remain a world leader in food innovation,” the report stated. “At the same time, certain food innovation is sometimes seen as a threat to the traditions and culture across Europe.”
It added: “This calls for an enhanced dialogue on this matter and better knowledge, to make sure that these innovations can be assessed in an inclusive way that also considers social, ethical, economic, environmental and cultural aspects of food innovation.”
The EU will also hold a Food Dialogue every year with stakeholders across the value chain, as part of which it will launch a study on the consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) – this could have a knock-on effect on meat alternatives too, which have been misleadingly criticised by some as unhealthy because they’re UPFs.
As for the much-criticised CAP, the EU promised to better reward farmers who “actively engage” in climate-friendly food production, an approach that would prioritise agricultural products essential to the EU’s strategic autonomy and resilience.
“This could indicate increased support for plant protein production (whether just feed or also food is to be seen),” Rafael Pinto, senior policy manager at the European Vegetarian Union, tells Green Queen. “Overall, it mentions the need for a fairer distribution of subsidies, especially for small and medium farms – something that is needed but is mentioned in almost every CAP document since the beginning of the policy.”
Why does the agrifood vision ignore the Strategic Dialogue?
Courtesy: European Parliament
If you’ve been following EU food policy for a while, this may not have come as a surprise to you. At his confirmation hearing, farm commissioner Hansen hinted at this outcome, calling the Strategic Dialogue “rather a vague formulation” and suggesting more detailed discourse was needed.
He added that meat was “part of a balanced diet”. And though he noted that the EU was “massively underproducing” plant proteins, his focus was on producing more soybeans to feed animals, who would then be fed to humans.
The EU also has a history of giving in to lobby pressure and flip-flopping on its own proposals, including several aspects of the Green Deal. Most recently, the Commission was set to unveil a sustainable food systems framework to support the protein transition at the end of its previous mandate and ended up abandoning the plan after backlash from interest groups.
Something similar happened with the agrifood vision too. “Right after the end of the Strategic Dialogue, some of the biggest industry representatives decided to detach themselves from something they previously agreed on and cherry-pick only the policies that reflected their views – contrary to NGOs that would gladly accept the conclusions as a whole,” explained Pinto. “It seems like the Vision was highly and disproportionately influenced by some key economic interests.”
He added that the release of the vision “officially marked the death of the Farm2Fork Strategy”, the EU’s plan for sustainable agriculture: “With this new approach, it seems like decarbonising agriculture and promoting healthier diets are not priorities for the Commission. The over-reliance (and naivety) on tech fixes for the livestock sector risk under-delivering and undermining our broader sustainability goals.”
What happens now?
Courtesy: Dimarik/Getty Image, Alessandro0770/Getty Images, Canva AI | Composite by Green Queen
Pinto suggests that the EU Commission isn’t necessarily against promoting the protein transition in itself. “[I’d] rather, maybe hopefully, believe that the Commission showed a neutral stance towards protein diversification,” he said.
“Protein transition is required for sustainability, health, animal welfare and food security and this has been recognised several times by the Commission. However, the lack of policies to that effect shows that current political will is low and pressure from strong interest groups is high.”
Both the European Council and Parliament will be reacting to the vision in the weeks to come, so there’s still time to address the shortcomings in the agrifood vision.
“We hope the EU agriculture and food policies don’t limit themselves to this vision. There’s a lot of room for progress in other areas, and the vision leaves the door open to have a dialogue on innovation and alternatives. The vision is a framework that hopefully will expand over the mandate to better align with other policies and targets,” says Pinto.
He adds: “Protein diversification is a key solution for the polycrisis. It can support environmental and climate goals, reduce disease burden, improve EU food security [and] competitiveness, diversify farmers’ portfolios, and ensure long-term farm sustainability. This is clear for most stakeholders, but we need more political will to address the issue.”
In our new interview series, we quiz future food investors about the solutions that excite them the most, their favourite climate-forward restaurant, and what they look for in successful founders.
Heather Courtney is General Partner at Alwyn Capital.
What future food technologies most excite you?
Technologies that can be applied across multiple markets. Many early-stage companies in alternative protein have struggled to raise funding over the last 18 months, as investors have shifted from prioritizing growth at all costs to focusing on revenue.
If companies have technology that can be applied to existing industries while keeping an eye on serving frontier industries as they scale, they can generate early revenue while capturing the upside of future innovations.
What are three future food verticals you are actively looking at for 2025?
Technologies that reduce COGS and improve quality in plant-based, fermentation, and cultivated products (e.g., media recycling in cultivated meat, continuous bioprocessing in fermentation).
Advanced manufacturing machinery and techniques for alternative proteins.
Precision fermentation—yes, this is probably a popular answer right now, but there’s a good reason. There is immense opportunity in strain engineering, cheaper feedstocks, more efficient bioreactors, and continuous bioprocessing to drive costs down and yields up. One of our portfolio companies, Sunflower TX, is developing precisely this kind of technology. Sunflower has created the first microbial perfusion fermentation system designed for continuous protein production, enabling more protein to be produced with less space and lower costs.
What do you consider the food tech sector’s greatest achievement in the past five years?
Bringing truly “future food” products to market – Upside Foods’s cultivated chicken filet, Perfect Day’s precision fermentation whey, GOOD Meat’s cultivated chicken, and EVERY’s hen-less egg, to name a few. Yes, there is still much work to be done, and no, these products aren’t perfect yet. But let’s take a moment to appreciate them for what they are: significant milestones in food innovation.
If you could wave a magic wand, how would you fix plant-based meat?
A serious magic wand? I’d abolish subsidies for animal agriculture so that plant-based meat could compete on a level playing field.
Beyond that, plant-based meat has a messaging problem. We’ve spoken to Sonalie [Figueiras, Green Queen’s founder and editor-in-chief] about this at length, and I agree with her—our industry has forgotten that women, specifically moms, make the majority of household purchasing decisions. We need to focus on what moms care about: their family’s health, saving time, and making life easier. We need to fix our messaging.
What’s the top trait you look for in a founder?
Tenacity. (There’s a lot more than one, but you only wanted one.)
The One That Got Away: What is the deal you wish you had gotten into but didn’t?
The one we missed knows who they are—we’re still in touch and tracking the company. We were deep in diligence when the lead investor decided they wanted the entire round.
What do you consider your most successful future food investment so far?
It’s too early to tell with most of our portfolio, but Cultured Decadence was acquired in 2020, so that was a clear win! We have other high-performing portfolio companies, but we’ll only know they’re real successes when they achieve an exit. Ultimately, true success will come when the industry takes off across all verticals, creating a win for people, the planet, and animals.
What has been your most disappointing investment so far?
We had a company shut down in 2022. It was one of our favourite products, and the founder had a great work ethic and the right team, but COVID wreaked havoc on them, and they couldn’t recover. Robert and I did everything we could to create a better outcome for the company, but in the end, they folded. That one still hurts.
What do people misunderstand/get wrong most about VC?
Not every business is a good fit for VC dollars, and that’s completely fine. We look for companies that, if everything goes to plan, could return the entire fund through that one investment—not every company is built for that kind of trajectory. You might have a solid business that could grow into a very large enterprise, but if it can’t do that within 10 years or less, VC funding might not be the right fit.
What is the most ‘future food’ thing you have eaten this month?
It wasn’t this month, so maybe I’m cheating a little here, but a few months ago, Robert and I tasted the latest iteration of New School Foods‘ plant-based salmon filet. It was so spot-on that it was unsettling. I even heard a fish eater say they thought it was virtually indistinguishable from conventional salmon. Seafood has been notoriously difficult to replicate with plant proteins—until now. New School Foods has changed the game.
Where is your favourite climate-forward restaurant/dish/place to eat anywhere in the world?
There’s a great spot near my mum’s house in St. Petersburg, FL, called Good Intentions. They make a plant-based dish called Crab Fries—a pile of fries with shredded hearts of palm and jackfruit, Old Bay, garlic butter, parsley, shredded parmesan, and aioli. I didn’t know I needed Crab Fries in my life until I had them, and now I’m obsessed.
It’s a tough time for restaurants right now, especially those sourcing local, sustainable ingredients. So many of my favorite plant-based restaurants in NYC and beyond have closed. If there’s a spot you love, please support them.
What’s your ‘why’? What motivates you to do what you do?
My love for animals drives everything I do. I envision a future where they are no longer treated as expendable. At Alwyn Capital, we are working to make that vision a reality—one that benefits animals, people, and the planet.
I began my career as a pharmaceutical researcher—I loved working in a lab and learning how biological systems function. Now, I have the privilege of collaborating with founders operating at the frontiers of biotechnology to build a more sustainable future.
Israel’s Ever After Foods has partnered with Swiss manufacturing giant Bühler Group to produce cultivated meat at a mass scale with much smaller equipment.
Extending its sustainable protein push, Bühler Group has teamed up with an Israeli food tech firm to help streamline cultivated meat production.
Ever After Foods – a joint venture between cellular agriculture firm Pluri and the Tnuva Group (Israel’s largest food company) – will work with Bühler to bring to market a commercial-scale system that can produce cultivated meat using equipment at least 10 times smaller than the industry standard.
“We are overcoming the bioreactor sizing conundrum,” Eyal Rosenthal, CEO of Ever After Foods, told Green Queen. “Where others need an absolutely enormous 20,000-litre bioreactor, our system produces the same volume with less than 2,000 litres, making it more efficient and viable.”
He added that Bühler will “play a critical role in our mission to create the next, more sustainable, era of meat production”.
Shifting away from the pharma world
Courtesy: Ever After Foods
Formerly named Plurinuva, Ever After Foods has exclusive licencing rights to use Pluri’s technology and intellectual property to commercialise cultivated meat.
Its proprietary edible packed-bed (EPB) technology platform – which comprises a patented 3D cell expansion environment to mimic the cells’ natural environment – dramatically lowers production costs. And its bioreactors yield up to six times more protein and 700 times more lipids from each cell, offering better flavour and nutritional value.
“Consumers will not compromise on taste and texture. Our production system is specifically designed for cultivated meat production, which is a complete step-change from traditional cultivated meat technologies. Another element that sets us apart is that our system does not compromise on the final product, delivering real meat rather than cell slurry, while achieving outstanding efficiency,” explained Rosenthal.
Scalability is another key market barrier. According to consultancy giant McKinsey, to meet the industry’s growth demands, cultivated meat firms would need up to 22 times more fermentation capacity than currently exists in the global pharmaceutical sector.
“Where traditional stirred-tank systems require 4,000 litres to produce 80kg of cultivated meat, our system uses only 200 litres without costly retention devices such as attenuated tangential flow or tangential flow filtration,” said Rosenthal. “This results in at least a 90% reduction in production costs and significantly lower capex, enabling cost parity with conventional meat.”
The process is also much more climate-friendly than industrially raising livestock, resulting in 93% less air pollution, 95% less land use, and 94% less water consumption.
Ever After Foods: working on several cell lines
Courtesy: Ever After Foods
Ever After Foods says it’s working closely with cultivated meat makers and food industry leaders to speed up the development and global deployment of its EPB system – the partnership with Bühler is an extension of that effort.
“Their support will help us scale up and ensure cultivated meat producers around the globe can access scalable, affordable food production systems. Having a respected player like Bühler supporting us is crucial for ensuring that our technology meets the highest standards in the food industry,” said Rosenthal.
The company – which raised $10M in June – is one of several innovators pushing Israel’s food tech economy forward. The country was the third to approve the sale of cultivated meat, greenlighting local startup Aleph Farms‘s application in December 2023.
Israel has additionally made food tech one of its top five priority R&D areas and attracted 10% of all VC funding ($1.2B) in the alternative protein sector between 2014 and 2023.
“We are working with several leading cultivated meat and global food and meat companies across species like beef, chicken, duck, and fish,” said Rosenthal.
Bühler advances future food focus as profits grow
Bühler Group CTO Ian Roberts | Courtesy: Bühler Group
“Powering cultivated meat production at scale with a patented production system, Ever After Foods will help the food industry keep pace with the protein demands of a growing global population,” said Bühler CTO Ian Roberts.
The collaboration is part of Bühler’s goal of enabling market-ready, healthy cell-based products that are friendly to the wallet and the planet and can address global challenges like food insecurity. It comes days after the company reported a turnover of $3.3B for 2024, making a net profit of $209M (a 5.5% increase from the previous year).
“The global food chain faces significant challenges if we are to successfully and sustainably feed our growing population. How we produce and consume protein will continue to change, and requires a transition of our protein system to deliver this,” said Roberts.
In December, it opened The Cultured Hub, a cellular agriculture scale-up plant, in partnership with Swiss retail giant Migros and flavour specialist Givaudan. Situated in The Valley in Kemptthal, the factory can support the development of products like cultivated meat, fermentation-derived dairy, cell-based chocolate, and more.
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers NotCo’s Dubai chocolate, BrewDog’s collaboration with Impossible Foods, and new products at Expo West.
New products and launches
Chilean AI-led food tech player NotCo has releasedDubai Style NotSquare, a vegan version of the viral pistachio-kunafa-filled chocolate bar.
Courtesy: Matias Muchnick/LinkedIn
Scottish pub chain BrewDog has partnered with Impossible Foods to introduce a vegan chicken menu across 48 UK locations, which includes cheeseburgers and tacos made from the latter’s Chicken FIllets, as well as nuggets. The limited-edition menu is running until the end of March.
UK oat milk chocolate maker Happi has rolled out Salted Honeycomb and Cherry & Almond Easter eggs, which contain 35% less sugar than mass-market brands and are available at Waitrose and other retailers for £11.99 per 155g egg.
British sports nutrition brand Myprotein has launched a caramel-pecan flavour of its double-dough brownie in collaboration with Hotel Chocolat. It’s available on its website for £25.99 for a box of 12.
Courtesy: Continental Wine & Food
Yorkshire-based Continental Wine & Food has launchedLacey’s Vodkashake, a line of dairy-free cream liqueurs available in strawberry and banana flavours. Inspired by 1950s-style American diner milkshakes, the 15% ABV product is stocked at 500 B&M stores, retailing for £12 per 70cl bottle.
Elsewhere, Indian plant-based meat brand GoodDot has obtained a listing at Australian health food store Wholefood Merchants.
Also in Australia, Coyo has unveiled a dairy-free yoghurt line made with 74% oat milk and 17% coconut cream. They come in natural, vanilla bean, mango and strawberry flavours, and will be stocked at Woolworths and independent retailers nationwide starting March.
Courtesy: Coyo
Amid the US egg shortage, UK startup Crackd – which makes the pourable vegan No-Egg Egg – is gearing up for a launch stateside, and will have a booth at Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, California (March 5-7).
Also at Expo West, alt-dairy leader Elmhurst 1925 will debut three new products: unsweetened vanilla cashew milk, barista cashew milk, and unsweetened coconut-cashew barista milk.
Courtesy: Colruyt
And Belgian retailer Colruyt Group has launchedBoni Plan’t, a plant-based brand under its Boni Selection private label. The move unites over 100 existing meat-free products under the new label, with several new items to be added in the coming months.
Company and finance updates
Swedish dairy giant Valio has acquiredRaisio‘s plant protein business, which includes the Härkis and Beanit fava bean brands, for €7M. The deal will see 16 employees transferred to Valio.
After two years of tumult, Swedish oat milk giant Oatlyreported a 5% hike in revenue for both Q4 and the full year of 2024, and expects 2025 to be its “first full year of profitable growth as a public company”.
Courtesy: Nespresso
In northern Spain, Hijos de Rivera, Inproteins and the Xunta de Galicia have invested €7.5M in a new plant protein manufacturing facility. The project will receive a total of €18M in funding, supported by the Galician Institute for Economic Promotion and Banco Sabadell.
In the UK, AI-driven meal-planning platform Remy has acquiredKitche, an app that helps prevent food waste at the household level.
Dutch cultivated pork producerMeatablehosted a cross-industry event with 80 stakeholders to discuss sustainable proteins and the future of food.
Courtesy: Meatable
Speaking of cellular agriculture, Singapore’s Umami Bioworks has introduced a cultivated seafood platform to address protein diversity in the pet food industry. It comes as the firm works with another startup to commercialise cat treats made with cultivated fish, and just after the first cultivated pet food launched in the UK earlier this month.
Policy developments
Californian alternative protein pioneer Eat Just and its cultivated meat subsidiary, Good Meat, have reached an “agreement in principle” to settle their legal dispute with bioreactor supplier ABEC.
Courtesy: Eat Just
Israeli startup Yeap has announced that its upcycled yeast protein now meets EU regulatory requirements, paving the way for its market entry in the region.
The European Plant-Based Foods Association (formerly the European Natural Soyfood Association, or ENSA) has changed its name to Plant-Based Foods Europe to “better reflect the industry’s dynamic landscape”.
After more than 70 years, Humane Society International and the Humane Society of the United States have changed their name to Humane World for Animals, marking the occasion with a new ad campaign featuringSia.
In a written submission, the UK government is being urged by The Vegan Society to raise awareness of vegans in the parliament to prevent harassment and bullying, as well as increase plant-based options for policymakers.
Finally, in New Zealand, the Vegan Society of Aotearoa and the New Zealand Vegetarian Society have handed in a petition to ban the misleading labelling of animal-free products, since there’s no legislation to determine what products qualify as vegan or vegetarian in the country.
The world’s most populous generation, Gen Alpha, thinks future foods like plant-based and cultivated meat are “inevitable” – though first impressions matter.
By the end of the decade, Gen Alpha will have a spending power worth $12 trillion, on top of being the largest generation the world has ever seen.
Born between 2010 and the end of 2024 and between 0-15 years old, it’s a group of consumers who have grown up in the age of social media and climate change, and for whom sustainability will be a central life aspect. Research shows that saving the planet will be the main career mission for two-thirds of these children, and 80% of their parents have already been influenced to lead more eco-friendly lives.
Gen Alpha is becoming an increasingly important cohort for brands to market to, and it’s a generation “poised to reshape the food industry”, according to research firm Mintel. At the forefront of this shift are alternative proteins, which have been recognised by numerous scientists and climate researchers as the best solution to decarbonise the global food industry.
So how do the generation of tomorrow feel about the proteins of tomorrow? It’s a question scientists at Singapore’s state-backed Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) contended with in a recent study, interviewing 19 sets of Gen Alphas and their parents about their attitudes towards plant-based and cultivated meat, and insect protein.
The study, published in the Appetite journal, found that plant-based meat is the most well-known out of the three protein groups. Among the children, 63% have heard of vegan alternatives, while 42% are aware of cultivated meat. Several kids had heard of the latter via the news, TikTok, YouTube, or STEM festivals.
More than a third (37%) of Gen Alphas have tried plant-based meat too, and encouragingly, nearly 80% are willing to give it a go. Interest in cultivated meat is high too among this younger generation too- as 74% are happy to try these proteins.
What’s holding Gen Alpha back?
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
There are several barriers the alternative protein industry needs to attend to. In answering whether they’ve tried cultivated meat, some parents mixed up products like Impossible Foods’ offerings with these novel foods – highlighting an awareness gap.
Those who are more aware and knowledgeable about alternative proteins showcase a greater willingness to consume them, though familiarity worked against these foods too. Some children expressed a preference for conventional meat purely because it’s what they’re used to.
This also ties in with food tech neophobia, or a fear of new foods made from novel technologies. Some children describe alternative proteins as “weird”, while this concern is even more prominent among parents, especially with cultivated meat.
Meanwhile, concerns about the cleanliness of alternative protein production plants, their nutritional value, and perceived “unnaturalness” deter some parents. However, those aware of the health risks and antibiotic usage in meat production categorize plant-based meat as healthier, though they want to consume it as a supplementary protein instead of a complete replacement.
Finally, there are some cultural and religious hurdles too. For children and parents who identify as Muslim, for example, their willingness to eat cultivated meat is contingent on its Halal certification. In 2024, the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore issued a fatwa declaring that cultivated meat is generally halal, and Muslims can eat these products as long as they adhere to halal standards.
Children and parents can influence each other to eat sustainable proteins
Courtesy: Upside Foods
Since cultivated meat is deemed a novel food with no history of consumption, it requires authorisation from national regulators to be sold in a country’s market. Singapore was the first nation to approve the sale of such products after the Singapore Food Agency concluded that Eat Just’s Good Meat chicken was safe for consumption back in 2020. It followed up with further greenlights for Vow‘s cultured quail and foie gras last year.
For Gen Alpha, historical consumption of food is an indicator of safety and healthiness; however, they question the safety of cultivated meat due to its lack of consumption history. Parents cite the same reason for associating a greater risk with eating cultivated meat.
The study labelled bi-directional influence as a social opportunity for alternative proteins. “Parents’ food habits, opinions, beliefs, and preferences influenced their children’s willingness to consume alternative proteins and acted as both a facilitator and a barrier. Overall, most parents were open to letting their children consume alternative proteins,” the authors wrote.
At the same time, there were instances of children who influenced their parents to try alternative proteins. One survey participant noted how they were initially “quite averse” to Impossible meat, but eventually tried it when their son said: “Come on, have a taste.”
Prices, clarity, and first impressions are critical
Courtesy: Eat Just
There are several things alternative protein companies need to do to get in with the consumers of tomorrow. Plant-based and cultivated meats need to be the same price, if not cheaper, than conventional proteins – Gen Alpha prefers to pay less for the former category because they either don’t involve animals, so are perceived as easier and faster to produce.
Clear labelling should be a priority too – both parents and children confused certain plant-based brands with cultivated meat in the study. They also develop a greater appetite for alternative proteins that match animal-derived meat in taste and other sensory attributes.
Finally, the research revealed that first impressions are critical – for the entire industry. “Children and their parents often reported the importance of liking alternative proteins the first time they tried them,” the study noted. “They went on to say that any negative experience would result in them being less willing to consume alternative proteins again, including other products and brands.”
However, environmental sustainability is a major motivator for the consumption of alternative proteins among Gen Alpha, who are willing to embrace these foods – they told researchers that “alternative proteins were the inevitable future” and want to eat them to adapt to the changing climate.
As more Brits, Europeans and Americans cool on meat alternatives, one region is making gains on the protein transition – can homegrown brands in the Gulf cater to local demand for plant-based meat?
While some consumers in the West are turning their back on planet-friendly meat alternatives, citing reasons like inflation and unsatisfactory flavour, those in Africa and the Middle East are bucking the trend.
A growing number of consumers in the Gulf region are embracing plant-based food, as locals look for more sustainable options. While most meat analogues in the region have long been imported, which has often meant high markups for shoppers, a wave of homegrown companies is looking to change this.
A handful of startups are providing alternatives to more expensive products from international players like Kerry Group, Beyond Meat, Quorn, Amy’s Kitchen, and others while catering to the region’s youth. More than half of the GCC’s population is under 25, and across the world, younger generations tend to lead the plant-based charge.
In parallel, as concerns around food insecurity intensify, regional governments are recognising the potential of alternative proteins to safeguard the local food supply, providing the niche sector with added momentum.
Plant-based food in the Gulf in numbers
Courtesy: Redseer
The GCC plant-based market is expected to expand significantly by the end of the decade, reaching $500M at a 35% CAGR. This is nearly double the industry’s predicted growth in the wider Middle East and Africa (MENA) region.
While frequent consumption of meat-free food decreased by at least five percentage points in North America (now at 13%), Europe (18%), and Asia-Pacific (14%) between 2023 and 2024, Africa and the Middle East (38%) is bucking the trends with encouraging growth.
As in the rest of the world, price is now the main barrier to eating more plant-based food in the Middle East, with 36% of consumers citing it. In addition, taste (33%), an unfamiliarity with eating vegan food (33%), and convenience and availability (32%) are equally important factors.
Courtesy: EAT/GlobeScan
Awareness about plant-based products is increasing in the GCC – in the UAE, 94% of people were familiar with them in 2023 (up from 91% in 2022), while in Saudi Arabia, this increased from 85% to 89% in 2023.
A good chunk of consumers are also happy to pay a premium for plant-based food in the UAE (27%) and Saudi Arabia (21%).
Around 15% of Emiratis want to cut back on meat, primarily for health reasons. And of these, 26% want to replace it with plant-based alternatives.
Taste is the top purchase driver for meat alternatives (chosen by 33% of consumers) in the region, followed by brand reputation (25%) and recommendations from others (19%).
Gulf consumers are most interested in replacing meat in their children’s meals, with nearly half (48%) saying so in the UAE, and 43% in Saudi Arabia.
Courtesy: Redseer
In Saudi Arabia, around 5% of a representative population sample followed a plant-forward diet, as of 2022, with four in five of them being women.
Nearly 40% of these consumers have difficulty finding locally inspired plant-based food, and 20% say meat alternative options are restricted.
While only 8% of Gulf consumers identified as flexitarian in 2023, this is set to rise to 23% by 2030.
The plant-based meat players leading the charge
Switch Foods
Courtesy: Switch Foods
Based in Abu Dhabi, Switch Foods was founded by Edward Hamod in 2022 and made a splash in the region’s plant-based space with the opening of a 20,000 sq ft plant-based meat factory. Situated in the capital’s Khalifa Industrial Zone, the facility manufactures meat-free kebabs, koftas, soujouks, mince, and burger patties.
These products are available at over 130 stores across a wide range of retailers, including Carrefour, Spinneys, Waitrose, Géant, Union Coop, Sharjah Co-op, and LuLu, alongside online stores like Talabat, Careem, and InstaShop.
While 95% of its initial sales came from retail, its foodservice penetration has grown significantly since. Now, Switch Foods’s plant-based meat can be found at Hilton Hotels, Millennium Hotels, Marriot, 25hours Hotel, Eataly, and onboard Emirates flights, among others.
The company has raised $6.5M in seed funding and was said to be in talks to secure another $7M in Series A funding last year. Since June 2023, it has expanded at a 20% CAGR per month, and closed that year with a revenue of around Dh2 million ($544,000) in only half a year of operations. Last year, it expected to earn a revenue of Dh10 million ($2.7M).
Thryve
Courtesy: Thryve
A subsidiary of business house IFFCO Group, one of the UAE’s largest food companies, Thryve arrived on the scene in late 2022 as part of its parent’s regenerative agriculture push. IFFCO Group has named regenerative farming and healthy soils as one of its ESG focus topics.
“We are guided by nature-based principles in our food system design, bringing nature to the core of our business decisions,” Valeria Krynetskaya, then head of Thryve, explained. “We rediscovered an ancient crop, Faba Bean with significant regenerative potential, healing soil through nitrogen fixation and saving water. We are transforming this climate-smart faba bean into faba-lous plant-based meat with local flavours of the Middle East.”
Marketed as the GCC’s first 100% plant-based venture – as opposed to meat companies that sell certain animal-free products – Thryve opened the Middle East’s first vegan meat production facility in Dubai Industrial City, and is part of a family of 80 brands with a footprint in over 100 countries.
Thryve’s fava-bean-based meats include burgers, mince, shawarma, koftas, shish tawook, chicken kabsa chunks, and nuggets, and they’re available at retailers like Carrefour, Waitrose, Lulu, Spinneys, and more in the UAE. The company has since expanded to Saudi Arabia too, and says its factory canhelp it reach 30% of the GCC population.
Arlene
Courtesy: Arlene
Founded by Helene Raudaschl in 2020, Arlene makes frozen ready-to-eat vegan meals that incorporate meat analogues. They’re produced in a 60,000 sq ft manufacturing facility in Dubai.
Arlene’s meat alternative dishes include local favourites like kebabs and kibbehs, Asian staples such as gyozas, dan dan noodles, and spring rolls, and international classics like spaghetti bolognese and chilli con carne.
The company’s products are available at Waitrose, Spinneys, and Maxzi in the UAE, as well as retailers in Singapore.
Nadura*
Courtesy: Natura*
The newest kid on the block, Nadura* is a Dubai-based subsidiary of legacy manufacturer Food Specialties Limited, which launched in 2024 with a range of meat-free proteins made from Canadian peas.
The frozen burgers, mince, chicken and kebabs are marketed as clean-label alternatives to the ultra-processed foods typically found on the market. And in 2023, its chicken mince won Bronze at the Plant-Based Excellence Award at Plant Based World Expo Europe.
While these products are currently available online at Elfab in the UAE, the company is positioning them towards the foodservice and hospitality industry – soon, you could find its plant-based meat at restaurants across the country.
Niya Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Fork & Good, on what separates the startup from other cultivated meat players, earning its first revenue, and its regulatory plans.
It was just only in January 2024 that, in an Irish pub in Davos, Switzerland, Fork & Good held Europe’s first public tasting of cultivated meat. The startup served dumplings made from a blend of 30% cell-cultured pork and 70% conventional pork (plus a cultivated and plant-based mix for vegetarians), with more than half of the taste-testers preferring the blended meat version.
This was a marker of progress for the New Jersey-based firm, getting some real-world feedback from an international group of people just 10 minutes away from the World Economic Forum conference.
Now, just over a year later, the company has earned its first revenue, courtesy of a joint development agreement with an $8B global food manufacturer. “It is an exciting milestone to earn revenue in cultivated red meat, and shows market validation of our technology,” co-founder and CEO Niya Gupta tells Green Queen, though she declines to name the company.
In fact, Fork & Good has signed deals with three clients and is in talks with about a dozen manufacturers and retailers – all focused on using cultivated pork as a complementary ingredient in both meat and plant-based formulations. Currently, the protein is being tested as part of ham and meat snacks.
“We have always been a B2B company,” says Gupta. “When we first started, African swine fever had wiped out 25% of the world’s hog herd, and our customers were struggling with reinforcing their supply chains. Pathogen shocks, tariffs, and tighter demand conditions have all resulted in significant volatility, which poses challenges in consistency of product and cost for our customers.”
Joining forces with an industry pioneer
Courtesy: Fork & Good
For Gupta, it’s hard to imagine a life without dim sum, the Cantonese term for a whole host of dumplings served for breakfast in restaurants across China. After all, she grew up in Hong Kong, which consumes more meat per capita than any other place. “My family were farmers [in India] for generations, and I spent every summer at the farm, which gave me a deep respect for agriculture and also a desire to improve our food systems,” she says.
Having spent 15 years working in agriculture, including a consultancy stint at McKinsey, it made sense to “come full circle and be a future farmer”.
To do so, she joined forces with Gabor Forgacs, a pioneer of cultivated meat. He co-founded Modern Meadow, one of the earliest players in the space, showcasing a prototype of a cultivated sausage at TEDMED 2011, a whole two years earlier than Dr Mark Post’s world-famous burger.
Modern Meadow “really sparked people’s imagination and showed it was possible to build meat from cells”, says Gupta. Cost barriers led Forgacs and his team to pivot to cultivated leather at the time, and today, the company makes cow-hide alternatives out of plant proteins and upcycled post-consumer tyres. Forgacs left the firm in 2016, and co-founded Fork & Good with Gupta two years later.
“We are working together to invent a much more practical, cost-based approach informed by my experience in the food industry and using his expertise in the fields of tissue engineering and biophysics,” she says.
“We need all the solutions possible to keep having safe, affordable meat and if we [want to] have any chance of meeting our 1.5°C global warming target. Cultivated meat builds a more resilient supply chain and helps us do it sustainably.”
How Fork & Good makes its cultivated pork
Courtesy: Fork & Good
Gupta’s agtech background led her to realise that cultivated meat is a lot like hydroponic farming, where you “optimise input for output” – that is, you grow vegetables in nutrient-rich water instead of soil.
“In the same spirit, our process is based on the mutual optimisation of the three input components – the cell line, the medium and the bioprocess – to grow animal cells (i.e. the biomass) more efficiently than livestock,” she explains.
“Specifically, we developed immortal cell lines and corresponding medium with an iterative approach by analysing the waste medium and determining what the cells use (for example, which amino acids and in what concentration). We adopted a bioreactor technology that assures the best control over the way our adherent cells grow in aggregates – we can control the size of the aggregates – to maximise cell density,” she adds.
This approach reduces the calorie intensity of feedstock fourfold for pork and fivefold for beef, making Fork & Good confident it can “grow meat with fewer resources than animals”.
The optimisation through the three components forms the base of its patented integrated cell manufacturing (ICM) platform, which lets it grow a large number of cells in a cost-effective manner. In addition, the company has an optimised downstream process and continuous harvesting process at its pilot facility in Jersey City, which can produce about seven tonnes of product in less than 800 sq ft of space.
“The ICM, combined with our continuous downstream processing and the fact that we are not using stem cells – instead, [we] are editing muscle cells to skip the cost and complexity of differentiation – substantially differentiates Fork & Good from others,” says Gupta.
“Furthermore, unlike many companies focused entirely on the biology, we are also addressing capital expenditure by having low-cost distributed manufacturing, made possible via designed-for-purpose bioreactors and continuous harvesting,” she adds.
“In particular, this allows us to build much smaller facilities (10×1000 litres) to scale up production to commercially relevant quantities of biomass – $10-20M for a single facility rather than hundreds of millions.”
Fork & Good’s target pricing is $2 per lb, which would match commodity pork, and in-house R&D data supports this goal. But the bulk of this work comes during scale-up and engineering. “In our first scale-up factory, we’re targeting $5 per lb for 100% biomass with our more tried and tested cell line, which would be possible at commercial scale today. This is based on existing observed yields, media costs and purchasing components at scale,” Gupta says.
US regulatory plans hinge on RFK Jr
Courtesy: Fork & Good
The startup’s initial geographic priorities are North America and Southeast Asia. “We have been working with the FDA and USDA for two years, and are applying to Singapore as well,” says Gupta.
The latter was the first country to allow the sale of cultivated meat back in 2020, and authorised Australia’s Vow to sell cultured quail and foie gras too last year. “Some of our partners in other Asian countries are keeping us informed of the latest regulatory developments for us to be opportunistic there,” she says.
In the US, only Eat Just and Upside Foods have been cleared to sell cultivated meat so far, and with Robert F Kennedy Jr sworn in as the new health secretary, uncertainty looms for how this sector is regulated.
“We believe the biggest relevant challenge in the US is the uncertainty facing all government agencies at this moment,” says Gupta. “If the FDA has fewer resources or is reorganised, this will impact their bandwidth for review and lengthen processing times. Diversifying geographic focus is a good idea to mitigate regulatory risk.”
Fork & Good has been vocal about this – before Florida finalised its ban on cultivated meat last summer, its head of business opportunities, Emily Bogan, told a House panel in February: “A ban like this threatens a free market and sets a dangerous precedent for government interference.”
If all goes well, though, looking at past approvals, Gupta envisions Q2 2026 as the earliest launch date for its cultivated pork.
‘Nothing is inevitable’ – including cultivated meat
Courtesy: Fork & Good
Fork & Good has so far attracted $30M from investors including True Ventures, Starlight Ventures, BBG Ventures, and Leaps, the VC arm of German pharmaceutical giant Bayer. “We closed a Series A2 round October last year, to fund our response to FDA feedback and deliver on customer deals we had signed,” notes Gupta. “We have $1-2M open for this same round closing at the end of Q1.”
Cultivated meat has been a victim of the food tech investor fallout, with companies in the category raising 40% less money last year than they did in 2023. Worryingly, they only secured $6M in the second half of last year.
“The funding landscape has definitely changed due to the burst of the hype bubble combined with macro forces in VC. Our last round was the most challenging of the three institutional rounds we have raised. Luckily, as we have stayed capital-efficient and have had reasonable valuations, [we] were less impacted than others,” Gupta explains.
“If startups rode the wave, they should be taking a hard look at their business and resetting expectations. [They should also be] adopting leaner approaches and looking at alternative forms of capital – particularly from funders who value our solutions. This is still a really huge problem to solve, and supply chain pressures and meat prices are higher than ever,” she adds.
Gupta warns that “nothing is inevitable except for death and taxes”, and this applies to cultivated meat too. “Unlike pure software innovation, outside of the breakthrough, you need to solve for infrastructure, supply chains, consumer education and safety/regulation,” she states.
“This is true of any major zero-to-one innovation, especially in a climate where we have to touch the physical world. But when the need is great enough, you see multiple waves of innovation in the same area until the problem is solved – e.g., solar energy took several attempts over the years, before costs fell faster than any expert or academic predicted.”
The company has ridden that wave Gupta spoke of – can it now make good on its promise to put cultivated pork on your fork?
New York-based Blackbird Foods has been acquired by Ahimsa Companies, a holding company with several sustainable protein startups in its roster.
Frozen plant-based food maker Blackbird Foods has been acquired by Ahimsa Companies, an investor on a takeover spree of alternative protein players globally.
The deal will help Blackbird Foods – which makes vegan pizzas and wings, seitan, and dairy-free cheese – expand its reach, enhance its manufacturing capabilities, and accelerate product innovation.
It is Ahimsa Companies’s third M&A deal since being founded last year, after its acquisitions of leading brand Wicked Kitchen (including subsidiaries Good Catch and Current Foods) in May 2024, and nugget maker Simulate last October.
Financial terms weren’t disclosed, but Blackbird Foods will continue to operate under its existing brand identity.
Courtesy: Blackbird Foods
Banking on the market for frozen vegan food
Blackbird Foods, founded in 2022 by Emanuel Storch and Mike Pease, has products in Target, Whole Foods Market, Sprouts Farmers Market, and The Fresh Market, as well as restaurants like Screamer’s Pizzeria.
One of its flagship products is the pepperoni pizza, which it recently revamped with the help of industry giant Beyond Meat. The startup swapped its housemade pepperoni with the latter’s pea protein version, which it said was meatier.
In 2024, it raised $125,000 in a crowdfunding round on StartEngine, where it claimed to have recorded lifetime sales of over $11M. According to a filing with the SEC, the business made $4.47M in revenue in 2023, a 60% increase from the year before, which it attributed to increased distribution and velocity.
“We are eager to tap into Ahimsa’s extensive knowledge to strengthen Blackbird’s presence in the frozen aisle. With their support, we have ambitious plans for growth and exciting product innovations on the horizon,” said Pease.
While retail sales of plant-based meat suffered in 2024, they sold much better in the freezer than the fridge, according to market research firm Circana. Dollar sales of chilled meat analogues took a 17% dip in the 52 weeks to July 14, 2024 to reach $309M, while those in the frozen aisle only encountered a 6% loss, totalling $720M in sales.
Courtesy: Blackbird Foods
Ahimsa Companies leads plant-based consolidation era
Backed by investors including the Ahimsa Foundation, Ahimsa Companies’s business model involves taking over companies that can reshape the sustainable food industry. The holding company has noted that consolidation is “critical to the growth and success”.
As part of a roll-up strategy, Ahimsa Companies is looking at companies in the precision fermentation, cultivated meat, extruded pea protein, non-dairy alternative, and plant-based food segments, and has bought a 50,000 sq ft factory in Ohio to produce meat analogues.
“Ahimsa Companies shares our passion for plant-based innovation and animal-free food production. Together, we will continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible in plant-based cuisine while maintaining the quality and authenticity our customers love,” said Storch.
Courtesy: Simulate/Green Queen
The acquisition comes after investment in plant-based startups fell by 75% in 2024, reflecting an overall hesitance in food tech funding among venture capitalists. It has played a part in the string of consolidation deals the sector has seen recently – in the UK alone, food and drink M&A activity was up by 29% in 2024.
Eat Just CEO Josh Tetrick says soaring egg prices have driven up demand for its mung-bean-derived Just Egg, with sales hikes unlike what the firm has seen in the past.
Eggs have never been more expensive in the US. According to consumer price index data released by the USDA last weekend, average retail Grade A egg prices reached $4.95 per dozen last month, surpassing the previous high recorded in January 2023.
The new record came just as 23 million birds were culled in January due to this latest wave of avian flu (taking the total to nearly 160 million since February 2022). “It’s the most serious bird flu crisis in history,” says Josh Tetrick. “It’s spreading faster than ever before.”
Courtesy: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Tetrick is the co-founder and CEO of Eat Just, the company behind Just Egg that is very much meeting the moment. “Egg shelves are empty, except for one product, and it happens to be made from plants,” he tells Green Queen on a phone call. “It’s both an extraordinary and strange moment.”
This is because millions of Americans are being exposed to a vegan egg for the very first time, he says, and his company takes up 99% of that market. “If they want eggs, they [only] have a few choices,” notes Tetrick. “One, don’t eat them. Two, you know, have applesauce. Or three, have Just Egg.”
In January alone, Just Egg’s sales grew five times faster than in the past year, while 56% of shoppers have returned to buy more (a three-point increase from 2024). At one of the country’s largest retailers, its sales are up by 70% compared to the same week last year.
The plant-based company makes a refrigerated liquid alternative, a frozen omelette-style folded product and a just-relaunched mayonnaise range.
Courtesy: Just Egg
“We have some of the largest chains in the country reaching out to us – on the foodservice side, the convenience store side – saying they don’t know when this is going to end, and they want to bring in something that’s more reliable and more permanent, i.e., what we’re doing,” says Tetrick.
Restaurants are feeling the pinch, too. Popular breakfast chain Waffle House has introduced a temporary 50-cent surcharge per egg, and some bakeries are switching to vegan eggs. One local cafe in Philadelphia – 90% of whose menu depends on eggs – told the Guardian that a plate of bacon, eggs and toast with coffee now costs twice as much as it did last year.
This, Tetrick feels, is a moment for the sustainable protein sector – to show that there’s a different, safer, healthier and more reliable way to produce eggs than farming birds in concentrated feeding operations: “This is a real moment in time for the plant-based industry to prove that it’s up to the challenge.”
Eat Just offering free cases to restaurants and retailers
Courtesy: Eat Just
Eat Just is witnessing greater demand across retail and foodservice, including local diners and cafés, mom-and-pop stores, and caterers that supply to universities (like Sodexo). “People are wanting to order more because consumers are going through the product faster because there are fewer options – i.e. chicken eggs – available,” says Tetrick.
Currently, more than 70% of its sales come from the retail channel, with the pourable liquid format its most popular product (followed by the foldable egg patty).
To expand its uptake, though, Tetrick says Eat Just is incentivising restaurants and retailers by providing them with a free case of Just Egg and other discounts. This helps them bring the product in for the first time and ensure they have a supply of eggs, which they struggle to do “when they’re only relying on chickens”.
While it’s hard to find eggs on supermarket shelves right now, Just Egg is available in over 40,000 stores today. “Almost every major retailer carries Just Egg. But we do have gaps, and we expect to fill more of those gaps in the next few months,” he says.
Courtesy: Eat Just
The firm’s manufacturing facility in western Minnesota has enough capacity to double its production if needed – though it’ll need to be expanded if it needs to produce more than that. “Then we have partner facilities that we work with. We send the protein, and they have plenty of capacity also,” says Tetrick.
He adds: “We are scheduling more days of production. We’re ordering more materials, like packaging, ahead of time to ensure that we’re prepared for even more orders than we might even anticipate.”
Tetrick says that Just Egg is cheaper than chicken eggs in some parts of the country (its 16oz liquid egg carton, equivalent to about 10 eggs, retails for US$7.36 at Walmart) right now. In some places, consumers and restaurants are paying up to $7 per dozen for the latter, while wholesale prices of white-shell eggs now stand at $8 per dozen.
Recently published research suggests that undercutting the cost of animal proteins is the most effective purchase driver for plant-based food, so Eat Just needs to find a way to continue to lower costs and stay cheaper beyond the current egg price hike caused by supply shortages.
Tetrick says the company is working on it. To make its egg alternatives, Eat Just separates protein from mung beans, a process responsible for roughly half of the cost of production. “The more efficiently we can [do that], the lower our cost is,” Tetrick explains. “So we’re devising more and more processes to reduce the cost of protein, using techniques to yield up and having a higher throughput.”
Chicken egg makers stuck in a cycle
Courtesy: Eat Just
Nearly all Americans (94% of them) eat eggs. It’s by far the most widely consumed animal protein in the country. “I don’t remember a time in the United States when a major animal protein is literally not on shelves anymore, in many of the biggest grocery stores,” Tetrick points out. “People have a hard time finding it.”
It’s not the first big wave of bird flu to hit the US egg industry in recent years. And when prices skyrocketed last time, they returned to normal levels in the months that followed. However, this wave appears worse.
This time, the avian flu is “objectively” bigger, in terms of the number of birds affected, and the impact on egg prices and the supply chain. Tetrick believes this is happening because of the “inherent nature of the system”.
Courtesy: Eat Just
“To make eggs for a country of 350 million people, it means one very basic thing: you have to pack lots of animals in small spaces. And when you do that, because basic biology is a thing, those animals will just get sick, and that’s going to keep happening,” he says.
“The industry can’t get out of that cycle. Move them closer. They get sick. Then there’s avian flu, and then you’ve got to kill lots of them. And then the egg shelves are empty. And here we go again,” he adds. “More and more retailers are realising that that is a fact, and they’re beginning to think through what the world will look like when that continues to happen.”
In Tetrick’s ideal world, you’ll have more pasture-raised eggs at higher prices, and a greater number of plant-based alternatives.
He acknowledges that the current reality is far from his vision. “It’s quite different from what the egg shelves look like today, though,” he says.
An inflection point for the plant-based industry
Courtesy: Eat Just
To date, Eat Just has raised over $850M in venture capital, with existing investor VegInvest/Ahimsa Foundation pouring in $16M in the last publicly announced investment in 2023. At the time, there were suggestions that the company was facing a cash squeeze.
But Tetrick confirms that the company has healthy cash flow and isn’t looking to fundraise at the moment: “We sell every Just Egg product at a positive margin, and it’s able to support the key functions of the company, so it can continue to grow faster.”
Chicken-free eggs made up just 0.5% of the plant-based retail market in the US in 2023, having been bought by just 1% of households. However, with bird flu and soaring chicken egg prices, the category is set to expand faster now.
According to Tetrick, Eat Just is the 17th largest egg company in the US today: “And we’re growing everywhere – retail, foodservice, everything.”
Courtesy: Box Clever/Eat Just
This is a moment for the sustainable protein sector to prove itself. “We have to prove that we can be in stock. We have to prove that we can make a nice omelette. We have to prove that we can continue to do it consistently,” he says. “And if we do that, we think this could be a real inflection point where millions of people move from a conventional egg to something that we think is a lot better. And it’s a broader statement about what plant-based can be.”
Just Egg makes up “99.999% of our sales”, says Tetrick – the rest comes from its cultivated meat arm, Good Meat. “We are the reliable egg today, and we cannot let this moment pass,” he says. “We’ve got to deliver on time, and in full. We’ve got to make sure that we’re making sufficient product. We need to make sure that if there’s any out-of-stocks around the country that we even hear of anecdotally, we’re on top of it, within hours.
“When we look back 20 years from now, I think it’ll be one of the most important moments in the plant-based industry. And I hope we meet it.”
Magic Valley, a Melbourne-based producer of cultivated meat, has received A$100,000 in government funding to scale up production and drive down costs.
Aussie food tech startup Magic Valley has secured A$100,000 ($62,800) from the national government to transition from research to commercial production of cultivated meat.
The grant is part of the A$392M Industry Growth Program (IGP), which aligns with the government’s National Reconstruction Fund priorities, including agricultural value-adding and low-emissions technologies.
The investment will help Magic Valley, which specialises in cultivated pork and lamb, accelerate production, optimise bioprocessing, and drive down costs, which it says are key steps on its path to market.
How Magic Valley makes its cultivated meat
Courtesy: Magic Valley
Founded in 2020 by CEO Paul Bevan, Magic Valley unveiled a cultivated lamb product in 2022, targeting one of the most polluting products in the food system (it ranks only behind beef and dark chocolate). It then ventured into cultivated pork with a minced product, which the startup has indicated it can produce for A$8 per kg.
Magic Valley’s technology doesn’t require fetal bovine serum, and taps into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). It takes a small sample of skin cells from a living animal, which are expanded and turned into iPSCs, which in turn can be converted into muscle and fat.
The cells are grown in a bioreactor, in a mixture of water, amino acids, and other nutrients. They’re harvested after a few weeks and turned into meat products. These can be made over and over again from the original cell sample, since the iPSCs can grow in an unlimited way.
According to the company, its process can reduce its proteins’ emissions by 92%, land use by 95%, and water use by 78% compared to their conventional counterparts.
In 2023, it collaborated with Washington-based Biocellion SPC to enhance its bioreactor design and optimise production, and expanded into a new pilot facility at bio-innovator and incubator Co-Labs. This plant can house bioreactors with a capacity of up to 3,000 litres, allowing it to potentially produce 150,000 kgs of cultivated meat annually.
Courtesy: Magic Valley
Magic Valley hosted a public tasting for its cultivated pork in April, serving it as part of baos at John Gorilla Café in Brunswick, Victoria. It has also hosted a televised tasting on Australia’s Channel 7 network, and appeared on Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars Australia.
It was one of five startups to receive the latest round of grants under the IGP, which supports small and medium-sized businesses that play a crucial role in the economy but can find it difficult to come to market. The scheme focuses on several verticals, from renewables and medical science to defence and agriculture.
IGP supports enterprises in commercialising their ideas, growing their operations, expanding to national and international markets, and better positioning themselves to secure future investment and scaling opportunities.
Courtesy: Magic Valley
“This funding turbocharges our ability to scale. We’re not just making meat – we’re creating the future of food. And this support from the Australian government signals that they believe in that future too,” said Bevan.
It comes at a time when more and more Australians are cutting back on meat, with 42% now either reducing or not consuming animal protein at all. Last year alone, a quarter had lowered their meat intake, and another 14% were planning to do so too.
However, a 2023 survey of Australians and New Zealanders found that 74% weren’t familiar with cultivated meat, while only 24% would readily incorporate it into their diets (and 48% said they wouldn’t do so). Research also shows that when it comes to alternative protein policies, Australia ranks bottom on the list of the 10 most supportive governments in Asia-Pacific. So investments like the one in Magic Valley are a welcome step.
Courtesy: Food Frontier
While Cass Materials, Infinite Bioworks, and Smart MCs are all developing products and services to help manufacturers make cultivated meat, the only two companies actively producing these proteins are Magic Valley and Vow.
The latter is already selling its cultivated quail and foie gras in Singapore and Hong Kong, and is awaiting approval from Food Standards Australia New Zealand. Magic Valley has indicated that it was working closely with the regulator on the compliance and safety of its cultivated pork, and previously suggested that it could commercially launch the product this year.
British vegan entrepreneur Heather Mills, founder of legacy brand VBites, on what’s going wrong for the plant-based industry – and how it can move forward.
Having spent decades in the vegan food sector and collaborating with a small group of like-minded individuals to raise awareness about the urgent need to protect animals, the planet, and our health, we were delighted to witness the tremendous growth in this movement over the past five years.
We would like to take credit for it – and we definitely should, as far as making the best products are concerned at VBites.
However, the real reason for the growth was the sale of three vegan/vegetarian food companies for hundreds of millions of dollars: Quorn, Daiya, and then the IPO of Beyond Meat (which took its market cap to $12B at one point).
At the time, I warned these companies that they should have their messaging ready for the pushback from the meat and dairy industry. Unfortunately, they didn’t listen and that huge $12B valuation dropped to under $500M for Beyond Meat.
The meat and dairy industry became afraid because they did not have ownership and control of the vegan market and the boom, and put out dreadful products that turned people off going vegan.
Investor interest must be retained
Courtesy: VBites
In the UK, at VBites, we thought about this and got ahead of the game by replicating famous brands and manufacturing vegan alternates for them, such as Applewood vegan cheese, Domino’s pizza cheese, and numerous other supermarket labels of meat- and fish-free products.
Had these companies that obtained hundreds of millions of dollars focused on working with meat and dairy companies to replicate their brands as white labels, as well as their own brand, the Gartner effect may not have happened.
That’s why we created the first vegan burgers and cheese for McDonald’s and Burger King.
Going forward, there is no other choice than to push the reduction of global warming, the cruelty of animals, and the improvement of health by going vegan.
The most important thing is that greedy corporate investors stay invested in these companies for the long term, for the future of their own children, the planet, and the animals.
It’s not just the profit – the sector will become very profitable – however, it needs time and investment, and it needs to be well spent. I find the big corporations waste so much money and that’s attributed to this downfall.
It’s all about the people
Courtesy: Diana Papini
Vegan startups mainly started with enthusiastic founders like myself. I had 30 years’ experience and made the same mistakes. However, I never had a huge investment.
A lot of these founders also were really knowledgeable in tech and brand marketing, but did not think of the bigger picture or understand how difficult it is to scale up kitchen products into large-scale, manufacturing products.
That requires a totally different expertise.
At the time, I contacted them and said: “Let us do the manufacturing for you, as we have the world’s largest 100% vegan manufacturing facilities and have been the experts for decades.”
They had no original IP and we suggested they get on with the genius of branding, but unfortunately, they ignored this and most of them went into administration.
We at VBites went through a similar situation when we were invested in, because the investors thought they knew what they were doing and didn’t listen to how to run a small family business. Bottom line, it’s all about the people.
We have our online supermarket called Alternative Stores, which is growing 55% per month. We have 2,200 products, including the most innovative boiled, fried and poached vegan eggs. We’ve also created an egg albumen to go into food application.
To help the smaller family businesses that have been used for their innovations, then copied, private-labelled and dumped out of the supermarkets, we don’t charge for these brands to put their products on our website. This way, they can test the market without mortgaging their house and putting themselves into debt.
We have turned our companies around by working directly on the factory floor with the people who have been with us for many decades. The problem with big corporates is that they sit in their ivory towers and most of them have never run a business from the ground up, so they need to listen to the founders.
And if the founders are not experienced, they need to listen to the financial expertise of those who know what they’re doing.
I believe that there will be another plant-based boom because there has to be. There is no other option.
Months after securing an exit for Deliciously Ella, founders Ella and Matthew Mills have acquired vegan ready meal leader Allplants out of administration under their revamped Plants brand.
Less than three months after it entered administration, British ready meal startup Allplants is back on the market, having been rescued by the founders of fellow vegan business Deliciously Ella in their bid to drive the conversation away from “ultra-processed meat alternatives”.
Ella and Matthew Mills, who sold Deliciously Ella to Hero Group in September, retained their Plants brand and restaurant in the multimillion-pound deal. While the Plants by DE eatery has since closed, the CPG label – launched as a sub-brand with Waitrose in 2022 – is now undergoing a refresh with the acquisition of Allplants.
“We are absolutely thrilled to share that today we have acquired the Allplants brand name and associated brand assets out of administration,” Ella Mills said in a statement. “We will bring together Plants and all plants to create something truly special – a new, natural, plant-based powerhouse.”
Instead of launching new products under the Allplants label, Plants will look to leverage the former’s social media following – it has nearly 200,000 followers across its accounts – to expand its reach.
The refreshed business will be led by managing director Kerry Atack, who has worked with Deliciously Ella since 2020.
Deliciously Ella founders tap into Allplants’s ‘enormous promise’
Courtesy: Plants
Set up by brothers Alex and Jonathan Petrides, Allplants has been around since 2016, selling vegan ready meals online and via retailers. It capitalised on the meal delivery boom a few years later during the pandemic-induced lockdowns, and when it made its retail debut in November 2022, it sold six million meals within the first three months.
Over the years, the company raised £67M from investors including professional footballers Chris Smalling and Kieran Gibbs. But in the background, it registered losses of nearly £10M in the seven months to March 2023, which Jonathan ascribed to inflation, post-Brexit supply chain disruptions, rising interest rate, and the shift from the growth stage to the pursuit of profitability.
The business went into administration in November, making 65 employees redundant and working with Interpath to find a buyer. Now, it has become the latest in a line of plant-based companies that have been rescued from the brink, including Meatless Farm, VBites, Plant & Bean, and Mycorena.
Courtesy: Allplants
“When we started cooking in 2016, fewer than 1% of Brits ate vegan. Today, that number is over 6%, with millions more flexing and shifting towards plant-based,” said Jonathan, who has left the business. “Allplants was always about sparking that curiosity, nudging habits, and helping people taste the future.”
He added: “Putting so much goodness out into the world and being a part of this societal shift is something we can always be very proud of, and I feel privileged to have been involved in such an important movement – but there’s still a lot of progress to hopefully come.”
In her statement, Mills said: “Having spent the past 12 years building Deliciously Ella and Plants, we have long admired the Allplants brand, and the brand name has built remarkable consumer awareness across the UK. Unfortunately, the business ran into significant financial difficulty, and we know that the resulting administration has been an incredibly difficult time for the community, customers, suppliers, team members and investors.”
She added that Plants was “pleased to have signed an agreement” to acquire the brand name and assets: “We’re so excited to build an exciting future for this brand with such enormous promise.”
Ella Mills slams UPFs ahead of Plants brand refresh
Courtesy: Plants/Green Queen
Plants sells pantry staples like pasta, sauces, kombucha, soups, and frozen meals, which are available at Waitrose, Ocado, Whole Foods Market, and Zapp.
The brand will announce a packaging refresh in April, with phrases like “Real food”, “Real flavour”, and “100% natural ingredients” forming part of a new direction that looks to shift the discourse away from ultra-processed foods (UPFs).
These make up 57% of the average British diet, and while experts have warned against associating processing with nutrition, a backlash against UPFs has also led to plant-based meat products falling into disrepute.
Retail sales for plant-based meat were down by 6% in the UK in 2023, with volumes plunging further by 13%, while the country’s largest meat-free company, Quorn, posted pre-tax losses of £63M that year, a fourfold increase from the £15M it lost in 2022, just as more youngsters are increasing their meat intake (19%) than reducing it (16%) in the UK. Vegan ready meals, meanwhile, saw a decline of 20%.
The UPF pushback has given rise to whole foods like beans, tofu (now in 8% of British households, despite being a UPF too), and tempeh (with one tempeh maker the second-fastest growing meat-free brand last year).
Courtesy: Deliciously Ella
“The plant-based category should be synonymous with real, nourishing food, yet for too long it has been dominated by ultra-processed meat alternatives, a trend now in steep decline. We’re here to try and change that, and to reimagine the plant-based fixture with delicious, natural, quick wins for clever cooks,” said Mills.
It’s the latest example of vegan brands themselves attacking plant-based meat for being ultra-processed. Phil Graves, CEO of mycelium meat maker Meati, recently told Green Queen that people shouldn’t have to choose between factory-farmed meat or “ultra-processed plant-based options that have a long list of ingredients you can’t pronounce”.
Consumers are cutting back on meat due to health concerns, but plant-based alternatives fail to meet their taste expectations – a new study says blended proteins could offer a balance.
Flavour, nutrition and affordability have long been thought to be the most influential factors driving food purchases. A new report from Food System Innovations (FSI) suggests that entrenched beliefs, familiarity concerns, and functional expectations are becoming increasingly important and are having an effect on people’s food choices.
The future food non-profit says that while their data shows consumers’ appetite for meat is decreasing due to health concerns, plant-based alternatives are not meeting the moment either – and their acceptance hinges on taste improvements.
FSI’s proposed solution? Blended meat – or, as they say, ‘Balanced Proteins’. The clue’s in the name. These products combine meat with plant-based ingredients, providing a better-for-you and better-for-the-planet solution without “changing the essence of what makes meat so beloved”.
According to a 2,000-person nationally representative survey of US omnivores and flexitarians, FSI conducted with YouGov, a 50:50 blend is the “sweet spot”. Since 37% of Americans prefer products with 1-49% of plant-based ingredients, and a third favour a 51-99% ratio, brands offering 50:50 blends – like the Both Burger, Fable Foods, and the Duo Burger – stand to win.
“This is an intuitive heuristic that people gravitate towards and helps them understand the category,” suggests Tim Dale, category innovation director at FSI.
Balancing health, taste and price concerns
Gen Zers have been labelled as the group spearheading the protein transition. Studies suggest that they are likely to reduce meat consumption based on factors like the environment, and the same goes for millennials.
According to FSI’s data, these two demographics also find the blended meat category more appealing than other age groups – 38% of Gen Z and 34% of millennial Americans were interested in the concept, compared to just 8-21% of the rest.
Courtesy: Food Systems Innovation
That being said, the widespread adoption of balanced proteins – as well as plant-based meat – is faced with a major barrier: taste. Nearly two-thirds of consumers who tried vegan alternatives rated their flavour as ‘okay’, ‘not so good’, or ‘terrible’, no doubt contributing to the 71% of respondents who said they’re unlikely to buy meat-free products in the next six months.
Even with blended meat, 63% said they wouldn’t purchase these products in the ensuing months. Asked why, 38% cited flavour and 29% texture.
At the same time, just over half of Americans who have reduced or intend to reduce their meat intake cite health and price as the biggest reasons. And for people who find blended meat appealing, having it be the same price or cheaper than conventional meat would influence at least 20% of those surveyed to buy these products.
So how do you balance the health and affordability concerns around meat with the taste dissatisfaction with alternatives? Dale proposes splitting the concept of taste into “perceived taste” and “actual taste”.
“Balanced proteins face a challenge with perceived taste, which is currently poor due to factors like familiarity, trust, and the role of meat and plant-based ingredients in consumers’ diets,” he says.
Indeed, 44% of those who find blended meat appealing say they’re “not someone who would eat this”, and cite it as a reason why they wouldn’t buy it for their loved ones.
Courtesy: Food Systems Innovation
“However, the actual taste of several brands has been shown to surpass leading conventional products in categories like burgers and chicken nuggets. This suggests that once consumers try these products, their initial taste scepticism may diminish,” notes Dale.
“Overcoming the perceived taste barrier will take time and will depend on more people trying products that provide new value to the consumer diets and consistently deliver on taste,” he adds.
Choose ‘functionality’ over ‘nutrition’ as processing fears persist
Curiosity drives the demand for blended meat more than factors like health or sustainability, and for Gen Zers, ease of preparation ranks just as high as nutrition on their list of priorities.
Speaking of which, most Americans who are turned off by blended meat aren’t worried about the nutrition aspect (only 18% expressed this concern) – instead, a third are worried about the way these products are manufactured. It’s a nod to the debate around ultra-processed foods, and how plant-based meat has been targeted across the media and criticised as being overly processed, unfairly so according to some.
Courtesy: Food Systems Innovation
“Consumers are particularly concerned about processing in novel meat categories, even though ingredient and processing concerns are less prominent in their overall diet,” says Dale. The fact that this doesn’t impact their nutritional perception of blended meat shows that “while they may dislike the means, they accept the ends”.
He points to the “tension” of trying something new as a reason for the pushback against processing: “Consumers must overcome habitual purchases and anxieties when trying a new product. For balanced proteins to succeed, they need to clearly communicate a compelling benefit that outweighs the perceived risk of change.”
This lack of familiarity and trust gives people “an easy reason to dismiss” novel products, since they look for information that reinforces their preexisting concerns. “To overcome these barriers, balanced proteins should lean into distinct advantages – ideally tied to plant-based ingredient inclusion – that address different consumer pain points,” Dale explains.
“While consumer education and cleaner ingredient strategies can help, the most effective way to move past UPF concerns is by delivering benefits that consumers actively desire. I think Perdue Plus [which uses plant-based ingredients from The Better Meat Co] is a great example – getting children to enjoy eating vegetables.”
Courtesy: Perdue
He notes that many blended meat formats are competing on the same value proposition as conventional meat, which has high consumer ratings for taste and value: “To win in these categories, balanced proteins must far exceed conventional options, not just match them.”
Dale also prefers using “functionality” over terms like “health” or “nutrition”, which may not be effective drivers. “While nutritional benefits matter, brands need to recognise how consumers perceive their conventional meat competition – if they don’t see a problem, nutrition alone won’t drive adoption,” he says.
How can brands tap into the blended meat opportunity?
Overall, only a quarter of respondents to the YouGov poll found blended meat appealing, in stark contrast to the 67% of omnivores who expressed interest in buying these products in a 2024 survey by FSI’s Nectar initiative.
Dale argues that the Nectar study likely setup the increased products’ appeal. People completed the survey immediately after tasting the product and were unaware whether they had eaten a blended or conventional version.
The methodology used in the YouGov poll, however, likely reduced appeal. “The category was described in the abstract rather than with images or real products, which may have limited familiarity,” explains Dale. The wording used to describe blended meat suggested that conventional proteins aren’t widely perceived as needing nutritional improvement and sustainability remains a niche driver.
Regardless, Dale advises brands to find their white space based on consumer needs and desires. “It is easier to solve an existing consumer problem rather than a created one,” he says.
Moreover, these products must be seen as approachable, and finding a balance between familiarity with meat and a differentiated value proposition from plant-based ingredients is crucial too.
Courtesy: Anisha Sisodia/Phil’s Finest
“Don’t let the pursuit of perfect clean labels or niche positioning overshadow the fundamentals – taste, value, familiarity, and functionality,” he says. “Engage consumers early and often to develop a clear, realistic understanding of their taste perceptions and preferences.”
He adds that brands should lean into innovative formats, experimenting with products that break down barriers to improve accessibility and appeal – think smaller pack sizes or family-friendly options for shared meals. Moreover, lowering the barriers to trial is important. “Address key friction points – such as taste scepticism and price sensitivity – to make trying and switching easier for consumers,” says Dale.
He recommends businesses measure the results of marketing campaigns in the long run: “A new category with new benefits requires sustained communication. Prioritise long-term brand building and consumer education to drive lasting adoption.”
Israel’s Finally Foods has announced its first field trial for potatoes containing casein, less than a year after the molecular farming startup launched.
In what it describes as “record time”, AI-driven molecular farming startup Finally Foods will begin its first field trial for potatoes that contain dairy proteins in Israel next week.
The move comes just 10 months after the Israeli firm emerged from stealth, marking a “major milestone” in its path to commercialisation. The field trial, which will last three to four months, will be a validation point of the company’s technology, which essentially modifies potatoes into bioreactors that can produce casein in a sustainable and cost-effective manner.
It will allow the company to assess the yield scalability and protein yield of its potato crops. The trial “transitions our technology from controlled greenhouse conditions to real-world agricultural settings, testing how our casein-producing potatoes perform in open-field environments”, explains Dafna Gabbay, co-founder and CEO of Finally Foods.
“One of the key challenges in molecular farming is the lengthy time-to-market, but Finally Foods is demonstrating that molecular farming can efficiently produce high-value proteins at scale in record time by drastically reducing the trial-and-error time,” she adds.
Molecular farming helping produce multiple casein formulations
Courtesy: Finally Foods
Gabbay established the startup with CTO Basia J Vinocur, who was formerly the VP of R&D at biotech firm Evogene. Finally Foods has an exclusive license for Evogene’s GeneRator AI technology, which it uses to optimise its production process by enabling short R&D cycles, more efficient extractions, and faster commercialisation plans.
Evogene holds around a 40% stake in the company, with the rest of the ownership divided between the co-founders and state-backed investor The Kitchen FoodTech Hub.
Finally Foods chose to use potatoes because they met several efficiency parameters, including high yields and effective protein extraction. The company has designed the potato as an optimised “expression system” that can formulate multiple variations of casein.
“We’re currently expressing multiple formulations of casein in our plants, with a primary focus on developing versatile formulations that can be used across a broad range of dairy applications,” says Gabbay.
Casein is the most common protein found in cow’s milk, making up 80% of its protein content, and is a key emulsifier that prevents water and fat from separating and gives cheese its melty and stretchy attributes.
There are four kinds of casein proteins found in milk, which fold into a spherical structure known as a micelle, where they are suspended in a highly hydrated solution and bound together with minerals like calcium. This is key to casein’s functional attributes, and Gabbay has previously indicated that her team plans to express all four sub-units in one plant.
Courtesy: Finally Foods
The startup is one of several companies working with molecular farming to produce animal proteins, including Moolec, Alpine Bio, Mozza, Miruku, PoLoPo, and Veloz Bio. A market set to double in value by 2029, molecular farming has been identified as a more viable and affordable way to replicate animal proteins than cell cultivation or precision fermentation.
This technology relies upon genetically engineering plants to produce proteins, which can be harvested from leaves or other tissues. This forgoes the need for expensive fermentation tanks, since plants themselves are the natural bioreactors here.
Finally Foods in talks with dairy producers
“This trial is a necessary step toward large-scale protein extraction, paving the way for efficient and cost-effective production at scale,” says Gabbay.
One of the major challenges faced by molecular farming is regulation – companies require approval to both grow genetically modified plants and then sell them for use in human food.
“Field trials are an essential step for regulatory approval, allowing us to gather key agronomic data and validate environmental impact assessments,” she adds.
This field trial follows the completion of a greenhouse gas trial, which confirmed that the potatoes grow and behave like non-transgenic potatoes and showcase no abnormal characteristics. “This is essential for regulatory approvals and to ensure the plant’s viability for large-scale agricultural production,” notes Gabbay.
“Also, the potatoes we harvested from the greenhouse enable us to extract and analyse casein from different lines expressing different formulations. This step is key for optimising protein yield, functionality, and extraction efficiency.”
Courtesy: Finally Foods
Integrating AI into the process has allowed Finally Foods to accelerate development and get high yields of functional casein within potatoes, while keeping costs low. More and more alternative porten companies are leveraging AI, including Shiru which has an AI-powered protein discovery platform; Climax Foods, which employs machine learning to reverse-engineer what makes cheese taste good; and NotCo, whose AI platform matches thousands of plant-based ingredients to find the combinations best suited to replace animal proteins.
Finally Foods is “in ongoing discussions with several dairy companies to start developing applications” with its casein formulations this year. To support its progress, it is currently securing an extension to the pre-seed round it raised last year, and expects to open a seed funding round in the months to come.
“This next phase of funding will support scaling our production, advancing regulatory approvals, and expanding commercial partnerships, as we continue to drive innovation in molecular farming and plant-based casein production,” Gabbay says.
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Beyond Meat’s new products and cookbook, the US’s first corn milk brand, and a cultivated seafood tasting.
New products and launches
Plant-based meat giant Beyond Meat has expanded its steak lineup with Chimichurri and Korean BBQ-Style flavours, which are available at Sprouts Farmers Market. It has also launched a Go Beyond the BUzzer cookbook with the National Basketball Players Association, with recipes from current NBA players like Cade Cunningham, Kyrie Irving and DeAndre Jordan.
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
German alt-seafood startup Koralo is expanding into the US, and looking to partner with clients for its co-fermented microalgae- and mycelium-based Wellness New F!sh fillet and functional food ingredients.
Speaking of seafood, Canadian firm Konscious Foods has partnered with New York-based seafood purveyor Acme Smoked Fish, which will distribute its plant-based smoked salmon to delis, restaurants, bagel shops, and more.
Fellow Canadian food tech player The Cultivated B has launched multi-channel biosensors to monitor the growth and metabolism of cell culture and fermentation processes. The tech combines continuous tracking with AI-enabled real-time analytics to help enhance accuracy and speed.
Also in Canada, Odd Burger has secured a retail listing with Calgary Co-op, making its vegan frozen food lineup available at all 22 locations in Alberta.
Courtesy: Maïzly
Based in one of the US’s major corn producers, Indianapolis startup Maïzly has debuted a category-first corn milk, which it offers in original and chocolate flavours. Free from seed, nut or vegetable oils, it packs 8g of fibre per cup, and is available on its website, Amazon and select retailers.
Sweden’s Veg of Lund has secured a listing for its Dug potato milk product at 150 Carrefour stores in Spain, marking its debut in the country.
In Spain, supermarket chain Eroski, catering company Ausolan, mycelium firm Innomy, and the Leartiker Technology Centre have created desserts and snack bars made from fungal protein as part of the Delifungus project.
Iceland’s ORF Genetics and South Korea’s CellMeathosted a public tasting for cultivated shellfish meat at the Iceland Ocean Cluster, in an event attended by First Gentleman Björn Skúlason and agrifood minister Hanna Katrín Friðriksson.
Courtesy: Solar Foods
Italian algae startup KelpEat has launched high-protein crackers using Solein, the gas protein produced by Finnish firm Solar Foods. It was showcased at the Pitti Taste show in Florence this week.
Company and finance updates
Solar Foods has also reached a step closer to bringing its air-based protein to the EU market, after addressing inquiries from the European Food Safety Authority regarding the scientific opinion on its novel food application.
Courtesy: Heura
Spanish plant-based meat leader Heura has improved its B Corp rating by 18%, now scoring 111 points and securing the top spot for CPG food businesses with a turnover of over €1M.
NoPalm Ingredients, a Dutch producer of fermentation-derived oils and fats from upcycled agricultural sidestreams, has become the first company to scale such ingredients to industrial levels of 120,000 litres.
Israeli food tech startup SuperMeat has teamed up with Argentinian biomanufacturing firm Stämm to expand production of the former’s cultivated meat, which it says can be produced for $11.79 per pound. The partnership is supported by mutual investor Varana Capital.
Courtesy: Dror Varshavski
Canadian plant protein manufacturer Burcon Nutrascience has agreed to acquire a commercial-scale facility in Galesburg, Illinois, and will begin production in the first half of this year.
In the US, YC-backed blended meat startup Choppy (formerly Paul’s Table) has ceased operations nearly three years after it was established.
Californian alt-honey startup MeliBioearned $15,000 after winning Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition‘s NGT3 pitch slam contest for its precision-fermented honey.
Research, policy and awards
MeliBio‘s European vegan honey distribution deal with Narayan Foods is on the backburner, but the business is aiming to become profitable by the end of the year.
Courtesy: Imperial College London
In the UK, the University of Bristol and Imperial College London have voted to support the transition towards plant-based catering menus, joining a host of other institutes in the Plant-Based Universities movement.
Can targeted menu modifications ‘nudge’ people into picking plant-based items in restaurants? A new study by Bryant Research explores this question, based on trials run at Mumbai restaurant Gracias Granny.
South Korea’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs has unveiled its 2025 Agri-Food Fund Operation Plan, committing ₩55B ($38M) towards smart agriculture and food tech.
Courtesy: Gander
Food waste app Gander has been nominated for Prince William‘s Earthshot Prize 2025. The app operates in UK, Ireland, Australia and Brazil, and has saved about 40 million items of food from ending up in the trash.
Finally, the Freedom Food Alliance (FFA) has launchedFoodFacts.org, a fact-checking platform powered by an AI chatbot and expert-backed nutritional and health content. Disclaimer: Green Queem Media founder Sonalie Figueiras is an advisor at FFA.
With egg prices returning to sky-high levels in the US, it brings a major opportunity for plant-based and fermentation-derived alternatives. Can these companies capitalise on the moment?
You know things are serious when Waffle House starts upcharging you for every egg.
The all-day breakfast chain serves 272 million eggs every year; it has now added a temporary 50-cent per-egg surcharge on orders due to the bird-flu-induced national shortage.
The current wave of avian flu – in its third year now – killed more than 40 million chickens in the US in 2024, causing major supply problems and subsequently driving up prices. The peak may have been January 2023, when a dozen eggs set you back $4.82 in the supermarket – though current costs are agonisingly close.
The crisis is showing no signs of abatement – the number of chickens affected by the flu per month tripled in December, and increased further last month. That leaves an egg-shaped hole in grocery baskets and restaurant orders.
This is an opportunity made for sustainable egg protein startups, which are making egg alternatives with plant-based ingredients, as well as recombinant egg proteins from fermentation.
The egg market in numbers
Courtesy: CNBC
Retail chicken egg prices in the US reached $4.15 per dozen in December 2024, a 65% hike from 12 months prior, with consumers and restaurants paying up to $7.
Egg prices are projected to rise by another 20% in 2025, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
The cost of eggs wholesale has already reached an all-time high. White shell eggs now cost $8 a dozen, obliterating the previous record of $5.46 in December 2022.
Inventories of shell eggs are roughly 15-16% below the five-year average, as per the USDA.
It’s not just the US – since 2019, egg prices have doubled in South Africa, and grown by 50-90% in Europe, Russia, Japan, India and Brazil.
In Australia, 1.8 million hens were culled last year as a result of the country’s largest avian flu outbreak. While that was eradicated, a new strain of the virus has appeared.
Courtesy: GFI
Plant-based eggs are a nascent market, making up just 0.5% of retail sales of vegan food in 2023. This amounted to $43M in dollar sales, a 5% decrease from 2022. Unit sales also dropped by 13%.
In the longer term, retail sales of plant-based eggs grew by 11% between 2021 and 2023, and unit sales were up by 8%. In comparison, unit sales of conventional eggs fell by 4% in this period.
Only 1% of US households buy vegan eggs; repeat rates have continued to increase, from 38% in 2020 to nearly half (48%) in 2023.
Courtesy: GFI
While the price gap between chicken-free and conventional eggs shrunk in 2022, a slight stabilisation in the latter’s supply widened it in 2023, with plant-based eggs costing over $8 higher per dozen. This disparity is set to narrow again as avian flu rages on.
One research firm suggests that in Europe, the plant-based egg market is expected to grow by 40% annually to reach $3.88B in 2031, showcasing the potential for these products.
In Asia, this market is set to expand even faster (73% annually) to reach $850M in 2028, led by China and India.
Courtesy: Data Bridge Market Research
The problem: Why egg prices are high
A long-running flu: At the root of the issue is H5N1, the highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza that has led to the culling of nearly 158 million birds since 2022. This wave has been ongoing for much longer than usual – in the past, bird flu waves have only lasted for a season or so. Meanwhile, high animal feed prices (initially originating from Russia’s war on Ukraine) have contributed too.
Refreshing flocks is not a quick process: More than 1,550 commercial and backyard flocks have been affected by H5N1 in the last three years. Disinfecting and verifying the safety of a farm can be a lengthy process – and even when it’s deemed safe, it takes a new flock up to 16 weeks to start laying eggs.
Logistical challenges: The egg supply chain has not been spared by the logistical crises that have hit the global food industry. Transportation costs – especially for refrigerated items – have soared amid a shortage of truck drivers in the US and a hike in long-haul truck rates.
Courtesy: Getty Images via Canva
Cage-free policies: Almost a dozen states in the US – including California, Massachusetts, Arizona, and Washington – have introduced cage-free egg policies. Such anti-cruelty legislation sets minimum space requirements for hens, which reduces producers’ overall capacity.
Political pressure: Eggs have been a talking point in the US political sphere over the last year, with President Donald Trump criticising former President Joe Biden’s administration for failing to control the price hikes and promising to get them back to normal when he took over – in actuality, things have only gotten worse since the start of his second term.
Low supply, high demand: While supply has dwindled, Americans’ demand for protein-packed foods like eggs has increased. These consumers are increasingly swapping red meat for poultry and eggs, and 71% have named protein as the macronutrient they’re most interested in consuming.
What are chicken-free egg makers trying to solve?
Direct swaps for classics
Several startups offer liquid eggs or ready-to-eat versions of classic egg dishes that can be used as a 1:1 swap, and these tend to target CPG consumers who use eggs as part of their meals at home.
Perhaps the largest name is Eat Just, whose Just Egg comes in pourable and toaster formats and uses mung bean as a base – it can be used to make scrambles, omelettes and even baked goods, though it does come with a steep price tag.
As of late 2023, Eat Just indicated that its egg alternative captured 99% of the US vegan egg market and that by February 2024 it had sold the equivalent of half a billion eggs. The startup faces competition from brands like Zero Egg and Simply Eggless in the US, and international players such as Crack’d, Oggs, Perfeggt and Vegge.
Courtesy: Eat Just
Others, meanwhile, are moving past pourable formats to offer more novel options. Yo Egg, for example, makes vegan sunny-side-up and poached eggs with runny yolks, which can be boiled or fried. BeLeaf also makes hen-free fried eggs. And under it WunderEggs brand, Crafty Counter turns almonds and cashews into egg patties, boiled eggs, and deviled eggs.
In Singapore, Float Foods has developed a range of plant-based eggs for different applications, including poached, yolks, and XL omelette wraps, under its OnlyEg brand. Poached eggs are also a feature of Germany’s Neggst, as are sunny-side-ups, boiled eggs, and patties.
Courtesy: Le Papondu
French brand Le Papondu, meanwhile, is looking to take things a step further. While it has gone to market with egg patties, it’s working on a crackable whole egg in the background.
A bang for your buck
Most of these pre-prepared or pourable egg alternatives don’t actually undercut the cost of eggs, contributing to the price gap between plant-based and conventional versions. This is where powdered alternatives come in.
It’s the original egg substitute format and it continues to enjoy popularity, as illustrated by the number of brands in this space. As dried products that shoppers add water to, they are much more wallet-friendly, they can be packaged more minimally and they don’t require refrigerated transportation.
Courtesy: Acremade
Powdered vegan eggs are an ideal alternative for cash-strapped consumers in the egg-flation era. Brands like Peggs, Acremade, Orgran, Bob’s Red Mill, Vegg, and Sol Natural are filling this gap.
Like-for-like functionality
Some companies are targeting the bakery and CPG sectors with alternatives that perform like eggs in different products—estimates suggest that up to 40% of all eggs are used as ingredients in foodservice and food manufacturing.
For example, Follow Your Heart, Fabalish, and Eat Just all make egg-free, plant-based mayonnaise, and companies like Orgran, Oggs, and Egg’n’Up all offer substitutes for use in baked goods.
Courtesy: Eat Just
Others, including Revyve and ProteinDistillery, are using waste ingredients like spent brewer’s yeast – a byproduct of the beer industry – as fermentation feedstocks for microbes to produce egg protein alternatives for use in baked goods and meat analogues.
Meanwhile, some startups are using precision fermentation to make bio-identical versions of egg proteins without chickens. The Every Company makes EggWhite (which contains an ovalbumin equivalent), a transparent glycoprotein, and a whole egg; the startup has been granted three ‘no further questions’ letters from the FDA in the US and has applied for regulatory approval in the UK and the EU as well.
Finland’s Onego Bio is using the same technology to produce its recombinant ovalbumin, Bioalbumen, and is awaiting FDA approval this year.
Courtesy: Onego Bio
Belgium’s Otro is also working on egg white proteins made via precision fermentation. And Germany’s Formo is set to launch a precision-fermented egg alternative (though their version isn’t bioidentical). Elsewhere, Israeli startups PoLoPo and Finally Foods are growing egg proteins inside potatoes via molecular farming.
While it’s still early days for many of these startups, there is a clear opportunity amidst what looks like continued supply, quality and price volatility for the global chicken-egg industry.
The number of Europeans who say they eat sustainably has dropped to 46%, despite calls for the bloc’s citizens to cut back on meat and dairy.
Over the last year, several countries in Europe have revised their national dietary guidelines to recommend people eat more plants and fewer animals. This, policymakers have noted, is crucial to safeguard both public and planetary health.
But that advice seems to be falling on deaf ears if a 19,500-person survey of consumers in 18 European countries (including the UK) is anything to go by.
The EIT Food Consumer Observatory’s annual Food Trust Report – backed by the EU – finds that people are prioritising health over sustainability in their food choices, and that too by a considerable margin.
When asked what they’d like to change most about their diets, more than half (51%) of Europeans said they wanted to eat healthier food, while 12% were looking for more affordable options.
Less than one in 10 (9%) of respondents said they wanted to prioritise sustainability, a concerning finding for a demographic that has tended to be more climate-literate than their counterparts in the US or Asia.
“While we can see a desire by consumers to eat more healthily, we’re not seeing the same desire to prioritise sustainability through dietary changes. But linked to this, we’re also seeing consumers struggle with gauging reliability of information about food,” said Sofia Kuhn, director of public insights and engagement at EIT Food. “How can we expect consumers to change their behaviour if they can’t access the information they need to do so?”
Less than one in five Europeans is avoiding meat or dairy
Europeans eat twice as much meat as the global average and what’s recommended by Eat Lancet’s Planetary Health Diet. However, 63% of them are satisfied with their current diets, and only 15% would like to make changes to the way they eat.
Of those who are unsatisfied, 65% mention healthier diets as the priority improvement, and just 5% point to sustainability. However, the importance of the latter increases importance among those happy with their current eating patterns, 12% of whom call it a priority.
“This means that consumers first want to maximise the healthiness of their diets and pay attention to the planetary impact of their diet when they are satisfied with the healthiness,” the report notes.
But the intention to live sustainably has been on the decline since 2020, when 78% of Europeans said they wanted to be more eco-friendly, compared to 70% today – this is despite climate change wreaking havoc on the continent and killing 45,000 people annually.
This translates to diet too. The share of Europeans who say they eat sustainably has reduced from 51% in 2020 to 46% in 2024. And despite meat and dairy being highly polluting foods – they account for 84% of EU agricultural emissions, despite providing only 35% of its calories – less than one in five (18%) say they avoid animal products.
In contrast, 40% of respondents say they actively avoid processed foods, highlighting the conundrum faced by plant-based meat makers. Seasonal and local eating are the major dietary considerations when it comes to sustainability, though just 30% try to eat foods with the “least impact on the environment”.
Knowledge gap key to sustainability interest
Over half of Europeans would like to increase their intake of fruits and vegetables, in line with dietary recommendations. That said even though they’re overconsuming protein, 30% would like to eat more of this macronutrient. In contrast, only 38% want to increase fibre consumption, despite most Europeans being fibre-deficient.
In terms of future dietary changes, about 60% of survey respondents say they’d like to avoid processed foods, but only a quarter say the same for animal-based foods. In fact, 12% would like to increase their intake of meat and dairy, leaving the net percentage of people who want to eat more plant-forward at 13%.
“Despite the fact that this is probably the most sustainable behaviour on the list and the attention given to this change in diets, very few consumers are planning to shift their intake of animal-based products to more plant-based options,” the report found.
Going forward, 44% of Europeans would like to decrease the environmental impact of their diets, an improvement on current trends. In a blow to regenerative agriculture, only 26% of people want to eat more foods grown this way.
One reason for the low interest in planet-friendly eating could be a knowledge gap. Only 46% of Europeans feel they have enough knowledge about the sustainability of food, and just 41% can determine just how eco-friendly a food is.
This is directly linked with trust in the food chain – those who trust various food system actors feel more knowledgeable about sustainability. The problem EIT’s research has uncovered is that not enough people have faith in the food chain. Only around a quarter of Europeans trust retailers and regulatory authorities on sustainability, and even the most trusted actors – farmers – fall short here.
Lack of support for cultivated meat and animal-free dairy
One way to improve the European diet is through food innovation. However, consumer enthusiasm for this has already been low and dropped from 34% in 2023 to 28% last year. This is also associated with trust in the food system – 38% of those who have faith in the food chain are open to innovation, versus 16% who don’t.
Foods that support emotional well-being are the most popular form of new tech among Europeans, followed by personalised nutrition, indoor farming, and algae-based foods. Only a third support animal-free dairy products made from precision fermentation, while an equal number of Europeans are in opposition.
The most disliked innovation is insect protein (rejected by 62% of Europeans), although 3D-printed food and genetically-altered foods aren’t far behind (58% and 57%, respectively).
As for cultivated meat, more people are opposed to it (45%) than in favour (29%). This comes against the backdrop of Italy’s ban on cultivated meat, and similar (though so far unsuccessful) efforts by countries like France, Romania, and Hungary. At the same time, the European region is an emerging leader in the novel foods space, with several homegrown companies undergoing regulatory checks in other countries, and one startup selling cultivated chicken for pets beginning last week.
The EIT Food Trust Report also comes amid calls by doctors, climate experts, food giants, and even farmers to accelerate the protein transition in the EU and spotlight sustainability in the European Council’s upcoming agrifood vision.
“Across the board, we’re seeing a lack of trust in food systems actors to put consumers’ best interests at heart, and provide accurate information about food, health and sustainability,” said Kuhn.
“As food systems professionals, we have a major opportunity to transform the way consumers perceive the bodies that produce, process, market and regulate the food they eat. Collaboration will be key as we move towards greater transparency and accountability.”
