Backed by the Thai government, Sangtuptim Inter Co., a manufacturer of coconut-based products, has developed a plant-based pork analogue from coconut water.
A Thai company known for its coconut vermicelli has created plant-based meat using coconut water, as part of a government-led programme to promote the industrial economy.
Sangtuptim Inter Co. has developed the meat analogue under the Department of Industrial Promotion’s (Diprom) Reshape the Future policy. The product has won an award in the UK, and is said to represent a prototype for using innovation to increase the value of local food products.
Thailand is the 10th largest producer of coconuts globally, and has a burgeoning alternative protein sector marked by consumer enthusiasm for healthier products. According to Orasa Sangtuptim, managing director of Sangtuptim Inter Co., plant-based food has become popular in the country, with food safety, sourcing, and environmental impact being key considerations.
Treading international (coconut) waters
Courtesy: Sangtubtim Inter Co.
Diprom announced its Reshape the Future policy in January, with a view to keeping up with the changing economy, reshaping the country’s economic corridors, and increasing access to opportunities through investment. For 2024, the goal is to help over 18,000 entrepreneurs and create over ฿10B ($293.5M) in added economic value.
When it comes to the agriculture sector, the government agency plans to do so by promoting access to production technology, boosting value-added processing, and helping develop products that meet consumer needs – especially health-promoting plant-based foods.
Specialising in coconut products, Sangtuptim Inter Co. joined the Industrial Promotion Center, Region 8 scheme that looks to develop small and medium-sized enterprises, beginning with a coconut jelly and further innovating with fresh non-fat, sugar-free noodles made from coconut water, which can be served cold and hot.
The plant-based pork, meanwhile, is a mix of coconut water and king oyster mushrooms, and has recently been patented. As part of its international recognition, the product has received vegan certification in Italy, alongside the gold award at the International Invention and Trade Expo 2022 in London.
These products capitalise on the strength of local farmers in the Samut Songkhram Province, and elevate an agricultural raw material to a higher-value product through tech innovation. Currently, Sangtuptim Inter Co.’s products are sold locally, as well as in the US, Germany, New Zealand, Canada, and Norway.
Plant-based demand strong in Thailand
Courtesy: Sangtubtim Inter Co.
“Throughout our participation in the DIPROM programme, we have gained practical knowledge that can be effectively applied,” said Sangtuptim. “We received in-depth advice from experts that has been beneficial to our business, resulting in an annual revenue increase of over ฿2M ($59,000).”
While the Thai plant-based sector has grown by 61% in the last five years – expected to reach 45B in 2024 – it still faces its challenges. In June, the country’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published draft regulations suggesting a ban on meat- and dairy-related terms (such as ‘almond milk’, ‘plant-based chicken nuggets’, ‘Angus’ and even ‘clean meat’) on plant-based analogues.
But this comes amid increased willingness to shift to alternative proteins in Thailand. According to a 1,500-person survey published in January by Madre Brava, two-thirds of Thai consumers plan to stop eating meat in the next two years, and only 9% say they wouldn’t consume alternative proteins in that period.
Health and nutrition concerns are both the main consumption drivers and barriers – 57% find alternative proteins healthier than meat, but 47% say they’d rather eat whole foods given the amount of processing meat analogues go through.
Price is another major concern, with 47% also finding plant-based alternatives too expensive. That said, two in five Thai consumers are willing to swap half their meat intake with alternative proteins, while 51% would swap half their meat consumption with traditional plant proteins.
Courtesy: Madre Brava
Meanwhile, Thai citizens want government action to support farmer transitions with new jobs (72%) and eco-friendly practices (69%). “If the government has a policy to seriously support the production of plant-based protein and alternative protein, both for domestic consumption and export, it would be able to correspond with the direction of both the domestic and export markets,” said Jacques-Chai Chomthongdi, Southeast Asia director at Madre Brava.
A product like Sangtuptim Inter Co.’s vegan pork – which uses locally farmed coconuts, offers health benefits, and promotes food security in a country where 10.5% of people face severe hunger every day – fits the bill.
As inflation eases, food tech investments are showing signs of recovery, but companies within the alternative protein ecosystem are treading different paths.
While food tech venture capital dipped by 48% in 2023 (reaching $15.3B), investor interest in this sector is bouncing back, according to a new report by French strategy consultants DigitalFoodLab.
In the first half of 2024, food tech startups already attracted $7.9B – just over 50% of the 2023 total, indicating that the industry is no longer suffering from the funding declines of the last two years.
“The slight bounce back that we observed in the first half of the year is mostly due to a handful of larger deals in delivery startups,” says Matthieu Vincent, co-founder and partner at DigitalFoodLab. “At the end of the day, it shows that there is renewed trust in this ecosystem (delivery) as inflation is slowing down.”
Courtesy: DigitalFoodLab
Despite early-stage investments remaining strong in 2022 and 2023, the first six months of this year saw seed funding rounds fall dramatically from $2B in 2023 to less than $700,000. The wave of food tech financing driven by late-stage deals – at $3B, Series D+ and private equity deals nearly matched last year’s total of $3.3B.
“This is only a point of attention, but it could become worrying if it continues, as early-stage investments are fundamental in developing a healthy ecosystem,” the report notes.
Alternative proteins charting different courses
Courtesy: DigitalFoodLab
After the 2020-21 peak, when funding was at record levels, inflationary concerns and high interest rates combined to lower investor interest. But now, as the situation normalises, investment activity has reached a “new plateau”.
While delivery is still king, upstream and midstream technologies are taking centre stage. This includes AgTech and Food Science startups (the latter comprises alternative proteins and new food products) – and there has also been a surge in collaborations between companies in these two segments.
Food Science players made up 28% of the industry’s investments last year, reaching $4.7B. In the first half of 2024, these startups have already raised $2B, thanks to large rounds like Meati‘s $100M Series C and Perfect Day‘s $90M pre-Series E.
Investments into brands showcasing new food and drink products are helping the overall category, but “there is a wave of doubts about the ability of alternative protein startups to deliver results in the short term”, according to the report.
Vincent explains that the alternative protein ecosystem is encompassing three “increasingly different paths”. For brands making plant-based analogues, sales have decreased despite consolidation in the category. “We can’t have a call with an investor without hearing: ‘We don’t want to look at that space,’” says Vincent.
“However, we still feel optimistic about this space and expect that as inflation decreases, consumers will go back to experiment with these products, but maybe not before mid-2025.”
Then there are the companies dealing with precision fermentation or cultivated meat. “Doubts are still running high on the ability of the startups to ever reach price parity, and more importantly on their ability to fund their scale-up (or build the facilities),” Vincent explains.
But on the positive side, functional ingredient makers – innovating with sugar, fats, egg proteins, and more – are enjoying sustained interest. “This category is actually doing really well with increased investment, lots of partnerships with large companies and a significant appetite from investors,” says Vincent.
“That’s why we see more and more startups rebranding themselves from ‘protein producer’ to ‘specialty or functional ingredient manufacturer’,” he adds.
Investors eye Europe as Asia suffers
Courtesy: DigitalFoodLab
No region was spared from the investment declines over the last couple of years, but this year, Europe is surging forward. According to the report, the region was “slightly less affected” by the challenges.
This builds on previous research focused on climate-centric food tech companies, which found that Europe overtook the US in funding for the first time last year, making up 58% of global investments. This is also seen in the alternative protein world – Europe has accounted for 48% of all venture capital in this space in the first half of 2024.
“Europe had been ignored for some time, maybe due to the old continent being slow to structure its innovation ecosystem (incubators, business angels, etc.),” says Vincent. But the emergence of large delivery startups with an international focus has “definitely helped put the continent on the global food tech map”.
Meanwhile, despite India receiving the second-largest sum of money between the start of 2023 and the first half of 2024 (behind only the US), Asia – once the leader in food tech investments – is witnessing a decline in its share of funding.
Vincent ascribes this to two factors: a strong decline in delivery investments, where Asian (and specifically Chinese) startups were among the first to raise huge amounts of money; and “doubts from foreign investors about their ability to invest in China”. He adds: “We should note that there are many bright spots in Asia, from Singapore to Indonesia.”
Despite the global trends this year, Vincent is exercising caution. “We expect the same levels of investments, maybe slightly lower, due to the current economic and political situation,” he says. “However, we expect a visible bounce back for 2025.”
According to the report, this revival will begin in the US and eventually materialise in Europe, though the speed of movement will be slow as the number of “fundable startups” has decreased and investors have upped their requirements. “We may have to wait for 2026 (at least) to see a substantial uptick where we could come back to the levels of funding of 2020,” the report says.
German food tech startup Formo has closed a $61M Series B fundraise and launched animal-free cheeses made from microbial fermentation in supermarkets.
If you’re in Germany or Austria, you can now walk to one of 2,000+ Rewe, Billa and Metro stores and buy a first-of-its-kind vegan cheese made from mould.
Berlin-based startup Formo, known for its exploits in fermentation, has debuted its first products on the market. Frischhain, a cream cheese analogue made from koji protein, is now available in the aforementioned grocery stores in plain and herb flavours. A tomato version is to follow in the coming weeks, alongside Camembritz (a Camembert replica).
The launch coincides with the closing of Formo’s Series B funding round, in which it bagged $61M from investors including existing backers FoodLabs, EQT Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, and welcomed new financiers in The Nature Conservancy and Rewe Group, among a host of others.
The third-largest alternative protein investment round of this year, it takes Formo’s total raised to $117M, and will enable the startup to scale up production, expand its operations internationally, diversify its product portfolio, and push for net profitability.
The company continues to advance its precision fermentation technology platform for animal-free casein, with an eye to launching cheeses made with the protein in the first half of 2025. Next year will also see Formo introduce two more cheeses from its koji protein lineup: Frankoforte and Hellasdorf.
“Frankoforte is a rich, bold blue cheese made from koji protein, offering an intense flavour punch while maintaining a beautifully smooth, creamy texture. Hellasdorf, inspired by classic Greek feta, delivers a tangy, savoury flavour with a perfect crumbly texture,” Christian Poppe, Formo’s public affairs and sustainability director, tells Green Queen.
How Formo makes its koji protein cheese
Courtesy: Formo
To make its cheese, Formo uses a microbe called Aspergillus oryzae, a type of koji mould. This is a filamentous fungus that has been used for centuries in Japan, forming the base for fermented foods and beverages like miso, mirin, shoyu and sake. “Koji protein resembles whey protein, making it the perfect foundation for our cheese alternatives,” says Sandra Wilde, VP of Food at Formo.
The startup’s process mirrors traditional brewing techniques. It starts by cultivating the koji mould in steel tanks, where the microbes grow in a “nutrient-rich bath” containing sugars and micronutrients, as well as wheat flour or other carbohydrates.
As the fungi consume these nutrients, they produce protein. Once the fermentation is complete, Formo separates the biomass from the liquid (which contains the protein). This is then dehydrated using spray dryers to create a fine protein powder, which becomes the foundation of the company’s cheese products.
Once the powder has been extracted, Formo collaborates with family-owned traditional cheesemaking businesses, who use its recipe to create the end product. “These experts apply – just as we do in our pilot plant – conventional cheesemaking techniques, which include coagulation, curdling, draining, pressing, and ageing,” explains Poppe.
Courtesy: Formo
Partnering with traditional artisans allows Formo to “replicate the familiar taste, texture, and mouthfeel of cheese while leveraging centuries-old cheesemaking expertise”, while providing an alternative source of income for producers in a carbon-heavy industry.
The koi protein makes up 6.7% of the Frischhain cheese – the rest is made up of shea fat, sunflower oil, soluble corn fibre, salt, sugar, carrageenan, lecithins, and ripening cultures (plus flavourings for the other variants).
So while the combination of koji and time-honoured cheesemaking ensures that Formo’s cheeses deliver on taste, how does it fare on the nutrition front? The plain Frischhain has more fat (27.6g per 100g) than the Philadelphia Original cream cheese (21g), but the koji cheese has much lower saturated fat (10.1g vs 14g) and is higher in protein (6.1g vs 5.4g).
It even outperforms plant-based cream cheese on the latter two metrics. Simply V’s almond-based spreadable cream cheese, for example, has 13g of saturated fat per 100g, and 4.8g of protein.
Formo targets late-2025 launch for precision-fermented cheese
Courtesy: Formo
The potential of fermentation extends to sustainability as well. Formo says it’s using production partners and contract manufacturers that “fulfil the highest environmental standards”. According to an ISO-compliant life-cycle assessment (LCA) conducted by CarbonCloud, Frischhain production generates 65% fewer emissions, uses 83% less land, and consumes 96% less water than conventional cream cheese.
To go a step further, Formo is also donating any surplus food to organisations like the Red Cross or through food waste platforms like Too Good To Go. Additionally, its packaging is fully recyclable and is said to follow “eco-design principles”.
The company is currently capable of producing “triple-digit tonnes” of its cheese each month, but plans to triple its capacity in the coming year.
“Our current focus for the Micro Fermentation product line is on Europe, particularly the DACH region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), where we aim to establish a strong presence first,” reveals Pappe. Frischhain has already been available for foodservice consumers at Metro since August, with each 1.5kg container priced at €25.99.
Courtesy: Formo
He says the microbial fermentation products being launched now complement its ongoing precision fermentation efforts, allowing the business to build consumer relationships and brand recognition.
“Our precision fermentation operations are going great, and we’re making significant strides with our second-generation cheese product line,” he says. “The technology is advancing rapidly, and we’re excited about the potential of creating bioidentical dairy proteins.”
While declining to share specific launch dates, Pappe says the precision-fermented products – which include hard cheeses made with bioidentical casein – will be initially targeted towards the US, with a rollout around late 2025.
“Everything is coming together – the launch of our first products, the positive results of our environmental analyses, and the successful funding round,” says Formo co-founder and CEO Raffael Wohlgensinger. “This is the result of five years of intensive research and product development, as well as the work of an incredibly passionate team. Game on.”
Investors bet on fermentation amid alternative protein struggles
Courtesy: Formo
Sandra Malmber, a partner at EQT Ventures, raises an important point. “Few European companies are raising such large rounds within climate tech,” she says. “A key success factor was proving commercial traction, which is a rarity for this type of company at this point in its lifetime.”
Alternative protein investments have slowed down. They fell by 44% in 2023, and while the decline appears to be halting this year, the amount of capital put into this sector is a far cry from the highs of 2021.
Amid this macroeconomic environment, Formo credits its $61M round to technological advancements it has made in the last 18 months, allowing it to come to market at competitive prices with “strong profitable product margins”.
“While our technology was already advanced, the real leap was how quickly we were able to scale it and build robust operations,” notes Pappe. “We moved from lab-scale development to large-scale production at an impressive speed, proving not only the strength of our technology but also our ability to establish strong commercial capabilities.”
Another factor that may have attracted investors was that Formo deals with fermentation. Alternative protein startups working in this space have received around twice as much funding as plant-based or cultivated meat players this year. In the first half of 2024, the fermentation segment has already obtained 90% of the money it did in all of 2023.
Courtesy: GFI
So perhaps it’s no surprise that the top four funding rounds in alternative proteins this year belong to fermentation companies – Meati leads with its $100M Series C, followed by Perfect Day‘s $90M pre-Series E, Formo’s $61M Series B, and Infinite Roots‘ $58M Series B.
“What makes fermentation especially exciting is that it builds on ancient food manufacturing techniques – like those used to make cheese, beer, and bread. Because it’s not entirely new to consumers, it holds great promise for rapid consumer acceptance and uptake,” suggests Pappe.
“Additionally, fermentation is easier to scale compared to other alternative protein technologies, helping us move faster toward price parity with conventional animal products, which is a major driver of investor confidence,” he adds.
Pappe believes investment levels will rise again as companies “prove their ability to scale, reach price parity, and win over consumers”.
“Fermentation is already leading the way, and as more companies hit these key milestones, the entire industry will gain momentum,” he says.” The future is incredibly bright – we’re combining cutting-edge science with tried-and-true methods to transform the food system and make sustainable, affordable alternatives widely accessible.
More than two in five Australians are reducing meat or don’t eat it at all, with health a major consumption driver. But taste and price remain key challenges for plant-based meats.
Australians are cutting back on meat due to health and price concerns, but adoption of plant-based meats remains low, and their taste is a big reason why.
One in five (21%) of citizens are ‘meat reducers’ – people who are eating less meat but don’t identify as flexitarians – making it the most popular diet in the country, according to a 2,000-person survey conducted by Toluna for think tank Food Frontier.
Respondents were asked to choose from 13 different dietary patterns – 10% said they were vegetarian, 7% flexitarian, and another 5% vegan, meaning that 42% of Australians are either reducing meat or not consuming it at all.
Courtesy: Food Frontier
This year, a quarter of respondents have reduced their meat consumption, while 12% are planning to do so, and 2% have eliminated it altogether. The top three reasons for this were health concerns (61%), budgetary constraints (54%), and climate change (37%) – the latter is a welcome surprise, given the country has one of the largest climate denial rates in the world.
“The cost-of-living crisis may be affecting meat consumption,” suggests Food Frontier CEO Simon Eassom. “Over the past four years, the importance of budget as a motivator for reduced meat consumption has increased significantly, rising from 40% in 2021 to 54% in 2024.”
Plant-based meat needs a taste kick
Courtesy: Food Frontier
The dietary drivers in Australia remain similar across the spectrum. For example, 54% of meat reducers said they were doing so for health, 28% also picked medical reasons, and a third (34%) pointed to climate concerns. In the same vein, flexitarian diets are driven by health considerations (58%), medical reasons (34%) and environmental worries (24%).
Similar to the results in 2021, 79% of Australians go meat-free at least one day a week, with a quarter (24%) doing so for three to four days.
But while meat reduction is popular, plant-based analogues to meat still have some way to go – only 35% of Australians have tried these products (up from 25% three years ago), and just 16% eat them regularly.
Australians are most attracted by plant-based meats’ health benefits (53%). Nearly half (45%) enjoy their taste, 38% recognise their environmental advantages, and 36% do so for ethical reasons. However, this is in contrast with the 70% and 54% of Australians who chose health and environment, respectively, as reasons for liking meat analogues.
Courtesy: Food Frontier
But these products have low repeat purchase rates, with only 22% of Aussies saying they’d buy them again. Poor taste was cited as a barrier by 46% (down from 52% in 2021), followed by their high price (37%, versus 39% three years ago) – this is despite the price premium of plant-based meats narrowing from 49% in 2020 to 33% last year, according to Food Frontier’s 2023 State of the Industry report.
That study also revealed that plant-based meat sales in Australia increased by 47% between 2020 and 2023, with per capita consumption up by 28%.
Meanwhile, 28% of Australians buy both plant-based meats and traditional plant proteins like tofu and lentils, and one in five prefer the former because they don’t know how to cook the latter.
Milk analogues popular in Australia, but climate connection remains low
Courtesy: Food Frontier
Mirroring global trends, plant-based milk seems to be the leader in Australia’s alternative protein space, with two in five respondents (41%) having tried these analogues, and a third (34%) drinking them on the regular.
A similar number of consumers (36%) are likely to repurchase plant-based milk after trying it, the higher among the rest of the foods in the survey. Meanwhile, more consumers have tried vegan ice cream (37%) and would buy them again (25%) compared to meat analogues. But vegan cheese leaves a lot to be desired – only 13% who’ve bought it would do so again.
“The study also aimed to understand Australians’ perceptions of climate change contributors and how these considerations are influencing their dietary choices,” said Eassom. Agriculture makes up 13% of Australia’s emissions, and at least 66% of this comes from livestock farming.
But while 66% of Australians realise that fossil fuels contribute to climate change, less than half said so for food waste (45%) and animal agriculture (44%). And when asked what actions they take to reduce their impact on the planet, 76% noted that they recycle – by far the most popular act. Only 22% and 16% have been cutting out meat and dairy, respectively, to fight the climate crisis.
Courtesy: Food Frontier
“It appears that some Australians are making a connection between animal agriculture and climate change; however, from a list of perceived key contributors to climate change, animal agriculture was selected by the least number of study participants,” said Eassom.
“This would indicate that, despite growing awareness amongst some consumers, more than half of Australians are either unaware or not concerned about the relationship between food production and climate change.”
The survey also looked at Aussie attitudes towards pet food, finding that consumers are split on their willingness to change their furry friends’ diets. More pet owners would buy wet pet food with ethically raised meat (49%) or minimal animal ingredients (44%) than products with no animal inputs (38%).
“That pet owners are interested in switching to other foods as long as they are nutritionally sufficient demonstrates a market for sustainable and innovative pet food options, mirroring the growing interest in diverse protein sources in human diets,” Eassom said. “In response to this, we are seeing a number of companies exploring alternative proteins, including cultivated meat, in pet food production.
Motif FoodWorks, the Boston-based startup known for its Hemami ingredient for meat analogues, is shutting down, days after it settled a long-running IP dispute with Impossible Foods.
Last week, Motif FoodWorks announced it had sold off its heme business to Impossible Foods, as part of a settlement of an IP dispute dating back to 2022.
Just a few days later, the Boston-based maker of Hemami protein told employees the business was winding down. According to AgFunderNews, which first broke the news, a skeleton staff is staying on to help shut shop.
The decision was heavily influenced by the Impossible Foods lawsuit – in which both companies agreed to cover their own legal costs – as well as the sales and investment declines in the meat analogue category post-2021, when Motif FoodWorks raised a $226M Series B round, according to one VC manager with knowledge of the situation.
Motif FoodWorks, which spun off from Boston-based synbio firm Ginkgo Bioworks in 2019, has to date secured $345M worth of capital from various investors, making it one of the most well-funded companies in the fermentation protein space.
Its massive Series B came amid a record year for alternative protein investments, which reached $5.6B at a time when big rounds were the norm – Impossible Foods received $500M, for example, while Nature’s Fynd bagged $350M.
However, this fell dramatically over the next two years, with companies attracting $2.9B in 2022 and $1.6B in 2023 – for context, fermentation players alone raised $1.7B in 2021. While there are signs of recovery, with the sector raising $666M in the first half of this year, it’s still a far cry from 2021 levels.
Courtesy: GFI
The Series B was a “sign of the times”, according to the source familiar with Motif FoodWorks’ business, who spoke to Green Queen on the condition of anonymity. But the “completely unrealistic cagers for the alternative protein market” drove this raise. “When you think back to 2020 and 2021, people really thought that alternative protein could capture 5% of global meat capacity,” they said.
But the subsequent struggles of the industry meant that this potential hasn’t yet materialised. And then there was the lawsuit. Impossible Foods accused Motif FoodWorks of patent infringement: both companies make bioidentical versions of heme protein, an ingredient that gives meat analogues their meaty taste and colour.
Impossible Foods’ version is identical to soy leghemoglobin, while Motif FoodWorks’ Hemami is identical to bovine myoglobin. The lawsuit – which began in 2022 – “absolutely did hurt”, claimed the source.
“Even though ultimately it was settled, it achieved commercially what it wanted to achieve – which is that large companies, which are, generally speaking, quite risk averse, didn’t want to necessarily work with Motif’s heme,” they said. “Motif couldn’t sell that heme as an ingredient because of this pending lawsuit.”
They added: “So from a commercial standpoint, Impossible was able to [hinder] Motif from going to market. Even if the lawsuit was partially frivolous and Motif had a case, it still stopped the commercial viability of Motif’s heme product.”
The big question for precision fermentation
Courtesy: Motif FoodWorks
Hemami isn’t Motif FoodWorks’ only ingredient. It has also devised a hydrogel called Appetex, which combines plant proteins and carbohydrates to improve the texture of meat analogues.
It has previously also released finished products. The MoBeef, MoPork, and MoChicken products catered to foodservice and private-label clients, while a direct-to-consumer lineup comprised of Motif PorkWorks, Motif BeefWorks, and Motif ChickenWorks debuted last year.
The company also has exclusive access to Prolamin technology from the University of Guelph, which uses plant-based ingredients to enhance the texture of vegan cheese products, enabling them to melt, bubble and stretch like their conventional counterparts.
Motif FoodWorks opened a 10,600 sq ft R&D lab in Boston in 2021, followed by a 65,000 sq ft market development and research centre last year, dubbed Motif’s Plant Base. But amid the market challenges and the lawsuit, it also engaged in multiple rounds of layoffs.
While the heme business has been taken over by Impossible Foods, what happens to the rest of its ingredients, licences and the facilities remains to be seen.
Courtesy: Motif FoodWorks
“Ultimately, this was more of a market challenge and a landscape challenge, in the sense that customer demand just wasn’t there – primarily prevented from the lawsuit itself,” the source told Green Queen.
But it also pointed to “the challenges of bringing other ingredients to market”, they added. “This is a bigger question about precision fermentation, and its ability to move from Ginkgo – which is basically creating a strain – to then actually commercialising that strain for the right titer, the right yield, and the right application, and whether or not there’s a customer for that.”
They continued: “That is the big question that much of the industry is still grappling with. So whether or not Motif is able to grasp it or not, we’re still looking for: what is the right application, what is the right cost, and can that be commercially viable in precision fermentation?”
Beyond Meat will soon launch a fermentation-derived mycelium steak to address consumer demand for clean-label products, with a likely launch through a health-focused restaurant chain.
One of the world’s most famous meat analogue makers is turning to fungi to attract health-conscious consumers and revitalise its faltering sales.
As misinformation about the health impacts of plant-based meat takes hold of consumer wallets – with messaging around ultra-processing and long ingredient lists particularly successful – Beyond Meat is responding by venturing into an entirely new product category.
The Californian company will roll out a clean-label, whole-muscle steak product made from mycelium, which will likely be launched via a partnership with a restaurant chain known for serving healthy food, according to CNBC, which first reported the news.
Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown said he imagined the mycelium steak as an alternative to chicken, a salad topping, and a burrito filling. “The focus on this has been a very small number of ingredients, very high protein, very low saturated fat,” he explained.
The company is also introducing a reformulated version of its chicken analogue, in line with the recent health-forward changes made to its beef and sausage ranges. While the company looks to turn around its fortunes – having suffered nine consecutive quarters of year-on-year revenue declines – Brown confirmed to CNBC that the vegan pioneer isn’t open to an acquisition.
Latest example of Beyond Meat’s health spotlight
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
Beyond Meat’s move into mycelium is a surprise pivot, but there have been signs all along. Ever since the company switched its marketing focus from planetary to human health, it has dug deep into R&D to come out with products better suited to what consumers want today.
And what they’re asking for are foods with shorter ingredient lists and better health credentials. Research shows that clean-label and natural ingredients were the factors that gained the most importance for CPG purchases between 2020 and 2022. And after the brand itself, the most important on-pack details driving food purchases are the ingredient list, ingredient claims, nutritional information, and health claims.
Beyond Meat based an entire marketing campaign on the heart-healthy certification of its existing Beyond Steak portfolio by the American Heart Association (AHA) last year. This has since extended to its Beef Lite and Beef Crumbles.
The company also unveiled a major recipe change for its flagship beef and burger as part of the Beyond IV platform, which swapped coconut and canola oils for avocado fat, and added fava beans and red lentils to the ingredient list. Compared to its predecessor, the new Beyond Burger features 60% less saturated fat, 20% less sodium, and 20% more calcium per serving.
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
So diving headfirst into health has been intentional: after all, 55% of Americans eat meatless diets out of health concerns. Polling shows that health is also the most important driver of plant-based meat consumption in the country.
This is also why Beyond Meat debuted a new kind of sausage – one that isn’t meant to replicate meat, a first for the company. The Sun Sausage lineup is comprised of vegetables, grains and pulses, and contains 46% less fat (and 70% less saturated fat) than the pork-imitating Beyond Sausages, and that’s after the latter was revamped to the Beyond IV standard.
Mycelium, meanwhile, is low in fat and high in fibre (a nutrient Americans are underconsuming), and has 20-30% of protein content in dry matter, alongside all essential amino acids. It’s also a source of essential micronutrients like iron, zinc and vitamin B12, which are typically found in animal-sourced foods. A three-week early intervention trial has suggested that 190g of mycelium per day can lower LDL cholesterol by 21% on average versus animal protein.
Brown encapsulated the health strategy to investors in the Q2 earnings call, saying: “I believe it will be arguable whether Beyond Meat is, at its core, a plant-based meat company that delivers health and wellness, or a health and wellness company that makes plant-based meat.”
Fermentation has also represented the bulk of investor interest in alternative proteins this year. While plant-based proteins and cultivated meat have been slow to recover from last year’s funding slump, fermentation startups have brought in $398M in the first half of this year, an amount three times higher than the former two sectors. This is also only $45M short of the segment’s 2023 total.
Investors’ waning interest in the market also coincided with a sales decline, with Americans spending 19% less money on refrigerated meat analogues in the 52 weeks to May 19, compared to the same period a year ago.
Beyond Meat, which accounts for a 7% share in refrigerated meat analogue sales in the US, suffered simultaneously. To enable a turnabout, it withdrew its poor-selling jerky line, brought production in-house, and hiked the prices of its products. The result? A 23% sales increase, a 10-point gross margin improvement, and 40% lower operating expenses from Q1 to Q2 this year.
So the higher markups are showing signs of working for the business, although whether it continues to attract consumers, only time will tell. Research has shown that cost is the biggest detractor of plant-based meat consumption in the US, driving away 53% of Americans.
Courtesy: 84.51°
At the same time, around half of global consumers say they’d pay more for clean-label products, prompting products like Elmhurst 1925’s single-ingredient TerraMeat chicken and Nosh.bio’s upcoming Koji Chunks, also made from just one (fermented) ingredient).
Despite doing well in Europe, Beyond Meat’s partnership with McDonald’s, which saw the fast-food giant sell its alt-beef patty in the McPlant burger, has failed to live up to expectations in the US. So partnering with a health-focused restaurant chain to launch its mycelium steak represents a concerted effort to revive its foodservice performance, where sales dipped by 19% in Q2 2024, compared to the same period in 2023.
“Our strategy today is to offer a somewhat more premium product, and that’s generating the restoration margins,” Brown told CNBC about the company’s recent moves. “It’s clear messaging around health. So it’s not a direct route, it’s not linear, but we’ll get there.”
Timo Recker, CEO of plant-based startup TiNDLE Foods, talks evolving consumer attitudes, sales and funding declines, the importance of taste, and his admiration for Beyond Meat.
It’s been nine months since Timo Recker took over the reins of TiNDLE Foods from his fellow co-founder Andre Menezes. The leadership change came at the end of a big year for the Singapore-headquartered startup, and that momentum hasn’t halted in 2024.
A year ago, the company rebranded itself from Next Gen Foods to align with its flagship plant-based meat brand TiNDLE, months after acquiring London-based alt-dairy startup Mwah! This was followed by the launch of a domestically produced breakfast sausage in the US, and the brand’s stateside retail debut months later.
All the while, TiNDLE Foods was making major strides in Europe, especially the UK and Germany, Recker’s home country. Under his leadership, the company has debuted in Switzerland, unveiled a crop of new stuffed chicken range – which were rolled out in August – introduced a new bratwurst line, and is diversifying its portfolio with a forthcoming barista oat milk.
Courtesy: TiNDLE Foods
It has also been forming partnerships with physical and e-commerce retailers in the US, recently launching its products into 160 Giant/Martin’s stores on the East Coast. And oh, it was at the Met Gala.
Recker, the former founder and CEO of LikeMeat (now part of the Livekindly Collective), is now back in Germany, overseeing TiNDLE Foods’ additional growth plans for Europe. This isn’t the first time he’s at the helm – having co-founded the startup with Menezes, he served as CEO from July 2020 to May 2021.
Now, as the plant-based sector suffers from faltering sales, lower investment, and misguided media coverage, Recker speaks to Green Queen in a wide-ranging interview. He explains how the role of a CEO has changed since he was last in it, what the industry is missing currently, why a host of startups have been forced to shut down, and what governments can do better.
This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.
Green Queen: You were previously CEO for a year. Why did you decide to return to this position?
Timo Recker: I held the role of CEO in 2020 through the first part of 2021, while we were still in the early stages of R&D and without a consumer product available yet. Andre Menezes took the helm as CEO at the start of 2021 to bring our first product, TiNDLE Chicken, to market, and he led the company through a period of rapid growth, establishing a name for the brand globally first in foodservice – by working with many recognised and trendsetting partners in the space.
At the start of this year, our focus was to grow the distribution of our products, especially in retail, where I have experience from my time leading LikeMeat. Foodservice will always be an important and influential channel for us, as that’s where many consumers have first tried TiNDLE products or will be introduced to new brands. But our goal was always to be available in both channels and make great-tasting plant-based products accessible to consumers wherever they shop.
We’re in grocery stores today across Germany, Switzerland, the UK, and the US – many of which are some of the biggest and most challenging retail markets in the world. This year, we’ve been focused on introducing TiNDLE Foods to new retailers, but also growing and diversifying the product range to fit wider consumer needs.
Courtesy: TiNDLE Foods
GQ: How has the role changed at TiNDLE Foods from then to now?
TR: We’re working within a very different context today – both operationally with the addition of wider grocery distribution and in terms of the global economic situation.
As we’re available in retail both in Europe and the US today, our go-to-market approach needs to consider the grocery customer, whereas before we were targeted on restaurants and operators. The path to purchase is different here and a lot of work [is required] to understand the consumer needs to drive category growth.
We’ve had to update or develop new workstreams internally to address those needs, while maintaining our commitment to using high-quality and simple ingredients – which we’ve been doing since the very start.
Plant-based sales have also declined, but at the same time, we’re seeing moves within the space that indicate it’s not necessarily going away. A number of mergers and consolidation efforts have occurred over the last few years, and major global retailers are adding plant-based products to their private labels. To me, these are positive signals – and while organic growth may be slower than anticipated, our industry is adapting and actually getting closer to understanding the needs of our shoppers.
This doesn’t impact our category alone, as we’re seeing ripple effects of market factors like inflation, high interest rates, and global conflict and unease hit many industries and businesses. Part of my role today is navigating this market and making sure TiNDLE remains nimble as we keep an eye on achieving our mission of reducing humanity’s reliance on animals as a food source.
GQ: Building on that, how has the industry changed since the last time you were CEO?
TR: There’s now a wider understanding and acceptance of plant-based foods. Especially in Europe, where LikeMeat started, it’s become increasingly popular and frankly, the norm, to eat plant-based foods on a regular basis. It’s no longer a sustainability ‘fad’ or occasional dining habit, but one that’s rooted in the lifestyle and culture now.
Germany is the biggest market for plant-based foods, with the UK following behind as second. In Germany, where we have widespread distribution of our retail products with the Edeka Group, sales of plant-based foods have grown year-on-year – up by 42% since 2020. There’s generally a wider acceptance and willingness to try plant-based foods, which wasn’t the case when I started LikeMeat in 2013.
That also means there are more players and diversity of offerings in the market today. TiNDLE is not the only company making plant-based foods, so we do have the challenge of educating consumers about our products and what makes them different. While we’ve always focused on R&D and product innovation, we are also doing so now with a lens on home cooks and the retail experience.
Courtesy: TiNDLE Foods | Composite by Green Queen
GQ: TiNDLE Foods recently made a move into plant-based milk, a year after acquiring Mwah – can you tell us more about the product’s development and applications? When and where are you launching the milk and the gelato?
TR: We previewed our barista oat milk earlier this year at the Natural Products Expo West show, where we were able to gather product feedback from a wide range of consumers and retailers. With that helpful feedback, we’ve been working on finalising the final formulation for different regions.
We are happy with the innovation and product quality so far and have developed what we believe is a differentiated product in the barista milk category. We will share more once we have a rollout date and launch details confirmed.
Our acquisition of Mwah! last year allowed us to incorporate their dairy technology platform and capabilities, which will serve as a basis for future dairy foods. The platform will allow us to create gelato in the future, but for now, we’re focused on the development of our barista milk product.
GQ: You’ve always talked about being a multi-category company. Is TiNDLE Foods working on other meats like beef, pork or seafood too?
TR: Our current focus is widening the reach of our current products, which includes the complete TiNDLE Chicken range (for both foodservice and retail) and TiNDLE Bratwursts (in Germany), and continued development of our dairy products.
With the market for plant-based milks being established and performing well, we have the opportunity to use that cross-aisle promotion for our chicken and sausage products – bringing those active customers into the plant-based meat category.
We have the competence and know-how to do beef, seafood, other meats, etc., but don’t have plans right now to enter other categories. Our model and consolidation of all brands under the TiNDLE Foods umbrella would allow us to do so in the future.
Courtesy: TiNDLE Foods
GQ: What do you feel is missing in the plant-based industry right now?
TR: We’re missing the taste factor and culinary experience on the consumer side in the plant-based industry right now. Food is meant to be enjoyed and is behind so many of life’s greatest moments. We see that a lot of the backlash against the industry hits on that point, and particularly on taste – we feel that’s somewhat accurate when it comes to the overall experience consumers are getting from start to finish when trying a new plant-based product.
This is partly why we launched the stuffed chicken line now. Not only is it easy to prepare at home, but we’re paying tribute to our roots in the gastronomy world and bringing some of those chef-inspired flavours into people’s homes. We want to elevate the plant-based meat experience to that of animal meat.
You might plan your whole meal around a steak or roast chicken – or look up the menu at a new restaurant you’re trying and build anticipation – and we want to do the same with a centre-of-the-plate item like TiNDLE Chicken, whether it’s at home around the dinner table or a great restaurant.
What we also need to see are more products that bridge great taste and experience with great nutrition and clean labels. It’s important to have taste together with short, clean recipes that are also nutritious for the consumer. We’re seeing a move in this direction, but it needs to be coupled with what we mentioned earlier on taste/culinary experience.
GQ: As a CEO, how do you view the sales declines of plant-based meat over the last couple of years?
TR: What we’re seeing today is similar to what we’ve seen in past tough market waves. When times are tough, costs of goods go up and, so we’re seeing many people go back to animal meat, as it’s more affordable when compared to some of the premium plant-based meat options out there.
Our industry is under pressure and we’re seeing a number of players struggle and compete against the cost of conventional meat.
However, the sales dip is not necessarily negative to me, as it feels like a natural progression for any industry. The modern industry of plant-based meats is still quite young, having only been around for 15 years or so and having taken off in the last five to six years. On the other hand, the modern meat industry and factory farming have been around for decades.
The dips also show that there isn’t a lack of interest, but rather that demand was not as strong as our optimistic projections thought it would be. Consumers are still buying plant-based meats, and what we’ve seen specifically in our category of chicken is that there’s an appetite for new products and brands.
Customers are largely unhappy with the status quo items they’ve had on shelves for the last decade or more, and they want new and innovative selections to choose from. We’re seeing that chicken remains the #1 seller in the frozen plant-based category, ahead of beef and pork, with 37% of the total plant-based meat market share today [according to SPINS data].
TR: I think some investors were disappointed with the slower growth and adoption in plant-based, as their expectations were that there’d be more exponential growth. However, a dip in investment in the category doesn’t necessarily mean there is a lack of opportunity for plant-based companies.
Many investors are choosing to evaluate the current environment before taking additional risks. Some investors might actually want to invest right now and take advantage of the opportunities. In the next couple of months, I think there may be some interesting deals in our sector because of the downturn.
For TiNDLE, we have been able to preserve our runway longer and use it to focus on organically growing the business. While we’re not focused on fundraising or seeking out new investors right now, we are still dedicated to our mission and finding ways to solve the climate crisis.
Many of our customers and partners also are committed to finding sustainable solutions to our broader food system and ensuring food security and safety for future generations. We can continue to build this network, expanding the reach of products and continuing to innovate for our customers.
GQ: Quite a few companies have been forced to shut in the last 18 months. What do you think are the root causes of these developments, and how can they be addressed?
TR: Overall, we’re seeing that funding has declined with growth slowing. On top of that, there is difficulty in creating products that break through and can tap into unmet consumer needs.
One issue is also high overhead costs, typically coming from manufacturing or ingredients production. Our space is rooted in innovation and technology, which is fantastic and inspiring for the food industry in general – but the costs of maintaining extensive R&D or production facilities are high, especially today.
Labour, raw materials, infrastructure – all of that adds up and can be difficult to balance when growth over the last year plus has been slower than anticipated.
We’re always looking for efficiencies in the business and one way we’ve been able to do that is by working with co-manufacturers instead of owning and operating our own facilities. Our co-manufacturing partners are seasoned and understand the art of production a lot better than we do, so they’re able to take on the full workflow of food manufacturing on their end. It requires trust and a bit of a learning curve, but it’s been beneficial for us to reduce those high overhead costs.
We have also chosen to develop unique product recipes with simple ingredient lists, so availability and efficient production is not a problem for us.
Like I mentioned earlier, a number of mergers and acquisitions have taken place in recent years. These types of strategic partnerships and consolidation efforts can allow companies in our category to band together and strengthen the impact we can make on the food system and supply chain, as we ultimately share the same mission and long-term goals.
Courtesy: TiNDLE Foods
GQ: Do you believe governments need to invest more in the sector? How can they be persuaded to do so?
TR: Yes, I do believe they can do more. Governments can help stimulate production and promote widespread awareness of plant-based diets – ideally making it more transparent for consumers why shifting away from animal-based foods can be beneficial across so many areas of our daily lives.
Plant-based foods have to compete with the long-standing relationships that animal meat and food producers have with policymakers and governments. This has long allowed prices of animal food products to remain affordable, thanks to government subsidies.
The plant-based food industry does not have this type of support and to consumers – it looks like our prices are unfairly high when compared to their animal-based counterparts. Price is not the sole reason why consumers do not purchase plant-based products, but it is increasingly a factor of consideration for people today when doing their grocery shopping or choosing to dine out (especially with inflation concerns).
Governments are aware of food security concerns – particularly when it comes to feeding growing populations, overall global supply chain uncertainty and increased tensions internationally, and the climate and global warming threats impacting our natural resources. The awareness is there, but the persuasion needs to come with mass popularity of the issue with populations.
GQ: Which companies in the space are inspiring you the most right now, and why?
TR: The companies inspiring us today are those that are addressing broad consumer needs by innovating on ingredients. We are seeing really great innovation happening in the space of health and clean ingredients today.
To the majority of consumers, they still perceive animal meat as ‘healthier’ and ‘cleaner’ than plant-based meat. But the truth is that while animal meat may appear to offer certain nutritional benefits, there are still a large amount of additives and processing when you look closely at the full cycle of how that meat arrives from the animal to your kitchen. Whether it’s hormones, antibiotics, GMO crop feed, the animal meat is not as ‘clean’ and ‘unprocessed’ as it appears.
Companies in our space that are moving toward clean recipes and health-focused ingredients are inspiring to me. I admire Beyond Meat’s resilience and innovative power over the last year, as they pivot to wholesome ingredients. I’m also inspired by the ingredient innovation play from Meati and their use of mycelium – it’s really fascinating how they’ve been able to create a product with good taste and texture, but also hit on core nutritional needs.
I’m also impressed by the team at LikeMeat. After I left the company, they have more than doubled their revenue and grown significantly, becoming a household name in many countries.
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
GQ: What’s in store for TiNDLE Foods over the next 12 months?
TR: You will continue to see TiNDLE bring new innovation – including a new technology platform – adding on to the popular offerings we’re already selling today. We feel what we’ve done well is bring excellence in taste and experience to the plant-based category, so we’ll continue to grow and improve on that over the next year.
We also plan to make TiNDLE products more widely available – whether in local grocery stores or different retail channels (e-commerce, meal kits, etc.), and also with foodservice groups and chains.
GQ: Where do you see the brand in five years’ time?
TR: In five years, TiNDLE will evolve into a driving force in the category – supporting the jump from capturing 1% to 10% of the global meat market. In that time, we’d like to see people have closer and easier access to excellent plant-based products, thanks to increasing education around the power of a plant-based diet coupled with lower prices.
With the TiNDLE brand, we would help spark that shift by contributing the best-tasting and high-quality, clean products – continuing to innovate, grow efficiencies, and support broad consumer awareness in that time.
Impossible Foods has settled its patent infringement dispute with Motif Foodworks, taking over the latter’s heme business.
Plant-based meat maker Impossible Foods and food tech company Motif Foodworks, a spinoff of Boston-based Ginkgo Bioworks, have settled their bitter dispute over heme protein, two-and-a-half years after the litigation began.
According to a filing in the US District Court for the District of Delaware – first reported by Bloomberg Law – Impossible Foods has agreed to take over Motif FoodWorks’ heme business. The ingredient gives plant-based analogues a meaty taste and appearance, and is used by Impossible Foods to help make its burgers ‘bleed’.
Judge William C Bryson approved the settlement in a dismissal order on Tuesday.
What the lawsuit was about
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
Heme is the USP in Impossible Foods’ beef products. Its version of the protein is bioidentical to soy leghemoglobin, which is found in the roots of specific plants. The company employs precision fermentation to produce the ingredient. It inserts the DNA from soy plants into a genetically engineered yeast strain called K. phaffii, which is then fermented in a similar way to how Belgian beer is made. It then isolates the soy leghemoglobin from the yeast and adds it to its plant-based beef.
This gives the burger a reddish-brown hue that changes when heated, and imparts an iron-rich flavour and mouthfeel. It’s also been a roadblock for Impossible Foods’ flagship product in markets like the EU, which has more stringent regulations around novel foods.
Motif Foodworks, meanwhile, uses precision fermentation to make a heme protein identical to bovine myoglobin, called Hemami. Found in the muscle tissue of cows, this is a protein responsible for the colour and iron content of meat and seafood. While the latter isn’t a CPG company, its ingredient has been part of burgers through distribution partners like Coolgreens.
Impossible Foods filed a lawsuit in March 2022, accusing Motif Foodworks of patent infringement. But Motif Foodwords denied any wrongdoing, suggesting that the action was an attempt to stifle competition and limit consumer choice.
After Motif Foodworks filed an appeal in 2023, the US Patent Trial and Appeal Board invalidated one of Impossible Foods’ heme patents in June, covering a plant-based “ground beef-like food product” that “results in the production of at least two volatile compounds which have a beef-associated aroma” when cooked. However, it declined Motif Foodworks’ reqrest to review six other patents part of the lawsuit.
Case dismissed with prejudice
Courtesy: Motif Foodworks
Now, the case has finally come to a close, a welcome result for both parties. At times, things got incredibly bitter, with Motif Foodworks accusing Impossible Foods of hiring private investigators who took on fake identities to obtain information about its products.
The court filing noted that Impossible Foods, Motif Foodworks, and Ginkgo Bioworks “hereby stipulate and agree that all claims, defenses, and counterclaims asserted by any party in the above-captioned action are dismissed with prejudice”, meaning the same legal claim cannot be filed again.
Additionally, the filing stated that each of the companies would bear their own “costs, expenses, and attorneys’ fees”.
In a joint statement sent to Bloomberg Law on Wednesday, the companies said: “This resolution affirms Impossible Foods’ category leadership and the strength of its product portfolio related to heme.”
They added: “Motif FoodWorks and Ginkgo Bioworks look forward to supporting continued growth and innovation within the plant-based sector, recognising the massive potential for progress in the industry for consumers and the environment.”
Impossible Foods has previously won a court ruling for its heme ingredient, after objections made by the Center for Food Safety about the use of the genetically modified ingredient were struck down. It also came out on top in a trademark infringement claim against Nestlé, whose Garden Gourmet brand was forced to change the name of its Incredible Burger.
And in August, the European Food Safety Authority ruled that Impossible Foods’ heme doesn’t raise any safety concerns, bringing it a step closer to entering the EU market. The company now needs to pass a safety assessment by the Panel on Genetically Modified Organisms – but this process hasn’t progressed since December 2021, with Impossible Foods needing to submit more information.
The Bezos Earth Fund has inaugurated its third Centre for Sustainable Protein at the National University of Singapore, labelled as an “absolute powerhouse” of alternative proteins.
Biomass fermentation, microalgae innovations, and hybrid meats are all on the menu at Bezos Earth Fund’s latest Centre for Sustainable Protein.
The third of its kind, this site was always going to be in Asia, as reported by Green Queen in June. And today, the fund inaugurated the research hub at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
“The decision to do this in Singapore was a simple one,” Andy Jarvis, director of Bezos Earth Fund’s $1B Future of Food initiative, tells Green Queen. “Singapore is an absolute powerhouse when it comes to alternative proteins – it was way ahead of so many other countries in the world.”
“The government has made the strategic decision to focus on this and [has] invested. You have an incredibly dynamic innovation ecosystem on alternative proteins, and you had the government take the lead in regulating cultivated meat two years before the rest of the year of the world,” he adds.
It follows the establishment of its sister centres at North Carolina State University in May and Imperial College London in June. Like the other two hubs, the Singapore Centre for Sustainable Protein has been set up with a $30M investment, as part of a total commitment of $100M for alternative proteins. The remaining $10M will go towards an ancillary grant.
Courtesy: Rocío Lower/Bezos Earth Fund
The Singapore Centre for Sustainable Protein will primarily focus on microalgae and biomass fermentation, alongside research into cultivated meat and plant-based tech, with a view to creating what the fund calls “ultimate proteins”: hybrid meats that combine cultivated cells with plant- and fermentation-derived ingredients to match conventional proteins on taste, price and nutrition.
The hub at NUS – a top 10 university globally – will also integrate cross-cutting platforms covering nutrition science, safety, and consumer acceptance in its research.
“The decision particularly to fund the NUS was through a process where we invited a number of proposals from a number of different institutions, and those were evaluated,” says Jarvis. “We went in total around the world to 14 different universities, and we felt this proposal from the National University of Singapore’s absolutely first class.”
Nutrition and consumer research at the forefront
Courtesy: NUS FST
Bezos Earth Fund’s latest alternative protein centre will zero in on regional preferences and battle food insecurity – globally, nearly 10% of people go hungry every day – amidst a population that will number 10 billion by 2050.
To do so, it will work closely with industry, government and academic partners. One of these is alternative protein think tank the Good Food Institute (GFI), which played a key role in helping the fund develop its vision for the alternative protein centres.
“By connecting Singapore’s brightest scientific minds with their counterparts in other global innovation hubs, the Bezos Centre at NUS has the capacity to fully unlock the enormous economic and ecological potential of sustainable proteins,” said Mirte Gosker, managing director of GFI APAC.
The NUS centre aims to conduct clinical trials to evaluate the metabolic and health benefits of alternative proteins, particularly in Asian populations. Researchers will also develop cell- and computer-based technologies to explore these foods’ effect on humans, with the ultimate aim of building a next-generation risk assessment framework in collaboration with regulators and industry stakeholders.
Courtesy: Rocío Lower/Bezos Earth Fund
Consumer acceptance is another key aim, spanning risk communication and behavioural research to help encourage the adoption of sustainable proteins. The centre will analyse methods to incorporate scientific rigour in public communications on novel foods, understand the current demand for these proteins, and amp up their preference over conventional meat.
“NUS and the Bezos Earth Fund are united by a shared commitment to actively combat climate change. The world’s growing appetite for meat has put a huge strain on our global food system, and we need to develop sustainable food solutions with researchers, government and industry,” said NUS president Tan Eng Chye.
Sir Andrew Steer, president of the Bezos Earth Fund, stated that Asia is “pivotal to the future of sustainable proteins”, and Singapore leads the way: “The new Centre at NUS harnesses the region’s influence and expertise to drive solutions that can reshape food systems globally, with significant potential impact for East and South-East Asia’s 2.3 billion consumers.”
Biomass fermentation and hybrid meat research go hand-in-hand
Courtesy: NUS FST
Asked why biomass fermentation is a central focus area, Jarvis says it’s an area that represents “enormous opportunity”, since it often uses biomass sourced from food industry sidestreams. “It has the promise to be an incredibly cost-effective way of producing high-quality proteins for this market,” he notes.
One example of this promise is the NUS hub’s research on using soy whey from tofu waste to feed algae and create proteins. “It’s a fascinating idea,” says Jarvis. “How can we use a byproduct from tofu – that liquid – and then use particular strains of microalgae that can make use of that liquid and produce a high-quality protein?
“The university has been looking at this and is ahead of the game. They have some strains that they believe are really promising and the work of the centre will really go in and comprehensively analyse those processes.
“The idea, as with all of these Bezos Centres for Sustainable Protein, is to make this research and this knowledge open-access, and then any company or startup can take that knowledge and process, and put it into products they take to market.”
Hybrid meat skewers with cultivated pork | Courtesy: Ants Innovate
But this is among a number of other things the centre is doing. “We’re not only focused on biomass fermentation – that alone is unlikely to solve all of these problems,” explains Jarvis. This is why the centre will look into creating microbial proteins that can be further developed into hybrid meat, combining them with plant and/or cultivated proteins to enhance their taste, affordability and health credentials.
“Hybrid proteins, I think, are important more and more,” says Jarvis, echoing what many investors feel. “We’re seeing you can reach cost parity when you develop these hybrid proteins, and so that will be an additional focus.”
It’s why the hub will explore cost-effective methods to produce cultivated meat in the kgs for hybrid applications, as well as extract specific plant-based proteins from industry sidestreams to use as cultivated meat scaffolds or be turned into meat analogues via 3D printing and other technologies.
“I don’t think it’s kind of one over the other,” Jarvis says. “Let’s look at biomass fermentation, and let’s look at how those also combine with other types of sources of protein – cultivated and plant-based – to boost those products.”
Asia ‘absolutely critical’ for alternative proteins
Zhou Weibiao, head of the NUS Department of Food Science and Technology | Courtesy: NUS FST
There are 23 principal investigators who will lead research at the new Centre for Sustainable Protein, from institutions including NUS, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Institute of Technology, and ETH Zurich.
They will also focus on talent development via education schemes, and venture-building programmes at NUS Enterprise, which will translate research into practical solutions. Doing so will help accelerate the adoption of alternative proteins across Asia-Pacific.
Zhou Weibiao, head of NUS’s food science and tech department, said the university is well-positioned to host the new Centre, thanks to its extensive research expertise, strong alternative protein partnerships, and its deep understanding of areas like nutrition, safety, and consumer perceptions.
The first two hubs at NC State and Imperial received co-funding from a range of partners – for example, in addition to the $30M poured in by the Bezos Earth Fund, the London centre benefitted from another $20M from the university as well as other organisations and companies.
“We’re also looking for co-funding and co-investment from the ecosystem itself here in Singapore,” reveals Jarvis. “It’s no exception, and we continue to dialogue about how to maximise this so that the centre has real buy-in both from within Singapore and around the ecosystem.”
Courtesy: Timo Volz/Pexels
In a wide-ranging interview with Green Queen in June, Jarvis had outlined the intention to make all three centres complementary to each other. Expanding on that, he says the idea is to cover many parts of the industry’s challenges and “complete the puzzle of what’s needed to make alternative proteins much better as a technology”.
NC State had a biomanufacturing focus, while Imperial looked at engineering biology. NUS’s spotlight on biomass fermentation and hybrid proteins aligns with its sister sites, according to Jarvis.
“It’s also geographically complementary here in Asia. Asia is an absolutely critical market for alternative proteins,” he adds, echoing Steer’s point about East and Southeast Asia being home to 2.3 billion people, making them the two most populous regions in the world.
“This is where we are seeing enormous growth in the demand for animal-sourced foods,” says Jarvis. “What happens in Asia has global implications, and so having a centre based in Singapore is also very complementary and very important as a geographic hub.”
An EU-funded report by agrifood lobbies has recognised the need to eat less meat and shift towards more sustainable diets, asking the EU Commission to create a plant-based action plan by 2026.
We’re eating too much meat, and we need to shift to plant-based proteins to save the future of food and farming in the face of climate disaster.
That may sound like an impassioned call from a climate advocacy group, but this was actually a conclusion made with lobby groups that represent Europe’s farmers.
In a joint report presented to EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, 29 organisations agreed on the findings after a fraught seven-month process, as part of the Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture.
The shared vision stated that business as usual is not an option for EU farmers – they need bold, swift and timely policy intervention to progress towards more sustainable practices and tackle the climate emergency, biodiversity loss, soil degradation, inflation, and consumer health.
“We must do more – and we will do more – to protect our farmers and to make the agrifood system more resilient, more competitive, but most importantly also more sustainable,” von der Leyen told reporters after accepting the report.
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.
The stakeholders – involving everyone from farm lobbies to green groups – 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.
As part of these, the Strategic Dialogue acknowledged that it was vital to support ongoing efforts to transition from animal proteins to plant-based options. “The sustainable choice needs to become the choice by default,” the report said, asking the EU Commission to develop an EU Action Plan for Plant-Based Foods by 2026 to “strengthen the plant-based agrifood chains 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.
Whether these recommendations turn into policy is another question, with von der Leyen suggesting these will feed into an agrifood roadmap that she’ll present within the first 100 days of her new mandate. While the report’s findings were welcomed by green advocacy groups, they’re also exercising caution, given the EU’s recent track record with environmental policies.
How the EU can nudge greener consumer diets
Courtesy: Lidl Nederland
The report noted how average protein consumption – in the EU particularly from animal sources – exceeds dietary recommendations by public and scientific bodies.
This is why consumer organisations, NGOs, health and education services, EU member states, and local authorities should work together to encourage “sustainable, balanced, and healthy diets” by developing people’s interest in planet-friendly eating patterns.
Providing free meals for children in primary schools is a key measure, as is initiating education programmes at these ages to enhance nutrition education and food literacy. The EU Commission was asked to consider if the bloc’s school scheme – which promotes produce, milk and dairy products – could be upgraded to help the transition towards healthier and less resource-intensive diets.
The EU and its member states were also urged to update their food-based dietary guidelines to integrate sustainability and develop strategies to increase consumption of climate-friendly food – this year, neighbours Germany and Austria have already done so.
Stakeholders should also implement policies and collaborative initiatives to encourage the use of a diversity of varieties, breeds, food processing techniques and food cultures, while coherence between the EU’s agrifood promotion policy and other objectives like healthy eating guidelines and sustainability goals is a must.
Courtesy: Canva
The focus on sustainable diets didn’t set any targets for cutting back meat production, but the report advised the EU Commission 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.
The Commission was also asked to publish a report and accompanying legislation on national measures over the marketing of food high in fat, sugars and salt to children, as well as provide tax reductions (like VAT) to ensure consumers have equitable access to choice. Food producers, meanwhile, should step up their efforts to reformulate and create new products with better nutritional composition and environmental value.
Just transition for farmers central to a sustainable food system
Courtesy: AI-Generated Image via Canva
Agriculture is responsible for 11% of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions, but 84% of these come from livestock, despite animal-based foods providing 35% of calories and 65% of proteins in the EU. The 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).
The CAP’s environmental controls were further weakened this year after intense lobbying, but the report said the policy shouldn’t depend on whether farmers comply with environmental rules beyond existing EU law.
Instead, it recommended separate payments to farmers that use sustainable practices, to be handled by agricultural and environmental authorities. This came after farmers asked for a “substantial annual increase” in climate finance.
Farmers are among the groups most heavily affected by the climate crisis, as well as a shift away from animal agriculture. This is why the report called for a temporary Agrifood Just Transition Fund (separate from the CAP) to dole out one-off grants and loans to help farmers move towards sustainable agriculture.
“While also reinforcing the positive externalities that the sector already provides, this support should facilitate a smooth adaptation process, helping farmers, producers, and workers,” it said.
“Farmers have to be rewarded for good practices and incentivised to produce healthier, more sustainable products,” said Rafael Pinto, policy manager at the European Vegetarian Union (EVU), which published a Plant-Based Manifesto ahead of the June elections that laid out several of the policies recommended in the Strategic Dialogue report, including public procurement, lower VAT rates, and adhering to the One Health approach.
“The transition to these types of productions must also be supported with both funding and training. It’s essential to make sure nobody is left behind,” Pinto told Green Queen. “Producing more plant-based products is not only an opportunity for farmers to diversify their portfolios but also to build more climate resilient productions, ensuring long-term sustainability and adaptation to new consumer trends.”
Actions will speak louder than words
Courtesy: European Vegetarian Union
One of the EVU’s recommendations was to devise an action plan for plant-based food, echoing the recommendation from this report. In a questionnaire it sent to 60 Europarties and national parties, 56% indicated support for such a strategy.
If implemented, such an action plan would represent a “seismic shift for the plant-based food sector”, according to Jasmijn de Boo, global CEO of ProVeg International. “It is heartening to know that a serious recommendation has been made to promote climate-friendly, plant-based foods and give nature a fighting chance to recover,” she said.
“We can expect more funding to flow into the plant-based sector under this plan, be that for research, farming and public procurement,” added Lucia Hortelano, senior EU policy manager at ProVeg.
But while it’s a positive sign that von der Leyen will consider a plant-based strategy in her agrifood vision, the true impact will only be dependant on its actual content, warned Pinto.
“A simple report or a vision without concrete measures, targets and funding will not do much for EU farming, the planet or people’s health,” he said. “The conclusions from the Strategic Dialogue are still recommendations for the European Commission. So first, it’s important for Ursula von der Leyen to uphold them.”
Courtesy: AI-Generated Image via Canva
Pinto touched upon the EU’s tendency to flip-flop on its own proposals – for example, the Commission was set to unveil a sustainable food systems framework to support the protein transition at the end of its previous mandate, but ended up abandoning the plan after backlash from interest groups.
“We’ve had great recommendations and even proposals from the Commission in the past that didn’t make it outside the cabinets, so it’s essential to keep highlighting the pivotal role this Action Plan could have for Europe’s farmers, climate transition and citizen’s health,” he said.
“We hope the recommendations in this report and proposals do not go the same route as the Farm to Fork strategy that ended up being almost completely blocked in the process,” he added. Denmark – the first country to devise a national action plan for plant-based food, and impose a tax on meat and dairy production – would be a useful “source of inspiration”,
Pinto outlined the importance of setting targets around a ratio of plant and animal protein, sustainability in public procurement, and the share of funds allocated to plant-based products. It’s also crucial to ensure a level playing field in terms of the disbursement of public subsidies, and support of traditional and innovative vegan proteins.
“The Action Plan must tackle several challenges such as promoting diet changes from the demand-side, creating a more level-playing field for plant-based producers, and ensuring farmers are well compensated for their work,” said Pinto. “Furthermore, significant support must be dedicated to training, promotion and R&D for plant-based products.”
In our weekly column, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers a first-of-its-kind alt-butter, the popularity of Silk plant-based milk, and the transformation of a former chicken farm.
Dutch CPG giant Upfield has expanded its Flora Plant B+tter range in the UK with a limited-edition Smoked Garlic-flavoured vegan block butter, which it describes as an “industry-first”. It will be available at 250 Sainsbury’s stores from September 29.
Swiss plant-based meat pioneer Planted has announced it will showcase its vegan steak at SIAL Paris (October 19-23). The product will also into French foodservice and retail in the coming weeks.
In the UK, vegan egg startup OGGS has rolled out a lemon loaf cake topped with aquafaba meringues. They’re available at Tesco and on Ocado.
Doughnut chain Krispy Kreme has added three new flavours to its vegan range in the UK: Salted Caramel Sensation, Blueberry Bubble Bliss and Cinnamon Swirl.
Courtesy: Bademiyan
In India, Mumbai restaurant Bademiya has introduced a range of plant-based meat dishes using GoodDot‘s meat analogues. Menu highlights include Soya Bhuna Masala, Soya Kadhai, and Soya Chilli.
Israel’s SimpliiGood has announced it will launch its spirulina-based smoked salmon in Europe early next year, featuring 40% protein and fewer than 10 ingredients.
And Sigma-owned meat analogue brand Better Balance has launched its new pea-protein-based Better Dog at all 27 Gelson’s Markets locations across Los Angeles County.
Company and finance updates
After Swedish mycoprotein producer Mycorena was rescued from bankruptcy by Nalpasol, there were questions about what this would mean for its employees. Mycorena founder and CEO Ram Nair has now confirmed that he has left the company.
Courtesy: Mycorena
ProVeg International has launched its Food Innovation Challenge for students in Asia to develop an innovative plant-based food product for the Asia-Pacific market. Winners will get a portion of the $10,000 prize money and the chance to partner with brands like Beyond Meat, Mars, Unilever and Monde Nissin.
Scottish food tech startup Nandi Proteins, which is developing an egg white replacer for gluten-free bakes and mycoprotein-based meat alternatives, has attracted €500,000 via a convertible loan, with participation from state investors like UK social innovation agency Nesta and Scottish Enterprise. This comes ahead of a £1M equity funding expected to close later this year.
Research and manufacturing developments
Derek Sarno, co-founder of Wicked Kitchen, has converted a chicken farm in Norfolk, England to a sustainable mushroom farm, in collaboration with The Little Mushroom Co. and Smithy Mushrooms.
The world’s largest dairy producer is also the world’s largest alt-dairy consumer, according to Statista. Nearly a third (32%) of Indians regularly drink oat milk and eat almond yoghurts – followed by Thais and Emiratis (both 29%).
Courtesy: Statista
Statista also found that Silk is the leading milk alternative in the US, with 34% of Americans having tried it, followed by Almond Breeze (30%). These two are also the most likely to make people come back for more, with 86% saying they’d purchase Silk again, and 84% saying so for Almond Breeze.
Finland’s Solar Foods, which makes Solein protein from air, has obtained self-affirmed GRAS status in the US, taking it a step closer to commercialisation in the country.
Solar Foods is inching closer to bringing its Solein protein to market in the US, after earning self-determined Generally Recognized as Safe (SAFE) status.
The Finnish startup’s fermentation-derived ingredient is made by feeding microbes on carbon dioxide, hydrogen and oxygen (instead of sugar). The orange-yellow powder can be used in products from meat, dairy and egg alternatives to pasta and beverages.
Following the GRAS determination, the company now need to register its production facility in Vantaa, Finland – called Factory 01 – with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This would enable it to begin exporting its protein to the US, something it suggests could happen by the end of this year.
”Obtaining self-affirmed GRAS status is the first step towards entering the United States,” said Solar Foods chief commercial officer Juan Benitez-Garcia. “We will shortly be able to launch commercial activities in this significant new market, including marketing and sales operations, and drive our growth.”
The company will also endeavour to notify the FDA of its GRAS determination, with the aim of receiving a “no questions” letter. Its Solein protein is already on the market in Singapore, which approved the ingredient back in 2022.
Why Solar Foods will notify the FDA of its GRAS determination
Courtesy: Solar Foods
Since Solein is considered a novel food – much like the precision-fermented heme ingredient in the Impossible Burger, or any cultivated meat – it needs to go through a regulatory testing process before it can be sold as part of food and beverage formulations.
For the self-affirmed GRAS status, Solar Foods conducted large-scale scientific research and published food-safety-related results in peer-reviewed journals. A qualified panel of experts have additionally compiled a statement on Solein’s safety and intended use based on the determined food categories and ingredient concentrations.
The next step – facility registration with the FDA – requires the company to present a food safety plan fulfilling the specific requirements and any other applicable requirements. This would allow it to market Solein in the US. Based on the company’s timeline, we could see products made from Solein protein in the US as early as next year.
After that, the startup will look to obtain the “no questions” letter from the FDA, for which it is required to make a notification with necessary reports on the safety of the product, which would be evaluated by the food safety body.
There are multiple reasons to do this. Self-affirmed GRAS determination doesn’t legally require FDA review, meaning companies aren’t required to disclose safety data publicly, helping maintain confidentiality around proprietary information and trade secrets.
It’s an easier, cheaper and faster way to commercialise. But it does mean companies are making their own safety assessments independently from the FDA (while complying with its requirements). On the contrary, GRAS notification is a much more rigorous process that includes both positive and negative studies on the ingredient. This is viewed as a more transparent process with publicly available data, and breeds both market and consumer confidence.
Outlining this, Solar Foods explained that FDA GRAS notification could “widen the possibilities” for Solein as some potential customers “may require the go-through of this procedure”. It estimates that it will receive the FDA letter by the end of 2026.
A year of milestones for Solar Foods
Courtesy: Solar Foods
It has been a big year for Solar Foods, which is planning to go public with a technical listing on the Nasdaq First North Growth Market in Helsinki.
At the start of the year, the Solein protein was part of a Taste the Future chocolate snack bar released by Fazer – a majority shareholder of Solar Foods. And last month, Japanese food conglomerate Ajinomoto unveiled mooncakes and ice cream sandwiches where Solein replaced the dairy, while it won the international Phase 3 category in NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge.
The startup, which has attracted €43M in equity funding and €30M in debt financing, opened Factory 01 in April, with the daily ability to produce as much protein as a dairy farm with 300 cows. The manufacturing plant was facilitated by €34M in grants from Business Finland, which has pledged a further €76M to support Factory 02 if built in Europe.
Solein is said to have “the lowest carbon footprint compared to all other known protein sources” when produced via renewable energy, with emissions equal to just 1% of those generated by conventional meat, and 20% of plant proteins. The ingredient also has 65-70% protein, 5-8% fat, and up to 15% dietary fibre, while containing iron and vitamin B.
Solar Foods has previously said that regulatory approval in the US will provide “significant benefits” in authorisation processes in other markets – it has filed dossiers in the EU and the UK too.
”The United States will be a significant market for us. GRAS status in the US will contribute to advancing Solein’s expansion into other markets that do not grant specific novel food approvals, such as Japan,” explained Benitez-Garcia.
As Factory 01 churns out Solein and Solar Foods inks partnerships in Singapore and the US, these efforts will determine the prerequisites for earning sales contracts for Factory 02, whose capacity will be 50 to 100 times higher.
Looking forward, the company anticipates the UK greenlight in 2026, and is also considering filing applications for new products developed alongside Solein.
The culture wars over cultivated meat continue, with a House Representative in Illinois introducing a bill to ban these foods in the state.
And it goes on.
Two months after Florida’s ban on cultivated meat came into effect, and a month before one goes live in Alabama, Illinois has joined a number of other states to try and outlaw these proteins.
House Representative Chris Miller, a third-generation cattle farmer, has introduced HB 5872, a bill to make the sale, manufacture or distribution of cultivated meat a Class C misdemeanour.
It means that if you sell cultivated meat, you’ll be treated the same way as you would if you possessed less than 2.5g of marijuana, assaulted someone, or left a firearm in your house that could easily be accessed by a minor. The penalty can result in 30 days of jail time, and/or $1,500 in fines.
“Agriculture is big business in Illinois, and we don’t need fake meat laboratories creating a highly expensive product that tries to replicate real meat,” said Miller. “Illinois farmers know what they’re doing, and they do it well.”
Rep Miller relies on misinformation to back bill
Courtesy: Representative Chris Miller/Facebook
Miller’s bill, which hasn’t been referred to any of the committees yet, calls cultivated meat “a threat to the health, safety, and welfare” of Illinois residents.
A press release on the Representative’s website explains that HB 5872 was introduced as a response to “growing concerns from the notion of replacing real meat with laboratories”, and argued that it would protect “individual’s health, farmland, and agricultural products”.
Let’s break that down. First, cultivated meat poses no health risks – if it did, the USDA and the FDA wouldn’t have deemed it safe to be sold for human consumption, as they did for Upside Foods’ and Eat Just’s chicken products last year. In fact, cultivated meat takes away any concerns about antibiotics or bacterial contamination (like E coli).
Next, to make cultivated meat, you need sugars, minerals, and other inputs, which are agricultural products. Andy Jarvis, director of the Bezos Earth Fund’s Future of Food initiative, told Green Queen in June: “This is not an anti-farmer sector; this is a sector that is using farmed products in new ways.”
And finally, the claim that this is a threat to farmland is laughable at best – research has shown that if produced by renewable energy, cultivated meat uses 90% less land than conventional beef. It has also been found to be three times more efficient at turning crops into meat than even the “most efficient” livestock.
“The ideology behind cultivating animal cells to improve carbon emissions is mind-blowing,” said Miller, with complete disregard for the misinformation he was spewing. Explaining how cultivated meat is made, his announcement took inspiration from an account of Upside Foods’ process by Wired. The publication revealed that instead of producing its meat in bioreactors, the Californian startup was at the time primarily relying on plastic roller bottles.
Miller, however, contorted the two to say that cultivated meat is produced in bioreactors, and employees “grow sheets of tissue in plastic flasks, called roller bottles, and combine them to create larger pieces of chicken or beef”. He’s also using one company’s process as a yardstick for the entire industry.
It highlights a startling reality: policymakers are trying to suppress consumer choice by outlawing food without actually knowing how it’s truly made. Alabama’s bill was also similarly built on misinformation.
It’s all about politics
Courtesy: Upside Foods
“Here in Illinois, farmers work hard to raise cattle and produce some of the finest meat on the market,” said Miller. In January alone, a local company recalled nearly 7,000 lbs of raw ground beef thought to be contaminated with E. coli.
“My legislation would protect farmers and the high-quality products they help produce to feed families across the nation,” Miller added, regurgitating an argument made by almost everyone who’s tried to ban cultivated meat.
Legal challenges against cultivated meat have become a trend in the US, particularly among Republicans. But for all the talk about protecting the state’s animal agriculture industry, most of these efforts come from legislators who themselves are livestock farmers, or belong to a family of meat producers. So really, they’re looking out for themselves.
Only last week, Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen signed an executive order prohibiting state agencies from procuring cultivated meat, ordering contractors to not discriminate against conventional meat producers, and calling for restrictions on how cultivated meat is labelled in stores – despite it never appearing on any supermarket shelf in the US.
Pillen, part of a pork family empire in Nebraska, now wants to ban cultivated meat in the 2025 legislative session. Similar efforts are ongoing in Arizona, Kentucky, Iowa, Michigan, New York, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia.
Illinois was set to be the site for Upside Foods’ industrial-scale manufacturing plant before the project was put on pause. But now, the company has sued Florida for its ban, calling it unconstitutional. Whether such pushback would deter Miller – who has previously been censured by his colleagues for attending Donald Trump’s rally that preceded January 6 – only time will tell.
But as November 5 draws closer, Donald Trump incoherently tries to talk about plant-based bacon, and his running mate JD Vance denounces ‘soy boys’, the Republican strategy seems to be clear: nothing is more American than red meat, no matter how bad it is for you or the planet.
Let’s cut the crap and call these bans what they really are: political stunts hoping to sway voters with misinformation and no regard for their own freedom to choose what they eat.
Nebraska Senator Barry DeKay has introduced a bill to ban cultivated meat in 2025, months after Governor Jim Pillen signed an executive order to take this action.
Editor’s Note: This article was amended on 17 January 2025 to reflect that the bill has been introduced. Our previous reporting focused on Governor Pillen signing an executive order.
Despite Ron DeSantis’ Florida being sued for banning cultivated meat, his Nebraskan counterpart remains unfazed, initiating a “a full-blown attack on lab-grown meats and fake meat”.
Those were governor Jim Pillen’s words in August, after signing an executive order putting several restrictions on cultivated meat, and announcing his intention to ban these products in this year’s legislative session.
Now, Senator Barry DeKay has brought forward a bill to keep cultivated meat from being manufactured, distributed, or sold in Nebraska, requiring these proteins to be labelled as “adulterated food products” under the Pure Food Act.
“There are clear, recognised benefits of meat as a source of protein. It is uncertain whether manufactured meat protein is a substitute for natural meat sources as essential dietary needs. I question elevating lab meat to a level of equivalency with real meat,“ claimed DeKay.
“Until or unless there are clear labelling rules that adequately disclose that cultured meat is not real meat, its sale allows lab meats to unfairly benefit from industry investments in marketing and production,” he added.
“What’s more, this industry is supported by organisations that want to do away with animal production in Nebraska and the United States. This is part of the process that we’re going to go through to make sure our way of life, our livestock, and our product that we can put on the dinner table stays intact going forward.”
Pillen, meanwhile, did not mince his words. “It’s important we get on the offense so that Nebraska farmers and ranchers are not undermined. Our job is to protect consumers, grow agriculture and defend agriculture,” he said.
Courtesy: Governor Jim Pillen
Nebraska governor takes jibe at Bill Gates
The effort goes back to August when Pillen introduced the executive order at Oak Barn Beef, a family-owned meat shop in West Point.
The governor was flanked by the owner of the store, a livestock farmer running for office, and the head of the state’s agricultural department (whose family owns a beef farm), when he approved three measures to protect animal agriculture from the “extraordinary, crazy views out there that there’s going to be different ways to feed the planet”.
And he took a jibe at Bill Gates, who has invested in a number of alternative protein companies, including California’s Upside Foods, the plaintiff in the lawsuit against Florida. “There’s a guy that made some money in building computers. He needs to stay in the computer space and knock this stuff off thinking that he’s going to promote lab-grown meat. He’s lost his brains,” said Pillen.
“We’re being proactive and making sure that silly things aren’t happening, because they are happening on the coasts,” Pillen added. Last year, two restaurants – one on each coast – were serving cultivated meat, after Upside Foods and fellow Californian startup Eat Just received approval from the USDA and FDA.
The governor, whose family owns a major pork farm in the state, was very forceful in his wording. “If there are Nebraskans that want to buy lab-grown meat, good for them. They’re just not going to do it in Nebraska,” he said.
Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen received and signed the executive order in August, officially putting it into effect. And now, DeKay has followed through on the intention to outlaw cultivated meat.
How Nebraska’s executive order stifles cultivated meat
Courtesy: Governor Jim Pillen/X
Pillen announced three separate measures to block the progress of the cultivated meat industry. First, he has prohibited state agencies from procuring these proteins
Then, he has mandated state contractors to ensure they don’t “discriminate against natural-meat producers” in favour of alternative proteins.
And finally, he’s asked the agriculture department to make a rule that requires any cultivated meat sold in stores to be clearly labelled separately and placed away from what he called “real meat”. For the record, cultivated meat uses cells from real animals, so it is ‘real meat’ – just, you know, without the slaughter and the pollution and the land use and the water consumption.
Sherry Vinton, the aforementioned director of the agriculture department, said her agency will develop standards to determine when alternative proteins – including plant-based meats – are being falsely labelled or misadvertised. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it is.
“Without these regulations, people can be misled, they can be deceived into buying a product that they didn’t intend on buying,” she said. Some would say that’s insulting people’s intelligence.
“We are going to get very aggressive and make sure Nebraskans are not going to get confused by how meat is labelled,” Pillen said. “People are not going to be able to come into Nebraska and sell product that has meat on it that’s not meat.”
The executive order suggested that blended meats – which combine conventionally raised meat with plant-based ingredients or cultivated cells – “have the potential to confuse consumers”.
But to the contrary, peer-reviewed research has shown that when produced using renewable energy, cultivated meat can account for 92% fewer emissions, 94% less air pollution, and 90% less land use than conventional beef. Another study estimated that a shift to cellular agriculture combined with green energy could cut annual emissions by 52% and reduce the amount of land used by traditional farming methods by 83%.
A familiar – and tired – rhetoric
Courtesy: EPA
Pillen said that 95% of livestock producers in Nebraska are family-owned, and that he wants to keep it that way. This is the same rhetoric used by DeSantis as well as Alabama governor Kay Ivey, whose state has also banned cultivated meat (which will come into effect on October 1).
Nebraska’s lawmakers are aims to follow in his fellow Republicans’ footsteps. The governor promised to reciprocate this legislation in his state in May – when the bans by Florida and Alabama were announced.
“The fake-meat, petri-dish-meat folks, they’re not going to have a place in Nebraska, just mark that down on your calendar,” he said at the time. “It’s time for us to roll up our sleeves and fight and defend Nebraska, and that’s what we’re doing.”
In August, when signing the executive order, Pillen said he’ll ask policymakers to propose and prioritise a ban on cultivated meat next year. “We can etch it in stone so nobody has a chance,” he suggested, calling these proteins “an attack on our values”.
“We are the beef state,” he added. The problem is, agriculture is the largest source of Nebraska’s emissions, contributing to 42% of the state’s climate footprint, according to the US EPA. And beef production alone accounts for 55% of this share, and 23.7% of the state’s overall emissions.
That seemingly doesn’t faze Pillen. “Nebraska farmers and ranchers, like those here today, are committed to producing the best food products anywhere,” he said. “We feed the world, and we save the planet more effectively and more efficiently than anybody else, and I will defend those practices with my last breath.”
But this idea that cultivated meat is a threat to farmers is a fallacy. As Andy Jarvis, director of the Bezos Earth Fund’s Future of Food scheme, told Green Queen in June: “Everyone gets kind of very nervous about cultivated [meat]… thinking that it’s completely detached from farming. Well, the [culture] media are sugars, and all sorts of minerals and things that are coming from crops, and they’re farmed goods.”
He added: “So this is not an anti-farmer sector; this is a sector that is using farmed products in new ways. And generally using farmed products that are more profitable and highly sustainable in the way they’re produced.”
Nebraska leaders miss the irony
Courtesy: Jim Pillen for Governor
Lawmakers in Arizona, Kentucky, Iowa, Michigan, New York, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia have all introduced similar proposals to thwart cultivated meat. As Upside Foods CEO Uma Valeti put it, these types of bans are “a harbinger of what might come when a small set of people try to make laws and rules” on what Americans can eat.
So it makes it even more depressingly funny that Jeanne Reigle, the legislative candidate supporting Pillen at the signing, said – completely unironically – that what keeps her up at night and makes her fear for American children’s future is that the “government could get involved and have more control over this new so-called ‘food’”.
As for Pillen, it’s unclear whether he really feels so deeply about this issue, or it’s more a PR stunt – after all, it’s become almost fashionable in Republican states to restrict new businesses hoping to find a way to feed America when meat inevitably goes into short supply. Given Republicans’ staggering lack of belief in climate change or willingness to embrace cultivated meat, this is nothing new.
But the Nebaraska governor wants it to be. He wants you to know that this is “a big deal”. Whether a ban actually happens – or any such bills die down eventually – only time will tell.
Should Pillen really be focusing on products that have never been sold in Nebraska and wouldn’t have for quite a few years anyway? Or should he be putting his energy into reducing the dangerously high nitrate levels in his hog farm’s water supply, which would also protect the health of the farmers and consumers he says he cares about?
Instead of feeding peanut shells to livestock, we can upcycle them to make high-fibre meat analogues and growth components for cultivated meat, while cutting down on food waste.
Did you know that you can eat peanut shells? Better yet, were you aware that you can make planet-friendly meat from them?
That’s what scientists from the US are proposing, in a move they say can cut food waste, promote human health, boost food security and farm economies, reduce emissions, and thus meet several Sustainable Development Goals.
In a review published in the Frontiers journal, researchers outline how about 22% of the 46 million tonnes of peanuts produced annually is waste from the shells, resulting in a loss of over 6.5 million tonnes of dietary fibre and 595,000 tonnes of plant protein.
While peanut shells are most commonly upcycled into animal feed, a dry complete material for packaging and industrial fillers, and potentially biofuel, the study suggests that this is a “missed opportunity” since these hulls are edible to humans. It proposes methods to recapture nutrients (like protein and fibre) and process these hulls into functional ingredients for a variety of foods, including plant-based and cultivated meats.
The nutritional and food security potential of peanut shells
Courtesy: Frontiers
The scientists argue that the valorisation of peanut byproducts would significantly increase the amount of food available from current land, water and energy use, addressing hunger and benefitting farmers (who could sell the shells at a premium compared to low-cost animal feed).
Most of the greenhouse gas emissions from peanut production come from on-farm activities, and the hulls alone represent a quarter of the potential energy output. But overall, these groundnuts generate 97% fewer emissions per kg than beef, and use up 97% less land too – so using the shells to produce food for human consumption illustrates a highly sustainable way to increase food security.
Peanut shells have several nutritional advantages, according to the study. They’re a rich source of dietary fibre (making up over 60% of their dry weight) and protein (7%), alongside plant-sourced phytonutrients like polyphenols and flavonoids. This includes the anti-inflammatory flavonoid luteolin, which has been used as a source of bioactive in medicines and nutritional supplements.
The scientists cite research showing the potential of extracts derived from peanut hulls in cancer and hypertension treatments, pain management, displaying anti-diabetic properties, and reducing pathogen activity in food applications.
“The advances in the evidence about these compounds have led to widespread production of extracts from peanut hulls frequently used in pharmaceuticals in most global regions,” the study states.
However, peanut shell flour isn’t currently processed anywhere in the world, according to the researchers, and this presents an opportunity for health experts and food manufacturers. Once consumers accept it as an ingredient, adding it to foodstuffs can reduce production costs and food insecurity in at-risk regions, many of which overlap with peanut-growing areas.
Shells and husks of hazelnuts, almonds and walnuts are already being used as fibre- and protein-rich flours. But peanuts are grown in substantially larger volumes, and their shells have a much larger absolute amount of protein, fibre and nutrients than hazelnut or almond hulls. Still, no patents exist for processing peanut shells for human food uses, rendering it a market ripe for innovation.
Reimagining peanut shells as a future food
Courtesy: Patcharapon’s Images/Sissyartsy
Just as almond and hazelnut flours have been utilised in baking and snacking applications, peanut hull flour can also be used to make breads, cookies, crackers, and biscuits. Fibre-rich flours from these shells can enhance baking textures due to strong binding capacity and higher water absorption. Common foods like stews and gravies can also benefit from peanut shell flour.
One interesting use case comes from the hydrolysation of peanut hull flour, which is used to extract lignans (a group of polyphenols). What’s left over is cellulose, which can be processed into a substitute for methylcellulose. This is a commonly used emulsifier, thickener, and binding agent in plant-based meats.
The targeted activation of proteins could unlock properties associated with cellulose additives, better utilising peanut shells and improving the cost efficiency of upcycling them, while also providing greater culinary versatility and an enhanced nutritional profile with fewer overall processing demands.
Meanwhile, these shells also have a high concentration of branch-chain amino acids, some of which are associated with umami flavours, especially grilled and aged meats. Plus, they can be processed in a similar way to pea protein, whose large demand is set to outsize production capacities.
“Recapturing lost protein from an alternative legume source like PHs could provide an additional source to meet that demand while increasing the efficiency of existing production systems,” says the study. Due to the retained fibre and carbohydrate content, the final sale volumes could be 20% larger than pea protein, if aiming for similar concentrations.
These peanut shell protein concentrates can have multiple applications, from a mildly peanut-flavoured protein supplement for drinks and powder, to a protein base for plant-based meat and dairy products.
Notably, they can be used as a replacement for other plant proteins in serum-free growth media, bio-ink, and structural scaffolding components of cultivated meat, important at a time when the industry is working to reduce costs through culture media innovations.
Israeli molecular farming player PoLoPo will now supply patatin after its egg protein clients expressed demand for the native potato protein.
PoLoPo, the Israel-based startup turning potatoes into protein factories, is now supplying patatin to clients, in response to an unexpected demand for the native potato protein.
The company uses molecular farming to grow target amino acids within a potato’s tuber through its SuperAA platform. While its first product is ovalbumin, the most abundant protein found in chicken eggs, its metabolic engineering techniques can also increase the potato’s own protein content.
And according to PoLoPo, commercial customers that have been buying its egg protein have also been asking for the latter, since the startup can produce patatin at much lower costs than current the current standard.
“We are keeping our eyes on the prize, which is bringing molecular-farmed egg protein to market, but conversations with clients revealed an additional demand for patatin in large quantities at a fair price,” said Maya Sapir-Mir, CEO of PoLoPo, which is awaiting regulatory approval from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) before going to market.
Why PoLoPo’s patatin is unlike other potato proteins
Courtesy: PoLoPo
Sapir-Mir co-founded PoLoPo with CTO Raya Liberman-Aloni in 2022. The team decided to begin with potatoes due to their resilience in diverse climates, low growth costs, short maturation time, relatively large storage capacity (in the form of tubers), high yields, and compatibility with existing technologies.
The company says it’s an efficient and sustainable ingredient that offers attractive financial opportunities for established agrifood producers, which will allow PoLoPo scale up its SuperAA system in a cost-effective manner.
For its ovalbumin, it inserts a DNA sequence into the potato to teach it to produce a fully functional, nutritionally equivalent protein that is chemically identical to chicken eggs.
But it can also produce a powdered version of patatin. It does so by drying and extracting proteins harvested from the tubers. The final product doesn’t have any GMOs, despite the process using genetic engineering.
The problem is, most manufacturers destroy native protein when extracting potato starch, so most patatin on the market is non-functional, and this usually ends up going to animal feed, pet food, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals.
PoLoPo’s patatin, though, has a high protein digestibility score of 0.99 (the scale maxes out at 1), which is similar to that of casein, beef and eggs. It also has all essential amino acids and boasts functional attributes like emulsification, gelling and texturisation.
“Patatin has high nutritional value, is not considered as an allergen, and has great functionalities. By that, it is a versatile protein option for many categories: plant-based meat and dairy, baked goods, products like bars and drinks that are popular for sports nutrition or even meal replacement,” Sapir-Mir tells Green Queen.
PoLoPo bets on cost efficiency amid impending US approval
Courtesy: PoLoPo
“We are scaling up our production to pilot scale in Israel for product and formulation development purposes,” reveals Sapir-Mir. “It’s important to remember that to scale, all we need is to plant another field.”
This is one of the key advantages of molecular farming: it doesn’t require expensive bioreactors to produce ingredients on a large scale. Here, the plants themselves act as the bioreactors. This also means lower prices – a key selling point for PoLoPo’s plunge into a $105M market for potato proteins.
Current prices of functional patatin can surpass $100 per kg, as extraction and drying with existing infrastructure is a resource-intensive process. But PoLoPo’s potato plants produce higher levels of patatin within potatoes, leading to better returns – both financially and in terms of yields. Combined with the protein’s functionality, this could help battle food insecurity in malnutrition-hit regions.
“Our SuperAA platform is significantly elevating the natural yield of patatin in potatoes, making potato processing for functional protein extraction more economical,” highlights Sapir-Mir. “This innovation unlocks pricing points that the industry has never seen before for functional patatin, offering more competitive pricing for high-quality protein.”
While she leaves the door open for fundraising (the company closed a $2.3M pre-seed investment round last year), PoLoPo is also now gearing up for launch in the US. It applied for USDA approval in May, and expects to get the nod by the end of the year.
“The submission to the USDA earlier this year is to cover growing our rich protein potatoes. We will file self-GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) for the patatin ingredient, and because it’s the natural protein growing in its natural environment, we expect a relatively smooth and quick approval,” Sapir-Mir explains.
PoLoPo is among a host of Israeli companies using molecular farming to grow future-friendly proteins. Finally Foods is also using potatoes, but to grow casein (the main protein in dairy) instead. NewMoo, meanwhile, is producing liquid casein from soybeans.
Alternative proteins are poised to present attractive benefits to Israel, with the industry expected to produce 10,000 additional jobs, have more than 200 companies and over a dozen manufacturing facilities, and contribute $2.5B to the country’s economy by 2030.
Canada’s New School Foods has attracted $6M in new capital and opened a commercial-scale manufacturing facility to bring its vegan salmon to market.
As it prepares for its commercial launch in the US and Canada, plant-based seafood maker New School Foods has received $6M in a seed extension round and opened a 28,000 sq ft production facility.
The latest investment included Inter IKEA – the holding company of the Swedish furniture giant – Good Startup, NewTree Capital and Hatch, building on existing state-led funding from Protein Industries Canada.
It brings the Toronto-based startup’s total raised to $18M, and will help it accelerate the launch of its whole-cut salmon analogue to foodservice customers.
Whether the vegan salmon appears on IKEA menus one day remains to be seen, but New School Foods founder and CEO Chris Bryson commended the furniture retailer’s “strong alignment to our mission of creating a more sustainable food system”. “We greatly admire the fact that IKEA has committed publicly to being at least 50% plant-based in their menus by 2025,” he told Green Queen.
Courtesy: New School Foods
How New School Foods makes its whole-cut salmon
New School Foods, which was established in 2021, employs directional freezing on a biopolymer gel to form thousands of microscopic ice crystals that travel away from the freezing source. The ice is then removed, leaving behind empty channels that act as a scaffold, which can be filled with proteins, fats, flavours, etc. to form meat-mimicking muscle fibres.
The “cold-based” process creates highly tunable fibres – their length, diameter and resistance can be altered to create the desirable textures. These pieces of muscle fibres are then assembled into larger structures, separated by layers of connective tissues.
“While conventional structuring processes like extrusion use heat to mimic muscle fibres, which pre-cooks the protein, we use a freezing-based technique to create muscle fibres that do not pre-cook the proteins,” explained Bryson.
“This ensures that the product looks raw, and then transforms upon cooking, providing a familiar cooking experience. And by not pre-cooking the proteins, it ensures that the texture does not end up being rubbery.”
Bryson said the method is “specifically designed to address the inherent product complexities and challenges of making whole cuts: “That’s everything from the way the product looks – both raw, and cooked, and how it actually cooks and transforms, to its texture and its taste.”
He added: “Salmon, for example, has a vibrant, shiny and translucent look, layered with parallel white lines. Those lines melt upon cooking, which enables the product to flake. And then those flakes break down into small muscle fibres. Recreating that entirety is key to driving a customer experience that will feel authentic, familiar, and worth enjoying time and again.”
Courtesy: New School Foods
Using machines identical to fishing industry
This process of making vegan salmon will now be applied on a large scale via New School Foods’ V1 commercial assembly line in the new facility in Toronto, which is designed to “host multiple stages of growth”.
Bryson described the V1 assembly line as “the very first commercial implementation of our scaffolding and directional freezing processes”. It will support the startup’s initial restaurant partners while aiming to showcase how it can produce high-quality seafood analogues.
“We’ve designed the facility to allow room for continued expansion of our production capabilities, since there will be a V2 line, and so on,” the CEO said, adding that contrary to many competitors, the company owns its production operation instead of using a co-manufacturer.
“This ensures that we have greater control over quality [and] unit costs, and can invest in continuous innovation for both our process and formulations so as to solve the most important issue at hand – creating plant-based alternatives that appeal to a wider customer audience,” he said.
“This is especially important for making whole-cut alternatives because they are significantly more complex products to create than a ground product – if you want to do it right.”
New School Foods’ technology uses adapted off-the-shelf, commercially available industrial equipment to ensure it can scale up. “Ironically, one of the pieces of equipment we use is a commercially flash-freezing machine identical to those used in the commercial fishing industry – we’re just using it for plant-based fish,” Bryce revealed.
Courtesy: New School Foods
Quality and price the ‘North Star’ of vegan seafood
The latest investment comes a few months after the company kicked off its New School Culinary Council, a collective of chefs and restauranteurs that will guide product development, recommend recipes, and support the market adoption of its vegan salmon.
The first chef it had collaborated with was Matthew Kenney of Plant Food + Wine fame. The vegan chef has endured a troublesome couple of years, with at least 12 of his restaurants closing since September 2022. Asked if Kenney is still working with the brand, Bryson indicated that the partnership had run its course for now. “As of late, we’ve mainly been working with local chefs in Toronto,” he said.
New School Foods has always targeted chefs as its point of entry in the market. “Our plan has always been to distribute via the chefs and tastemakers – 70% of the seafood purchased in the US is via restaurant orders rather than grocery/cook-at-home,” he explained.
“Since we are producing new versions of the product every week, if not multiple times per week, it’s been very important for us to get immediate market feedback to keep improving the product,” added Bryson. “This is something that we expect to continue doing; getting great feedback from experts is critical to building a great product.”
New School Foods founder and CEO Chris Bryson | Courtesy: New School Foods
While there’s no exact launch date yet, the startup has previously suggested that it would be sometime this year. Alternative seafood has faced significant headwinds of late, with sales only making up 1% of the entire plant-based market in the US. Its slice of the overall seafood industry is similar. Brands like Akua, Ordinary Seafood and New Wave Foods have shut down in recent months, illustrating the tough market landscape.
And as consumers continue to face cost-of-living pressures, finding the right price for its salmon will be key to making people bite. Bryon agreed, saying: “Product quality and price parity need to be your combined North Star, and that’s a major reason why we’ve developed our own manufacturing operation.”
He added: “We won’t start at parity since that requires significant volume, but we’re laying the right foundation to get there. When we do launch via our restaurant partners, we expect that the price of the filet will be of a comparable price to other entrees on the menu.”
New analysis by the Food Foundation shows that plant-based meat is better for the planet and mostly healthier, with traditional proteins like beans or tofu the most optimal options.
Plant-based burgers, sausages and nuggets are much more climate-friendly and largely better for human health – but their progress is hindered by a price premium, a new study by the UK’s Food Foundation has found.
While the environmental benefits of plant-based proteins are well-known – especially in high-income countries – the conversation around their health credentials has been skewed and misleading, and needs “much greater nuance”.
The report revealed that plant-based meats and traditional plant proteins like beans, grains, tofu and tempeh all have significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions than animal-derived meat. The same is true for water use (barring rice). Meanwhile, vegan proteins also contain fewer calories, less saturated fat, and higher fibre levels than meat products.
Courtesy: Food Foundation
The Food Foundation split plant proteins into three categories: new-generation analogues, traditional proteins (both classed as processed), and beans and grains (which are less processed or unprocessed). It analysed 67 plant-based products and compared their climate, nutrition and price attributes to 46 meat products.
Beans and grains like chickpeas, rice, oats and lentils were on average the strongest-performing foods on all three fronts of sustainability, nutrition and price, and thus should be “an important part of strategies” to support dietary shifts. That said, in the short term, “like-for-like meat substitutions are likely to offer a realistic and feasible transition pathway”, the report suggested.
Plant proteins: a solution for UK’s fibre deficiency
Courtesy: Food Foundation
According to the research, the number of plant-based meat options far exceeds products offering traditional proteins like tofu or tempeh. And the proportion of ultra-processed food (UPF) – a thorn in the side of the vegan food industry – in each category also varies considerably.
While misleading media coverage has bred consumer confusion about UPFs – in the UK, an equal share of consumers believe UPFs are healthy and unhealthy, despite these foods making up 57% of the average British diet – the report pointed out that suggestions of plant-based meat being unhealthy solely because they’re UPFs are wide of the mark.
“Even plant-based alternatives with good nutrient profiles based on traditional nutrient profiling models, such as mycoprotein (Quorn), can be classed as UPFs,” the researchers wrote, adding that a 2023 study found positive health impacts from the intake of ultra-processed meat analogues.
While plant proteins were found to be lower in protein than meat, this difference was only marginal. And in any case, the UK doesn’t have any protein deficiency issues at a population level, the report said. In fact, Brits are overconsuming protein, with men and women eating 29g and 22g more of it, respectively, than is recommended by the British Nutrition Foundation.
Courtesy: Food Foundation
The biggest gain for plant-based meats and traditional proteins comes with fibre intake, a nutrient the UK is not consuming enough of. On average, conventional meat products only have 0.5g of fibre per 100g, versus 4.7g for vegan meats, and 5.1g for grains and beans.
But while tofu, beans and the like have minimal levels of salt, plant-based meat products have higher salt levels than animal proteins (1.3g vs 1.1g, respectively). The report also found that only a third of the meat analogues analysed are fortified with iron and vitamin B12. This leaves room for improvement: brands could enhance the health credentials of vegan meats by improving fortification and reformulating them to reduce salt content.
However, certain products are already outperforming their animal counterparts. Vegan bacon has on average 1g more protein per 100g, while plant-based meatballs have 1g lower salt content compared to their livestock-derived equivalents.
Light on the planet, heavy on the wallet
The Food Foundation cites figures from Our World in Data to show that meat production has an outsized impact on the planet. Beef (from beef herds) is by far the most polluting protein, followed by lamb and beef from dairy cows.
But even chicken – often floated as a ‘sustainable’ meat option – has more than twice the emissions impact of rice and Beyond Meat, and emits three times more greenhouse gases than Quorn and Future Farm.
Similarly, beef is the most water-intensive food analysed in the report, followed by rice and other animal proteins. The rest of the plant proteins use much less water – Quorn’s water consumption is 97% lower than beef, while Beyond Meat’s water footprint is 99% smaller.
Courtesy: Food Foundation
But while plant-based meats and proteins delivered plenty of wins on the health and environment fronts, their prices for consumers leave a lot to be desired. Meat analogues and plant proteins (like tofu and tempeh) are 73% and 38% more expensive than conventional meat products, respectively, with only grains and beans turning out cheaper (-52%).
Vegan bacon has the highest price premium, with these products almost three times more expensive than animal-derived versions. On the other hand, plant-based meatballs and mince are almost at price parity, costing only 7% and 14% more, respectively.
Courtesy: Food Foundation
UK should cut animal consumption with beans and blended meat
The report has a bunch of recommendations for different stakeholders in the industry. If you’re an investor, consider the fact that alternative proteins offer the highest CO2e savings per dollar of invested capital of any industry – three times higher than cement, transport or aviation – according to Boston Consulting Group.
For food manufacturers, restaurants and retailers, ensuring price parity for alternative proteins would be a major step forward, as would setting sales-based targets for plant proteins – several supermarket groups in Europe have already done so. These entities should also reformulate products that are high in salt or other unfavourable health metrics, so they’re on par or even more nutritious than meat.
Running cross-product promotions like meal deals and set menus for plant-based food, increasing the ratio of plant-rich foods to meat-based ones, and innovating with blended meat – mixing meat with alternative proteins, as Quorn is doing with the NHS – are all beneficial to this sector.
Courtesy: Quorn/Billion Photos/Green Queen
There’s a real focus on promoting unprocessed proteins like beans, which the report says represents a “win-win-win” for environmental, health and equity outcomes. Making beans more appealing via marketing strategies is key, especially since the consumption of these foods isn’t patterned by income levels.
As for policymakers, they should focus on strengthening procurement in schools and hospitals; introduce mandatory reporting of protein ratios for large companies; extend the VAT exemption of plant-based milks; and recognise the need to eat less meat as part of its climate strategy.
The UK government was also urged to reject EU proposals to outlaw the use of dairy-related terms on plant-based product labels, connect alternative protein development with public health goals, improve the regulatory system for new products, and build on its investments into this sector.
There has been some progress on the latter – earlier today, it was announced that UK Research & Innovation has invested £12M in a new National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre, which aims to develop and bring to market plant-based, cultivated and fermentation-derived proteins.
Speaking to Green Queen, Dr Stella Child, research and grants manager at the Good Food Institute (GFI) Europe, said that to ensure the UK remains competitive internationally, “the new government needs to build on the country’s growing scientific expertise and invest £100M a year in R&D and creating the infrastructure British alternative protein companies need”.
In our weekly column, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Chile’s vegan ads with Joaquin Phoenix, Maison Landemaine’s La Vie sandwiches, and Helaina’s animal-free lactoferrin study.
New products and launches
A new vegan brand is on the market. Spain’s Beanstalk Foods has entered the European market with a range of meat analogues like hamburgers, meatballs, pastrami, breaded calamari, as well as ambient salami and chorizo snacks. It will start with Spain and the UK, and has a sister company in New York for a US launch.
Courtesy: Beanstalk Foods
South Korean vegan cheese brand Armored Fresh has expanded its distribution footprint with KeHe Distributors, with its products now available nationwide for retailers in the US.
Israeli vegan meal kit producer Anina Culinary Art, whose products feature upcycled vegetables in dehydrated discs, has now launched nationwide in the US with its new online store.
German chocolate giant Ritter Sport is adding a new Vegan Double Crunch flavour to its Travel Retail Edition Vegan Tower in January. The range will be showcased at the TFWA World Exhibition in Cannes (September 30 to October 3).
Courtesy: La Vie/Beanstalk Foods/Fundación Veg
Parisian bakery chain Maison Landemaine has introduced two sandwiches using La Vie‘s plant-based meats: a vegetarian croque monsieur with ham and a vegan club sandwich with bacon.
Speaking of bacon, the UK’s Squeaky Bean has introduced ready-to-eat Crispy Bacon Style Strips, described as a first-to-market vegan alternative.
In Chile, Fundación Veg has launched a new campaign in Santiago Metro to promote plant-based eating during the Fiestas Patrias (September 18-19), with an animal-welfare-centric painting of actor Joaquin Phoenix by local artist Fab Ciraolo.
Courtesy: Pythag Tech
New York-based Pythag Tech, a software provider focused on cultivated meat, has unveiled The Clean Meat Terminal, a market intelligence platform for investors, companies, consultants and researchers with news, regulatory information, a company database, and more.
In Hong Kong, The White Owl Group has opened a new joint location for its plant-forwardMaya Bakery and The Cakery at the IFC Mall in the city’s Central district.
KFC China partnered with famed Shanghai vegan eatery Spring Breeze Songyuelou to introduce plant-based steamed buns on its breakfast menu.
And in India, cricketer Virat Kohli and actress Anushka Sharma (who are married) have appeared in a new ad campaign for plant-based meat brand Blue Tribe.
Research and policy developments
The Good Food Institute has released a report on investment in the alternative protein space, advising companies on where to target fundraising efforts amid a global squeeze in food tech financing.
Courtesy: Helaina
New York-based precision fermentation player Helaina has released a pre-print, non-peer-reviewed study, which found that its animal-free lactoferrin had a lower immunogenic response than the bovine version.
In the UK’s Slough Borough Council, a trial to collect food waste using dedicated caddies from residents in five areas has saved the council more than £3,000.
Courtesy: Chinese Nutrition Society/Dao Foods
During China’s National Nutrition Week 2024, the Chinese Nutrition Society promoted soy and legume consumption, with one event focusing on soy milk’s nutrition and releasing a white paper around guidelines and recommended intakes.
Events and awards
The Good Food Institute has unveiled the latest cohort of its student-focused Alt Protein Project, with 21 new chapters part of its fifth year.
Manufacturers, startups, investors, suppliers and scientists will gather at ProVeg International‘s New Food Conference in Berlin on September 3, where they’ll examine the current state of plant-based foods and best supply chain practices, as consumers reach a “societal tipping point”.
Courtesy: Solar Foods
Finally, Finnish startup Solar Foods, which makes Solein protein from air, has won the international Phase 3 category in NASA‘s Deep Space Food Challenge.
The UK is opening a £38M National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre to bring new planet-friendly foods to market, with a £15M investment from the government.
The University of Leeds is hosting a new hub dedicated to developing and commercialising climate-friendly alternatives to animal proteins, and getting more people to eat them.
The National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre (NAPIC) has been established through a £38M investment from public and private sector players, including over 100 stakeholders and businesses both domestically and abroad.
Of this, £15M comes from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Innovate UK – two of the government’s largest financing bodies – as the UK look to accelerate its net-zero emissions strategy.
The future food hub will be co-hosted by the James Hutton Institute, the University of Sheffield, and Imperial College London – which is also the site of one of Bezos Earth Fund‘s Centers for Sustainable Protein – with a team of 30 interdisciplinary researchers and 120 international partners. These include farmers, small and large businesses, regulators, and councils).
Focusing on plant-based, cultivated and fermentation-derived products and ingredients from innovation to commercialisation – as well as developing more sustainable animal feed and aquaculture – NAPIC will offer technical, entrepreneurial, regulatory and policy training, while promoting knowledge exchange via its international network of partners, which includes the United Nations.
Courtesy: Ivy Farm Technologies
“This hugely welcome investment will provide a catalyst driving forward the pace of innovation by bringing together a wide variety of UK researchers to solve the many challenges involved in commercialising alternative proteins,” Dr Stella Child research and grants manager at the Good Food Institute (GFI) Europe, told Green Queen.
According to GFI Europe’s estimates, the £15M financing by the BBSRC and Innovate UK has brought the government’s total investment in alternative proteins to over £91M. The capital will support NAPIC for five years, as its members work to produce a roadmap for the development of a National Protein Strategy in the UK.
“The new National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre will advance research and innovation in alternative proteins, strengthening the UK’s leadership in this critical sector and fostering international collaboration to ensure a more sustainable and secure food future for all,” Dr Stella Peace, executive director for healthy living and agriculture at Innovate UK, said in a statement.
The four pillars of the UK’s new alternative protein centre
Courtesy: THIS
The members of NAPIC will work closely with businesses, academia, regulators, and investors on four interdisciplinary knowledge pillars. The University of Leeds will lead the Perform pillar, ensuring that alternative proteins meet consumers’ taste, texture and nutrition expectations.
The Produce pillar – headed by the James Hutton Institute – will help partners develop ingredients and products with optimum functional, sensories and nutritional qualities, and address concerns about ultra-processed foods and a just transition for farmers.
Then there’s the Process pillar, with Imperial College leading this effort. It involves a specific focus on scaling up cultivated meat and precision fermentation via AI-guided models to help commercialise these foods.
Finally, the University of Sheffield will spearhead the People pillar, which aims to focus on delivering a fair protein transition for consumers and farmers through a focus on affordability, accessibility and acceptability. This involves providing new training and business opportunities for farmers, as well as futureproofing the UK’s protein supply against a reliance on imports.
The UK currently imports over £15B worth of protein products (including meat, dairy, eggs and seafood), plus £3B worth of animal feed, according to Dr Rob Hancock, deputy director of the Advanced Plant Growth Centre (APGC) at the James Hutton Institute.
Courtesy: Imperial College
The food system accounts for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, with meat and dairy alone making up 57% of this share (twice as much as plant-based). In contrast, a University of Oxford study found that vegan diets can reduce emissions, water pollution and land use by 75% compared to a meat-rich diet.
“Reducing these emissions will be difficult, especially given an increasing global population and the impacts of climate change,” said Professor Derek Stewart, director of the APGC, who is leading the Produce pillar. “We need to find more sustainable sources of protein and thankfully there is a huge biodiversity in non-animal sources of protein, and we’ve barely scratched the surface of this.”
Transitioning to healthy, sustainable sources of protein is a pressing global challenge,” added Professor Karen Polizzi from Imperial College’s Department of Chemical Engineering, who is spearheading the Process pillar. “NAPIC will help facilitate this transition by supporting researchers and industry in all parts of the process from product design through to consumer acceptance.”
Why the consumer focus is vital
Professor Anwesha Sarkar, project leader of the National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre | Courtesy: University of Leeds
Polizzi is the vice-director of the Bezos Center for Sustainable Protein too, but while this hub has a research focus surrounding engineering biology and AI to speed up the development of alternative proteins, NAPIC will home in on making these foods mainstream in the UK.
Consumer acceptance is one of the major barriers hindering these foods’ progress. Professor Louise Dye, co-director of the Institute of Sustainable Food at the University of Sheffield, told PA Media that only around 9% of supermarket protein sales come from alternative proteins.
“Population-level access to – and acceptance of – alternative proteins is currently hindered by a highly complex marketplace, concerns about taste, nutritional equivalence and cost, as well as health and safety concerns, and the fear of diminished livelihoods for farmers,” added Professor Anwesha Sarkar, project leader for NAPIC, and research and innovation director at the University of Leeds’ School of Food Science and Nutrition.
And while there are encouraging signs, a lot more needs to be done. For example, one survey suggested that 2.5 million Brits were vegan in 2023, a 78% rise from the year before – and another 3.1 million were vegetarian. Meanwhile, meat and dairy consumption fell to their lowest levels last year in nearly half a century (when records began) – but so did fruit and vegetable intake.
Courtesy: YouGov
When it comes to cultivated meat, more Brits would feed these proteins to their pets (47%) than themselves (33%), according to a 2022 study. This was echoed by a more recent poll too, where only 26% of consumers expressed a willingness to eat cultivated meat – with taste and price key concerns.
Even with plant-based meat, a category of products that have been on the market for a while, taste and affordability are the biggest complaints in the UK, while health is the most attractive benefit of these analogues.
This illustrates the need to drive consumer support for these proteins by meeting them where they are, as well as helping farmers transition away from animal proteins without hurting their incomes and lives. There is some potential here, with research revealing that British farmers recognise the benefits of cultivated meat.
“With consumers and agriculture at the heart of a transition towards alternative proteins, it’s hugely important that the centre focuses on ensuring these foods meet people’s expectations around taste, price and nutrition, as well as enabling British farmers to benefit from new opportunities in this growing sector,” said Linus Pardoe, UK policy manager at GFI Europe.
UK government urged to ramp up investment in alternative protein
Courtesy: Number 10/Flickr/CC
NAPIC is the latest in a string of examples showcasing the UK’s commitment to alternative proteins. In the last 18 months, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council has injected £12M in the Cellular Agriculture Manufacturing Hub at the University of Bath, while UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) supported Imperial College’s Microbial Food Hub with up to £12M in financing.
“The launch of the National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre exemplifies our commitment to spearheading innovation in the alternative proteins sector,” said Professor Guy Poppy, food champion at UKRI and deputy executive chair of the BBSRC (which is part of UKRI).
“By harnessing the strengths of our world-class scientific community and robust industrial partnerships, this initiative addresses vital sustainability challenges and forges essential links between research and commercial application,” he added. “Academic and industry collaboration is key to transforming these pioneering ideas into practical, scalable solutions.”
Along similar lines, NAPIC head Sarkar said: “NAPIC is a truly pan-UK centre with global reach and our mission is to be an ‘innovation enabler’ for rapidly evolving alternative protein industries, delivering a universally healthy, acceptable, accessible, eco-friendly food system by harnessing the UK’s world-class science.”
Highlighting the potential of the hub, the James Hutton Institute’s Dr Hancock told PA Media that around 75% of human food comes from just 12 plant species, but “there are about 14,000 plant species which are edible and available to be exploited”.
Courtesy: James Hutton Institute
GFI Europe has previously called on the UK to provide £390M in investment to the alternative protein sector between 2025 and 2030, if it is to keep pace with the rest of the world. “Estimates indicate that, with regulatory reforms and sufficient public investment, the UK’s alternative protein industry could add £6.8B each year to the country’s economy and create 25,000 jobs by 2035,” noted Dr Child, its research and grants manager.
Now, the think tank is urging the UK to go even further. “In order to achieve this success and ensure the UK remains competitive internationally, the new government needs to build on the country’s growing scientific expertise and invest £100M a year in R&D and creating the infrastructure British alternative protein companies need,” she added.
But with investments growing in the last couple of years, and the UK recently becoming Europe’s first country to approve cultivated meat for sale, the establishment of NAPIC is a step in the right direction.
“Today’s announcement provides yet more evidence that the UK government increasingly recognises the importance of alternative protein research and development to boost food security, reduce the climate impact of our food system and create green futureproof jobs,” said Dr Child.
India’s new BioE3 policy puts alternative proteins and future food in sharp focus – what does the biomanufacturing strategy mean for this sector?
On Saturday, India announced a biotechnology policy focused on the economy and climate, with smart proteins and functional foods – as well as climate-resilient agriculture – among six pillars of the strategy.
With BioE3 (which stands for Biotechnology for Economy, Employment, and Environment) being approved by the Union Cabinet, India is aiming to foster “high-performance biomanufacturing”, with a focus on accelerating tech development and commercialisation by getting up biomanufacturing hubs and biofoundries.
The policy is designed to strengthen the country’s net-zero goal of 2070 and its Lifestyle for Environment strategy (which encourages green behaviours), and speed up ‘green growth’ by promoting a circular bioeconomy. The government aims to position India as “a potential leader in the fourth industrial revolution”, science and tech minister Jitendra Yadav said in a press conference yesterday.
The administration defined “high-performance biomanufacturing” as the ability to produce products from medicine to materials, promote advanced biotech processes for the manufacturing sector, as well as address farming and food challenges.
The six focus areas are high-value bio-based chemicals, biopolymers and enzymes; smart proteins and functional foods; precision biotherapeutics; climate-resilient agriculture; carbon capture; and marine and space research.
That alternative proteins have been highlighted as an economic pillar of the world’s most populous nation is a big deal for the industry. Here’s how it happened, and what comes next.
How alternative proteins became part of India’s BioE3 policy
It all started in July 2023, when the Prime Minister’s Science, Technology, and Innovation Advisory Council met to identify key areas of scientific importance for high-performance biomanufacturing, explains Sneha Singh, acting managing director of the Good Food Institute (GFI) India.
The secretary of the Department of Biotechnology, Dr Rajesh Gokhale, presented smart proteins as part of the initiative. Since then, the department has been holding closed-door meetings with an expert committee to identify a strategic roadmap and period goals for the alternative protein industry.
Courtesy: Blue Tribe Foods
GFI India – a think tank focused on alternative proteins, which include plant-based, cultivated, and fermentation-derived proteins – was part of these meetings. “The inclusion of smart protein as part of the BioE3 policy is the government’s signal to the world that India is looking to be the hub for R&D and cost-efficient manufacturing in this emerging sector,” Singh tells Green Queen.
She adds that other agencies have been engaging on smart proteins too. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India has been working on regulatory clarity, while the Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI) showcased plant protein technology at the World Food India event.
The Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council has also backed entrepreneurs through early-stage ignition grants, and the Department of Science and Technology has led calls to promote translational R&D.
How will smart protein startups profit from BioE3?
The biomanufacturing policy “acts as a catalyst” for alternative protein’s growth in key foundational areas, according to Singh.
“By providing dedicated R&D and innovation support, the policy will accelerate the development of new technologies and processes that can pave the way towards the nutrition, price, and taste parity of smart protein products, making them a truly competitive alternative to their animal-derived counterparts,” she explains.
Meanwhile, the establishment of manufacturing hubs and biofoundries will offer “crucial support” for large-scale commercialisation. “This increased production capacity can significantly improve the accessibility and affordability of smart protein products, enabling them to reach a wider consumer base,” she says.
Courtesy: Perfect Day/Zydus Lifesciences
“Smart protein startups will gain significant momentum through dedicated R&D and innovation support, greater investments, and a nurturing ecosystem,” she adds. “The policy will foster a collaborative environment, facilitating the exchange of knowledge and resources between industry and academia, and encouraging public and private partnerships, leading to faster development and commercialisation of smart protein technologies with biohubs and biofoundries.”
Agriculture accounts for 15% of India’s emissions, and two-thirds of this comes from livestock farming. Singh believes the circular bioeconomy focus resonates with the goals of food sustainability: “By reducing reliance on animal farming, alternative proteins address environmental concerns, further strengthening the smart protein sector’s appeal.”
Who else stands to benefit?
But it’s not just companies that benefit from India’s new policy. “With the growing demand for millets, chickpeas, and other indigenous crops for smart protein end-products, farmers and crop-producing communities can explore new avenues with these resource-efficient crops to create a robust supply chain and contribute to rural economic development,” outlines Singh.
“The policy’s commitment to expanding the skilled workforce is another vital aspect, as it aligns perfectly with the sector’s rapid growth and immense economic potential,” she adds. This will “open several doors for students and the nascent workforce”, who’d be able to enter a fast-growing industry through dedicated coursework and multidisciplinary roles.
This is something Gokhale touched upon in the press conference too. “[BioE3] is expected to generate substantial employment opportunities, particularly in tier-II and tier-III cities, where biomanufacturing hubs will be set up,” he said. “These hubs will leverage local biomass sources, thereby enhancing economic development in these regions.”
Looking at things longer-term, all these efforts will combine to bring benefits to consumers. They will “gain access to a wider array of better-quality, tastier, and more nutritious smart protein products, catering to their diverse preferences”, notes Singh.
Courtesy: GFI India
At around 20%, India has the largest vegetarian population in the world. A report by GFI India last year found that one in four early-adopter consumers would consider giving up conventional meat, seafood, dairy or eggs in the future, with issues like hygiene, ease of cooking, animal welfare, and planetary impact top of mind.
Meanwhile, a perceived ‘unnaturalness’, lack of clarity on health benefits, and taste and price are among the major consumption barriers for alternative proteins in India. People over 45 feel these products are not relevant to them and possess a synthetic taste, while product availability is a key hurdle for many Indians. The amped-up focus on biomanufacturing would help address many of these challenges.
Looking to the future
India’s bioeconomy has grown immensely in the last decade, going from $10B in 2014 to more than $130B in 2024, according to figures cited by Gokhale. This trajectory is set to continue, with forecasts valuing the sector at $300B by 2030.
“Notably, the once fledgling pharmaceutical industry is now a $50B behemoth, fulfilling a significant portion of global demand for medicines and vaccines,” says Singh. “Today, a similar opportunity awaits in the smart protein sector. India’s robust biopharmaceutical and bioprocessing industries have already laid a strong foundation, establishing us as a key player in R&D, innovation, and the large-scale manufacturing capabilities needed for the smart protein sector globally.”
Courtesy: Seaspire
Singh references the government’s Make in India initiative, the propulsion of entrepreneurial ventures, skilled talent generation, and technological advancements as markers of India’s potential to become a global manufacturing hub for smart proteins.
“Leveraging its biomanufacturing capabilities, India can innovate and scale up production of crucial equipment and ingredients cost-competitively, leading the way for technological breakthroughs to produce high-quality and low-cost food manufacturing while fostering robust bioeconomy growth,” she says.
Just earlier this month, the central government introduced 109 new climate-resilient crop varieties for the country’s farmers – for Singh, this is a sign India is “fully committed to making our food systems more productive while also being more cognisant of the impacts of climate change”.
This effort also shares synergies with alternative proteins. “Many of these climate-positive crops, such as pulses, legumes, and beans, have applications for plant-based proteins,” she says. “Beyond climate resilience, government support for research on crop breeds with higher protein content and reduced off-flavours can be hugely impactful in increasing the commercial potential of these crops through plant protein value chains.”
Courtesy: Narendra Modi/X
India has also launched a joint climate-smart agritech accelerator programme with Australia. And last week, Mumbai-based Zydus Biosciences agreed to buy a 50% stake in biomanufacturer Sterling Biotech from Californian precision fermentation pioneer Perfect Day – they plan to open an animal-free protein factory to supply to global markets.
“Climate-resilient agriculture is not solely about safeguarding food systems from the effects of climate change – it is also about reducing their contribution to this global challenge,” says Singh.
Leading future food industry investor Blue Horizon is pivoting from fund management to manufacturing, starting with a Giga Protein Factory in the Arabian desert. Here’s why.
Just over a year ago, alternative protein fund leader Blue Horizon pulled the plug on its growth fund amidst changes in the venture capital landscape and an internal dispute that had led to complications.
Fast-forward to June 2024: agrifood VC platform AgFunder announced in a social media post that it was taking over the management of Blue Horizon’s growth fund effective immediately. The update stated that Blue Horizon had “exited the investment advisory sector”.
According to the announcement, the fund’s limited partners (LPs) would “gain access to AgFunder’s global network, with offices in Silicon Valley, London, and Singapore” and “benefit from the resources provided by AgFunderNews, comprehensive research, and GAIA, AgFunder’s proprietary database and AI platform, which includes over 60,000 agtech and foodtech startups.”
Blue Horizon, meanwhile, said it was pivoting away from asset management to focus on core operations and manufacturing via large-scale ‘Giga Protein Factories’ under a new entity, dubbed NUOS (NUtrition Operating System), in a bid to “accelerate the global transition to a sustainable food system”.
It represents a significant shift in the alternative protein and future food investor space. Since its founding by Swiss businessman Roger Lienhard in 2016, Zurich-based Blue Horizon has been a seminal fund in the sector.
But the seed for change came when Blue Horizon began raising the growth fund – the firm realised that the category wasn’t mature enough to warrant growth equity capital.
According to Blue Horizon’s founders, the future food industry was entering the Gartner hype cycle, and concern around pricing, taste and health came to the fore, which led the conventional meat and dairy industry to mobilise and launch anti-plant-based meat campaigns. Subsequently, mainstream investors became nervous and the alternative protein sector fell into what the firm calls a “capital chasm”, a bottleneck that impeded the industry’s progress.
Blue Horizon told Green Queen they couldn’t break the cycle, ending up with only a $100 million raise after three years of efforts for their first growth fund (reports suggest the firm was targeting multiples of this sum).
Behind the scenes, there were other complications. The firm’s fund management business had faced hurdles despite raising capital, and a dispute with one key executive of the venture fund rattled LPs’ confidence, resulting in its liquidation.
“Yes, there have been tensions,” says Hector Freitas, partner and head of business development at Blue Horizon. “But that’s history.”
After much soul searching, Blue Horizon made the decision to scale back its fund management business – the firm transferred the growth fund to AgFunder – and recalibrate its employee base with an eye toward the future.
AgFunder takes on growth fund
Founded in 2013 by Michael Dean and Rob Leclerc, AgFunder is a leading global early-stage investor in food and agriculture with a portfolio of nearly 100 agrifood tech companies across six continents.
Last month, AgFunder closed its fourth early-stage fund on $102M, surpassing its target. It has already deployed a third of this fund, supporting startups like jitter-free coffee brand Rarebird and ketone-rich energy drink maker Key.
The takeover of Blue Horizon’s fund brings its total managed assets to $300M and adds a growth-stage portfolio to the firm.
“We’ve always intended to have [a growth fund], but the market needed to mature and there have been limited viable opportunities for growth stage investing until fairly recently,” Dean told Green Queen.
AgFunder partners Michael Dean and Manuel Gonzalez with head of media and research at AgFunderNews, Louisa Burwood-Taylor | Courtesy: AgFunderNews
“With our network and AI-driven discovery platform, we have been particularly strong with early-stage investing, which also offers the best opportunity for high multiple returns – but with a maturing portfolio, we’ve always intended to have a growth strategy, and this deal with Blue Horizon gave us the opportunity to dive in sooner than later,” he added.
Discussions about Blue Horizon’s fund management began because the two funds share a limited partner. “The anchor investor in Blue Horizon is also an anchor investor in our fund,” he shared. “They approached me to see if AgFunder would be interested in taking over the Blue Horizon growth fund, and facilitated the introduction last September. So it took around seven to eight months to close.”
Would AgFunder use the funds to invest in its existing early-stage portfolio companies? “We have a good number of portfolio companies maturing nicely who will be going out for their Series B+ soon, and we’ll certainly take the best of those opportunities to our LPAC [Limited Partner Advisory Committee] for consideration [under the growth fund],” Dean said, after confirming that roughly 50% of the fund is left to disburse.
Freitas says he is confident that AgFunder will do right by the fund. “The [growth] fund is now under control of the LPs.[It’s] super important to make sure that the LPs are being looked after in the right way,” he says in an interview with Green Queen. “I’m sure they [AgFunder] will do something really good with the fund going forward.”
Blue Horizon taps into its true DNA
A rendering of Nuos’ Giga Protein Factory | Courtesy: Nuos
The focus is now on NUOS, which is described on its website as “the world’s leading contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) facility for producing alternative proteins at scale”. It’s an extension of Blue Horizon’s goal to transition the world to a sustainable food system.
Freitas, alongside Lienhard and CEO Björn Witte, is part of Blue Horizon’s management team, and says the development of NUOS is one of his key responsibilities.
He frames the latest activity at Blue Horizon as the result of a long-term master plan with three main verticals, with the first revolving around innovation: “One of our master plans is our innovation vertical – Blue Horizon has always stood for accelerating the transition into a sustainable food system.”
Blue Horizon’s smart protein journey started with backing alternative protein innovation, which involved seeding the early-stage funders – “meet the founders, help them with capital, and support them to grow”, as Freitas puts it. “Since the inception of Blue Horizon, we have done close to 100 investments in the alternative protein space.”
Further, he points out that the firm has had a handful of successful exits to its name, something that’s “quite unusual in the current market environment”. The latest example is New Roots, the Swiss vegan cheese company (as per Blue Horizon’s own website).
Courtesy: New Roots
Blue Horizon began by making investments off its balance sheet, Freitas tells Green Queen, about the firm’s origins. “[First}, we started with balance sheet investments, which was followed by the inception of the funds. We started the venture capital fund, and we started the growth fund,” he says, suggesting that operational excellence has been one of the firm’s strengths.
The firm was one of the most supportive fund partners in the alternative protein space, he adds, going above and beyond a typical venture capital role. He points to a dedicated content and social media team based in Los Angeles whose sole job was to assist Blue Horizon startups as an example. “That’s how we supported our portfolio.”
Green Queen spoke to at least three founders whose companies were seed-funded by Blue Horizon who characterised the fund’s team as “very supportive of founders,” with both noting how important the team was to the broader alternative protein ecosystem.
Freitas says that Blue Horizon will continue to invest in innovation, though not at the same pace. “The adjustment of strategy is that we have decided to exit the investment advisory side of the business given the market development in our industry over the last two years,” says Freitas. “It just does not seem to work well for us.”
Covering the whole spectrum from early seed to fund advisory was “not our DNA. Our DNA is being entrepreneurial,” he explains. “That’s where we see the biggest impact,” he says when asked why Blue Horizon is pivoting to driving operational businesses. “That’s where we see the biggest need.”
Phase two: consolidation
The second vertical involved the execution of a consolidation strategy. Freitas says that while plant-based meat companies such as Like Meat, Planted or Daring tend to become very successful in their home markets quite quickly, it’s when the startups start expanding geographically that things get complicated.
“It’s still food,” he says. “It’s not an app that goes from one phone to the other,” noting the challenges of regulations and logistics for tangible goods like plant-based meat, challenges alien to software startups and their investors.
For Lienhard and his team, the “early sparks were failing to create the fire” – products were costly, they weren’t getting tastier fast enough, and the startups were too small for the impact needed. To set the stage for large-scale transition, Blue Horizon set up a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to fundraise and bring together “some of the most promising players out there”.
Blue Horizon tells Green Queen that the firm saw an opportunity to break the fragmentation cycle and consolidate some of the sector’s leading players into one holding company, which would benefit from tailwinds in the market, world-class products, consolidated operations and a credible leadership team.
That formed the basis of Livekindly Collective, which launched in 2020 with $135M in funding (later raising a $200M Series A and a $200M Series B). Claimed to be the world’s third-largest alternative protein company, it’s essentially a roll-up of plant-based portfolio brands including Like Meat, Fry’s, Oumph!, No Meat, Dutch Weedburger, and later Alpha Foods, which allowed for economies of scale on R&D, production, distribution and marketing.
Giga protein factories and the Tesla model
The third vertical of the master plan is all about managing costs and expectations. “Up until 2022, there was ‘an early hype’; and hope in our market of gaining fast traction,” says Freitas. “Several funding rounds and funds came into the picture, Beyond Meat went public, and everyone was talking about the plant-based sector growing rapidly.”
But when the hype cools down, people look to make changes. “If you’re tight on money, you tend to go for the cheapest protein you can find in the supermarket, and the cheapest protein is still meat,” he says.
Plant-based meat still comes at a premium – in the US, it is 77% more expensive on average than conventional meat. To bridge this gap, Blue Horizon is taking inspiration from Elon Musk’s Tesla Gigafactory EV playbook in Nevada: build on a large scale in the desert, with optimum costs for energy, land, labour and logistics; involve people who care about sustainability; and focus on food security.
“We did very detailed calculations over the last 18 months… [and] realised that we will be able to undercut the lowest price of chicken breast of JBS meat from Brazil or Thailand,” says Freitas.
A rendering of Nuos’ Giga Protein Factory | Courtesy: Nuos
Just like EVs are going from highly prized (and priced) luxuries to gradual mass-market adoption, for alternative proteins to truly reach the mainstream and meet demand, the unit economics needs to compete with meat.
The first of these giga protein factories will be in the Middle East, which would be able to produce a million tonnes of product each year. “We want to be the home for alternative protein production going forward. And establishing in the Middle East has a lot of benefits,” Freitas states. “Capital, of course, but also a willingness [from local governments] to be in this space.”
When the news was announced, Witte – who is the chairman of NUOS – said the company was looking for “the right partner who shares the vision, mission and has the ecosystem to drive a global transition”, and the Abu Dhabi government turned out to be the ideal fit.
“Amongst all of the nations’ proposals NUOS received, it was clear from the outset that Abu Dhabi would be the natural partner. Through a combination of their vision, commitment, local infrastructure and long-term partnership appetite we felt that we could… create the gold standard for the food industry globally,” Witte added.
An ‘Innovation Academy’ to reach price parity
Plant-based meat at price parity with animal meat | Courtesy: Lidl
Some supermarkets have already made major strides towards price parity via their private-label ranges, with Lidl in Germany and other EU markets being the most notable example. Why can’t the sector have more such wins?
“The Lidl campaign was amazing… putting alternative proteins next to meat at the same price on the shelves. It looked super cool to start with. But in the end, products were not good or tasty enough yet to attract repeat buyers,” he says. [Editor’s note: Lidl said the campaign helped increase sales by 30% over six months.]
“There are some products out there that are really amazing. Look at Burger King: they’re selling plant-based chicken nuggets at the same price as meat. They get closer to their sustainability targets – being one key driver, but they’re probably not making enough margin yet.”
Getting taste and texture right is crucial, as is cleaning up ingredient labels. He alludes to the constant headlines criticising Beyond Meat’s supposed long ingredient lists, adding that nobody talks about what goes into the minced meat found in supermarkets. “It’s often an unfair comparison. But that’s how it works,” says Freitas. “Constant development needs to be done because our minds are so conditioned to meat.”
A rendering of Nuos’ Giga Protein Factory | Courtesy: Nuos
It’s why Blue Horizon is creating an Innovation Academy next to the gigafactory, which would allow it to invest in R&D for companies and drive prices down. While price is important to the end consumer, Freitas believes it’s probably even more crucial for B2B customers.
“If you can give a retailer or a QSR more margin against an equivalent product on a plant-based basis… they will be able to sell it,” he says. “They will place it correctly, and then consumers will take it on.”
Freitas adds: “Our strength is being close to the founders, being close to operations, being close to building infrastructure, and creating ideas [about] what the next step can be so our industry is growing… When you are on the operational side, you constantly have to be in a fight so you have a better chance [when] sitting in the driver’s seat, and steering food chains in the right direction.”
NUOS breaks ground in 2025, aiming to solve what it describes as the “great bottleneck” with the “great unlock” for plant-based meats, by enabling the upsurge in the S curve and the leap into mass adoption.
As Lienhard puts it: “The unlock for the industry is building something that can help startups accelerate and scale.”
This article was updated to add new information.
Disclaimer: NUOS is a content partner for Green Queen’s newsletter Green Queen Gulf.
New Zealand plant-based meat company Sustainable Foods, which makes the Plan*t line of hemp-based meats, has gone into voluntary administration.
Sustainable Foods, the parent company of vegan meat analogue brand Plan*t, has entered voluntary administration, citing harsh market conditions.
The company’s directors had appointed administrators on Friday after it struggled to raise capital, CEO Justin Lemmens confirmed to the New Zealand Herald. It planned to raise NZ$500,000 to NZ$1M ($310,000-620,000) to allow it to continue trading in 2025.
Sustainable Foods had been “caught in a perfect storm”, he told the newspaper, explaining that consumer and retailer interest cooled in the face of a tough economic environment, just as the manufacturer was investing to develop a new product.
A thwarted expansion followed by funding success
Courtesy: Sustainable Foods
Founded in 2018 by Lemmens and Kyran Rei, Sustainable Foods came to prominence via a line of hemp-based meats in partnership with The Craft Meat Co, which it acquired in early 2020. This was rebranded to Plan*t in 2021, with Lemmens calling the asterisk a “versatile” symbol depicting the company’s nutrition, sustainability, origins in New Zealand, and use of novel proteins.
The brand initially came to market with a range of hemp-based Chick*n, before diversifying into burgers, sausages and minced meats. These high-protein products leveraged hemp’s sustainability and health credentials (it’s linked to cardiovascular, neurological and anti-inflammatory benefits).
But while Sustainable Foods aimed to expand into Australia and Asia by the end of 2021, this move was stalled due to challenging market conditions, and Plan*t’s footprint still remains within New Zealand.
To overcome these challenges, the company raised NZ$2.15M in a crowdfunding campaign in April 2022 (about $1.5M at the time), with investors including ruby union player TJ Perenara and media company Stuff. Following the investment, the company highlighted its aim to grow its turnover from NZ$1.5M in the year ending March 2022 to NZ$20.6M by 2025.
Two months later, it netted a further NZ$1.25M as a loan from the New Zealand Government’s Regional Strategic Partnership Fund to boost its operations. The funds were earmarked “to purchase and install additional manufacturing equipment/machinery to enable the scale-up in production capacity at the Sustainable Foods facility”.
Relocation and cost-of-living pressures hurt Sustainable Foods
Courtesy: Sustainable Foods
In January, Sustainable Foods relocated its headquarters from the coastal district of Kāpiti in Wellington to the town of Ashburton in Canterbury. The idea was to be closer to its hemp suppliers, with a new 1,400 sq ft established to produce its meat analogues.
But according to the NZ Herald, the move was a challenge for the company, and coincided with low supermarket sales due to stocking issues.
The company used a high-moisture extruder – the only commercial machine of its kind in the country – for its hemp protein products, but this was too expensive and hindered Sustainable Foods’ ability to scale up, further hurting its financial health.
Lemmens said the cost-of-living crisis has forced supermarkets to focus on high-volume meat products to maintain consumer footfall, and these have crowded out the shelf space its Plan*t meats could have filled.
The company, which employs over 60 staff and had an annualised revenue of NZ$2.4M, now expects the first report from administrators at PwC soon. “Sustainable Foods will continue to trade while working through possible restructure solutions alongside other options,” Lemmens told the NZ Herald.
The development comes months after fellow New Zealand plant-based brand Sunfed Meats shut down under similar circumstances: supply chain pressure, high costs, and a loss of faith from investors.
Sustainable Foods did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Scientists have found a way to produce proteins by feeding yeast on upcycled wastewater from the food and pharma industries.
How would you like your wastewater-derived meat?
It may sound unappetising, but residual water from the food and pharmaceutical sectors could be a solution to our crippling food waste problem, while producing alternative proteins like meat and dairy analogues, as well as greener fuels.
Researchers from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) tapped the salty residue from cheese produced by Danish dairy giant Arla to test a yeast strain called Debaryomyces hansenii. These microbes can thrive in highly saline environments, and the study found that they can be turned into valuable proteins to make meat analogues, dairy alternatives, pigments, and enzymes.
“There are businesses that create waste streams that are rich in nutrients, but also have a very high salt content, which is often a problem,” explains DTU Bioengineering assistant professor José Martinez.
“The salinity prevents utilisation of the nutrients while preventing businesses from discharging their waste streams as ordinary wastewater, which means they have to special treat, and this is costly. Why don’t we try to grow this type of yeast in these salty waste streams?” he explains.
Food waste meets pharma waste
Courtesy: Jose Ramos
In 2020, a study found that wastewater from raw cheese manufacturing – usually derived from the demineralisation of whey – was problematic, “posing severe environmental and public health problems” thanks to its acidic pH and the high amounts of phosphorus, total solids, oils and fats, and minerals involved.
Agriculture’s planetary impact is already massive – it accounts for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. But a third of all food produced is either lost or wasted, which alone makes up 8-10% of emissions. So a solution that valorises a food industry sidestream that otherwise ends up harming the planet and our health has bags of potential.
Martinez has been researching yeast cells adapted to extreme conditions like high temperatures, low nutrient content, or high salinity for years. D. hansenii is adapted to aquatic environments, and can thrive in water up to six times as salty as seawater.
The experiment with Arla’s wastewater exceeded his expectations. The saline residue was also rich in lactose (a sugar), which the yeast cells easily metabolised. While more salt content meant more efficient growth, the yeast’s development wasn’t as efficient as it could be due to insufficient nitrogen levels.
To solve this bottleneck of the lactose-rich waste stream, Martinez met with Manuel Quirós, a cultivation specialist at Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk. Quirós revealed that Novo Nordik had a salty residue of its own – linked to the manufacture of haemophiliacs – which was high in nitrogen.
“We simply mixed the two saline waste streams – the one with a high lactose content and the one with a high nitrogen content,” explains Martinez. “We used them as they were. We didn’t need to add fresh water, nor did we need to sterilize the fermentation tank, because the salt prevented the growth of other microorganisms. It was plug and play.”
His research team found that D. hansenii thrived in the mixture. To make the yeast a product of commercial interest, they used CRISPR technology to modify the strain into a protein as it grew.
CRISPR is a gene-editing technology that can cut the DNA of cells in specific places, allowing scientists and manufacturers to deactivate genes, insert new pieces of DNA into the genome, and change genes to get rid of mutations. It can help produce many different proteins and substances, and its potential has been explored by researchers using koji mould to make better-tasting meat analogues too.
A green fuel that’s actually sustainable?
Courtesy: Mikal Schlosser
Martinez initially settled on a fluorescent protein to be used as a model substance, enabling them to get a production target by measuring how strongly fluorescent the liquid was when the yeast cells were at work. The optimal mixture of the waste streams from Arla and Novo Nordisk was nearly twice as salty as seawater and contained 12g of sugar per litre.
According to the DTU, D. hansenii has been the target of “intense research” for decades. Previous studies have focused on finding the gene that makes the yeast cells salt-tolerant and trying to transfer it to plants so they can tolerate high salinity. This ended up being very complex, as salt tolerance is linked to several genes working in tandem.
Over the course of two years, Martinez and his colleagues worked to use the yeast cells themselves, leveraging their salt-tolerant attributes and modifying them to produce valuable ingredients. The use of CRISPR means this yeast and the food and pharma industry’s waste products can create a range of products.
But these aren’t limited to food. Martinez is part of a separate research collaboration exploring green fuels. Using this breakthrough, that effort could now include modifying D. hansenii to produce lipids (or fats) that can be converted into sustainable fuels.
Currently, many ‘sustainable’ fuels are built on palm or cereals. Palm oil is linked to mass tropical deforestation, while biofuels command 44% of the total cereal production in the US, which is a highly inefficient use of land and resources.
It’ll take at least a decade before Martinez’s research can be turned into commercial returns, since the lab-scale tests were only conducted on one to five litres of waste streams. The next challenge is to scale up to 10-30 litres, but Martinez expects hurdles in providing an efficient oxygen supply to the liquid. Expanding to thousands of litres will present obstacles as yet unknown.
For Novo Nordisk, though, the sustainability aspect is promising. The pharmaceutical company is already leaving a huge impression on the food industry through Ozempic and Wegovy, its GLP-1 agonist drugs. Across the US, one in eight Americans have tried such medications, and food companies big and small have been forced to innovate to cater to this demographic.
“Novo Nordisk wants to take full responsibility for our entire value chain,” explains Quirós. “Our strategy is called Circular for Zero. We have three focus areas: reducing the use of resources, reducing CO2 emissions, and minimising waste streams.”
Mars Petcare and Big Idea Ventures are spearheading a new programme for startups developing novel proteins and fats to develop sustainable pet food innovations.
As the planetary impacts of pet food become apparent to more and more consumers, a new programme is hoping to advance innovations that deliver more sustainable food for our furry friends.
Industry giant Mars Petcare and food tech investor Big Idea Ventures have partnered with food and feed technology specialist Bühler and plant-based fat producer AAK to launch the Next Generation Pet Food Program.
The initiative is on the hunt for human food startups that can help greenify the pet food sector through sustainable solutions like novel ingredients and upcycling. The idea is to use alternative proteins and fats to reduce the carbon emissions of the pet food sector.
“This initiative aims to highlight the exciting opportunity for developing sustainable pet food products,” said Andrew D Ive, founder and managing general partner of Big Idea Ventures. “It represents a significant step forward in fostering innovative, eco-friendly solutions within the pet food industry.”
Scheme looks for novel food startups to transform pet food sector
Courtesy: Olga Kholiavina/Getty Images
Pet ownership is on the rise, as is the carbon footprint attached to it. While the true emissions of pet food are a subject of debate between experts, research has shown that 20% of all meat in the UK and 25-30% in the US is used for pet food.
Meat is the most carbon-intensive food, making up 57% of the global dietary emissions together with dairy (twice as high as plant-based foods). Livestock agriculture is also an efficient form of farming, taking up 80% of the world’s farmland while supplying only 18% of its calories and 37% of its protein.
While. there are a number of companies working specifically on making pet food more planet-friendly, whether through plant-based proteins or cultivated meat, the Next Generation Pet Food Program wants to apply the tech advancements in human food to this industry.
The organisers are looking for companies innovating with alternative proteins and fats, nutritionally rich and sustainable novel ingredients, and eco-friendly processing technologies like food waste upcycling and innovative extraction techniques.
Startups will be chosen based on how unique their solution is, their ability to be scaled up, their potential to reduce emissions (with quantifiable metrics), and their willingness to openly collaborate with partners using your IP. Companies based in Asia-Pacific are preferred as the showcase event, will be held in Singapore, but other geographies will be considered if they have a highly relevant tech solution.
Mars has already been working on replacing chicken and pork fat with sustainable alternatives, so partnering with AAK – which makes plant-based oils and fats for a variety of applications – makes sense. Bühler, meanwhile, will provide technological expertise, with selected startups invited to tour its Protein Innovation Center and participate in an extrusion demo in Singapore.
“Ensuring a sustainable source of pet nutrition requires new ideas, technologies, and innovative practices,” said Bühler CTO Ian Roberts. “Collaborative innovation between industry leaders like Mars Petcare and Big Idea Ventures attracts startups from both within and beyond the pet care sector, supporting them in scaling their solutions to enhance the sustainability of pet nutrition.”
Startups to showcase product concepts in Singapore
Courtesy: ThamKC/Getty Images
The deadline for applications is September 10, and in the end, five to six startups will be chosen for the programme. Once selected, they’ll participate in online sessions during October and November, gaining expert insights from leading pet food experts and understanding the key factors in product formulation for pet food.
The startups will work with CPG, ingredient and tech experts from Mars Petcare, AAK and Bühler to develop innovative pet food concepts that directly address problem statements.
Then, during the Singapore International Agri-Food Week (November 18-22), the organisers will host a meet-and-greet event alongside the tour of Bühler’s facility. The startups will present a pitch for their innovations to Big Idea Ventures, which will help polish the presentation in preparation for a showcase event. Here, they’ll be presenting their solutions to a “high-profile audience”, which will offer them a host of networking opportunities.
“At Mars Petcare, our purpose is: A Better World for Pets,” said Elise Malandain, VP of R&D at Mars Petcare. “This programme aligns perfectly with our commitment to sustainability and innovation, and we are excited to collaborate with startups that share our vision.”
The announcement of the Next Generation Pet Food Program comes amid a flurry of activity in the alternative pet food space. Just this week, for example, Wild Earth entered the vegan cat food category with a “nutritionally complete” Unicorn Pate.
Last month, UK manufacturer Pets Choice agreed to acquire vegan dog food maker Hownd, while London-based Meatly became the world’s first cultivated pet food company to be approved for sale.
Meanwhile, in the US, Friends & Family Pet Food Co. announced it was partnering with Singapore’s Umami Bioworks to produce cultivated seafood treats for cats, while Cult Food Science began preparing for FDA feeding trials in pursuit of regulatory approval for its Noochies! cultivated dog treats.
And in a major win for the sector, the British Veterinary Association revised its position on the health credentials of vegan pet food, recognising that it’s possible to feed plant-based diets to dogs, so long as they’re nutritionally complete.
California’s Mission Barns has developed a novel bioreactor that is easy to scale and can lower the cost of cultivated meat, with regulatory approval imminent ahead of its planned market launch.
Moving away from the conventional single-cell suspension reactors of the biopharma sector, Mission Barns is hoping to solve cultivated meat’s scalability and cost problems with a novel solution.
The Californian startup is working on a cultivated pork fat called Mission Fat, which is meant to be mixed with plant-based proteins and ingredients to make hybrid meat products like bacon, pepperoni and chorizo.
Founded in 2018 by Eat Just alum Eitan Fischer, Mission Barns plans to launch these products in both foodservice and retail channels once it receives regulatory approval, for which it has filed dossiers in several countries. But to meet the market demand for cultivated meat, the company (and the industry) needs to solve two major bottlenecks: production capacity and price.
To get there, the startup has eschewed conventional bioreactors to develop a novel machine that’s more efficient, easier to scale, and ends up with a cheaper final product.
“We have different sizes of our proprietary bioreactors, ranging from R&D-scale units for experiments and optimisation, to our largest scale which is currently at pilot scale,” explains Bianca Lê, technical affairs and growth principal at Mission Barns.
The problem with using pharmaceutical bioreactors for cultivated meat
Courtesy: Mission Barns/LinkedIn
For Mission Barns, the need for a better bioreactor solution stemmed from the fact that a lot of the biotechnology used to make biopharmaceuticals isn’t purpose-built for cultivated meat.
There are inherent differences between the two: the per-tonne demand for cultivated meat is seven times higher than for biopharma drugs produced from mammalian cell cultures; the accepted ideal costs for the former is around $5-10 per kg, versus $500,000-1M for the latter; and people have more concerns about GMOs in food than in medicines.
“Bioreactors are vessels designed to grow cells. They’ve historically been designed to produce products for the biopharmaceutical industry,” Lê tells Green Queen. “We’ve invented a novel bioreactor that allows us to scale the production of cultivated meat, whether it’s pork, beef, or chicken, or fat or muscle.”
Most cultivated meat producers use bioreactors that support single-cell suspension, as these are readily available at larger scales. But to produce cell cultures this way, companies need to genetically modify anchorage-dependant cells (those that need something to attach to) so they can grow in suspension liquids.
“Meat is made up of muscle and fat cells embedded within a protein scaffold that provides structure and texture,” explains Lê. “These anchorage-dependent cells are called ‘adherent cells’ because they need to attach (or adhere) to this scaffold in order to grow. This is in contrast to cells that are able to freely float and grow whilst suspended in liquid (called ‘suspension cells’).”
Mission Barnes argues that existing suspension culture bioreactors aren’t effective in making non-GM cultivated muscle or fat, while commercially available adherent culture bioreactors only exist at small to medium scales due to a lack of market demand.
“Rather than changing the meat cells to suit a suspension culture bioreactor, our bioreactor recreates the same adherent growth conditions inside an animal’s body,” says Lê.
The mission behind the novel bioreactors
Courtesy: Mission Barns
For the new bioreactors, Mission Barns wanted to meet four key design specifications that outperform current options (whether suspension or adherent), with the aim of achieving high production capacities at low costs.
First, the company wanted to “efficiently grow and harvest meat cells (which are anchorage-dependent) from any species, using less space than existing harvestable adherent bioreactors”, outlines Lê. Then, it aimed to bypass the lengthy development process required for new cell lines to adapt to existing bioreactor environments.
The new machine also needed to be able to easily “mature muscle and fat cells, taking into account changes in geometry, density, and buoyancy”. And finally, the startup wanted the bioreactors to “produce whole-cut tissue products within a single vessel, eliminating the need for separate tissue production equipment”.
“We have successfully developed a bioreactor that meets these specifications, allowing us to cultivate both muscle and fat cells, or tissue, from any species,” says Lê.
“Our innovative adherent approach enables us to focus on engineering a single system – the bioreactor – instead of having to modify and adapt different cell types to work with existing bioreactors like suspension bioreactors. This makes the process more efficient and straightforward.”
Mission Barnes has additionally developed fully chemically defined and animal-free culture media, non-GM pork cell lines that can differentiate fat and proliferate quickly, and food-grade, cheap process reagents and substrates for coating, washing, and harvesting.
With partners lined up, Mission Barns expects US approval soon
Courtesy: Mission Barns
“At this pre-market stage, our primary focus is on bioprocess optimisation,” says Lê. The startup’s bioreactor is already in its third iteration, which is over 500 times larger than the initial prototypes.
Now, it is planning a larger-scale manufacturing facility. “Our current plan involves having bioreactors with working volumes in the tens of thousands of litres at commercial scale, when we’ll be outputting tens of millions of pounds of final product per year,” she adds.
Mission Barns, which has so far raised $60M, conducted a techno-economic analysis of this future facility, finding that with continued tech advancements – such as efficient media use, innovative scale-up, and an optimised supply chain for raw materials – it could reduce costs to reach price parity with conventional pork.
Asked about the regulatory progress, Lê reveals that Mission Barns is “actively working with regulators around the world” to bring its products to market “in a way that can assure consumers of its safety and high quality standards”.
“We’ve already completed a comprehensive safety assessment of our cultivated pork, and expect the agencies to publicly agree with our assessment soon, including the US,” she says.
The current pilot plant facility “can produce enough product to supply a handful of restaurants and retailers”. This would help with the initial market launch, as Lê points out: “We have a number of exciting partnerships confirmed with major US grocery stores, restaurants and food distributors who we have partnered with to sell our products.”
In Netherlands, discount retailer Lidl has introduced a blended minced meat SKU with pea protein, and reduced the price of its plant-based meat and dairy products.
With a new product and pricing strategy, Lidl Netherlands has taken a major step towards its 2030 goal of making 60% of all protein sales plant-based.
The discount supermarket has launched its first blended meat product, a minced meat mix with 60% beef and 40% pea protein. It has a lower impact on both the climate and consumer wallets.
In addition, it has permanently decreased the prices of its own-label vegan meat and dairy analogues, which will now be priced either the same as their conventional counterparts, or even lower than them.
“Much work is being done by supermarkets to encourage the purchase of plant-based food, but this move by Lidl in the Netherlands represents a hugely significant shift in the way supermarkets approach food system change,” said Jasmijn de Boo, CEO of ProVeg International.
Lidl establishes economic parity for Vemondo range
Courtesy: Lidl Nederland
Pricing has been a major climate strategy for Lidl across several markets. It first achieved price parity for products in its private-label Vemondo brand in its home country of Germany, before extending that to Denmark, Hungary, Austria and Belgium.
In the Netherlands, it conducted a six-month pilot that involved putting its plant-based meat SKUs next to the conventional meat aisle in 70 stores. The result was a 7% hike in sales, with visibility, taste and volume the key factors.
The retailer extended this placement approach across its 440 stores in the Netherlands, and has now brought its pricing strategy to the country too. It means that meat analogues like vegan burgers and sausages, and alt-dairy products such as plant-based yoghurt, cheese and crème fraîche now either cost the same as meat and dairy, or are cheaper.
This is key to consumer adoption: in 2023, a UK-based study by ProVeg showed that people are dramatically more likely to buy plant-based foods over their animal-derived equivalents when the former are lighter on the wallet.
Meanwhile, another survey by the food advocacy organisation revealed that plant-based analogues are now cheaper overall than meat and dairy in nearly all Dutch supermarkets, which – like Lidl – have committed to the 60/40 ratio by the end of the decade.
“Shifting to more plant-based diets is vital if we are to successfully stabilise CO2 emissions and halt habitat and biodiversity loss around the world,” said de Boo. “Supermarkets play a huge role here and Lidl has shown what can be done to encourage this shift. We urge other supermarket chains to compete with Lidl with their promotion of plant-based foods.”
A report by Madre Brava last month suggested that Lidl and Ahold Delhaize are leading the protein transition in the retail world, aligning their sales goals with climate targets. Lidl is working towards public targets across its locations, having published goals in six countries, with others to follow suit soon. “Doing so within this year could potentially turn Lidl into the first supermarket chain to publicly commit to align their protein offerings with human and planetary health goals,” the report said.
Taking on blended meat years after retailers’ failed attempts
Courtesy: Lidl Nederland
In 2019, Aldi brought out a BBQ Flexitarian Burger made from a mix of beef and beans, which got widely panned. Two years later, Tesco introduced a Lean & Greens range that combined chicken with vegetables. In both instances, the products are now discontinued.
Blended meat – especially from private-label brands – wasn’t commercially successful. But things have changed now. Everyone from Nestlé and Purdue Farms to Quorn in the NHS and even Disneyland are dabbling with these products, which deliver an improvement on the climate credentials and represent more uptake among meat-eaters and flexitarians.
Lidl Netherlands has made a major move towards lowering its climate footprint. Beef is the most polluting food on the planet, and by subbing out 40% of it with pea protein (whose emissions are 90 times lower), the retailer’s new minced meat produces 37% fewer emissions.
According to Lidl, half of the population in the Netherlands eats minced meat every week. But a large European survey this year found that 49% of Dutch consumers have reduced their meat consumption compared to 2023. And the top two factors for purchasing plant-based analogues are taste and price, two attributes Lidl’s alternative proteins must get right.
“The taste is the same, but the environmental impact and price are lower,” promised Geert de Vries, a buyer at Lidl. The 300g mince – available in all its Dutch stores now (and yes, placed right next to meat) – will set consumers back €2.29, a 33% improvement on ground beef.
“The development took quite a while. We wanted to develop a minced meat mix that contains less meat, but retains the taste,” said de Vres. “I daresay that even for the real meat lover, this minced meat mix is indistinguishable from regular minced meat.”
Martine van Haperen, health and nutrition expert at ProVeg Netherlands, lauded Lidl’s two initiatives. “Price is the main obstacle for people to choose plant-based more often. The step to make plant-based products the same price or cheaper than meat and dairy removes that obstacle,” she said.
“Also, not everyone wants to eat meat substitutes or legumes. By introducing a hybrid product, just in the meat section, they really appeal to the meat eater. They don’t even have to change their consumption pattern. This is a valuable addition that really gives Lidl the opportunity to influence the protein ratio.”
Finnish gas protein startup Solar Foods is planning to go public with a technical listing on the Nasdaq First North Growth Market in Helsinki.
Solar Foods, which makes Solein protein by feeding microbes on gases, has announced its intention to list the business on the Nasdaq First North Growth Market in September.
The First North marketplace is a division of Nasdaq Nordic and an alternative stock exchange for smaller companies in Europe. It is currently home to over 550 companies.
Helsinki-based Solar Foods will be applying for a technical (or direct) listing – unlike an IPO, this doesn’t involve the issuance of any new shares, but instead allows businesses to sell their existing stocks without raising new capital.
The Solein protein producer outlined two reasons for going public. The first is to implement a global growth strategy, which involves scaling up production, introducing new products, and making strategic acquisitions to speed up tech development.
Additionally, Solar Foods aims to enhance its profile and credibility among stakeholders, customers, financiers, as well as current and future personnel.
Tech licencing could open up new revenue stream
Courtesy: Solar Foods
Solar Foods produces Solein through the fermentation of microbes, using carbon dioxide, hydrogen and oxygen as feedstocks (instead of sugar). The resulting protein can be used in an assortment of products, from meat, dairy and egg analogues to beverages and noodles.
Having already been approved for sale in Singapore, it debuted as part of a vegan chocolate gelato at Italian eatery Fico, and was the base of a Taste the Future chocolate snack bar released by Fazer – a majority shareholder of Solar Foods – earlier this year. And just this month, Japanese food conglomerate Ajinomoto unveiled mooncakes and ice cream sandwiches where Solein replaced the dairy.
The deep-yellow, flavourless powder boasts 65-70% protein, 5-8% fat, and up to 15% dietary fibre, while also containing iron and vitamin B. But apart from nutrition, Solein’s USP lies in the sustainability credentials – the main raw materials for production are carbon dioxide and renewable energy, resulting in emissions equal to just 1% of those generated by conventional meat, and 20% of plant proteins.
This has also allowed it to become the first private company in Finland to gain a Nasdaq Green Equity Designation, which recognises businesses that generate more than half of their turnover from green activities, and less than 5% from fossil fuels.
In its announcement, Solar Foods explained that its business model is “to produce new food raw materials for the global market using both existing and new microbial strains under development”.
“This requires investments in R&D, sales and marketing, as well as in the production capacity of Solein,” it said. “As the company has already scaled its production technology to demonstration scale, it also has the potential to licence both hydrogen fermentation technology and production organisms for the food industry.”
In doing so, its net sales would be based on a licence fee based on clients’ production, and the startup said this model wouldn’t tie up capital and would help improve its profitability.
Solar Foods working on new products as it plans for Factory 02
Courtesy: Solar Foods
To date, Solar Foods has attracted over €43M in equity funding, including an €8M Series B round last November, as well as €30M in debt financing. It also received €34M in grants from Business Finland to build its commercial-scale Factory 01, which opened in April with the capacity to produce as much protein per day as a dairy farm with 300 cows.
Business Finland has set aside a further €76M to support the construction of its next plant, Factory 02, if it’s built on European soil. This facility is expected to have a profitable production scale.
Solar Foods has highlighted several “megatrends” that underscore its growth. Climate change, biodiversity loss, shrinking farmland, a swelling population, increasing consumer consciousness around sustainability, and geopolitics (three countries make up 80% of global soy production) are all major challenges for food companies.
“Solein has the lowest carbon footprint compared to all other known protein sources if fossil-free energy is used in production,” Solar Foods said. “The production of Solein does not require arable land, and it can be produced anywhere where renewable energy is available, such as in the desert or in space. In large-scale production, the company estimates that Solein’s cost will be competitive with any other protein.”
The startup is now focusing on international expansion, with regulatory approval expected in the US this year, allowing it to begin sales in the second half of 2024. This is set to provide “significant benefits” in authorisation processes in the other markets it has filed dossiers in, such as the EU and the UK. Solar Foods anticipates the UK greenlight in 2026, and is also considering filing applications for new products developed alongside Solein.
The two manufacturing plants form the basis of Solar Foods’ growth over the next two years. Factory 01 can produce 160 tonnes of Solein annually, and this would be sold to customers for test marketing campaigns and new product pilots – these are prerequisites for earning sales contracts for Factory 02.
The latter’s capacity is set to be 50 to 100 times higher than Factory 01 and generate net sales of €80-200M. It could see a total investment of €150-420M, and based on current estimates, each kg of Solein will cost €4.3-5.2 to produce (excluding certain financing costs). That price is set to fall even further with tech advancements.
At the end of 2023, Solar Foods had a net debt of €12M (25% down from the previous year), with an operating loss of nearly €7M and net sales of €5,000 – the latter will likely increase significantly with the new partnerships this year, including the Fazer and Ajinomoto products.
In our weekly column, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Lurpak’s plant-based butter, Cheetos’ limited-edition vegan release, and Oatly and Kolkata Chai Co.’s ice cream block party.
New products and launches
Arla‘s market-leading butter brand Lurpak has finally entered the plant-based world with a non-dairy spreadable version made from rapeseed, coconut and shea oils, oats and cultures. It debuts in the UK today, and in Denmark on August 26.
Courtesy: Lurpak/Meawnamcat via Getty Images
Another dairy-free win comes from Premier Foods, whose canned custard brand Ambrosia has introduced a plant-based edition in the UK. The non-HFSS 390g tin is currently available at Morrisons for £1.95 (on par with the £2, 400g dairy and egg version), and will roll out at other retailers next month.
Irish vegan influencer duo David and Stephen Flynn – known as The Happy Pear – is bringing its range of dips, soups, ready meals, granolas and drinks to UK supermarkets following a successful €2.5M crowdfunding round in June.
Courtesy: The Happy Pear
Swedish vegan meat analogue startup Hooked Foods has brought out four new products – chicken bites, chicken filets, tuna bites, and salmon bites – with a refreshed packaging design. They will be available at ICA Gruppen and Coop Sverige from October.
German pet food startup VegDog has permanently introduced a potato-based vegan popcorn snack for dogs.
Frito-Lay‘s cult-favourite cheese puff brand Cheetos has at last gone plant-based with a new Vegan Vegetalien White Cheddar Blanc launched exclusively in Canada for a limited time.
Courtesy: @accidentally_vegan_canada via Instagram/Yazgi Bayram via Getty Images
Ingredients giant Ingredion has released a functional native cornstarch called Novation Indulge 2940, which holds distinct gelling properties for use in vegan cheese, among other applications.
UK vegan meat maker Shicken has rolled out its Tikka Kebab in Costco stores in the US, making it the only British plant-based meat brand currently available on its shelves.
Also in the US, Oatly has partnered with Kolkata Chai Co. to promote their Oat Milk Chai Soft Serve at a block party at the latter’s East Village location in New York City this Friday (August 22), which is National Soft Serve Day. It comes a week after Oatly’s soft-serve began appearing at Impossible Foods‘ Chicago pop-up.
Courtesy: Oatly/Kolkata Chai Co.
Texas-based Kibo Foods has launched a new line of Veggie Crunch chips made from green peas. They come in three plant-based flavours: sour cream and onion, hot chipotle, and sea salt. They’re available on its e-store and on Amazon for $21.99 per 12-pack.
In Singapore, upcycled food startup The Moonbeam Co. has collaborated with coffee company Bettr to introduce the Resavour Mocha Siew Dai Cookies, made using spent coffee grounds.
Japanese restaurant operator Fujiya has announced a sorghum-based meat analogue brand called Nikugoe. The lineup, which includes Hamburg Steak, Meat Super Cheese Hamburger, and Meat Super Gyoza, is set to launch in the country in autumn, with future plans to take it to the US.
Courtesy: Tous les Jours
South Korean bakery chain Tous les Jours has added vegan cakes to its menu. The Plantastic raspberry-chocolate and blueberry-chocolate offerings are available nationwide.
And in Dubai, vegan café Seva is set to reopen on September 1 after undergoing renovations in the summer.
Research and company developments
Research by plant-based meat brand Meatless Farm has found that two-thirds of meat-eaters would swap beef burgers for a vegan option after learning that its meat-free burger has 85% lower emissions.
Courtesy: Meatless Farm
At the University of Lisbon‘s Técnico Lisboa, researchers have developed cultivated seabass via 3D bioprinting, a result of a five-year effort.
Inn Pakistan, the Institute of Agronomy at Bahauddin Zakariya University has launched an MSc (Hons) degree in Climate Change and Food Security.
Company and personnel updates
Sandhya Sriram, founder of cultivated seafood startup Shiok Meats (now acquired by Umami Bioworks), has been appointed as CEO of New Zealand-based food tech investor and accelerator Sprout Agritech.
In Canada, Danone’s plant-based milk brand Silk‘s coconut and almond milk ranges, and Walmart‘s private-label Great Value almond milks, have been recalled due to concerns of a Listeria outbreak.
Courtesy: Beacon Press
Mercy for Animals president and CEO Leah Garcés is releasing her second book, Transfarmation: The Movement to Free Us from Factory Farming, on September 17. Currently available for pre-order, it is described as an “insightful and pointed exploration of the injustices perpetrated by factory farming”, and will be promoted via a six-city book tour in the fall.
Finally, Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport has joined the growing list of retailers and caterers to commit to making 60% of all protein sales plant-based by 2030, with the aim of halving emissions by this time. The international airport will also introduce Fairtrade standards for food and coffee, with all products being deforestation-free by 2025 (echoing the incoming EU regulations).
Catalonia is home to a ‘booming’ alternative protein industry, says a government report as Spain’s autonomous region looks to become a European hub for future food.
As Spain’s alternative protein sector expands, Catalonia is hoping to become a centre of innovation for these future foods.
A new report by the government’s Catalonia Trade and Investment agency reveals that the autonomous region is home to 112 companies in the sector, which employ 1,031 people and generate €301M in revenue. But it expects the number of businesses working with alternative proteins to “grow exponentially in the coming years”.
In what is dubbed as the “first comprehensive analysis of this field” in the region, the state agency claims it ranks 14th on the global list of alternative protein projects receiving foreign direct investment.
The makeup of Catalonia’s alternative protein sector
Courtesy: Heura
The report seems to be an effort to attract foreign businesses to Catalonia, with a statement from Bernat Anaños, co-founder and plant-based meat leader Heura (which is based in Barcelona, the Catalan capital), outlining as much: “Barcelona and Catalonia are the perfect place from which to lead the protein transition.”
Among the 112 companies identified by Catalonia Trade and Investment are those that deal exclusively with alternative proteins (like Heura), as well as meat and dairy companies with plant-based product lines. Moreover, there are players specializing in ingredients for taste, aroma and texture enhancements, supplements, and other areas.
Signalling the growth potential of the sector, over a third (34%) of the companies are less than a decade old, while 70% are small or medium-sized (turning over less than €50M). But most businesses are focused internationally: nearly 70% are exporters, and 15% are local subsidiaries of foreign companies.
Within the region, Barcelona is home to 62% of players in the region’s alternative protein sector, responsible for 83% of its revenue and 86% of jobs. Apart from Heura, these include vegan cheese producer Väcka, fermentation startups Libre Foods and Real Deal Milk, plant-based meat makers Novameat and Zyrcular Foods, alt-fat innovator Cubiq Foods, and vegan food manufacturer Natursoy.
Recent developments outline sector’s potential
Courtesy: Väcka/Ditaly
The report stresses that it’s not just companies that make up the alternative protein ecosystem in Catalonia – it’s also populated by business organisations and associations, technology transfer platforms, incubators, as well as universities and research centres, like Eatable Adventures, Forward Fooding and Innovacc. Meanwhile, trade fairs like Alimentaria, BioCultura, Hispack, Free From Functional Food Expo, and Hostelco also focus on this area.
Illustrating the increasing interest in Catalonia’s alternative protein potential, the report highlights several recent and upcoming developments. For example, the Department of Climate Action and the Institute of Agri-Food Research and Technology last year pumped €7M into the Center for Innovation in Alternative Proteinsm, which promotes future food R&D for human and animal nutrition.
Ingal Enginyeria & Consulting, meanwhile, will develop a pre-industrial plant for the extraction and production of alternative protein, which will be available to hundreds of startups. Natural Gourmet Foods has similarly inaugurated a production and distribution facility specifically for plant-based meat. And German meal kit giant HelloFresh, whose range includes meat analogues, is preparing to launch in Barcelona.
Looking forward, the Catalan government says consumer preferences, production capacity, regulatory environments, and climate action policies will be the main factors influencing the global alternative protein industry. Nationally, it notes how four out of five consumers in Spain are reducing their meat consumption, and 72% are eating more meat and dairy analogues.
“There’s a need to drive technological development so that companies in the alternative protein space can reach production capabilities equivalent to those in traditional food industries,” ACCIÓ says on its website. “These innovations should also facilitate the exploration of fermentation and cell-cultivation processes to obtain these new products.”
