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Category: Alt Protein

  • Bezos Earth Fund Opens Alternative Protein Hub at London’s Imperial College

    imperial centre for sustainable protein
    6 Mins Read

    A month after it unveiled the first Center for Sustainable Protein in North Carolina, the Bezos Earth Fund has opened its second alternative protein hub at Imperial College London.

    The Bezos Earth Fund is making good on its alternative protein promise, opening the second of its Centers for Sustainable Protein, this time outside the US.

    Housed at Imperial College London, the hub spans seven academic departments at the university, and is infused with a $30M investment over five years.

    The Center for Sustainable Protein in London will advance research into precision fermentation, cultivated meat, bioprocessing and automation, nutrition, and AI and machine learning. This intelligence will be deployed towards innovative, evidence-based solutions through the commercialisation of alternative protein products that are not just planet-friendly, but also nutritious, delicious, and affordable.

    It comes less than a month after the Earth Fund set up its first such centre at North Carolina State University, also through a five-year, $30M grant. It’s part of the fund’s $1B Future of Food Program, which involved the initial $60M investment in the alternative protein hubs – this has now been extended to $100M. Andy Jarvis, director of the fund’s Future of Food Program, revealed to Green Queen that a third centre will be opened in southeast Asia.

    bezos earth fund imperial college
    Courtesy: Yau Ming Low/iStock

    Imperial Center for Sustainable Protein to use engineering biology

    Animal agriculture accounts for up to 20% of global emissions, and meat production alone is responsible for releasing twice as many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as plant-based foods. And despite taking up 77% of all agricultural land, the livestock industry only supplies only 18% of the world’s calories and 37% of its protein.

    The Bezos Earth Fund highlights this disparity to explain how humans need to increasingly adopt alternative proteins, given the world will have 10 billion of us by 2050. It mentions the rise of plant-based foods, the progress made by the fermentation sector, and the potential of cultivated meat as examples of promising solutions.

    “Food security is one of the biggest challenges facing humanity,” said Hugh Brady, president of Imperial College London. “For a sustainable future, we need to ensure that people across the world can be fed adequately and nutritiously with minimal impact on biodiversity, climate and our wider natural environment.”

    But the widespread adoption of these proteins is dependent on quality and cost improvements, as well as a more efficient use of energy. The Bezos Earth Fund argues that to aid the protein transformation, other components need to be produced more sustainably and efficiently too, such as fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, and compounds responsible for flavour, aroma and colour.

    To do so, it is championing engineering biology, which applies engineering concepts to design, build and produce cells and products. The Center for Sustainable Protein will use a mix of rational and AI-guided engineering strategies with automation at biofoundries – where cells are turned into mini-factories to produce useful products – to scale up new bio-based processes.

    “Later is dangerously too late if we’re to think about growing our world’s protein sources,” said Jarvis. “Imperial College London has led pioneering efforts in the field of engineering biology, perfectly positioning the university to advance sustainable protein options that will satisfy the growing global masses.”

    bezos center for sustainable protein
    Courtesy: Imperial College London

    Collaborating with multiple institutes globally

    The European alternative protein centre at Imperial College will have three spokes in the UK, and three abroad, with more than 76 international partners to advance research, innovation and commercialisation.

    The UK spokes are grouped under members of the Cellular Agriculture Manufacturing Hub at UCL and Aberystwyth University; the Food Centre at Reading University; and the Growing Kent & Medway consortium involving the National Institute of Agricultural Botany and the Universities of Kent and Greenwich.

    Meanwhile, the international spokes pokes are hosted by the Technical University of Denmark (Biosustain), Tufts University (Centre for Cellular Agriculture), and the National University of Singapore.

    “Imperial has the leading-edge research, innovation, partnerships and convening power to advance global food systems,” said Andrew Steer, president and CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund. He pointed to the expanding population to implore it is “time to rethink” how we grow and eat food. “This work will help ensure that our future includes more protein options – and that they taste great, are nutritious and come at low cost.”

    The Imperial College protein centre will also encapsulate other institutes and facilities to translate discoveries into real-world applications and educate the next generation of bioengineers. These include the Centre for Synthetic Biology, SybiCITE, and the Centre for Translational Nutrition & Food Research, which has partnerships with Nestlé, Unilever, Quorn and Waitrose, among others.

    “The Center’s ethos is that bioengineered solutions can – and should – be both planet and people-positive. Imperial is uniquely positioned to harness the potential of engineering biology to accelerate the alt-protein revolution and transform global food systems,” said Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro from the department of bioengineering at Imperial College, who is the director of the new Center for Sustainable Proteins.

    Alternative proteins could ‘define the future’

    The Bezos Earth Fund was launched in 2020 through a $10B grant by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, one of the wealthiest individuals in the world. Last year, the fund committed $1B towards a transformation of the food system. The first investment came during COP28 in December, allocating $57M in food-related grants to tackle the threats of climate change and biodiversity loss and preserve food security.

    It was in March that the fund’s vice-chair Lauren Sánchez (who is engaged to Bezos), announced the intention to set up the alternative protein centres. “We need to invent our way out of climate change. And we’re going to do it,” she told an audience at the the Aspen Ideas: Climate conference in Miami.

    The idea is to host the hubs in universities “at the cutting edge of science and technology related to sustainable protein”, according to Jarvis. These institutes are creating breakthrough research to make alternative portions cheaper, tastier and healthier.

    “They should be responding to industry needs, solving emerging problems, and investing in game-changing new ideas which have transformational potential to bring about step changes for the sector. And the best bit is that should all be open-access – the knowledge generated can be used by anyone to ensure broad impact,” he said.

    bezos earth fund alternative proteins
    Courtesy: Bezos Earth Fund

    The North Carolina State University centre, for example, will advance the research, creation, and commercialisation of new technologies, provide training for the emerging industry workforce, and gauge consumers’ protein preferences.

    Jarvis said a third centre will announced in a few weeks. “The Bezos Earth Fund’s Future of Food Program is working to transform food and agricultural systems to feed a growing population without degrading the planet,” he stated. “With this kind of firm R&D foundation in place, I believe sustainable protein will be set to properly play [its] part in the future of food. It might even come to define that future.”

    Imperial College was at the centre of controversy earlier this month, when a study conducted by its researchers on ultra-processed foods mislabelled plant-based meats as unhealthy.

    The post Bezos Earth Fund Opens Alternative Protein Hub at London’s Imperial College appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Most Plant-Based Products Fall Short of Meat-Eaters’ Taste Expectations, Finds Analysis

    nectar insights
    8 Mins Read

    Most plant-based meats underperform on the taste front for omnivores, and blended meat could be a potential game-changer, detailed sensory analysis has found.

    Vegan meat analogues need to be spicier, smokier, sweeter, darker, juicer, and bolder to sway omnivores away from conventional burgers, sausages, bacon and other meat products, according to the results from sensory testing by Nectar, a new initiative focused on taste-based protein transition.

    Its inaugural Taste of the Industry report is based on insights from 1,150 American meat-eaters who participated in sensory panels evaluating 15 taste attributes for 54 plant-based meat products across five categories between June and August last year.

    These were burgers, hot dogs, bacon, chicken tenders, and chicken nuggets, and Nectar found that while some leading plant-based products are ready for mainstream adoption, most brands fell short.

    Each product was tested against an animal-based benchmark – and nuggets were the only category where plant-based versions outperformed their conventional counterparts. Impossible Foods, MorningStar Farms, Quorn, Rebellyous Foods and Simulate were the top taste performers here.

    “By championing great-tasting products, empowering brands and consumers with data-driven insights, and fostering partnerships across the industry, Nectar’s launch heralds a new era of innovation and collaboration in the alternative protein space,” said Max Elder, managing director of non-profit Food Systems Innovation, which established Nectar last month.

    The burger opportunity

    plant based meat study
    Courtesy: Nectar

    While burgers are perhaps the most popular plant-based category in terms of the number of options on the market, there’s a big satisfaction gap here. After evaluating nine vegan and blended (a mix of conventional meat and plant-based ingredients) commercially available burgers, the researchers found that 78% of omnivores rated conventional burgers as ‘somewhat like’, ‘like’ or ‘like very much’, versus just 37% for the average plant-based burger.

    The leading vegan burger performed slightly better across these metrics (55%), but it was clear that the average plant-based options can improve. “The biggest opportunity for plant-based burger brands is to develop bolder flavour profiles,” says Caroline Cotto, director of Nectar. “The most significant differences in consumer preference between plant-based and animal burgers were in flavour rather than texture or appearance.”

    She adds: “Consumers also want plant-based burgers to be ‘meatier’ (spicier, smokier, saltier, sweeter, darker, and juicier), with 45% of participants finding plant-based burgers as not meaty enough. ‘Meatiness’ had a larger impact on overall liking than any other trait.”

    Blended meat could be a key pathway to plant-based

    blended meat study
    Courtesy: Nectar

    One of the most striking findings was the impression of blended meat products. The leading product in this category – 50/50 Foods’ Both burger – outperformed the plant-based leader, and was the only patty that performed within one point in average liking of the conventional burger.

    The blended burger made from 50% beef and 50% vegetables was rated as ‘somewhat like’, ‘like’ or ‘like very much’ by 69% of consumers, while the leading vegan patty was liked by 55%. That said, blended products are still closer in liking to plant-based burgers than animal-derived beef patties.

    “Omnivores preferred the appearance and flavour of the blended burger. Survey respondents found the best-performing plant-based burger lacked the desired levels of spiciness, smokiness, sweetness, and saltiness compared to the blended burger,” says Cotto. “Taste is a primary purchase driver for all food products. If blended meats can offer better taste profiles for omnivores today, they have a significant role to play in the protein transition.”

    She adds that the blended burger’s success has prompted Nectar to initiate “the world’s largest public sensory analysis of blended meats”. Testing around 40 products across eight formats, the research will explore the optimal plant-animal ratio, the best plant-based ingredients, the best channels to promote the category, and potentially better names. It will be out this autumn.

    Plant-based nuggets are at parity

    vegan chicken nuggets
    Courtesy: Nectar

    Chicken nuggets are the most disliked of all animal products analysed, with more than a quarter of omnivores (27%) disliking the conventional versions. Plant-based products have successfully disrupted this space, with both the average vegan nugget and market leaders performing better than animal-derived nuggets.

    While 53% of omnivores liked conventional chicken nuggets, 70% were satisfied with the leading vegan nugget. In fact, 54% liked the average plant-based nugget as well. Flavour is key here, though for product development teams, meatiness and consistency should be top of mind.

    “While we can’t reveal the best-performing nugget brand, we can share that the top performers within one point of the animal-based benchmark included Impossible, MorningStar Farms, Quorn, Rebellyous Foods, and Simulate (in alphabetical order),” reveals Cotto.

    “These products stood out for their superior flavour, which was most central to overall liking. Generally, breaded and fried plant-based meat categories receive higher ratings than non-breaded and fried categories,” she explains.

    “Omnivores appreciate the flavour of plant-based nuggets but see room for improvement in meatiness and consistency. Brands should enhance juiciness [and] saltiness, and address mildness to ensure their products outperform all animal nuggets, not just the benchmark used in the study.”

    Hot dogs: a white space for leading brands

    food system innovations
    Courtesy: Nectar

    There’s a lot of room for improvement for vegan hot dogs, which represent the least-liked plant-based meat category in the Taste of the Industry report. Only 22% of meat-eaters liked the market-leading animal-free hot dog, compared to 55-75% for the rest of the products (chicken tenders were the most liked). In comparison, 92% said they liked conventional hot dogs (and 19% liked the average plant-based offering).

    The gap existed across all sensory attributes, representing major opportunities across flavour, texture and appearance. But there is a caveat, according to Cotto. “The hot dog category has evolved significantly since last fall. Brands like Impossible, Oscar Mayer and others have introduced hot dog products that were not part of this study,” she says.

    “To emerge as category leaders, brands should aim for bolder flavours (meatier, juicier, sweeter, spicier, smokier) while avoiding overcorrection – being too salty, for example, has a greater negative impact on overall liking than being not salty enough,” adds Cotto.

    Meanwhile, vegan bacon could also do with improvements. Although Hooray Foods’ rice- and pea-based version actually came within one point of average liking with animal-derived bacon, the company ceased operations within a month after the taste tests were concluded.

    “Plant-based bacon struggles with appearance, consistency, and flavour,” states Cotto. “To surpass animal bacon in taste, brands should focus on enhancing meatiness, making the product less mild, and increasing crispiness. Currently, plant-based bacon is often considered too soft and chewy, while animal bacon is seen as too crispy.”

    The health-nutrition disparity

    blended meat
    Courtesy: Nectar

    The research further explored omnivores’ broader sentiments about plant-based foods, with 84% agreeing that eating more vegan meals reduces animal farming (only 5% disagreed with this statement). Similarly, 77% believe plant-based products are better for the environment, though 16% are unsure about this – previous research has shown that Americans fail to associate eating meat with climate change.

    Health, meanwhile, has been the major buzzword around plant-based meat recently. It’s a factor that has become increasingly important for consumers, and something that has made leading brands change the way they market their products. Based on Nectar’s research, you can see why: while 80% of omnivores believe plant-based products are better for their health, only 55% find them to be more nutritious.

    Cotto has an inkling as to why that is (although this hasn’t been tested). “Consumers think about health in terms of [a] holistic diet (i.e. plant-based diet is healthy) and… consumers think about nutrition at a product level,” she says. “Our takeaway from this is that plant-based meat companies should focus on broader health positioning when marketing their products and lean into messaging that shows plant-based products are part of a healthy diet and lifestyle.”

    The takeaways for product developers

    plant based meat survey
    Courtesy: Impossible Foods

    The report shows how there are several major hurdles for plant-based meat to overcome. “Nectar believes there isn’t a single primary barrier for the plant-based meat category, but rather a variety of market, channel, and consumer needs. We also believe great taste is essential for mainstream adoption of plant-based meats,” says Cotto.

    “Our Taste of the Industry 2024 indicates that while the average satisfaction with plant-based meat is low, some leading products perform well, showing the potential for improving taste profiles across the board,” she adds.

    The progress being made by companies can already be seen with the example of the hot dogs. Since completing the trial in August, Impossible Foods and Oscar Mayer have both unveiled vegan versions, as Cotto mentions above. The first step in propelling the taste of plant-based meats to the next level is having robust, category-level data to guide technological development,” she says.

    “While Nectar is technologically agnostic, we focus on identifying sensory gaps between plant-based products and their animal-based analogues, then share that data with stakeholders to drive sensory innovation,” she adds, outlining new flavour and texture innovations as “particularly exciting”.

    Nectar’s aim is to provide pre-competitive support for product development. “Our initial research indicates a positive outlook for the protein transition: while the average plant-based product may not yet be widely liked, leading products are appealing to a significant portion of the market,” reiterates Cotto.

    “This suggests that with further R&D investments, taste profiles can be improved across the board. Plant-based brands should not hesitate to develop bolder taste profiles to close the taste gap with animal-based products.”

    The post Most Plant-Based Products Fall Short of Meat-Eaters’ Taste Expectations, Finds Analysis appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Revyve Debuts Egg Replacer from Upcycled Brewer’s Yeast for Better Plant-Based Meat

    revyve egg replacer
    4 Mins Read

    Dutch alternative protein startup Revyve is launching a powdered egg substitute made from spent brewer’s yeast to enhance plant-based meat formulations.

    Revyve will debut its latest microbial protein innovation at next month’s IFT First Expo in Chicago (July 14-17), using upcycled brewer’s yeast (a beer industry byproduct) to make an egg replacer.

    The ingredient boasts the same binding and emulsification qualities eggs possess, but aims to remove the supply chain volatility, animal abuse, price fluctuations, and allergy risks associated with conventional eggs.

    The non-GMO vegan egg substitute comes in a powdered format, and like the rest of Revyve’s ingredients, it’s labelled as “yeast protein”. The product is intended as a clean-label alternative to E-numbers – artificial additives as well as naturally occurring substances added to CPG products for textural functionality, such as methylcellulose – for use in plant-based foods like meat analogues.

    But for any product to replace eggs effectively, it needs to compete on costs. Revyve says its egg replacer is at price parity with chicken eggs, thanks to its patented tech. “We reap the typical functionality benefits of microbial and fermented protein, but by working with yeast – which is widely available as a co-product – we don’t use any fermentation,” CEO Cedric Verstraeten tells Green Queen. “This way we can minimise capex requirements and production costs.”

    Giving burgers their shape, sizzle and colour

    egg substitute
    Courtesy: Alessa Joseph

    Revyve relies on what is virtually an endless supply of yeast (given the vast amount of beer produced annually), and this eschews the need to grow any of its own biomass.

    “First, we wash the yeast with an optimised set of operations, to make sure we remove all beer and brewing-related off-notes,” explains Verstraeten. “Then we use our proprietary gentle process to micro-mill the yeast and separate the valuable protein and fibre to optimise firming, gelling and foaming capabilities.”

    Co-founder and CTO Edgar Suarez Garcia suggests that the company’s USP lies in this “unique combination of functional proteins and fibres”. “Manufacturers appreciate that when paired with other ingredients, Revyve can eliminate the need for methylcellulose, which has numerous functional and labelling downsides,” he says.

    “We have taken yeast functionality to the next level. Products manufactured with Revyve single-ingredient yeast proteins take on true-to-form textures. Revyve offers exceptional heat-set gelling, binding and emulsification,” he adds.

    Reserach has highlighted the importance of texture and mouthfeel for meat analogues. A 2022 survey by certification body V-Label found that the texture of plant-based meats is as important as their conventional counterparts for 75% of consumers, but only about 60% were actually satisfied with the former.

    “When burger producers ask how Revyve performs, we explain that it behaves like egg whites,” says Suarez Garcia. “When cooked in a patty mixture, Revyve becomes firm yet springy, forming a binding network around the other ingredients.”

    He continues: “Burgers retain water and oil at hot and cold temperatures; they brown and sizzle on the grill and hold their shape when flipped and sandwiched in a bun.”

    Verstraeten suggests that Revyve’s egg replacer will appeal to manufacturers looking for nutritious, affordable alternatives to eggs to up their products’ eco credentials, and those on the hunt for clean-label replacements to chemical additives for texturising.

    Revyve’s egg replacer stands out from ‘low-functioning’ plant proteins

    revyve
    Courtesy: Revyve

    There are already a ton of plant-based egg replacement powders on the market, but Verstraeten believes Revyve’s use of yeast protein – which enables it to offer the same functionality as eggs – sets it apart. “Plant proteins typically have low functionality, so plant-based egg replacers usually require a mix of ingredients and additives to mimic the functionality. By working with yeast protein, we can achieve this with a single ingredient,” he explains.

    Some of Revyve’s customers have already launched products using its ingredient in the burger segment, but the egg substitute can be used for foods beyond patties too. “Our high-performance product can be used in a versatile range of applications including nuggets, dairy products and baked goods,” says Verstraeten.

    The startup is now working on CPG products with its egg replacer in the sauces, appetisers and bakery segments, which are slated for launch in the second part of the year.

    While there are multiple products from independent producers on the market already, scaling up its production will allow Revyve to support large manufacturers as well. “We have demonstrated our process at industrial scale, and are currently building a large-scale commercial production, which will start up later this year,” reveals the CEO.

    The facility is its key priority over the next 12 months, with the aim of “making Revyve a key ingredient across the food industry”. Concurrently, the company is also raising capital for its next scale-up milestone, which “will expand our capacity further and allow us to reach positive cashflows”. Last month, it secured €8M in new financing to support its growth.

    A number of businesses are making proteins from spent brewer’s yeast. Germany’s ProteinDistillery uses biomass fermentation to turn the beer byproduct into egg-white-like ingredient Prew:tein, and France’s Yeasty has discovered a way to remove the bitterness from brewer’s yeast, producing a flour for alternative protein, pet food, and nutrition products.

    Meanwhile, Belgian beverage giant AB InBev – the world’s largest beer manufacturer and parent company of Budweiser, Stella Artois and Michelob – is also developing alternative proteins from spent brewer’s grain.

    The post Revyve Debuts Egg Replacer from Upcycled Brewer’s Yeast for Better Plant-Based Meat appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Former Tindle CEO: What I’ve Learned About the Plant-Based Industry’s Rise, Fall & Future

    plant based decline
    4 Mins Read

    Andre Menezes, founder and former CEO of plant-based meat maker Tindle Foods, explores the vegan industry’s rollercoaster period post-pandemic, and where it’s headed next.

    In the world of startups and innovation, few sectors have seen as much fervour and enthusiasm as the plant-based food industry did between 2018 and 2022. What started as a movement to utilise food technology to craft alternatives to animal-based products quickly became a beacon of hope for sustainability, health, and profitability. However, as we look back at the trajectory of this industry, it’s evident that the journey has been far from straightforward.

    The initial challenge faced by pioneers in this space was developing the technology to replicate the attributes consumers seek in animal products. While early iterations of plant-based offerings fell short, the landscape rapidly evolved, with companies investing millions to refine products like ground beef, burger patties, and nuggets to near-indistinguishable levels from their animal counterparts. This technological leap paved the way for what seemed like an inevitable march toward dominance in a trillion-dollar market.

    As companies geared up for scale, investors poured in capital, and the industry experienced exponential growth. However, amidst the excitement and optimism, a surprising stagnation emerged. Despite projections of continued exponential growth, the numbers began to plateau. Demand, which once seemed insatiable, showed signs of tapering off after a stellar 2020.

    tindle foods
    Courtesy: Andre Menezes

    The sentiment shift in 2022 was seismic. Interest rates rose, sales figures stalled, and industry giants struggled to meet expectations. What was once hailed as the future of food suddenly faced headwinds from critics, misinformation campaigns, and attacks from established incumbents. The narrative around plant-based meat shifted, and what was once seen as revolutionary technology became labelled as a passing fad.

    Yet, amidst the gloom, there are lessons to be learned and opportunities to be seized. One thing that’s become clear in hindsight is that consumer adoption is more nuanced than initially presumed. While sustainability and animal welfare resonate with a segment of the population, it’s not enough to sustain the exponential growth envisioned by investors.

    What led to the plant-based downturn

    The crux of the matter lies in the very foundation of the industry’s rise. It wasn’t driven by an inherent, sustained demand from consumers but rather by a surge in awareness and curiosity. While this initial spark led to a bump in trial purchases, it failed to establish a solid foundation of ongoing demand.

    Crucially, the sector neglected to ask a fundamental question: are consumers genuinely motivated to reduce meat consumption when making purchasing decisions? The reality is that only a small segment of the population—comprising vegans, vegetarians, sustainability advocates, and health-conscious individuals—actively seeks meat alternatives. This segment, however passionate, is insufficient to sustain the massive growth anticipated by investors and industry stakeholders.

    plant based meat healthy
    Courtesy: Dig Insights

    Health emerged as a significant driver behind the adoption of plant-based diets. Concerns over cholesterol levels and the perceived health risks associated with red meat prompted many to explore plant-based alternatives. But this very emphasis on health also made the industry vulnerable to attack.

    Enterprises, threatened by the burgeoning plant-based movement, launched aggressive campaigns questioning the health benefits of plant-based products. From scrutinizing ingredients to casting doubt on manufacturing processes, these efforts sought to undermine the perceived health advantages of plant-based alternatives.

    The convergence of these factors – lack of sustained demand, limited consumer motivation beyond a niche segment, and targeted attacks on health claims – contributed to the industry’s downturn. As interest rates rose, sales figures stagnated, and industry titans struggled to meet expectations, the narrative around plant-based meat shifted dramatically.

    The opportunities for founders and investors

    beyond meat cookbook
    Courtesy: Beyond Meat

    The downturn of 2023 served as a stark reality check, prompting companies to reassess their strategies and investors to reevaluate their portfolios. Yet, amidst the challenges lies an opportunity for introspection and adaptation. By focusing on addressing genuine consumer needs, fortifying health claims, and cultivating sustainable demand, the plant-based food industry can chart a course toward resilience and resurgence.

    The path forward requires a sober reassessment of strategies and a focus on fundamentals. Consolidation is inevitable, and profitable players with at least $100M in annual revenue are the ones best positioned to survive (and even benefit) from the status quo. In this dire context, retaining talent will become increasingly difficult as talents will increasingly become anxious about the prospects of the industry and subsequently their potential gains.

    Ultimately, the success of the plant-based food industry is not just a matter of profit but a necessity for the health of our planet. As we confront the challenges ahead, it’s imperative that founders, investors, and industry leaders collaborate to ensure the longevity and viability of this vital sector. Only then can we realize the full potential of plant-based foods as a sustainable and ethical alternative for the future.

    The post Former Tindle CEO: What I’ve Learned About the Plant-Based Industry’s Rise, Fall & Future appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Serve Love: Beyond Meat Introduces ‘Heart-Healthy’ Cookbook & New Sausages As Part of IV Platform

    beyond sausage launch
    6 Mins Read

    Beyond Meat has extended its Beyond IV platform to include its sausage lineup, alongside an online recipe book in collaboration with the American Heart Association.

    Californian plant-based leader Beyond Meat has introduced the fourth iteration of its sausage lineup, which features a cleaner ingredient list, less saturated fat, and slightly more protein.

    The sausages are part of the Beyond IV platform introduced in February, which saw the brand overhaul the recipes for its plant-based beef mince and burger, eschewing coconut and canola oils and adding avocado oil instead. The move came as the company upped its nutrition focus, in response to slowing sales, evolving consumer needs, and misinformation about the health impacts of meat analogues.

    Now, its two flavours of sausages – Brat Original and Hot Italian – have joined the list, also featuring avocado oil and a host of nutritional improvements. A Mild Italian-Style flavour is slated for launch this summer, which will likely replace the Sweet Italian Style in the current Beyond Sausage range.

    The new sausages are being positioned as having “enhances flavour and a meatier texture” alongside their health credentials, addressing the three key consumer pain points when it comes to plant-based meat.

    Complementing the launch is a new online cookbook called Serve Love, which features 30 recipes certified by the American Heart Association’s (AHA) Heart-Check programme, and was announced by Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown to investors in the company’s latest earnings call. It was there that he’d also revealed that a new heart-healthy product launch was on the cards this year.

    Better-performing than conventional sausages

    beyond meat recipes
    Courtesy: Beyond Meat

    The new Beyond Sausages have a number of health enhancements. They have 66% less saturated fat per serving (2g for the new sausages vs 6g for the old), slightly more protein (17g vs 16g), 9% less sodium (530mg vs 480mg for the Hot Italian flavour), and over 12% fewer calories (210 vs 240).

    Like all of Beyond Meat’s product launches this year – the reformulated mince, burger and crumbles – the sausages also carry accreditation from the American Diabetes Association’s Better Choices for Life programme.

    “The new Beyond Sausage is incredibly juicy, meaty, and delicious, and I love that it’s made with heart-healthy avocado oil, helping to lower the saturated fat to just 2g per link,” said Joy Bauer, renowned dietitian and nutrition advisor to Beyond Meat. “Plus, it has less sodium than the previous version and features a simplified ingredient list. Beyond Meat is truly pioneering the future of superior plant-based meat products.”

    While the ingredient list may have been simplified, the new sausages still contain between 26 and 28 ingredients (minus the casing). That said, most of the composition is dominated by six ingredients – water, pea protein, avocado oil, rice protein, natural flavours, and methylcellulose – with the rest appearing in concentrations of 2% or less.

    The Hot Italian sausage also carries the Clean Label Project certification, which was part of its latest beef products too. However, the initiative is more focused on screening products for environmental toxins and ingredient quality than the actual number of ingredients.

    That said, the new links are still much better for you than conventional pork sausages, given they contain over 66% less saturated fat, up to 43% less sodium, and over 30% fewer calories (based on USDA data). The Beyond sausages also contain an equivalent amount of protein (17g vs 18.5g for a pork link).

    Early testing has been favourable for the new sausages. “Consumers love the new Beyond Sausage, even preferring the taste over our previous version,” a Beyond Meat spokesperson told Green Queen. “It’s easy to make something taste good, it’s much harder to make it taste good and be healthier, and we’re really proud of everything we accomplished with the new Beyond Sausage.”

    New cookbook comes ahead of marketing campaign

    beyond meat cookbook
    Courtesy: Beyond Meat

    The plant-based sausages are rolling out in new gold packaging at retailers across the US, and were launched in Love County, Oklahoma via an event where Beyond Meat served recipes from its new cookbook. This is a collaboration between the company’s in-house culinary team and Bauer.

    Brown teased the recipe book in the earnings call last month, where much of the discussion revolved around the company’s pivot towards focusing on the health credentials of its products. The CEO explained that Beyond Meat’s product development process relies upon a framework called FAAT, “for flavour, aroma, appearance, and texture, while driving improvements in nutrition, cost, and other considerations”.

    He said the team “delivered a home run and improved sensory experience with a nutritional build – so impressive that it goes to market with a host of important validations”.

    The cookbook contains recipes ranging from small plates and soups to bowls, burgers, and noodles. Some highlights include Vietnamese spring rolls with Beyond Steak, a Philly cheesesteak, mushroom bolognese with Beyond Crumbles, Beyond Beef tostadas, and paella with the new Beyond Sausage.

    The recipes meet the AHA’s strict nutrition requirements around calories, saturated fat, sodium and added sugar. “Health is a top driver to the plant-based meat category, and we’re proud to deliver on that expectation with a growing portfolio of products that are not only absolutely delicious but that offer significant nutritional benefits,” said Beyond Meat CMO Akerho Oghoghomeh.

    The plant-based meat giant will continue to serve the Love County community with activations and programmes including a partnership with the local food bank.

    Customer feedback ‘positive’ for health-forward Beyond IV products

    beyond sausage
    The Beyond IV lineup | Courtesy: Beyond Meat/Green Queen

    Beyond Meat has registered sales declines for eight consecutive quarters, but slightly exceeded analysts’ expectations in the first quarter of this year. The company remains optimistic, reiterating its full-year net revenue forecast of $315-345M. “We really do believe that we are at the early stages of a terrific and pivotal year for Beyond Meat,” said Brown, who is banking on the Beyond IV lineup to turn its fortunes around.

    Asked how the new offerings are performing, the company representative said: “We’ve been getting a lot of positive response and feedback from consumers, as well as from the health and nutrition community on our new Beyond IV products. It’s exciting to see the new products roll into supermarkets nationwide just in time for the summer grilling season.”

    Later this summer, the company is expected to launch an “impactful and significant” marketing drive to promote its fourth-generation products. “We believe – as do the nutritionists, institutions and dietitians standing behind Beyond IV – that we offer consumers a delicious yet powerful choice that can help them and their loved ones with healthier lives,” Brown said last month.

    For the rest of the year, health seems to be the prime focus for Beyond Meat, as highlighted by its spokesperson, who told Green Queen: “We are excited to continue introducing our tastiest and most nutritious products yet that have garnered the support of the leading health organisations while also continuing to educate consumers on the health benefits of our products.”

    The post Serve Love: Beyond Meat Introduces ‘Heart-Healthy’ Cookbook & New Sausages As Part of IV Platform appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • ‘Not A Real Noun’: Thailand Proposes Labelling Ban on Plant-Based Meat and Cheese

    thailand plant based labelling
    5 Mins Read

    Thailand’s food safety regulator has published draft regulations suggesting bans on meat- and dairy-related terms for plant-based analogues.

    Plant-based meat and cheese products could face crippling labelling bans in Thailand if the draft regulations by its Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are passed.

    The government agency is tackling what it says is a dearth of supervision and guidelines surrounding alternative proteins with a series of proposed measures for these foods. It has established a special research team to study how novel foods are regulated overseas to inform and develop its own legislation and standards.

    “At present, alternative protein products are seeing popularity amongst consumers and there are many such items on the market, but the control and supervision of the safety aspect of these in Thailand still has no clear direction,”​ the FDA said, according to FoodNavigator.

    “We are embarking on a study of the current production and imports of alternative protein products in the country, and studying the related regulations [to apply this knowledge] in the development of regulations and standards in Thailand,” it added. “This will start with analysis of the plant-based protein sector in Thailand [before moving to] other alternative proteins such as insect-based, cultivated meat or fermentation.”

    As part of its draft regulations for plant-based foods, the Thai FDA has proposed a ban on certain meat- and cheese-related terms for vegan analogues.

    ‘Plant-based mince’ okay, but ‘plant-based beef mince’ not

    plant based meat thailand
    Courtesy: More Meat

    “First of all, product naming must be specified in the Thai language – additional English language labelling will be allowed, but this must be consistent with the vocabulary used in the Thai language naming,”​ the FDA said.

    It suggested that plant-based meat producers can use names that correspond with the physical characteristics of the product. For example, ‘nuggets’, ‘tenders’, ‘mince’, ‘fillets’, ‘patties’, ‘sausages’, ‘bacon’, ‘pepperoni’, ‘chunks’, ‘roast’, etc. are all fair game – so long as they’re followed by terms that make it clear they’re plant-based (such as ‘from plants’ or ‘from soy/pea’, and so on).

    These guidelines extend to certain alt-dairy products too. This means on-pack labels like ‘cheese analogue’, ‘almond milk’, ‘plant-based nuggets’, ‘soybean nuggets’ or ‘burgers made from almonds’ would all be legal.

    “However, words that will cause consumers confusion or to misunderstand the product to be made from meat will not be allowed on the labels,” the agency added. This means terms like ‘meat’ or ‘meat product’, those specifying the type of animal (such as ‘beef’, ‘pork’ or ‘chicken’), and other descriptors like ‘Angus’, Wagyu’ and even ‘clean meat’ would be prohibited.

    Essentially, ‘plant-based nuggets’ would be allowed, but ‘plant-based chicken nuggets’ would not.

    Likewise, while terms like ‘soy milk mixed with nuts’ (if it has multiple plant sources) and ‘7-grain plant milk blend’ would be legal as well, words that “do not correspond to facts or are deemed ambiguous” would be banned.

    “The term ‘dairy-free milk’ is not a real noun and cannot accurately describe plant-based milk alternatives, hence will not be allowed,”​ the FDA’s draft regulations read. “Manufacturers are also not allowed to use names generally understood to be unique to certain dairy products such as ‘Cheddar’ or ‘Mozzarella’, or phrases that indicate equivalence with conventional dairy products such as ‘yoghurt-style’ or ‘Cheddar-like’.​

    “Furthermore, any terms related to specific process names for the conventional dairy sector such as ‘whole’ or ‘skimmed’ for milk and ‘mature’ for cheese, will not be allowed.”

    Thailand’s proposed regulations are outdated

    thai union omg
    Courtesy: Thai Union

    The draft regulations also state that all plant-based products would need to display nutritional values of the food on labels, including energy values, micronutrients, and claims relating to ingredients that may affect consumer health directly or indirectly.

    The FDA’s proposal would also prohibit companies from using images, symbols or any pictorial marks that suggest the product is of animal origin, either on the front or back of the packaging label. “Pictures that showcase the characteristics of the product will be allowed – so images of nuggets or burgers will be allowed, but not a picture of a pig or cow, even if the packaging also carries a ‘meat-free’ label,” it said.

    The draft regulations entered a public consultation period that ended on June 7. It’s the latest episode in the long-running saga of restrictive regulations for plant-based meat and dairy products globally. These bans are often lobbied for by livestock interest groups, with consumer confusion a commonly cited concern.

    But studies have shown this isn’t the case, with most consumers knowing the difference between plant-based and animal-derived proteins. Plant-based companies like Tofurky, Miyoko’s Creamery, Planted, Oatly and NotCo have all won legal battles over product labelling.

    The tide is shifting too. Italy is reconsidering the ban it imposed on plant-based labels last year over fears of conflicts with local manufacturers. France’s top court suspended a similar ban by its government, while a court in South Africa ruled against upholding a strict labelling ban on plant-based food. All these examples took place this year.

    thailand vegan survey
    Courtesy: Madre Brava

    So Thailand’s proposed regulations seem ill-timed, and outdated. In actuality, its FDA should be paving the way for novel foods to thrive in the market, considering that 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, according to a 1,500-person survey by Madre Brava.

    In fact, 40% of consumers in Thailand are willing to swap half their meat intake with alternative proteins, and 70% support a reduced tax on the latter. “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.

    The post ‘Not A Real Noun’: Thailand Proposes Labelling Ban on Plant-Based Meat and Cheese appeared first on Green Queen.

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  • Tender Food Closes $11M Series A Round, Inks Fast-Food Deal for Fibre-Spun Vegan Meat

    4 Mins Read

    Massachusetts-based plant-based meat company Tender Food has raised $11M in a Series A funding round, and secured a contract with local vegetarian QSR chain Clover Food Lab.

    Tender’s Series A investment was led by Rhapsody Venture Partners, with Lowercarbon Capital and Safar Partners returning alongside new investors Claridge Partners and Nor’easter Ventures. It brings the startup’s total capital raised to $23M, following a $12M seed round in 2022.

    The funds will help Tender expand its production capacity at its new facility to millions of lbs, commercialise its first products at scale, lower manufacturing costs even further, and develop new meat products.

    Additionally, they will be used to meet the demands of meatless fast-food chain Clover Food Lab, which is Tender’s latest foodservice customer, having introduced the latter’s meat analogues in all 13 of its restaurants (situated around the Boston area) in May.

    Cotton candy tech creates ‘hyperrealistic’ meat analogues

    tender food funding
    Courtesy: Tender Food

    Formerly known as Boston Meats, Tender’s plant-based meat stands out for the way it’s produced – it leverages a fibre-spinning technology licensed from Harvard University, which it spun off from in 2020.

    Akin to how cotton candy is made, plant protein fibres are spun to create structured cuts of meat, which results in what the startup calls “hyperrealistic, nutritious, affordable” meat analogues like beef short rib, pulled pork, chicken breast, and crab.

    The startup suggests that its meat analogue range “leapfrogs” current market-leading products by the likes of Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat.

    “Consumers are largely disappointed with plant-based meat products in the market – they’re too expensive, they don’t taste good, and are mostly limited to burgers and sausages with long, unrecognisable ingredient lists,” said Christophe Chantre, co-founder and CEO of Tender.

    “We need new technologies to address these challenges and drive meaningful adoption in this category, which is crucial for decarbonising our food system. Our technology allows us to create healthy products that taste great, have the structure and feel of animal meat and are much cheaper to produce.”

    The startup’s patented technology aims to replace the extrusion processes traditionally seen in plant-based meat, and ultimately animal agriculture. “Our production costs are already low today and we have barely started scaling,” Chantre added. “Offering products that compete with animal meat on price is critical for this industry to grow.”

    Tender strengthens leadership while exploring hybrid meat

    Courtesy: Clover Food Lab

    Tender’s vegan meat and seafood products have been featured in restaurants and universities around the Boston area, including Saus Boston, Wusong Tiki Bar, and the Olin College of Engineering.

    Clover Food Lab will feature the Tender fried chicken and pork as toppings on its bowls. “We’re a popular vegetarian chain, so, as you can imagine, we try a lot of new plant-based products. Tender’s stood out from the start – it’s innovative, it’s tasty, it’s a great addition to our grain bowls and salads,” said Chris Anderson, senior VP at Clover Food Lab. “And most importantly, we’re hearing lots of positive feedback from our customers – 90% of whom are meat-eaters.”

    To advance its mission to decarbonise the food system, Tender has also received a grant worth nearly $1M from the US National Science Foundation for R&D into hybrid meat (a combination of cultivated meat and plant-based ingredients). The startup will collaborate with the Kaplan Lab at the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture to explore if cells can enhance the flavours, aroma and nutrition of its plant-based meats, and whether hybrid products are commercially viable.

    Moreover, Tender recently appointed former Oatly North America president Mike Messersmith to its board of directors. Messersmith oversaw the oat milk giant’s US launch in 2017 and built its brand from the ground up in the region, and Tender aims to use his industry experience to help accelerate its own commercialisation plans.

    It isn’t the only company using fibre-spinning technology for alternative proteins – Germany’s Project Eaden is doing the same. Research has highlighted the importance of texture in plant-based meat. A global survey in 2022 found that while meat analogues’ texture is as important as conventional alternatives for 75% of consumers, only about 60% were actually satisfied with it.

    And a recent US poll found that only 16% of Americans would purchase plant-based meat products for their taste and texture attributes. In restaurant settings too, texture is the second-biggest reason deterring consumers from choosing meat analogues, chosen by 42% of respondents.

    The post Tender Food Closes $11M Series A Round, Inks Fast-Food Deal for Fibre-Spun Vegan Meat appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • European Food Tech Startups Overtook the US to Attract $2B in Investments in 2023

    foodlabs food for climate report
    6 Mins Read

    Climate-focused food tech companies in Europe raised $2B last year, making up 58% of global investment in the sector and surpassing the US for the first time.

    European food tech startups focused on climate change solutions attracted $2B in investments last year, overtaking the US for the first time. Despite a global downturn in VC funding, funding in this sector matched the levels of 2022, when European companies raised $2.1B.

    This is according to the annual Food for Climate report by early-stage VC firm FoodLabs and investment database Dealroom, which assessed over 1,200 climate-centric food startups across 40 segments to explore the state of the sustainable food & agtech ecosystem in Europe. The analysis suggests that European food tech companies made up 58% of global funding in the industry, much higher than the US (around 36%).

    europe climate food tech funding
    Courtesy: FoodLabs/Dealroom

    The agtech sector made up $1B of this sum, thanks in large part to increased interest in sustainable fertilisers – Atlas Agro alone raised $325M for its renewable fertilisers. Regenerative agriculture startups secured $581M overall, focusing on climate-resilient crops and microbial solutions.

    “To address some of Europe’s most pressing challenges, we urgently need to finance and support innovative food solutions that help us adapt to a changing climate and mitigate its effects, while securing our food supply,” said Christophe F Maire, founding partner at FoodLabs.

    Fermentation startups and alt-cocoa on the up in Europe

    In 2023, European alternative protein startups raised $365M, led by plant-based companies. However, the real stars of the analysis were fermentation startups, which experienced a 12-fold increase since 2020 to reach $76M in investments last year.

    And this year, fermented protein players have raised at least $12M, becoming the third most-funded segment in Europe’s alternative protein sector, ahead of plant-based startups. Specifically, mycelium protein has really taken off in 2024.

    alternative protein funding europe
    Courtesy: FoodLabs/Dealroom

    Maire expects fermentation startups to continue to remain dominant for the next two to three years. “Driven by the growing maturity of the space, many startups are turning to grownups and raising growth rounds for commercialisation at Series B stage and beyond,” he told Green Queen. “We also see products that are inherently superior to plant-based approaches in terms of taste and texture, and are close to price parity.”

    Meanwhile, meat analogues are by far the most attractive protein segment for investors, making up over 70% of investments in Europe last year. Their supremacy is expected to continue this year, with a projected share of 56%. Alternative dairy startups, however, have witnessed a sharp decline, going from 60% of the sector’s capital injections in 2020 to a forecast of less than 1% for 2024.

    These figures have been impacted by the rise in egg substitutes (projected to make up nearly 30% of alternative protein funding this year) and alternative fats and oils (13%). Startups tackling the cocoa and coffee industries also gained a lot of ground, in response to surging prices and climate concerns.

    dealroom climate tech
    Courtesy: FoodLabs/Dealroom

    Alternative cocoa players received $69M in 2023 (doubling the capital from the year before). “The space has been overlooked, but is gaining prominence for three key reasons,” Maire said. These include the environmental impact (dark chocolate is the second most polluting food group, mainly due to land use); ethical considerations (given the incidence of child labour in the value chain); and price fluctuations (cocoa prices reached an all-time high this year).

    “We believe that the emerging bioeconomy and scientific breakthroughs have the potential to solve some of the biggest food and climate issues,” said Patrick Noller, general partner at FoodLabs. “Many companies are pioneering efficient, cost-effective, and eco-friendly proteins and alternative ingredients through precision fermentation, biomass fermentation, molecular farming, and cell culture.”

    France leads investments, but removing regulatory barriers is key

    Apart from alternative proteins, European food waste startups attracted $138M in funding last year, a 20% increase on 2022. Meanwhile, sustainable packaging companies received $70M (a 46% year-on-year hike), and biomaterial producers raised $41M (a 238% increase).

    Overall, the climate-focused food tech sector was the second-best performing category across European industries in 2023, representing just a 2% decline in investments, behind only the energy industry (which saw a 16% hike). On average, the continent witnessed a 37% drop in VC financing.

    europe climate food tech investment
    Courtesy: FoodLabs/Dealroom

    The UK leads the way as a climate-food tech hub, home to 18% of the sector’s startups in Europe. This is followed by the Netherlands (14%), and France and Germany (12% each). However, French companies received the most capital ($416M), and that’s after a 29% dip from 2022. Switzerland ($354M) and the UK ($239M) were next on the list, with impressive gains made by the former, as well as countries like Belgium, Norway and Iceland.

    In terms of who is putting the money in, the EU-backed European Innovation Council Fund has been the most active pre-seed investor since 2016, making 33 investments in the climate-centric food tech space. This is closely followed by the Blue Horizon Corporation (30) and state-owned bank Bpifrance (26). Likewise, Belgium’s Astanor Ventures (18) and France’s Demeter Partners (17) are the top investors when it comes to Series A+ rounds.

    But in spite of the positives of 2023, projections for 2024 suggest a return to pre-pandemic levels ($1.1B), with the US expected to overtake Europe again. This is primarily due to the absence of mega-rounds like Atlas Agro’s. “The global venture [capital] industry is still in transition after the outlier years of 2020-21, a shift in monetary policy and higher interest rates,” said Maire. “We don’t expect global investment to increase in 2024, but we do expect a return to baseline.”

    dealroom foodtech
    Courtesy: FoodLabs/Dealroom

    Startups will also have to contend with a reshuffled EU parliament, with the far-right’s rise raising fears about the bloc’s climate ambitions. “The EU already does a tremendous job of funding innovation through many direct and indirect programmes,” explained Maire. “However, it could simplify and standardise some of the regulatory hurdles – for example, for alternative protein companies.”

    The EU’s current novel foods framework has left it lagging behind other governments – the US, Singapore and Israel have already approved cultivated meat for sale, while the UK is on the verge of doing so after announcing it’s breaking away from pre-Brexit regulations. In contrast, Italy has banned the production and sale of cultivated meat, and France and Romania are considering doing so too.

    The post European Food Tech Startups Overtook the US to Attract $2B in Investments in 2023 appeared first on Green Queen.

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  • Ever After Foods Raises $10M for Scale-Up Platform That Make Cultivated Meat 90% Cheaper

    ever after foods
    4 Mins Read

    Israeli biotech firm Ever After Foods has secured $10M to accelerate the growth of its bioreactor platform that allows cultivated meat producers to scale up manufacturing while driving down costs.

    Ever After Foods has received $10M from strategic investors in the EU and the US to support its scalability platform for cultivated meat, which offers a cost-effective and highly efficient manufacturing solution for producers.

    The funding round includes a second investment from Israeli cellular agriculture company Pluri and the Tnuva Group (the country’s largest food company), which formed Ever After Foods as a joint venture in 2022.

    “The current investment round in Ever After Foods is led by new global partners, and includes Tnuva’s renewed commitment as well. We believe this validates Pluri’s strategy and underscores the quality of our technology and solutions,” said Pluri CEO and president Yaky Yanay.

    Making more efficient cultivated meat at low costs

    cultivated meat cost
    Courtesy: Ever After Foods

    Formerly called Plurinuva, Ever After Foods has exclusive licencing rights to use Pluri’s technology and intellectual property to develop, manufacture and commercialise cultivated meat. It is starting with beef and poultry cells, but the latest investment has extended the licence to include seafood as well.

    The startup launched its bioreactor platform last year, with the ability to produce 10kg of cultivated meat mass with just a 10-litre tank at the time. Since then, however, it says it has “swiftly advanced” its technology and manufacturing platform, demonstrating the natural production of muscle and fat tissues for various animal cells, hitting the taste and texture touchpoints so crucial to consumers.

    This tech enables Ever After Foods to offer a 90% reduction in costs for its B2B clients, compared to “the second-best technology in the field”. Moreover, the bioreactors yield up to six times more protein and 700 times more lipids from each cell, offering better flavour and nutritional value.

    The cell cultivation process is also much, much lighter on the planet than industrially raised livestock, boasting 93% less air pollution, 95% less land, and 94% less water.

    “Ever After Foods’ unique and innovative production platform empowered the change to our business model. The shift to a technology enabler will allow us to serve more players in the value chain,” said Ever After Foods CEO Eyal Rosenthal.

    “Securing funding from new global partners is a testament to our team’s tireless dedication to solving the primary production barriers for the next step toward a more sustainable meat industry. In addition to the funding, working with new partners in the space will deepen our industry network and speed up our expansion into international markets as we drive the next era of scalable cultivated meat production.”

    Tackling the cost and scale hurdles

    cultivated meat investments
    Courtesy: GFI Israel

    Scalability and costs are two of the most pressing challenges holding back the progress of the cultivated meat industry. One investor told Reuters that these products need to reach manufacturing costs of $2.92 per pound to be price-competitive with conventional meat. But while companies have managed to bring down these costs by 99% in less than a decade, analysis by McKinsey suggests it will still take until 2030 for these proteins to become as cheap as conventional meat.

    This is a problem both locally and internationally. “Scaling up manufacturing for Israeli startups is challenging due to infrastructure costs, mirroring challenges encountered by startups worldwide,” Alla Voldman, VP of strategy and policy at industry think tank the Good Food Institute Israel, told Green Queen last month.

    “Consequently, most new Israeli startups tend to focus more on business-to-business (B2B) solutions, aiming to fill these industry gaps and overcome scalability obstacles,” she added.

    McKinsey further notes that cultivated meat companies would need over 17 times the fermentation capacity that currently exists in the global pharmaceutical industry to meet the growth demands of the industry. Responding to this need, in Israel, contract development and manufacturing organisations that have traditionally served pharmaceutical companies have now begun to expand to the cultivated meat sector.

    To address the cost challenge, government agency the Israel Innovation Authority established a research consortium in 2022, comprising 14 companies and 10 academic labs equipped with an $18M investment to develop cost-effective methods to produce cultivated meat.

    Israel is one of only three countries to approve the sale of cultivated meat, greenlighting local startup Aleph Farms‘ application in January. The country has made food tech one of its top five priority R&D areas, and attracted 10% of all VC funding ($1.2B) in the alternative protein sector in the last decade.

    By 2030, the industry is expected to produce 10,000 additional jobs (a third of which would be manufacturing roles), have more than 200 companies and over a dozen manufacturing facilities, and contribute $2.5B to Israel’s economy through exports, local wages, corporate taxes, and more.

    The post Ever After Foods Raises $10M for Scale-Up Platform That Make Cultivated Meat 90% Cheaper appeared first on Green Queen.

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  • Future Food Quick Bites: Cinnamon Miyoko’s, Vegan Euro 2024 & Fighting Florida

    john barnes euro 2024
    5 Mins Read

    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 Upside Foods’ cultivated meat tasting in Florida, a fermented sweetener from upcycled fruits, and Impossible Foods’ patent dispute with Motif FoodWorks.

    New products and launches

    Californian cultivated meat giant Upside Foods is fighting back against Florida’s ban on these novel proteins with a public tasting event in Miami on June 27, four days before the law comes into effect.

    florida lab grown meat ban
    Courtesy: Upside Foods

    It has been a big week for Californian precision-fermented egg producer The Every Company. After forming the Fermy brand with Landish Foods for beverage mixes, it announced a partnership with Spain’s Grupo Palacios, which will incorporate the animal-free egg in its Spanish omelettes.

    More news from California: nut-free spread maker Voyage Foods‘ peanut and hazelnut butter innovations are now available in bulk sizes on Amazon to support the needs of foodservice operators.

    Plant-based dairy pioneer Miyoko’s Creamery has launched two new versions of its oat milk butter in Garlic Parm and Cinnamon Brown Sugar flavours, which are priced at $4.99 per 6oz tub at Whole Foods.

    miyoko's oat milk butter
    Courtesy: Miyoko’s Creamery

    Dutch plant-based ingredient company Fooditive Group has introduced a low-calorie, sustainable sugar substitute called Keto-Fructose in the US. It’s made from upcycled apples and pears via a fermentation process, which is now undergoing FDA GRAS assessment.

    In the Netherlands itself, retail giant Jumbo has replaced gelatin with plant-based alternatives in all its fresh pastries. The renewed lineup is now available at all 700 locations in the Netherlands and Belgium.

    In search for plant-based M&M’s? UK vegan chocolatier Mummy Meegz has rolled out dairy-free M’z Gems in chocolate and peanut flavours, joining its range of alternatives to classics like Cadbury’s Creme Eggs and Freddo bars.

    vegan m&ms
    Courtesy: Mummy Meegz

    Swiss plant-based meat company Planted has entered the foodservice market in the Middle East, with its products being featured on menus of certain UAE restaurants. It now plans to expand into hotels.

    German ingredients firm Loryma has introduced Lory Bind, a wheat-based binder intended as a clean-label alternative to methylcellulose in plant-based meat formulations.

    Fellow German company Billie Green has debuted a plant-based mortadella range in classic, garden herb, and cherry pepper flavours.

    plant based mortadella
    Courtesy: Billie Green

    And in Singapore, oat milk startup Oatside has expanded its ready-to-drink coffee line with Caramel Macchiato and Mocha flavours, which will be available at NTUC FairPrice, Don Don Donki, Shopee and other retailers from Friday at S$1.80 per pack.

    Finance and company updates

    Canadian plant-based producer Phytokana Ingredients has announced that it’s initiating a C$38M ($27.7M) Series C investment round, just as it introduced a new 70% faba bean protein concentrate that provides emulsification and gelling properties to vegan meat formulations.

    Australian plant-based startup The Leaf Protein Co has brought in $850,000 in pre-seed funding to develop nutritional additives for food applications with rubisco protein.

    future food quick bites
    Courtesy: The Leaf Protein Co

    Mycoprotein giant Quorn has added egg white to the three new flavours of its previously vegan Sweet Chilli Mini Fillets, with no plant-based variants of the snack available.

    Fellow mycoprotein player Mycorena, meanwhile, has discontinued its large-scale factory project for one of its core ingredients to focus on a long-term circular upcycling production model, citing an “unfavourable investment climate” and an unsuccessful Series B fundraising effort.

    Israeli cultivated meat producer Believer Meats has signed an MoU with Abu Dhabi’s brand-new AgriFood Growth and Water Abundance cluster to establish research opportunities, pursue regulatory advancements, and explore commercial facilities.

    abu dhabi agwa
    Courtesy: Believer Meats

    Global investor network FAIRR and Tufts University have released a Protein and Nutrition Factsheet for investors to gain more knowledge about sustainable nutrition, the scientific evidence of the health impacts of different proteins, and the risks and opportunities involved with the protein supply chain.

    Also at Tufts University, the Center for Cellular Agriculture has received an “unprecedented investment” from the institute to hire five new dedicated cellular agriculture professors.

    Policy and event news

    Impossible Foods has been dealt a blow in its legal battle with Motif FoodWorks over precision-fermented heme proteins. The US Patent and Trademark Appeal Board has invalidated one of the former’s patents, which covers 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.

    In Spain, a coalition of over 20 seafood producers is accusing plant-based seafood companies of misleading consumers via their product labelling. The companies, which include Apromar, Interfish and Conxemar, intend to join SAFE Food Advocacy Europe to lobby for stricter regulations on vegan seafood, citing “unfair competition”.

    UK biotech firm Sun Bear Biofuture has announced that its precision-fermented alternative to palm oil is safe to eat, with independent research showing its product outperforming conventional palm oil on flavour.

    hacksummit
    Courtesy: FoodHack

    Italian cocoa-free chocolate maker Foreverland won the inaugural FoodTech World Cup at the HackSummit in Lausanne last week, beating out eight other finalists.

    German food trade show Anuga has announced a new event for alternative proteins in 2025. Called Anuga Alternatives, it will feature cultivated, plant-based and fermentation-derived proteins, alongside ingredients like algae, mushrooms and insects.

    Israeli alternative protein companies Imagindairy and Wanda Fish have been selected as the 2024 Global Technology Pioneers by the World Economic Forum.

    Finally, UK plant-based meat startup THIS has partnered with former England footballer John Barnes, to release THIS Is The One, a new parody track for Euro 2024, which features vegan food at stadiums across Germany.

    Check out last week’s Future Food Quick Bites.

    The post Future Food Quick Bites: Cinnamon Miyoko’s, Vegan Euro 2024 & Fighting Florida appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • THIS Receives £20M Series C Investment to Launch New Plant-Based Meat Offerings

    this plant based funding
    4 Mins Read

    UK plant-based meat startup THIS has raised £20M ($25.4M) in a Series C funding round to expand its product range and drive profitability on its core offerings.

    THIS, the London-based producer of meat analogues, has closed a £20M Series C round led by European impact investor Planet First Partners.

    The financing involved a combination of primary and secondary equity financing, and brings total investment into the startup to £35M ($44.5M). Its previous investors include BGF, Backed VC, FiveSeasons Ventures, Idinvest Partners, Manta RayVentures, Seedcamp, ITV and footballer Chris Smalling (among others).

    The development comes just as THIS’s ready-to-eat Chicken and Bacon Wrap (exclusive to WH Smith) was recalled in connection with the E. coli outbreak in the UK, which has affected more than 200 Brits. The Food Standards Agency said the recall was a “precautionary step” and that E. coli “has not been detected in the product”.

    THIS drives Planet First Partners’ sustainability push

    plant based meat uk
    Courtesy: THIS

    THIS will use its latest investment to accelerate growth in its home market and roll out new product lines that cater to “evolving consumer health preferences”. In the UK, health is the main driver of plant-based meat consumption, with 39% of Brits saying so in a survey last year. This focus was highlighted in its TV campaign with food critic Grace Dent in October.

    The company will also continue to boost profitability on its core products, which include chicken, beef, pork and lamb analogues. Its growth strategy will be led by new CEO Mark Cuddigan (formerly of Ella’s Kitchen), who took over from founders Andy Shovel and Pete Sharman in February (both remain involved in the business).

    “We are excited to welcome Planet First Partners into the THIS family,” said Cuddigan. “Our partnership will be key as we continue to lead a revolution through our plant-based food to protect animals and the environment, growing brand love to become market leaders in the UK.”

    It marks the first investment through Planet First Partners’ Farm 2 Fork vertical, which aims to support planet-friendly agriculture and food systems, and complements previous investments in green energy and sustainable cities. It’s spearheaded by executive chairman Frédéric de Mévius, who also founded Verlinvest, an investment vehicle that built brands like Oatly and Vita Coco.

    The find is classified under Article 9 of the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, which stipulates sustainability is the primary objective for portfolio companies. Its capital injection into THIS will see it take two seats on the board, and contribute to the increased adoption of plant-based diets, helping prevent the conversion of biodiversity-rich landscapes and release land for ecosystem restoration.

    “We believe the company is uniquely placed to capitalise on growing consumer preferences for sustainable and healthy food alternatives, whilst supporting the environment,” said de Mévius. “I am personally excited to put my experience as a consumer investor behind a sustainable brand that is totally aligned with our fund’s sustainability objectives and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.”

    THIS is working on tofu-like superfood

    this isn't chicken thighs
    Courtesy: THIS

    The Series C round follows a year of rapid expansion for THIS, which claims to be the fastest-growing plant-based meat brand in the UK. Its sales were up by 46.6% last year, and volumes rose by 66.6%, according to NielsenIQ data for the Grocer’s Top Products survey, reaching annualised revenue of £24M ($30.5M).

    The company says it is the third-largest meat analogue brand in the UK, and has witnessed strong repeat sales in the Big Six supermarkets (Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrisons, Aldi and Lidl). While it became famous for its vegan chicken pieces, it has continued to introduce new lines in the last few years. This year alone, it has launched vegan chicken thighs, chicken breast, chicken shawarma, frozen beef mince, as well as skin-on chicken wings in collaboration with BrewDog.

    THIS has also streamlined its operations, consolidating its production from 17 sites to just three. This involved combining its lab and office spaces into one London site, with production facilities in Northern Ireland and Rochester, England. It is additionally making operational enhancements to improve its gross margins each quarter.

    “In terms of our profitability, the team has transformed the business in the last 12 months,” Cuddigan told Sifted last month. “We have transformed our margin, but we need to go much further to become a sustainable business.” The business is aiming to have its first profitable quarter this year.

    The UK saw retail sales in the larger meat-free category dip by £38.4M ($48.8M) last year. But the country’s largest grocer, Tesco, reported a 20% hike in sales of plant-based steaks and chicken breasts since the start of 2024, with purchases of meat-free burgers increasing by 10% compared to 2023. Even traditional plant proteins like tofu and tempeh grew by 20%.

    Speaking of, Cuddigan has hinted at the new products in the pipeline for THIS, telling Sifted that THIS is developing a plant-based ‘superfood’ for consumers to use as an ingredient in a number of ways – akin to tofu, but with more nutritional value than anything currently available on the market.

    “As consumer awareness of environmental and ethical concerns surrounding meat consumption grows, we’re seeing continued interest in plant-based products, particularly with a lean towards health-focused choices and an ingredients list people recognise,” he said.

    The post THIS Receives £20M Series C Investment to Launch New Plant-Based Meat Offerings appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Those Headlines Linking Plant-Based Meat to Heart Disease are Deliberately Misleading

    plant based meat ultra processed
    9 Mins Read

    A bunch of headlines have been knocking plant-based meat for causing heart disease, but these are deliberate misinterpretations to discredit the industry further.

    Did you hear that plant-based meat can now apparently kill you?

    That is the consensus of media outlets like the Daily Telegraph, the New York Post and the Daily Mail. Citing a study by Sao Paulo University and Imperial College London published in the Lancet journal, headline writers have decided – in a classic case of misinformation – that plant-based meat and veganism will increase your risk of heart disease.

    Backed by the World Cancer Research Fund, the study used the health data of nearly 118,400 Brits between 2009 and 2012, and assessed ultra-processed foods (UPFs). These foods are defined by the Nova classification as those produced via industrial formulations and techniques like extrusion or pre-frying, combined with cosmetic additives and substances of little culinary use.

    Think ice creams, sugary cereals, fizzy drinks, packaged breads and cakes, sausages and other ‘reconstituted meats’, and – yes – plant-based meat analogues.

    “Replacing meat and dairy with plant-based swaps might not be the simple health hack you think it is,” wrote the Daily Mail.

    “Fake meats and vegan food not as good for you as you might think,” read the headline for the Metro newspaper.

    “Full transparency would expose the myth that vegan foods are good for you – I am not talking here about whole grains, fruits, nuts and vegetables, which are perfectly healthy in a balanced diet with meat, fish, eggs and dairy products – but highly processed compounds of them, often laden with colourings, emulsifiers and flavourings,” wrote the Telegraph columnist Jamie Blackett, a beef farmer who regularly appears on GB News, the most unreliable and untrustworthy broadcaster in the UK.

    The way these stories are written is dangerous, because not only are they misleading, but they’re deliberately so. These news outlets aren’t stupid, they know exactly what they’re doing – slapping ‘vegan’ in your headline will get you clicks, as would ‘meat’. But objectivity and balance? Who gives a shit.

    What the Lancet study really said

    vegan ultra processed
    Courtesy: The Lancet

    So here’s what happened. The study analysed an array of animal- and plant-based foods – both non-UPFs and UPFs – and aimed to find the difference in disease risks if 10% of the diet was shifted to non-UPF plant-based foods.

    What do plant-sourced non-UPFs include? Fruits and vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds, of course, but also, beer and wine, processed bread, pasta, cereals, and table sugar.

    The researchers found that with every 10% increase in energy from non-UPF plant-based foods, there was a 7% lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease, and an 8% decrease in risk of coronary heart disease.

    But when you increase your share of plant-based UPFs by 10%, it’s associated with a 5% greater risk of cardiovascular disease, and a 6% risk of cardiovascular disease.

    The problem with most of these headlines and interpretations, though, is that this means plant-based meat is bad too. However, meat analogues only made up 0.2% of the participants’ diets in the study. Plant-based UPFs accounted for 39.4% overall, but nearly 10% of these were industrialised packaged breads, almost 7% were pastries, buns and cakes, and about 4% were biscuits.

    Plant-based meat represented the lowest-consumed category across both plant-based and animal-souced foods. The latter included things like reconstituted meats (such as nuggets and sausages), milk-based drinks and desserts, and mayo and spreadable cheese.

    What none of these articles – or even the study text in the Lancet for that matter – is the impact of increasing your intake of animal-sourced foods by 10%. Only when you dig into the supplemental data do you find that if you eat 10% more animal-based UPFs, you increase the risk of both cardiovascular and coronary heart diseases by 4%.

    And when you consider the impact of replacing foods with plant-sourced non-UPFs, the impact is similar across the board. Substituting 10% of plant-based UPFs with non-UPFs has the same effect on cardiovascular disease risk (a 7% decrease) as doing so for animal-based UPFs.

    In fact, replacing both ultra-processed vegan food and animal-derived non-UPFs with plant-sourced non-UPFs has an identical impact on death risks from these diseases.

    Research doesn’t show full picture of meat

    The core problem with the research and the way it’s been reported is the idea that all vegan UPFs are bad, which is not true. Sure, breads and cakes and biscuits and fizzy drinks aren’t exactly health foods, but they just happen to be vegan. It’s not what you necessarily think of when you think of ‘plant-based food’ – most people’s minds go to either whole foods (which the study shows are great for you), or meat and dairy analogues.

    It feels very convenient to just bundle everything into the vegan umbrella when it suits these news outlets’ narratives. And some blame lies with the authors too: they didn’t include much data about animal-derived meat, and sidestepped its effects in the findings in the actual study. I’d wager the number of people who actually go through to analyse the supplementary data is under 0.2% – you know, the amount of meat analogues that actually featured in the entire study.

    Imperial College didn’t do any favours either. The main image in its press release is a very commonly used photograph to depict plant-based meat, which magnifies the focus on these products. Its text takes a further dig: “Many plant-based foods, including meat-free alternatives such as some sausages, burgers and nuggets, can be classified as ultra-processed foods (UPFs), despite often being marketed as healthy options.”

    lancet ultra processed foods
    Courtesy: Imperial College London

    As Marlana Malerich, co-founder at the Rooted Research Collective and a food systems researcher with expertise in UPFs, points out: “Plant-based meat and ultra-processing have become topics of contention, and their inclusion in these headlines is likely to garner attention.”

    Like Malerich, a number of other health experts have criticised the coverage of the study. “This study may lead to more confusion in the real world,” said a group of experts from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. “Emerging evidence has shown positive outcomes for plant-based meat alternatives and studies that do not segregate health outcomes from different UPF categories become misleading.”

    Consider this: practically everybody eats bread and biscuits – no matter if you’re a meat-eater, pescetarian or vegetarian. The study is saying that if you increase the amount of bread and biscuits (and cakes and pastries) by 10% in your diet, this is not good for you. It’s fair to assume that most people know that. Again, plant-based meats made for less than a hundredth of participants’ diets in the study – so it’s not really the UPF group people should be focusing on with respect to these results.

    Experts disagree with UPFs and Nova classification

    Hilda Mulrooney, reader in nutrition and health at London Metropolitan University, pointed out how the study relies entirely on the Nova classification system, over which a number of concerns have been raised, “particularly that it assumes that the health implications of a foodstuff are based only on the degree of processing, rather than their nutritional content”.

    The Nova classification was always meant to be used as a yardstick for the processing of a food product, not its health implications. But more and more people are doing the latter, despite warnings from multiple scientists.

    “Even experts do not agree on the Nova categorisation – a study found only around 30% agreement on the placement of foods within Nova categories among food experts, suggesting the food categorisations used across studies almost certainly use different criteria for different foodstuffs,” Malerich tells Green Queen.

    ultra processed foods
    Graphic by Green Queen

    For example, beer, wine and cereals are considered non-UPFs, but tofu is considered ultra-processed. “This suggests to me a lack of understanding of principles of food production and nutrition in the classification system, as essentially tofu – here classified as ultra-processed – can be made in a way similar to cheese, which the researchers said was non-ultra-processed,” said Duane Mellor, dietitian and spokesperson for British Dietetic Association.

    Most of the coverage of this study also excludes the researchers’ conclusion, which states that dietary guidelines promoting a plant-sourced diet should emphasise the reduction of meat, red meat, or animal-sourced foods, alongside the “need to avoid all UPFs”. Malerich takes issue with that last bit, given the disagreement over the Nova classification.

    “There are alternatives to Nova that are actually quantifiable, such as NutriScore and a new hyper-palatability categorisation based on ratios of fat, salt, sugar, and carbs. Why do we persist in using Nova when it is not a quantifiable nutrition metric?” she outlines.

    Media amplifies culture wars despite focus on outdated plant-based meat

    Let’s focus on the plant-based meat bit for a second. The UK Biobank’s data was collected between 2007 and 2010, with participants interviewed about what they ate in the last 24 hours at least twice between 2009 and 2012. Their hospital and mortality records were then monitored, and researchers followed up with them nine years later on average.

    So for anyone still perturbed about the 0.2% of meat analogues – these are products that existed in 2010. The plant-based industry has had more than a few transformations since then. In 2010, Beyond Meat was still two years away from the market (and eight years from entering the UK), Impossible Foods didn’t exist, and Quorn and Linda McCartney’s were really the only major meat analogue makers in Britain.

    Startups like THIS and VFC – which are going from strength to strength – only launched towards the end of the follow-up period. Plant-based meat makers are increasingly reformulating their products to be healthier, cleaner-label and more nutritious. They’re doing that now, in 2024. You cannot apply the results of a study analysing products from 2010 today – that makes no sense.

    grace dent
    Courtesy: THIS

    But of course, publications like the Telegraph will continue the pile-on on these products, exacerbating the culture wars between the right and the left that outlets like it brewed up in the first place.

    Platforming people like Blackett is on brand. This is a man who has previously been accused of harassing campaigner Chris Packham at a time when he was receiving death threats for speaking out against bird shooting. Blackett has a tendency to associate meat-free eating with death.

    Last month, he wrote a column titled “Vegetarians must have a death wish – for themselves and the planet”, where he called out “pea protein gloop burgers” and “oat juice lattes”. “I refuse to call them ‘meat’ or oat ‘milk’,” he wrote. He’s cool like that.

    Following the study, he penned an article headlined: “Vegans are slowly killing themselves.” Here, he said he didn’t “subscribe to the NHS-in-crisis narrative”, completely choosing to ignore the peak waiting lists and lack of supplies at the cash-strapped National Health Service. Which, incidentally, could save a lot of money if people went plant-based, according to another study.

    “There’s nothing healthy about ultra-highly processed fake ‘meat’ products,” the introduction to the latter column read. It sums up the problem. 1. Ultra-processed doesn’t automatically mean unhealthy, 2. A lot of plant-based meat products are actually healthier than conventional meat, and 3. With this logic, why are we ignoring ultra-processed animal-derived meats? You know, the ones that the WHO has called carcinogenic?

    London Met’s Mulrooney hit the nail on the head, saying: “Although some may assume the message of this study is that all ultra-processed plant-based foods are bad for health, I think that in fact what the evidence in the study actually shows is that poor diets are associated with increased risk of chronic diseases.”

    The post Those Headlines Linking Plant-Based Meat to Heart Disease are Deliberately Misleading appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Judge Rules in Favour of The Better Meat Co in IP Dispute Against Meati

    better meat co meati
    6 Mins Read

    The IP case between mycelium meat makers Meati and The Better Meat Co has drawn to a close, after a judge ruled largely in favour of the latter.

    California’s The Better Meat Co and Colorado-based Meati have ended their two-and-a-half-year-long intellectual property dispute over their mycelium protein products, paving the way for the former’s fundraising efforts.

    As reported by AgFunder, a judge in the Eastern District of California court ruled largely in favour of The Better Meat Co, accusing Meati of deploying “inexplicable” tactics and engaging in “sandbagging”. The court also rejected Meati’s claim over The Better Meat Co’s patent.

    The legal battle began in December 2021 after The Better Meat Co sued Meati for undermining its IP and attempting to “bully” a less-funded rival. Meati, in response, accused the former of stealing its IP. Both companies produce meat analogues derived from the same fungi strain and using submerged fermentation.

    The meat of the matter

    better meat co lawsuit
    Courtesy: The Better Meat Co

    Meati was founded in 2015 by Tyler Huggins and Justin Whiteley, and has raised $365M in venture capital to date, including a $100M Series C1 round just last month. The company’s chicken cutlets and steaks are now available in more than 6,000 retail locations, and it’s aiming to take the store count to 10,000 by the end of the year.

    Meanwhile, The Better Meat Co, was founded by Paul Shapiro, Joanna Bromley and Adam Yee three years later. It has brought in only $27M in funding, thanks in part to the long-running court case. It began as a company producing plant-based meat enhancers, but later revealed it had been developing meat analogues using filamentous fungi. Its Rhiza mycoprotein is, among other applications, part of Perdue Farms’ Chicken Plus blended meat line.

    In July 2021, The Better Meat Co was granted a US patent for this tech, listing Augustus H Pattillo as its inventor. According to CEO Paul Shapiro, Pattillo had previously spent a year working on a Department of Energy fellowship at Chicago’s Argonne National Laboratory, at the same time Meati (then called Emergy and working on renewable batteries) was also doing work at the federal agency.

    In 2019, Pattillo joined The Better Meat Co (BMC), which was accused of IP theft by Meati after receiving the patent. “On information and belief, no one had ever discovered how to make textured mycelial masses resembling animal meat before Drs. Huggins and Whitely,” Meati’s legal team had stated. Huggins and Whiteley “did not believe it was possible for BMC to have brought a product to market so quickly on its own unless Pattillo had taken something” from Meati, and argued that their names should have been on the patent.

    The Better Meat Co argued that Meati had “provided no evidence that it had identified the novel claim terms of the BMC patent, had shared any of the concepts at issue with Mr Pattillo, or was even actively researching meat replacement uses of mycelium prior to 2019″.

    The Californian startup also claimed that Meati had failed to provide hard, admissible evidence – despite repeated requests – to “corroborate Huggins’ and Whiteley’s testimony that they, and not Pattillo, first conceived of the claims listed in Better Meat’s patents”.

    Judge reprimands Meati for ‘sandbagging’ and ‘shenanigans’

    meati lawsuit
    Courtesy: Meati

    In the court order in California, judge Kimberly J Mueller sided with The Better Meat Co for the most part, admitting some trade secret claims made by Meati to proceed, but rejecting its core patent claims.

    She said Meati “has not supported its opposition with citations of particular parts of materials in the record to corroborate Huggins’s and Whiteley’s testimony that they are among the inventors – or the sole inventors – who should be listed on the four Better Meat patents”.

    Mueller also outlined how Meati served The Better Meat Co with nearly 3,0000 pages of documents the night before a hearing on May 17, which the Colorado-based company said supported its inventorship claims. But, the judge said, Meati’s counsel offered “no credible explanation” of why it didn’t provide such materials sooner, considering the case has been going on since December 2021.

    “In a case like this one – a case pending for more than two years in which the claimant can reasonably be expected to possess the evidence it would need to prove its claims – that claimant cannot avoid summary judgment through such sandbagging and shenanigans,” she said.

    Instead of showing any “genuine dispute of material fact”, she stated that Meati’s action led the court to doubt it was pursuing its claims for “a proper purpose in the first place”.

    Meati targets profitability, The Better Meat Co aims to scale up

    the better meat co
    Courtesy: The Better Meat Co

    The ruling is a positive one for The Better Meat Co, which can now hope to amp up its fundraising efforts without the IP albatross on its neck.

    The judge did find that Meati had “identified genuine disputes of material fact within the record” related to trade secret claims, but both companies have now agreed to bring the dispute to an end. “The case has been concluded satisfactorily and we don’t have any further comment at this time,” a Meati spokesperson said.

    Echoing this, a representative for The Better Meat Co added: “This case is now concluded, and we look forward to continuing to build a better food system.”

    The Better Meat Co CEO Shapiro, a long-standing animal rights advocate, was previously the subject of sexual harassment allegations during his time as VP at the Humane Society of the United States.

    After leaving the charity for unrelated reasons in 2018, he told Politico: “I’ve taken responsibility for inappropriate behaviour years earlier in my career, and apologised to those who may have been offended. I cannot, however, respond to allegations that I’m unaware of, were never presented to my former employer or me during the inquiry 16 months ago, are alleged to have occurred many years ago and, frankly, just never happened.”

    Both Meati and The Better Meat Co will hope to move forward with their business plans following the end of the case. Meati has enacted three rounds of layoffs in the last 12 months, the latest one cutting 13% of its workforce. It has also seen shifts in the C-suite, with Phil Graves taking over as CEO from Huggins, who has moved into an advisory role, just as COO and president Scott Tassani left the company.

    The Colorado-based startup is now aiming for profitability, and has previously set out its plan to reach $1B in sales by 2025 (although the restructuring has likely pushed back this target).

    The Better Meat Co just announced it had slashed the cost of its mycoprotein. When produced at scale, it will now cost the same as commodity beef, even if no further R&D advancements are made. It is now looking to scale up to supply major CPG brands in the US and Asia, who have signed letters of intent and offtake agreements for its mycoprotein.

    The post Judge Rules in Favour of The Better Meat Co in IP Dispute Against Meati appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • When Told About the Benefits, Almost Everybody in China Would Eat More Plant-Based Foods

    china plant based study
    6 Mins Read

    New research shows that health is the priority for Chinese consumers when it comes to plant-based food – and the more they know about the benefits, the more they’ll eat it.

    When you inform people in China about the benefits of a vegan diet, nearly all of them (98%) would be willing to eat more plant-based foods, according to a new survey.

    This number stays the same for flexitarians, though this demographic has more people displaying a ‘strong willingness’ to add plant-based foods (64%, versus 57% of the total). This makes sense considering that flexitarian by definition refers to people actively reducing their meat intake – but even amongst meat-eaters (or omnivores), 54% are willing to up their vegan consumption once learning about the benefits.

    The results are from a poll carried out by Kantar for ProVeg International, covering 1,000 consumers from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. It found that nearly a third (32%) of Chinese people identify as flexitarians, though the incidence of vegetarianism (1.5%) and veganism (0.9%) is low.

    They were presented with 15 benefit statements about plant-based foods, 14 of which were based on peer-reviewed research. These included preventing or lowering the risk of type 2 diabetes, breast cancer, and antibiotic resistance; lowering body mass index (BMI); cutting greenhouse gas emissions; reducing global hunger; and being a source of delicious and satisfying meals (among others).

    “We found that most people are concerned that they eat healthy food and that once they know just how healthy and climate-friendly plant-based food is, they will eat a lot more of it,” said Shirley Lu, managing director and Asia and China representative at ProVeg.

    Health high on the agenda for China’s consumers

    china vegan survey
    Courtesy: ProVeg International

    The survey participants were asked to agree or disagree with each of the statements, while also rating which ones would be the most effective in persuading them to eat plant-based food. Using this data, the pollsters created a four-quadrant Agreement/Persuasion Matrix.

    Seven of the top 10 statements that respondents agreed with were related to health. The most popular was the one that suggested plant-based diets lowered BMI and reduced obesity rates, therefore also reducing rates of heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. More than half (56%) of Chinese people believe this is true.

    The BMI statement was also the most persuasive in encouraging increased plant-based consumption, leading the first quadrant of the matrix. The three other statements in this quadrant – which combined strong agreement with strong persuasion – were health-related too. They stated that plant-based diets are high in calcium and bioavailability (52% agreement), provide adequate protein (49%), and are iron-rich (51%).

    In quadrant 2, which highlights benefits that were met with low agreement but still tend to be influential in increasing uptake of plant-based foods, the top statement suggests that these foods lower the risk of developing antibiotic resistance. This was also the most persuasive statement overall, and was followed in this quadrant by the statements that animal agriculture makes up 80% of rainforest destruction, beef and dairy are among the biggest sources of methane, and vegan diets can help reduce world hunger.

    In contrast, the idea that plant-based foods are more energy-efficient and use fewer natural resources was the least persuasive argument, despite 49% agreeing with this. The statement people agreed with the least was that animal agriculture accounts for up to 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions, something that was also one of the most insignificant benefits for respondents.

    Who should plant-based companies market to?

    china plant based survey
    Courtesy: ProVeg International

    This reflects the emphasis Chinese consumers put on health over the environment. Overall, the main reasons for consuming plant-based food were health (46%), nutrition (39%) and food safety (35%). Only 24% are motivated by the fact that they are climate-friendly.

    Conversely, the biggest barriers are dissatisfaction with the freshness of ingredients (cited by 36%) and the taste (31%), and uncertainty about the nutritional completeness (30%).

    For food manufacturers, targeting the right demographic is key to hit home your message. While more women (59%) expressed a strong willingness to change their diet than men (41%), responses were very similar across the age ranges of both sexes, at between 24% for those aged 18-24 and 27% for 40- to 60-year-olds.

    Meanwhile, 36% of flexitarians displayed a strong willingness to eat more plant-based food. Among income groups, it seemed the richer the person, the less willing they were to change. People earning between ¥15,000 and ¥25,000 ($2,000-$3,300) each month were most happy to shift to a plant-based diet (29%), and those on the highest household income (above ¥40,000/5,400) were the least likely to do so (16%).

    china vegan study
    Courtesy: ProVeg International

    The report recommends companies leverage the high-awareness and high-persuasion factors from the matrix, amplify the benefits that had low agreement but were still highly convincing, and market popular benefits with low persuasion rates in ways that can be more relevant to consumers.

    Spotlight health, whether it’s produce or plant-based meat

    In 2016, the Chinese government introduced the Healthy China 2030 policy, which stipulated that public health should be a precondition for all future socio-economic development. And four years later, it announced the 30-60 policy, committing to hit peak emissions by 2030 and become carbon-neutral by 2060.

    Last year, a study by Singapore-based firm Asia Research Engagement found that China – the world’s largest producer of pork, fish and eggs – is expected to see animal consumption increase by 2030 despite falling population numbers. But if it is to meet the 1.5°C goal, 50% of all protein consumption in the country must be from alternative sources by 2060.

    There are several things industry players can do to help nudge more plant-based consumption. Social media was found to be the most effective marketing tool, while a focus on nutritional transparency and lower price points will go a long way too.

    gfi state of the industry report
    Courtesy: GFI APAC

    Companies need to improve the knowledge and awareness of nutrition and food processing, and finance R&D efforts to develop healthier and tastier plant-based meat products. More investment in consumer education about meat analogues’ health benefits is crucial too.

    Finally, vegetables that are high in protein, iron and calcium are particularly appealing to consumers, so marketing strategies that highlight the nutritional value of both fresh produce and meat and dairy analogues can be highly influential.

    “China boasts a rich heritage of plant-based diets and a wealth of healthy plant ingredients. Government agencies, educational institutions, and plant-based food businesses can leverage this study to educate consumers about the benefits and impact of plant-based diets,” said Lu.

    “By highlighting the health, environmental, and culinary advantages, we can collectively work towards transforming our food system to one that is beneficial for humans, plants, and animals alike.”

    The post When Told About the Benefits, Almost Everybody in China Would Eat More Plant-Based Foods appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Abu Dhabi Announces Alternative Protein Economic Cluster to Boost Food Security

    abu dhabi economic cluster
    4 Mins Read

    The crown prince of Abu Dhabi has approved a new economic cluster for novel foods and alternative proteins to tackle food insecurity and water shortages.

    Abu Dhabi has launched the AgriFood Growth and Water Abundance (AGWA) hub, an economic cluster built to advance the production of novel food and ingredients, and technologies that increase access to and better utilise water resources.

    Announced by the Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince of the Emirati capital, the food security cluster will aim to meet increasing global demand for food and water, alleviate pressures on agricultural systems, address shifting dietary patterns, and capitalise on technological advancements to ensure a reliable and resilient supply chain.

    It will be led by the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development (ADDED) and the Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO), which will support both local suppliers and exporters to help maximise commercial opportunities.

    “The launch of AgriFood Growth and Water Abundance cluster is a game changer in our efforts to further diversify the economy, enhance innovation, and achieve objectives of the UAE food security strategy 2051,” said ADDED chairman Ahmed Jasim Al Zaabi.

    Alternative proteins to help create 60,000 jobs and $25B in GDP

    uae alternative protein
    Courtesy: Switch Foods

    AGWA will help food and water industry players leverage innovations in alternative proteins, algae and reverse osmosis technologies, and enhance traditional food and water production and supply. Sheikh Khaled underlined food and water security as a national priority, stating that “smart solutions” and research and innovation projects for modern agriculture are crucial for both the local economy as well as sustainable development.

    The AGWA is said to be tapping into an AED77.4 trillion ($21T) industry, and is expected to contribute AED90 billion ($24.5B) in additional GDP to the city’s economy by 2045. The cluster will also create 60,000 new jobs by this time, with an anticipated investment of AED128 billion ($34.8B).

    “Abu Dhabi has been exploring sustainable solutions to food production challenges since [the] late 1960s,” said Al Zaabi. In 1969, UAE founder Sheikh Zayed set up the first network of greenhouses on Abu Dhabhi’s Saadiyat Island, which featured “advanced technologies of that era” for more sustainable food production.

    “Our recent initiatives continue this legacy of long-term vision and commitment to innovation, sustainability, and inclusive socio-economic development,” he added.

    The development follows the UAE’s announcement of its latest food and agriculture strategy last September, which aimed to boost the industry’s value to $10B and create 20,000 jobs by 2025. A few months earlier, Abu Dhabi also witnessed the opening of its first exclusively plant-based meat production plant by Switch Foods.

    ‘Non-oil’ expansion mustn’t distract from need for fossil fuel phaseout

    adnoc sustainability
    Courtesy: Adnoc

    As a country with vast swathes of desert and limited arable land, the UAE relies heavily on food imports to meet 90% of its population’s needs, totalling $14B in 2020, according to the USDA. But as Al Zaabi alluded to, the country’s current National Food Security Strategy aims to make it the world’s most food-secure country by 2051.

    While its position on the Global Food Security Index has risen from 35th to 23rd (and it tops the MENA region), the original strategy was to break into the top 10 by 2021. Nearly a fifth of its population lives below the poverty line, and according to the World Bank, 6% of its citizens are undernourished.

    “Abu Dhabi’s new food and water economic cluster addresses sustainability, critical global challenges, and new investment opportunities,” said Badr Al-Olama, director-general at the ADIO. “This is the next step in achieving Abu Dhabi’s economic diversification strategy by accelerating non-oil sectors.”

    Speaking of which, the UAE is heavily reliant on oil and gas, which contribute to 30% of its GDP and 13% of its exports. And while it has laid out a plan to diversify its economy away from fossil fuels and support the growth of various industries, it’s currently in the middle of a five-year, $130B plan to double its refining capacity and triple petroleum production.

    Despite hosting COP28, the UAE didn’t back the fossil fuel phaseout demanded by climate scientists globally. In fact, Sultan Al Jaber – the summit’s president and the head of the UAE’s national oil company, Adnoc – went so far as to claim that there was “no science” behind the environmental efficacies of a fossil fuel phaseout, adding that it would not allow sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back into caves”.

    The UAE also has the world’s third-largest net-zero-busting plans for oil and gas expansion, and many of its new fossil fuel developments are incompatible with the 2050 net-zero goals. And Adnoc – which is based in Abu Dhabi – hasn’t disclosed its emissions since 2016.

    So it’s not just the expansion of non-oil sectors that will help the UAE reach its climate goals – the country also must simultaneously divest and scale back its fossil fuel operations. The preceding economic cluster, which was the first announced, focused on just that. Titled Smart and Autonomous Vehicle Industries, it is designed to make the nation a leader in “future mobility solutions” across air, land and sea transport.

    The post Abu Dhabi Announces Alternative Protein Economic Cluster to Boost Food Security appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Future Food Quick Bites: DoD v Cattlemen, Non-Dairy Footballers & Vegan in the Bronx

    impossible hot dog
    6 Mins Read

    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 Alpro’s collaboration with Peter Crouch, a new alternative protein jobs platform, and a host of university-related news.

    New products and launches

    In the UK, Alpro has partnered with Peter Crouch to kickstart its new Alpro Plant Protein Morning Trials campaign. The former England footballer tests celeb fitness routines, including waking up at 2:30 AM, multiple gym sessions, and plunging into ice baths to promote the recently extended Plant Protein range.

    peter crouch alpro
    Courtesy: Alpro

    Also in the UK, there’s a new musical about the meat industry. Mad Cow will be coming to Canterbury’s new fully vegan Garlinge Theater next month.

    Swiss meat analogues maker Planted has rolled out its fermentation-derived steak in Switzerland at Coop and in Germany at Rewe stores.

    Belgian startup Bolder Foods is continuing to showcase its biomass-fermented cheese prototypes, with investors and entrepreneurs getting a taste of its product at an event hosted by ingredients leader Givaudan.

    plant based news
    Courtesy: Ilana Taub/LinkedIn

    San Francisco-based startup Impact Food has announced its sushi-grade plant-based salmon, with wholesale pre-orders running now. The product premiered at Oisixs Ra Daichi’s annual World Oceans Day event in sashimi and nigiri formats in Japan.

    That’s not all for vegan salmon this week – German alt-seafood producer BettaF!sh has also entered the space with SAL-NOM, a hot smoked salmon analogue made from seaweed. It retails for €3.29 per 130g jar, and will be launched as a tinned SKU too in the summer.

    As part of its roster of new mini-campaigns, Veganuary ran its Choose Fish-Free Week from June 3-8, shedding light on alternative seafood brands and recipes. A BBQ Month and Choose Dairy-Free Week will be next.

    veganuary choose fish free week
    Courtesy: Veganuary

    Israeli 3D-printed meat producer Redefine Meat has rolled out its New Meat range of lamb kofta mix, pulled beef, pulled pork, burgers, beef mince and bratwurst in German retail via e-tailer Velivery.

    Hybrid meat maker Mush Foods has partnered with French specialty meat purveyor Dufour Gourmet to introduce a charcuterie range made from its 50Cut mycelium meat. Offerings include a bratwurst, breakfast sausage, Italian-style sausage, and chicken sausage.

    Californian food tech company MeliBio‘s vegan honey, which retails in some parts of Europe under the Better Foodie brand name, is now available in Switzerland and Liechtenstein through a distribution deal with Swiss wholesaler Honeydew.

    vegan honey
    Courtesy: Better Foodie

    Fellow Californian startup Upside Foods served its cultivated chicken at Industry Only LA, as part of buffalo chicken bao buns and cold sesame noodles.

    In the US, catering giant Sodexo and the University of Cincinnati have introduced 513 Culinary Group, an immersive campus dining venture to spotlight inclusivity and local ingredients. The partnership entails new menu options with more plant-based foods and special care given to allergens.

    If you’re in New York, the Fordham Plaza is hosting the Bronx Vegan Bazaar every third Saturday from noon to 6 PM starting this weekend on June 15.

    questlove cheesesteak
    Courtesy: Stella Artois

    The Roots drummer Questlove partnered with Stella Artois to host the Questlove’s Cheesesteak Diner pop-up, which features Impossible Foods’ beef. It was the first event of the beer brand’s Let’s Do Dinner: Summer Series, which brings together food, lifestyle and entertainment platforms.

    Speaking of which, Impossible Foods‘ new beef hot dog has made its way into Safeway stores in California and Jewel-Osco locations in Chicago – and it’s gone straight into the meat aisle.

    beanless coffee
    Courtesy: Jake Berber/LinkedIn

    And Singaporean beanless coffee startup Prefer has moved into the frozen world with a gelato launched in partnership with local dessert parlour Aphrodite Waffles and Gelato. The ice cream uses Prefer’s bean-free coffee concentrate.

    Finance and company updates

    Accelerator programme ProVeg Incubator has announced its latest cohort of alternative protein startups, featuring Atlantic Fish Co, Optimised Foods, Friends & Family Pet Food Company (all US), AIProtein (Egypt/US), and Fisheroo (Singapore). The initiative has also been extended from 12 weeks to 20.

    Danish startup EvodiaBio has raised €7M to produce natural aromas for the food industry using precision fermentation. Its tech can improve the taste of non-alcoholic beer by producing yeast-derived ingredients that recreate the taste of hops.

    the better meat co
    Courtesy: The Better Meat Co

    Fellow fermentation company The Better Meat Co has slashed the production costs of its mycoprotein, which is now on par with commodity beef when manufactured at scale.

    Germany’s Veganz Group – which makes plant-based dairy, meat and snack products – has confirmed the drawdown of a grant from the State of Brandenburg’s investment bank to construct a new facility in Ludwigsfelde.

    Fellow German company Tälist has introduced AltProtein.Jobs, an AI-led ‘matchmaking’ platform to connect employers with prospective candidates in the future food sector. Its algorithm has made 2,000 matches with a 9+ score, 9,400 with 8+, and 25,000 with a 7+ rating.

    alt protein jobs
    Courtesy: Tälist/Green Queen

    The US Department of Defense has released a call for alternative protein funding proposals under BioMade, the public-private biomanufacturing consortium, with projects receiving between $500,000 to $2M. One of its key focus areas is on fermentation-derived and cultivated proteins for military rations. It has already spawned an outraged response from a cattle association.

    Research and policy developments

    Researchers at the United Arab Emirates University and the National University of Singapore have teamed up to explore novel plant protein sources that can be incorporated into meat analogues for better taste, texture and nutritional attributes.

    In the US, Western Oregon University has signed the Humane Society of the United States‘ Forward Food Pledge, committing to transition its campus dining menus to 50% plant-based meals by 2027.

    future food quick bites
    Courtesy: Nottingham Trent University

    In more university news, the UK’s Nottingham Trent University has launched a master’s degree in smart agriculture, which will explore how AI, vertical farming and precision agriculture can enhance food security and reduce energy costs. Students will develop ‘recipes’ to produce food crops much more rapidly than currently possible outdoors.

    Finally, plant-based food company Strong Roots conducted a 1,000-person survey in the US, the UK and Ireland to find that 52% of consumers are more likely to purchase products with carbon footprints on their packaging, and 82% want to be informed about businesses that contribute to climate change.

    Check out last week’s Future Food Quick Bites.

    The post Future Food Quick Bites: DoD v Cattlemen, Non-Dairy Footballers & Vegan in the Bronx appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • This Competitive Hot Dog Eater Endorsed Impossible Foods – Now He’s Kicked Out of Nathan’s Famous Contest

    joey chestnut
    6 Mins Read

    Competitive eater Joey Chestnut has been banned from participating in this year’s hot dog eating contest by Nathan’s Famous over a commercial deal with plant-based meat maker Impossible Foods.

    Joey Chestnut, who has won 16 of the last 17 Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest titles, will not be defending his title this year after making a sponsorship deal with Impossible Foods and its newly launched plant-based beef franks.

    First reported by the New York Post, Major League Eating (MLE) – which runs the competition on behalf of Nathan’s Famous – confirmed that the 40-year-old won’t be allowed to participate in the competition after he chose to represent a “rival brand”.

    Chestnut was paid $200,000 to appear in the contest last year, and was offered a four-year contract worth $1.4M going forward. But a partnership with one of the biggest plant-based meat companies in the US, which is rolling out its beef hot dogs nationwide as we speak, was enough for Nathan’s Famous to block him from participating.

    But for a competitive eating champion who has made a living by eating hot dogs to now endorse vegan versions is a major shift, and a nod to Americans’ increasing focus on health in the food they eat.

    MLE & Nathan’s ‘changed past rules’

    Writing on X/Twitter, Chestnut said: “I was gutted to learn from the media that after 19 years I’m banned from the Nathan’s July 4th Hot Dog Eating Contest. I love competing in that event, I love celebrating America with my fans all over this great country on the 4th and I have been training to defend my title.”

    The MLE said in a statement that it was “devastated to learn that Joey Chestnut has chosen to represent a rival brand that sells plant-based hot dogs” instead of competing in the contest. “MLE and Nathan’s went to great lengths to accommodate Joey and his management team, agreeing to the appearance fee and allowing Joey to compete in a rival, unbranded hot dog eating contest on Labor Day,” it said.

    The organiser added that it has operated under the same “hot dog exclusivity provisions” for nearly two decades. Prior to the 2010 event, it banned Japanese former competitive eater Takeru Kobayashi over a contract exclusivity dispute as well, which meant the six-time champion never competed in the Nathan’s Famous contest again.

    nathan's hot dog eating contest
    Courtesy: Kena Betancur/Getty Images

    “To set the record straight, I do not have a contract with MLE or Nathans and they are looking to change the rules from past years as it relates to other partners I can work with,” Chestnut said.

    “This is apparently the basis on which I’m being banned, and it doesn’t impact the July 4th event. Sadly, this is the decision Nathan’s and Major League Eating are making, and it will deprive the great fans of the holiday’s usual joy and entertainment.”

    Speaking to CNBC, MLE president Richard Shea called Chestnut “a great champion and a friend”. “I hope he’s there on July 4th as we celebrate Independence Day and he changes his choice to promote a veggie hot dog rather than ours,” he said.

    In response, Impossible Foods said: “We love Joey and support him in any contest he chooses. It’s OK to experiment with a new dog. Meat eaters shouldn’t have to be exclusive to just one wiener.”

    Hot dogs are no longer hot

    joey chestnut impossible foods
    Courtesy: Impossible Foods

    The Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest has been a Fourth of July tradition in Coney Island, New York since the 1970s (though unofficially, the competition dates back to the 1910s). It is broadcast nationwide on ESPN and is a marketing strategy for Nathan’s Famous, which is dealing with the continued decline of hot dogs.

    While links are a quintessential American food, concerns around their ill health impacts are driving away consumers. Hot dogs are the epitome of processed food, and processed meats like these are categorised as a Class 1 carcinogen by the World Health Organization (WHO). It means there’s “convincing evidence” that these foods cause cancer.

    Last year, research published in The Lancet (and sponsored by WHO) revealed that while ultra-processed foods are linked with a greater risk of multimorbidity (when someone has two life-threatening diseases concurrently) of cancer and metabolic diseases, this is associated mostly with animal-derived foods and artificially sweetened or sugary beverages.

    Despite misinformation efforts suggesting the contrary, the above study suggested that plant-based meats were not associated with this risk – thanks to the high fibre content and lower amount of saturated fat, sugar and calories than conventional meat.

    Impossible Foods’ beef hot dogs contain 50% less total and saturated fat than “a leading animal-based hot dog served in restaurants”, 12g of protein (vs 6g), and zero cholesterol. The company’s research has also found that 71% of taste-testers agree its links taste like their conventional counterparts.

    A win for the plant-based industry?

    impossible hot dogs
    Courtesy: Impossible Foods

    A 1,022-person survey last year found that health is the major reason Americans eat vegan or vegetarian diets, with six in 10 choosing it. Previous versions of this poll were part of a larger review outlining that 74% of Americans find plant proteins healthy, a number that drops sharply to 39% for animal protein. But while the adoption of plant-rich diets doubled between 2012 and 2022, this still only accounts for a quarter of the US population.

    This is why brands like Impossible Foods are hoping to entice meat-eaters to try vegan analogues, which are also far better for the environment. Even Oscar Mayer, a brand synonymous with hot dogs, is launching a plant-based offering.

    Chestnut has recognised this shift, and for a celebrated meat-eater to endorse plant-based meat is a big step forward for the alternative proteins sector. Nathan’s Finest banning him only punctuates this point further.

    Even Kobayashi has felt the ill effects of eating hot dogs. In the Netflix documentary Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut, he announced his retirement from the sport after losing his appetite and feeling of fullness. At the end of the film, he expressed a desire to create a healthier hot dog.

    “I see this as a win for the plant-based meat industry,” Arun Sundaram, VP and senior equity analyst at CFRA Research, told MarketWatch. “The fact that the industry was able to sponsor one of the greatest hot-dog eaters in the world about a month before the famous hot-dog eating competition makes for some great headlines.”

    The post This Competitive Hot Dog Eater Endorsed Impossible Foods – Now He’s Kicked Out of Nathan’s Famous Contest appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Hybrid Meat Startup SciFi Foods Shuts Down Amid Fundraising Challenges

    scifi foods
    5 Mins Read

    US hybrid meat startup SciFi Foods has appointed an advisory firm to sell its assets as cultivated meat continues to face a bleak investment landscape.

    San Francisco-based startup SciFi Foods, the maker of hybrid meat from cultivated beef cells and plant-based ingredients, is shutting down its operations.

    The news comes months after the company successfully completed its first commercial-scale production run in a 500-litre bioreactor. It had also been in consultation with the FDA over its regulatory approval path in the US.

    “Given challenges in the fundraising market, we’ve appointed an advisory firm to run a sale process,” co-founder and CEO Joshua March told AgFunderNews.

    “Given the nature of the process, I can’t really say much more beyond this,” he added.

    SciFi Foods had achieved price parity with conventional beef

    joshua march
    SciFi Foods founders Joshua March and Kasia Gora | Courtesy: SciFi Foods

    Founded in 2019 as Artemys Foods, the startup rebranded in 2022 with a cultivated beef product to be used in hybrid meat formulations. Backed by Silicon Valley VC Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and other investors like Coldplay, SciFi Foods has brought in over $40M in total financing.

    Hybrid meat, which combines cultivated proteins with plant-based ingredients, is aimed at enabling scalability and driving down the high costs of cultivated meat. Investors say this is the only way it is currently commercially viable – Eat Just, the first company to ever sell cultivated meat, has previously rolled out versions with about 60-70% of cultivated cells, and its latest innovation is a retail offering with 3% of chicken cells.

    Startups like Aleph Farms, Meatable and Vital Meat – which are all expecting regulatory approval in various markets over the next few months – are also using the hybrid approach for their products. Aleph Farms, which received the go-ahead from the health ministry in Israel in January, will soon roll out its hybrid beef at restaurants in the country.

    Late last year, SciFi Foods opened a 16,000 sq ft pilot facility in San Leandro, California, where it began growing beef cell lines in single-cell suspension, in a 100% serum-free process. This is where it had finished its first run in the 500-litre bioreactor.

    Single-cell suspension allows cells to be grown in any standard, stirred-tank bioreactor, without the need to try and scale up novel hardware. It also does away with the need for expensive substrates like microcarriers or scaffolding, which is crucial for cost control.

    SciFi Foods, whose hybrid burger was a 90/10 mix of a soy protein base and cultivated beef, announced that it had achieved price parity with conventional beef using a combination of its proprietary high-throughput cell line engineering and CRISPR technology in 2022.

    Cultivated meat feels the heat

    plant based investment
    Courtesy: GFI

    The development comes amid what has been a highly turbulent time for the cultivated meat industry. As March alluded to, fundraising has been a mountain to climb – according to the Good Food Institute (GFI), investment in cultivated meat companies nosedived by 75% from 2022 to 2023. This came amid a wider decline in food tech funding (-61%), with alternative protein financing dropping by 44% to $1.6B.

    The loss of faith among VCs has continued for cultivated meat startups this year, with Q1 witnessing merely 5% of the $226M invested in the sector in all of 2023. It’s why AgFunder has earmarked cultivated meat as a “category to watch” this year.

    It has become a major headache for companies in this sector. Just last week, Aleph Farms confirmed it had laid off 30% of its local staff in Israel due to difficulties in securing capital amid its scale-up process, and as part of its asset-light growth strategy. Californian cultivated seafood producer Finless Foods had similarly carried out two rounds of layoffs in less than 12 months.

    Also in California, cultivated pork startup New Age Eats ceased operations in March 2023. Eat Just, based in San Francisco, has been caught up in a lawsuit against its former contract manufacturer ABEC, which has claimed over $100M in payments for changes to the scope of the work and unpaid bills in relation to its cultivated chicken arm Good Meat. A judge has sided with both entities in several matters, and the case will now proceed to trial.

    good meat chicken
    Courtesy: Eat Just

    Another Californian startup, Los Angeles-based Omeat, has had its workforce cut by 80%, with its founder stepping down as CEO amid allegations of creating a hostile work culture.

    Apart from the financial headwinds, the industry has also been met with legislative challenges. Italy became the first country to ban the production and sale of cultivated meat last year, with France and Romania contemplating the same. And last month, the US states of Florida and Alabama both passed similar bills, which were heavily criticised even by the meat industry.

    Company closures were predicted to continue this year by alternative protein experts, and SciFi Foods has become the latest on that list. “We are in a phase of consolidation and correction that isn’t over yet. Given that venture capital is so scarce, fundraising and due diligence processes are taking extremely long, and especially lead investors are so hard to find, we expect to see more businesses going down,” Albrecht Wolfmeyer, director of ProVeg Incubator, told Green Queen in April.

    He added: “At the same time, we are seeing a lot of exciting innovation in the ecosystem and also growing consumer and corporate interest in markets like Germany. This and parts of next year will be tough, then we’ll see more light at the end of the tunnel.”

    The post Hybrid Meat Startup SciFi Foods Shuts Down Amid Fundraising Challenges appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • State of Global Policy: Canada Leads Investment in Alt-Proteins, Asia a Region to Watch

    alternative protein policy
    6 Mins Read

    Canada and the EU lead the way in terms of public funding for alternative proteins, while Asia is a region to watch for this year, shows to a new policy-centric report.

    Governments are investing more capital and implementing more supportive policies for alternative proteins as they recognise their potential as a solution to climate change, food security, public health, and employment – but they still have “plenty of ground to cover”, according to a new report.

    Published by industry think tank the Good Food Institute (GFI), the State of Global Policy presents a snapshot of governments’ views on alternative protein across the planet in 2023. Its analysis estimates that public funding in the sector reached $523M last year, though this represented a 12.6% decline from the $599M poured into the industry in 2022.

    Breaking this down further, $190M of this figure went to R&D, and another $163M was earmarked for commercialisation efforts. The remaining $170M was for mixed purposes. As for which alternative protein was most popular, it was a close call between plant-based ($189M) and fermentation-derived ($181M) innovations. Cultivated meat trailed behind with just $40M in government investments, while $112M was set aside for a combination of these proteins.

    That said, GFI outlined that countries need to invest $10.1B annually for the industry to realise its full potential – this marks a nearly 30-fold increase from the actual investments that were disbursed in 2023 ($348M). But it’s just a fraction of the world’s spending on EVs, renewable energy and other climate-friendly technologies.

    “By making public investments on par with other strategic priorities, policymakers can greatly accelerate the pace and scale of protein innovation and position their governments as leaders in a future industry,” the report states.

    Here are the countries championing alternative proteins across different segments.

    Who were the stars of 2023?

    ivy farm meat
    Courtesy: Ivy Farm Technologies

    The report picks out Germany and the UK as the stars of 2023 for their dramatic increase in spending on alternative proteins. The former surpassed its all-time funding into alternative proteins ($35M) with $44M in investment last year. The country is investing up to $20.4M in alternative proteins between 2023 and 2028, which includes a $547,000 grant to Kynda, as well as a new research project for cultivated seafood.

    Germany has also set aside €38M ($41.3M) in its federal budget for 2024 to develop alternative protein production capacity and help farmers transition to plant-based agriculture. And in March this year, it adopted a national nutrition strategy recommending that plant-based foods should make up at least 75% of people’s diets.

    The UK, meanwhile, announced a $15.3M cellular agriculture research hub, funded over 20 research projects, and included cultivated meat and fermentation in a $2.2B national biotechnology plan. It also received its first two cultivated meat applications from Aleph Farms and Ivy Farm Technologies in 2023 (followed by Vital Meat last month), and is now overhauling its pre-Brexit regulations to clear the path for novel food companies. Cultivated pet food company Meatly is expecting the greenlight and a market launch imminently.

    The public investment leaders

    new school foods
    Courtesy: New School Foods

    While the UK and Germany may be becoming major players, their investment is far eclipsed by a few others. Canada tops the charts with $129M invested in alternative proteins in 2023 (versus $174M in all-time funding before the year). This is largely thanks to the allocation of $112M from Protein Industries Canada, a public-private partnership for novel proteins and one of the country’s economic clusters.

    It was followed by the EU ($113M) and the US ($82M). Before 2023, Denmark was the leader on this list, investing a total of $223M in the sector – but it fell off last year, with just $891,000 in alternative protein financing.

    The regulatory winners

    cultivated meat tastings
    Courtesy: UPSIDE Foods/Eat JUST

    Singapore has always been a flagbearer of progressive regulation when it comes to alternative proteins, but last year, the US joined it as the only other country to approve the sale of cultivated meat, with Eat Just’s Good Meat and Upside Foods both launching their cultivated chicken products in restaurants.

    The two countries had already given the go-ahead to precision fermentation company Remilk for its recombinant whey proteins, and its home country Israel joined that list, granting approval in April. Israel also became the third country to clear cultivated meat for sale at the start of this year. And Singapore followed its 2020 approval of Good Meat by giving the greenlight to Australia’s Vow.

    The plant-based pioneers

    umiami
    Courtesy: Umiami

    GFI pinpointed three countries championing plant-based proteins by boosting local agriculture and manufacturing. Australia, which rescinded a grant for pulse protein factories after delays in enactment made the projects ineligible, saw four of its six states invest in alternative protein. One of them was Western Australia, which poured $3.3M into a factory producing oat milk enriched with lupin protein.

    Neighbouring New Zealand, meanwhile, allocated $7M for a project developing alternative proteins from local crops like green peas, oats and hemp.

    And in France, the government put restrictions on plant-based meat labels, but also led a $35M Series A fundraise of whole-cut vegan chicken producer Umiami. This was followed by its $8M grant for the company’s commercial-scale factory in 2022, which opened three months ago.

    The cellular agriculture supporters

    solein protein
    Courtesy: Solar Foods

    Six countries were highlighted by the GFI report for their biotech, research and infrastructure support for cultivated and fermentation-derived proteins. Two of the four pillars of Singapore’s $117M Food Story 2.0 programme are relevant to alternative protein, with a heavy focus on cultivated meat.

    Israel awarded its previously announced funding of $13M for a precision fermentation contract development manufacturing organisation, while in the US, the Cornucopia programme seeks to create microbial foods, with $10.4M given to one of four fermentation projects over four years.

    In February 2023, South Korea’s North Gyeongsang Province led a 28-member MoU to advance the cellular agriculture industry. The province also established a regulation-free zone for proof-of-concept prototypes, and a $6.7M Cellular Agriculture Industry Support Center.

    The Netherlands, meanwhile, provided $1.1M from its Cellular Agriculture Netherlands programme for research into producing collagen and elastin through precision fermentation. And Finland supported local fermentation startup Solar Foods with the construction of two facilities through investments and grants, while funding a $5.3M research project for microbial fermentation.

    The countries to watch

    cultivated meat china
    Courtesy: CellX

    Among the six countries, GFI outlined as laying the groundwork for significant investment in the sector, half are in Asia. India’s Ministry of Science and Technology announced a National Biomanufacturing Policy that includes alternative proteins as a key pillar, and created a funding programme to promote millets as a raw material for the plant protein industry, approving a $107,919 project for egg alternatives.

    In November 2023, Japan accepted a proposal from three companies for R&D on cultivated wagyu beef, focused on scaling and commercialisation. And China, which included cultivated in its 14th five-year plan in 2022, “offered generous incentives to industry players” – while exact investment numbers are not known, its cultivated meat industry has grown as it’s a lower-cost environment than Europe or the US.

    Elsewhere, Brazil may not have announced any new funding in 2023, but its new government’s “prioritisation of sustainability, the green economy, and low-carbon agriculture bodes well for the field”, the report suggests.

    South Africa became possibly the first country in the continent to make a public investment in precision fermentation, injecting $700,000 into DeNovo FoodLabs’ development of whey protein. And finally in Spain, the regional government of Catalonia awarded $7M for the construction of a scale-up facility for plant-based and fermented proteins.

    The post State of Global Policy: Canada Leads Investment in Alt-Proteins, Asia a Region to Watch appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Prolific Machines Nabs $55M to Create Cultivated Meat & Novel Proteins by Harnessing Light

    prolific machines
    6 Mins Read

    Californian biotech startup Prolific Machines has closed a $55M Series B1 round for its photomolecular platform, which leverages light to create novel proteins at significantly lower costs.

    The $55M investment represents the first close of Prolific Machines’ Series B round, and was led by Fonterra’s VC arm The Ki Tua Fund. BreakthroughEnergy Ventures, Mayfield, SOSV, Shorewind Capital, Darco Capital, Conti Ventures, In-Q-Tel (IQT), and several others participated as well.

    This means the company – which has previously set out its intention to raise a $170M full Series B round – has so far brought in $86.5M in total investment. Investors in its last round in 2022 included the likes of Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban and model and actress Emily Ratajkowski.

    Since being founded in 2020, Prolific Machines has developed a photomolecular biology platform to grow and control cells with light, allowing manufacturers to create products across cellular agriculture for the food and medicine industries. It will use the Series B1 capital to commercialise this platform through industry partnerships.

    “Photomolecular biology is the use of light and AI to precisely control and optimise cellular behaviour to more efficiently produce superior bioproduct solutions across wide-ranging applications, from food to pharmaceuticals,” co-founder and CEO Deniz Kent tells Green Queen.

    “We set out with a vision to use one of our most abundant resources – light – to create an exponentially better way to control biology,” he says, suggesting that this control is “critical to making cheaper and higher-quality products”.

    How does Prolific Machines harness light to create proteins?

    light sensitive proteins
    Courtesy: Prolific Machines

    Prolific Machines argues that current cellular biology processes are constrained by “expensive, inefficient, and imprecise molecular methods”. But the precision of light allows it to control these processes in “fundamentally new ways”.

    “Prolific harnesses light to produce everyday essentials more efficiently, from food and lifesaving drugs to novel biosolutions,” explains Kent. “We use light as a signal to control cellular behaviour with unprecedented precision and instantly instruct cells on what to do, and where and when to do it. Our process creates significant cost, speed, yield, and quality advantages compared to existing processes.”

    The company’s technology is inspired by the field of optogenetics, a combination of genetic and optical methods to control the activity and behaviour of cells through light.

    “We use ‘non-ionising’ light at relatively low intensities in our process, which means it doesn’t carry enough energy to harm living cells. It is safe for use in the production of both food and non-food products,” says Kent.

    How can light improve existing production techniques?

    photomolecular biology
    Prolific Machines founders Max Huisman (CTO), Deniz Kent (CEO) and Declan Jones (CSO) | Courtesy: Prolific Machines

    “Methods currently used to make bioproducts are limited to imprecise, inefficient, and expensive control levers – like temperature, chemicals, and proteins – to indirectly control cells,” Kent says. “Prolific’s first-of-its-kind photomolecular platform brings together safe and effective tools – light, bioengineering, hardware, and AI – to unlock unparalleled control and precision.”

    He explains that living organisms can sense light because of light-sensitive proteins (LSP), which are naturally occurring proteins found in everything from plants and bacteria to human retinas. These exist to detect and respond to light, and can do this very quickly, causing action in cells within seconds.

    “Proteins are at the heart of everything a cell does, from perceiving signals from other cells to switching genes on or off. By attaching LSPs to proteins that you want to control within the cell, Prolific makes it possible to precisely control subcellular biology using light,” he says. When met with light, which acts as a signal, the LSPs can control cells across key functions.

    “Prolific unlocks dynamic control by pulsating light in specific patterns, intensities, and wavelengths to activate cellular functions when and where it matters most, which is a game-changer for biotechnology,” adds Kent.

    What kind of products can Prolific Machines create?

    prolific machines cultivated meat
    Courtesy: Prolific Machines

    So what kind of products can you produce using light? “Prolific is co-developing the future of biology with innovators across cultivated meat, nutritional and therapeutic proteins, disease models, tissue engineering, cell and gene therapy, and beyond,” he reveals.

    “Examples include nutritional proteins used in supplements and infant formula, antibodies to treat diseases, whole cuts of cultured meat, higher fidelity disease models, and other innovations never before possible.”

    Kent calls the process a “boon” for cultivated meat, with companies able to achieve “massive cost, scale, and sterility benefits without the need for recombinant proteins or growth factors”.

    “Using light, our process can create structured or marbled products, like steaks. We can create all cuts of meat that would be impossible to make in a scalable manner with existing cultivated production methods,” he says. “Our process provides unparalleled spatial control, creating the patterning and structure to make alternative protein products with first-of-its-kind texture, taste, and affordability.”

    As for “nutritional proteins”, this could entail many “high-value proteins”, including those found in infant formula, such as lactoferrin (whose precision-fermented version has only recently been commercialised).

    Can light help make cultivated meat cheaper?

    lab grown meat cost
    Courtesy: Ark Biotech

    Prolific Machines suggests that the first applications of its technology will be announced via partnerships with manufacturers in the coming months. The company has already established two “robust” mammalian cell lines to support its food and pharmaceutical partners.

    While more details on pricing will be available once these link-ups are established, Kent offers: “One of the key benefits of our photomolecular platform is cost efficiency due to our use of light, which is the cheapest possible input into biology. Our process also removes the need for costly growth factors, which are the most expensive part of the cultivated meat process.”

    Reducing the cost and scaling up production are the two key manufacturing challenges facing producers in this space. While companies have managed to reduce costs by 99% in less than a decade, forecasts show these proteins won’t price parity until 2030. But startups like Meatly and BioCraft Pet Nutrition (both making cultivated pet food) have announced breakthroughs in their culture media to drastically bring down the cost of their products.

    “Our platform elevates our partners’ existing cell lines and product approaches, providing a critical infrastructure layer for biology,” says Kent. “Think of us as the ‘NVIDIA for biology’. We are already co-developing the future of biology with a number of partners.”

    While some countries and US states have imposed bans on cultivated meat, these proteins have been championed by UN climate bodies like the IPCC and the UNEP, since they have a much smaller environmental footprint, can secure the food system against climate and disease shocks, and feed an ever-hungrier planet poised to have 10 billion people by 2050.

    The post Prolific Machines Nabs $55M to Create Cultivated Meat & Novel Proteins by Harnessing Light appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Cultivated Meat Startup Aleph Farms Lays Off 30% of Staff As Part of ‘Asset-Light’ Growth Strategy

    aleph farms layoffs
    5 Mins Read

    Israeli cultivated meat producer Aleph Farms has let go of 30% of its domestic workforce, reportedly due to difficulties in securing capital amid its scale-up process.

    Aleph Farms, one of only four companies cleared to sell cultivated meat, has laid off about 30 of its 100 local employees, owing to difficulties in raising capital amid a wider investment decline in the sector, according to Israeli food tech publication CTech.

    An Aleph Farms spokesperson confirmed the news. “As we transition towards larger-scale production and commercialisation, we are maintaining R&D and production in Israel while expanding globally through co-manufacturers, in line with our capital-efficient and asset-light approach,” they told Green Queen.

    “We are adapting our organisation to align with this next growth phase, and need to part ways with approximately 30% of our local employees. We care for all affected employees and will be supporting them in the new job search.”

    Aleph Farms had ‘expected significant expansion’ this year

    lab grown meat israel
    Courtesy: Aleph Farms

    Around the same time CTech reported the news last night, Aleph Farms posted an update on social media. “The ability to adapt is fundamental at all levels of life, enabling us to navigate change and foster growth over time,” it read. It’s unclear whether this was in reference to the restructuring, but it did mark a departure from the style of its other posts.

    Aleph Farms started the year with the biggest milestone in its seven-year history, earning regulatory approval to sell its cultivated beef in Israel. The startup had announced its intention to roll out its Black Angus Petit Steak under the Aleph Cuts brand at select restaurants in the country, with a longer-term goal of making it available to retailers.

    Since then, it has struck a deal to produce cultivated meat in Thailand, and partnered with a biotech startup to leverage AI to reduce costs and enable scalability. These advancements followed the 2022 opening of its 65,000 sq ft plant in Rehovot, Israel, allowing it to initially produce 10 tonnes of cultivated steak annually, the acquisition of another manufacturing facility in Modi’in, as well as the agreement with ESCO Aster in Singapore (the world’s first approved industrial manufacturer for cultivated meat).

    The company has previously outlined its aim to reach $1B in revenue by 2030, and has so far raised $118M in funding. Its last investment round was in 2022, bringing in a sizeable Series B amount of $105M. But struggles in securing investment, the global decrease in alternative protein funding, and the geopolitical tension with the Israel-Hamas war have put pressure on the company, according to CTech.

    The publication cited strategic plans and investor promises to suggest that Aleph Farms had hoped for a different year. One industry insider was quoted as saying: “They expected a very significant expansion this year, but the situation in Israel is difficult for the entire market. All companies are reexamining their expenses.”

    Israel’s alternative protein challenges – and potential

    plant based funding
    Courtesy: GFI

    Alternative protein investments saw a marked downturn in 2023, among a wider VC fallout from food tech. According to the Good Food Institute (GFI), food tech companies received 61% fewer VC dollars last year than in 2022, while alternative protein funding dropped by 44% to $1.6B.

    Cultivated meat companies were hit especially hard, with investment down by 75% from 2022. And this loss of faith among VCs has continued, with the first quarter of 2024 seeing merely 5% of the $226M invested in the sector in all of last year. It’s why AgFunder has earmarked cultivated meat as a “category to watch” this year.

    Within Israel, VC fundraising was down by 74% in 2023, hitting an eight-year low. Coupled with the struggles of the fintech sector, several other startups have been forced to make cutbacks in their workforce.

    That said, despite a dip in alternative protein financing, interest in the industry remains strong in Israel. The country was responsible for 10% of the sector’s investments globally in the last decade, second only to the US, according to a recent report. Last year, a record 15 new startups began working on novel proteins, taking the total to 73. And in 2022, the Israeli Innovation Authority (IIA) established an $18M research consortium for cultivated meat, comprising 14 companies and 10 academic laboratories.

    cultivated meat investments
    Courtesy: GFI Israel

    The analysis also outlined the industry’s long-term potential, forecasting that it will generate 10,000 additional jobs (a third of which would be manufacturing roles), have more than 200 companies and over a dozen manufacturing facilities, and contribute $2.5B to Israel’s economy by 2030. The report’s authors encouraged investors to take confidence in the IIA’s efforts and pump significant capital into the sector

    But as Aleph Farms pointed out, challenges remain, especially for companies trying to expand their production capacity. “Scaling up manufacturing for Israeli startups is challenging due to infrastructure costs, mirroring challenges encountered by startups worldwide,” Alla Voldman, VP of strategy and policy at GFI Israel, told Green Queen last month.

    She added that the geopolitical situation is heartbreaking. “However, the Israeli entrepreneurs proved their resilience in ensuring their companies meet the milestones,” she said. “We believe that the increasing need for food security solutions locally and across the globe will drive additional private and public investments in this sector toward innovative technological solutions.”

    The post Cultivated Meat Startup Aleph Farms Lays Off 30% of Staff As Part of ‘Asset-Light’ Growth Strategy appeared first on Green Queen.

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  • Wicked Kitchen Acquired by Ahimsa Companies in Latest Plant-Based Consolidation Move

    wicked kitchen ahimsa
    5 Mins Read

    Global plant-based food leader Wicked Kitchen has been acquired by the newly formed Ahimsa Companies, which seeks to lead an “industry-wide consolidation effort”.

    Ahimsa Companies, a newly formed holding company by the Ahimsa Foundation, has acquired vegan food brand Wicked Kitchen and its subsidiaries Good Catch and Current Foods for an undisclosed sum.

    With global plant-based sales flatlining last year, investment on the decline, and meat analogues facing a downturn in purchases in the US, many have suggested that consolidation could be key to the future of the category. This is Ahimsa Companies’ aim too, leading a sector-wide consolidation effort to generate opportunities for vertical integration and scale-up.

    “We’ve said all along that consolidation will drive success for the plant-based industry,” said group CEO Matt Tullman. “As Ahimsa Companies brings together more brands, it can leverage this strength to help stabilise and shape the new landscape for the plant-based industry.”

    Why Ahimsa Companies acquired Wicked Kitchen

    wicked kitchen acquisition
    Courtesy: Wicked Kitchen

    Wicked Kitchen, a maker of plant-based ready meals, desserts, snacks and ingredients, was founded by brothers Derek and Chad Sarno in 2016. Until last year, the former was head of plant-based innovation at Tesco, the UK’s largest retailer, where which brought the brand to market in 2018.

    The startup has since grown internationally, with products available in over 20,000 retail locations and a roster of more than 150 offerings. And as it began to expand, Wicked Kitchen itself brought other brands into the fold. In September 2022, it acquired vegan seafood producer Good Catch, another company founded by the Sarno brothers.

    And last year, it bought another plant-based seafood startup, Current Foods. This came amid a rollercoaster-like period for seafood analogues, which made up just 1% of sales of the overall meat analogues category. While brands like Konscious Foods and Hooked Foods expanded their footprint, others were forced to shut, such as Ordinary Seafood and New Wave Foods.

    Consolidation has been pinpointed as a solution to the volatility. Peter McGuinness, CEO of plant-based meat giant Impossible Foods, alluded to this in a recent interview with Bloomberg. “There are a lot of companies that are making food that’s not great food. There’s 200 plant-based companies in America – probably only need three, or two. So there’s a lot of small companies making not-so-great food and people are having bad first impressions,” he said.

    “You’re going to be left with a couple of brands and private labels, and that’s going to be the category.”

    Ahimsa Foods similarly believes consolidation is “critical to the growth and success” of the sector, and now plans to add multiple brands, as well as manufacturing and sales enablement businesses, to its roster, with the goal of vertically integrating and leveraging resources.

    Wicked Kitchen, meanwhile, will expand to additional retailers, add to its foodservice offerings, and invest in further product innovation following the acquisition. “We are aligned in our mission, and we believe that Wicked Kitchen is stronger today and better positioned to serve the health and environmentally conscious consumer who does not want to sacrifice on taste or convenience,” said Pete Speranza, who has been the brand’s CEO since 2020.

    He and the Sarno brothers will remain shareholders in the new business.

    Plant-based M&A deals ramp up

    vegan food group
    Courtesy: Vegan Food Group

    This is far from the only consolidation deal in the vegan sector recently. In fact, last year saw M&A deals in the overall food industry jump by 57%, according to one report, with the estimated value climbing by 20% to reach £2.1B.

    “There is potential for increased M&A activity in areas of the plant-based market that are showing resilience or growth, such as indulgent categories or products offered by discount retailers,” said Sam Sharp, senior associate and food and drink head at British-Irish law firm Browne Jacobson. “Companies might look to acquire or invest in brands that have successfully navigated the current economic climate or are aligned with consumer trends towards healthier and more sustainable options.”

    In February, Vegan Food Group – another recently formed holding company evolving from the plant-based meta brand VFC – acquired Germany’s TofuTown, months after buying Clive’s Purely Plants and Meatless Farm. The company is continuing to explore further acquisition opportunities, with the goal of becoming a “vegan Unilever”.

    A month earlier, US non-dairy coffee creamer brand Nutpods was acquired by newly formed CPG investment arm MPearlRock, around the same time Australian plant-based meat maker v2food took over ready meal brands Soulara and Macros. Meanwhile, vegan fast-casual chain Next Level Burger purchased restaurant group Veggie Grill (alongside its Más Veggies taco chain) in January as well.

    This followed Indian superfood brand Nourish You’s acquisition of alt-dairy startup One Good in late 2023, in one of the country’s largest plant-based M&A deals. British artisanal vegan cheesemaker Palace Culture was taken over by The Compleat Food Group (formerly Winterbotham Darby) a month earlier, just as Canada’s Protein Powered Farms bought Lovingly Made Ingredients, a plant protein extrusion facility.

    And in October, Finnish alt-dairy brand Oddlygood acquired Nordic brand Planti, while recently founded US company Superlatus agreed to buy plant-based dairy and egg startup Spero, months after it agreed to purchase precision fermentation dairy leader Perfect Day’s consumer arm The Urgent Company.

    That month, German food conglomerate Pfeifer & Langen also earned a majority stake in Rügenwalder Mühle, which produces vegan sausages. And Australia’s All G Foods spun off its alt-meat brand Love Buds, which merged with Fenn Foods’ vEEF to form The Aussie Plant-Based Co.

    “In the context of flat or declining category demand, consolidation, and M&As are vital for rapid growth in the plant-based sector. These strategies allow companies to scale, innovate, and navigate through resilience challenges more effectively,” Vegan Food Group co-founder Matthew Glover told Green Queen in February. “Combining resources and expertise through M&As enables businesses to expand their market presence and improve supply chains efficiently, which is crucial when organic growth is hard to achieve.”

    The post Wicked Kitchen Acquired by Ahimsa Companies in Latest Plant-Based Consolidation Move appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Future Food Quick Bites: Non-Dairy Starbucks, Vegan Flights & A Bezos Protein Centre

    starbucks vegan whip
    5 Mins Read

    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 Starbucks’ upcoming Oatly collaboration, a vegan certification for hospitality operators, and Bezos Earth Fund’s alternative protein centre.

    New products and launches

    For its summer menu, Starbucks is reportedly launching a vegan cinnamon crumble Frappuccino with Oatly‘s vanilla Oat Whip, which will be available for a free swap – a welcome policy change from the coffee chain. It will also offer a non-dairy vanilla sweet cream cold brew, and free plant-based cold foam substitutes for all core drinks.

    oatly whipped cream
    Courtesy: Big Box Vegan

    Speaking of which, Oatly has now launched its 1.5-litre barista milk in the UK, which was teased in its latest earnings call to investors.

    Also in the UK, The Coconut Collaborative has unveiled what it says is the country’s first vegan yoghurt and granola topper.

    British vegan pet food maker Hownd has gained a listing for three hypoallergenic functional treat ranges – Keep Calm for stress relief, Got an Itch? for healthy skin and coat, and Yup You Stink! for bad breath – at Pets at Home, which will be available in stores nationwide in September.

    Fellow UK startup Sun Bear Biofuture has joined the expanding roster of companies offering sustainable alternatives to palm oil. Its deforestation-free innovation is derived from fermentation and makes use of agricultural sidestreams as feedstocks.

    beyond burger jalapeno
    Courtesy: Beyond Meat

    Meanwhile, plant-based giant Beyond Meat has rolled out a new SKU in the UK. The spicy jalapeño burger is available at 280 Tesco and Sainsbury’s stores each, with a frozen version coming to 200 locations each in September.

    In the US, Tomorrow Farms‘ animal-free milk Bored Cow, which uses Perfect Day‘s precision-fermented whey protein, has expanded into 2,000 new stores nationwide, with additional 11oz packaging for the original flavour plus four-packs now available in Albertsons, Safeway, Sprouts, Fresh Thyme, Central Market, and Shaws, among others.

    Consultancy network Vegan Hospitality has launched a global certification programme for tourism and hospitality companies, offering companies expert strategy consulting, online staff training, promotional support, and free auditing.

    planteneers
    Courtesy: Planteneers

    In Germany, plant-based producer Planteneers has introduced a lineup of vegan desserts, comprising tiramisu, cheesecake, fermented oat dessert, pudding, and soft ice cream. They’re positioned as “healthy but indulgent” alternatives to their dairy counterparts.

    German airline caterer LSG Group has teamed up with Unilever-owned plant-based meat brand The Vegetarian Butcher to offer vegan meals for onboard dining.

    More news from the skies: Spanish meat analogues maker Heura and vegan cheese giant Violife have partnered with Vueling Airlines to launch a plant-based burger on the carrier’s summer menu, which is priced at €8.50.

    future food quick bites
    Courtesy: Bernat Anaños/LinkedIn

    There’s a new plant-based butchery in Prague. Located in the Czech capital’s Letná district, Bezmasna features meatloafs, cold cuts, deli salads, as well as chlebíček (Czech sandwiches).

    Singaporean startup Jiro-Meat is aiming to commercialise its upcycled plant-based meat made from okara – the fibrous pulp leftover from soy milk and tofu production – in the next six months.

    And in India, Nestlé has rolled out a limited-edition edible plant-based fork for its Maggi cup noodles. The two-piece fork is made from wheat flour and salt.

    Finance and company updates

    The Bezos Earth Fund has opened its first Center for Sustainable Protein at North Carolina State University, supported by a $30M fund. The facility aims to advance alternative protein production and commercialisation, and has onboarded Believer Meats (which is due to open its own cultivated meat facility in the state later this year) as a partner.

    Germany’s Planteneers has also opened a Customer Center of Excellence in Aurora, Illinois as part of its North American expansion. The facility will let customers collaborate on product development and create ingredient solutions via a plant-based meat laboratory (it will soon have one for alt-dairy too).

    seaspire
    Courtesy: PROT

    Indian vegan seafood player SeaSpire has rebranded to PROT, as it diversifies into other plant protein sources. Its alt-seafood lineup is being relaunched as a ‘Gill-t Free’ range ahead of World Ocean Day (June 8), supported by Veganuary India‘s Fish-Free Week campaign.

    Danish plant protein powder Nutrumami has closed a €450,000 seed funding round to expand its team and prepare for market launch.

    Policy and research developments

    A 9,272-person survey by YouGov shows that if cultivated meat was on par with conventional meat, only half would continue eating the latter (nearly a quarter remain unsure of what they’ll do). It’s an improvement from the 40% who would otherwise ‘definitely not’ eat cultivated meat. Meanwhile, Americans remain very split over bans on these products.

    lab grown meat survey
    Courtesy: YouGov

    In the UK, Calderdale Council in West Yorkshire – which adopted a climate change emergency policy in 2020 – wants to make its menus fully plant-based, with a preference for seasonal, non-processed foods.

    A joint venture between the Artevelde University of Applied Sciences and the City of Ghent has seen a food waste monitor installed in several restaurants, which will use the smart scale to better measure how much food is being thrown away.

    vegan ad campaign
    Courtesy: Eat Differently

    Finally, advocacy group Eat Differently has rolled out a parody ad campaign called Hate Vegans? in Los Angeles. It aims to highlight the reasons people care about plant-based diets and their impact on the planet – ‘injuries’ sustained from preachy vegans could turn into settlements with the help of fictional attorney Seymour Loudermilk.

    Check out last week’s Future Food Quick Bites.

    The post Future Food Quick Bites: Non-Dairy Starbucks, Vegan Flights & A Bezos Protein Centre appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Forsea Foods Hosts Cultivated Eel Tasting in Israel, Aims for 2026 Rollout

    forsea foods
    6 Mins Read

    Israeli alternative protein startup Forsea Foods held an intimate tasting event for its cultivated unagi in Tel Aviv, with plans to launch the eel meat in Japan by 2026.

    Investors, journalists, food manufacturers, opinion leaders and government representatives all convened at A, the Japanese restaurant in Tel Aviv, to get a taste of cultivated unagi yesterday.

    The event, hosted by Forsea Foods, showcased three dishes featuring the Israeli startup’s cultivated freshwater eel as a centrepiece, nearly five months after it debuted the first prototype of the seafood innovation.

    The highlight of the menu was unagi kabayaki, a traditional Japanese dish featuring a grilled eel fillet on a bed of rice. The preparation of the eel was supported by Yuval Ben Neriah, head chef and owner of A, and Katsumi Kusumoto, owner of Tokyo vegan restaurant Saido. It was an extension of the latter’s collaboration with Forsea Foods, having created two unagi dishes as proof of concept back in January.

    “This project with Forsea has been particularly exciting as it marks my first venture into future food and the world of cell-cultured seafood and its resonating sustainability message,” said Ben Neriah. “The feedback from the diners was indeed uplifting. Several remarked that they wouldn’t have guessed that the unagi was cell-cultivated had they not been informed.”

    Now, the company plans to hold further tasting events outside Israel this year, in preparation for regulatory applications and a market launch slated for 2026.

    forsea foods tasting
    Courtesy: Liran Maimon

    Hybrid seafood tasting pinpoints the cost challenge

    Forsea Foods’ patented method for cultivated seafood uses organoid technology to create 3D microtissues comprising fat, muscle and connective tissues, which can mimic the functions and structure of organs. These spontaneously differentiate into edible cells, replicating the natural process of cell formation.

    Moreover, the cell lines can self-organise into tissue structures without scaffold support. This simplifies the production process, eases supply chain bottlenecks for eel meat, and enhances the potential for scalability. And by significantly reducing the reliance on growth factors, the startup can produce in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

    A $4.3B market, eel has always been a luxury seafood product, commanding wholesale prices between $40 and $60 per kg in Japan (which consumes over 70% of all eel catch). But overfishing, poaching, illegal trading, breeding troubles and pollution have ravaged supplies of the fish, with consumption declining from about 160,000 tonnes in 2000 to just over 60,000 tonnes in 2021 in Japan.

    All this has made eel a critically endangered species and likely to become more expensive as demand doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Tackling costs is crucial, and it’s something that has been a major challenge for cultivated meat companies ever since the advent of the technology.

    This is why most cultivated meat products that have come to the market or been showcased in public tastings are actually hybrids of plant-based ingredients and cultivated cells, which helps lower costs and makes them commercially viable. The eel presented in Forsea Foods’ tasting also contained plants, revealed co-founder and CEO Roee Nir.

    While he didn’t disclose the amount of eel cell biomass used, he told Green Queen that “it was very evident in the tasting experience”. But Forsea Foods, which is working to scale up its process now, is confident about the price equation, with Nir suggesting that its technology will allow it to bring costs below price parity once it reaches larger production levels.

    cultivated eel
    Courtesy: Liran Maimon

    “The current R&D cost of the dishes we served is not really relevant to the price of the future product,” he argued. “Our organoid technology has several remarkable advantages related to the price parity challenge – it reduces the use of growth factors, eliminates the need for the scaffolding stage and makes the production process much more scalable.”

    He added: “Forsea’s unique organoid technology has the potential to overcome many of the industry bottlenecks in bringing cultivated meat to the consumer plate… This event was a great opportunity for us to present our unprecedented achievements to partners and industry stakeholders.”

    Forsea Foods hopes to debut cultivated unagi in Japan by 2026

    One of the 40 attendees of Forsea Foods’ tasting event was Takahashi Seiichiro, Japan’s deputy chief of mission to Israel. It’s a marker of the startup’s commercialisation plans, targeting the main consumer of eel meet globally. “While we Japanese have been eating eel for more than 5000 years, we understand that cultivating eel is no simple task. Therefore, I believe that introducing the first cell-cultured eel is the accomplished result of great comprehensive corporate efforts,” said Seiichiro.

    Forsea Foods is developing relationships with strategic partnerships in Japan as it targets a commercial debut of its cultivated eel in 2026. Saido – which already serves a vegan version of the fish – has previously indicated its intention to offer cultivated unagi once regulatory approval comes through. The startup previously told Green Queen it’s in talks with food safety authorities in Singapore too, but Nir said the plan is to introduce its product in Japan first, since it’s a “far larger” market.

    Japan is among the countries advancing regulatory progress for novel foods. In April, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (which will continue to oversee food safety) transferred its food hygiene standards division to the Consumer Affairs Agency. Companies now must liaise with two agencies on regulatory conversations, but this puts the ultimate responsibility in prime minister Fumio Kishida’s hands.

    “The Japanese regulatory process establishment is being drafted these days. That takes time. However, there is a strong backwind from the government to promote this industry,” Nir said, pointing to Kishida’s comments last year that called cellular agriculture an important part of “realising a sustainable food supply”. “Our assumption is that cultivated meat will be approved, if not late 2025, in early 2026,” he added.

    lab grown meat tasting
    Courtesy: Liran Maimon

    Looking forward, the company is now working to enhance its recipes. Since the start of the year, we made significant advancements in improving our cell lines,” said Nir, who added that Forsea Foods is working on six different cell lines.

    The startup, which has so far raised $5.2M in seed financing, will soon launch its Series A funding round, with plans to use the capital to establish a commercial pilot plant (the location of which is yet to be decided). It’s a tough funding environment for cultivated meat, where investments declined by 78% in 2023.

    “Investors are now more selective and looking for companies with technological and commercial advantages. Forsea has a very unique organoid technology that allows it to reach price parity faster and bring its product to the consumer’s plate,” said Nir. “In addition, the company’s focus species at risk, which have a high price point and large market potential, allow it to target a very attractive market. Our first product, the cultivated eel, is very attractive in the Asian, European and American markets.”

    Forsea Foods is the only known company working on cultivated eel, but others are producing plant-based versions. Fellow Israeli startup Steakholder Foods showcased a 3D-printed alternative in December (it plans to include cultured eel cells in the product at a later stage, if costs allow). Meanwhile, New York’s Ocean Hugger Foods and Japanese giant Nissin already have vegan eels on the market (using aubergines and soy protein, respectively).

    The post Forsea Foods Hosts Cultivated Eel Tasting in Israel, Aims for 2026 Rollout appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Eat Just Reformulates Vegan Just Egg with ‘Biggest’ Improvement in Taste & Texture Since Launch

    just egg ingredients
    5 Mins Read

    Californian alternative protein leader Eat Just has debuted the fifth iteration of its vegan Just Egg, made from mung beans, which further closes the gap in taste and functionality with conventional eggs.

    It’s five years, five versions for Eat Just’s market-leading Just Egg, which now promises to match chicken eggs on flavour and functionality better than ever before.

    Announced in time for National Egg Day (June 3), Just Egg v5 is said to be the brand’s “biggest jump” in the taste, texture and functionality of its vegan liquid egg since its launch in 2019, with co-founder and CEO Josh Tetrick calling it “the best Just Egg we’ve ever made”.

    The enhanced egg alternative has had no changes in its ingredients – instead, it’s all about the manufacturing of its mung bean protein, which forms the base of Just Egg. “Since the day the idea for this product was born, our goal has been to create an egg that tastes better, is better for you, and has the same or better functionality than a conventional egg, and v5 Just Egg represents a huge step toward that goal,” said Tetrick.

    This chimes with the brand’s 2024 goal, as a spokesperson told Green Queen in January, “to sell healthier, sustainable products to millions of consumers in a way that enables the company to sustain itself in the long term”.

    Fluffier, lighter, eggier – but no new ingredients

    The new liquid Just Egg is said to have a cleaner flavour profile than previous versions, which provides a more neutral palette for dishes from scrambles to quiches and allows its “pillowy, creamy texture” to dominate. The new formulation also elevates baking applications like breads, cookies, pancakes or muffins, thanks to better binding and aeration characteristics.

    The latest in a series of updates comes as Eat Just works towards a mung bean egg with superior flavour, functionality and nutritional profile than chicken eggs. The efforts to do so have traversed multiple disciplines, ranging from culinary expertise and protein science to operations and engineering.

    Just Egg’s newest iteration doesn’t have any new ingredients or alterations in its current ingredient list. It was actually born out of its team’s attempts to simplify the manufacturing process of its pourable vegan egg. But after testing out several process changes in its mung bean protein processing plant in Appleton, Minnesota, the company discovered positive benefits to the final product, alongside a more streamlined process.

    The taste and performance of the resulting vegan egg has impressed professional chefs, including American celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern. “Well over a decade ago, I became one of the first people in the world to try the very first version of Just Egg,” he said, describing it as “absolutely unbelievable”.

    “This latest iteration is fluffier and lighter, with better egg texture and more eggy flavour – and it performs better than any previous version I’ve tried. I cannot tell the difference between this and a conventional scrambled egg,” he added.

    “And quite frankly, it’s so much better for me. No GMOs, no artificial flavours, no egg, no cholesterol, 50g of protein in this whole carton. That is a delicious egg,” Zimmern said in an Instagram video.

    Eat Just has rolled out the Just Egg v5 at stores across the US, including Whole Foods, Sprouts, Walmart, Target, and Kroger. Its pourable and folded eggs are available in 48,000 retail locations, as well as 3,300 foodservice spots in the US and Canada, like Planta, Barnes & Noble, Caffè Nero, Peet’s Coffee, and Philz Coffee.

    Meeting consumer needs to drive category forward

    vegan omelette
    Courtesy: Eat Just

    Just Egg is responsible for 99% of sales in the plant-based egg market, and Eat Just claims it is one of the fastest-growing egg brands – plant-based or otherwise – nationwide. To date, it has sold the equivalent of 500 million chicken eggs, preventing 87 million kgs of CO2e from entering the atmosphere, saving 18.3 billion gallons of water, and averting 26,900 acres of land from being farmed for soy and corn to feed chickens.

    But its product reformulation speaks to a wider need for plant-based brands – whether they’re industry leaders or fledgling startups – to continue to innovate to meet consumer needs. Beyond Meat, for example, relaunched its flagship beef mince and burger earlier this year with a healthier recipe and enhanced taste credentials.

    A recent survey of 1,500 Americans revealed that one of the main barriers to consumer adoption of plant-based foods is the health perspective, especially when it comes to vegan eggs. Despite the frequent threat of avian flu, this was the only food category where more respondents felt the animal-derived version was healthier (30%) than vegan analogues (27%).

    It perhaps explains why plant-based eggs are only bought by 1% of American households (although repeat purchases increased from 38% in 2020 to 48% in 2023). Last year, sales dropped by 5% to $43M. So there’s a sizeable opportunity for companies like Eat Just, and meeting consumers’ health expectations with newer formulations is a no-brainer.

    It will also help the business on its path to becoming profitable. “It’s the most important objective of the company and the team is focused on increasing the probability of achieving it,” Eat Just told Green Queen earlier this year, after relaunching its cult-favourite vegan mayo.

    As of November, Just Egg made up 99.9% of its profits. But Eat Just’s cultivated meat arm Good Meat, however, has been embroiled in several legal battles over the years. The biggest dispute concerns contract manufacturer ABEC, which had sued the alternative protein company for $100M over unpaid bills. Last month, a judge in Pennsylvania sided with Eat Just on some matters, and ABEC on others. While the case is ongoing, ABEC has now accused Eat Just of “bad faith” and engaging with “the worst aspects of litigation practice in the profession”.

    Good Meat, meanwhile, hit a milestone by becoming the first company to introduce cultivated meat in retail, debuting a hybrid version of its chicken (with 3% cultivated cells) at Huber’s Butchery in Singapore.

    The post Eat Just Reformulates Vegan Just Egg with ‘Biggest’ Improvement in Taste & Texture Since Launch appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • The Three Main Barriers Stopping Americans from Buying Plant-Based Food – and How to Fix Them

    plant based meat survey
    6 Mins Read

    A new consumer survey highlights the three key barriers to plant-based food purchases in the US, and the opportunities for brands to overcome them.

    Alternative protein finds itself at a bit of a crossroads in the US, where sales and investment have dwindled, as has the number of vegans. But while plant-based meat did lose a bit of steam in terms of purchases, dairy analogues remained on their growth trajectory, and traditional proteins like tofu and tempeh gained slightly.

    Over the last year, the health focus has really taken over how people interact with food. Cleaner labels, whole foods, and high-fibre are all-important now. Taste still remains crucial, however, and plant-based meat brands are doubling down on the flavour and nutrition focus to regain customers who may have had a loss of faith.

    So while there’s been a dip, there’s also a lot of opportunity. A new survey by Dig Insights – in consultation with the Good Food Institute and the Plant Based Foods Association – dives into the thoughts of 1,500 Americans to find out what’s missing in the alternative protein industry, and how to address it.

    The poll revealed that 64% of US consumers are looking to increase their protein intake, especially younger demographics. But there’s a gap to fill with older respondents – 60% of Gen Xers, for example, haven’t tried tofu, tempeh or seitan, while 52% have never tried meat analogues either. Meanwhile, for 47% of Americans, finding plant-based meat in the grocery store isn’t easy.

    All these challenges open up new opportunities for plant-based food companies. Here are the three major barriers to widespread consumer adoption, and how to address them.

    Barrier #1: Not everyone sees plant-based as healthier

    plant based meat healthy
    Courtesy: Dig Insights

    The research found that the number of Americans who think plant-based meat or seafood products are healthier than their conventional counterparts (29%) is the same as those who believe the opposite to be true. Across the board, over 40% of people find vegan foods to be nutritionally on par with animal proteins.

    In fact, there are more respondents who find tofu, tempeh, seitan and plant-based dairy healthier than those who don’t, with the largest gap appearing for milk – 40% say plant-based milk is healthier, but only 19% think it’s less healthy than cow’s milk. The perception of vegan eggs, however, is on the flip side, with more Americans finding them unhealthier.

    But even with a majority of consumers trying to up their protein consumption, 47% aren’t too familiar with plant-based meat. And therein lies the opportunity, says the report, which found a correlation between those who want more protein and their willingness to buy plant-based protein in supermarkets and restaurants.

    Among these consumers, 28% have ordered dishes with plant-based proteins in restaurants (4% more than those who aren’t looking to increase protein consumption) – 45% of these respondents state it’s very important for restaurants to have options with plant proteins. Similarly, nearly a third (32%) of protein-seekers expressed a willingness to buy these products in the grocery store, versus 28% of those not looking to eat more protein.

    “The consumers becoming more accustomed to plant-based proteins are also those who will be dining out regularly,” the report suggests. “Creating plant-based protein-filled meal options, with an emphasis on protein content, caters to a wide audience of consumers, including those who may not typically consume plant-based protein.”

    Barrier #2: Taste and texture need a perception change

    plant based barriers
    Courtesy: Dig Insights

    Despite 57% of survey respondents ordering food weekly, only 24% have opted for a plant-based dish off the menu. Meanwhile, 84% of people who will decidedly not buy plant-based meat in the supermarket never see themselves eating these analogues. Dig Insights ascribes this to “taste, texture, and familiarity”.

    About 30% of consumers are just not familiar with plant-based meat, tofu, tempeh, et al. And, even among the Americans either likely to buy meat alternatives or leaning against it (but aren’t decided yet), only 16% would purchase them for their taste and texture attributes. Similarly, in a restaurant setting, taste (54%) is the biggest reason deterring consumers from choosing meat analogues, followed by texture (42%) and unfamiliarity (30%).

    However, 91% of Americans who try plant-based protein like the taste and texture and are satisfied with it. This highlights a major perception gap for plant-based meat products, and the need for greater education. Focusing on product samples in retail locations and promotions in restaurants are two of the best ways of doing this.

    This is because 31% of Americans would buy plant-based meat in grocery stores if they were offered free samples, and 30% would do so if it were on sale. And 15% don’t eat these products in restaurants due to a lack of offerings, and because the people they’re dining with don’t consume them either.

    plant based meat survey
    Courtesy: Dig Insights

    Another key aspect of consumer education is the environmental impact of plant-based foods compared to meat. The latter emits twice as many greenhouse gases as the former, and makes up 60% of the food system’s emissions. Despite this, 62% of Americans think the climate footprint of plant-based meat is the same or even bigger. This should come as no surprise, as previous research has shown that 74% of Americans don’t think eating meat is bad for the planet.

    “There’s a large opportunity to educate omnivores and carnivores (who make up 45% and 21% of consumers, respectively) on the environmental benefits of eating plant-based meats,” the report says. “Educating consumers on the impacts will lead to them being more persuaded on purchasing and incorporating plant-based proteins in their diet regularly.”

    Barrier #3: It’s hard to identify plant-based products

    Plant-based meats are going through a bit of an identity crisis, both in the metaphorical and literal sense. Only 38% of Americans find it easy to identify meat analogues on supermarket shelves. And, surprisingly, Gen Zers and millennials have a harder time doing so than Gen X consumers. Similarly, spotting these products is most challenging for vegans (50%), while omnivores and carnivores are much more adept at this.

    “Convenience, visibility, and brand awareness are crucial factors when it comes to consumer purchasing decisions in grocery stores,” says the report. While conventional practice is to separate plant-based from animal-derived meats, study upon study has shown the benefits of putting the former in the meat aisle.

    The survey saw a majority of Americans agree that all plant-based foods should be placed in the same refrigerated section as animal foods, with 69% saying so for meat and 75% for milk. There are two ways of doing this: fully incorporating plant proteins alongside their animal counterparts, or putting them in the same aisle but in a separate subsection – more respondents preferred the latter, although preferences vary based on purchase frequency.

    plant based meat aisle
    Courtesy: Dig Insights

    When it comes to restaurants, menu descriptions and placements are influential. Four in five (81%) want the words ‘plant-based’ in the dish’s name, and another 80% want the source of the protein mentioned. Customisation options (78%) and flavour indicators (86%) are vital too.

    Finally, brand recognition and recommendations/reviews continue to be important purchase drivers for plant-based meat in retail, and clear labelling and differentiation in restaurants represent further education opportunities for consumers.

    “Despite the surge in popularity, there remain significant untapped markets and consumer misconceptions to address. By focusing on education, product visibility, and catering to the increasing demand for protein-rich options, brands can effectively expand their reach and capitalise on the diverse preferences of consumers,” states Dig Insights.

    “Through strategic initiatives such as sampling programmes, promotional offers, and enhanced product placement, the plant-based protein industry can overcome existing barriers and pave the way for sustained growth in the future.”

    The post The Three Main Barriers Stopping Americans from Buying Plant-Based Food – and How to Fix Them appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • What Do You Eat at Europe’s Top Climate Tech Conference?

    hack summit menu
    7 Mins Read

    The annual HackSummit is fast approaching. As one of Europe’s best climate events, it must deliver a sustainable catering menu – and it has. We speak to the team who designed it.

    Next month, food tech community FoodHack will host its third annual climate conference, the HackSummit, in Lausanne, Switzerland. It’s expected to convene climate activists, startups, entrepreneurs, investors, journalists, as well as food tech and sustainability stakeholders in a two-day showpiece that will also feature the first FoodTech World Cup.

    Last year, Green Queen founding editor attended the event and described it as “truly incredible”, with a calibre of attendees that was “the best I’ve experienced”. She also outlined that all climate conferences should be free of animal products, should not create waste, and should have no plastic bottles – and the summit had delivered on all fronts.

    hack summit
    Courtesy: FoodHack

    Of particular note were the apples in the conference, which sported some neat customised Hack branding. Sourced from Biofruits, these apples are making a return this year – as is a fully vegan menu that dials up the flavour and spotlights the health credentials of alternative proteins.

    Curated by chef Brice Jacverza, the menu has a global tint to it, complete with zero-waste compostable utensils by Originnovation. For breakfast, guests have the choice of the aforementioned apples, Swiss retailer Migros’s own-label V-Love Vegurts in four flavours, MeliBio’s Vegan Ohney, and sweet and savoury brioches from Dutch startup Revyve, which makes proteins and ingredients from brewer’s yeast.

    Revyve also appears on the lunch menu with its minced meat making up the filling of Khinkali dumplings (which come alongside a Georgian-style salad). Other lunch dishes include Asian-style ‘burgers’ with Planted’s hoisin duck, TiNDLE Foods‘ crispy chicken wings with Asian coleslaw, Redefine Meat’s lamb kebabs with pea salad, hummus and flatbread, Better Nature’s tempeh (with Indian spices) served with rice and vegetables, and tacos with Vegan Zeaster’s shrimp, courgette guac and Mexican salsa.

    plant based chicken
    Courtesy: TiNDLE Foods

    These lunch options will be available at the HackSummit Festival Food Trucks. Attendees can also get their hands on BettaF!sh’s vegan tuna sandwiches as an on-the-go option. And for dessert, Migros will provide its mini marble cakes and chocolate bars, and Paleta Loca will serve its artisanal ice cream.

    The 2024 HackSummit features two coffee options. There’s espresso from GoodLife Espressos, and if you’re after a filter, look no further than the beanless option by Dutch producer Northern Wonder. Guests can also opt for teas from ChariTea, and kombucha and super mate from Supernatural Soft Drinks. Swedish pea milk brand Sproud is the milk choice, and Be WTR will install water fountains for both still and sparkling water.

    It’s a mouth-watering menu that seems as well thought out as it is climate-friendly. What went behind all the decisions? We speak to Fascal Hukker, event manager at FoodHack, to find out how the HackSummit brought together the menu.

    This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and style.

    Green Queen: How and why did you choose the brands for the specific products? Do you prioritise local startups?

    planted hoisin duck
    Courtesy: Planted

    Fascal Hukker: It all starts with creating a great concept. We wanted three things: to go 100% vegan, offer a healthier menu and to serve meals which are fun. Healthier meant adding more vegetables and fibre in the dishes. And more fun meant more colours and different cuisines from around the world. 

    We started by looking for startups who could match all three of these requirements. For drinks and desserts, we love to work with local startups and companies. They are part of our community and, in turn, they can meet other innovators at the event. 

    At the 2023 HackSummit, our ice cream partner Paleta Loca met a packaging company, and since then, they have been working together on more sustainable packaging, which really shows the power of local collaboration.

    GQ: What kind of different food technologies does the menu represent?

    FH: Fermentation, extrusion technology, mycelium.

    GQ: Can you tell us more about the chefs, and why you chose these flavour combinations and cuisines for the products?

    FH: Our head chef Brice and I first worked out the concept in specific dishes, we wanted to cover multiple international cuisines. So we selected the products first, found partners. Then Brice selected chefs from individual food trucks that he was confident could cook these kinds of dishes.

    We delivered test products so they could try them before in the kitchen and work out the best-tasting options. Brice did culinary art direction on it and that resulted in the menu. 

    You need to believe in good taste to start with and have an amazing chef to believe in making it happen.

    GQ: Have the chefs worked with alternative proteins before?

    bettafish tunah
    Courtesy: BettaF!sh

    FH: Some of the chefs have worked with alternative proteins before because they were involved in last year’s HackSummit. But to others, it’s completely new. They are all willing to try and create test dishes to find the best application of the products, and I can tell you it looks very promising.

    GQ: Where can attendees find the on-the-go snacks, desserts and drinks?

    FH: The snacks and drinks will be spread out throughout the venue. We created several coffee and water stations, which will have snacks and Hack-branded apples on the side. The main bar will serve a larger array of drinks in cans, as well as still and sparkling water from BE WTR. 

    Desserts will be served after lunch, and we will treat our guests to local vegan ice creams from Paleta Loca.

    GQ: What was the motivation behind choosing Goodlife over other specialty coffee brands?

    FH: Our main coffee sponsor is Northern Wonder, which will serve coffee-free coffee from its own coffee machines across five stations in the venue. 

    GoodLife Coffee supplies the traditional coffee beans served at one coffee station. Those will be sponsored by Algrano, which helps roasters and farmers connect make direct trade easier and with more transparency via its online platform.

    northern wonder coffee
    Courtesy: Northern Wonder

    GQ: What made you go with Sproud over other plant-based milk makers?

    FH: We worked with Sproud in 2022, and our audience loved it then. So when we were looking for an alternative milk partner, it was an easy pick.

    GQ: How are you dealing with the potential waste generated both from leftovers and packaging?

    FH: For fresh and packaged food and drink products that are left over, we are working with Table Suisse. This organisation picks up the leftover products and distributes them to 500 regional centres for those in need, such as shelters for the homeless, soup kitchens, emergency shelters, and women’s shelters.

    For the packaging part, we focus on avoiding the most wasteful packaging, so we are ordering aluminium cans instead of glass bottles and are serving water from taps with reusable cups that will be washed and cleaned. We also work with suppliers that use wrapping materials that can be recycled.

    We are also partnering with Originnovation to offer 100% food-grade disposable tableware for our attendees. The packaging and tableware can be placed in the food waste treatment system and the packaging contains paper and PBAT – when shredded, the packaging paper composts within six months.

    GQ: What is the message behind the HackSummit menu? What do you want people to take away from it?

    redefine meat lamb
    Courtesy: Redefine Meat

    FH: The message is clear, as our event concept is Welcome to the Hack Arena, where we Hack the Food and Climate space. So we will serve food that matches that ambition and spirit. 

    We want to serve the stadium the food of the future. Good fast food. Good for people and the planet that’s vegan, fun and healthy. By serving great-tasting, sustainable foods we hope to showcase how it can add so much fun and memorable experiences to an event. 

    I want people to take away that it’s the dish that counts and not the ingredients – this way, we can do so much good for the planet by eating delicious, sustainable food.

    HackSummit will be held at the Beaulieu Congress Center in Lausanne on June 13 and 14.

    The post What Do You Eat at Europe’s Top Climate Tech Conference? appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Switching to Meat Analogues Could Cut Emissions by 71%, Shows Analysis of 7,000 Households

    plant based healthy
    4 Mins Read

    Making modest ingredient swaps could help cut food emissions by 26%, but larger switches – like replacing meat with plant-based analogues – can bring about a 71% reduction.

    The food system only trails behind the energy sector in terms of planetary impact, accounting for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. Study after study has shown that animal-derived products have a much heavier footprint, with one suggesting that meat alone accounts for 60% of the food system’s emissions.

    Now, new analysis – claimed to be the most detailed research into the climate impacts of a country’s food habits – has revealed that switching from meat to plant-based analogues could cut emissions by as much as 71%.

    Researchers from Imperial College London’s School of Public Health and the George Institute for Global Health looked into comprehensive emissions data and sales for over 22,000 supermarket products in Australia, which are typical of the western diet of many countries. Covering the annual grocery purchases of 7,000 households, the research calls for significant dietary change in high-income countries to meet global climate targets.

    Meat and dairy the biggest GHG emitters

    meat emissions study
    Courtesy: Nature Food

    The study used data from the George Institute’s FoodSwitch database from 2019 as well as global environmental impact datasets, assigning foods to 16 major categories, which were further divided into 74 minor categories and 703 sub-categories.

    For example, bread and bakery, meat and meat products, and dairy were the main categories, further divided into minor subsets of bread, processed meat, and yoghurt and yoghurt drinks, and then separated by sub-categories like white bread, meat pies, and non-dairy yoghurts.

    The research revealed that replacing higher-emission products with “very similar” lower-carbon ones (from high-GHG to low-GHG breads, for example) can reduce emissions by as much as 26%, while more drastic switches to “less similar” foods (from high-GHG garlic bread to low-GHG white bread) could result in a 71% reduction.

    The differences are quite pronounced when you analyse animal products like meat and dairy. Meat alone makes up for nearly half (49%) of the 31 million tonnes of GHG emissions analysed, despite only making up 11% of all grocery purchases. Dairy is the second-largest contributor (17%), though these products accounted for 21% of product sales.

    Meanwhile, fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes contributed to 5.2% of all emissions, despite making up a quarter of all purchases. And meat analogues were the lowest-emitting of all product categories, responsible for just 0.03% of all emissions (albeit representing 0.07% of purchases). This is why swapping from a meat-based lasagna to a vegetarian one can lead to the 71% emissions cut mentioned above.

    While the researchers aim to show that even small changes can foster climate-conscious eating habits, a glimpse at the difference between dairy and non-dairy shows how much vegetarianism differs from fully plant-based eating. Going from Aldi’s sweetened Greek yoghurt with honey granola to Coco Tribe’s gluten-free vanilla coconut yoghurt can reduce emissions by 77% (the research excluded brand names, but the product descriptions point to these companies).

    Could carbon labelling help consumers make climate-smart choices?

    ecoswitch app
    Courtesy: FoodSwitch/App Store

    “Consumers are willing to make more sustainable food choices, but lack reliable information to identify the more environmentally-friendly options,” said Gaines. She and her co-authors are calling for on-pack carbon labels on all packaged food products to help consumers make informed choices.

    “The results of our study show the potential to significantly reduce our environmental impact by switching like-for-like products,” she added.

    The study proves that incorporating sustainability targets in national food policies could directly help reach global climate goals, without burdening consumers, according to Paraskevi Seferidi, a research fellow at the School of Public Health. “This is why we are urgently calling for robust legislation that targets high-emission food products,” she said.

    The combined health and environmental costs of the global food system are estimated at between $12.7T and $15T. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, “unhealthy dietary patterns” are the major contributor to these hidden costs.

    “There is currently no standardised framework for regulating the climate or planetary health parameters of our food supply, and voluntary measures have not been widely adopted by most countries,” said Bruce Neal, executive director of the George Institute Australia and an Imperial College London professor. “This research shows how innovative ways of approaching the problem could enable consumers to make a real impact.”

    Based on the research, the George Institute has developed a free app called ecoSwitch, which is currently available in Australia. “Shoppers can use their device to scan a product barcode and check its Planetary Health Rating, a measure of its emissions shown as a score between half a star (high emissions) to five stars (low emissions),” explained Neal.

    He added: “EcoSwitch is a much-needed first step, but our vision is for mandatory display of a single, standardised sustainability rating system, on all supermarket products.”

    The post Switching to Meat Analogues Could Cut Emissions by 71%, Shows Analysis of 7,000 Households appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • The Tortured Pork Department: Taylor Swift Offers Vegan Meat at Eras Tour in Madrid’s Bernabéu Stadium

    taylor swift eras tour
    4 Mins Read

    Taylor Swift fans could buy plant-based meat dishes at her Eras Tour concerts in Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu Stadium.

    “You smoked then ate seven vegan nuggets.”

    Taylor Swift may not exactly have butchered the lyrics to her latest title track the way I’ve done, but fans attending her Eras Tour shows in Madrid’s Bernabéu stadium could certainly do one of those two things this week.

    While she performed at Real Madrid’s iconic home on May 29 and May 30, her team enlisted Spanish food tech startup Heura to offer plant-based meat products to the 130,000 concertgoers. Fans in both the general and VIP areas could choose dishes like vegan chicken nuggets, pork sausages, and burgers, but it was still a somewhat surprise move by the artist.

    It marks another feather in the cap for Heura, which saw sales hike by 22% annually in 2023, and bring in another €40M in Series B funding. The company is now aiming to become profitable this year.

    “Heura is present this year at many festivals in Spain and France, being the official gastronomic partner at Madcool (Madrid), Arenal Sound (Valencia) and Marsattac (Marseille), offering plant-based options for all attendees,” Anna Monreal, head of public relations at Heura, told Green Queen.

    The vegan meat options at Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour

    is taylor swift vegan
    Courtesy: Heura

    The Madrid shows weren’t exclusively plant-based, but did feature a bunch of different vegan options. So whether you’re Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus, there was something for everyone while you watched it happen on the stage.

    Heura’s soy chicken pieces were part of three different dishes. There was a snack wrap with marinated chicken and mustard mayo; a sandwich with spicy chicken, morsels, sundried tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, and a black garlic mayo; and a curry with Heura chunks. The brand served its vegan chicken nuggets as well.

    Additionally, Swift’s fans could opt for a chorizo roll with Heura’s pork sausage, and a Heura beef burger with pickles, sauce and vegan cheese.

    This is not the first time Swift has offered meat analogues at the Eras Tour. In her four-day stay at Mexico City’s Foro Sol stadium in August, local startup Propel Foods served vegan tacos made from its plant-based Bistec steak, Chorizo and Pastor products.

    And in April, vegan seafood producer The Ish Company presented its plant-based Shrimpish as part of a grain bowl during her shows at the Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida.

    “Taylor Swift has been making positive strides towards promoting plant-based food and sustainability through her influence and actions,” said Monreal. “These initiatives not only provide healthier and more sustainable food options at large events but also help reduce the carbon footprint associated with meat production.”

    Taylor Swift and climate change: a complicated love story

    taylor swift travis kelce
    Courtesy: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

    As the world’s biggest artist and one of its most influential people, Swift’s climate change impact is a closely watched phenomenon.

    There are, of course, the infamous private jets, which earned her the distinction of being the biggest celebrity polluter in 2022. Last year, a now-defunct Instagram page called Taylor Swift’s Jets went viral, tracking the 34-year-old’s journeys on private jets and calculating her emissions to be 138 tons in just three months – that’s about the annual climate footprint of nine Americans.

    Swift’s representatives have noted that her “jet is loaned out regularly to other individuals”, and attributing “most or all of these trips to her is blatantly incorrect”. But when you fly 5,500 miles to see Travis Kelce win the Super Bowl with the Kansas City Chiefs (who are already facing their own animal cruelty crisis as we speak), three months after you’re named Person of the Year by TIME Magazine, you can’t be upset about the backlash.

    And while purchasing “more than double the carbon credits needed to offset all tour travel” ahead of the Eras Tour might be a well-intentioned thing to do, carbon credits are highly problematic. Maybe she could convince 70,000 Swifties to cut their beef consumption in half, which would offset all of her flying emissions would be offset, if you’ll believe the rigorous back-of-the-envelope calculations of one Reddit user.

    All that said, Swift has been vocal about her anti-fur stance, choosing to wear faux in the music video for Lavender Haze (from the 2022 album Midnights). “It’s not real fur ’cause we’re not, you know, heathens,” she said memorably.

    “Taylor Swift has collaborated with fashion designer Stella McCartney on a vegan fashion line. This line, launched in conjunction with her album Lover, included eco-friendly and animal-free products such as jackets, tops, and bags. This collaboration emphasises sustainable manufacturing processes and fur- and leather-free designs, highlighting Swift’s commitment to ethical fashion,” says Monreal.

    “These efforts collectively enhance Taylor Swift’s positive impact by promoting plant-based products and sustainability, encouraging her vast fan base to consider more environmentally friendly choices.”

    Let’s hope the Eras Tour keeps serving more vegan meat (Taylor’s Version).

    The post The Tortured Pork Department: Taylor Swift Offers Vegan Meat at Eras Tour in Madrid’s Bernabéu Stadium appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • BioCraft Pet Nutrition’s Cultivated Mouse Meat Now Costs the Same as Premium Pet Food

    biocraft pet nutrition
    5 Mins Read

    Austrian-American cultivated meat startup BioCraft Pet Nutrition has achieved price parity with premium pet food by reimagining the growth media for its mouse meat.

    BioCraft Pet Nutrition has achieved a breakthrough in its production process that allows it to make its cultivated mouse meat for dogs and cats at the same price as premium pet food.

    Along with scalability, cost has been a major hindrance to the progress of cultivated meat, which requires expensive growth media and bioreactors to make. Finding solutions to make these proteins more affordable has been a priority for companies in this space.

    And while there have been some major strides – startups have managed to bring down costs by 99% in less than a decade – McKinsey suggests it will still take until 2030 for cultivated meat to reach price parity with its conventional counterpart.

    But BioCraft (formerly called Because Animals) says its cultivated meat now has a sale price of $2-2.50, on par with premium meat in pet food. It has achieved this milestone by reimaging the use of growth media to both cut costs and boost the nutritional profile of its mouse meat.

    “Achieving price parity and a robust nutritional profile for pets were the only elements holding back cultivated meat for the pet food industry – and BioCraft has now achieved both,” said founder and CEO Shannon Falconer.

    The startup now aims to put its cultivated meat in branded pet food on shelves by early 2026.

    How BioCraft Pet Nutrition makes affordable cultivated meat

    lab grown meat pet food
    Courtesy: BioCraft Pet Nutrition

    Typically, growth media – the mix of proteins, sugar and nutrients that feed animal cells in a bioreactor – cost hundreds of dollars per litre. Proteins represent the most expensive component of the growth media, while individually produced amino acids are another costly element.

    One of the key processes to reduce costs is to move away from animal-derived materials and provide nutrients from crops instead. This is something BioCraft focused on too, developing a nutrient medium composed of plant-based ingredients widely used in pet food applications (and therefore already approved by food safety regulators).

    “By taking this approach, we simultaneously developed a nutrient that is both suitable for our cells and suitable for pet nutrition. This also means that we don’t need to perform any downstream processing as all of the ‘inputs’ we feed to our cells are already feed-approved,” explained Falconer.

    “But most importantly, by not separating our nutrient formulation and our cells in any downstream processing steps, BioCraft is able to retain those key water-soluble nutrients that only animal cells manufacture (for example, taurine), and which are released by actively growing cells into the surrounding environment,” she added.

    “What we’re left with in the end is a nutrient-dense slurry of animal cells, animal-derived nutrients and plant-derived nutrients, which is essentially what meat from an herbivore (like a cow) actually is. This slurry can then be used as a substitute for traditional animal-based slurry ingredients, which pet food manufacturers already use.”

    While the nutrient-rich growth media is typically discarded, BioCraft discovered it could be specifically formulated to provide a nutritious part of the end product, which more closely mimics conventional meat. This leads to no waste of nutrient inputs, which are leveraged to bolster the final nutritional value of the product.

    BioCraft’s mouse meat slurry is said to be rich in essential nutrients like protein, DHA, EPA (an omega-3 fatty acid), and taurine. This emphasis on nutrition for dogs and cats was a catalyst for decreasing the cultivated meat’s costs. “By focusing on the application of pet food, BioCraft’s approach is very different from that being pursued by companies focused on cultivated meat for humans,” Falconer said.

    “Specifically, where the main focus for the human food industry is making the product taste and look like the meat people are used to (and at the price point they’re used to), the main focus for BioCraft is ensuring a nutritional profile that is as good or better than the meat pet food manufacturers are used to (and at the price point they’re used to).”

    Regulatory plans and B2B business model

    lab grown meat costs
    Courtesy: BioCraft Pet Nutrition

    BioCraft’s breakthrough comes the same month British cultivated meat startup Meatly announced a drastic reduction in culture media costs for its pet food. The latter is on the verge of receiving the regulatory greenlight in the UK, with its cultivated meat cans expected to be on shelves imminently. Falconer remained tight-lipped when asked about her company’s regulatory plans, but teased an announcement soon.

    Instead of rolling out its own packaged products, BioCraft – which has brought in $6.7M in funding to date – will provide its cultivated meat ingredients to other manufacturers for use in pet food formulations. “As a mission-based company whose priority is to remove animals from the supply chain, moving as much volume of cultivated meat as possible is key,” said Falconer.

    “Building a brand that is able to replace hundreds of millions of kg of animal meat used in pet food per year would take a very, very long time. And the planet doesn’t have that time. Working with pet food manufacturers who already have the consumer base and are already purchasing that very same meat ingredient that we’d like to replace makes much more sense to us than selling B2C,” she added.

    Cultivated meat has been a hot topic in the US of late, with the states of Florida and Alabama banning the production and sale of these products in an election year, claiming food safety issues and citing their aim to safeguard the local livestock industry. Both moves have been widely criticised, especially since the USDA and FDA have both cleared cultivated meat for sale after rigorous testing processes.

    “In the early days of scaled commercialisation, the demand for cultivated meat will be much higher than initial supply will be able to fill,” said Falconer, whose company has also developed a chicken cell line. “During that time, pet food manufacturers can simply focus on selling in other states.”

    Pet food puts an enormous toll on the planet – in the US alone, dry cat and dog food production amounts to 25-30% of all animal-consumption-related emissions. Research has also suggested that if pets were a nation, they’d be the fifth-largest meat-consuming entity. It’s figures like these that have prompted companies like BioCraft and Meatly to produce climate-friendly pet food. Others in the space include Bene Meat Technologies, Wild Earth, and Bond Pet Foods.

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