Germany – Europe’s largest vegan market – produced nearly 17% more plant-based meat last year than in 2022, according to federal data.
Two months after the German Society for Nutrition updated its dietary guidelines to recommend halving meat consumption, it has emerged that the country’s annual production of plant-based meat grew by 16.6% in 2023, reaching 121,600 tonnes.
That’s according to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), which noted: “Whether veggie burgers, tofu sausages or seitan mortadella – the demand for vegetarian or vegan meat substitutes continues to increase.”
When looking at longer-term trends, manufacturing of meat analogues has more than doubled since pre-pandemic levels, up by 113% from 2019. The growth has been constant with each passing year, and this is an indication that the adoption of plant-based meat remains unbroken, said Destatis.
Value gap between animal- and plant-based meat shrinks
It’s not just the amount of plant-based meat that has increased – the number of companies manufacturing these products has too. In 2022, 51 businesses were making these analogues, but last year, this jumped to 67.
Moreover, the value of the plant-based meat produced in Germany also grew by 8.5% last year, going from €537.4M in 2022 to €583.2M in 2023. That said, this is still relatively low when compared to conventional meat, whose value grew by 5.6% year-on-year to reach €44.8B in 2023 – nearly 80 times higher than vegan analogues.
But while still large, this gap has shrunk in almost half since before the pandemic. In 2019, meat products produced in Germany were worth €40.1B, 150 times more than plant-based meat (around €300M). This is a marker of the latter’s growth in the country, which is the largest market for vegan food in all of Europe. Sales of plant-based products grew by 11% from 2020 to reach nearly €2B in 2022.
Courtesy: Destatis
Meanwhile, Destatis noted that the rising demand for meat alternatives was accompanied by a continuing decrease in both production and consumption of animal-derived meat. Despite the value growth, conventional meat production has actually fallen for seven consecutive years in Germany, reducing by 4% in 2023 compared to the year before. Since 2016, it has dipped by 21%.
And preliminary data released by the Federal Institute for Agriculture and Food revealed that per capita consumption of meat had dropped by 12% compared to 2019, reaching 51.6 kg on average in 2023. Separate research backed by the EU has shown that 59% of Germans were eating less meat in 2022 than the year before.
Germany’s support for plant-based food
Germany’s increasing meat production will serve what is considered Europe’s largest flexitarian market – 55% of its population follows such a diet, according to the USDA. It has been supported by federal policies promoting plant-based foods too: the country’s latest nutrition strategy from 2022 spotlights vegan eating as one of its main focuses, particularly in government-run establishments like hospitals and schools.
The German government has also set aside €38M in its 2024 federal budget to encourage the manufacturing and consumption of alternative proteins and a switch to plant-based agriculture, as well as open a Proteins of the Future centre.
“Germany needs a roadmap for the transition towards more alternative protein sources and such a centre can be the first step in developing such a strategy with all relevant departments and stakeholders,” said Ivo Rzegotta, senior public affairs manager for Germany at industry think tank the Good Food Institute Europe.
And in March, the country’s new nutritional guidelines suggested a 50% reduction in meat, advocating for a “health-promoting and ecologically sustainable diet” that is comprised of 75% plant-based foods. . “If we want to eat a healthy diet and at the same time protect the environment, we have to change our diet now,” the nutrition society’s president, Bernhard Watzl, said at the time.
Courtesy: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ernährung
But the dietary guidelines were criticised for not highlighting the benefits of plant-based meat. The society noted that the nutrient profile of plant-based meat, seafood and dairy “often differs greatly from that of animal foods”. “Based on the usual consumption habits in Germany, the complete or partial replacement – especially of milk and fish – with plant-based alternatives without appropriate substitution can lead to nutrient deficiencies,” it said.
Writing on LinkedIn, Anna-Lena Klapp, senior nutrition and health specialist at ProVeg International, said: “Plant-based alternatives to popular animal products play an essential role for people transitioning to a more plant-based diet as these products often closely resemble the foods people are used to and like.”
She added that the guidelines should identify which plant-based products can and cannot be part of a sustainable or healthy diet: “They should differentiate between plant-based alternatives that can be consumed frequently, and those that should be eaten in moderation or seen as merely for enjoyment.”
French startup Vital Meat has submitted a dossier to food regulators in England and Scotland for its cultivated chicken, a process that’s expected to take 18 to 24 months.
France’s Vital Meat, which makes cultivated chicken as a B2B ingredient for hybrid meats, has applied for regulatory approval in the UK, making it one of only a handful of companies to do so.
The startup has submitted a novel food dossier to the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and Food Standards Scotland, whose scientists and experts will now assess the application in a process expected to last 18 months to two years.
The development comes six months after the cultivated chicken player filed for approval in Singapore too, with the green light from its regulator thought to be imminent.
“We can’t wait to start commercialisation in Great Britain; chicken is one of the most consumed meat over there,” said Vital Meat co-founder and CEO Etienne Duthoit. “We are now preparing our launch in 2025 and looking for food partners.”
Why Vital Meat chose the UK
Courtesy: Vital Meat
Vital Meat, which uses pharmaceutical technology to transform cells from fertilised chicken eggs into cultivated meat, expects to receive regulatory clearance in Singapore by the end of the year. “We are going through the questions and answers process with scientific experts from SFA and so far, the discussion is very smooth and is going well,” said Claude Rescan, the startup’s regulatory expert.
The company suggests this puts it “in the running” to be the first European startup to be approved for sale in the city-state, although Dutch cultivated pork producer Meatable is anticipating the go-ahead shortly.
“We are very confident and are already collaborating with a Singaporean chef as well as food companies to prepare for the market launch as soon as the approval is granted,” said Duthoit. This year, Singapore has already granted approval to Australia’s Vow, whose cultivated quail is now being unveiled at restaurants. And just last week, Eat Just (the world’s first company to be allowed to sell cultivated meat back in 2020, also in Singapore) introduced its Good Meat chicken in the freezer at Huber’s Butchery, marking the global retail debut of cultivated meat.
“The decision to expand into the UK swiftly follows our Singaporean endeavour. Asia, and particularly Singapore, is an important market for us with consumers that are open to new foods and a business ecosystem open to innovation,” said Vital Meat COO Olivia de Talancé.
As it awaited the SFA’s decision, Vital Meat wanted to expand to another market. It chose the UK due to its citizens’ pragmatism and climate consciousness aligning well with the sustainability aspects of cultivated meat, alongside their receptiveness to innovation and awareness around health.
But plenty of work needs to be done if manufacturers are to convince Brits to eat cultivated meat. A survey by the FSA in 2022 revealed that while 78% of consumers had heard of these proteins, only 34% would be willing to try them. Only three in 10 perceived cultivated meat to be safe to eat, and 42% said nothing would encourage them to consume these products. However, 27% would change their minds if they knew they were safe to eat, and 23% would do so if they could trust that they’re properly regulated.
Rapid progress for cultivated meat in the UK
Courtesy: Vital Meat
Vital Meat’s UK application is the latest development in a fast-moving sector. For years, the FSA was criticised for having a slow novel foods regulation process, which it inherited from the UK post-Brexit. But lately, things have begun to shift, and fast.
The regulator is seeking state investment to create labs for sandbox testing of novel foods, with an eye on the £5M scheme announced by UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt last autumn. In January, it was reported that the FSA has launched a survey asking manufacturers when they plan to submit applications for cultivated meat products, and what technologies they may be using. This followed a 2023 Deloitte study it commissioned, which suggested that speeding up novel foods regulation could help the UK meet its carbon reduction plans (it aims to reach net zero by 2050).
In March, the FSA agreed on plans to fast-track the commercialisation of novel foods. It said it would create a new public register of regulated products, replacing the current system that requires the parliament to pass statutory instruments before they can be placed on the market. This added up to six months to the process, which at the time took up to two-and-a-half years.
The FSA will also remove the requirement for products that have already been approved to reapply for clearance every 10 years. The reforms mean it will now take up to two years to approve cultivated meat for human consumption in the UK, as the new framework still requires thorough, evidence-based assessments of safety and nutrition.
Around the same time, British cultivated meat startup Meatly said it was expecting to receive the greenlight from the FSA within three months – but this is a chicken product for pets, not human consumption. Of producers working on the latter, only Israel’s Aleph Farms has publicly announced filing a dossier to the UK regulator (back in August). Dutch pioneer Mosa Meat, meanwhile, has laid out its intention to do the same.
“Health is of paramount importance to us. We are committed to not using antibiotics, or any other controversial ingredient, such as fetal bovine serum or any other animal product. That’s why we are confident that our commitment to safety and sustainability will be rewarded,” de Talancé said of Vital Meat’s UK application.
Courtesy: Vital Meat
The company partnered with cell culture media producer BioWest last year, whose customised serum-free media for Vital Meat allows the latter to manufacture its cultivated chicken in 250-litre bioreactors, capable of producing several kgs of product at a time. The collaboration has allowed the French startup to reduce costs, too, which is a crucial entry barrier for cultivated meat.
Cost is also why Vital Meat is choosing the hybrid approach, making cultivated chicken for manufacturers that can mix it with plant-based ingredients, instead of marketing a fully developed cut itself. Investors say this approach is the only way cultivated meat can be commercially viable in the near term – it’s the same reason why Eat Just’s latest Good Meat chicken comprises 97% plant-based ingredients.
In 2022, a 1,000-person poll suggested that 35% of UK consumers are open to trying a hybrid burger. Vital Meat, which plans to introduce white fish and pork in the future, will hope to build on these results soon.
Israeli cultivated seafood startup Wanda Fish has developed hybrid toro sashimi, the highly prized fatty cut of bluefin tuna belly, and plans to apply for regulatory approval next year.
To battle overfishing, extinction threats, ocean pollution, and increasing prices of an already pricey product, Wanda Fish has created cultivated toro sashimi, the fatty underbelly of bluefin tuna known for its buttery, tender characteristics.
Made from cultivated bluefin tuna cells developed with a 3D plant-based matrix, the hybrid product aims to take on the same sensory and nutritional attributes of its wild-sourced counterpart, which can go for as much as $100 for a 1kg serving.
Armed with its patent-pending technology, whole-cut downstream manufacturing process, and a $7M in seed investment in October, Wanda Fish is now preparing to commercialise its cultivated seafood, with regulatory applications planned for 2025. These efforts will be supported by its upcoming Series A round, which will help the startup fine-tune its product and scale up production.
“We are still at lab-scale production. Nevertheless, we are planning our manufacturing process, which will support our goals for this stage,” Wanda Fish CEO Daphna Heffetz, who founded the company in 2021 as a joint venture with The Kitchen FoodTech Hub, tells Green Queen.
Tackling scalability and high costs is also why Heffetz and her team chose to develop a premium seafood filet – bluefin tuna is one of the most expensive seafood products, priced well above land-based livestock. “This would enable us to build a solid business model, start commercial activities without committing to large-scale and expensive operations, and grow with the growth of the category and product sales,” Heffetz explains.
Why Wanda Fish picked bluefin tuna toro
Courtesy: Noam Priesman
Bluefin tuna is a highly sought-after seafood delicacy, thanks to its velvety texture, buttery flavour and nutritional attributes. But this species represents the ocean’s fastest and longest-distance swimmers, which makes them difficult to raise in captivity, thus commanding a higher price and its use in high-grade sushi and sashimi.
But its supply is limited and extremely variable in quality, and its stocks face declines due to overfishing and illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing. But continued demand is driving the species towards endangerment and has prompted governments to place strict quotas to limit its fishing. Plus, tuna is one of the most polluted fish in the oceans, often contaminated with plastic debris and extremely high levels of heavy metals like mercury.
This is why cultivated seafood producers like BlueNalu (US) and Wanda Fish are hoping to provide a solution to the volatility and unsustainability of bluefin tuna toro. The latter combines the cellular mass of muscle and fat created from tuna cells, which are co-developed with a plant-based matrix.
“An important element of our product, same as wild-caught fillets, consists of muscle, fat and connective tissues,” says Heffetz. “The tuna cell biomass is then mixed with a plant-based matrix to form a whole cut. As the product is aimed to be served raw, same as the wild-caught sashimi, we developed an easy-to-scale and cost-effective technology to create our 3D fillet, which allows us to serve the product raw.”
The fatty part of the whole-cut bluefin tuna provides not just the textural characteristics it’s cherished for, but also essential nutrients like proteins and omega-3 fatty acids. Wanda Fish’s process induces native fat formulation in the tuna cells, with the team focusing on achieving the same level of fat marbling as conventional toro sashimi. The scalability of the platform will allow the company to get closer to price parity and maximise its profit margins for the premium product, according to Heffetz.
“Cultivated bluefin tuna is one of those rare food products that make good business sense,” says Yaron Sfadyah, VP of business development and marketing. “It is in high demand, with limited alternatives that match the taste and texture of the wild fish, and at an ideal price point and distribution model. Alternative protein companies often contend with high manufacturing costs, coupled with the low price of animal-based products. It is a completely different story for cultivated bluefin tuna.”
Going the hybrid meat route
Courtesy: Noam Priesman
One major way of reducing costs for cultivated meat currently is to simply use less of it in the product. Known as hybrid meat, this approach of blending cultivated cells with plant-based ingredients is favoured by several companies. Most prominently, Eat Just – the world’s first cultivated meat startup to be approved for sale – last week launched its latest Good Meat chicken product for retail in Singapore, which contained just 3% of cultivated chicken.
“It’s no secret that the main challenge the entire cultivated food sector faces is high manufacturing costs at scale. And we don’t have time to spare, as demand for seafood products – specifically bluefin tuna – is constantly rising,” says Heffetz.
“We believe hybrid products that include muscles, fat and connective tissue biomass grown from fish cells will offer a delicious and nutritional product to market and satisfy consumers. We are a food company, basing our food on cutting-edge technology, and as such our mission is to supply a delicious and wholesome product that will also do good for our world – and so the question is: ‘What formulation will result in the best product to satisfy consumers?’” she adds.
While she hasn’t disclosed the exact composition of the product, Heffetz explains that the company aims to have a “significant percentage of cultivated vs plant-based” in its products. “We believe it’s a question of product viability, not science or the ‘race’ to reach a certain figure,” she suggests. “The aim in this first prototype was to develop the right technique of mixing the two components while maintaining the characteristics of the wild-caught. To test that, we did use a significant portion of mixed cultivated cells, but the majority is still plant-based.”
Asia a key focus for Wanda Fish
Courtesy: Noam Priesman
Wanda Fish will introduce the toro at high-end seafood restaurants, with a focus on Japanese cuisine, including sushi and sashimi. “When you look at the ideal distribution channels for cultivated bluefin tuna, premium seafood restaurant makes a lot of sense, which is one of the greatest market attributes of this product, and why we think we stand at a different potential and feasibility than other cultivated food products,” says Heffetz. “Thus, we are planning to start selling in limited quantities in 2026, reaching price parity soon after.”
Its initial target markets are countries with the right combination of consumer acceptance, suitable regulatory frameworks, and government support. Heffetz earmarks Israel, the US and Asia as potential entry points. Within Asia, she pinpoints Singapore, South Korea and Japan as the most promising markets, both from a product perspective and in terms of their openness to novel foods.
And in Japan, there is more clarity now about the regulatory framework, though it has become slightly more complex – this could be a crucial country for Wanda Fish, given it accounts for 80% of global bluefin tuna consumption.
“We need to monitor these developments as we decide which country has a better path forward,” says Heffetz, who is especially excited about Asia. “Just look at the number of alternative seafood products that are being introduced to Asian consumers, many of which are introduced by Asian multinational, giant food companies, whether it is in Japan, Korea, Thailand, or elsewhere,” she points out.
Sailing through financial and legislative pressure
Courtesy: Noam Priesman
Alternative seafood has been facing its own headwinds recently – earlier this year, Germany’s Ordinary Seafood and San Francisco’s New Wave Foods both ceased operations, citing a bleak funding landscape and market challenges, while Californian cultivated seafood player Finless Foods reportedly initiated a second round of layoffs in less than 12 months.
However, Heffetz remains upbeat. “When we look at the data, the deals and investments that took place in recent years, we actually see that seafood is keeping its pace, or is not as hurting as the alternative meat sector,” she suggests, adding: “The alternative seafood sector is much smaller than the meat sector, and thus its growth potential is huge. This is also why I feel strongly about this field – we have yet to showcase the real potential, and we are encouraged by the level of support and interest we are seeing from companies, CVCs and VCs around the world.”
And speaking of challenges, the cultivated meat sector has been at the centre of legislative action recently. Italy has already banned the production and sale of these products – and this month, the US states of Florida and Alabama have done the same. Several other countries and American states are considering similar bans or restrictions.
Heffetz believes these bans are more reflective of the local political climate than the industry or its potential. “Cultivated food will require additional research and work, and even then, it will take years to challenge the large animal-origin food companies. We can look at plant-based as an interesting case study,” she says.
“At the end of the day, whether we like it or not, our world and our future are at risk, and this is a step to mitigate that risk. As I see it, we are developing another offering to stand side by side with plant-based, animal-based, cultivated, fermentation, and who knows what [else] the future may bring to our plates.”
UK food tech startup Ivy Farm has inked a manufacturing partnership to scale up at a new alternative protein facility in Finland. After hosting a tasting of its cultivated beef yesterday, it’s aiming to launch its first sales next year.
British cultivated meat producer Ivy Farm Technologies has announced a major manufacturing partnership with Finnish biotech firm Synbio Powerlabs Oy, which will see the former demonstrate the scalability of its mammalian cells in food-grade fermenters at the latter’s new production plant.
Synbio Powerlabs is converting a large Finnish food-grade facility into a multipurpose hub for cultivated meat and fermentation-derived proteins, backed by a €2.99M government grant. Slated to go live early next year, it will feature pilot-scale equipment and production scales at 10,000 and 27,000 litres, with six 250,000-litre manufacturing vessels. This will make it the largest such facility in the world, according to the announcement.
Ivy Farm will have exclusivity in the cultivated meat section of the hub, and will be able to gain a strategic advantage, reduce capital expenditure costs, and mitigate risks linked to scaling up. The next phase of the partnership will focus on tech transfer and expanding production to 10,000-litre fermenters, with further plans to increase manufacturing in the next few years.
It would be a major step up in the Oxford-based producer’s plans to commercialise its cultivated beef – its current pilot plant can produce up to three tonnes of product annually, but this facility is used for process development rather than continuous production. “The partnership with Synbio is designed to progress the production steps to larger scales and test what is possible all done in a low capex way,” Ivy Farm CEO Richard Dillon told Green Queen.
A ‘unique’ facility powered by renewable energy
Courtesy: Synbio Powerlabs
The new plant, located near Helsinki, is dedicated to helping alternative protein companies accelerate their routes to market. The Nordics are home to some of the most innovative players in this space. While these countries are high importers of meat, the abundance of renewable energy and tech expertise makes them primed to capitalise on the novel foods sector.
“With the support of Clingate Oy and the Finnish government, we are proud to lead the charge in transforming our vision into reality, positioning ourselves as a global leader in food innovation,” said Synbio Powerlabs chairman Alejandro Antalich. “Together with Ivy Farm Technologies, we are committed to pushing the boundaries of what is possible and shaping the future of food.”
Speaking about the partnership with Ivy Farm, he added: “By converging our cutting-edge technology and innovative thinking, we are not only revolutionising the way meat is produced but also paving the way for a more efficient, scalable, and environmentally friendly approach to mass-scale food production.”
Dillon said the company was “committed to partnering with fermentation experts and licensing our technology” to speed up the commercialisation of cultivated meat globally.
Asked why the startup chose Finland as a hub, he said: “There is no facility similar to this in the UK, so we were forced to look outside of the UK.” He called Synbio Powerlabs “real experts in fermentation”, explaining that Finland “has a strong track record in supporting technology and sustainability”.
“Finland is second in Europe when it comes to renewable energy share [behind neighbouring Sweden]. The Synbio Powerlab facility is using power from a very efficient and sustainable Finnish energy system that is almost 70% renewable,” he said. “The facility and the tanks are multipurpose for different fermentation processes,” he added, outlining that the startup “has the possibilities to use all fermentation equipment in the future”.
“Producing cultivated beef in this facility at the metrics expected would produce delicious and nutritious meat with potential savings of 92% GHG emissions, 90% less land and 66% less freshwater versus current industrial farming,” he added. The total production time from the cell thawing to harvesting tonnes of meat is two to three weeks, versus two to three years to produce the same tonnage of meat via current bovine pregnancy and farming methods.”
Fellow British startup Eternal, which makes fungi-based Mycofood is one of the other companies that will be making use of the new facility, with other businesses to be announced in the future.
Ivy Farm files for regulatory approval, targets 2025 launch
Courtesy: Ivy Farm Technologies
The partnership was unveiled at Iceland Innovation Week yesterday, where Ivy Farm hosted the country’s second-ever cultivated meat tasting with local startup ORF Genetics, which produced recombinant growth factors for these proteins. In February, the latter co-hosted a public tasting with Australia’s Vow, whose cultivated quail is now approved and on sale in Singapore.
Ivy Farm’s public tasting itself follows an event hosted by Fortnum and Mason in London, which previewed a scotch egg that featured the former’s cultivated Angus beef in the form of meatballs. The Iceland tasting was attended by government officials and food and tech leaders, with the beef cooked by Ólafur Örn Ólafsson, owner and head chef of fine-dining eatery Brút.
“I couldn’t believe how enjoyable it was to work with cultivated beef, which is essentially just meat grown using new technology. In fact, it would be very difficult or even impossible for most foodies to distinguish between the cultivated beef and traditionally grown,” the restauranteur said.
“Our primary focus is on premium cultivated beef, specifically Wagyu and Aberdeen Angus mince meat,” said Dillon. Ivy Farm is focusing on a B2B approach, which may mean its cultivated beef ends up in a hybrid product with plant-based ingredients, or even mixed with conventional meat.
“We supply to food companies who already are experts in making and branding final meat products, such as burgers, meatballs and other delicious products from minced meat,” he explained. “Some may choose to combine with their existing meat products and some may combine with plant-based products. The food companies have the best consumer and customer insights, so will make good final product choices for their markets.”
Dillon confirmed that Ivy Farm has filed dossiers for regulatory approval, though he remained tight-lipped about the timeline or country. “Ivy Farm has high hopes to achieve regulatory approvals in a number of regions in the not-too-distant future,” he said.
In March, the company collaborated with BSF Enterprise (parent of cellular agriculture business 3D Bio-Tissues) to fundraise, launch and scale its cultivated meat in Asia. “We have engaged BSF, a technology specialist company, [which] is familiar and networked in Hong Kong, China and the broader Asia region to help us assess a number of enquiries from Asian companies to potentially license our technology and/or invest in the scale-up development work we have planned,” said Dillon.
So when can we expect to see a product containing Ivy Farm’s cultivated beef? “2025 is going to be an exciting time for us as we look to scale and get first sales,” said Dillon.
By S Marek Muller, assistant professor of communication studies, Texas State University; and David Rooney, doctoral candidate, University of Texas at Austin
Increasingly, vegans, vegetarians and others looking for meat alternatives are seeing a new option on the menu: patties that look, taste and even appear to bleed like beef hamburgers, but are actually made of soy, pea protein and other ingredients.
Now, a leading plant-based meat company called Impossible Foods plans to rebrand, in order to reach a wider audience.
From now on, Impossible Foods says that all of its green cardboard packaging will be switched to red, in a bid to “appeal to the carnivorous cravings of meat eaters,” according to a March 2024 news release.
Some of the plant-based meat substitute industry’s woes can be attributed to politics. Many consumers associate plant-based meat substitutes with veganism, animal rights activism and left-wing politics.
Impossible’s CEO, Peter McGuinness, said in 2023 that his company has an elitist reputation and that the company’s rebranding is a rejection of “wokeness.” The so-called “wokeness” of Impossible and other plant-based meat substitutes shows the symbolic power that food can have in politics.
As communication scholars, we study and teach our students about the persuasive power of symbols. Even innocuous items like the food we eat are symbols that come with attached meanings and values.
Amid the highly polarized politics in the U.S., plant-based meat substitutes and their analog, “real” meat, have become weapons in a symbol-laden political battle between some conservatives and liberals, sometimes nicknamed the “Meat Culture War.” In other words, while an Impossible burger might literally be a soy patty, it is also a symbolic threat to the right-wing ideological order, a symbolic stand-in for the left-wing “villain of the week.”
People who are higher income, younger and live in the suburbs are most likely to have tried plant-based meat substitutes, Gallup polling shows. A rural Mississippi corner store probably won’t sell Impossible sausages, but an urban California Whole Foods probably will.
In some cases, conservatives have attached even more meaning to plant-based meat substitutes. Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, for example, produced a documentary in 2022 featuring the Raw Egg Nationalist, a prominent far-right influencer, who said that Impossible, Beyond and other plant-based companies are part of a “soy globalist” conspiracy to criminalize meat consumption and weaken citizens through poisoned food. The Raw Egg Nationalist also wrote in 2022 that plant-based meat substitutes and eggs are “perverted” products pushed by elites to bring civilization to “the brink of madness.”
Food’s political symbolism is not new. Depicting East Asian men as “effeminate rice eaters” was used as a justification for European colonial rule in Asia in the 1800s and for later stoking anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. And during the Iraq War in the mid-2000s, some U.S. restaurants renamed french fries as “freedom fries” to protest France’s refusal to join the war.
More recently, some people have derisively called men who consume soy-based proteins “soy boys.” In response to calls for meat reduction, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst has proposed banning the trend of Meatless Mondays to combat “the Left’s War on Meat.”
Impossible’s appeal to the political right likely won’t be solved with a quick repackage. That’s because their issue is related to a deep-seated conspiratorial ideology embraced by some people in far-right political circles.
Sure, some studies in consumer psychology suggest that brand color impacts consumer preferences. For plant-based meats in particular, consumers’ perceptions of the product’s eco-friendliness and tastiness is somewhat affected by packaging color – in this case, typically green. A color shift may “nudge” a wayward carnivore to take a taste of an Impossible brat, but that’s a bandage, not a solution.
You are what you eat
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
The symbolic connection between consuming the “right” foods and U.S. political identity is strong.
He correctly noted that electoral districts that are also home to a Whole Foods were more likely to vote “blue,” while districts with Cracker Barrels were more likely to vote “red.” Ten years later, in the summer of 2022, social media went wild when Cracker Barrel offered an Impossible sausage patty on its menu.
Some people then posted on Cracker Barrel’s Facebook page, lambasting the restaurant chain. As one person wrote, “We don’t eat in an old country store for woke burgers.”
Plant-based meat substitutes are often used by conservative commentators as a symbolic stand-in for “Big Government” and are seen as a threat to individual liberty.
At the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz declared his wish “to see PETA supporting the Republican Party now that the Democrats want to kill all the cows.” At a 2020 rally in Des Moines, Iowa, then-President Donald Trump cast the anti-meat conspiracy in even more nefarious and illogical terms, saying that “they want to kill our cows! You know why, right? … That means you’re next.”
In 2021, a survey found that 44% of Republicans actively believe that there is a “movement in the U.S. to ban red meat.”
A larger conspiracy
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
These fears overlap with the populist right-wing conspiracy theory of “The Great Reset,” meaning the belief that wealthy “elites” are weakening citizens – particularly white men – to subject them to tyrannical control and subjugation.
A 2023 article in The American Conservative argued that Impossible was at the forefront of a “collective vegan madness that has seized our media and political classes … not to convince people but to compel them.” In the online backlash to Cracker Barrel’s new Impossible sausage item, some commentators similarly suggested that Cracker Barrel’s “5G sausages” were controlled by Bill Gates.
Psychology andgender scholarship has found that “traditional” forms of masculinity associated with right-wing ideologies correlate with high meat consumption. Right-wing males consume red meats at higher volumes and with greater frequency than other demographics.
As communication scholars, we’re confident that what Impossible can’t do is repackage in a way that will attract right-wing carnivores. The Meat Culture Wars won’t end because of red wrappers or meaty descriptors. They’ll only end when, collectively, other items become perceived as an identity threat and globalist conspiracy and people forget about fake meat.
Impossible Foods CEO Peter McGuinness sat down with Bloomberg Television to talk about the struggles of plant-based meat, consumer preferences, and a potential IPO.
The plant-based meat category was launched incorrectly, there are too many brands in the space, meat-eaters are key to their success, and someday, an IPO would be nice. These were some of the highlights of a wide-ranging chat between Impossible Foods CEO Peter McGuinness and Bloomberg Television’s Alix Steele and Romaine Bostick.
Over eight minutes, the head of one of the industry’s giants reiterated a lot of things he’s said over the past year, clarified a few others, and revealed a couple more. “We don’t like the sector and the category being where it is, and there’s a lot of reasons why,” he said.
If you read between the lines, you see an executive confident in his company’s position, apprehensive about the wider sector and other brands, and comfortable about not being invited to the Met Gala.
Jokes apart, there are hints that Impossible Foods is using Big Food and Big Meat’s playbook to beat them at their own game and displace those industries. Here’s what McGuinness said over the eight-minute interview, and what it all meant.
“I think it was launched incorrectly from the beginning. It was very climate[-forward], it was very zealot, there was a lot of rhetoric, it was anti-cattle industry. So it got political, it got woke, it got bicoastal, academic, elitist – so that all has to stop.”
McGuinness said something similar in an interview with AgFunderNews last September: “I think the category was not launched in the best possible way. It was launched against the cattle industry. And, you know, no one wants a civil war in America.”
Speaking at the Adweek X conference a few months later, he said: “There was a wokeness to it, there was a bicoastalness to it, there was an academia to it… and there was an elitism to it – and that pissed most of America off.”
Meat industry interest groups and cattle-protecting lawmakers have long been using words like ‘elite’ and ‘woke’ to describe alternative proteins – that rhetoric has become much more noticeable around cultivated meat in the wake of statewide bans in Florida and Alabama, but these phrases have been successful in driving a large portion of consumers away from plant-based analogues.
Courtesy: PBFA
Particularly, the focus on sustainability hasn’t attracted customers the way meat analogue makers would have hoped, and that has led to a shift in their messaging. In March, Impossible Foods unveiled a major brand refresh that saw it switch from green packaging to red to appeal more to meat-eaters, and put a greater spotlight on flavour descriptors and nutritional points (like saturated fat and sodium content”.
This is because these factors are much more important to consumers. According to a Mintel survey from 2023, the top two attributes discouraging Americans from trying plant-based meat are flavour (48%) and nutrition (35%). A poll of Kroger shoppers found that over half (51%) of people buy plant-based meat because they’re healthier, which is the top motivation for these purchases.
“It’s gotta be delicious… It’s gotta be nutritious… And then you gotta be price-competitive.”
This was perhaps the most succinct explanation of where plant-based meat marketing is headed. As alluded to above, Impossible Foods is already focusing on these factors, as is Beyond Meat. In the UK, too, THIS is doing the same.
“Taste is the #1 reason why consumers will decide to purchase a product again or not,” an Impossible Foods spokesperson told Green Queen in November, after its Beef Lite product received the heart-check certification from the American Heart Association.
Courtesy: Impossible Foods/Green Queen
But while flavour is key to bringing consumers back and nutrition important to keep them long-term, in the cost-of-living crisis, price is what will decide whether they pick up these products in the first place. “We’re on average about $1-1.50 less than grass-fed, organic, but we are premium to what I would call ‘the well’, you know, the saran-wrap cellophane stuff,” McGuinness told Bloomberg.
He revealed that the company has brought its prices down by 20% in the last year and a half, while conventional meat is up 18-22% because of higher input and labour costs, and the culling of herds due to famine, drought and diseases.
“We’re in 48,000 foodservice locations, so we’re number one in foodservice in plant-based, but there’s 1.4 million, so we have a lot of work to do.”
The statement outlined Impossible Foods’ intention to roll out its products in more foodservice locations – there’s a general consensus that the risk of chefs preparing a bad meal is lower than individuals cooking these products at home for the first time. This makes restaurants a great entry point.
In fact, McGuinness hit back at Bloomberg’s suggestion that plant-based meat isn’t as “prominent” in fast-food chains anymore. “I just had one at the airport the other day, and it was pretty prominent on the menu board,” he said of the Impossible Whopper, which is available at all 5,500 Burger King locations in the US, as part of a collaboration that began five years ago.
Courtesy: Burger King
That partnership is one of a number of long-term foodservice deals cultivated by Impossible Foods over the years – the company, it must be said, has an outstanding foodservice record. Its eight-year-long link-up with American chef David Chang and his Momofuku restaurant group is just one example – it’s also present in 15,000 Starbucks stores (five years), Disneyland (four years), White Castle (six years) and Bareburger (seven years), among others.
“What keeps me up at night is the opportunity, not the cynicism.”
McGuinness underlined the company’s goals to increase retail distribution – it’s on under 1,000 store shelves (though it recently launched in Whole Foods). “We’re in first gear, it’s nobody’s fault. And we have 15% awareness, 85% of the country hasn’t heard of us… and 6% household penetration – so 94% of America is yet to try an Impossible product.”
He added that the steps the company needs to take to grow aren’t “high math, crazy things”. “You can expand awareness through paid advertising. You can expand household penetration through more distribution. Food companies do this every day.”
Courtesy: Bloomberg Television
This is why Impossible Foods’ launched its first-ever campaign last summer, followed by what McGuinness described as “plant-based’s biggest” marketing drive ever earlier this month. Launched at the Met Gala, it will be a three-month campaign across TV, streaming, digital, social media and billboards – and focuses on “solving the meat problem with more meat” (plant-based, that is).
It’s a forward-looking, optimistic statement by the company’s CEO, who looked visibly excited about the new marketing initiative. Whether it will translate into more customers, time will tell.
“We want to encourage meat-eaters to try and eat our food… I’m not interested in stealing share from other plant-based companies.”
This is a familiar but important assertion from McGuinness. “My job is not to steal share from Beyond Meat – then I’ve just moved the deck chairs around, and the category stays at the same size. We have to make the category bigger,” he said at Adweek X in December.
The same week, after announcing the Impossible Hot Dog, the company told Green Queen: “We’re trying to reach meat eaters – not vegans, vegetarians or those already eating sustainable diets. That’s why we focus on making products that appeal to actual meat-eaters. Our goal is not to compete with fruits, vegetables, and other whole foods, but to offer meat-eaters products that are better for them and the planet.”
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
McGuinness echoed this sentiment in his Bloomberg interview, suggesting that appealing to non-meat-eaters is “not going to move the needle”, whether that’s from a value, revenue or mission perspective. “If you’re trying to have less water, less [deforestation], less GHG, it only works if you’re displacing animals,” he said.
While vegans and vegetarians are obviously important to plant-based meat companies, the real value is bringing over the meat-eaters. “People might be surprised to know that 90% of Impossible consumers also eat meat, and more than one in two who try us for the first time intend to do so again,” Impossible Foods told this publication in March.
McGuinness highlighted the importance of speaking to this target audience “in a respectful, inviting way, not an insulting way, which is what I think was done in the past”. Alienating meat-eaters won’t help – this is precisely why Starbucks’s Impossible Breakfast Sandwich has cheese and eggs, and the Impossible Whopper contains cheese and special sauce. They’re not vegan, but that’s not the target market anyway.
“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.”
You can look at this two ways. There is definitely a case to be made about oversaturation in the industry – 2023 saw several startups cease operations as they ran out of cash in a highly competitive market. But on the other hand, suggesting a monopoly of two or three companies in the entire category sounds a bit… Big Food?
“Many consumers have unfortunately had a less-than-positive first impression of various plant-based products, and that casts doubt on the rest of the category as a whole,” the company has previously told Green Queen.
McGuinness alluded to this in an interview with Food Dive earlier this month, where he took aim at what he labelled “the biggest ‘all other’ I’ve seen in any category”. “There are 100 of these little micro companies that are throwing out products that are not particularly good,” he said, particularly describing fungi and mycelium startups. “I think there are certain brands and products that are the problem,” he said.
Courtesy: Meati
“Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat [are] the only true meat alternatives in the category,” he added. “You’re going to be left with a couple of brands and private labels, and that’s going to be the category.”
We’re already seeing consolidation in the industry, but diversity and consumer choice are vital – that Kroger survey found that the range of options in supermarkets is the second-most influential purchase factor for plant-based meat (with 39% choosing it). Monopolies, meanwhile, are dangerous, especially in the food industry. It’s exactly what the meat giants have been doing for years, with National Beef, JBS, Cargill and Tyson owning a jaw-dropping 85% of the US meat market.
It’s something the documentary Food, Inc. 2 highlighted. “Monopoly power is a threat to our freedom,” the film said in one of its calls to action. Take the case of Abbott Nutrition, which – along with Meat Johnson Nutrition – owns 80% of the baby formula market. When there were safety issues with its products, Abbott recalled its formula and shut its largest plant, sparking an infant formula shortage.
Courtesy: Bloomberg Television
Things are more evenly split in the plant-based sector – according to Bloomberg, Impossible Foods leads the refrigerated space with a 9% market share, but is trumped by Kellogg’s (which owns MorningStar Farms), Beyond Meat and Conagra (the parent company of Gardein) in the freezer aisle, where it commands a 5% share.
“We don’t need to go public in the near future… That said, it would be nice to go public at some point on our terms, to further capitalise and cement the legacy of the company.”
An Impossible Foods IPO has long been rumoured, with speculation rife last month after McGuinness indicated to Reuters that the company is exploring a liquidity event that could result in a sale or a public offering. Green Queen understands that the company isn’t committing to this – it has maintained that it’s the fastest-growing brand in the category.
Any liquidity event, if it were to happen, wouldn’t take place for another two to three years. And at present, expanding distribution and strengthening its portfolio are the business’s key priorities.
Courtesy: Impossible Foods/Green Queen
“We’re lucky enough to be pretty well-capitalised right now,” McGuinness told Bloomberg. Not needing to go public was a good position to be in, he explained as the IPO markets are not “great right now”. “We’ll go public when we’re prepared and we’re ready. I think things were rushed maybe in the past – we don’t need to rush, luckily.”
The company will hope that this will put IPO rumours to bed for a while, as it ramps up its marketing efforts to meet the meat-eaters where they’re at, shrug off the elitist tag, and keep the price tag wallet-friendly. But would a monopoly make sense?
Iowa governor Kim Reynolds has just signed a bill that restricts the labelling of meat and egg alternatives, as well as excludes them from federal food assistance programmes.
Plant-based and cultivated meat and eggs can no longer be labelled that way in Iowa, after its governor Kim Reynolds signed SF 2391 into law. It makes the state the latest to impose a ban on the labelling of alternative proteins.
But perhaps more concerning is a stipulation that prohibits people from buying meat and egg analogues through federal food assistance programmes like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for low-income families or the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).
Meanwhile, a second bill signed by Reynolds extends a tax break for livestock producers who sell certain animals for breeding, which is expected to save them nearly $18M by 2030. “Today, we protect Iowa’s livestock industry for future generations,” she said.
The same farmers were warned of health risks by a public health expert last year for working in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), which have caused life-threatening illnesses and contaminated the drinking water due to nitrate pollution in the state. This has meant that Iowans will spend $333M to treat their water over the next five years, and up to $167.5M to address the health impact.
Yet, Iowa is doubling down on its CAFOs – last year, more than 250 of the 288 large livestock operations constructed in the US were in Iowa, according to the EPA.
An ‘unnecessary’ and ‘disparaging’ bill
Courtesy: Kim Reynolds/X
The bill is far from the only legislation in the US that prohibits the use of meat-related terms on plant-based alternatives – many states have done (or are attempting to do) the same. But imposing these restrictions on eggs isn’t as common, and perhaps a sign that the industry is slowly encroaching upon the chicken sector’s market share.
“This legislation prohibits companies from exploiting the trust consumers have with our livestock producers and misleading consumers into buying products they don’t want. This is about transparency,” said Reynolds. “It’s about the common-sense idea that a product labelled chicken, beef, or pork, should actually come from an animal.”
Under the law, anyone misbranding “fabricated egg products” or a plant-based, cultivated or insect protein faces a fine of up to $500, with each day that the violation occurs constituting a separate offence (the maximum limit for the penalty is $10,000).
Dawn Driscoll, a Republican senator and cattle farmer, labelled it a “meat integrity” law. “Consumers deserve the truthful labelling on products, and our children deserve better than lab-grown protein,” she said.
In response, the Precision Fermentation Alliance (PFA) – a trade group comprising 10 alternative protein startups – called the bill “unnecessary and duplicative of federal laws”. “Under current federal law, foods that do not meet an established standard of identity must be clearly labelled with appropriate qualifying terms so that consumers understand the nature of the foods they purchase,” it said in a statement.
“SF 2391’s use of ‘fake’ and ‘imitation’ as the lead qualifying terms is inflammatory and disparaging to a wide category of foods that American consumers both understand and want access to.”
Iowa restricts access to alt-protein to those in need
Courtesy: Just Egg
Restricting labels is one thing, but an amendment in the bill’s passage through the government committees means the state’s residents cannot use programmes like SNAP or WIC to buy these foods. It’s an abhorrent use of legislation that blocks people on low incomes, women and children in need from accessing healthier, more sustainable food options, and mocks their freedom to choose what they want to eat – all to line up the pockets of an industry that is destroying the planet.
If the USDA approves the purchase of meat or egg analogues under one of these programmes, the new law directs the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services to seek a waiver or exemption for people to buy these products under the nutrition assistance schemes. The bill completely disregards any concerns about meat or egg allergies – Iowans who suffer from these conditions are left in limbo.
“Perhaps USDA will turn down the waiver request and things will be different, but it’s just bad legislation,” outlined House representative Monica Kurth, who said the bill takes away the rights of people dependent on SNAP or WIC. Last month, the USDA updated its WIC provisions to include plant-based milk, yoghurt and cheese, a move that recognised the importance of alternative proteins.
“Let’s protect our people that need help,” added fellow representative Ako Abdul-Samad. “Let’s protect the babies that can’t eat eggs. Let’s not make it hard on our people. Why are we making it hard on people that we’re trying to help in Iowa?”
“This law arbitrarily limits access to safe, nutritious foods through programs such as SNAP and WIC. Restricting consumer choice hurts both American consumers and the industries that employ them, whether at the silo or the many food processing facilities in the Midwest and beyond,” the PFA said. “This law is part of a troubling emerging trend of state legislation artificially constraining the free market and stifling the greatness of American innovation. This is particularly unfortunate today at a time when supply chain disruptions and persistent inflation are putting pressure on consumers’ pocketbooks.”
At the signing of the bill, House representative Heather Hora took a shot at cultivated meat too. “Iowa’s farm families work hard every day to bring nutritious red meat to the market. Lab-grown products are not the same as high-quality pork or beef or other meats raised by Iowa farm families and consumers deserve truthful, transparent labeling on products.”
It comes the same month Florida and Alabama banned the production and sale of cultivated meat within state borders. Iowa’s bill, which disproportionally affects vulnerable people, is the latest in a heightening trend of legislative meat-hugging that’s dampening the future of food ahead of this year’s elections. Let’s hope it doesn’t catch on.
Korean food tech startup Simple Planet has received ₩11B ($8.1M) for a government project to boost food security, and targets regulatory approval for its cultivated meat ingredients next year.
South Koreans could be eating cultivated meat as soon as next year, with Seoul-based Simple Planet gearing up to file for regulatory approval in the country, months after it began inviting applications for the same.
“Simple Planet is applying for regulatory approval from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, aiming for approval in the first half of next year,” co-founder and CEO Dominic Jeong told Green Queen. The company will sell products under its Balboa Kitchen brand.
“Consumers will be able to taste or receive prototypes in the second half of next year. The target markets include not only Korea, but also North America and Southeast Asia.”
The development comes after Simple Planet was selected for a ₩11B ($8.1M) grant by the government, led by the Korea Institute of Planning and Evaluation for Technology in Food, Agriculture and Forestry (IPET), Korea Agriculture Technology Promotion Agency (KOAT), and Korea Institute of Marine Science and Technology Promotion (KIMST).
The funding is dedicated towards a project that aims to develop the food tech sector in South Korea to bolster sustainable and stable food production in the future. Simple Planet, which makes ingredients for cultivated meat like powders and fats, will use the capital to further expand its R&D and commercialisation processes.
Simple Planet working on 13 cell lines
Courtesy: Simple Planet
The project durations differ based on the department. The KOAT initiative will focus on creating cultivated foods to replace animal-derived ingredients and last three years. Under the IPET, also a three-year project, it will work on establishing pluripotent stem cell lines and differentiation and developing mass culture technology for cultivated meat. The KIMST-backed project, meanwhile, is five years long and centres on R&D and production of high-value cultivated seafood.
“Simple Planet’s expertise in cell separation, proliferation/differentiation, and large-scale production through suspension culture has been a key factor in the selection process,” said Jeong. The company was recognised for its cell acquisition technology and suspended cell development platform, the establishment of 13 different specialised cell lines, and the development of serum-free media for cultivated meat.
Instead of making fully developed cuts of meat, Simple Planet is producing protein powders and unsaturated fatty acid pastes for cultivated meat products. “The focus is on cattle, pigs and chickens for livestock, and eel, halibut, rainbow trout, bluefin tuna, squid, pollack and lobster for seafood,” said Jeong. But he added: “There are plans to produce whole cuts in the future.”
The company is also working on duck, flatfish, salmon, king crab and oyster cell lines, and has plans to create a fish cake and seafood powder in the future.
“Our cell-cultured food ingredients can produce diverse customised ingredients including food and functional ingredients with excellent production efficiency, enabling a stable food supply,” said Jeong.
Cultivated meat developments escalating in South Korea
Courtesy: Simple Planet
The startup has bagged over $7.5M in funding to date, following a $6M pre-Series A round earlier this year. It has six bioreactors of varying sizes, with a total capacity of 1,150 litres. It’s currently building an 18,000 sq ft facility in (expected to be operational by 2025) – but Simple Planet has massive scale-up ambitions, with plans to start producing in Singapore, Thailand, India and the US by the end of 2025, with a targeted capacity of 20,000 litres.
Scaling up will help the company bring costs down, an effort that has been facilitated by its switch to food-grade media from fetal bovine serum. This could potentially reduce its production costs by 99.8%, from $430 to $1.5 per litre. “The current production cost is around ₩200,000/kg [$148] and the consumer price is set at ₩70,000/kg [$52],” said Jeong. “The plan is to reduce the cost through process technology development.”
This is crucial if cultivated meat is to take off in the country, with only 12% of Koreans willing to pay ₩1,000-3,000 (74 cents to $2.2) more per 100g of cultivated meat. On the contrary, 57% would eat cultivated pork if it’s cheaper than its conventional counterpart, and 25% would do so for beef too.
Speaking of taking off, cultivated meat has gained rapid momentum in the country. In February, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety established a framework for regulatory approval of these proteins. The process costs ₩45M ($34,000) and is expected to take up to 270 working days.
And last month, the government created a regulatory-free special zone designed for the development of cultivated foods in the eastern province of Gyeongsangbuk-do. It harbours 10 startups that are working towards the commercialisation of cultivated meat.
Additionally, the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries announced this month that it will invest ₩28.6B ($21M) in research funding for its plant-based and cultivated seafood tech. “Simple Planet’s view is that the high-value marine species will become easily accessible to consumers, and the project is seen as a necessary investment for the future, as it can replace endangered species,” said Jeong.
Dutch plant-based meat startup The Vegetarian Butcher has teamed up with Californian precision fermentation pioneer The Every Company to use its animal-free egg whites in meat analogues.
Unilever-owned The Vegetarian Butcher will make use of The Every Co’s microbial egg whites as a clean-label binder in some of its meat-free formulations, marking a major collaboration in the alternative protein world.
The Vegetarian Butcher’s chicken, beef, pork and fish analogues are present in thousands of retailers and foodservice outlets across Europe and beyond. Its partnership with The Every Co – the only company that has commercialised precision-fermented egg proteins – is a step in its efforts to do away with chicken-derived eggs from its entire lineup.
Incorporating the animal-free egg white into its meat alternatives will allow it to provide a clean-label option to consumers who are increasingly apprehensive about ultra-processed foods and long ingredient lists.
“When on a mission, we love to work with the right partners to become even more impactful together,” The Vegetarian Butcher said in a statement. “This breakthrough, clean-label ingredient is a natural fit with The Vegetarian Butcher’s mission to release animals from the food chain.”
Ditching methylcellulose for the Every EggWhite
Courtesy: The Vegetarian Butcher
Currently, The Vegetarian Butcher uses methylcellulose in its formulations, which is becoming less and less popular among meat analogue makers. While it’s widely used in the industry as a binder and gelling agent, its overprocessed nature, complex moniker, and use in laxatives has garnered it a bad rep – in 2022, Beyond Meat was sued for using the ingredient while putting ‘all-natural’ claims on its burgers (it no longer labels them this way).
But it’s a highly functional ingredient – it is non-toxic and allergen-free, can dissolve in cold water, and forms a gel at high temperatures. One of its most unique properties is its thermoreversibility: methylcellulose can set when hot and melt when cold. This means it provides meat analogues with a juicy bite and meatier texture, making it hard to replace.
Singaporean vegan chicken maker TiNDLE Foods uses methylcellulose to keep its plant-based meat together. On its website, it explains: “Think of it as a plant-based egg white.”
This is where The Every Co comes in. It genetically engineers yeast strains called Komagataella phaffii and feeds them on sugars to produce proteins found in eggs. Its precision-fermented EggWhite innovation contains ovalbumin, the most abundant egg protein, and provides aeration, whipping, gelling, binding, and foam stability properties.
Nick Toriello, The Every Co’s chief commercial officer, told AgFunderNews that The Vegetarian Butcher has been trying to get methylcellulose out of its formulations for “quite some time”. “What was key to them was that EVERY EggWhite was a relatively simple and straightforward product to work with as it could just serve as a drop-in replacement,” he explained. “The taste and texture of the end product is superior, and they get a cleaner label at the back end.”
The Every Co files for EU & UK approval
Courtesy: The Every Company
While its egg proteins are certified by The Vegan Society – as no animals are used or harmed to produce them – they must still carry an allergen warning. But the ‘animal-free’ or vegan message isn’t a priority for many of its partners, according to the startup.
“After years of dedicated effort to further veganise our product range, this new collaboration aims to accelerate the final steps of this process, while preserving the delicious taste and texture of our products,” The Vegetarian Butcher said.
As we reported in December, The Every Co has already been granted three ‘no further questions’ letters from the FDA in the US, but for The Vegetarian Butcher to sell any products featuring the Every EggWhite, the Californian startup will need regulatory approval in the respective countries. It has filed novel food applications in the EU and the UK.
“We aim to have that regulatory approval in parallel with the launch,” Toriello said, in relation to The Vegetarian Butcher partnership. “So the main market we’re targeting for this is the UK specifically, but we’re actively exploring near-term opportunities in other regions.”
The Dutch startup isn’t the first to use the Every EggWhite to fine-tune meat analogues – last year, Colombia’s Grupo Nutresa partnered with The Every Company to use its animal-free egg white as a binder for products under its Zenú and Pietran brands. The Silicon Valley startup has also collaborated with ingredients giant Ingredion and drinks conglomerate AB InBev in the past.
The Every Co’s 2024 priorities
Courtesy: The EVERY Company
The Every Co is actively producing two other products: Every Protein, a nearly transparent protein bioidentical to glycoprotein (found in egg whites) for neutral and clear-looking foods and beverages; and Every Egg, a whole egg that contains the EggWhite, plant-based oils, natural colours and flavourings, fibre and water.
These products make for viable options among the volatility of chicken eggs, which have always had unpredictable prices and are frequently affected by outbreaks of avian flu. This is a big attraction for the startup’s B2B clients. “Every customer is different. Some want to absolutely take animals out of their supply chain,” explained Toriello. “But the bigger thing we’ve noticed in the last two years is that they want stability on supply and price. And on price, we are competitive with cage-free egg white pricing today.” (The startup has raised $233M in funding so far.)
And it delivers on taste too, having impressed the likes of Daniel Humm, who hosted a special dinner at his three-Michelin-starred eatery Eleven Madison Park with the Every Egg as the centrepiece. “In collaborating with chef Humm and his team at Eleven Madison Park, we successfully demonstrated that EVERY Egg’s quality delivers on the highest standards of culinary excellence,” The Every Co CEO Arturo Elizondo, who co-founded the startup in 2014 with David Anchel, told Green Queen at the time.
Speaking to AgFunderNews, he labelled “onboarding additional manufacturing capacity and translating that into products in the marketplace” as the business’s two top priorities for the year. “We’ve proven that our technology works at scale; we’re producing regularly in 100,000-litre+ fermenters, making metric tons of product,” he said. “So it’s now a matter of continuing to dial up scale so we have enough capacity to ultimately bring the cost down.”
Lance Lively, the company’s VP and general manager, added: “What we’re thinking the most about is how can we get to the point where we can supply 20% of eggs to the top five egg users on an annualised basis.”
Californian cultivated meat pioneer Eat Just has hit a major milestone in the sector, debuting Good Meat chicken in the freezers of Huber’s Butchery in Singapore – the first time these proteins are available in retail.
You can now cook cultivated chicken at home, thanks to Eat Just’s landmark move into the freezers of Huber’s Butchery in Singapore, making it the first cultivated meat product to be sold for retail anywhere in the world.
As the first company to ever receive regulatory approval to sell cultivated meat, the Good Meat chicken has been available at various foodservice points in the island nation since 2020. But moving into retail is a major breakthrough for an industry that has so far struggled to manufacture enough product and keep costs down for such a rollout.
This has been enabled by the launch of the latest iteration of Eat Just’s chicken, titled Good Meat 3. It’s a lower-cost formulation comprised of fewer cultivated meat cells, going from 60-70% to just 3% of the product. The rest is made up of wheat and soy proteins, sunflower and coconut oils, natural flavours, modified food starch and soy lecithin, and comes seasoned with olive oil, salt and pepper.
Available in the freezer section of Huber’s Butchery – which previously sold the product as part of several dishes – the shredded chicken is priced at S$7.20 ($5.35) for a 120g pack. “This format gives the best texture and versatility for home chefs to prepare in a wide variety of dishes,” Eat Just CEO Josh Tetrick tells Green Queen when asked about the meat cut.
“Giving consumers the opportunity to buy cultivated chicken in-store and bring it home to prepare and serve to their families is a huge step towards normalising this new type of food,” he says, revealing that a retail launch has been a goal from the start.
Switching up the hybrid composition to lower costs
Courtesy: Eat Just
The retail launch marks the debut of Good Meat 3, a new product crafted by Eat Just that could potentially end up as a foodservice offering as well. It was produced at ESCO Aster (the world’s first regulator-approved contract manufacturer for cultivated meat), while the extrusion process was completed at Nurasa’s newly unveiled Food Tech Innovation Centre, another Eat Just partner.
By retuning the composition to use a smaller percentage of cultivated meat, the startup is now able to sell its chicken at retail-friendly costs, which is a major step towards the commercialisation of the sector. Hybrid meats – which combine cultivated animal cells with plant-based ingredients – have been described by investors as the only way to make cultivated meat commercially feasible.
Heather Courtney, general partner at Alwyn Capital, told Green Queen in December: “The chances of being able to economically produce 100% cultivated products that can compete on price with commoditised meat are slim to none in the next 10+ years.”
But equally crucial to the success of these meats is the taste factor – it’s what attracted consumers to Good Meat too. A survey of diners at Huber’s Bistro suggested that buying and eating cultivated the cultivated chicken “significantly boosted” people’s acceptance of it. On a scale of 1 to 5, respondents displayed a strong willingness to try it again (a score of 4.41) and rated its flavour 4.21/5.
Eat Just – which has reduced production costs by 90% since 2018 – promises that despite the change in formulation, Good Meat 3 does not compromise on flavour, texture or nutrition. According to sensory testing, consumers find the product exceptional in taste, texture, and appearance. “Our initial sensory data has yielded overwhelmingly positive feedback on taste and texture, and we’re excited to see how home chefs will use GOOD Meat 3 in their favourite recipes,” says Tetrick. This indicated that “consumers will agree that it tastes like conventional chicken”.
The Good Meat chicken is also nutritionally on par with conventional chicken, and superior in some aspects. Per 100g, it delivers 28.6g of protein, 5.75 of fat (1.9g of which is saturated), 5.7mg of cholesterol, and 2.2g of fibre.
The retail rollout – combined with the lower price – will effect a major propulsion of sales for the company. “To date, we’ve sold more than 2,000 servings of GOOD Meat in Singapore alone, and with the introduction of GOOD Meat 3, we will sell more than that in 2024,” outlines Tetrick.
Cultivated meat gains ground in Singapore
Courtesy: Eat Just
The launch coincides with the reopening of Huber’s Butchery, which has undergone an extensive renovation. Starting today, Singaporeans can buy frozen cultivated chicken for the remainder of 2024. “Huber’s Butchery has been a true partner and advocate for Good Meat for over a year, and we are thrilled to continue working with them on this historic launch,” Tetrick says.
“Having the latest version of Good Meat 3 cultivated chicken available for retail is another step in this journey to make cultivated meat available to a bigger audience,” says Andre Huber, executive director of Huber’s. “People will have the opportunity to prepare the product the way they want and experience how it can fit into their home-cooked meals.”
Mirte Gosker, managing director at industry think tank the Good Food Institute APAC, adds: “The world will soon get its first look at what home chefs choose to do with cultivated meat when the choices are infinite. There’s no better place for this culinary exploration to happen than Singapore, which has a well-earned reputation as an epicentre of market testing thanks to its renowned food culture, multiethnic population, and outsize presence of world-class research facilities.”
It means that at present, there are two different cultivated meat products available to Singaporeans. In April, the country’s food safety regulator cleared Australia’s Vow to sell its cultivated quail, which has since been doing the rounds at restaurants – it’s currently on the menu at Tippling Club. Later this year, Dutch producer Meatable also expects to get the greenlight and launch its cultivated pork into foodservice.
But Eat Just, for now, remains the only company to put cultivated meat in retail freezers. “We know there is much more work to be done to prove that cultivated meat can be made at large scale, and we remain focused on that objective,” says Tetrick.
Contending with legal and political threats
Courtesy: Eat Just
The retail milestone comes as the cultivated meat startup faces various challenges in its home country. It has been embroiled in a $100M lawsuit with contract manufacturer ABEC over unpaid bills. Earlier this month, the judge in Pennsylvania sided with Eat Just on some matters, and ABEC on others. The case is still ongoing.
Meanwhile, the states of Florida and Alabama have banned cultivated meat this month, in a move widely panned by alternative protein experts, the press, and even the meat industry. This bill sends a terrible message to the investors, scientists, and entrepreneurs that have built America’s global leadership in alternative proteins,” Tom Rossmeissl, Eat Just’s global marketing head, told Green Queen after Florida’s ban.
“The law will not stop the development of cultivated meat,” he added. “And Good Meat remains committed to its mission: making real meat without needing to tear down a rainforest.”
Despite its financial troubles (the company has faced at least seven lawsuits since 2019) Tetrick has previously outlined Eat Just’s plans to break even in 2024. The startup, which has raised over $850M to date, earned 99.9% of its revenue from its vegan Just Egg business, as of November. “we are focused on the daily execution of our zero-burn plan (i.e., cover operating costs through margin dollars) and serving our customers. If we execute, the company and its missions win. It’ll be challenging and hard – and it’s up to us to get it done,” Tetrick told this publication at the time.
Now, he reiterates that target, explaining: “Eat Just is on track to achieve break-even by the end of 2024.” He adds that the company has no firm plans about foodservice at this point, but is “considering a variety of options to make our chicken available to wider audiences”. Its campaign-style production runs and rollouts have seen the Good Meat chicken appear on the menus of hawker stalls and fine-dining eateries in Singapore, as well as China Chilcano in Washington, DC.
Asked about Eat Just’s plans for 2024, Tetrick says: “We look forward to hearing feedback from Huber’s customers about GOOD Meat 3, and will use this input as we continue to make our product better.”
Health, e-commerce and almond milk are vital in a sector that shows long-term potential despite recent headwinds, according to a new report by the Plant-Based Foods Association.
In spite of a rough year for sales and investment in the vegan sector, if certain barriers are removed, plant-based food is here to stay. That’s the consensus of the 2023 State of the Marketplace report by US-based trade body the Plant-Based Foods Association (PBFA).
Leveraging data from multiple insight firms, the analysis looks at the retail, foodservice and e-commerce sectors to find the challenges and opportunities for plant-based brands.
“Despite inflationary pressures and economic challenges that have affected the entire food landscape, plant-based has held strong and established its faithful role in the shopping carts, shelves, and menus of a large and diverse group of consumers,” said PBFA’s VP of marketplace development, Julie Emmett.
“The plant-based foods segment remains an important priority offering for our customers that continues to evolve with changing customer trends,” added Lee Robinson, VP of merchandising at Whole Foods Market, a PBFA partner. “Putting the ‘plant’ back in ‘plant-based’ through simpler, plant-forward ingredient decks, elevated sourcing, and reduced processing are areas of focus to usher the industry into advancing agricultural practices.”
What can companies learn from the state of the plant-based marketplace in 2023? Here are the big takeaways.
Gen Z doesn’t make up a large majority of plant-based shoppers
Courtesy: PBFA
The share of vegan consumers is evenly split across age and income demographics. Over-65s actually accounted for the largest share (23.5%), followed by the 18-34 age group (19.5%). So it appears that Gen Zers don’t represent a large majority of plant-based shoppers, although their purchasing power is predicted to grow when 2024 tax changes take effect.
Meanwhile, over 41% of people who buy plant-based have high incomes, a trend that “aligns with unavoidable industry realities”, according to PBFA. Vegan food is still competing with the low prices of industrially farmed, government-subsidy-backed animal foods. But research has shown that plant-based consumers spend more overall, making them highly valuable to retailers and operators.
Additional data shows that 62% of US households are buying plant-based foods, and 81% are repeating these purchases, indicating their strong faith in these products.
Health over everything
Courtesy: PBFA
The importance of health has skyrocketed in the post-pandemic and mid-Ozempic eras. Industry leaders are already repositioning their brands to be more health-skewed to meet these needs, and PBFA’s analysis confirms the vitality of health.
The report outlines how health can mean different things to people, spanning personal illness, food safety or even specific nutritional requirements. Among primary US grocer shoppers, 80% consider themselves health-conscious, and 65% eat plant-based because they think these products are healthy.
Similarly, 51% of Kroger shoppers said they buy vegan products since they’re healthy, and 38% do so because they want to reduce animal consumption due to personal health concerns.
Only four categories actually declined in dollar sales
Courtesy: PBFA
Despite concerns about the industry’s alleged downfall (if you’re to believe certain media outlets), only four product categories saw sales dip, while the overall sector held relatively steady (down from $8.2B in 2022 to $8.1B in 2023), suggesting that it was a year of flatlines instead of declines.
From 2021 to 2023, meat and seafood (-6.6%), ready meals (-7.9%), ice cream (-7.4%), and cheese (-5.4%) were the only plant-based categories that witnessed a decrease. PBFA recommends that retailers merchandise meat or seafood analogues with products that are frequently purchased together, such as conventional meat/seafood or dairy cheese, as about three in 10 people who buy the former also buy the latter.
Milk is still the plant-based leader
Courtesy: PBFA
Plant-based milk is still the leading category in the sector, making up over a third (36%) of all sales last year, and representing a 4.2% annual growth since 2021. In 2023, dollar sales grew slightly by 0.7%, but unit sales dropped by 7.5%, an indication of the higher cost of products (milk alternatives saw prices hike by over 8%).
Still, this category represents the highest dollar share in the overall market (15%) across the plant-based sector. This is even higher (41%) in the natural channel, which entails supermarkets with over $2M of annual sales and at least 50% of sales from natural or organic products (excluding Whole Foods).
Despite a 3.6% decline, almond milk is still the leader in the US, making up 55% ($1.6B) of the category’s total sales. Oat has held strong at second position with a 7.6% increase, while coconut milk saw the largest increase (24.8%).
In foodservice, meanwhile, operators increased their spend on plant-based milk much more than dairy. While they bought 8.2% more conventional milk and spent 7.1% more than the year before, their purchases of plant-based milk grew by 18.3% in volume, representing a 20.9% higher spend.
Watch out for the creamers
Courtesy: PBFA
Non-dairy creamers are expanding rapidly in the US. It’s a market that has seen constant growth over the years, and saw annual sales increase by 16.2% (the highest in the industry) from 2021 to 2023 to reach $701M. Last year alone, dollar sales were up by 10.4%, and units also increased by 3.7%.
Across the US, 15% of households bought plant-based creamers last year, and over 65% repeated their purchase. Among the 73% of Americans who drink coffee every day, a majority prefer to add creamers and/or sweeteners instead of drinking it black. Here, the preference for oat milk creamers climbed by 90% and almond-based options by 71% since 2022.
“As long as the demand for coffee exists, consumers will search for creamers to go with it – and as environmental awareness grows, consumers may seek out more plant-based options,” the report stated. “Brands and retailers can emphasize plant-based creamers’ environmental benefits to help consumers make choices that are more aligned with their values.”
Don’t sleep on e-commerce
Courtesy: PBFA
In the US, 33% of shoppers buy plant-based foods online – convenience, a wide array of options, and the absence of physical shelf space constraints make this channel attractive to brands. E-commerce plant-based sales reached $394M in 2023, with an annual growth rate of 16.4% over three years. They also occupy a larger share of online sales (6.8%) than brick-and-mortar retail (3.8%).
And while animal-based foods outpaced vegan categories in dollar sale growth last year, plant-based products actually saw a higher increase in unit sales than their conventional counterparts, illustrating strong, sustained shopper interest and engagement.
Restaurants are down on plant-based – other operators are not
Courtesy: PBFA
Dollar sales of plant proteins – including meat analogues and traditional food like tofu, tempeh, grains and nuts – in foodservice dipped slightly by 1% last year, with restaurants representing the biggest decline. Quick-service establishments spent 10% less on these foods, and full-service ones shelled out 7% less.
But this was offset by other industry operators – mainly workplace cafeterias, which bought 25% more plant proteins and spent 13% more on them. Dollar and pound sales of plant-based food also increased in education, healthcare and government establishments.
Rob Morasco, VP of innovation at Sodexo, which is aiming to make 50% of its food plant-based by 2025, outlined three main challenges for adding plant-based products to foodservice. “Our customers can be anywhere on the ‘knowledge spectrum’ on these products, especially those that don’t identify as vegan or vegetarian. Educating them on the choices available to them without ‘preaching or dictating’ is very important,” he explained.
“Second, our operators and chefs also need the same education on plant-based overall – whether alt products or whole food plant-based, there is work to do to help our chefs feel more comfortable in this space. Lastly, cost and distribution are still a challenge – normalization compared to their ordinary alternatives and achieving price parity will be a pretty big deal.”
Different forks, different strokes
Courtesy: PBFA
The business, industry, government, healthcare, casino and lodging sectors all invested the most in plant-based foods, especially tofu, representing the growing focus on whole foods.
“We do think, however, that the products that emulate the big ‘ordinary’ protein movers – beef, chicken, pork, seafood – are the most important to the non-commercial space,” said Morasco. “We sell a lot of hamburgers and chicken tenders and need plant-based alternatives to those that taste like the ordinary version.”
But for restaurants, plant-based meat, egg and cheese analogues present a major opportunity. An analysis of 20 eateries over six months found that introducing these options increased the total sales of all plant-based orders by 112% and mixed orders by 35%.
First-time guests placing vegan orders were twice more likely to return for a second visit than those who ordered animal-based foods. Moreover, plant-based orders boosted check averages by 8% (versus 1% for animal-based orders), indicating that higher-quality offerings justify the premiums on plant-based food.
In our weekly column, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers a vegan salad partnership, a plant-based cheese rebrand and EU funding for cultivated meat.
New products and launches
UK fast-casual chain The Salad Project has partnered with Deliciously Ella on a new limited-edition menu, which will feature a Miso-Maple Aubergine Bowl, a DE Classic, a Super Green Salad, and a Little Plants Bowl (for kids).
Courtesy: Sheese
Scottish vegan cheese producer Sheese has had a complete rebrand – a new logo, new orange packaging, and a new recipe – to make its products look and taste more like their conventional counterparts.
Fellow plant-based cheesemaker I Am Nut OK has secured its first nationwide listing, with its cashew-based parmesan, feta and buffalo mozzarella now available on online retailer Ocado.
Also in the UK, plant-based food brand Squeaky Bean has launched a hoisin duck pancake meal kit and a new snack range – comprising Southern Fried Straws, Duck and Hoisin Style Bites, and BBQ Pork Style Rolls – at select Tesco scores this week.
Starbucks UK has collaborated with Nestlé on its new Mexican-Style Wrap for the summer menu, which features the latter’s Garden Gourmet pulled fillet, alongside a chilli-tomato sauce, peppers, spinach and vegan mozzarella.
Another British startup, Myco, will roll out the first 10,000 burgers and 20,000 sausages made from its Hooba protein (made using vertically farmed mushrooms). It has agreed listings with several suppliers, including artisanal and plant-based wholesalers.
Courtesy: Lidl
Lidl Belgium has followed its German counterpart in lowering the prices of its own-label plant-based alternatives to match the rates of meat and dairy, in a bid to double its vegan sales.
Across the Atlantic, US fermented protein producer Calysta has joined forces with German pet food startup Dr. Clauder’s to debut air-dried dog treats using the former’s vegan FeedKind Pet protein, which will first launch in Europe.
Meanwhile, Next Level Burger and Veggie Grill have rolled out the second phase of their Birds & Bees pollinator protection campaign for National Egg Month, with two new vegan egg sandwiches featuring Just Egg and WunderEgg.
Courtesy: Next Level Burger
Fellow American company Mighty Yum has reformulated its vegan Munchables lunch kits in response to demand for more allergen-friendly options, with its Turkey and Cheese and Ham and Cheese varieties no longer containing soy or gluten.
Seafood giant Thai Union will unveil two new vegan shrimp SKUs at the THAIFEX-Anuga Asia event in Bangkok later this month. These include breaded shrimp and a shrimp patty.
Courtesy: Alma Resort
And in Cam Ranh, Vietnam, Alma Resort has introduced a vegan menu in its Asiana restaurant as part of its sustainability goals and in response to growing demand for meatless food. Highlights include chicken katsu curry, crispy California sushi rolls, and mushrooms and tofu in oyster sauce. Its other eateries have also expanded plant-based options.
Finance and company updates
Indonesian plant-based meat brand Green Rebel has temporarily suspended its D2C operations in South Korea to improve management efficiency amid ongoing financial losses.
Canadian vegan hot dog maker Sensible Foods has launched a strategic review that could result in a change in the company’s business strategy, with Shawn Balaghi replaced as CEO by Chris Jackson (on an interim basis).
Fellow Canadian company Else Nutrition, which makes vegan infant formula and cereal products, has closed a second tranche of a private placement worth $1M for clinical trials related to the FDA and general working capital.
Also in Canada, plant-based seafood startup Save Da Sea has netted C$650,000 ($475,000) in seed financing – led by a state fund for women-led startups – to expand the distribution of its products.
Courtesy: Save Da Seafood
Cultivated meat company ProFuse Technology has received a €2.4M grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Transition programme, a recognition of policy support for alternative proteins in the EU.
Isreli alternative protein company Steakholder Foods has inked a deal with Wyler Farms, which will manufacture its 3D-printed burgers, meatballs and minced meat at commercial scale and drive the startup towards profitability.
Research and policy developments
Berlin-based food tech startup Nosh.bio has opened a new factory in Dresden that can produce 1,000 tonnes of mycelium protein each year, with its first production run expected in the next four to five months.
US commercial kitchen equipment manufacturer Waring has launched the Planit POD Fermentation System, allowing chefs to ferment and pasteurise up to eight lbs of custom-built plant proteins within 24 hours.
According to analysis of Circana data by animal rights charity Wakker Dier, meat sales in the Netherlands have fallen by 16.4% since 2020. Last year, supermarkets sold 2.3% less meat than in 2022.
Czech startup Bene Meat Technologiesreleased the first samples of its cultivated pet food at Interzoo 2024 in Nuremberg, Germany, and is now on the lookout for an industry partner to put the product on shelves by year-end.
Courtesy: Bene Meat Technologies
There are concerns that the UN’s Bonn Climate Change Conference (June 3-13), an intersessional event that will lay the groundwork for November’s COP29 in Azerbaijan, will return to a meat- and dairy-heavy menu. But ProVeg International is urging the UN to keep two-thirds of the catering plant-based – similar to the predominantly meatless menu at COP28 – to continue progress.
In the US, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors have slated a citizen-led petition to ban factory farms for the ballot on November 5, a move that could have nationwide implications – although the board is opposing the initiative based on an inaccurate economic evaluation of a potential ban.
Over in the UK, a historic ban on live animal exports for slaughter or fattening has passed the final stage in parliament, meaning it will soon become law – 50 years after campaigners first started protesting the move.
Courtesy: Lee Hsien Loong/X
The Singapore Food Agency and the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment have proposed a bill outlining new requirements for the pre-market approval of novel foods, which may now be subject to additional provisions before being imported or sold in the island nation.
Researchers in Singapore have developed a cultivated meat prototype by co-culturing pig muscle and fat cells in a decellularised asparagus scaffold, which could unlock large-scale manufacturing of these foods.
Finally, ethical pantry startupVoyage Foods has won the food honour in Fast Company’s 2024 World Changing Ideas Awards for its peanut- and hazelnut-free spreads. Cultivated meat producer UPSIDE Foods, precision-fermented egg startup The Every Company, and home compost bin Mill were among the other finalists.
In the least optimistic scenario, alternative proteins could displace a sixth of meat and dairy consumption in Europe. In the best-case outcome, they could replace two-thirds of animal proteins by 2050 and make the region self-sufficient.
Supportive policies for novel proteins hold the key to self-sufficiency and food security in Europe at levels last seen 30 years ago, according to a 10-country report by think tank the Green Alliance, commissioned by the Good Food Institute Europe.
Covering Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden and the UK – 10 of Europe’s biggest agricultural countries – the research reveals that these nations collectively rely on twice as much foreign land for imports than the domestic land they use to produce exports. But a shift to alternative proteins, which require a fraction of the land needed for meat and dairy production, could enable nearly all of these countries to eliminate their reliance on imports to feed their citizens.
If governments back plant-based, cultivated and precision-fermented proteins with suitable policies, there would be major cost reductions associated with carbon removal, a significant expansion of nature restoration projects, and a surpassing of the EU’s Farm to Fork targets.
The authors of A New Land Dividend suggest alternative proteins can displace their conventional counterparts for two reasons. First, a large share of the latter are highly processed, in a market where businesses choose ingredients (not consumers), and this means a shift to alternative proteins could be made as soon as they reach price parity. Secondly, cost and convenience are key, and these novel foods offer like-for-like replacements more likely to displace meat and dairy than unprocessed plant-based foods.
But in the era of ultra-processed foods and their connotation with healthfulness, does this go against the grain of what consumers want from their foods – cleaner labels, lesser processing, more nutritious ingredients? “Our experience is that plant-based producers are responding to the trend toward cleaner labels, and that the market for more established alternatives – like the vegan sausage roll – remains strong,” explains Dustin Benton, policy director at Green Alliance, tells Green Queen.
The extent of displacement relies on three factors: price parity (which will speed up if inflation keeps disproportionately affecting animal proteins), policy (in terms of government funding, infrastructure and regulatory support), and taste (the report argues precision-fermented and cultivated proteins need to be successful to replace cuts of meats and cheese that plant-based products may not).
The three scenarios for alternative proteins
Courtesy: Green Alliance
The analysis outlines three ways novel proteins could go. The first is a low-intervention scenario, where a lack of policy support means these foods will displace a sixth of meat and dairy consumption by 2050. Here, cultivated meat and precision fermentation don’t become profitable, but the authors outline that plant-based products can’t displace whole cuts of meat or cheese, so the substitution is limited to some processed meat and dairy products.
“Our assumptions for the low-intervention scenario are that policy abandons or even actively deters precision fermentation and cultivated meat, and that only very marginal innovation occurs in plant-based foods. It is – in effect – a failure scenario,” says Dustin. “This is consistent with a future in which poorly thought-through bans, like that imposed by Florida governor [Ron] DeSantis [this month], become the norm.”
Does this mean that without government backing, two of the three alternative protein pillars face a dead-end? “Cultivated meat and precision fermentation will need policy support to become successful – this is a common lesson from many types of new technology development,” says Dustin.
“We’re confident this support will materialise somewhere in the world, so the question for Europe is whether it wants to be proactive and steer the development of these new foods for the benefit of European producers and consumers, or whether it prefers the products to be developed elsewhere, with the benefits potentially ending up abroad.”
The second scenario is one of high innovation, where significant policy changes would drive the replacement of over two-thirds of meat and dairy sales by mid-century. Milk and eggs would be displaced by precision-fermented alternatives. This technology, alongside cell cultivation, can produce fats, enzymes and flavours to advance taste parity for plant-based products.
For more complex cuts of meat, additional innovation is needed for cultivated meat to reach a competitive price, which would then displace some cuts of meat, as well as most processed animal products. Conventional meat and dairy production could continue, but only at higher values, lower volumes and in premium markets.
“The high innovation scenario, by contrast, envisages supportive policy and continued technology improvement, but not radical breakthroughs that would – for example – make whole cuts of meat produced via cellular agriculture cheaper than their traditional counterparts,” says Dustin. “Even in the high innovation scenario, we see complex products like steak as mainly coming from animals.”
The authors envision a third, mid-ambition scenario of intermediate displacement, where supportive policy sees the plant-based and precision fermentation markets grow, but renders cultivated meat too expensive to succeed.
The fourfold benefits of alternative proteins for Europe
Courtesy: Green Alliance
The low-intervention scenario would see 21% of domestic farmed area and 9% of overseas land released for alternative proteins, while the high innovation outcome would free up 44% of domestic land (an area nearly the size of France), and 57% of the foreign land used for imports (more than the size of Spain).
France, Spain and the UK have the greatest land dividend, thanks to their extensively grazed outdoor beef and lamb sectors. Denmark and the Netherlands, meanwhile, will have the smallest dividend, as their agricultural areas are dominated by export production.
“Italy is the least supportive country, but – perversely – it could be a major winner,” Dustin says of the world’s first country that banned cultivated meat. “High innovation in alternative proteins could see Italy nearly double its food self-sufficiency rate, while increasing its share of organic food by 2.5 times: in effect, the sort of small-scale, high-quality, regionally specific agriculture that Italy is known for would benefit from a world where alternative proteins were more common.
“What’s needed is an alliance between small, agroecological farmers and the new alternative proteins sector to ensure that the space that alternative proteins create allows for more of this traditional food production.”
Upping the support and consumption of alternative proteins would bring about four key outcomes. First, there would be an increase in self-sufficiency as more land would be freed up, regardless of the scenario – a separate study has shown that replacing half of our meat and dairy intake with plant-based alternatives could reduce agricultural and land use emissions by 31%.
Farmers would also benefit from the carbon removal market – whose demand would decrease by ninefold – by having the space to expand natural carbon sinks, which would forgo the need for engineered carbon removals, saving €21B each year by 2050 on the cost of meeting the continent’s carbon neutrality goals. That’s equivalent to nearly half the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) budget – 82% of which currently supports animal agriculture.
The area of agroecological farmland would quadruple by 2050, which would exceed the Farm to Fork strategy’s goal of 25% of land being certified organic. Finally, alternative proteins could also make enough space for more wildlife habitats, which would restore the Annex I habitats (those most in need of conservation) required by the EU’s Nature Restoration Law.
Europe needs to price out meat and dairy, and support farm transitions
Graphic by Green Queen
European governments need to invest more in alternative proteins to drive healthier formulations and price and taste parity, according to the authors of the report. Within the EU, they recommend member states openly discuss landscape and rural economic change with their citizens, with an aim to shift CAP payments to broader rural land uses.
The impact of CAP payments is crucial to the future of alternative proteins. Between 2014 and 2020, livestock farming received 1,200 times more public funding in the EU than the novel protein sector. The report suggests that the CAP should avoid directly subsidising meat and dairy production. They explain how combining the current strategy with reduced domestic demand for conventional animal products would see European taxpayers pay once for production (which is often exported), and again to mitigate the resultant emissions and climate damage caused by high levels of livestock farming.
“There are some powerful livestock lobbies, but their approach doesn’t always represent the views of most farmers,” says Dustin. Green Alliance’s UK-focused analysis found that upland livestock farmers could double their income by switching to a combination of nature restoration and much lower livestock production, versus a world where CAP-style subsidies are retained, so long as policy supports farmers to meet the UK’s environmental targets. “This approach would make much more sense for the taxpayer, and for the majority of smaller farmers or those who farm more marginal land.”
Farmers should also be paid to convert land from animal protein production into habitats that store carbon and restore nature, which would be a cost-effective way to meet climate and nature targets, and guarantee rural livelihoods.
Dustin further highlights how high-quality, responsive regulation is essential to the success of alternative proteins in Europe. The EU’s current novel foods framework is among the strictest in the world, and its rigidity has left many alternative protein producers looking outwards to Singapore or the US to enter the market. This was the same in post-Brexit UK, but things are on the mend as the regulation becomes more receptive – the first cultivated meat product in the country (for cats) is imminent.
“There is a big prize for getting it right: new, environmentally friendly foods that meet the highest food quality standards in the world,” says Dustin. “The UK has retained equivalent food standards to the EU’s, but with the freedom to approve products according to those standards at a faster pace than has historically proved possible in the EU. This could form the basis of UK competitive advantage in alternative proteins.”
This year’s Met Gala featured vegan products from Impossible Foods, Neat, Stockeld Dreamery and Tindle Foods, showcasing plant-based indulgence to the world’s most influential celebrities.
The Garden of Time was this year’s theme for the Met Gala, and actors, artists, models, influencers and all kinds of celebrities showed up in attires that spanned from gorgeous, to curious, to wild.
But true to the theme, the garden was also present in a way with the food served at the show. Hopes weren’t high when Anna Wintour banned garlic, onions and chives from this year’s event, presumably so everyone doesn’t have “bad breath”. “Those are three things I’m not particularly fond of,” she said ahead of the event.
It’s been reported that high-end cuisine was the name of the game at the Met Gala on Monday, with a fancy spring vegetable salad to start with, followed by a beef filet for the main, and almond cremeaux shaped like an apple for dessert.
But if you ask me, the best bits were before and after the actual gala. At fashion’s biggest show, some of the plant-based world’s biggest brands showed up too. It was out with haute cuisine, in with pure vegan indulgence.
Here’s how vegan food made a splash at the 2024 Met Gala.
Impossible’s indulgent sliders and BBQ nuggets
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
It was a big night for one of the premier plant-based meat producers, Impossible Foods, which kicked off its latest marketing drive at the Live from E! red carpet. Its new ads were aired during the pre-show broadcast at The Mark hotel, a smart choice given the Met Gala over-indexes on vegans.
But it wasn’t just the ads – Impossible Foods was also serving food to attendees on the red carpet, and it was all about plant-based indulgence.
The clue was in the name, with the brand showcasing its Indulgent Burger, its premium beef patty launched last year, which is thicker, juicier and meatier than its signature burger. Upon launch, the company said 82% of taste-testers found this burger as good as or superior to conventional beef – so it made sense to exhibit the product among some of the most influential people in the world.
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
The Indulgent Burger was part of a slider that was lined with a brie and truffle aioli – it’s unclear whether this was plant-based, but since the brand’s target audience isn’t vegan anyway, that would be in line with its marketing strategy.
Impossible Foods also served its famous chicken nuggets, but these were also dressed up – in a passion fruit BBQ sauce no less. Both the nuggets and burgers were served alongside what looked like edible flowers to honour the Garden of Time theme, but the former also came in a specially branded green box that read: ‘Garden of Meat’.
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
After the event, Impossible Foods CEO Peter McGuinness called it an “important opportunity to build awareness as we roll into the summer grilling season”.
Stockeld Dreamery, Neat and Tindle turn it up at the afterparty
Met Gala afterparties are some of the most exclusive in the fashion world, and three brands got together to satiate the cravings of the, erm, inebriated attendees at one of the many, many parties.
At Casa Cipriani South Street, fast-food chain Neat was invited to hand out its plant-based cheeseburgers and hot dogs to the guests. Swedish brand Stockeld Dreamery joined in to help out, given its vegan Cultured Cheddar cheese tops the patty on Neat’s burger.
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
Another one of Neat’s collaborators, Singaporean startup Tindle Foods, brought out its vegan chicken tenders. “They went like crazy. We had to keep bringing out trays because they’d be gone in seconds,” the company said in a video montage.
The vegan junk food was served at a party that included Leonardo DiCaprio, Camila Cabello, Lil Nas X, SZA, Lizzo, Jaden Smith, Cardi B, Usher, Serena Williams, and Offset.
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
“This ended up being a huge win for the plant-based space as celebrities were spotted with Neat Burgers, Stockeld and Tindle flags all night long,” Stockeld Dreamery founder Sorosh Tavakoli said.
“If there’s a better way to make plant-based foods sexy, let me know.”
Days after Florida enacted a ban on cultivated meat, Alabama has become the second US state to do so – just as food safety regulators announced plans to clarify the regulation of these foods.
“Take your fake meat elsewhere. We’re not doing that…”
While DeSantis did say something like that in relation to Florida, add the words “in Alabama” at the end, and you’ve got yourself a repackaged quote from Alabama senator Jack Williams, who had proposed an identical ban with an identical rhetoric that has now had an identical outcome.
The Cotton State has followed its neighbour by making it a Class C misdemeanour to manufacture, sell or distribute cultivated meat, after governor Kay Ivey signed the bill into law earlier this week. This means anybody in violation of this could face a fine of $500 and up to three months in jail, and have their license revoked (if it’s a food establishment).
“This law will strengthen our livestock and poultry industry by preventing lab-cultured cells from being sold in Alabama,” said representative Jack Crawford, who carried the bill in the House. “To our consumers, the quality and safety of our agricultural products are of the utmost importance, and these lab-grown protein cells can’t be assured to be safe.”
That last bit implies one of two things – either Crawford is intentionally spreading misinformation, or he genuinely believes that the USDA and FDA clearing cultivated meat as safe to eat is not enough of a confirmation.
Built on dangerous misinformation
Courtesy: Jack Williams/Facebook
The bill was first proposed in February by Wiliams, a cattle farmer, who said: “If you were on Mars, you have to grow what you have to grow to eat. The problem with this is we have plenty of food in the state. We have plenty of cattle and chicken. There’s no reason for us to bring this product in here.” That was a statement completely ignorant of the fact that Alabama is the fourth-poorest state in the country, with a sixth of adults and nearly a quarter of children facing food insecurity. But sure, there’s enough chicken.
Although, is there? The state is home to a poultry farm that culled nearly 48,000 chickens due to a pathogenic avian flu just six months ago, a threat that continues to loom in animals that humans end up eating.
“Anything that is artificial and not to do with our animals comes up on my radar. I don’t want Alabamians eating that,” Williams said, disregarding the fact that cultivated meat originates from animal cells, and overstepping boundaries to tell people what they can or can’t eat.
These statements represent the widespread misinformation that has fuelled Alabama’s ban. When introducing the bill for a reading in the House, Crawford attempted to explain how these foods are made. “They throw a couple of animal cells in there, throw some chemicals in there, some ingredients and boom: You get a chicken leg out.”
It got laughs, but nobody in the House questioned how it really works. Even if Crawford’s version of things is true – which, surprise, it isn’t – it just sounds like how most industrially farmed meat is made, really.
But perhaps the biggest sign that misinformation is driving this ban is the support from Freedom Health Alabama, a group that has previously campaigned against vaccine mandates and masks, and refers to cultivated meat as “Franken-meat”. No more credible stamp than one from an anti-vaxxer, eh?
The bill garnered overwhelming support throughout its legislative passage, with 31 senators voting for it, and nobody opposing it. In the House, the final tally was 85 in favour, 14 against. There was one change made before sending it to Ivey’s desk – the house decided against including a stipulation that would have prohibited government agencies and universities from conducting research on these products.
Before being passed in the House, it did also reach a brief hiccup when House speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter declined to bring it to the floor for a vote, as part of a larger conflict between the Senate and the House. However, the impasse passed, and from October 1, you’ll be committing a crime if you sell cultivated meat in Alabama.
‘We don’t even do this with cigarettes’
Courtesy: Upside Foods
“These folks are throwing a couple of animal cells in there with some chemicals and calling it meat. Alabamians want to know what they are eating, and we have no idea what is in this stuff or how it will affect us,” said Williams. “Meat comes from livestock raised by hardworking farmers and ranchers, not from a petri dish grown by scientists. We are protecting our farmers and the integrity of American agriculture.”
Speaking to Green Queen after the Florida ban, Pepin Tuma, legislative director at alternative protein think tank the Good Food Institute, said: “American-made cultivated meat has been rigorously inspected and ruled safe by the USDA and FDA – so why are politicians with no experience in food safety interfering where they don’t belong?”
The two regulatory bodies authorised California’s Upside Foods and Eat Just to sell their cultivated chicken last year, after a rigorous, months-long process. And they’ve now announced plans to “clarify and provide guidance on the regulation of cultured animal cell foods”, having had discussions about market and technical developments and the inspection of cultivated meat facilities. The USDA will now propose new labelling regulations for cultivated meat this year.
“Some of America’s largest meat companies have been early investors in cultivated meat. They recognise cultivated meat’s potential to complement conventional meat production, improve supply chain resilience, and ensure American’s access to meat as global demand for animal protein is projected to double by 2050,” Sean Edgett, Upside Foods’ chief legal officer, said following the Florida ban.
Upside Foods has subsequently launched a petition in response to Florida’s ban, asking people to “tell politicians that they should not control what you eat, and support food innovation for a brighter future”. Similar proposals are being debated in various other states, including Arizona, Wisconsin, Texas, Nebraska and Tennessee.
Cathy Ballenger-Apolo, one of the petition’s supporters, wrote: “If there is a zero-kill way to provide meat to the population who consumes it, a way that is wholesome, natural, and healthy, why not utilise it?”
Williams himself has recognised the potential of cultivated meat, previously saying: “If that’s what we have to survive, I would re-entertain looking at something,” said Williams. “But I think there needs to be a lot of test work done on it.”
House representative Marilyn Lands – a Democrat in the Republican majority state – best summed up the idiosyncrasy of the law. “I thought conservatives, Republicans, were all about letting the free market do its work,” she said during a House session. “And I don’t believe we should be dictating what people can eat, or criminalise people who sell or service certain foods even when they’ve received approval from the federal government.
“This makes no sense to me. We don’t even do this with cigarettes.”
German food tech startup MyriaMeat has unveiled a cultivated pork fillet made from 100% pork cells, without any scaffolds or plant proteins.
Months after emerging from stealth, German startup MyriaMeat has announced the successful development of a cultivated pork fillet made entirely from pig cells.
Showcasing the fillet at an event in Berlin, which was hosted by MyriaMeat investor SPRIN-D, the German innovation agency, the cultivated meat uses no scaffolds or plant proteins for shape. “Our meat is free from vegetable additives and genetic modifications,” said Malte Tiburcy, co-founder of MyriaMeat and head of research at the University of Göttingen.
“The industrial revolution is coming, We have the technological knowledge to end the suffering of billions of animals while feeding humanity on the basis of a healthier, more sustainable product,” said managing director Florian Hüttner. “We have a responsibility to facilitate that change.”
How MyriaMeat produces cultivated pork with 100% pig cells
Founded in 2022 by researchers from the University of Göttingen, MyriaMeat transfers its founders’ patented medical technology to food applications. Developed over 25 years of research, it leverages pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and parthenogenetic stem cells, which allow it to grow functional muscle structures and whole cuts of meat.
Typically, producing structured or thick meats can be aided by growing cells on a scaffold, which enables the attachment, differentiation and maturation of cells in a specific manner. But scaffolding has a high cost attached to it. iPSCs, meanwhile, possess self-assembling properties that can be utilised by organoids to reproduce features of in-vitro tissue organisation and mimic the characteristics of a variety of tissues.
MyriaMeat believes only iPSC-derived pure muscles can recreate animal muscles as closely as possible, and notes that the muscles it has developed can contract.
“Our unique iPSC pipeline allows us to obtain stable stem cell cultures from a single, harmless biopsy,” said Hüttner. “Our vision is to redefine meat consumption in line with the needs of a growing world population and environmental protection, significantly reducing the CO2 emissions of meat production
Fellow cultivated pork producer Meatable, which is gearing up to launch in Singapore this year, also uses a technology based on iPSCs to make its product. The company has streamlined the process in a way that it now only needs four days to create fully differentiated cultivated meat – the fastest in the industry. UK startup 3DBT, meanwhile, has created a cultivated pork fillet without any plant-based scaffolding, fillers or blends either, forgoing the hybrid approach being undertaken by many in the industry (including Meatable).
Companies like Mewery, Clever Carnivore, Uncommon, Ivy Farm Technologies, Joes Future Food Tech, CellX and Magic Valley are all working on cultivated pork too. They’re creating a solution to the intensifying concerns about pig meat – outbreaks of African Swine Fever have occurred in many parts of the world recently, with pig populations being culled in Russia, Hong Kong, the UK, the US and India. That has led to a shortage of pork and subsequently driven up prices, with the viral disease adding to the meat’s existing carcinogenic status.
A tasting event for cultivated meat
Courtesy: MyriaMeat
“In our company, it’s now about implementation, no longer basic research, and we have demonstrated this with our prototype developed in Göttingen within just one year,” said Hüttner.
“At MyriaMeat, we have built a platform not only for the production of high-quality and pure meat but also for a variety of other meat-based products and are an ideal partner for the development of innovative foods with alternative proteins,” he added.
The company has already secured €43M in funding, which was the largest investment in a cultivated meat startup in Europe last year. Aside from pork, it has plans to create cultivated Wagyu beef and deer meat, and it’s in discussions with industrial partners and potential investors to facilitate its scale-up efforts and host a tasting event later this year.
While MyriaMeat scales up, it will likely keep a close eye on consumer preferences and regulatory developments in its home country, where pork consumption fell by 19% from 2015 to 2022. A YouGov survey of 2,000 Germans published in March showed that 47% of Germans are willing to try cultivated meat – although two-thirds of consumers find plant-based meat more appealing.
According to the poll, two-thirds of Germans also believe cultivated meat should be produced locally to benefit the economy if it were to come to market, and 47% think the government should advance the sector’s development and support farmers to capitalise on the opportunities presented by alternative proteins.
For its part, the German government has committed €38M in its 2024 federal budget to promote alternative proteins, including the manufacturing and processing of cultivated meat.
After a mixed start to the year, with both revenues and sales declining in Q1, Beyond Meat remains optimistic about the rest of 2024, pointing to the rollout of its healthier and costlier plant-based beef.
As the fourth iterations of its burger and mince begin replacing their predecessors on retail shelves, Beyond Meat has reported an eight straight quarter of year-on-year revenue decline, which reached $75.6M in Q1 2024, dropping by 18% from the corresponding period last year.
However, this was slightly higher than analysts expected ($75.2M), and in line with the company’s guidance for the quarter after a tough 2023. The net revenue was also up by 2.6% from the previous quarter. Moreover, the plant-based meat leader reported a gross profit of $3.7M (down by 41% from Q1 2023), meaning that its products made more money than they cost to produce.
But operating expenses lead to a total net loss of $54.4M for Beyond Meat this quarter. Keeping with the mixed-bag theme of its earnings report though, its deficit actually narrowed by 8% from Q1 2023 – this was thanks to an 8% reduction in operating losses and losses from its Planet Partnership with PepsiCo, which saw the launch of the Beyond Jerky. The slow-selling SKU was discontinued last year, with the El Segundo company rechannelling its focus to the new Beyond IV platform.
The new burger and mince, which are said to be meatier and healthier, are also more expensive – Beyond Meat is banking on these three factors to drive growth in the rest of the year. “Through this fourth-generation project, which we expect will be fully distributed by Memorial Day, we took a leap forward on a continuous improvement journey that is a rapid and relentless innovation programme,” CEO Ethan Brown said in a conference call with investors.
“We really do believe that we are at the early stages of a terrific and pivotal year for Beyond Meat,” he added. “We’re doing the things you need to do to get through a period that is challenging and resume growth.”
Sales down across channels, but McDonald’s deal to drive growth
Courtesy: McDonald’s Germany
Over the last year, Beyond Meat’s distribution points have declined globally, down from 146,000 in Q1 2023 to 130,000 today. This has coincided with a decrease in sales across both retail and foodservice. In the US, both channels saw a 16% decline in net revenue, which the company ascribed to a softening of demand despite discounts on its products, a dip in the volume of products sold, the discontinuation of its jerky SKU, as well as the loss of distribution.
Internationally, it experienced a 12% decline in retail sales, but a much larger 29% drop in foodservice revenue. This meant its sales were down by 21.5% in non-US markets in Q1. In retail, this was due to softer demand for its beef and pork products in Canada and chicken SKUs in Europe. The foodservice performance proved to be a tough comparison with Q1 2023, when Beyond Meat had just finished a large order for McDonald’s as its vegan nuggets went on sale in Europe.
Speaking of which, Beyond Meat reported its Q1 earnings the same day McDonald’s announced a campaign for its famous meals promotion, exclusively featuring the McPlant burger in menus curated by Tokio Hotel members and twins Bill and Tom Kaulitz. It’s similar to the Travis Scott, BTS and McJordan meals in the US.
Beyond Meat’s partnership with McDonald’s has now expanded into Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, a marker of its plans to boost distribution and sales in Europe – one of its five key priorities for the year. The Beyond Burger has now expanded into more Co-op stores in the UK, while Beyond Steak has been launched into Dutch foodservice. And after satisfying local shelf life requirements, the company will expand its retail presence in Germany too.
A new cookbook to showcase healthier Beyond IV products
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
Despite representing a significant improvement from the previous quarter, the company’s gross profit and margin fell short of its expectations, owing to factors like including higher manufacturing and material costs, long-running discounts, and transitional costs related to bringing production in-house (which is also one of its priorities this year). But Beyond Meat is optimistic about its margin for the rest of the year, given that the Q1 figures don’t account for the price hikes attached to its more premium beef products.
Brown said the consumer reception of the higher markups – another business priority for 2024 – is “too early to tell”, but noted that it’s not just a new pricing stricture, but also a new product altogether. “We did have long discussions with a lot of the main retailers we work with around why we’re doing this,” he added. “And with limited exception, most were accepting.”
The new burger and mince represent the most significant renovation of its core product line to date, with a much more prominent focus on health and flavour – two of the most important factors to Americans. They have 60% less saturated fat and 20% lower sodium content than their predecessors, with more protein than most conventional 80/20 beef products.
Brown explained the company’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 Beyond IV products meet the American Diabetes Association’s (ADA) nutritional guidelines for its Better Choices for Life programme, and carry Good Housekeeping’s Nutritionist Approved Emblem. They also featured in a collection of ‘heart-healthy’ recipes by the American Heart Association (AHA), and Brown revealed that the latter and Beyond Meat are co-launching a cookbook to highlight the nutritional credentials of its products.
He highlighted “getting leaner” as another of the company’s 2024 priorities, which almost serves as a double entendre. It referred to its operations becoming more efficient and a tightening of its focus on product portfolio and consumer messaging, but it ties in with the health-forward message emanating from the new products, which represent another key goal for this year.
Heart-healthy product line set to expand
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
The CEO also pinpointed “orchestrated misinformation regarding our product lines” as one of the brand’s biggest challenges – for years, Beyond Meat and its main competitor Impossible Foods have been the subject of a targeted campaign by the Center for Consumer Freedom, a meat industry interest group. In August, the company responded with a marketing initiative quashing the misinformation.
This summer, Beyond Meat will launch an “impactful and significant” marketing drive to promote its fourth-generation beef. “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,” said Brown.
“My emphasis on the health side of things is simply because of the misinformation campaign. We would not make these changes at the expense of taste,” he added. “We want to bring back in that very close and early adopter consumer that maybe has been scared away.”
In March, Beyond Meat unveiled a new product line in its Beef Crumbles, which were certified by the AHA and ADA. Brown revealed the alt-meat giant will introduce another heart-healthy product later this year. With these innovations, the company reiterated its full-year forecast of net revenues between $315-345M, and expects sales to reach $85-90M in the next quarter.
“2024 is a pivotal year for change and progress for Beyond Meat. We began the year making solid strides along our 2024 strategy and correspondingly, our path to sustainable operations and a return to growth,” said Brown.
“We believe that our determination to sharply reduce our operating expenses and cash use, consolidate our production network, implement pricing changes to help restore margins and launch our most significant renovation to date Beyond IV for purposes of reinforcing, as well as raising the bar on the health benefits of our plant-based needs, amidst sustained misinformation campaigns are beginning to pay off.”
Meatless brand Tattooed Chef is back on retail shelves in the US under its new parent company Planted Ventures, 10 months after filing for bankruptcy.
Nearly a year after its collapse, Californian meat-free producer Tattooed Chef has relaunched into US retail with a series of frozen ready meals and smoothie bowls under its new parent company, Planted Ventures.
The products span four meatless (but not entirely vegan) categories – Entrée Bowls, Smoothie Bowls, Veggie Blends, and Veggie Commodities – and are available at select Costco stores in the US, with a broader rollout in club and retail stores expected later this year. Planted Ventures is also working on private-label offerings.
“The return of Tattooed Chef reflects our belief that simple food is the best food, with ingredients that are honest and sustainably sourced,” said Tattooed Chef founder and executive chef Sarah Galletti.” We are reinventing the classics that people already recognize and are excited to eat and making it easy and accessible for them to do so.”
Planted Ventures is helmed by founder Sam Galletti, who is Sarah’s father. “We are and always will be a family business that is all about food,” he said.
How Tattooed Chef went into bankruptcy
Courtesy: Tattooed Chef
Tattooed Chef’s resurrection comes 10 months after it initiated a bankruptcy process, following increased costs and an unsuccessful attempt at raising funds to secure the loss-making business. The company was caught in the headwinds affecting the larger alternative protein industry, with several startups running out of capital and being forced to shut.
The 2018-founded frozen foods producer suffered from a 12.7% drop in revenue and net losses of $19M in Q1 2023 due to increased labour, packaging, energy, equipment and raw material costs. But its financial troubles began at least a year before that, owing to inflationary pressures and falling sales in key retailers.
Its collapse was ascribed to a variety of factors. Competing in a crowded market, it was adjudged to have a weak brand identity, and too many product lines. Much of its range was vegetarian and not vegan, and it was accused of misleading consumers with unclear labelling. Its CEO at the time, Salvatore Galletti, had also suggested that the company was considering selling meat products. “It opens up a lot more avenues and a lot more doors,” he told Forbes, arguing that profitability suddenly became much more important after the company was publicly traded on the NASDAQ.
Sam and then-CFO Stephanie Dieckmann were also the subject of a class action lawsuit in December 2022, which alleged that in its account filings from March 2021 to October 2022, Tattooed Chef made false and/or misleading statements, downplayed issues with “internal controls”, and overstated revenue while understanding losses.
In March 2023, a “derivative complaint” was filed against the company, which accused it of a “breach of fiduciary duty, unjust enrichment, abuse of control, gross mismanagement, [and a] waste of corporate assets”. A former employee – who was among a number of staff members laid off by the company in 2022 and 2023 – told AgFunderNews that the business was “poorly run” and “could not pay their bills, causing supply chain issues”.
Its stock dipped under the minimum bid price of $1 per share required to be listed on the NASDAQ in June 2023. Tattooed Chef was given 180 days to comply, or risk being delisted. Despite a $12M unsecured loan from Sam, who was the president and chairman of the business, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in California a month later.
Going back to the roots
Courtesy: Tattooed Chef
Tattooed Chef’s insolvency came around the same time many of its counterparts were facing similar fates. Meatless Farm, Plant & Bean and VBites were in the same boat – but all three have been rescued in some way. Tattooed Chef is following that journey.
Planted Ventures purchased part of the company’s assets in September 2023, and has now managed to revive the brand. “We are excited to commence this relaunch of the Tattooed Chef brand, establish and renew industry relationships, and to become part of the healthy eating journey of millions of plant-based intenders,” said Sam.
“In my 40 years in the food industry, I have come to understand that success is defined by three things: surround yourself with good people, control the manufacturing, and have strong private label relationships,” he added. “At Planted Ventures, we have all that and more – we have a brand that consumers have embraced and, quite frankly, have missed.”
The reinvigorated business has seen Sarah create a frozen line-up of plant-based and vegetarian products that blend her Italian heritage with Los Angeles culture. Among Tattooed Chef’s offerings are returning SKUs like the cauliflower mac and cheese, vegan beef burrito bowl and organic acai bowls, alongside new innovations such as vegetable lo mein and Mexican-style street corn.
The company also offers prepped food like sheet pan or oven-baked vegetables, riced cauliflower and pre-cut zucchini and yellow squash. “With Planted Ventures, we have gone back to our roots as a company and are redefining the concept of better-for-you frozen food,” said Sam.
Planted Ventures describes itself as a vertically integrated manufacturer, with operations based at a farm it has acquired in Prossedi, Italy. The majority of its produce is grown, prepared and packaged in the 100,000 sq ft fully automated facility. This, the company says, ensures a “dependable supply and end-to-end quality assurance” for both its Tattooed Chef-branded products and white-label offerings.
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 Mission Barnes’ newest cultivated meat, Waitrose’s whole-food plant-based plunge, and Odd Burger’s new locations.
New products and launches
For the pizza lovers, cultivated meat producer Mission Barnes has announced its latest innovation, a hybrid pepperoni mixing combining pork cells with pea, fava bean and flaxseed proteins.
Courtesy: Yo Egg
Israeli food tech company Yo Egg, which debuted its vegan sunny-side-ups and poached eggs in Los Angeles retail in March, is now available nationwide in the US via PlantX.
The Plant Based Seafood Co has partnered with supermarket chain Wegmans to place its Mind Blown range of vegan crab cakes and dusted scallops on the retailer’s shelves in 80 stores across the US.
Tacotarian, the California-based vegan Mexican restaurant chain, has introduced a line of shelf-stable taco fillings made with Beyond Meat. The first products will be jackfruit barbacoa and jackfruit Birria, which will be available online and at various retailers.
Bee-free honey maker MeliBio, which launched its Mellody plant-based honey through a collaboration with Eleven Madison Park last year, has renewed its partnership with the three-Michelin-starred plant-forward eatery, whose Tea and Honey Gift Box contains the brand’s vegan honey.
US tofu giant Nasoya has launched two plant-based chicken products under its Plantspired range, available in Kung Pao and Bee-Free Honey Garlic (which uses agave) initially at Albertsons and Meijer.
Courtesy: Omami
Speaking of tofu, Berlin-based Omami has debuted a three-ingredient chickpea tofu range in Germany in Tasty Nature, Black Pepper, Sweet Chilli and Smokey Twist flavours.
Vegan whole cut meat maker Chunk Foods will showcase two new SKUs – Chunk Cubes and Slabs – at the National Restaurant Association Show (May 18-21) in Chicago. The Cubes are meant for fast-casual restaurants, while the Slabs are touted to be the largest whole-cut plant-based meat to hit the market, weighing over 3 lbs.
In the UK, Costa Coffee has extended its partnership with vegan influencer duo BOSH! with the launch of a vegan Falafel and Houmous Wrap and Gingernut Loaf Cake.
British retailer Waitrose has expanded its private-label PlantLiving range with 12 new products that focus on flexitarians and whole foods over processed plant proteins, after sales for canned lentils, marinated tofu and vegan salad rose exponentially.
Courtesy: Waitrose
And in Australia, the iconic Chippendale Hotel (The Chippo, if you’re local), has opened the country’s first fully vegan pub in Sydney.
Financial developments
Canadian cellular agriculture company Cult Food Science has closed a private placement of C$800,000 ($585,000), which will be used for working capital and general corporate purposes.
Fellow Vancouver-based startup Maia Farms has secured $2.3M in pre-seed and grant funding for its mycelium protein (which has 5.5 times the iron content of beef), which recently won NASA and the Canadian Space Agency’s Deep Space Food Challenge for its CanPro ingredient.
Latin American startup Peruvian Veef has raised $320,000 to expand its foodservice and retail footprint across the continent.
Swedish startup OMG Plantbased Food, which trades as Oh Mungood!, has secured an undisclosed sum in a funding round.
Courtesy: Oh Mungood!
New Zealand microalgae protein startup New Fish, whose first product is called Marine Whey, has rebranded to Nutrition from Water (NXW), and has received an investment from Olympic gold medallist sailor Pete Burling.
Seitan startup Blackbird Foods, which makes vegan pizzas and wings, has launched a crowdfunding campaign on StartEngine, with investment opportunities starting from $249. It follows a 60% year-on-year growth in sales.
Brooklyn-based Caladian Bio, which is building next-generation, low-cost benchtop bioreactors for enhanced data capture and experimentation throughput, has raised $5M in seed investment.
Manufacturing and company updates
Alternative protein leader Eat Just has had an update on its lawsuit with contract manufacturer ABEC over unpaid bills by its cultivated meat arm, Good Meat. The judge in Pennsylvania has granted several of ABEC’s motions and denied others, while also dismissing some of Eat Just’s counterclaims. But it sided with the latter on one of its claims, which will now proceed to trial.
Fellow cultivated meat pioneer UPSIDE Foods has launched a petition in response to Florida’s ban on the novel proteins, urging people to show lawmakers from other states that they don’t agree with the policy.
Mush Foods, the mycelium meat startup making solutions for blended meat, has released the results of a life-cycle assessment, which found that its 50CUT product produces negligible GHG emissions (0.02kg per patty). This means blending it with conventional meat would halve its carbon footprint.
E-learning platform GenConnectU has announced an on-demand course focused on impact investing in the plant-based sector, facilitated by VegTech Invest CEO Elysabeth Alfano.
VC firm Big Idea Ventures has launched PlantSustain, its fifth portfolio company through its Generation Food Rural Partners fund, which will focus on commercialising bio-based research for more sustainable products and agricultural solutions.
Danish bioproduction leader 21st.BIO has unveiled its pilot plant facility in its Copenhagen headquarters, which has a fermentation capacity of over 3,000 litres of fermentation capacity and will help companies scale up production of recombinant proteins and peptides for the nutrition, food, agriculture, biomaterials, and biopharma sectors.
Courtesy: 21st.BIO
US vegan fast food chain Odd Burger will open three new locations in Alberta and British Columbia this month (taking its total to 16), and has signed a consulting deal with the Ahimsa Foundation, which will receive 1.5 million stock options at a price of 15 cents.
Finally, global vegan certification body V-Label has launched a new advisory board and is calling for applications from individuals with divser backgrounds and expertise in fields including sustainability, sales and finance, marketing, consulting, and business development.
The World Bank has asked countries to redirect their subsidies away from livestock farming and towards low-emission products, encouraging greater adoption of alternative proteins for a more secure planetary future.
In a landmark report highlighting the agrifood system’s impact on climate change and potential for mitigation, the World Bank has made a major statement about the financial prowess and giant ecological footprint of the animal agriculture industry.
The global financial lender has suggested a repurposing of subsidies from red meat and dairy towards lower-emission foods like fruits, vegetables and poultry, adding that alternative proteins like plant-based, cultivated and fermentation-derived options represent a low-cost, highly effective solution in mitigating global heating.
At current rates, we’re on track to breach temperature rises of 3.2°C since pre-industrial levels, which will have catastrophic effects on the planet. But the agrifood sector is a largely untapped source of affordable climate action, which can have an outside impact on the crisis, presenting the opportunity to cut a third of all emissions (about 16 gigatonnes a year) through readily available tools.
The Recipe for a Livable Planet report, which is the World Bank’s first comprehensive global strategic framework to mitigate the food system’s contribution to climate change and protect food security, says such actions will have three key benefits. They will make our food supply more secure amid a population that will count two billion more by 2050, they will help our food system withstand the ecological crisis better, and they will ensure vulnerable people are not harmed by the transition away from meat and dairy.
“We are faced with a startling and largely misunderstood reality: the system that feeds us is also feeding the planet’s climate crisis,” said Axel van Trotsenburg, senior managing director for development policy and partnerships at the World Bank. “The narrative is clear: to protect our planet, we need to transform the way we produce and consume food.”
Why tackling agrifood emissions is crucial
Courtesy: World Bank
The World Bank notes how agricultural emissions are much larger than many think, accounting for 14% more emissions than heat and electricity. But agrifood emissions must reach net zero by 2050 if we’re to have a chance of meeting the 1.5°C goal outlined in the Paris Agreement, given they’re so high they could themselves make the world miss this target.
But too little money is being invested in reducing this impact. A separate report last year showed that only 4.3% of all climate financing goes to the agrifood system. The World Bank states that funding to reduce or remove agrifood emissions is “anaemic” at 2.4% of total mitigation finance. This needs to change among countries across the economic spectrum.
Three-quarters of these emissions come from developing nations, including two-thirds from middle-income countries, but mitigation action needs to happen in high-income states as well. Moreover, it’s important to take a food systems approach, including emissions from relevant value chains, land use change and those from the farm, since over half of agrifood emissions come from these sources.
Such action must be taken carefully to avoid job losses and food supply disruptions. Inaction, however, presents even greater risks to these factors, with the World Bank outlining that it would make our planet unliveable. If done correctly, mitigation action can bring about increased food security and resilience, better nutrition, improved access to finance for farmers, and biodiversity conservation, while securing jobs, good health and livelihoods for vulnerable groups and smallholder farmers.
Investing in agrifood emissions reduction represents much larger payoffs than the costs. Countries need to inject 18 times more capital into this sector than they’re doing now, reaching $260B per year, to half emissions by 2030 and get on track for net zero by 2050. But the health, economic and environmental benefits could be as much as $4.3T by the end of the decade, which is a 16-to-1 return on investment.
One way to do this is to shift money away from “wasteful and harmful” subsidies, with the required investment for emissions cuts less than half the amount the world spends on agricultural subsidies. Still, the World Bank says substantial additional resources are needed to cover the rest of these costs.
The agrifood opportunity for countries
Courtesy: World Bank
Low-income countries, which make up just 11% of the agrifood system’s emissions, should focus on “green and competitive growth” and avoid building the high-emissions infrastructure that richer countries need to now replace. Over half of the emissions here come from land use change, so preserving and restoring forests are cost-effective ways to cut emissions.
The World Bank encourages carbon credits and emissions trading to preserve forests as carbon sinks, though these tools come with major asterisks. But there are also benefits to be gained from climate-smart agricultural techniques and agroforestry practices.
Middle-income nations are responsible for the majority (68%) of the food system’s emissions, with 15 such nations accounting for two-thirds of the world’s cost-effective mitigation potential. A third of these reduction opportunities are linked to land use change, while fertiliser production, food loss and waste, household consumption, and methane from livestock are all areas to make cuts in as well.
High-income countries play a central role here. Making up 21% of all agrifood emissions, they have the highest energy demands for food production and must do more to promote renewable energy. They should also give more financial and technical support to low- and middle-income nations to adopt low-emission farming practices.
Richer countries should decrease their own consumer demand for emissions-intensive animal foods, according to the World Bank, which notes that these states can influence consumption by ensuring the climate and health costs of food are fully included in the prices. Moreover, repurposing subsidies from red meat and dairy towards low-emission products, and promoting sustainable food options, would be highly impactful as well.
World Bank champions alternative proteins
The World Bank’s report highlighted that rich countries have the highest demand consumption of climate-harming animal foods, which globally account for 60% of all agrifood emissions. UN bodies like the FAO have underlined solutions for less polluting animal agriculture, but the World Bank says shifting diets away from meat and towards plant-forward patterns is twice as effective as other mitigation methods (such as reducing enteric fermentation).
Courtesy: World Bank
Meanwhile, full-cost pricing of animal foods – in other words, carbon taxes – would make low-emissions options more competitive. The report outlines studies that have shown meat prices need to increase by 20-60% to reflect the true costs on human and planetary health. This is why redirecting subsidies could lead to significant changes in consumption patterns – livestock farming receives 1,200 and 800 times more funding than alternative proteins in the EU and the US, respectively.
The World Bank spotlights plant-based meat, cultivated foods and other protein sources as innovative technologies that need more can greatly contribute to emissions reduction, but need much heavier R&D spending. Diversifying protein supplies through R&D, plant-based meat and dairy, and insect protein are some of the cheapest ways to lessen the climate footprint of the food system. This cost is earmarked to be up to $26B a year, much lower than the investment in protecting and restoring nature (up to $142B), regenerative agriculture ($40B), promoting healthier diets ($35M), and reducing food loss and waste ($60M).
Dietary change can result in a 70-80% decrease in food-related emissions and a 50% drop in land and water use. The World Bank suggests vegan diets are by far the most effective here, noting how one study found that while vegetarian eating patterns have a median emissions reduction potential of 35%, plant-based diets could cut emissions by nearly half (49%).
Courtesy: World Bank
At another point in the report, it points out that plant-based and cultivated proteins have a 30-90% lower GHG intensity than animal-derived foods and could represent a reduction potential of at least 300 megatonnes of CO2e in the near term – and this is based on conservative estimates. “Technologies like cellular fermentation and plant-based protein can provide low-emission alternatives to meat. These methods can benefit animal welfare while reducing land, water, and nutrient consumption for livestock,” the World Bank says.
“Cultured meat could transform protein consumption practices, but its impacts on emissions are still relatively unknown,” it added, noting that the industry is facing many technical, ethical and political challenges. “These innovative products are still in their early stages and their development is contingent on continued investments, technological growth, regulatory endorsements, and consumer approval.”
World Bank needs to clean its own house too
The World Bank calls on governments, businesses, consumers and farmers to work together to repurpose wasteful subsidies, encourage low-emission agriculture, capitalise on emerging tech, and ensure a just transition by including vulnerable populations on the frontlines of the climate crisis. More sustainable food options can be advocated through measures like food labelling (including carbon, nutrition and sourcing data), choice architecture, education campaigns, and research in innovation in alternative proteins by governments.
Courtesy: Friends of the Earth
“The food system must be fixed because it is making the planet ill and is a big slice of the climate change pie,” the authors say. “There is action that can be taken now to make agrifood a bigger contributor to overcoming climate change and healing the planet. These actions are readily available and affordable.”
Outgoing UN special rapporteur David Boyd summed up the frustration of human rights and climate activists in an interview yesterday. “I can’t get people to bat an eyelash. It’s like there’s something wrong with our brains that we can’t understand just how grave this situation is,” he said. “I think the right to a healthy environment is actually the foundation that we require to enjoy all other human rights. If we don’t have a living, healthy planet Earth, then all the other rights are just words on paper.”
The World Bank highlights the importance of making private investment in agrifood mitigation less risky, but its own private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), has provided at least $1.6B to industrial livestock farming projects since 2017. This creates a mismatch between the lender’s climate and animal welfare pledges, and its investment actions, and the organisation is facing calls to phase out its financial support of animal agriculture.
The institution has said that climate change and animal welfare are central to the IFC’s agricultural investments, stating that large-scale projects can be used to develop more efficient, eco-friendly practices. But with its latest report, the World Bank needs to put its money where its mouth is – quite literally.
Chinese plant protein company Baichuan Bio Tech is preparing for an IPO, having registered for consultation with the Zhejiang Securities Regulatory Bureau.
Baichuan Bio Tech, a plant-based manufacturer specialising in soy fibre protein, is preparing for an IPO in China, and has registered with the Zhejiang Securities Regulatory Bureau for guidance on going public.
Founded in 2008, the Wenzhou-based company is a protein solutions provider and tech leader combining R&D capabilities, production and sales. The company’s product portfolio traverses multiple categories, including plant-based meats, frozen foods and snacks, and its partners serve 32 countries and regions globally.
Its flagship dehydrated soy protein uses proprietary techniques to mimic the texture of muscle fibres, which allows plant-based meats to closely match the texture and nutritional value of their conventional counterparts, while significantly reducing fat and cholesterol content.
These speak to the ever-evolving attitudes of China’s consumers, whose dietary habits have become more health-skewed of late. BiaChuan founder Chen Biao explained the three-step transition, progressing from addressing hunger, to pursuing quality, to now emphasising health. A 1,206-person study from 2022 found that health is the strongest driver of plant-based meat purchases for Chinese consumers.
And it’s not just in China – this change is being seen across the world, with nutrition becoming increasingly more important to people, especially when it comes to plant-based food.
BaiChuan’s manufacturing prowess
Courtesy: BaiChuan Bio Tech
BaiChuan has two major production sites in Wenzhou and Henan, with a capacity of 80,000 tonnes annually. The former facility features fully automated workshops and focuses on high-end products for catering and exports, while the latter is said to be the largest plant protein manufacturing base in China, equipped with a fully automated production line to produce meat analogues, frozen foods and snacks.
The company claims its textured soy protein has a clean taste and superior mouthfeel, and boasts high functionality for plant-based meat applications, which include dishes like spaghetti, nuggets, burger patties, sauces and tinned meats.
It has made several strides in its facilities by upgrading to twin-screw extruders, boosting the performance and production formula of plant proteins and developing over 30 varieties of its soy protein with more than 100 specifications. In total, the company holds 51 patents for its technologies.
For its foodservice products, the manufacturer has developed products like plant-based edible bird’s nests, cubes, slices and granules, which instantly expand after physical extrusion for 10 seconds, preventing nutrient loss and overheating. These products have no cholesterol, sugar, additives or fat, and contain thrice more protein than beef, responding to consumer needs for more nutritionally dense plant-based meat.
Global clientele and future-facing product development
BaiChaun says its products are geared towards vegans, vegetarians and flexitarians. A ProVeg International survey from last year found that 19.3% of Chinese Gen Zers are flexitarians, while 65% know about plant-based meat and 35% are willing to purchase these products.
With nearly 500 employees, the company racked up nearly 500 million yuan ($6.9M) in sales in 2020, and has total assets worth 265 million yuan ($3.6M). This is aided by its roster of 1,300 clients, which includes large companies like Shuanghui, Jinluo, and Yanjinpuzi. In fact, 500 of these are overseas customers from the likes of Germany, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and more.
Courtesy: BaiChuan Bio Tech
But while it’s known for its soy protein, BaiChuan is also using 18 types of native ingredients including wheat, peanuts, peas, flaxseed, carrots, pumpkins, buckwheat, red beans and ginseng to form a new generation of plant protein productions developed by China Agricultural University professors.
A report by alternative protein think tank Food Frontier last year found China to be the most favourable market for plant-based food in Asia-Pacific. But high price remains a key barrier, with analysis from Asymmetrics Research showing that many middle-income Chinese consumers are looking for better-value products.
“In the post-pandemic era, consumers are placing greater emphasis on nutritional value and affordability,” said Jeremy Yeo, acting general manager of the China division of Beyond Meat, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. “Additionally, there’s a pronounced shift towards products that prioritise health, flavour and environmental sustainability. ‘Green’ and eco-friendly options are not mere trends; they mark a profound evolution in consumer tastes and values.”
There is policy support too – in February 2023 the annual Central No. 1 Document mentioned a diversified food system of animals, plants and microorganisms. And in May 2022, China’s 14th five-year plan for bioeconomy development highlighted an advancement of synthetic biology, and exploration of man-made protein and novel foods – two months after President Xi Jinping called for a Grand Food Vision that included the plant-, microorganism- and animal-based protein sources.
BiaChuan claims it accounts for over 40% of the domestic market share for plant proteins – with its impending IPO, it will hope to capture the stock market the same way.
In the US, Impossible Foods is also weighing up a possible IPO, after its CEO Peter McGuinness said the company is targeting a liquidity event in the next few years.
Despite a downturn in investment and economic contribution, sales of plant-based meat in Australia have grown from pre-pandemic levels, with a greater number of brands and a smaller price gap with conventional proteins. Food Frontier CEO Simon Eassom explains why.
Plant-based meat is inching closer to the cost of its conventional counterparts in Australia, driven by a proliferation of brands and significant foodservice growth, according to a new report by Food Frontier.
The think tank’s 2023 State of the Industry report combines industry data and insights from Deloitte Access Economics, highlighting the challenges and opportunities faced by the sector after a tricky couple of years globally.
Where has the industry gained, and where is it lacking? What will it look like in the future? Here are the key takeaways from Food Frontier’s analysis.
Foodservice surge offsets retail slide
Courtesy: Love Buds
The rise of plant-based meat in Australia has been driven by its foodservice performance since Covid-19. In 2023, sales across foodservice and retail reached AU$272.5M, representing a 47% increase from 2020, the first year of the pandemic. Per capita consumption is also up by 28% since 2020.
But while retail sales dipped by 1.1% annually, the wholesale demand in foodservice has increased by 59%. This means the latter is now responsible for 45% of the sector’s sales, up from 17% in 2020. Most of these sales (80%) come from quick-service restaurants (QSRs), with the report suggesting manufacturers stand to gain by expanding into new foodservice outlets and across untapped segments.
“The foodservice sector has come from a very low base, so growth has always had significant potential. Australians eat out a great deal as part of their culture. With plant-based meats becoming more popular and well-known, QSRs and other service outlets have been able to rapidly introduce non-meat alternatives into their menus very simply and without significant input into chef education,” Food Frontier CEO Simon Eassom told Green Queen.
He cites the ease of offering meatless versions of traditional choices like plant-based burgers or an Aussie breakfast with vegan bacon and sausages as an example. “There is evidence that consumers are more willing to try something new in a service setting and, particularly if one member of a group or family doesn’t eat meat, QSRs have recognised the value of catering for the requirements of the whole group,” he added. “Hungry Jacks (Australia’s version of Burger King) has seen this value when introducing the ‘Rebel Whopper’ as its plant-based version of its meat offerings.”
Eassom continued: “The retail sector grew very quickly before the pandemic and has suffered inevitable contractions, readjustments and corrections. Whilst the leading brands have consolidated or grown their market share, other brands have contracted or disappeared, so the overall growth trajectory through the financial difficulties of the past few years has been relatively flat, but there are strong signs of recovery,”
When you look at mid-term trends, the industry has steadily grown from pre-pandemic levels, with retail sales swelling by 9% annually since 2019, and foodservice expanding by 37%.
The industry’s economic contribution is down
Courtesy: Food Frontier
Despite the market performance, the plant-based meat manufacturing sector’s contribution to the economy has reduced by 9%, from AU$50.4M in 2020 to AU$45.8M last year. This drop is witnessed across both direct and indirect contributions.
One of the major factors behind this was a slight contraction in domestic manufacturing in the first half of 2023, stemming from a lack of investment and grant funding, rising manufacturing and labour costs, and reduced consumer expenditure.
When it comes to indirect employment, the plant-based meat’s contribution dipped by 9% as well. But it’s largely benefitting the agriculture, manufacturing and professional services industries, which account for 33%, 15% and 14% of the total.
“This agricultural potential remains largely untapped, primarily due to the absence of sufficient infrastructure for processing domestic plant proteins. Expanding domestic production and increasing the availability of Australian-grown plant protein ingredients present promising economic prospects for Australian farmers,” explained Eassom.
“There is substantial demand within the domestic plant-based food sector and in international export markets for Australian protein ingredients. Of course, the capital outlay to construct processing facilities is considerable and will likely require co-investment, either in consortiums or public-private partnerships to fund construction.
“Australia is seen throughout Asia as a supplier of reliable, safe and high-quality foods and food ingredients. With an increased number of facilities able to produce the ingredients and the incentives needed to convert commodity crops into high-value products, the economic and employment contribution from the sector will continue to grow.”
Investment mirrors global trends, but brand options increase
Courtesy: Food Frontier
Globally, plant-based companies saw a 28% decline in VC investment in 2023, reflecting the larger 61% drop in food tech funding. The pattern is similar in Australia, where plant-based meat makers have witnessed a 70% decrease in financing since 2020, and a 13% drop from 2022, reaching AU$16.75M last year.
However, the number of companies producing vegan meat analogues increased from 10 in 2019 to 22 in 2023. As Food Frontier outlined in its supermarket audit released in February, this has given rise to an explosion in the number of products, which went from less than 90 in 2020 to 275 in January 2024.
In fact, this figure peaked at nearly 350 in 2023, but consolidation in the category (with mergers like The Aussie Plant Based Co.) brought about a rationalisation of SKUs. “The industry could expect investment to drop further if the current economic climate continues. However, manufacturers are moving beyond the early days of requiring injections of capital from investors and seeing greater returns on collaboration, market expansion, mergers and acquisitions,” said Eassom.
“We anticipate any future investment in plant-based meat to mostly revolve around initiatives that add value to the industry by way of taste and texture – technologies and developments that help to improve the quality of the product and/or make it cheaper, thus addressing consumer barriers.”
Burgers give way to chunks, strips and crumbed formats
Courtesy: Food Frontier
Australia has witnessed a shift in consumer preference for the type of plant-based meat. Long-standing formats like burgers and mince have stabilised in number, while newer options such as strips/chunks and whole cuts have become more popular.
Crumbed chicken, deli meats, ready meals and snacking SKUs have all expanded too, pinpointing a preference for convenience. Meanwhile, vegan seafood products have fallen sharply. Additionally, the number of frozen products has increased by 10%, making up just over half of all products on shelves.
And 63% of these products are from Australian companies (up from 42% in 2020), with 48% being manufactured domestically.
“Consumers are looking for convenience, which has seen a significant increase in the supply of formats like schnitzels and nuggets, through to mince and meatballs, and to deli slices, snacking and finger foods,” Eassom outlined. “In addition, recreating the taste and texture of beef-style products – particularly chunks and strips – is more challenging than producing a crumbed or battered product where flavours can be added through the format.
“‘Southern-style’ flavourings, for example, have a greater impact on the flavour experience than the plant-based meat or animal meat itself. Such formats are readily available with animal meat through fast-food outlets and QSRs, so there is greater public acceptance.”
Plant-based meat closer to price parity
Courtesy: Food Frontier
Despite increased per capita spend amid inflation and the cost-of-living crisis, the price gap between plant-based and animal-derived meat is narrowing. While the former carried a premium of 49% in 2020, they were just 33% more expensive last year.
Vegan seafood and ready meals are almost at price parity, with only a 1.5% and 3.2% markup, respectively. On the other end of the spectrum, bacon (83%) and burgers (63.4%) carry the largest price premium.
But domestically produced plant-based meats are universally cheaper than imported products, representing a 14.8% difference. This also translates to cost-competitiveness with animal proteins, with the gap in ready meal prices down to an even smaller 0.3%, and beef chunks/strips (2.8%) and mince (8%) approaching parity too. In fact, Australian-made vegan seafood and chicken chunks/strips are actually cheaper than their conventional counterparts, costing 5.3% and 0.5% less.
“Some Australian manufacturers said they absorbed price hikes whenever feasible to shield consumers from bearing the brunt, recognising the role of pricing in consumer decision-making,” explained Eassom. “And some companies improved efficiencies in their supply chain, while others pursued vertical integration to reduce overall expenses. Another contributor to the narrowing of the price gap is the departure of several imported plant-based meats, which were more expensive per kilo than locally produced products.”
That said, regular retail prices of plant-based meats are still too high for consumers, with a 7.4% increase in cost across the board. Bacon (+27.5%) and sausages (+26.6%) have had the highest hikes (the former is the most expensive meat analogue in the country), while snacking products (21.1%) and beef chunks/strips (10%) have had the biggest price drops.
“It is worth noting that pricing is controlled by the retail sector as much as by the manufacturer and with relatively low volume sales, the margin demanded by retailers necessarily affects the RRP,” noted Eassom. “As volume of sales increases, the potential reduction in margins should see price parity grow closer.”
“If overseas trends are anything to go by, we think the Australian market, when it can, will see even closer price parity,” he added. This could happen in several ways: retailers could introduce a policy of increasing plant-based food sales and sell their products at price parity, something European chain stores are doing; manufacturers will likely become more efficient in making products (many are still young companies and improving scaling costs); and local production could be expanded, driving prices further down.
Health the largest driver, taste the biggest detractor
Courtesy: v2food
Research shows that 20-39% of Australians are cutting back on meat or eating none at all, with 38% open to replacing it with a plant-based option. Health seems to be the major influencing factor, with protein requirements and ultra-processing top of mind. After consulting with manufacturers, Food Frontier found that they are prioritising health and nutrition in plant-based meat production.
This is followed by price, thanks to the higher cost of living. High costs are also a deterrent, as is the taste of these products, which is the tallest barrier for plant-based meat purchases. “In line with most comparable markets, Australian consumers who consciously plan their diet say that health and nutrition are key drivers for their dietary decisions and corresponding purchasing behaviour. These rate higher, for example, than environmental issues or animal welfare (vegan consumers excepted),” said Eassom.
“Interest in plant-based meat is less driven by the positive perception of the nutritional benefits of plant-based meat and more by a growing concern of the negative effects of red meat consumption, deli-meat consumption, saturated fat, and lack of fibre in our diets.”
However, partly due to a lack of press coverage – only 5% of Australian media stories mentioned the impact of food on climate change between 2011 and 2021 – consumers are still not big on the environmental benefits of plant-based meat.
“In line with most comparable markets, Australian consumers who consciously plan their diet say that health and nutrition are key drivers for their dietary decisions and corresponding purchasing behaviour. These rate higher, for example, than environmental issues or animal welfare (vegan consumers excepted),” said Eassom. “Interest in plant-based meat is less driven by the positive perception of the nutritional benefits of plant-based meat and more by a growing concern of the negative effects of red meat consumption, deli-meat consumption, saturated fat, and lack of fibre in our diets.”
The road ahead
Courtesy: Food Frontier
In Food Frontier’s first State of the Industry report, Deloitte Access Economics modelled three potential 10-year scenarios for the plant-based meat manufacturing industry. These are based on three trajectories. The first centres on these products as conscious consumers’ choice, a conservative estimate; the second is a moderate forecast labelling vegan meats as popular and accessible alternatives; and the third, more accelerated prediction analyses these as popular mass-market commodities.
But the change in market size from 2019 to 2023 is not on track to meet the potential scenarios outlined in its first such report, thanks to “a confluence of macroeconomic trends”, “supply chain factors specific to the food manufacturing sector industry”, low repeat purchases due to poor experiences with early meat analogues, and assumptions that behaviour change would be much faster.
“Some products were not meeting consumer expectations around taste, and the higher price point compared to conventional counterparts has reduced repeat purchases, leading to a revised forecast value,” explained Eassom.
The first scenario now predicts sales to reach AU$361M by 2033, a conservative estimate accounting for 896 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs. The second forecast – representing increased R&D and infrastructure investment, reduced import reliance and lower meat consumption – would mean sales hitting $1.65B, with 6,063 FTE jobs. The third and most aggressive scenario, meanwhile, will see 17,430 FTE jobs and sales of $3.7B by 2033.
“Scenario two is considered the most likely to play out. It depicts a steady growth path until 2033, mirroring the ongoing medium-term trends observed over the past five years, particularly the robust growth from FY19 to FY20,” said Eassom. “Within this scenario, moderate growth is seen across both the retail and foodservice sectors in the category, with a parallel increase noted in the domestic plant-based meat manufacturing industry.”
He added: “There is limited further growth from the early adopters and diet evangelists. The challenge is to normalise the consumption of plant-based meat alternatives as an occasional part of the diet of flexitarians. Scenario two models two variables (number of consumers and frequency of consumption) that we believe represent achievable growth trajectories.”
Geared towards meat-eaters, Impossible Foods’ first ad campaign since its rebrand is all about flavour and health – the two things Americans care most about in their food.
A hot-dog-eating contest, lusting over nuggets, and an overly long sub are all featured in Impossible Foods’ first marketing campaign after refreshing its brand identity in March, with the plant-based meat pioneer declaring: “We’re solving the meat problem with more meat.”
The new campaign debuted at last night’s Met Gala red carpet show, which over-indexes on Impossible Foods customers, according to the company. At the garden-themed event, the celebrity attendees got to sample Impossible sliders with brie and truffle aioli, and passionfruit BBQ Impossible chicken nuggets.
The hero 30-second ad is a fast-paced walk-and-talk spot, with the protagonist outlining how “meat has problems”, and to solve them, we should eat more of it – only caveat? It should be made from plants. Describing the meat problem on its website, the brand notes how it’s “too delicious”, but that we eat so much of it, it’s causing problems – for our bodies as well as the planet.
“We see this campaign as a way to let meat eaters know Impossible meat is the best way to keep eating meat you love, just without a lot of the problems associated with animal meat,” said chief marketing and creative officer Leslie Sims. “Whether you’re a vegan, hardcore meat eater or somewhere in between, we have you covered.”
Changing how we see meat
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
The months-long campaign – which will run on TV and streaming, and digital, social media and billboards – was conceived via a collaboration between Impossible Foods’ in-house creative team and three-time AdAge Small Agency of the Year winner Erich and Kallman.
It features a distinct Americana feel designed to feel familiar and relatable to meat-eaters, with cultural traditions like a backyard barbecue, hot-dog-eating contest and a burger joint referenced ahead of grilling season. One scene also depicts a family-style meal with a giant bowl of spaghetti and Impossible meatballs.
The 30-second spot is accompanied by 15-second ads each spotlighting a different product – beef, chicken or pork – in a tongue-in-cheek tone, which follows the brand’s Making Meat History campaign from 2023. The latter compared an Impossible burger with a conventional one, which resonated with meat-eaters, leading the company to realise it could hone in even more on the similarities between old meat and new meat.
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
This is why there’s a call to action directed to meat-loving Americans – who eat way more meat than is recommended or needed – with Impossible Foods imploring them to solve the meat problem with more burgers, hot dogs and meatballs. The idea is to reframe meat as a delicious food made from plants, instead of forcing meat-eaters to change their lifestyles.
“For this latest campaign, we wanted to have a clear value proposition for them – you love meat, so why not try us and be better for the planet?” Sims told AdAge. On the humorous tone of the ads, she explained: “We are talking to hard-core meat-eaters, but we don’t want to be preachy.”
Taste and health over environmental messaging
With the new marketing campaign, Impossible Foods is doubling down on its food- and health-forward messaging, with the focus very much on flavour and nutrition. For example, one of the hero commercial’s scenes urges consumers to “punch cholesterol in the face”, highlighting how its meats have zero cholesterol.
The environmental emphasis is no longer a centrepiece in the ads, which was expected after the brand’s refresh put taste and health at the heart of its packaging. Speaking to Reuters last month, Impossible Foods CEO Peter McGuinness outlined why the brand has taken this direction: “We’re not leading with the planet because not enough people care. It’s the reality now.”
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
And he’s right – the environmental pull of plant-based eating isn’t as strong as it used to be. One 2023 survey found that the top two attributes discouraging Americans from trying plant-based meat are flavour (48%) and nutrition (35%). Another poll revealed that health is the major reason Americans eat vegan or vegetarian diets, with six in 10 choosing it.
It’s why the brand launched a Beef Lite version of its mince, which is approved as heart-healthy by the American Heart Association. But a company spokesperson told Green Queen in December that taste is the main reason behind consumers deciding to purchase a product again or not”.
The shift was most visible in the rebrand two months ago, which saw the company switch from teal green to red packaging with a larger imagery, and a higher focus on taste descriptors, saturated fat and sodium. The colour change was designed to reinforce the meatiness of its products and their likeness to conventional counterparts. Red is a colour more naturally associated with meat, as opposed to green, which is the symbol of eco-friendliness and vegan food. At the time, Impossible Foods laid out its aim to appeal to the “carnivorous cravings of meat-eaters”.
“Our intent with the new packaging – and the overall design of our new brand identity – is to lean into the craveability of meat,” a representative told Green Queen. “Taste is, of course, a big part of this. Between the bold red aesthetic and new food photography highlighted on the front of each product, we’re deliberately putting the deliciousness of our meat from plants front and centre.”
Courtesy: Impossible Foods/Green Queen
And consumer testing shows they do love its products – the brand says 80% of people who try its burgers like them, and that taste-testers preferred its chicken nuggets three-to-one in a head-to-head comparison with conventional nuggets.
The marketing campaign comes amid a flurry of activity for Impossible Foods. It has been rolling out its new beef hot dogs at baseball stadiums across the US, serving its meat to the US army, transitioning a cattle ranch into a farm that produces plant-based meat ingredients, and – more long term – weighing up a liquidity event that could include a sale or an IPO, all while entering into Whole Foods nationwide and rejigging how it sells its meat. It’s a busy time for Impossible Foods, and one it will hope translates into success.
British cultivated meat company Meatly has created a first-of-its-kind protein-free culture medium that can significantly reduce the cost of manufacturing these proteins.
Ahead of its impending regulatory approval in the UK, Meatly has announced the development of a culture medium that can bring down the cost of producing cultivated meat, solving one of the industry’s major bottlenecks.
Culture media are essential to the production of cultivated meat, entailing a mix of nutrients to facilitate the growth of animal cells. According to Meatly, this accounts for the majority of the costs involved in the entire process, reducing which is key to reaching price parity with conventional meat.
Typically, culture media cost hundreds of pounds per litre, but Meatly’s protein-free version brings that down to just £1 ($1.25) – a fraction of what companies currently pay. Co-founder and chief scientific officer Helder Cruz called it a “huge step forward” in scaling the startup’s technology and commercialising its products at an affordable price.
Our protein-free culture medium represents a critical milestone for us and the wider cultivated meat industry,” he said. “By setting this new benchmark, we are driving the cost of production down significantly, which is something the industry has been grappling with for years.”
Slashing the most significant costs by 100-fold
Courtesy: Meatly/Omni
The new cell culture medium created by Meatly contains no serum or animal-derived components, steroids, hormones, antibiotics or growth factors – the latter is responsible for the bulk of the costs associated with culture media. The startup’s innovation is food-safe and used in its suspension culture bioreactors without microcarriers, which are typically needed to help cells proliferate and enhance their density.
The fact that there are no microcarriers, growth factors or expensive proteins means industrial-scale production could be economically viable, and purchasing higher volumes of the culture medium would only bring down prices further.
The cost of producing cultivated meat is one of the industry’s most pressing challenges. But researchers have pinpointed cell culture media design as the most significant hurdle facing the commercialisation of these proteins, given that optimising media for a specific culture system requires tons of effort and investment.
One estimate has suggested that cultivated meat needs to reach production costs of $2.92 per lb to be on par with conventional meat. And while companies have managed to reduce costs by 99% in less than a decade, McKinsey forecasts that it will still take until 2030 for it to reach price parity.
Meatly’s breakthrough could speed that projection up considerably. “Meatly has single-handedly slashed those costs a hundredfold or more,” said Jim Mellon, founder of Agronomics, an investor in the startup. He noted that the development establishes the company as a “true technological leader” in the field. “This is a huge step forward in bringing the cost of cultivated meat to price parity with conventional meat and, ultimately, toward the mass adoption of cultivated products.”
Meatly gears up for UK cultivated meat debut
Courtesy: Harriet Constable/Meatly
The development of the cell culture media comes two months after Meatly completed the first production run of its canned chicken pâté for pets, which combined cultivated chicken with pulses and vegetables from British vegan dog food company Omni.
Previously called Good Dog Food, the London-based startup rebranded in late 2023 ahead of a planned market launch this year, which would make it the first company to commercialise cultivated meat in Europe. Meatly indicated in February that it was expecting regulatory approval from the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) within “the next three months”.
“The company expects to shortly receive regulatory approval, and I am excited to feed their delicious products to my dogs,” said Mellon. The FSA has kickstarted a process to accelerate the market entry of novel foods in the UK, after finally breaking away from the pre-Brexit laws it inherited from the EU.
It would be a major milestone in the cultivated meat sector, built upon a relatively minor level of investment – Meatly has raised £3.6M since being founded in 2022, much lower than many of its counterparts across the world. According to the startup, that proves “there is a fast and cost-effective way to scale cultivated meat”. The 150g Omni Feast: Chicken Revolution cans will cost about £1 each.
Meatly has secured “key partnerships with manufacturers”, including with petcare retailer (and seed investor) Pets at Home, ahead of its market entry. “We need cultivated meat now more than ever. Pet food is the natural starting point, given consumers’ excitement,” Meatly co-founder and CEO Owen Ensor previously said. “We’re thrilled to be at the heart of the future of meat production in the UK.”
Israeli cultivated meat leader Aleph Farms has partnered with biotech startup BioRaptor to integrate AI into its production process, which will enable scalability and reduce costs.
Ahead of launching into restaurants in its home country, Aleph Farms is tapping into BioRaptor’s artificial-intelligence-led operating system to optimise the production of its cultivated beef.
By partnering with BioRaptor, an expert in streamlining biotech processes through data and AI, Aleph Farms hopes to derisk its scale-up plans as it transitions to large-scale facilities with significant capital expenditure. The AI will complement human intelligence by collecting and extrapolating both large datasets generated throughout the cultivated meat development process.
“There are massive amounts of data created during the development of state-of-the-art production bioprocesses, which, when extracted, interpreted, and collected into actionable insights, can boost productivity and reduce costs, time, and human error,” said BioRaptor co-founder and CEO Ori Zakin. “This is exactly our plan with Aleph Farms.”
Using AI to make cultivated meat cheaper and faster
Courtesy: Amit Goren/Aleph Farms
Cultivated meat is grown in bioreactors that provide controlled, clean, and closed environments where animal cells can thrive. These cultivators continuously feed the cells with nutrients and are monitored for various process parameters such as pH, dissolved oxygen and temperature. Understanding this relationship between the cell feed and its environment is vital for defining the most optimal growth conditions.
BioRaptor’s solution allows Aleph Farms to smoothly evaluate cross-experimental findings to and have the results configured on a single platform. The ability to review both historical and real-time data, and make projections that enhance experiments leads to a more efficient and less cost-intensive scale-up process.
At Aleph Farms’ current facility in Rehovot, Israel, it can initially produce 10 tonnes of cultivated steak annually. It also announced the acquisition of another plant in Modi’in, Israel last year, alongside an agreement with ESCO Aster in Singapore (the world’s only approved industrial manufacturer for cultured meat). And in February, it partnered with biomanufacturer BBGI and synbio research and manufacturing company Fermbox Bio to set up a production plant in Thailand.
Scalability and costs are two of the most pressing challenges of the cultivated meat industry. Aleph Farms, which aims to reach $1B in revenue by 2030, has previously received 66 million NIS ($18M) in government funding to precisely address these bottlenecks.
Cultured meat itself needs to reach production costs of $2.92 per pound to be price-competitive with conventional meat. But while companies have managed to cut manufacturing costs by 99% in less than a decade, McKinsey analysis suggests it will still take until 2030 for these proteins to become as cheap as meat. “Of common animal proteins, beef delivers the highest value in global markets, so by focusing on cultivated beef, we are able to shorten the timeline to price parity,” Yoav Reisler, senior marketing and communications manager at Aleph Farms, told Green Queen in January.
“By simplifying bioprocess data management and suggesting optimal experimental design, we can enable smoother technological developments for the processes that the cellular agriculture industry has been pioneering,” added Zakin.
Alternative protein’s AI footprint expands
Courtesy: Daniel Elkayam/Aleph Farms
With the large amount of data generated by Aleph Farms, the BioRaptor team-up could help accelerate the development of robust and scalable production processes, according to Sagit Shalel-Levanon, senior director of process development at the cultivated meat startup.
“Our team’s scientific expertise in design of experiment (DoE) methodology and statistical analysis, complemented by BioRaptor’s AI-driven solution, will allow us to better understand the interactions between various process inputs and conditions,” she said.
“Deploying BioRaptor’s most advanced AI and machine learning solution into our R&D will provide additional support for our team to optimise processes for cost and scalability, laying a solid groundwork for our mid- to large-scale production,” said co-founder and CTO Neta Lavon. “Our approach is to build the right foundations as we grow and avoid massive capital expenditure before our process is fully ready for scale.
She continued: “We are investing time and resources to implement the most advanced tools into our differentiated technology platform and its various applications in food and beyond, thereby realising the full potential of cellular agriculture in the burgeoning bioeconomy.”
An increasing number of alternative protein startups are deploying AI to streamline ingredient discovery, research, and production processes. Players like Chile’s NotCo, California’s Climax Foods and Singapore’s Howw Foods are all harnessing the tech for product development, while US mycelium meat maker Meati has used it to conduct a study about its product’s health benefits. And earlier this week, Shiru launched a protein discovery platform and marketplace powered by the tech.
But AI also comes with its own climate conundrums, as these systems are run on large, 24/7 data centres that mostly use fossil fuel energy, accounting for 2.5-3.7% of global GHG emissions. They use a massive amount of water too, with US centres having consumed 1.7 billion litres per day in 2014 – 0.14% of the nation’s daily water use.
“On an ongoing basis, we carefully manage our environmental footprint and this includes conducting a life-cycle assessment on our cultivated meat products, alongside measuring our corporate ecological footprint (greenhouse gases, electricity, water, and waste),” Reisler told Green Queen. “In addition, we have launched programs for energy and resource efficiency. Our transition to renewable energies, our waste management program and our detailed roadmap to net zero help us navigate through a variety of challenges as we scale and eventually meet our ambitious environmental goals.”
Aleph Farms to roll out cultivated steak in foodservice
Courtesy: Aleph Farms
Aleph Farms hopes to use BioRaptor’s AI to build the right foundations and avoid tall capital expenditures before its process is fully ready to scale. In January, it became the third cultivated meat producer in the world to receive regulatory approval, with Israel’s health ministry clearing it to sell Black Angus Petit Steak under its Aleph Cuts brand.
“We are determined to build up our capabilities in production and sales support before initiating a full product launch. This will help ensure a steady supply of Aleph Cuts to consumers and continuous revenue for Aleph Farms,” said Reisler.”
“Following the completion of a Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) inspection of our pilot production facility in Rehovot, we will introduce Aleph Cuts in limited quantities via tailored tasting experiences for consumers and other relevant stakeholders,” said Reisler. “This targeted market activation allows us to gather direct feedback from consumers and refine our brand positioning in collaboration with them, helping lay the foundation for a successful full launch.”
He continued: “As Aleph Cuts becomes a new and differentiated category in the animal protein space, applying these marketing learnings is vital before becoming a staple on restaurant menus, in foodservice, and, eventually, in retail.”
The company, which has raised a total of $118M in funding, is also awaiting approval from food safety regulators in Singapore, Switzerland, the UK and the US. The latter made headlines this week after Florida banned the production and sale of cultivated meat in the state. “Barriers to process in specific countries and states may force producers of cultivated meat to redirect resources elsewhere, including to China. Can they afford to relinquish their global leadership due to shortsighted political interests during an election year?” noted Reisler.
“Limiting consumer freedom and restricting entrepreneurial freedom contradict the fundamental principle of a free democratic society. Shouldn’t consumers be given the freedom to make informed choices on their food?” he added.
“Banning a product that’s not yet on the shelves doesn’t improve ranchers’ condition. Fear of change often stems from a lack of trust in the system and concerns about the future. We are ready for an open exchange on how to implement a transition to sustainable and secure food systems, one that is just and inclusive for all stakeholders, including and especially for livestock farmers.”
UK plant-based meat challenger brand THIS is launching the country’s first nationally distributed vegan chicken thighs, starting with Tesco next week.
THIS, the cult-favourite plant-based meat brand, is rolling out a first-to-market vegan chicken thigh SKU in the UK next week. The product is the only nationally distributed plant-based chicken thigh, and will be introduced at the UK’s largest retailer, Tesco, on May 13.
Available in packs of four, the THIS Isn’t Chicken Thighs cost £3.80, with the company noting it could be used across a variety of dishes, such as traybakes, burgers, curries and stews. Made from a blend of soy and fava bean protein, they can be used whole too, and cooked in a pan or in the oven.
“We’re reinventing the way people experience plant-based dining,” said recently appointed CEO Mark Cuddigan. “We’re on a mission to lead a revolution to change what people eat, to protect animals and the environment – and with our ridiculously delicious and nutritious plant-based food, we’ve got you covered with the ultimate plant-based chicken thigh.”
The new chicken thighs are touted to be high in protein and fibre, with a similar recipe to its flagship THIS Isn’t Chicken Pieces SKU. It will appeal to the increasingly health-conscious UK consumer – a 1,000-person survey from last year found that health benefits are the top reason why Brits eat plant-based meat, cited by 39% of respondents.
But the whole-cut nature of the new product is the biggest differentiator from the chicken pieces. The company binds together soy and fava bean protein with an olive-oil-based fat to mimic the texture of thighs, which are then coated in a layer of seaweed to replicate the structure and texture of chicken skin.
This meaty, fibrous cut is achieved through THIS’s extrusion technology, which has three pending patents. Whole-cut products like thighs, wings and legs have complex, three-dimensional structures, where protein fibres are bound together by a network of connective tissue and intramuscular fat. This provides the juiciness and texture associated with these meats, which THIS said it has managed to recreate in its chicken thigh analogue.
It’s not the company’s first whole-cut meat either. It also makes plant-based chicken breast and roast chicken and stuffing SKUs, both of which have been launched in the last eight months.
THIS has gone from strength to strength
Courtesy: THIS
The new product comes at a time of rapid progress for THIS, which says it is the fastest-growing brand in the plant-based meat segment. The company’s 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. Its annualised revenue reached £24M last year.
This has been aided by a range of new products. Within its chicken range, the roast chicken SKU was the best-performing line in the category in 2023, even though it was only introduced in September. But the company also launched a chicken and bacon pie in partnership with Pieminster around the same time, and this year alone, it has rolled out the chicken breast, chicken shawarma, frozen beef mince, as well as skin-on chicken wings in collaboration with BrewDog.
“Innovation has been a core part of its growth over the last two years as it has diversified into a wider range of segments, including frozen, ready meals and food to go, as well as continuing to launch new products in its core segment of chilled meat alternatives,” NielsenIQ senior insight analyst Carol Ratcliffe told the Grocer last year.
THIS marketing director Dee Bulsara added. “The number one THIS rule is that we don’t proceed to launch unless we think the product can trick a meat-eater once it’s in a dish.”
The company has recently undergone a change in leadership as well, with Cuddigan taking over from founders and former co-CEOs Andy Shovel and Pete Sharman in February (who remain involved in the business). While THIS is aiming to have its first profitable quarter this year, the larger meat-free category in the UK has suffered, with sales down by £38.4M last year.
. “For too long, there’s been too many brands with wildly varying product quality, that have put off meat reducers from truly believing in the category. It’s also been confusing to shop – no supermarket needs to list 15 types of plant-based sausage,” Shovel told Green Queen last year. “We’re now at a stage where the sector is consolidating and poor-quality brands are coming out the market, with more brands consumers can trust and shelves that are way easier to navigate.”
Walmart has launched Bettergoods, a private-label brand that focuses on trend-forward, chef-inspired foods traversing better-for-you and free-from products that don’t cost the earth.
High culinary quality, chef-inspired, free-from and plant-based are the cornerstones of Walmart’s new Bettergoods brand. It’s the largest private-label food launch in 20 years by America’s largest retailer, as well as its fastest ever.
While the branding and product offerings have a premium feel to them, the idea – as is the case with all own-label brands – is to keep things wallet-friendly. It’s why, for example, the range’s salted caramel oat milk ice cream is priced at $3.62, compared to $4.48 for a pint of Ben & Jerry’s non-dairy oatmeal cream pie. In fact, over 70% of the products in the lineup are under $5, and while the total ranges from $2 to $15.
“Bettergoods is more than just a new private brand. It’s a commitment to our customers that they can enjoy unique culinary flavours at the incredible value Walmart delivers,” said Scott Morris, senior VP of private brands and food at Walmart.
“Today’s customers expect more from the private brands they purchase – they want affordable, quality products to elevate their overall food experience. The launch of Bettergoods delivers on that customer need in a meaningful way,” he added.
The three pillars of Bettergoods products
Courtesy: Walmart
Bettergoods differs from other private labels in that it doesn’t exclusively offer direct alternatives to national brands at lower prices – many of its products are unique to Walmart, which adds to the brand’s consumer appeal. It uses “trend-forward” ingredients and flavours to curate culinary concepts that it feels would attract shoppers most, and promises them at low prices.
There’s also a Satisfaction Guarantee attached to it – under this policy, the retailer accepts returns for any unopened products in their original packaging, and offers a full refund.
The Bettergoods line comprises over 300 products across Walmart’s aisles and freezers, spanning dairy, snacks, beverages, pasta, soups, coffee, chocolate and more. These fall into three distinct pillars. The first is centred around culinary experiences, where products highlight innovative recipes and elevated ingredients, like specialty salts and seasonings. Think a $3 Hot Honey Seasoning, $4 Creamy Corn Jalapeno Chowder, and a premium Bronze Cut Pasta for just under $2.
The second category is all about plant-based, featuring distinct green packaging and a suite of non-dairy products like the aforementioned oat milk ice creams (a seven-stong range), boxed mac and cheese, and vegan cheese that it claims melts and gives you the satisfaction of a cheese pull, all under $4. For the US’s leading grocer to put plant-based in such sharp focus is a big deal, and will go a long way in helping it reach its net-zero goal for 2040.
The final pillar is called Made Without, which is Walmart’s version of free-from. This caters to coeliacs and people with gluten intolerances, as well as health-skewed individuals looking for cleaner-label foods with no artificial flavours, colours or added sugars. These include offerings like a four-ingredient Sweet Cream Dairy Creamer, and gluten- and antibiotic-free chicken nuggets. With Walmart witnessing a “slight pullback” in spending on traditional groceries due to the advent of Ozempic, doubling down on better-for-you foods is a no-brainer.
Private labels finding success with shoppers
Courtesy: Walmart
Bettergood’s breadth of products is something you might find in a Target store – that’s intentional, as Walmart’s VP of creative and design, David Hartman, told Fast Company. “We wanted to make it easy for our customers to find better food alternatives,” he said. “The bright, vibrant, colour-on-colour palette for the core assortment makes our brand easy to find, and is used to express the vibrancy of the food and the joy of eating.”
These products are geared towards younger, affluent demographics looking for vegan and speciality foods. “As an industry we’re seeing younger customers be more brand agnostic, prioritizing quality and value and driving increased interest in private brands,” Morris told Axios.
With the cost of living straining consumer wallets, food options that don’t break the bank but continue to deliver on taste and satisfaction have become increasingly important. That has given rise to the popularity of private labels, which gained in market share in US retail last year, at the expense of name brands. In fact, own-label sales reached a record high in 2023, surpassing $236B in sales.
And it’s not just the US where these supermarket brands have found success. In the UK, Veganuary was flooded with private-label plant-based launches this year, after these ranges grew at twice the speed of branded products in 2023. And in Slovakia, a peer-reviewed study has shown that 80% of consumers find the quality levels of vegan and vegetarian private-label products to be good or appropriate.
Walmart’s Bettergoods range – select products from which are available now, with a full rollout expected in the coming months – will hope to ride the own-label wave in the US, competing with the likes of Whole Foods’ 365 Everyday Value, Kroger’s Simple Truth, and Target’s Good & Gather, among others.
In one of his final major speeches, outgoing Singapore prime minister Lee Hsien Loong mentioned “novel food biotechnologies” as a promising job prospect – it’s a nod to the country’s food tech pedigree.
In two weeks’ time, Lee Hsien Long will leave office after serving as Singapore’s prime minister for two decades. In that time, Singapore has undergone a transformation, emerging as the global frontier for food tech, thanks to a favourable research, funding and manufacturing environment, and progressive regulations.
In his annual speech on May Day – or Labour Day – at the Marina Bay Sands convention centre this week, Lee highlighted the actions that have brought success to Singapore. In one part of the speech, he touched upon how all parts of the island are equipped with good schools to provide equal opportunities to everyone, regardless of economic status or locale.
This, he highlighted, is why Singapore’s youth or graduate unemployment rates are very low. “Young people take up jobs that did not even exist in their parents’ generation,” he said.
“They become data scientists, machine learning engineers, carbon traders, novel food biotechnologies,” he added, nodding to the country’s flourishing food tech scene. He followed this up with a quick explanation too – “that means you take a plant and you make it look like wagyu beef” – which brought some laughs from the audience.
For Lee to namecheck alternative proteins in a speech about the most promising job sectors, and even go on to highlight what it entails, is reflective of Singapore’s strong standing in the industry. It’s why so many food tech startups flock to the city-state from around the world, and cherry-pick it as the perfect location to go to market.
The career opportunities in alternative proteins
Lee’s speech came just a week after Nurasa, the sustainable food innovation platform of state-owned VC firm Temasek, inaugurated the Food Tech Innovation Centre (FTIC), a hub dedicated to the R&D and scale-up of alternative proteins.
And last month, Singapore saw the opening of a new Future Food Lab at Singapore Polytechnic, an effort to scale up its capacity for novel food manufacturing and attract investments in R&D. It will also support Singapore’s 30 by 30 food security vision – the goal is to have 30% of food produced domestically by 2030 (it’s currently under 10%) – with innovating like low-sodium plant-based meats and a high-fibre mushroom protein bars.
This followed the launch of a first-of-its-kind career map for plant-based meat manufacturing in the Lion City, initiated by alternative protein think tank the Good Food Institute (GFI) APAC. It entails ingredient extraction and optimisation, formulation and texturisation, product application development, commercial-scale manufacturing, and quality and regulatory management, with the aim of building a bigger, more skilled workforce that can scale up and lower the costs of future food production.
Courtesy: GFI APAC
GFI APAC highlights the job roles involved in these segments, including food technologists, application scientists, and factory operators – highlighting the different skillsets and expertise levels that the industry requires. In fact, according to the ClimateWorks Foundation and the Global Methane Hub, the alternative protein sector could support up to 83 million jobs internationally by 2050.
“The city-state’s scientific talent pool is its greatest resource, carefully cultivated by visionary leaders who see not only the career fields that exist now but also those that will drive the economies of the future,” said Mirte Gosker, managing director of GFI APAC.
“Creating a booming business ecosystem requires not only financial investment but confidence that the national strategies spearheaded by various public agencies are aligned with the private sector on an industry’s long-term ambitions,” she added.
Singapore’s food tech prowess
Gosker noted that Lee’s shoutout to novel food biotechnologists is “just the latest signal to alternative protein startups and researchers that Singapore’s leadership is committed to helping them succeed”.
But it’s not just regulatory breakthroughs. As community and youth minister Alvin Tan outlined at an agrifood conference in October, the country is a hotbed for food tech, inviting companies to “come to the best place in the world for food innovation”.
Courtesy: Alvin Tan/LinkedIn
GFI APAC similarly labelled the island as a “global testbed” for the industry, helping startups incubate, innovate, partner and export their alternative protein innovations internationally. At least 25 non-local companies have a presence in Singapore for R&D and business development, while it’s home to almost a quarter (24%) of all alternative protein startups in Asia-Pacific.
“Despite its small population and lack of natural resources, Singapore is responsible for nearly a quarter of all alt protein scientific publications released in APAC since 2020, and is home to three of the five most active regional research centres,” noted Gosker.
But with Lee leaving his post, will it be a tall order for incoming prime minister Lawrence Wong to maintain the progress built on his predecessor’s 20 years in charge? Gosker doesn’t think so, explaining that policy continuity and progressive change are “key tenets of the Singapore model, which leverages public investments to cumulatively improve citizens’ livelihoods over the short and long term”.
“Singapore puts a high priority on building durable institutions that lift up whole sectors, such as shared-use facilities for alt protein R&D and production that are greater than any individual company or person,” she said. “Prime minister Lee name-dropping novel food biotechnologists in one of his final major speeches is further evidence that leadership in food innovation is now central to Singapore’s national identity.”
Singaporean sustainable food production platform Nurasa has opened a Food Tech Innovation Centre to help alternative protein companies scale up production and enhance flavour and nutrition.
Nurasa, the sustainable food innovation platform owned by Temasek, last week inaugurated the Food Tech Innovation Centre (FTIC) in Singapore, a hub dedicated to the R&D and scale-up of alternative proteins.
Operational since 2023, the 3,840 sq m facility is located within Biopolis – the city-state’s innovation community – and features high-tech labs with plant protein extrusion and precision fermentation capabilities. They’re designed to help sustainable food manufacturers scale up their production processes and accelerate their paths to market.
“The centre provides a space for different companies to come together and innovate, which benefits not just Singapore but also the wider region,” said Singapore’s deputy prime minister, Heng Swee Keat, who was present at the FTIC’s launch.
Precision fermentation and HME labs unlock alt-protein potential
Courtesy: Nurasa
The FTIC features shared laboratories, collaborative workspaces, private suites adaptable for small offices, and labs where partners can co-create. It has two facilities with advanced capabilities that will allow alternative protein companies to speed up manufacturing. The first is a precision fermentation hub developed and operated by contract development and manufacturing organisation ScaleUp Bio (a joint venture between Nurasa and ADM) and the government-owned Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR). This has bioreactors that have a capacity of up to 100 litres.
“Public-private partnerships can help accelerate innovation by kickstarting research and development in areas of emerging technology, facilitating talent exchange and minimising duplications in investments,” said Heng. “Doing so will enable more viable pathways to translation, commercialisation, and scaling for impact.”
Meanwhile, the second facility is owned by ScaleUp Bio and will serve as its new headquarters, focusing on high-moisture extrusion (HME) for plant proteins, with the goal of making meat analogues with superior texture and mouthfeel.
“At the Food Tech Innovation Centre, cutting-edge technology is at the heart of everything we do,” said Nurasa CEO Guo Xiuling. “Our facility enables us to challenge the status quo of the existing food system and develop solutions alongside our startup and corporate partners.”
She added that both labs can serve as small-scale production sites to make limited samples for market testing, allowing companies to tweak products based on consumer feedback at early stages, and eventually commercialise a public-ready product.
The FTIC will also serve as a hub for the NuFood Concept Studio, Nurasa’s open innovation platform for sustainable food development and commercialisation. The studio encourages consumer-centric food innovation and addresses areas like low-sugar, cholesterol-free and gut-friendly foods. Companies will be able to search for the newest ingredients, co-develop recipes based on market insights and the latest tech, and deliver accessible, adaptable and affordable breakthroughs to strengthen food security – Singapore’s 30 by 30 initiative aims to reduce import reliance by producing 30% of all food consumed in the island nation by 2030.
Nurasa’s FTIC a breeding ground for innovation
Courtesy: Nourish Ingredients
The ecosystem at the FTIC comprises industry partners, portfolio companies and joint ventures like ScaleUp Bio and Cremer Sustainable Foods, a joint venture of Nurasa and German agrifood giant Cremer. For the unveiling of the centre, Cremer Sustainable Foods worked with Australian precision fermentation startup Nourish Ingredients, which makes animal-free fats and lipids to enhance alternative proteins.
The two entities created a vegan chicken satay using Nourish Ingredients’ Tastilux fat, for which it’s in the middle of the Singapore Food Agency’s regulatory approval process, according to the Straits Times. Once it receives the all-clear, products using Tastilux will be allowed to be sold to consumers in the country. (The company recently also showcased its Creamilux fat for use in dairy alternatives and confectionery.)
Cremer Sustainable Foods, whose 1,000 sq m lab can pump out 1,300 tonnes of product per year, is making plant-based duck strips and siu mai, and is preparing to launch ready-to-eat vegan black pepper chicken and laksa next month.
Such innovations are rife at Nurasa’s FTIC. Local food manufacturer Lim Kee has also partnered with Cremer Sustainable Foods to launch its vegan chilli crab pau (a bun filled with Singapore’s national seafood dish). The former is working with Swiss ingredients giant Givaudan to improve the chilli crab’s flavour.
Speaking of which, Givaudan created a chocolate milk with 50% less cocoa with the same taste and mouthfeel – cocoa production has a heavy climate impact and is littered with human rights abuses. To make up for the lack of cocoa, the company used a combination of different ingredients that can help reduce its carbon footprint.
Meanwhile, beanless coffee startup Prefer – which raised $2M in funding in February and recently launched a line of black cold brew concentrates (caffeinated and decaf) for cocktail bars – is manufacturing, processing and packaging its products at the FTIC as well.
Czech startup Mewery has achieved a breakthrough in its tech to produce cultivated meat, establishing a stable cell line to enable scalability.
Mewery has formed a stable cell line in the development process for its cultivated pork, a key step that will help enable large-scale production of its meat.
The Brno-based startup’s scientists conducted a number of cell isolations to identify which ones exhibit the most favourable response to its co-cultivation technology, which involves pig and microalgae cells in a serum-free medium.
“This achievement represents another important step forward in our ongoing efforts to bring cultivated meat to consumers,” said chief science officer Vladislav Strmiska. “The establishment of a stable cell line lays the groundwork for consistent, high-quality meat production without relying on animal agriculture.”
The milestone will help Mewery move from lab volumes of dozens of litres, and potentially hundreds of litres volume in its pilot facility, which is set to be operational in the coming months. “We are also just in the pre-negotiation phase with potential commercial scale-up partners in Europe and the US,” Rostislav Brzobohatý, Mewery’s chief commercial officer, told Green Queen.
The company is in talks with a partner in Switzerland for the successful completion of its proprietary co-cultivation process in large 200-litre bioreactors and the launch of its demo operations, which are its immediate priorities.
How stable cell lines benefit cultivated meat production
Courtesy: Mewery
A stable cell line refers to a cell population that can continually grow and retain the desired properties over many generations. It’s the foundational building block of cultivated meat, but a lack of availability of the right cell lines has been a major bottleneck for commercialisation in the industry.
Achieving stable cell lines represents a few major advantages for producers. First, it enables them to deliver consistent quality and taste. Stable cells allow precise control and characterisation, ensuring that each batch delivers a piece of cultivated meat identical to the one before.
Secondly, it reduces the reliance on livestock farming, eliminating the need for animals in the production process. A 2023 industry survey by think tank the Good Food Institute revealed that 74% of companies have achieved identical or better results after establishing a cell line in serum-free conditions.
And finally, it paves the way for large-scale production of cultivated meat, helping companies accelerate their path to commercialisation.
Apart from the stable cell lines, Mewery has also expanded its cell bank to include multiple types of non-genetically-modified porcine cells. This will help it optimise the growth conditions of these cells for faster and more efficient production, and create a broader range of cultivated meat products, such as different cuts of meat.
“We are committed to developing delicious, sustainable, and accessible cultivated meat for everyone,” said Mewery CEO Roman Lauš. “This breakthrough brings us a significant step closer to achieving that goal.”
Courtesy: Mewery
In January, Mewery was awarded €200,000 in grants from the Czech government to further improve its platform’s efficiency. The funding was set to be used to characterize basic parts of the production process and expand research efforts into cell growth and interactions. “This knowledge will be essential for designing a near-future scalable production process that is efficient, cost-effective, and meets the highest quality standards,” Lauš explained at the time.
But while the startup did receive backing from the Czech government, the country’s lawmakers were also in support of an EU bill that sought to restrict the cultivated meat sector earlier this year. “We have also learned that our government’s view on the EU Agrifish Bill is just to start a broader discussion,” Brzobohatý revealed, adding that Mewery has had a “very positive experience” while in close contact with the agriculture ministry. “We are actively discussing the creation of a legislative framework to allow controlled tastings inspired by the Dutch model.”
“As regards the proposals to restrict cultivated meat, our view is clear,” said Brzobohatý. “We believe that the choice of the food they consume is up to the consumers alone. If such food is approved by the authorities whose jurisdiction and competence this falls under, all parties should accept this. The role of politicians is to set the framework and possibly moderate the debate, but they should certainly not seek to substitute for food safety authorities.”
Mewery also indicated that part of the government investment will be used for data gathering ahead of filing for regulatory approval. While its first choice would be to apply in the US, if the regulatory framework in the EU is cleared up by this time, it will likely do so there too. “Another country we are considering is Switzerland, which meets our requirements for our pre-commercial pilot operation,” said Brzobohatý.
Disrupting an industry in disarray
Courtesy: Mewery
Founded in 2020 by Lauš, Mewery has previously teased products like meatballs and tenderloin made from 75% porcine cells and 25% microalgae cells – by developing pork on microalgae scaffolding, the startup has slashed production costs by 70%. Last year, it debuted a burger at a small tasting in its home country, where over 90% of attendees indicated their willingness to taste the cultivated product.
When asked whether its products would be hybrid (a mix of cultivated animal cells and plants), Brzobohatý said: “We are continuously exploring all the possibilities. Our product is inherently hybrid by virtue of our co-cultivation method of combining pork cells with microalgae cells. At the same time, we are considering a pork burger as our first product, which would be a natural fit if combined with plant-based mass.”
Concerns about pig meat have continued to boil over African Swine Fever outbreaks in many parts of the world recently, with pig populations being culled in Russia, Hong Kong, the UK, the US and India. This has led to a shortage of pork and subsequently driven up prices, with the viral disease adding to the meat’s already carcinogenic status.
