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Category: Alt Protein

  • Cultivated Meat Regulation: The 10 Most Supportive Countries, From Funding To Policy

    8 Mins Read

    When it comes to cultivated meat, these ten governments are the most active in terms of funding, regulatory frameworks and research resources.

    Cultivated meat is one of the key food solutions in our climate crisis-fighting arsenal. There are now over 100 startups globally working on this technology and 2022 saw some huge strides in the sector, from the largest funding round ever recorded to key product firsts.

    As pundits continue to debate the topic of whether cultivated meat will become a common reality (It can’t scale! It definitely will scale!), one major issue that needs more attention is government support. From policy to subsidies, more needs to be done to boost the industry. Certain forward-thinking governments are making moves in terms of regulation and government funding, both of which are largely seen as the crucial next step to finally getting sustainable protein grown using cellular agriculture to diners’ plates. From regulatory updates in the US to more greenlights from Singapore authorities, we take a look at the ten most active governments across the globe that are helping to make cultivated meat a reality.

    Editor’s Note: While this list focuses on countries that have allocated the most funds and/or made the biggest regulatory moves, this list is not exhaustive. There are a handful of other countries that are pushing ahead with regulatory frameworks and economic support- a few to watch include South Korea, India, Canada and the United Arab Emirates.

    Source: Emerging Proteins NZ – September 2022 Report

    1) Singapore

    Singapore famously became the world’s first country to approve the sale of cultivated meat in December 2020 when it gave the go-ahead for Eat Just’s chicken nuggets. It has since approved a slew of the food tech’s products, including chicken breast, as well as a food processing license to Esco to manufacture foods using cell-ag tech. Aussie firm Vow says it is also expecting Singapore regulators to give the go-ahead for its cultivated quail soon. Cultivated meat products are approved by the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) on a case-by-case basis, with producers submitting safety assessments to grant pre-market approval. 

    Aside from setting up its regulatory framework, which has been continually revised (four times and counting) to include new feedback from industry stakeholders, Singapore’s government has also poured money into the sector as part of its ‘30% by 2030’ local food production goal. Now housing an entire batch of homegrown startups like Shiok Meats, and foreign startups like Eat Just and Hong Kong’s Avant who have chosen the city as its Asia base, Singapore is likely to continue its lead in paving the way for global cultivated meat adoption. 

    GOOD Meat cultivated chicken
    Good Meat chicken.

    2) Israel 

    Israel is another global leader in the cultivated industry, with its Innovation Authority demonstrating clear support with its latest $18M injection into a nationwide cultivated meat consortium. The group is made up of 14 companies and 10 universities and research bodies in the country. Aside from research funding, the government has also poured public funds into the sector, contributing over $13M to early-stage startups and infrastructure to the overall alt-protein industry. 

    Aleph Farms’ thin-cut beef steak.

    3) United States

    The US is making moves towards approving the sale and consumption of cultivated meat, which will likely come in 2023. Industry watchers are eyeing the milestone after California’s Upside Foods got through the first hurdle. In November, the startup received FDA GRAS status for its cultivated chicken, becoming the first American company to have its products deemed safe to eat. This is the initial pre-market step of the country’s joint framework to regulate cultivated meat products, with the USDA then in charge of the processing, packaging and labeling steps for certain products which fall under its oversight. 

    In terms of funding, the US government has backed the sector in several different ways. Most notably, the USDA awarded a $10M grant in 2021 to Tufts University for the creation of a new National Institute for Cellular Agriculture, which was the first-ever government-funded research project. The Biden administration doubled down on its promise to support alt-proteins in September 2022: the biotech program includes funding for “foods made with cultured animal cells”. More assistance came in the way of the administration’s Global Food Security Research Strategy released in October, as part of Biden’s plan to end hunger and foster food resilience. 

    Upside Foods chicken.

    4) European Union

    For cultivated meat products to be sold in the EU, regulators at the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) will have to test the products as with any other novel foods. In addition to a pre-market safety evaluation, cultivated meat products that may use genetically modified ingredients will need to comply with the region’s GM foods regulations. 

    While the EU’s food safety rules are among the world’s most stringent, which may mean a slower pace for cultivated products to reach the market, the region is investing in the sector as part of its climate plan. In 2020, the EU’s Farm to Fork strategy included alternative proteins as a “key area of research” for a “fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly food system”, a sentiment lawmakers doubled down on within its 2021 Strategic Foresight Report. The EU’s core innovation and research funding program Horizon Europe also mentioned cultivated meat and seafood as one out of three of its core pillars, with around €7M set aside specifically for the sector. This means more money going into projects that will help make cultivated meats more cost-efficient, such as the necessary infrastructure and materials or ingredients, and scale-up efforts. 

    Mosa Meat burger.

    5) EU powerhouses: The Netherlands and Norway

    Within the EU, some of the leading governments accelerating cultivated meat includes the Netherlands, which has injected €60M into the Cellular Agriculture Netherlands consortium, and Norway, where authorities have set up a five-year research project into cellular agriculture with €2M in annual public funding.

    Government funding into the overall alt-protein sector (includes plant-based, precision fermentation). Source: Open Philanthropy Farm Animal Welfare Newsletter

    6) United Kingdom

    Right now, the UK will require any cultivated meat products to go through pre-market authorization from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) as with any other “novel foods” in order to be sold on the market. There have been some signs that a novel regulatory framework “distinct” for cultivated foods could be on the horizon, with one government policy paper suggesting that adopting these changes would be a part of the country’s successful post-Brexit economic plan. 

    Ivy Farm sausages.

    Some public funding has been injected into the industry, with the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) awarding £14M to nearly a dozen projects in May this year, one of which is the Royal Agricultural University’s research into transitioning livestock farmers towards cultivated meat. Previously, the UKRI has backed London-based Multus Biotech, a startup focused on developing cost-effective animal-free growth media to help scale cultivated meat production. 

    7) Australia and 8) New Zealand

    In Australia and New Zealand, regulators say their existing Novel Foods Standard will already be able to accommodate foods made through cell-ag tech. This will include cultivated foods that may have used genetic modification technology, which will have to comply with additional regulations. Companies will have to submit their application to the FSANZ for pre-market approval. The capability of the existing standards and labeling requirements to cope with new cultivated meat products was accepted at the Food Ministers Meeting (FMM) in November 2022. 

    Vow Foods quail meat.

    Read: 10 reasons why cultivated meat is the future of protein

    9) Japan

    Japan is poised to see a new regulatory framework for cultivated meat, with its government stating it has already put together an expert team to begin assessing the safety of these products in June 2022. This will be spearheaded by the country’s Health, Labor, and Welfare Ministry, whose panel is tasked with deciding the necessary safety precautions for the sector. These moves came after the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries launched a forum in 2020 made up of industry stakeholders, including companies and government agencies, to compile a strategy for building Japan’s alt-protein ecosystem. 

    In terms of funding, the Japanese government has supported homegrown startup IntegriCulture, awarding it a ¥240M (US$2.2M) grant in 2020 to build its first commercial bioreactor.

    IntegriCulture meat.

    10) China  

    China recently hinted that it will ramp up its investment in cultivated meats. Its latest five-year agricultural plan specifically included cultivated meat and “artificial protein” for the first time. Under the plan, the Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Affairs outlined the development of “synthetic biology technology” as key to its goal of “upgrading of the food industry, and reduc[ing] the pressure on environmental resources brought about by traditional aquaculture”. According to state media Xinhua News, Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated the need to develop new sources of protein. He commented that “developing biological science and technology” to supplement traditional livestock would be key to the country’s food resilience. 

    Lead image courtesy of Upside Foods.

    The post Cultivated Meat Regulation: The 10 Most Supportive Countries, From Funding To Policy appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Float Foods’ OnlyEg Gets the Veganuary Treatment In Singaporean Restaurants

    float foods eggs
    2 Mins Read

    Singapore’s Float Foods is launching a region-wide restaurant push for its plant-based OnlyEg during Veganuary.

    Just weeks after announcing a meal kit partnership in Hong Kong with DayDayCook, Singapore’s Float Foods is teaming up again. This time, it’s partnering with a number of restaurants on its home turf to help locals and visitors to Singapore celebrate Veganuary — the month-long campaign that encourages people to go vegan for January.

    Veganuary menus

    Float Foods has partnered with Swissotel, Park Royal Pickering, Sofitel Sentosa, and well-known cafes and restaurants including OldTown White Coffee, Potato Head, The Hainan Story, Bangkok Jam, bamboo bowls, Erwin’s Gastrobar, Level 33, Lime House, Solo Ristorante, Ling Zhi, Afterglow, The Plant Food, Makan Vegan, Warung Ijo, Daily Green, Naked Earth, and S17 Community Kitchen. 

    The menus will feature the range of OnlyEg’s ready-to-eat products including Shreds, Omelettes, Tamagoyaki, and Patties.

    OnlyEg
    OnlyEg is bringing vegan egg items to Singaporean restaurants for Veganuary | Courtesy

    “Here at Sofitel Singapore Sentosa Resort & Spa, we are proud to be doing our part for the environment by supporting OnlyEg in Veganuary as one of the many initiatives to achieve The Singapore Green Plan 2030,” Cavaliere Giovanni Viterale, General Manager for Sofitel Singapore Sentosa Resort & Spa, said in a statement.

    “A vegan diet is one of the best things we can do for the environment. By going vegan, not only do we reduce greenhouse gases, but also global acidification, land use, and water use. It is probably the single biggest way to reduce our impact on planet Earth,” Viterale said.

    “At bamboo bowls our whole concept is to have a plant-forward menu, so it made sense to partner with OnlyEg. Our primary mission is to focus on health and sustainability, so we are proud to be a part of Veganuary,” Chef Justin Hammond, bamboo bowls.

    OnlyEg

    OnlyEg is comparable to conventional chicken eggs with eight to 12 grams of protein per 100-gram serving. But they contain 70 percent less saturated fat than chicken eggs, zero cholesterol, and contain non artificial preservatives. colors, or flavors.

    OnlyEg
    OnlyEg is nutritionally comparable to chicken eggs | Courtesy

    In September, Float Foods became the first manufacturer to launch a commercially available plant-based egg Tamagoyaki in Asia.

    “We build our products around the philosophy of using plants to help consumers eat clean, naturally sourced, nutrient-dense substitutes that are beneficial for their health and wellbeing,” the company said.

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  • New Institute of Cellular Agriculture to Support Startups in the Cultivated Meat Industry

    3 Mins Read

    A new strategic partnership between investment platform Cult Food Science, the University of Alberta, and New Harvest Canada, aims to provide support for startups in the cellular agriculture industry.

    Based at the University of Alberta’s Agri-Food Discovery Place, the Institute of Cellular Agriculture’s goal is to provide space and support for “new startups, researchers, students, entrepreneurs, and product development” in the emergent sector.

    “We are at the horizon of an explosion of new ideas and ventures that will accelerate the global cellular agriculture industry,” Lejjy Gafour, CEO of Cult Food Science, said in a statement. “We are excited to be able to accelerate the launch and development of new ventures and ideas from individual founders, to supporting classic enterprises who want to adopt cellular agriculture as part of their strategy with our support.”

    Cult Food announced another strategic partnership last year, joining forces with Singapore’s Umami Meats as part of a Seed funding round.

    A ‘pivotal stage’

    Isha Datar, Executive Director of New Harvest, says cellular agriculture is at “a pivotal stage” and needs the proper infrastructure to allow the co-creation of innovation to deliver on its promises.

    The range of cultivated fish from Umami Meats
    The range of cultivated fish from Umami Meats | Courtesy

    “Canada, and Edmonton, Alberta in particular, can provide the optimal environment to support cross-disciplinary collaboration, and advance our research in areas like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning,” Datar said. “This new partnership will leverage the University of Alberta’s legacy in bioprocess engineering to bring novel technologies and innovations to the Canadian agri-food sector.”

    Positioning the Institute at the University of Alberta allows companies working on cellular agriculture products, such as cultivated meat, access to research and innovation through the university’s broad network. It also helps to accelerate the advancement of experts in the space, providing opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students.

    “This partnership with New Harvest Canada and its innovation partners will be pivotal in how our research and teaching addresses climate change, industry sustainability, and food security issues” said Dr. Heather Bruce, Chair of the Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science at the University of Alberta. “New Harvest Canada and Cult Food Science will join a nexus of startup companies at the U of A’s Agri-Food Discovery Place that is launching agriculture and food production into the 21st century.” 

    Prepping for approval

    The move comes as the industry is poised to enter the mainstream. Cultivated meat in the U.S. got its first victory in November when Upside Foods earned GRAS status from the FDA for its cultivated chicken.

    Upside Foods’ EPIC factory, Courtesy

    Upside is also one of a growing number of cultivated meat producers with large-scale factories ready to go live once they receive regulatory approval. Upside operates a 53,000 square-foot California factory that it says can produce 400,000 pounds of cultivated meat a year.

    The industry is also formalizing efforts around the naming convention for cultivated meat in order to smooth regulatory processes and appeal to consumers. A recent study found some cultivated meat terms including ‘lab-grown’ and ‘artificial’ to be off-putting.

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  • Heura’s Plant-Based Meat Lands in 200 Waitrose Stores

    2 Mins Read

    Heura, the Spanish vegan meat giant, is now available in the leading U.K. supermarket chain Waitrose.

    It’s been a big year for Barcelona-based Heura, the fastest-growing plant-based food tech startup in Europe. It kicked off 2022 with a Neat Burger partnership for Veganuary, bringing plant-based nuggets to Lewis Hamilton’s vegan fast food chain. And it’s ending the year right where it started: in the U.K. with placement in 200 Waitrose supermarkets.

    “Throughout 2023, Heura will be focused on expanding its reach across Europe, to offer even more people meat successors – 100 percent plant-based foods that are superior from a nutrient-density and sustainability standpoint,” Heura co-founder and CEO Marc Coloma said in a statement.

    Courtesy Heura

    “Over the past year, Heura has grown its availability in the U.K. sixfold, and joining the shelves of Waitrose will further address the growing desire from British consumers to reduce their intake of animal meat products,” he said.

    Heura says the U.K. is a prime market for expansion as 43 percent of Brits say they have reduced or eliminated animal meat from their diets. More than 700,000 are also expected to join the Veganuary campaign in 2023 — the monthlong commitment to eat vegan in January.

    Heura 2022 milestones

    The launch builds on other milestones for Heura this last year. It launched a crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube in April to help accelerate its growth, surpassing its target in just 12 hours, raising more than €4 million. Last month, it raised €20 million in bridge funding. In May, it launched Good Rebel Tech — a new platform created to develop “sustainable micro and macronutrient-rich foods.”

    Courtesy Heura

    Heura has been expanding the plant-based category across the globe, including locations in Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Mexico, Sweden, Switzerland, Singapore, and the Netherlands.

    The range offered in Waitrose, which is available beginning today, includes Heura’s Mediterranean Chick’n Pieces, Chorizo Burger and Spanish Chorizo Sausage.

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  • What Should We Call Cultivated Meat? New Study Provides Insight

    GOOD Meat cultivated chicken
    3 Mins Read

    New research takes a look at the terminology surrounding cultivated protein — meat and seafood grown from animal cell samples in bioreactors.

    It’s been called a lot of things — from “clean” meat to lab-grown, cell-based, and cultured meat. Its critics have labeled it Frankemeat. The industry has settled on “cultivated meat”. But what do consumers prefer? A new study took a look.

    The research, published in the journal Nature Portfolio looked at U.S. consumers and their terminology preferences.

    The findings

    “We surveyed U.S. consumers to compare nine different labels for cultivated meat and seafood products in terms of appeal, purchase intent, perceived safety, perceived allergenicity, and clarity,” Chris Bryant of the University of Bath, said of the research. “We tested terms that were suggested by stakeholders in recent USDA and FDA calls for comments, as well as some additional terms.”

    Cultivated meat comes to the butcher shop
    Cultivated meat comes to its first butcher shop | Courtesy Eat Just

    “Some had proposed that these products be labelled ‘artificial’ meat or seafood, but we found that this terminology was not a good representation of the nature of the products, and led to many people mistakenly thinking they would be safe for allergy sufferers. On the other hand, we also tested a completely new term, ‘Novari’, but we found that this had very low levels of consumer understanding,” Bryant said.

    The terms earning the most favor were “cell-cultured” and “cell-cultivated.” “Artificial” and “lab-grown” were least favorable.

    What the industry says

    Ryan Huling, who leads communications and programs for the Good Food Institute’s Asia-Pacific region, says the researchers reiterate several important points that GFI has also made. GFI is the leading industry think tank. According to Huling, he’s not surprised that the nomenclature that invokes science and technology tends to have lower measures of appeal and purchase intent. “Put simply, consumers want to eat food, not tech,” he told Green Queen.

    “It is also worth noting that this research was conducted in the U.S., where cultivated meat is not yet approved for commercial sale,” Huling said. U.S.-based Good Meat is the only company selling cultivated meat to consumers, currently; its cultivated chicken is available in Singapore. But the FDA recently GRAS status to U.S.-based Upside Foods, which is the first step in its path toward U.S. regulatory approval, bringing the country one step closer to the widespread availability of cultivated meat.

    An ABEC bioreactor that produces Good Meat
    An ABEC bioreactor that produces Good Meat | Courtesy

    “GFI conducted a consumer study in 2019 with Mattson which helped determine our initial decision to use ‘cultivated’ terminology, while a more recent 2021 GFI survey of the cultivated meat industry demonstrated that ‘“’cultivated’”’ is also increasingly the preferred industry term,” Huling said.

    He says adding “cell” before “cultivated” is redundant because even conventional animal meat is composed of cells.

    “Describing animal products as ‘cultivated’ has been broadly shown to be most effective at fostering positive responses from consumers, while also being both scientifically accurate and a clear differentiator from conventional animal products,” Huling said. “That’s why more than 30 industry stakeholders — including nearly every cultivated food startup in Asia Pacific, as well as multinational companies Cargill and Thai Union and regional coalition groups from China, Australia, Japan, and Korea—have unified behind the term.”

    Huling says that from a narrative standpoint, “cultivated” also facilitates increased consumer awareness by “drawing clear parallels with the familiar process of plant cultivation.”

    “Just as growing plants in a greenhouse involves snipping off a small cutting from a plant and allowing it to grow in a nutrient-rich environment before harvest, we can now make meat by putting a small sample of animal cells into a nutrient-rich environment — known as a cultivator — and then harvesting them. This is a comparison that consumers around the world can easily wrap their heads around,” he said. 

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  • Maple Leaf Foods Is the Latest Food Giant to Explore Mycoprotein

    3 Mins Read

    Canadian protein giant Maple Leaf Foods has joined forces with mycoprotein meat producer, The Better Meat Co. The partnership will bring Better Meat’s tech to Maple Leaf’s plant-based subsidiary, Greenleaf Foods.

    Over the summer, Maple Leaf Foods announced it was cutting its plant-based business by 25 percent as demand failed to meet expectations. Third-quarter sales this year for the $45 billion meat giant’s alternative protein sector dropped more than nine percent to $43.6 million.

    Diversifying its portfolio

    But the declining sales aren’t deterring Maple Leaf from its meatless explorations as the new partnership details.

    “We are looking forward to working with The Better Meat Co. as we continue exploring alternative protein ingredients to allow us to further diversify our portfolio of delicious, sustainably produced plant-based food,” Jitendra Sagili, Chief R&D and Food Technology Officer at Greenleaf Foods, said in a statement.

    “Our current portfolio of over 50 plant-based items, which includes plant-based sausage, chicken, hot dogs, tempeh, and cheese, primarily leverages soy and pea protein ingredients. Working with The Better Meat Co. opens up new opportunities for us to innovate with other potential protein sources.”

    Courtesy Better Meat

    California-based Better Meat uses the Rhiza mycoprotein to create a meaty, sustainable protein with more iron than beef and more protein than eggs. According to Better Meat, Rhiza can enhance the texture and production yields in plant-based meat while also improving the nutritional profile.

    “Rhiza mycoprotein is a versatile ingredient for use both as a meat enhancer and meat replacer,” said Better Meat Co. Executive Vice President of Operations, Doni Curkendall. “Greenleaf Foods’ expertise in all things protein makes them a stellar partner to showcase this powerful ingredient that will help build an even more sustainable protein industry.”

    It may also perform more realistically than conventional plant-based protein; flexitarian consumers are driven to explore protein alternatives but often cite taste and texture as a reason they return to animal protein. Nielsen data from 2019 found 98 percent of consumers who buy alternative protein also purchase animal products.

    Food giants explore fungi protein

    The announcement follows Better Meat’s recent partnership with Hormel, the U.S.-based pork giant behind Spam. The two announced a working relationship last year.

    Courtesy The Better Meat Co.

    Other food giants are also exploring the fungi world for meat alternatives. Last year, Unilever partnered with Enough, the Scotland-based company that develops a biomass mycoprotein called Abunda. That partnership is bringing fungi-based protein to the Vegetarian Butcher range, the Dutch meat alternative company acquired by Unilever in 2018.

    “We’re excited by the potential that this technology has for future innovations across our portfolio, and we can’t wait to launch more plant-based foods that help people cut down on meat, without compromising on taste,” said Carla Hilhorst, EVP of R&D for Foods & Refreshment at Unilever.

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  • Mosa Meat Calls on Governments to Fund Cultivated Meat: ‘Beef Needs a Solution’

    Mark Post
    3 Mins Read

    Cultivated meat pioneer Mosa Meat is urging governments to support the growth of the category to fight climate change.

    A new white paper released by Dutch cultivated meat producer Mosa Meat is urging global leaders to redirect funds from conventional beef production toward cell-based meat cultivation as a viable tool in the fight against climate change.

    ‘Beef needs a solution’

    “Beef needs a solution. Industrial meat production continues to accelerate the climate crisis, while the world’s demand for beef is steadily growing,” Maarten Bosch, CEO of Mosa Meat, said in a statement. Animal agriculture accounts for nearly 60 percent of agriculture’s total global emissions. The sector is the second-largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions.

    “We are creating an alternative approach to producing real beef. With Mosa Meat’s rapid recent growth, creating the biggest scientific team in the industry and the largest cultivated meat campus in the world, I am very excited for what lies ahead as we help reshape the global food system,” Bosch said.

    Mosa Meat wants to see widespread support for cultivated meat | Courtesy

    The new review, entitled Cultivating Meat: The Mosa Approach, describes the recent accomplishments made by the cultivated meat sector and how it can play a positive role in not only mitigating global warming but also food security, preservation of natural resources, and public health.

    Mosa Meat was founded after its co-founders, Dr. Mark Post and Peter Verstrate, were the first to unveil cultivated meat in 2013, setting the wheels in motion for a sector that experts say could be worth $25 billion by 2030 following widespread regulatory approval.

    “We unveiled the first cultivated beef burger to the world in 2013 and a whole new cultivated meat sector has been developed, creating new value chains and collaborations,” said Bosch. “The next step for our field is to develop industrial and commercial-sized production facilities to maximize the potential impact. We call upon a range of financial, societal, governmental, and scientific institutions to collaborate and further invest into the development of cultivated meat.”

    Advancing cultivated meat

    Mosa Meat’s report says price parity with conventional meat is critical in the success of the category as is nutritional value and culinary experience. When Mosa unveiled the first cultivated burger in 2013, its production cost was about $330,000. Costs have dropped considerably, with companies saying they can reach price parity with more expensive cuts of conventional meat.

    Mosa Meat FBS
    Cultivated meatball | Courtesy Mosa Meat

    Last January, Mosa Meat announced it had successfully removed the controversial cultivated meat growth medium, fetal bovine serum, without genetically altering cells. It made its science public in the journal Nature Food in an effort to further advance the category.

    “For real progress in the protein transition, new solutions are needed to give consumers exactly what they expect from meat,” Mosa Meat says in its review. “The true potential of cultivated meat is that consumers can keep eating the products they love, exactly as they are doing now — and we don’t need to bet on massive global consumer behavioural change to reduce the current negative externalities of meat consumption. This is the primary reason Mosa Meat was founded.”

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  • Plant-Based Pet Food Brand The Pack Closes a Packed £835,000 Seed Round

    World's First Plant-Based Wet Dog Food Aims to Feed Good Dogs Good Food

    3 Mins Read

    Plant-based dog food brand The Pack has closed an £835,000 Seed funding round.

    The Seed funding round for the U.K. based pet food brand was led by Scelta Mycofriends B.V., Veg Capital, Kale United, Akoleo and Silicon Valley VC Accel, as well as a range of high-profile angel investors including Simon Newstead, Alicia Robb, Simon Day, Victoria Betoski, and Leo Groenewegen. The round also includes funding from petcare accelerator Leap Ventures, including the Mars Petcare Companion Fund.

    The fresh funds follow The Pack’s pre-seed funding round last January that earned backing from footballer Chris Smalling and the celebrity chef duo BOSH!, Henry Firth and Ian Theasby.

    “We’re delighted to invest in The Pack,” Jan Kleken of Scelta Mycofriends B.V., said in a statement. “[W]e believe they are creating unique and disruptive plant-based pet products, utilising cutting edge ingredients to offer premium nutrition. This is in line with the mission of Scelta Mycofriends, a subsidiary of Scelta Mushrooms, to develop fungi-based products for animal and human health.”

    Alternative pet food

    According to The Pack, co-founded by the vegan investment platform Vevolution founders Damien Clarkson and Judy Nadel, the alternative protein pet food category is on the rise and expected to surpass $57 billion by 2032.

    “Focusing on creating highly palatable premium products with functional ingredients that have been scientifically proven to aid dog health, whilst endeavouring to offer consumers a price competitive with meat based food is our goal,” Clarkson said.

    World's First Plant-Based Wet Dog Food Aims to Feed Good Dogs Good Food
    Courtesy

    Clarkson says the company will begin planning additional funding next year. “We are delighted with the group of investors who have supported us with this seed round in challenging market conditions,” Clarkson said. “They bring a wealth of experience and counsel that will help The Pack, steer around challenges in the coming years. For us, 2023 is all about growing distribution both in the U.K .and throughout Europe and launching our new nutritionally complete oven-baked products into the market and making them a must-have for every dog parent’s cupboard.”

    Rachel Sheppard Director of Mars Petcare accelerator program Leap Ventures says alternative protein diets for pets will play a key role in achieving a healthier planet in the future. “Therefore, we are so proud to invest in companies like The Pack through our Leap Venture Studio program,” she said.

    Pet food’s carbon pawprint

    Pet food’s carbon footprint is significant; a recent study estimated dry diets could be responsible for up to 2.9 percent of CO2 emissions and up to 1.2 percent of agricultural land use.

    Conventional pet food has also been linked to increased health risks for dogs because it’s often made from low-quality animal products, fillers, and artificial ingredients. The Pack says its expert-formulated meals are nutritionally complete as well as being more sustainable than conventional.

    World's First Plant-Based Wet Dog Food Aims to Feed Good Dogs Good Food
    The Pack’s co-founders Judy Nadel and Damien Clarkson

    The new funding will support the launch of The Pack’s dried dog food early next year. The company has already launched what it says is the world’s first plant-based wet meat stew for dogs. The wet food earned praise from the owners of the dog influencer Dolly Pawton, who struggles with inflammatory bowel disease.

    “We are obsessed with helping dogs be healthy and thrive on plant diets,” Nadel said. “For us, this means focusing on great nutrition from a balanced source of plant-based proteins. We started this company to give dog parents better choices than what existed before. We have chosen a solution focused on taste and high-quality nutrition, as we believe this is the approach that will lead to healthy dogs and long-term success for the business.”

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  • Future Food Technology Could Give Nature Back Up To 80% of The World’s Farmland

    5 Mins Read

    By: Chris D Thomas, Jack Hatfield and Katie Noble

    Here’s the basic problem for conservation at a global level: food production, biodiversity and carbon storage in ecosystems are competing for the same land. As humans demand more food, so more forests and other natural ecosystems are cleared, and farms intensify and become less hospitable to many wild animals and plants. Therefore global conservation, currently focused on the COP15 summit in Montreal, will fail unless it addresses the underlying issue of food production.

    Fortunately, a whole raft of new technologies is being developed that make a system-wide revolution in food production feasible. According to recent research by one of us (Chris), this transformation could meet increased global food demands by a growing human population on less than 20% of the world’s existing farmland. Or in other words, these technologies could release at least 80% of existing farmland from agriculture in about a century.

    Around four-fifths of the land used for human food production is allocated to meat and dairy, including both range lands and crops specifically grown to feed livestock. Add up the whole of India, South Africa, France and Spain and you have the amount of land devoted to crops that are then fed to livestock.

    Tractors in a large field
    Brazil’s enormous soy farms mostly produce food for animals, not humans. lourencolf / shutterstock

    Despite growing numbers of vegetarians and vegans in some countries, global meat consumption has increased by more than 50% in the past 20 years and is set to double this century. As things stand, producing all that extra meat will mean either converting even more land into farms, or cramming even more cows, chickens and pigs into existing land. Neither option is good for biodiversity.

    Chart of land use per 100g of protein for different foods
    Beef and lamb might contain plenty of protein but they use vast amounts of land. OurWorldInData (data: Poore & Nemecek (2018)), CC BY-SA

    Meat and dairy production is already an unpleasant business. For instance, most chickens are grown in high-density feeding operations, and pork, beef and especially dairy farming is going the same way. Current technologies are cruel, polluting and harmful to biodiversity and the climate – don’t be misled by cartoons of happy cows with daisies protruding from their lips.

    Unless food production is tackled head-on, we are left resisting inevitable change, often with no hope of long-term success. We need to tackle the cause of biodiversity change. The principal global approach to climate change is to focus on the cause and minimise greenhouse gas emissions, not to manufacture billions of parasols (though we may need these too). The same is required for biodiversity.

    So, how can we do this?

    Cellular agriculture provides an alternative, and could be one of this century’s most promising technological advancements. Sometimes called “lab-grown food”, the process involves growing animal products from real animal cells, rather than growing actual animals.

    If growing meat or milk from animal cells sounds strange or icky to you, let’s put this into perspective. Imagine a brewery or cheese factory: a sterile facility filled with metal vats, producing large volumes of beer or cheese, and using a variety of technologies to mix, ferment, clean and monitor the process. Swap the barley or milk for animal cells and this same facility becomes a sustainable and efficient producer of dairy or meat products.

    Animal cruelty would be eliminated and, with no need for cows wandering around in fields, the factory would take up far less space to produce the same amount of meat or milk.

    Industrial machinery
    The cultivation room at California-based Upside Foods which uses cellular agriculture to produce meat. David Kay / Upside Foods

    Other emerging technologies include microbial protein production, where bacteria use energy derived from solar panels to convert carbon dioxide and nitrogen and other nutrients into carbohydrates and proteins. This could generate as much protein as soybeans but in just 7% of the area. These could then be used as protein food additives (a major use of soy) and animal feed (including for pets).

    It is even possible to generate sugars and carbohydrates using desalination or through extracting CO₂ from the atmosphere, all without ever passing through a living plant or animal. The resulting sugars are chemically the same as those derived from plants but would be generated in a tiny fraction of the area required by conventional crops.

    What to do with old farmland

    These new technologies can have a huge impact even if demand keeps growing. Even though Chris’s research is based on the assumption that global meat consumption will double, it nonetheless suggests that at least 80% of farmland could be released to be used for something else.

    That land might become nature reserves or be used to store carbon, for example, in forests or the waterlogged soils of peat bogs. It could be used to grow sustainable building materials, or simply to produce more human-edible crops, among other uses.

    Gone too will be industrial livestock systems that produce huge volumes of manure, bones, blood, guts, antibiotics and growth hormones. Thereafter, any remaining livestock farming could be carried out in a compassionate manner.

    Cows in a forest
    Longhorn cattle on a rewilding project in England: if we got most of our protein and carbs through new technologies, this sort of compassionate and wildlife-friendly farming could be scaled up. Chris Thomas, Author provided

    Since there would be less pressure on the land, there would be less need for chemicals and pesticides and crop production could become more wildlife-friendly (global adoption of organic farming is not feasible at present because it is less productive). This transition must be coupled with a full transition towards renewable energy as the new technologies require lots of power.

    Converting these technologies into mass-market production systems will of course be tricky. But a failure to do so is likely to lead to ever-increasing farming intensity, escalating numbers of confined animals, and even more lost nature.

    Avoiding this fate – and achieving the 80% farmland reduction – will require a lot of political will and a cultural acceptance of these new forms of food. It will require economic and political “carrots” such as investment, subsidies and tax breaks for desirable technologies, and “sticks” such as increased taxation and removal of subsidies for harmful technologies. Unless this happens, biodiversity targets will continue to be missed, COP after COP.

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

    Lead photo by Quang Nguyen Vinh via Pexels.

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  • 2022 Review: Top 10 Cultivated Protein Stories of The Year

    5 Mins Read

    It’s been a whirlwind year for the alternative protein industry. That’s why we’re taking a look back on some of the biggest headlines of 2022, spanning across the globe. Here, we review what the cultivated meat sector brought to the table, from major funding milestones to product launches. 

    1. Upside Foods earns GRAS status

    Upside Foods’ chicken taco.

    California-based cell-based chicken maker Upside Foods received the milestone GRAS status from the FDA this year. In November, it became the first U.S. company to obtain the “No Questions” letter from the authorities to deem its products safe to eat. It’s a big deal for the cultivated industry, with this move seen as the first step towards gaining regulatory approval for producers to sell to consumers directly in the country for the first time. The announcement comes just short of a year after Upside acquired cultivated seafood startup Cultured Decadence.

    2. First-ever cultivated yogurt becomes a reality, thanks to Wilk 

    In a global first for the sector, Israeli food tech startup Wilk says it has developed yogurt using cell cultures derived from human and animal milk. The yogurt product, released in November, contains cell-based milk fat that rivals the nutritional benefits of conventional dairy-based milk fat.

    3. Cultivated chicken gets served at COP27…then sold at a butcher shop

    Good Meat’s cell-based chicken.

    With the sustainability of our food system a subject of focus at the United Nations COP27 summit this year, cultivated chicken was served up for the first time. Guests at the event, which took place in Egypt in November, got a taste of Good Meat’s real chicken meat grown directly from cells. Good Meat is the cultivated protein arm of San Francisco-based Eat Just, the brand known for its plant-based JUST Egg product. Weeks later, Good Meat’s cultivated meat, which evolved from a nugget format last year to now a satay chicken skewers (and soon, even chicken skin), landed on the bistro menu and display case at a Singapore butcher shop for the first time.

    4. APAC agrees on ‘cultivated’ nomenclature

    Perhaps the alternative protein nomenclature wars have come to an end–or at least in the cultivated meat world. In APAC, cell-based food producers came to an agreement that the preferred English-language term would be “cultivated”. Those who signed the memo in October include the Good Food Institute’s (GFI) regional arm, as well as over 30 other major stakeholders in the category, from Cargill to the APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture. While terms such as “cell-cultured” and “cell-based” have been previously been touted as the top terms to describe this sector of alternative proteins, the GFI has long been a proponent of the word “cultivated” since 2019.

    5. Africa welcomes its first cultivated beef burger

    Mzansi Meat’s beef burger.

    In April, we saw cultivated beef land in the African continent for the first time. South African startup Mzansi Meat launched its first cell-based burger, serving it at a special event to Cape Town’s mayoral committee member Alderman James Vos. Other African startups racing to bring their cell-based meats to the table include chicken-focused Mogale Meat and Sea Stematic, which has its eye on seafood.

    6. Governments around the world formally back cultivated meat

    Cultivated meat got a big boost from governments around the world. From the €60 million investment made by the Dutch authorities to Israel’s go-ahead for the country’s cultivated meat consortium, it’s clear that states are finally seeing the sector as a promising solution to global food security and sustainability. Global superpowers are on it too. The Biden administration gave huge backing to the biotech industry, which was largely seen as paving the way for cultivated meat regulatory approval. Meanwhile, China’s 5-year plan specifically included cell-based protein for the first time, which certainly boosted investment sentiment for players like CellX, a Shanghai cell-ag firm that bagged $10.6M in its Series A this year.

    7. Vow to become world’s second approved cultivated meat brand in Singapore

    French onion dish with Morsel, Vow's first product
    French onion dish with Morsel, Vow’s first product.

    Australia’s Vow revealed it will soon gain regulatory approval from Singapore to sell its cultivated quail meat. The announcement was made as the food tech sets a record with its $49.2M Series A funding, which came soon after it opened one of the world’s largest cultured meat factories capable of churning out 30 tons per year. The factory joins the strong league of cell-based producers that turned its machines on this year, from Ivy Farm’s plant in the U.K. (which is Europe’s largest), and Asia’s biggest facility in Singapore spearheaded by Good Meat. 

    8. Cultivated food ecosystem get organized across the globe

    In October, three of the world’s biggest cultivated food industry associations hosted a meeting in Singapore. The first-of-a-kind alliance is made up of U.S.-based Alliance for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation (AMPS Innovation), Cellular Agriculture Europe (CAE), and the APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture (APAC-SCA). Together, these societies hope to get ecosystem stakeholders together to speed up the process of creating a global regulatory framework, time to market and educating consumers about the welfare benefits and sustainability solutions the industry has to offer. The latter was founded by 11 companies across the Asian region, which only just launched in March this year. 

    9. 2022 is a year of firsts for cell-based product launches, from smoked duck breast to fish balls

    forsea foods
    Forsea Foods’ eel.

    2022 marked an incredible year for cultivated protein product rollouts. Some of the major ones include Meatable, which is set to launch cell-based pork in Singapore by partnering with the city-state’s contract manufacturer ESCO Aster, Meatiply’s regional-first cultivated smoked duck breast, and Israel-based Future Meat’s ground lamb meat. There’s also Umami Meats’ fish balls, Forsea Foods’ eel, and Joes Future Food’s pork belly for its pork-loving domestic market–all cultivated directly from cells. Even cell-cultured fish fat is now a thing, thanks to ImpacFat. 

    10. Foie gras makers Gourmey bag record funding 

    Finally, French startup Gourmey made headlines for closing a record-breaking €48M Series A in October. The oversubscribed round will go towards making its culinary-grade cultivated foie gras a reality by building a 46,000-square-foot commercial production facility in Paris, due to open in 2024. 

    Lead image courtesy of Good Meat.

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  • How A Stainless Steel ‘Cow’ Made Cheese for Those Vegan Cowboys

    3 Mins Read

    Those Vegan Cowboys, the spinoff brand from the founders of the Dutch plant-based meat brand Vegetarian Butcher, has launched its first precision fermentation cheese.

    Jaap Korteweg and Niko Koffeman put vegan meat on the map with the Dutch-Belgian Vegetarian Butcher which was acquired by Unilever in 2018. Now, the duo is focused on innovating in the dairy sector with their spinoff brand, Those Vegan Cowboys.

    Those Vegan Cowboys

    The brand has just released its first cheese made with precision fermentation — a process that creates dairy-identical caseins via microbes. The tech has been made popular by Bay-Area Perfect Day, which just saw Nestlé release its first precision fermentation milk made with Perfect Day’s whey.

    The tech eliminates the need for cows to produce a more sustainable and ethical dairy product, such as cheese, that mimics the taste, texture, and performance of conventional dairy.

    The microbial cheese is produced in a stainless steel bioreactor that Korteweg dubbed “Margaret.”

    “Named after Margaret Thatcher, this bovine beauty is quite the revolutionary lady herself,” the company says on its website. On top of that she’s actually made of metal, unlike the original.

    “As the first female prime minister of the country, Thatcher famously put her iron will and vision for the future in the words: ‘there is no alternative.’ Our Margaret is the first of her kind as well, and the embodiment of our own vision for the future. However, she spreads a message that’s quite the opposite, a message that will transcend national borders: ‘I am the alternative.’”

    those vegan cowboys
    Those Vegan Cowboys say they’re doing cheese the new way | Courtesy

    Korteweg said the co-founders were skeptical about the process. “When we started the lab after The Vegetarian Butcher, I gave it a 5 percent chance,” he said. “But the lab team worked wonders and now we have Margaret’s first cheeses. Now it’s a matter of scaling up, making the micro-organisms more efficient – in a way similar to the milk cow, an animal that has been pushed to its outer physical limits into giving 10.000 liters of milk per year instead of the natural 1000.”

    ‘Any cow-free cheese is now possible’

    The company says the achievement is a milestone in tech. “Thanks to the caseins, the cheese of our stainless steel cow potentially has comparable texture and other properties dairy cheese has,” said Lab ‘sheriff’ Will van den Tweel. “And yet it is completely free from animal products. Any cow-free cheese is now possible.”

    Those Vegan Cowboys fermentation cheese
    Those Vegan Cowboys fermentation cheese | Courtesy

    While precision fermentation has been used for decades, Those Vegan Cowboys says the cheese must satisfy regulatory requirements before it can be distributed for sale and consumption.

    The company says it’s determined to use agricultural products, including grass — a main food source for cows — as the basis of its fermentation. This, Those Vegan Cowboys say, will offer dairy farmers an “innovation” to help consolidate their businesses. Korteweg is a 9th-generation farmer.

    “To us, farmers will remain vital in the new way of cheese making,” Korteweg says. “It can relieve dairy farmers from several heavy societal issues they’ve been burdened with. It would be great if seeing these cheeses would inspire farmers to see the stainless steel cow as a real option. We want to move forward together and are happy to already have many conversations going.”

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  • 2022 Review: Top 10 Precision Fermentation Stories of The Year

    6 Mins Read

    As we wrap up 2022, let’s take a look back over some of the breaking headlines that solidified precision fermentation as a major pillar in the world of alternative protein. Here are some of the top stories within the space, from animal-free milk landing in Singapore to mark an Asia-wide first, to getting vocal support from renowned environmental journalist George Monboit. 

    1. Dairy giants bet big on precision fermentation

    This year, we saw the world’s largest dairy brands place their bets on precision fermentation. In October, New Zealand’s Fonterra, which supplies nearly a third of the world’s milk, partnered with bioscience firm Royal DSM to kickstart a precision fermentation startup making sustainable dairy proteins. Just one month later in November, the Bel Group–makers of iconic cheeses like Babybel and Boursin–began a collaboration with French startup Standing Ovation to start producing new alt-cheeses through microbial fermentation. Bel has since announced that three of its brands, Nurishh and The Laughing Cow, will expand its animal-free offerings too using Perfect Day’s precision fermentation tech.

    2. Precision fermentation milk lands in Asia

    Very Dairy milk
    Very Dairy milk.

    2022 marked the year when animal-free milk made its way to Asia for the first time. This December, Singapore residents are able to grab a carton of Very Dairy, a brand launched by Californian food tech Perfect Day. Available in three flavours–plain, chocolate and strawberry–the brand new products are dairy-identical thanks to the microflora that are engineered to recreate real milk proteins in a much more sustainable way. This is mere months after the precision dairy pioneer brought its animal-free dairy ice cream Coolhaus to the island nation.

    Outside of Asia, the next regions to watch in the coming months for product launches include Israel, whose homegrown startup Imagindairy closed a $28M seed round in May to expedite its “guilt-free dairy solutions”. There’s also Australia, where CSIRO-backed Eden Brew bagged $5M in June to bring its animal-free milk (and ice cream!) to consumers.

    3. India welcomes its own animal-free dairy startup

    Animal-free milk proteins made its way to India this year, with Phyx44 becoming the country’s first startup focused on this technology. Based in Bangalore and founded by IIT alummi and ex-Googler Bharath Bakaraju, the company, which boasts a gender-equal technical team of PhD scientists, will use precision fermentation to reproduce whey and casein proteins to make everything from yogurt to paneer. Not only a first for India, the startup stands out as one of the few full-stack players in the sector that is also targeting animal-free fats, in addition to whey and casein proteins. It closed a $1.2M seed round in November. 

    Phyx44's precision fermentation dairy
    Phyx44’s precision fermentation dairy.

    4. And so does China 

    China also opened doors to the precision fermentation dairy sector this year. In August, Changing Bio came out of stealth mode with a big bang, announcing a record $22M Series A, the second largest alt-protein funding round in the country. The food tech has reportedly already dished out animal-free dairy samples and is now building a 9,000 square-meter facility in Qingdao. 

    5. George Monbiot joins the precision fermentation fight

    The precision fermentation food sector won vocal support from climate activists and renowned environmental writer George Monbiot this year. Launched at November’s COP27, Monbiot and the group Reboot Food prioritised a focus on “brewed proteins” such as precision fermentation in its manifesto to usher in a sustainable and just food system for the world. 

    6. Sports nutrition giant MyProtein says yes to Perfect Day’s animal-free whey…and more of the pioneer’s wins

    Myprotein
    MyProtein’s new Whey Forward line.

    MyProtein, the ubiquitous sports nutrition and fitness brand, announced new products made using Perfect Day’s animal-free whey. In August, the company revealed Whey Forward, its new co-branded line of proteins that delivers on performance and taste, but is far more sustainable and ethical compared to conventionally produced whey protein. This was just the latest in a slew of 2022 wins for the sector’s pioneer food tech Perfect Day, which continued to make big moves in the following month when it rolled out Nth Bio. The platform will offer its expertise and collaboration opportunities with other companies, paving the way for precision fermentation to tap into new product categories in the future. Just months later in December, the firm acquired India’s Sterling Biotech, one of the largest global gelatin producers, signaling that it may be eyeing fermented gelatin next.  

    7. The Every Co. cracks its animal-free eggs into macarons & more

    It wasn’t just a big year for Perfect Day, but for The Every Co. too, another early name in the precision fermentation industry. After its mega rebrand from Clara Foods late last year, The Every Co. proved its animal-free egg white protein product, Every EggWhite, in March. It debuted an impressive line-up of macarons made with its product in collaboration with renowned patisserie brand Chantal Guillon. Then in October, the food tech entered the $260 billion alcoholic beverage market, debuting the world’s first precision fermentation egg protein-boosted hard juice in partnership with Pulp Culture. While The Every Co. was the first to the chickenless race, it is by no means the only one, as this year we saw Onega Bio enter the playing field with a $11M seed round in February. The Finnish VTT offshoot startup’s first product will be an animal-free “bioalbumen” egg white protein.

    8. New innovations in alternative ingredients: bovine lactoferrin 

    TurtleTree’s lactoferrin.

    TurtleTree, the biotech based in both Singapore and California, managed to unveil LF+ in August this year after 18 months of development. It is the world’s first precision fermentation bovine lactoferrin, a sustainably created identical protein that opens up possibilities in the adult nutrition, sports nutrition and infant formula industries. 

    9. Animal-free casein factory lands in the Middle East

    In October, alt-dairy startup Change Foods announced a new collaboration with the UAE’s KEZAD Group to start building a commercial production plant in Abu Dhabi. With a capacity of 1.2M litres, the upcoming fermentation factory is slated to churn out enough animal-free casein milk proteins to replace that of 10,000 cows and will supply the Middle East and Asian markets. 

    Change Foods’ bioreactors in a facility.

    10. We get closer to animal-free fats

    The precision fermentation space inches towards making animal-free fats a reality, after Aussie startup Nourish Ingredients bagged AU$45M in a Series A in October. The funds will go towards developing microbial fermentation fats and oils, a key ingredient to take alternative proteins in the plant-based and cultivated sectors to a new level in terms of taste. Another company making moves in the animal-free fat segment is Melt&Marble. The Swedish startup scored €5M in a seed round earlier in May, which will fuel its ambitions to commercially launch its alternative “beef-like” fat custom-made to upgrade the taste and texture of plant-based meats.

    Lead image courtesy of Bel Group. 

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  • Microbial Fermentation Comes to the Alt Sugar Market In Oobli Chocolate Bars

    Oobli chocolate
    2 Mins Read

    Oobli, the California-based food tech company focused on sweet protein via microbial fermentation, has launched its first product.

    Following its rebrand from Joywell Foods, Oobli’s first product is a sweet-protein-powered line of chocolate in three styles: 70% Silky Cacao, Sea Salt Flakes, and Raspberry Bits.

    Oobli says its new chocolate is gut-healthy, diabetic-friendly, and contains 70 percent less sugar than conventional chocolate bars.

    What is sweet protein?

    “We are on a mission to transform the world with healthy sweetness, and we’re very excited to announce the first-ever, sweet-protein-powered products in the form of decadent, delicious chocolate bars,” Oobli CEO Ali Wing, said in a statement. “Oobli sweet proteins are good for your health and climate-friendly, but it’s the taste that keeps people coming back for more. Stay tuned for even more sweet treats to come from Oobli in 2023.”

    strawberry
    Photo by Monika Grabkowska on Unsplash

    Oobli is using a proprietary microbial fermentation process to produce nature-identical sweet proteins — the same tech alt milk company Perfect Day uses to reproduce dairy proteins without the cow.

    Derived from fruit, the products deliver a sugar-like sweetness without the sugar spike. Oobli says its precision fermentation process is also more climate-friendly than other products.

    The company has about half-a-dozen fruit-derived proteins with plans to use them across confectionery products, soft drinks, and other foods. Oobli says its protein can work anywhere sugar is used.

    Sugar alternative market

    “We’re biologically predisposed to crave sugar, so it’s not something we should actually feel so bad about,” Wing told TechCrunch earlier this year.

    “If you really look at consumption today, over 70 percent of consumers are actively seeking to reduce sugar in their diets and the No. 1 culprit for that is daily added sugars,” she said. “We just need to solve it differently, and that’s the beauty of technology and what we are doing.”

    Vegan Chocolate Market to Reach $1 Billion By 2027
    Photo by Tamas Pap on Unsplash

    The tech offers a breakthrough in the sugar replacement category dominated by artificial sweeteners including aspartame and stevia. The global artificial sweetener market was valued at around $7.2 billion last year and expected to reach nearly $10 billion by 2028, according to recent data.

    Investors are sweet on Oobli’s tech, too. It recently raised a $25 million Series B with funding led by Piva Capital with participation from B37 Ventures and Global Brain Corporation, as well as existing investors Khosla Ventures, Evolv Ventures, SOSV IndieBio, and Alumni Ventures.

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  • 2022 Review: Top 10 Plant-Based Stories Of The Year

    8 Mins Read

    We dive into some of the headlines that topped plant-based alternative protein space, from vegan labelling wars to never-seen-before product launches. Here’s what the plant-based sector brought for us in 2022. 

    1. Plant-based milk sales top $2.3 billion

    Oatside’s oat milk.

    Vegan milk sales in the U.S. reached new highs (yet again) this year, growing 6.4% to almost $2.3 billion in June. Almond milk remained the category leader, taking up $1.2 billion of the share of sales, but oat milk saw a major hike of 50%. Exact figures for other markets are not yet available, but no doubt oat milk’s rise was a global phenomenon. South East Asia saw the arrival of a new homegrown brand Oatside to rival category giant Oatly’s popularity across the Asian region. Over in India, Bengaluru-based Alt Co. caught the attention of investors with a $1M round for its barista-approved oat milk line. 

    2. Vegan labelling wars continue

    2022 was a year of more debates over plant-based labelling. There were some wins. In April, the case Tofurky won its lawsuit in the Louisiana courts against the 2020 ban over the use of “meaty” terms for vegan products. In the ruling, the judge sided with Tofurky’s First Amendment violation challenge, in essence allowing products like vegan sausages and plant-based burgers to be labelled as such. Months later, we saw one of the most iconic American legacy brands in the plant-based space, Tofutti, finally add the term “vegan” to its packaging. India also hailed a win, with authorities working on further clarification of vegan definitions. However, the labelling dispute is still ongoing in Turkey, where the sale of vegan cheese is banned entirely on grounds of “deception”. In July, activists decided to sue, challenging it as unconstitutional. 

    3. Impossible Foods forges ahead with global expansion 

    Impossible x Domino's
    Impossible x Domino’s.

    Impossible Foods kept pushing on with its expansion plans over the year, most notably in the Australian and New Zealand markets. In March, the brand landed in retail giants Woolworths and Countdown in both countries. Just months later in October, Impossible brought its plant-based beef to pizza chain Domino’s. The brand also made inroads in Asia, where it debuted its vegan chicken nuggets in Hong Kong. But it hasn’t been good news all the way for the company, as it faced a legal battle with Motif Foodworks over its signature heme ingredient early on in the year (the case is ongoing and in Europe, Impossible saw one of its patents revoked), as well as its decision to layoff 6% of its workforce as part of a restructuring plan following founder Pat Brown’s exit as CEO and generally turbulent market conditions. The company is now helmed by former Chobani executive Peter McGuinness, while Brown retained a role as “Chief Visionary Officer”. A few months later, the company announced Brown would be heading up a new research arm dubbed Impossible Labs. However, in November, the visionary former CEO confirmed he was taking a leave of absence from the company until March 2023.

    4. Food giants hop on the vegan cheese train, debut slew of plant-based food offerings

    As plant-based eating becomes even more mainstream, 2022 saw large food corporations take up the opportunity to expand their vegan offerings. First up was France’s dairy giant Bel Group, which launched a vegan Babybel in January, with a plant-based version of The Laughing Cow to come soon. After announcing a partnership with Chile’s vegan leader NotCo in February, Kraft Heinz unveiled new products in October, including dairy- and egg-free mayonnaise, as well as three vegan cheeses: American, provolone and cheddar. In December, Kraft also rolled out a vegan edition of its iconic Philadelphia cream cheese in its domestic U.S. market after its debut in the U.K. Outside of the cheese space, big food corporations also doubled down on their overall vegan ranges, such as IKEA’s moves towards making 50% of its menu veggie, and Amazon Fresh adding over two dozen new vegan food products to its platform. 

    Philadelphia’s vegan cream cheese.

    5. Beyond Meat’s no good, very bad year

    Unfortunately, 2022 was a bit of a write-off for food tech giant Beyond Meat. In June, Don Lee Farms lodged yet another lawsuit against its former co-manufacturer, alleging Beyond of unfair competition via misleading ads, on top of its previous accusation of breach of contract, fraud and arrears. Then, amid missed sales targets, a scandal involving its COO Doug Ramsey being arrested for attacking another man, as well as the ultimate failure of its much-anticipated partnership with McDonald’s to supply the McPlant burger, Beyond announced job cuts of nearly 20% of its workforce. Some hope to end the year, though, with the brand scoring a deal to stock its plant-based burger at 1,600 Rewe supermarket locations in Germany after its PR highlight of getting Kim Kardashian on board as a “Chief Taste Consultant”. 

    6. Vegan cheese and plant-based eggs take off across Asia

    While vegan cheese and egg alternatives saw major mainstreaming in the U.S. and European markets last year, the category skyrocketed in Asia over the course of 2022. We saw the region’s first-ever dairy-free festival held in Jakarta, as well as a whole bunch of product launches. Thailand welcomed its first vegan cheese factory, Indonesian food tech Green Rebel entered the egg- and dairy-free realm, and South Korea’s Armoured Fresh secured $23M this year to bring its almond-based cheeses to new markets. In the egg alternative space, India’s Evo Foods says it will work with Ginkgo Bioworks to create even more realistic analogues, while Japan saw the rollout of two new egg alternatives: Umami’s konjac-based product, and Kewpie’s soy-based “Hobotama” that mimics scrambled eggs. 

    Evo Foods’ scrambled egg.

    7. Huge funding rounds for vegan meat players

    Three vegan meat makers saw major inflows of capital to continue their expansion, despite the global economic downturn. It kicked off with Chinese plant-based meat maker Starfield’s $100M Series B in January, which went towards building a new commercial factory line for everything from vegan pastrami to meat chunks. Then in March, Next Gen Foods bagged a whopping $100M, the largest single Series A investment in the sector to date, for its vegan chicken brand TiNDLE which has since landed in Veggie Grill locations stateside. Fast forward to September, Swiss startup Planted scored $72M in a Series B geared to expand its range of clean-label whole-cut analogues.  

    8. Plant-based innovation abounds chickpea ice cream, plant-based loin & fish-free seafood products galore!

    Nth Wonder gelato pints made by FairFlavor.

    The plant-based alt-protein seriously stepped up its game with a number of never-seen-before products. These included Juicy Marbles’ whole-cut loin, which it described as the “biggest, most insulting piece of plant muscle ever conceived”, Haofood’s peanut-based chicken, FairFlavor’s gelato made using kenari nuts, and ChickP’s vegan ice cream, made from–you guessed it–chickpeas. In the vegan seafood category, we saw an outburst of newbies, from Thai Union’s vegan shrimp to not one, but two ultra-realistic salmon fillets: Revo Foods’, which is mercury-free and 3D-printed, and Plantish’s whole-cut version. There’s even vegan snapper debuted by SeaSpire, unbreaded fish fillets that Jack & Bry made using jackfruit, and famous frozen foods brand Birds Eye’s new fishless battered fish. And it looks like the seafood space won’t be short of innovation in the months to come either, with Seafood Reboot netting $3.3M in May, promising to launch a whole new line-up of regenerative algae-powered alternatives. 

    9. France’s plant-based scene finally picks up pace 

    HappyVore’s vegan burger.

    2022 was a year when the French plant-based scene (finally) got going to catch up with neighbouring European countries, starting off with fast food chain Burger King’s move to add vegan bacon to its menu. In May, the QSR, which made serious plant-based inroads in Europe, Asia and the Middle East over the course of 2021, partnered with La Vie Foods to use plant-based bacon rashers for its Veggie Steakhouse burger. One month later, homegrown food tech HappyVore bagged €35M to fund the buyout of a Chevilly-based facility, which is the largest specialist vegan meat factory in France. To round out the year, plant-based meat maker Umiami took over a former Unilever factory to kickstart large-scale production of any type of vegan meat and fish. According to Umiami, after a full revamp, the factory may be able to churn out upwards of 22,000 tons of whole-cut meat–that could make France a serious alt-protein powerhouse to watch. 

    10. Vegan alt-protein takes off in a big way across India

    testing greenest
    Greenest range of vegan meat.

    India’s plant-based industry also had a breakthrough year. It started out with Indian delivery giant Swiggy’s deal with homegrown vegan firm GoodDot to add a separate plant-based category to its platform, then Mumbai-based Blue Tribe Foods scoring Bollywood celebrity and cricket star Anushka Sharma and Virat Kohli as brand ambassadors. Soon after, India’s leading spices company Agromatic Nutrifoods revealed a whole new line of frozen vegan meats, from kebabs to nuggets, while Evo Foods covered all the alt-protein bases with what was the world’s first heat-stable vegan boiled egg. In the Spring months, BVeg Foods began upgrading its analogues by working with Swiss production leader Bühler, which will mean we get one step closer to ultra-realistic whole muscle cuts, while the Greenest brand continued expanding its range with burger patties and more (and has since closed a pre-seed round too). Drink maker Novolutions said it’ll enter the vegan meat space with meatballs and even “spicy fingers”. Perhaps the most exciting news of all was coffee giant Starbucks’ collab with Imagine Meats to bring everything from vegan sausage croissant rolls to hummus kebab wraps to stores across the country. 

    Lead image courtesy of Plantish.

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  • Singapore’s Seafood Giant Ha Li Fa Launches Plant-Based Seafood Brand Eat, Plant, Love

    noodle bowl with fish ball
    2 Mins Read

    Singapore is getting its first plant-based mee pok in a partnership between the new Ha Li Fa brand, Eat, Plant, Love, and Bib Gourmand LiXin Teochew Fishball Noodles.

    A popular Chinese noodle dish, mee pok is one of many Asian dishes with few plant-based options, according to Eat, Plant, Love (EPL), the new plant-based brand under the Ha Li Fa umbrella.

    Eat, Plant, Love

    As part of the EPL brand launch, a plant-based mee pok is coming to the popular LiXin Teochew Fishball Noodles restaurants.

    mushroom noodle bowl
    EPL is using mushrooms and plant-based ingredients for its new range | Courtesy

    Ha Li Fa says the taste of the plant-based mee pok is “indistinguishable” from conventional. The dish features the EPL fish cakes, minced meat, vegetable rolls, and fried tau pok — stuffed tofu — served atop LiXin’s springy house noodles. The dish will also replace lard, a key ingredient in conventional mee pok, with shallot oil.

    Ha Li Fa is known for its popular BoBo fishballs and other seafood products, but the new EPL brand dives fully into plant-based options as the demand for alternatives is on the rise across Asia.

    The new range includes seven alternative seafood and meat products including plant-based and mushroom balls, vegetable rolls, plant-based calamari, fish cakes, minced meat, and stuffed tau pok.

    The new EPL products are launching at select supermarkets including Fair Price Finest and Xtra outlets.

    Asia ups its plant-based seafood

    Alternatives to conventional seafood are on the rise across Asia. In August, leading shrimp exporter Thai Union announced its first plant-based shrimp option.

    “We have had consumers come to us and say, ‘I know you are an expert in seafood and shrimp – I would like to have a shrimp tempura, but not containing shrimp’,” Tunyawat Kasemsuwan, Thai Union’s innovation director said last year. “They come to us because they see we understand product quality, its functional properties, characteristics, taste, and sensory texture.”

    Eat Plant Love's plant-based fish balls
    Eat Plant Love’s plant-based fish balls | Courtesy

    Also in August, Umami Meats debuted the world’s first cultivated fish ball in Singapore, which is currently the only government to have approved cultivated meat for sale and consumption.

    Mihir Pershad, Founder and CEO of Umami Meats said the company chose to develop fish ball laksa as a first prototype to create a dish that embodies Singapore’s rich food culture, “When we thought of classic, iconic Singaporean dishes, laksa immediately came to mind.”

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  • Ikea Ups Its Sustainability Efforts With a Plant-Based Food Hall

    ikea saluhall concept
    3 Mins Read

    A new food hall concept from the company behind Ikea spotlights local, plant-based cuisine with a focus on regenerative agriculture.

    Swedish home furnishings giant Ikea has not been shy about its sustainability commitments. It’s made sweeping changes to operations as part of its 2030 target to become a circular and climate positive business. It’s working to regenerate resources and says it wants to “play our full part” in contributing to a “fair and equal society by respecting human right, creating a positive impact for people across our value chain and contributing to resilient societies.”

    Part of that focus has included a gradual overhaul of its in-store cafes, increasing its plant-based offerings including vegan versions of its popular meatballs and hot dogs.

    Now Ikea’s parent company, Ingka Group’s latest effort includes the launch of Saluhall, a “bold and fresh Nordic take on the food hall concept.” The food hall will initially be 80 percent plant-based, the company says, but its plan is to make the entire menu plant-based and zero-waste.

    Saluhall

    “Our food offering has long been a key element of our meeting places, and with Saluhall we will go beyond dining to inspire the many people with more sustainable food choices, like plant-based dishes,” Ingka Centres’ Commercial and Digital Director, Jens Nielsen, said in a statement.

    “We want it to be about a whole lot more than what’s on the menu — a modern and original twist on the traditional food hall; providing local communities with a place to meet, while eating delicious food and socializing together in an even more inclusive and sustainable way,” Nielsen said.

    saluhall
    Saluhall concept is coming to 3 cities | Courtesy

    Ingka currently has three cities targeted for Saluhall: Changsha, China, San Francisco, California, and Gurugram, India.

    Much like Ikea’s current cafe offerings center around a few key items such as its iconic meatballs, the food halls will also have a narrow focus. Saluhall’s menu will center on bread, burgers, ice cream, and beer, taking inspiration from Nordic street food.

    A community focus

    All items on the menus will be made with seasonal and local ingredients. And the third-party vendors selling at Saluhall must also meet Ingka’s principles of regenerative and sustainable agriculture.

    “We are teaming up and connecting with other visionary minds who are eager to reinvent the traditional food court idea and bring a taste of local culture to Saluhall,” they company said.

    saluhall concept
    Saluhall will focus on local food and regenerative agriculture | Courtesy

    According to Stéphane Keulian, F&B Concept Development Leader at Ingka Group, the concept is more than just a place to eat and drink. “It is inspired by the New Nordic Food Manifesto movement that began nearly twenty years ago,” he said.

    “Through lectures, cooking experiences and a cookery school, Saluhall will be a natural location that brings people and local businesses together. And we are not doing this alone,” Keulian said. “We are teaming up and connecting with other visionary minds who are eager to reinvent the traditional food court idea and bring a taste of local culture to Saluhall.”  

    Ingka Group says Saluhall will operate “as an ethos as well as a physical space.” The principles reflect “the explosive growth and influences of the sustainable Scandinavian dining scene over the past two decades, making quality food that is kinder to people and the planet more available,” the company said.

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  • Which Protein Do Consumers Spend the Most On? It’s Not Meat and Dairy, Study Finds

    3 Mins Read

    A recent study by the Plant Based Foods Institute and leading supermarket chain Kroger, found that consumers are changing their purchasing habits.

    Consumer shopping habits are always in flux but the recent report found that’s especially true when it comes to protein choices. Notably, households that spent more on plant-based products decreased their purchases of animal-based options.

    The findings come as sales for plant-based protein were flat over the last year. But according to the research even with declining sales in the plant-based category, those purchasing plant-based options still decreased their purchase of animal products, too, by about $60.

    The findings

    The study looked at Kroger shopper data across several key categories over two years of spending, including milk, cheese, yogurt, frozen meals, frozen meat, and refrigerated meat. According to the findings, nearly 60 percent of shoppers in 2020 were either new to the plant-based category or had increased or maintained their previous category purchases.

    Photo by Joshua Rawson Harris at Unsplash.

    In 2021, 54 percent were still in that category with nearly 30 increasing how many plant-based purchases they made over the previous year. Purchases of dairy-free cheese and yogurt last year saw more than 33 percent new shoppers to the category. Similar numbers were seen in the plant-based frozen meals category and refrigerated plant-based meat products.

    “During Year One, the influence of covid ‘pantry loading’”’ was evident in consumer buying patterns,” reads the report. “Households that were increasing or decreasing their spend in plant-based categories also increased their spend in animal-based categories.

    “In Year One, we observed new households trying different categories of plant-based foods. Plant-based meat had the largest portion of New households in 2020, with 63 percent of households classified as New. Plant-based cheese was the second highest with 40 percent of households classified as New.
    Growth in plant-based New and Increaser households from 2019-2020 translated to sales growth across plant-based categories. Most categories witnessed double-digit percent growth, with plant-based refrigerated meat seeing increases of over 200 percent.”

    Continued interest

    As covid panic buying decreased, the researchers say they noticed new trends emerging in Year Two.

    “Coming off a year with many new households across each plant-based category, New households continued to grow in 2021 and made up 18 percent of the migration segment across the total plant-based categories,” the report explains. “This progression demonstrates that there is continued interest in plant-based categories building on the covid bump from the year prior.

    “Following a year of record sales growth, a slowdown in category sales was expected; however, a majority of plant-based categories continued to grow. Most significantly, plant-based yogurt saw the largest sales increase of the plant-based categories with 13.5 percent growth; in addition, 37 percent of households were from the New segment. These numbers suggest there were successful new items and/or innovations in this space that brought new households in and notably, increased sales.”

    The researchers say that in both 2020 and 2021, those who purchased more plant-based cheese increased their total overall spend compared to other groups by nearly $70, “suggesting that these households are the most loyal and engaged in plant-based overall out of all the target groups.”

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  • Hyfé’s Sustainable Mycelium Protein Scales Up Ahead of Schedule

    Hyfé Foods co-founders CEO Michelle Ruiz and CTO Andrea Schoen
    3 Mins Read

    Climate-tech company Hyfé says it has scaled up the production capacity of its mycelium protein to 400L pilot bioreactors.

    On a mission to unlock low-cost production for sustainable products, the Chicago-based Hyfé is utilizing waste streams as a source for fermentation feedstock. It says it’s three months ahead of schedule, completing its scale-up last month.

    “Our mission is to use our flexible fermentation platform to produce cost-competitive essential goods for multiple industries, repurposing millions of pounds of wasted nutrients and keeping tons of emissions out of the atmosphere every year,” co-founder and CEO Michelle Ruiz said in a statement.

    Turning wastewater into affordable, sustainable protein

    Launched last year by former LanzaTech and ExxonMobil engineers, Hyfé has already earned the support of Boston Bioworks and the University of Illinois Bioprocessing Research Laboratory. The Engine led its oversubscribed $2 million Seed round last May; the venture firm spun out of MIT and invests in early-stage Tough Tech companies.

    wheat field
    hoto by rajeev ramdas on Unsplash

    Mycelium is Hyfé’s first focus, which it says showcases the technology’s ability to make high-quality products. Hyfé uses patent-pending technology to capture nutrients otherwise washed away during food manufacturing. It takes the nutrients and converts them into fermentation feedstocks. Food manufacturing is the third largest contributor to wastewater, which accounts for 1.5 percent of all emissions. By salvaging those nutrients, Hyfé is able to reduce its costs and produce nutrient-dense fermentation products.

    “Biomanufacturing has the potential to create solutions to some of the most pressing challenges facing humanity,” the company says. “It can enable improvements in health, climate, and quality of life if rendered economically viable.”

    Mycelium flour

    Hyfé says reducing the cost of production is key to making sustainable bioproducts competitive against subsidized commodities. “The feedstocks that power bioproduction represent a high-impact opportunity since they account for up to 50 percent of fermentation operating expenses and are vulnerable to supply chain disruptions.”

    Hyfé is focused on mycelium protein Photo by Unsplash.

    Ruiz says Hyfé’s mycelium flour tastes and acts just like wheat flour, “enabling people to eat the foods they love without negative health impacts. We are leveraging biotechnology to produce this ingredient that is carbon neutral, at scale, and at a very low cost,” she said last May.

    “A bowl of Hyfé pasta has as much protein as a chicken breast, is high in fiber and has no refined carbs. We’re on a mission to make food better for you as well as better for the planet.”

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  • The First LCA on Cultivated Beef Shows 88% Fewer GHGs Than Conventional

    SCiFi Foods co-founders Joshua March and Kasia Gora, PhD, Courtesy
    3 Mins Read

    SciFi Foods has conducted the world’s first Life Cycle Analysis on cultivated beef and the findings show significant benefits for the planet.

    Researchers at The Ohio State University (OSU) conducted the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) on cultivated beef — the first peer-reviewed research on the climate impacts of lab-grown protein versus its conventional live animal counterparts. The findings were published in the journal Sustainability.

    The researchers looked at burgers made from cultivated beef along with plant-based ingredients including soy protein, produced by ScIFi Foods, the Bay Area startup that emerged from stealth mode earlier this year.

    The findings

    According to the findings, the SciFi Foods’ burgers reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 88.5 percent when compared to conventional beef burgers. Energy use dropped more than 37 percent, land use dropped more than 90 percent, and water used dropped by nearly 97 percent when the beef was grown in bioreactors.

    The researchers note that some parts of the process were very similar to conventional beef, such as cold storage, packaging, and distribution, but they note “there was little doubt overall that the SciFi Burger had a significantly smaller environmental impact.”

    SciFi Foods cultivated meat produces 88% fewer GHGs than conventional | Courtesy

    “There are many ways engineering and bioengineering is being utilized today to create a more sustainable future,” lead study author, Dr. Bhavik Bakshi, Richard M. Morrow Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at OSU, said in a statement, “and this is just the onset when it comes to what science can do for the food system.” 

    While the study only looked at SciFi’s products, the researchers say the findings validate the entire category — a significant milestone as regulatory approval nears in the U.S., following Upside Foods’ recent FDA GRAS status.

    ‘Leaving a positive mark on the planet’

    [W]e’re proud to prove that yes, what we’re doing is truly making an impact, because as much as this is about delicious burgers, the crux of it is about leaving a positive mark on the planet,” said SciFi Foods’ co-founder and CEO Joshua March.

    Methane emissions
    Photo by Joachim Süß on Unsplash

    The researchers say the study does not assume exclusive use of renewable energy, suggesting a shift to renewable resources could prove even more climate-friendly than conventional cattle farming.

    Animal agriculture is a leading producer of emissions. According to the OSU researchers, agriculture and the food industry is responsible for 25 percent of all global emissions. The world’s leading climate scientists and public health organizations have called for drastic dietary shifts to reduce animal products in order to meet the Paris Agreement target of keeping temperatures from rising more than 1.5°C.

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  • TiNDLE Expands Its Plant-Based Chicken Empire

    tindle tenders
    3 Mins Read

    As Singapore’s plant-based chicken brand TiNDLE continues its rapid global expansion, the Next Gen Foods’ brand announces new products and new team members.

    Following what’s been a banner year for the startup that only launched in 2021, TiNDLE Tenders join the lineup, and former Impossible Foods executive Jared Umsted takes up the SVP of Foodservice role for the U.S. market.

    Umsted served in a similar role as the Senior Vice President of Sales at Elohi Strategic Advisors where he managed TiNDLE’s relationship with the platform, working to scale TiNDLE’s foodservice partnerships. Prior to that, he worked for Ronnoco Coffee, vegan meat giant Impossible Foods, as well as Daring — the vegan chicken brand that recently partnered with Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker.

    Expanding the executive team

    “Jared’s deep bench of expertise in the plant-based industry will allow us to tackle new areas of expansion in foodservice and will further guide our plans as we consider launching in retail – we couldn’t be more excited to have Jared lead our new in-house team,” Andre Menezes, Co-founder and CEO of Next Gen Foods, said in a statement. “We are committed to growing our range of product offerings across the TiNDLE brand while meeting consumer needs as we move away from reliance on animal agriculture in the food system.” 

    Jared Umsted
    Jared Umsted joins the TiNDLE team | Courtesy

    “The quality, versatility and scalability of the offerings is unprecedented in the plant-based industry and one of the reasons that drove me to joining TiNDLE in-house,” Umsted said. “The adoption of new and cutting-edge technology at Next Gen –  while simultaneously adapting to the growing and shifting demands from consumers – sets us up well for competing at a global scale in the plant-based industry.”

    Plant-based chicken

    TiNDLE has become a leader in the plant-based chicken space; In February, TiNDLE raised a record-setting $100 million Series A for plant-based chicken before it had even launched in the U.S.

    It has since expanded its restaurant placement with more than 1,500 restaurants across the globe serving TiNDLE. It has placement with more than 100 national distributors in the U.S.

    tindle tenders
    TiNDLE adds chicken tenders to its lineup | Courtesy

    The company says its chef-created chicken is versatile and allows for “endless dish possibilities”. It’s now using 3D scanning and printing technology to enhance its R&D and integrate feedback from its growing roster of chefs.

    Its new tenders are part of its expansion plans, delivering similar taste and texture to its other pre-breaded products. It says they can be ready in less than five minutes — going from freezer to fryer.

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  • Float Foods Brings Its OnlyEg to Hong Kong Meal Kits In DayDayCook Exclusive

    float foods eggs
    3 Mins Read

    Singapore’s Float Foods, the plant-based food tech startup known for its egg replacement OnlyEg, has announced a partnership with DayDayCook, a direct-to-consumer meal solutions platform.

    Working with DayDayCook will bring the OnlyEg option visibility to the platform’s 20 million customers. The new meal kits will be available exclusively in the Hong Kong market beginning early next year with plans to roll out to the larger Asian market soon after.

    The meals leverage plant-based eggs in a variety of Chinese and Asian preparations from a range of chefs, the companies say.

    Plant-based eggs

    Unlike conventional eggs, Float Foods says its OnlyEg is healthier and more sustainable with comparable protein to a chicken egg but with 70 percent less saturated fat and zero cholesterol.

    Plant-based eggs are also less damaging to the environment by reducing the carbon footprint and requiring fewer resources to produce.

    float foods
    Vinita Choolani, CEO of Float Foods | Courtesy

    As consumer demand for climate-friendly foods increases, options like plant-based eggs play a critical role in helping shift dietary habits.

    “Float Foods and DayDayCook are uniquely positioned to meet consumers’ evolving taste, health and lifestyle requirements, including appreciating the time constraints faced by families, mothers, fathers, young adults in today’s fast paced world,” Vinita Choolani, CEO of Float Foods, said in a statement.

    Choolani launched Float Foods during the pandemic after seeing its impact on the food supply and the increasing number of diet-related illnesses. The company raised SGD $2.2 million(approx US$1.6M) in Seed funding round last year.

    Easy, tasty food

    The new partnership follows Float Foods bringing the first plant-based egg Tamagoyaki to Singapore’s food service industry earlier this year.

    Choolani says the new meal kits, which target 15 minutes of prep time, offer consumers wider choices to make conscious food decisions “that will impact their health and wellbeing, whilst injecting new flavours and taste experiences at the same time,” she says.

    Float Foods OnlyEg | Courtesy

    “People have enjoyed the experience of cooking and eating at home but are also hard-pressed for time and energy. The OnlyEg Meal Kits offer the chance to elevate the dining experience by introducing clean, contemporary, healthy meals,” Norma Chu, Founder, and CEO of DayDayCook, said in a statement. “Eating a healthy protein-rich meal should be accessible to everyone and bring a sense of celebration at the same time.”

    The new ready-to-cook meals will be available through e-commerce, and B2B options including hotels, restaurants, cafes, supermarkets, caterers, cloud kitchens, and institutional cafeterias. 

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  • Another Foods Launches India’s First Plant-Based Food-Service-Ready Chicken

    Another Foods is bringing its plant-based chicken to food service
    3 Mins Read

    Mumbai-based Another Foods says its new plant-based chicken is made specifically for food service to support the demands across the hospitality and restaurant industries.

    Another Foods says it worked with hospitality and food service experts to co-create its new line of plant-based chicken.

    “Having our own lab and manufacturing setup, Another Foods is able to create products specifically required by our partners,” Sharvil Desai, Founder, Another Foods, said in a statement. “We’ve started with three SKUs including plant-based chicken mince, chicken burger patty, and chicken chunks.”

    ‘Just like chicken’

    Desai says the new products taste “just like chicken” and are texturally identical to conventional meat. But Desai says the new items are non-flavored, which offers chefs the versatility to cook these products in different ways for different cuisines. “We want restaurants and hotels to think of us as their raw chicken supplier — just like a Godrej or a Venky’s — the only difference being that our products are plant-based.”

    India’s demand for plant-based food is on the rise | Photo by Sylvia Bartyzel at Unsplash

    The launch has earned praise from the Good Food Institute India, the think tank organization for the alternative protein industry.

    “As category awareness in India grows, food service offers the opportunity for curious and conscious customers to try plant-based meats at their favorite restaurants,” said Nicole Rocque, Senior Innovation Specialist, GFI India.

    Awareness is growing across the country, with India’s smart protein sector on track to reach $4.2 billion by 2030, according to projections from GFI India and Deloitte India. There are currently more than 50 startups in the alternative protein space in the country with more than 80 companies in total supporting the category growth.

    ‘More inclusive dining’

    As India’s population boom is expected to continue, Rocque says adding plant-based dishes to the menu “can help hotels, restaurants, and cafes attract new consumers, offer more inclusive group dining options, and appeal to younger demographics.” She says startups like Another Foods entering the plant-based market “gives back culinary creativity to chefs,” especially with its tailor-made product and marketing solutions for restaurants. “This model has great potential to scale as it leaves room for versatility, experimentation, and ultimately sustaining consumer interest for an extended period of time.”

    This month, Mumbaikars will have the opportunity to try Another Foods’ plant-based chicken at the Indigo Deli Colaba and its ghost kitchen, the Indigo Burger Project.

    Indian consumes want more than traditional meals as they embrace plant-based dining
    Indian consumes want more than traditional meals as they embrace plant-based dining | Courtesy GoodDot

    “I have been interacting with [Desai] and Another Foods for quite some time now,” Anurag Katriar, Founder, Indigo Hospitality and former President, National Restaurants Association of India, said. “My first meeting with him was over product trials and I remember offering blunt feedback about the necessity to work on the product further, before its commercial launch. To my pleasant surprise, instead of being defensive, Sharvil took my feedback on board positively and came back a few months later with a superior, improved product line! This incident speaks volumes about the culture of Another Foods and its promoters – they are chasing excellence, and that will surely hold them in good stead in the long run.”

    Desai says Another Foods’ team of scientists and chefs combine art and science to best serve its customers. “One of the biggest hurdles stopping people from being more sustainable is the notion that sustainability comes through compromises,” Desai said. “I wanted to create something that gives people what they want, without making them think they are compromising.”

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  • Australia Gets Its First Plant-Based Meat Ingredient Facility

    Harvest B factory
    3 Mins Read

    With $1 million in assistance from the Australian Government’s Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre, Harvest B has opened the first facility dedicated to plant-based meat ingredients in Australia.

    The new Sydney-based facility will be capable of producing up to 1,000 metric tons of plant-based protein made from Australian-grown grains, with plans to scale up. Harvest B says its novel tech creates a less expensive protein that eliminates the need for cold-chain and artificial ingredients while still delivering a meaty texture.

    Locally sourced, locally produced

    “When investigating the plant-based protein market, it became apparent that there was not a single large-scale ingredient brand supplying high-quality, locally made plant proteins to Australian food manufacturers,” Harvest B Co-founder and CCO, Alfred Lo, said in a statement. “Now food manufacturers have the option to source locally developed products leveraging local inputs rather than resorting to international suppliers,” Lo said.

    “Australia is a nation blessed with abundant natural resources, yet we have relied too heavily on the luck associated with trading these commodities in a raw state. Like Harvest B, we should be leveraging our smarts and add value to these high-quality natural resources – right here in Australia,” said Jens Goennemann, Managing Director for the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre.

    Harvest B founders
    Harvest B co-founders Alfred Lo and Kristi Riordan | Courtesy

    Harvest B says by incorporating locally grown grains, it will deliver a sustainable ingredient solution to consumer-facing food brands, manufacturers, and food service companies across the continent. Notably, Harvest B says it can do this at a price less than locally sourced animal ingredients and imported plant-based protein.

    “It made absolutely no sense that high quality, Australian grown produce is shipped offshore to be processed only for us to buy it back at higher costs as finished consumer products,” said Harvest B Co-founder and CEO, Kristi Riordan. “It became quickly evident to Harvest B that there was a significant opportunity for this value add to be done in Australia, creating local jobs and greater export opportunities.”

    Supplying the demand for smart protein

    Harvest B says it will supply food manufacturers and food service providers ingredients for plant-based mince, sausages, and patties as well as develop its own range of proprietary plant-based products. The company says it will initially develop ten different product lines, some of which will be positioned for export to Southeast Asia where demand for plant-based protein is on the rise.

    Harvest B team
    Harvest B team at the factory opening | Courtesy

    “To ensure we can grow our business, Harvest B invested heavily in research and development to create a novel product range that we believe exceeds the taste, texture, and price expectations of our consumers,” said Riordan. “In fact, industry and consumer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive to the point that we now have customers, both locally and abroad, approaching us.”

    The launch comes just months after Australian cultivated meat producer Vow debuted Factory 1, another facility aimed at disrupting the conventional protein sector. It says its new facility can produce 30 tons of cultivated meat per year.

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  • The Jeff Bezos-Backed Vegan Unicorn NotCo Raises $70 Million to Scale Up B2B Tech

    notco milk
    3 Mins Read

    NotCo, the Jeff Bezos-backed Chilean vegan food tech company working with a novel AI tool to develop plant-based milk, meat, and chicken, has announced the closing of a $70 million Series D1.

    With funding led by Princeville Capital and existing backers Jeff Bezos through his Bezos Expeditions, Tiger Global, L Catterton, Kaszek Ventures, Future Positive, and The Craftory, as well as new backers Marcos Galperin, founder and CEO of the largest Latin American tech company, MercadoLibre. The funding underscores the food giant’s $1.5 billion valuation.

    AI-developed vegan food

    NotCo’s AI tech, which it’s dubbed Giuseppe, helps it to identify ingredients that can best mirror the taste, texture, and nutrition profiles of animal products. It recently announced a partnership with Kraft Heinz to bring plant-based versions of some of the brand’s iconic products to market. The first items to launch are vegan cheese slices similar to the popular Kraft Singles.

    Kraft Heinz and NotCo have signed a joint venture agreement earlier this year

    The company’s own brand of products has taken off over the last several years after becoming the first investment of Bezos Expedition in Latin America in 2019. Its product lineup under the ‘Not’ label includes burgers, meat, milk, chicken, mayonnaise, and ice cream available across LATAM countries including Chile, Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia. It’s also increasing its shelf space in the crowded refrigerated and frozen sets across 10,000 stores in the U.S. It is now the fastest-growing food tech company in Latin America.

    “Since day one, our mission has been to create a more sustainable world, transforming the food industry by creating delicious plant-based food available for all tables, kitchens and pantries,” NotCo co-founder and CEO, Matias Muchnick, said in a statement.

    ‘New, impactful partnerships’

    “Building off the example of our joint venture with Kraft Heinz, we’re excited to develop new, impactful partnerships leveraging our proprietary technology. These partnerships will help diversify and accelerate our impact while scaling the accessibility of truly delicious plant-based options to further propel the industry forward,”Muchnick said.

    NotCo’s vegan mayo was one of its first AI-developed products | Courtesy

    The new funding will fuel NotCo’s new B2B efforts, which it says include other CPG brand partnerships, as well as suppliers and technology providers, enabling them to use the Giuseppe AI.

    “The food industry desperately needs to adopt technology to dramatically accelerate the product development process, reduce cost and address the challenges posed by climate change. NotCo is a very unique company in the food tech space globally with immense potential thanks to the team they have built and its one-of-a-kind AI technology,” said Joaquin Rodriguez Torres, co-founder of Princeville Capital. He also joins NotCo’s board of directors. “It’s rare to find a company with such an incredible track record of success in a short period of time, and we’re excited to help bolster the company’s growth and expansion.”

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  • Black Sheep Foods Raise a $12.3 Million Series A for Plant-Based Lamb

    3 Mins Read

    Black Sheep Foods, the Bay Area plant-based food tech company working to create vegan lamb meat with proprietary patent-pending technology has closed a $12.3 million Series A funding round.

    Black Sheep’s funding was led by Unovis, Bessemer Venture Partners, AgFunder, and Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed, bringing total investment to $18.05 million since the company launched in 2019. It raised more than $5 million in seed funding last January.

    ‘Giving consumers access to the most delicious meat variety’

    “Our minds associate meat with a shape, a texture, and a flavor,” Sunny Kumar, co-founder and CEO of Black Sheep Foods, said in a statement. “While texture has been the focus of meat innovation, flavor is a white space. Our debut lamb made from plants has more depth of flavor, richness, and appetizing aromatics than other meats, full stop. We’re in the business of giving consumers access to the most delicious meat variety, using plants instead of animals.”

    Black Sheep Vegan Lamb
    Black Sheep’s vegan lamb | Courtesy

    Black Sheep says the fresh funding will go toward scaling up production and moving into a new facility that will increase production significantly, moving Black Sheep’s output to 16 million pounds per year. It will also focus on securing national distribution; it launched its plant-based lamb meat in California restaurants last year, including Michelin-starred fine dining and quick service eateries including Ettan, Souvla, and Nick’s on Beverly. Its restaurant placement is now teetering toward 50 locations.

    The company says its sales volume “is on a tear,” with a large number of repeat customers. One repeat customer, the Greek Bay Area restaurant, Souvla, says Black Sheep is a hit with its patrons.

    “At Souvla, we were incredibly thoughtful when selecting a plant-based meat partner. Since launching Black Sheep Foods’ product in our restaurants last year, we’ve been seriously impressed with its integration into our menu and the overwhelmingly positive response from our many loyal guests,” Charles Billies, CEO and Founder of Souvla, said. “We remain excited about the future of their product offerings and this important movement in the years to come.” 

    Global meat market

    While the leading plant-based meat brands including Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, as well as the sea of competitors in their wake, have focused on replicating beef, pork, and chicken — lamb, and other less common meats in the U.S. market, hold great potential in other parts of the world, particularly Asia and the Middle East.

    Black Sheep Vegan Lamb
    Black Sheep’s lamb meat has global appeal | Courtesy

    Black Sheep’s lamb has already earned a following in the Middle East, the company says. Prince Khaled calls the lamb, “shockingly good.” He says, as someone who grew up with the taste profile in Saudi Arabia, he couldn’t believe the “authentic mouthfeel and flavor. With taste being a vital aspect of customer adoption, Black Sheep Foods will easily dominate amongst plant-based meats.”

    Khaled says game meats are also a wide-open playing field. “There’s a whole range of taste profiles that Black Sheep will be able to explore, especially with the company’s technology, allowing for an amplified flavor, excellent texture, and a strong nutritional profile.”

    The post Black Sheep Foods Raise a $12.3 Million Series A for Plant-Based Lamb appeared first on Green Queen.

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  • Malk Organics Closes a $9 Million Series B

    Malk Organics
    3 Mins Read

    Malk Organics, the Texas-based organic dairy alternative brand, announced a $9 million Series B funding round led by Benvolio Group and Rotor Capital.

    Malk was launched in 2015 by August Vega after she discovered her one-year-old son had a dairy allergy. But with her son in mind, Vega launched with a commitment to organic ingredients and a shorter list of ingredients overall compared to its competitors. It’s a move investors say gives the brand a competitive edge.

    “We are extremely bullish about Malk’s growth prospects, because not only is the product highly differentiated in a growing on-trend category, but the seasoned team in place has delivered exceptional results in 2022 and has a strong plan to accelerate future revenue and achieve profitability,” said Managing Partner of Benvolio Group, Sam Frankfort.

    ‘A strong foundation’

    Malk may have been ahead of the curve, with the industry leaders now touting cleaner products and shifting to unsweetened and organic as consumers seek out healthier dairy-free options.

    “Over the past 12 months, the Malk team has built a strong foundation by pioneering the premium plant-based milk segment, cultivating existing and new retail customer relationships, and attracting a dedicated, passionate team,” said Managing Partner of Rotor Capital, Rich Keller. “We are excited to continue to support their journey to helping Malk achieve its greatest potential.”

    August Vega, Malk founder
    August Vega, Malk founder | Courtesy

    The funding comes after Malk increased its distribution and expanded its offerings to include a chocolate oat milk that’s rolling out to stores now.

    Malk says the new funding will support its retail growth and marketing efforts as well as add key hires.

    “We are very pleased to announce this round of funding from our valued partners at Benvolio, Rotor, and more, which will help us continue to emerge as a leading organic plant-based milk brand,” said Malk’s CEO Jason Bronstad. “We have bold plans for Malk and are eager to build on the momentum we have garnered thus far as we continue to bring the cleanest milk alternative on the market to households throughout the country.”

    Demand for dairy-free milk

    The funding comes as demand for dairy-free products continues to rise even amid declining sales for other plant-based sectors. Dairy-free milk has long been the plant-based category driver as consumers opt for alternatives for health reasons such as lactose intolerance, as well as for climate and ethical reasons.

    Malk Organics
    Malk Organics | Courtesy

    A recent survey found nearly half of young consumers were ashamed to order dairy products in public. Retailers are also supporting the trend with Blue Bottle coffee announcing it would make non-dairy oat milk the default at all of its stores following a two-store trial.

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  • Cultivated Meat Just Landed In a Butcher Shop for the First Time

    Cultivated meat comes to the butcher shop
    3 Mins Read

    Eat Just’s Good Meat is now available through a Singaporean butcher shop, Huber’s Butchery.

    Eat Just’s cultivated Good Meat is coming to the display case and bistro menu of Huber’s Butchery in Singapore, beginning early next year. The launch includes a tasting preview happening this Saturday.

    ‘Another historic moment’

    “Offering this new approach to making meat at a butchery is another historic moment in the long road to making our food system more delicious and sustainable,” Josh Tetrick, co-founder and CEO of Eat Just, said in a statement. “I’m very proud to partner with the Huber’s team to give people a whole new way to experience our cultivated chicken in the new year.”

    The news follows several recent launches across Singapore including a partnership with the delivery platform Food Panda, and a recent partnership with a number of hawker stalls, as well as fine dining restaurants.

    Good Meat's cultivated lab meat
    Good Meat’s cultivated lab meat | Courtesy

    Last month, during the COP27 conference in Egypt, Eat Just served its Good Meat chicken to global climate leaders, media, and consumers for the first time outside of Singapore. Cultivated meat is poised to reduce the protein industry’s carbon footprint by producing fewer emissions than conventional meat production — some estimates put it at 90 percent fewer emissions. It’s also less resource intensive, requiring less land and water than conventional meat.

    The Huber’s partnership will see the company’s first placement alongside conventional butcher shop meat, something Huber says aligns with its longstanding commitment to quality.

    “When we founded our butcher shop, we made it our mission to provide top quality and exceptional tasting meat products with the highest food safety standards at an affordable price. Partnering with GOOD Meat is in keeping with that vision and the realities of our ever-changing food system,” said Huber’s Butchery Managing Director Ryan Huber.

    Executive Director Andre Huber said cultivated meat “could be one of the solutions to over-farming due to increased population size and density and an increase in animal protein consumption in many parts of the world.”

    Cultivated protein poised for regulatory approval

    The launch into the family-run butcher overlaps with the two-year anniversary of Good Meat’s approval in Singapore; it’s currently the only company with regulatory approval to sell its cultivated meat.

    Upside Foods’ EPIC factory, Courtesy

    But that will likely change in 2023 as fellow U.S.-based cultivated meat company, Upside Foods, has completed the first regulatory hurdle with the FDA GRAS status for its cultivated chicken.

    The meat is likely to receive USDA approval within the next year, which would make it legal for sale and consumption across the U.S.

    The post Cultivated Meat Just Landed In a Butcher Shop for the First Time appeared first on Green Queen.

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  • Believer to Open the World’s Largest Cultivated Meat Factory in the Heart of Hog Country

    future meat lamb
    3 Mins Read

    A new cultivated meat factory slated to open in North Carolina will be the world’s largest.

    In what Israel-based Believer Meats says is a watershed moment for the cultivated meat industry, its forthcoming 200,000-square-foot factory, which doesn’t yet have a target opening date, will be able to produce 22 million pounds of meat annually once operational, making it the largest cultivated meat factory in the world.

    The facility, which broke ground earlier this week, is coming to Wilson County, North Carolina — the heart of the state’s hog farming industry. North Carolina is the third-largest hog-producing state in the U.S. The facility will bring as many as 100 jobs to the region over the next three years, and an investment of $123.35 million to Wilson County. The company has raised more than $387 million since its 2018 launch.

    One step closer to commercialization

    “Our facility propels Believer forward as a leader in the cultivated meat industry,” Nicole Johnson-Hoffman, Believer’s CEO said in a statement. “Our brand has continually proven our commitment to scale production technology and capacity, and with our new U.S. production center, we are one step closer to commercialization. Believer is setting the standard globally to make it possible for future generations to eat and enjoy meat.” 

    Believer, formerly Future Meat Technologies, said it specifically targeted North Carolina because of its talent pool and its success in integrating technology-driven solutions.

    Courtesy Believer

    “We’re pleased to welcome Believer Meats to North Carolina,” said North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper. “This important decision to build its first U.S. commercialization operation in Wilson County validates our innovative research and development and highly skilled talent while further cementing our state as the best in the nation to do business.”

    The new facility will feature custom-made bioreactors that Believer says can achieve high cell densities and yields. The company has developed cultivated lamb, which it hails as an R&D breakthrough.

    Robert Rankin, Executive Director of the Association for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation (AMPS) oday’s hailed the announcement as “another example of the growth, progress and increased interest in this cutting-edge industry,” he said.

    The announcement also earned praise from the industry think tank, the Good Food Institute.

    “We celebrate this milestone and are thrilled to see the North Carolina and Wilson County officials and community providing critically important support to scale cultivated meat production. These steps pave the way for cultivated meat to come to market in the U.S. at scale and helps ensure as many consumers as possible have access to these groundbreaking products,” says Liz Specht, Ph.D., Vice President of Science and Technology at the Good Food Institute. “Further government investment like this will advance the sector toward commercialization, helping to feed a growing population more sustainably, spurring economic growth, and improving environmental and global health outcomes.” 

    The future of protein

    Johnson-Hoffman said Believer, and the cultivated meat industry at large, are “on the path” to creating change. “Through affordability, approachability, and availability, we want our products to become the meat of choice globally, and with the announcement of our new production facility, we are well on our way.”

    Upside Foods’ EPIC factory, Courtesy

    Believer’s new facility will be among a growing handful of dedicated cultivated meat factories across the globe. Upside Foods’ EPIC factory in California could soon be operational as the company just earned FDA GRAS status for its cultivated chicken. Once it receives USDA approval it could begin producing for commercial distribution.

    Eat Just, which is currently the only company with approval for cultivated meat in the world, is expected to bring its Good Meat factory online in Singapore early next year. The company says it will be able to produce tens of thousands of pounds of meat per year.

    Elsewhere, Ivy Farms opened the largest cultivated meat factory in Europe last summer, capable of producing three tons of cultivated meat annually. And in October, Australian cultivated meat company Vow debuted Factory 1, its NSW-based factory capable of producing 30 tons of cultured meat per year.

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  • Swiss Court Sides With Planted Foods on Use of ‘Meaty’ Labeling Terminology

    planted whole chicken breast

    3 Mins Read

    The Zurich Administrative Court has sided with Swiss plant-based protein manufacturer Planted Foods and its use of terminology including “chicken” and “BBQ.”

    “The use of animal names on the packaging of plant-based foods made from pea protein is not deceptive in view of the specific product presentation,” the court said in its decision, supporting the Swiss-based Planted Foods, which produces a range of vegan meat products.

    ‘The public recognizes the products as a vegetable substitute for meat’

    Further, the court said a consumer survey clearly indicated that “the public recognizes the products as a vegetable substitute for meat. By stating the name of an animal, the intended use of the food as a meat substitute product can be explained to the public in the interest of providing sufficient information required by food law.”

    planted chicken
    Courtesy Planted

    The decision comes as labeling on plant-based food faces increasing challenges as the industry expands. Neighboring country France enacted a ban on mean names on plant-based foods earlier this year in an attempt to avoid “consumer confusion.” That decision was ultimately overturned by the country’s highest court, but the attempted ban highlighted unfair scrutiny directed at the plant-based category.

    Label restriction attempts tick up

    Other efforts to restrict labeling have gone into effect, though. In South Africa in June, a government ruling outlawed using “meaty” names on plant-based food including terms like “vegan nuggets” and “plant-based meatballs.” The ruling was also announced as a way to minimize confusion.

    “Regulations such as this is exactly what we don’t need when the world’s scientists are telling us we urgently need to reduce our meat consumption to help brake dangerous global warming,” ProVeg South Africa’s country director Donovan Will said in a statement earlier this year. “The regulation disrespects consumers. There is no evidence to show that people are confused by meaty names for plant-based foods. In fact, evidence from Australia, Europe, and the U.S. prove they are not confused. We really urge the government to overturn this regulation.”

    miyoko's cheese
    Miyoko’s won the right to call dairy-free products cheese

    Turkey could see even greater restrictions following a June decision by the Turkish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry banning the sale and production of vegan cheese. Organizations are hoping to reverse the ban through legal action; The Vegan Association of Turkey filed a lawsuit to defend the rights of plant-based brands and manufacturers in Turkey.

    In the U.S. vegan cheesemaker Miyoko Schinner won a court case against the California Department of Food and Agriculture over similar attempts to block words like “cheese”, “milk”, and “butter” from dairy-free products.

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  • Orbillion Bio’s New Partnership Will Produce 4 Million Pounds of Cultivated Meat Per Year

    Orbillion's Wagyu beef burger
    3 Mins Read

    Collaborating with synbio tech solutions provider Solar Biotech, cultivated meat pioneer Orbillion Bio says it can produce upwards of four million pounds of cultivated meat per year.

    Known for its premium cultivated Wagyu beef, California-based Orbillion Bio says the new partnership with Solar Biotech will see it scale up to 20,000L bioreactors — enough to produce more than four million pounds of cultivated meat per year.

    The announcement follows the recent FDA GRAS status for Upside Foods’ cultivated chicken, moving the cultivated meat industry closer to U.S. regulatory approval.

    In position for mass production

    The partnership is the first of its kind for Solar Biotech, marking its official entry into the cultivated beef industry, following its launch into animal-free chicken and work with Motif Foodworks on a yeast-derived heme protein.

    Orbillion’s founders Samet Yildirim, MSc, MBS, Patricia Bubner, PhD, and Gabriel Levesque-Tremblay, PhD 

    “At Solar Biotech, we develop world-class bioprocessing technology together with leading players in biotech. We now want to bring our knowledge and decades of experience into creating real impact in the sustainable food tech space, and there is no better partner than the Orbillion Bio team. We see our technical synergy with Orbillion as an opportunity to enter a rapidly growing higher value cellular agriculture segment, which will yield long-term significant recurrent revenue for both parties with attractive profit margins” Alex Berlin, CEO and CTO of Solar Biotech, said in a statement. “They bring significant expertise in world-class bioprocessing and food, and we are looking forward to investing in this partnership to bring cost-effective and nutritious foods to market.”

    The partnership marries Orbillion’s proprietary cell culture platform with Solar Biotech’s scale-up bioprocess development capabilities and infrastructure, proprietary AI-driven bioprocess controlling software, new biosensing technologies, and vertically integrated engineering, and previous experience commercializing mammalian cell cultures for animal-free meat, the companies said in a statement.

    Quality, parity, and sustainability

    “Orbillion’s innovative business model will bring to market the highest quality cultivated beef, while being cost competitive,” Patricia Bubner, CEO of Orbillion, said in a statement. “Our unique technology has already allowed us to produce meat that comes from non-GMO cells and that is free of fetal bovine serum (FBS), and by partnering with Solar Biotech we can move more swiftly to reach price parity.”

    The new partnership will see Orbillion produce its meat at lower costs — part of its commitment to achieving price parity with conventional meat by 2026, and commodity pricing for beef by 2030.

    Orbillion Wagyu beef | Courtesy

    It will also help tackle the food industry’s emissions. Orbillion says if produced using renewable energy, cultivated meat could reduce global warming impacts by between 85 and 92 percent versus conventional beef. Lab-grown meat also reduces the amount of land needed to produce protein, and requires fewer resources including fresh water.

    As the cultivated protein sector positions itself for widespread regulatory approval, Orbillion hope it is setting itself apart with a focus on premium meats. In addition to its Wagyu beef, it’s also developing elk and lamb meat. A recent partnership with Luiten Foods will bring its range of cultivated meats to Europe by 2025, pending regulatory approval.

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