German food-tech startup Project Eaden has announced a €10.1 million seed funding round for its novel fiber technology used to create plant-based steak.
Creandum, Atlantic Food Labs, Shio Capital, Trellis Road, and several angels including former Rügenwalder MD Godo Röben led the new funding. The initial funding round was last June. And last month, Magnetic and Atlantic Food Labs increased their investments by another €2.1m.
Project Eaden says the financing will further the development of its proprietary bio-fiber technology that creates meaty steak that looks, cooks, and tastes like conventional.
Fiber spun meat
“Project Eaden is a technology company, so we’ll be investing in our own R&D activities and the initial production setup,” Project Eaden co-founder Jan Wilmking said in a statement. Wilmking co-founded Project Eaden last year with materials scientist Dr. David Schmelzeisen and Mymuesli founder Hubertus Bessau.
“We’ve built a highly-motivated team of professionals to further develop our unique, proprietary technology over the past nine months, including tissue engineers, food technologists, material scientists, and culinary professionals,” Wilmking said.
Photo by tommao wang on Unsplash
Carl Fritjofsson, General Partner at Creandum says that eating meat is associated with excessive land and water usage and unsustainable levels of greenhouse gas emissions. “But, for most people, it’s simply too much of a pleasure to give up on,” he says.
“Until today, existing plant-based options haven’t solved this dilemma, as they lack compelling taste, texture, and look despite higher prices. Project Eaden has the potential to become the industry’s game changer. That’s why we’re so excited to lead this round, which is one of the largest in the European plant-based meat tech sector,” Fritjofsson said.
“Project Eaden is meaningful innovation at its best, representing our mission to back world-class teams with a maximum possible footprint. We are happy to continue our long collaboration with the team,” said David Rosskamp, founding partner at Magnetic.
Project Eaden says its bio fiber technology recreates the taste, texture, and appearance of animal meat. The tech is similar to fiber spinning for synthetic fiber use across other industries including textiles, aerospace, and automotive. It says it’s using the same technology for meat — noting that it’s highly scalable and affordable.
Fiber spinning is an ancient practice; Egyptians used spindles to turn flax fiber into yarn. By 1665, after the development of the spinning wheel, Robert Hooke explored the idea of producing synthetic threads. It wasn’t until the 1930s that the world saw the first spinning of fully synthetic fiber, giving rise to nylon and polyester, which revolutionized the fashion industry. Project Eaden says it’s now time for another evolution to spinning — this time for food.
Plant-based meat 2.0
“Both plant and muscle fibers are versatile building blocks with fascinating material properties, which is why so many of today’s high-tech materials are natural fiber-inspired,” Schmelzeisen said. “For example, we use carbon fiber for rockets and satellites, and biomaterial-based implants for humans. Now, for the first time, we’re replicating meat, fiber by fiber, using proven and easily scalable textile industry technologies.”
Project Eaden says these fibers can be designed with precision to meet technical requirements including elasticity, water-binding ability, and strength. The ultra-thin fibers are bundled into strands that mimic conventional muscle tissue. The fibers are then combined with vegetable fats for a marbled, plant-based meat nearly identical to its animal-based counterpart.
Courtesy Juicy Marbles
Project Eaden joins Juicy Marbles, another European startup working to displace whole-cut animal meat. But Project Eaden says its tech is unrivaled in taste and texture.
“Our ultimate goal is to offer consumers a product that eliminates every single reason there is to eat animals,” Wilmking said. “We intend to fully recreate and even improve on the sensory profile and the overall pleasure people experience when they eat meat.”
Bessau says a delicious plant-based steak isn’t only associated with benefits for the consumer market, “but also for the planet because livestock are responsible for six percent of all greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. “The ‘carbon hoofprint’ is just as large as the carbon footprint of the entire global transport sector – road, air and sea combined.”
In the race to clean up the food system, molecular farming is emerging as one of the protein industry’s most viable contenders.
Molecular farming was first demonstrated more than 30 years ago when scientists produced a recombinant antibody and human serum albumin in transgenic plants and cell cultures. The tech has since expanded its reach with a number of companies working to utilize and commercialize these proteins to create a more sustainable food system.
What exactly is molecular farming?
In simplest terms, molecular farming is producing proteins with plants instead of animals. Plants are modified so that their cells replicate the desired proteins, and are then harvested from the leaves or other plant tissues.
Molecular farming is seen when microorganisms infect plants, transferring some genes in the process. Scientists use similar methods to give plants new instructions for creating proteins.
Photo by Louis Reed at Unsplash.
Why is molecular farming used?
Companies are turning to molecular farming for a number of reasons. It’s been hailed as a viable solution to producing vaccines and other necessary pharmaceuticals. It’s also being hailed as one of the best steps to shift our food system away from carbon-intensive animal products and toward more sustainable alternatives.
Benefits of molecular farming
Just like we’re seeing benefits from other meat and dairy successors both in the health and quality of the food to the smaller environmental impact, molecular farming offers similar benefits. These advances in food tech also hold the promise of a cleaner, more sustainable, and more efficient food system.
Molecular farming companies
The molecular farming landscape is growing rapidly. These are a few of the companies leveraging it to transform the global food system.
1. Miruku
A New Zealand-based future food company developing advanced dairy proteins in plants, Miruku emerged from stealth mode last spring with an oversubscribed $2.4 million Seed investment round.
“Our goal is to provide nutritious and functional animal-free dairy, economically,” Miruku’s CEO Amos Palfreyman said in a statement last spring. “The Miruku team is amped to have been joined by a special set of local and international institutional food tech investors backing our vision of delicious and ecologically sustainable food production, and of course our growth plans.”
2. Bright Biotech
U.K.-based Bright Biotech is working to make plant-based affordable recombinant proteins for R&D, therapeutic, cosmeceutical, agri-food, and industrial applications. It raised $3.2m last November in an oversubscribed Seed round.
The company says it uses “game-changing innovative technology” which uses chloroplasts to express high amounts of high-value proteins in plants. The company is currently producing and supplying recombinant growth factors to the R&D sector.
Courtesy William Mattey via Pexels
3. Mozza
Mozza says its mission is to make cheese from plants that’s indistinguishable from cheese that comes from animals. “It’s not nut cheese. It’s not soy cheese. It’s cheese made from the same proteins found in cow’s milk, but produced in plants rather than in a cow,” reads the Mozza website. And, the company says, because it’s dairy cheese, it will melt like dairy cheese, stretch like dairy cheese, and taste just like conventional.
4. Nobell Foods
Expect to hear the name Nobell Foods a lot more in the near future. The company recently raised $75 million to bring its molecular-based dairy proteins to market. The company uses a patented approach to making dairy from plants — a process that involved more than four years of research and development from founder Magi Richani, an engineer by training. Richani has tapped into caseins, the proteins in cheese that give it its texture and flavor. The company creates these key dairy proteins from soybeans for cheeses that it says taste, smell, melt, stretch, and even age like those made from animals.
ORF’s barley crop | Courtesy
5. ORF Genetics
Iceland’s molecular farming company ORF Genetics sells growth factors to cultivated meat companies. It developed Orfeus, a barley grain based vehicle for recombinant protein production. ORF’s portfolio includes growth factors for the stem cell research market, the skincare market, and cultivated meat. “We are confident that ORF Genetics has the perfect production platform to drastically reduce the cost of growth factors in your cell-cultured meat production and to provide the quantity of growth factors required,” Liv Bergþorsdottir, CEO of ORF Genetics, said in 2020.
6. Tiamat Sciences
North Carolina-based biotech startup Tiamat Sciences raised $3 million in Seed funding in 2021 for its proprietary plant molecular farming platform. It says using plants is less costly than bioreactors but produces the same or superior quality protein.
“Our technology can help to promote animal-free alternatives not only for food but also for the pharmaceutical industry,” France-Emmanuelle Adil, founder and CEO of Tiamat Sciences, said in a statement. “Plants are a great system to work with; they grow fast, are small water and energy consumers, and they are compostable. The technology offers flexibility with production for a diversified product portfolio.”
What does the alt protein industry have in store for us amidst a very turbulent 2023 ahead? A lot, actually. Below, I share my 12 crystal ball takes (in no particular order).
I sat down to write these trends and ended up writing a whole piece about where plant-based meat is going. Amidst predictions, I wanted to share my views on the sector as a whole, given all the brouhaha out there, and I think it’s worth a read.
Author’s Note: This is my third year making alt-protein-specific trend predictions. You can see my 2021 ones and how I did (pretty well, actually!), and here’s last year’s list, as well as my performance (less well, 2022 was rough folks, but still in the running).
This one may seem obvious for industry insiders and has been coming for a while. While affordable and scalable cultivated meat flesh on supermarket shelves is likely years away, cultivated fat is achievable and startups are already collaborating to create sausages, meatballs and more. So much more to come here, because fat is an integral part of animal meat’s mouthfeel so a cultivated fat add-on could help win over those sitting on the plant-based meat fence.
2) Affordable Flexitarianism
Food shoppers are watching their budgets more than ever. They are chasing value and that means brands need to be creative on the pricing front. I foresee a slew of more affordable plant-based products, perhaps reformulated to be cheaper to manufacture. In this vein, my crystal ball suggests a lot more vegan-ready meals (same as I predicted last year) and more plant-based brands venturing into this space à la Impossible Bowls. Also, lots more value packs coming your way, such as Quorn’s Costco Value Packs and Beyond Meat’s pandemic value pack iterations.
Courtesy The Better Meat Co
3) Fungi Forward Fun
I once hosted a Clubhouse chat during which participants told me that many Americans are scared of mushrooms and don’t buy them. I am not sure if that is still true (this was 2020) but as someone who lives in Asia, it’s really hard to believe. Here in Hong Kong, we regularly eat at least 5 kinds of mushrooms every week. Mushrooms are delicious, versatile, budget-friendly, and ideal as replacements for animal meat in so many dishes because of their terrific textures and minimal processing. I’m thinking in 2023 we will see more in this space. And in various formats too, from mycoprotein to mycelium and beyond.
4) More Culinary Diversity, Please
One of the reasons alt protein is still such a niche sector is that it remains far too Western-centric. A majority of the products that have been launched are burgers, nuggets and mince, most with European-derived cuisines in mind. Folks, the proverbial “West” is basically less than a billion people. The 7-billion-plus-strong ROW (rest of world) is who we need to be serving (especially since animal protein demand is growing fastest there) and there are hundreds of cuisines begging for smarter protein product drops. I predict a lot more action on this front, particularly in Asia, where the alt-protein revolution is only just beginning. This prediction dovetails well with general food trend reports that are forecasting mega growth in ROW culinary heritages including Cambodian, Filipino, Nigerian, Dominican and many more. Alt protein should serve wider food trends and meet consumers where they are, which is a much more diverse and authentic gastronomic place.
Photo by Anastasia Shuraeva from Pexels.
5) Canteen Impact
A lot of the data around plant-based meat sales being flat is based on SPINS data, a company that tracks retailer sales, ie grocery stores. What’s missing from this is food service data- ie how much plant-based meat/dairy/seafood/eggs large-scale food catering companies like Sodexo and Compass Group are cooking up. These companies have two main audiences: students (schools and universities) and employees (corporate cafeterias) and collectively serve hundreds of millions of people a day (Sodexo: 100+ million, Compass: 150+ million). When they adjust their menus/feature plant-based options, they can have a ginormous impact in terms of lowering our food emissions. And these companies are committed to plant-based meat in a big way. And not just out of good-heartedness, but also because they have their own Net Zero goals, and decreasing the volume of high-emission animal protein products on their menus is a big part of achieving those goals. Further, in a Gen Z-forward world, catering to diversity is KEY. That means offering up menu items to suit all kinds of dietary preferences. Both education and corporate institutions are under increasing pressure to do so, which means the food service operators have to adapt.
Note: SPINS data doesn’t include fast food/QSR chain data either. And there’s plenty to be excited about on that front too. Moral of the story: plant-based meat is going nowhere.
6) Nostalgia Branding Reigns Supreme
I can’t say this is a Sonalie original, but after having read over a dozen Gen Z trend reports, I feel low-key confident in telling you: expect a lot more nostalgia-induced packaging across all food sectors (currently dominating snacks and beverage aisles), including meat, dairy and seafood analogues. When the economy sucks, we all crave comfort, and that’s what nostalgia branding offers our loud and proud inner child. This trend goes beyond packaging- it extends to product selection too. Think animal-free dairy mac and cheese boxes, vegan fish fingers, plant-based instant ramen, “chickn” pot pie, and more.
Nestlé and Perfect Day’s Cowabunga milk is now available in select locations | Courtesy
7) Big Food x Animal-Free Dairy Go Steady
This is a continuation of my 2022 prediction around precision fermentation- I had a feeling the space was going to take off in a big way and it did. But what I foresee for this year is Big Dairy going full-steam ahead on animal-free dairy formulations, from cheese to yogurt to milk to ice cream. The headlines have already started from the likes of giants such as Fonterra, Bel Group, Unilever and Nestle among others. One of the biggest drivers of these collaborations is the industry’s need to account for their GHG emissions profile. For years, meat took most of the climate activist heat. But in the past couple of years, dairy has come under the spotlight, and rightly so. Expect to see a slew of announcements on this front.
8) Healthy Plus Formulations
In an age of inflation and recessionary pressures, companies must give their consumers every reason to choose their brands over others. And for alt protein brands, who are already perceived to be more expensive and “less than”, health is where they should be investing when it comes to product formulation. We need to give consumers more than just meat replacements and I think some brands get it and are going to jump on this. While I have predicted cleaner-label products before (to muted success, I still think plant-based brands need to do better in this area), this is more than that. Gen Z consumers in particular are hungry for food products that are both delicious AND good for you. Study: the phenomenon that is Mid Day Squares, aka functional organic chocolate energy bars. Also look at Athletic Greens’ unicorn valuation and Olipop fiber-rich prebiotic soda (because soda can’t just be soda anymore). Plant-based meat/seafood brandings should be experimenting with super nutrients and functional ingredients to give consumers that healthy plus bang for their buck (plus with the new US FDA healthy food guidelines, they may not have a choice).
Because, Animals cultivated mouse meat
9) Alt Protein Pet Food FTW
As much as millennials delayed having kids, millennials are choosing to forage the experience altogether. And they are replacing babies with pets. Pet ownership is on the rise and we can’t help but want to spoil our fur babies. That means best-in-class nutrition and food. Pair that with social media ensuring that more pet owners than ever grasp the environmental cost of their furry friends, and this is a massive area of opportunity. There’s already some decent action on the plant-based side of things. But I’m thinking the cultivated pet food opportunity is going to grow. My prediction? Not only will you see more alt-protein pet companies burst onto the scene, but you will also see some existing human-focused players diversify into the pet world, especially seeing as Big Food is jumping into this 112+ billion dollar opportunity.
10) The Quiet Quitting of PB Founders
Word on the VC street is that funding has dried up for plant-based meat. Not only for economic reasons (inflation, looming recession, freefalling public markets), but also for category reasons (plant-based meat is over, or haven’t you heard?)- too many brands, lackluster products, non-recurring customers. Less funding doesn’t just mean fewer new startups, it also means more existing startups will have to close shop because they will run out of money. I predict that over the next year, we will lose 10-20% of the plant-based meat landscape. Unlike with other industries, you won’t hear about it in your Linkedin feed. Why? Well because the majority of these companies (and their investors) are impact-driven. And it’s not good for the mission to talk about failure too much. It just feeds the (Big Meat Lobby) haters. And when you are talking about the future of the planet, the stakes (steaks!) are just too high. Hence…the quiet quitting of plant-based founders.
One of these 'milks' has been shipped halfway round the world and tastes like dust, it also contains stabilisers, emulsifiers, synthetic vitamins and a health warning. The other is produced in Britain, contains milk and no health warnings at all… #februdairy@februdairypic.twitter.com/TS8rr79oVK
An example of an anti alt dairy tweet, part of the pro dairy campaign Februdairy
11) The Politicisation of Alt Protein
Folks it’s been fun. But our time in the “new and innovative sector” sun has ended. For the first few years, Big Food (and Big Meat, Big Dairy, Big Seafood) was happy to let us grow and prosper in our tiny little market share corner. But we’ve made enough of a scene to get their attention and they aren’t too happy about how we’ve managed to get a decent chunk of their customers to question their product’s ethics/health/eco credentials. In my 2021 edition I predicted the revenge of Big Meat. And that’s more than come true. But it’s about to get a lot more sinister. As the industry continues to mature, Big Food is coming for us with its big guns (think Big Oil tactics), and that means politics. We are headed for an Alt Protein = Woke Liberal, Red Meat = Healthy Conservative world. It’s going to get ugly. Examples given: The Nebraska governor’s raging against plant-based meat ahead of the US midterm elections. Big Dairy infiltrating TikTok with anti-oat milk content. Farmers across the world are rebelling against climate action. More to come.
12a) Cultivated Meat Regulatory Approval Continues – US
Last year I predicted that we would see regulatory approval in the US or Israel. I was semi-right. Cultivated chicken meat maker Upside Foods made history to be the first US company to earn GRAS status by the FDA (aka their chicken was deemed safe for human consumption). But that’s only half the battle. To sell their product commercially, they need approval from the USDA. I predict that at least 1 US company gets USDA approval by the end of the year. Upside is strongly positioned to be the chosen one, but cultivated sashimi startup Wildtype could just as likely achieve the milestone. As could BlueNalu.
Meatable’s cultivated pork is coming to Asia soon | Courtesy
12b) Cultivated Meat Regulatory Approval Continues – Global Outlook
I predict the Singaporean government will grant commercial approval to at least 1 local cultivated meat player (I vote for MVP Shiok Meats, which focuses on cultivated seafood), and at least 1 more foreign player (likely Dutch cultivated pork player Meatable or Mosa Meat, given recent announcements).
Despite what remains an optimistic outlook for cultivated meat in China and some recent notable discussions, I don’t believe we will see commercial approval there in 2023. And I have changed my mind about Israel. While I do believe the country is home to some of the most exciting alt protein startups in the world (I do predict the country will continue to produce incredible cultivated meat innovation) and the government is very supportive with funding and talent, commercial approval is unlikely in 2023, thanks to a new ultra-conservative government and domestic geopolitics.
Over in Europe: again, lots of innovation and industry support, but Brussels is well known for being ultra-careful when it comes to approving novel food technologies (see: GMOs) so while I do think the Continent will eventually say yes to cultivated meat, it’s going to take a while. As for the UK, well, while some folks believe it will lead in this area, I remain skeptical. Firstly, their domestic political landscape is a mess (ref: every political headline for the past 4 months!) and secondly, UK farmers have a powerful voice. The government is not going to rock that boat.
For an overview of the ten most supportive countries when it comes to cultivated meat, see here.
Other stuff I am watching:
Seaweed as a super ingredient > we’ve barely scratched the surface of this wonder group of sea vegetables and we will be seeing more seaweed-fortified foods across the board as companies scramble to make their products more sustainable and more healthy (seaweed serves both).
More upstream supply chain biotech funding > (machinery, serums, scaffolding, cell lines) > as VCs get increasingly gun-shy around backing new cultivated meat and precision fermentation end-product teams, they will turn to upstream technology plays, which is very good for the space. The sector can’t scale with sorting out the fundamentals.
Alt food growth > we need to rethink how we produce more than just meat, seafood, eggs and dairy. Coffee, chocolate, palm oil, and sugar- all have problematic ethical and environmental footprints, from child labor to exploitative working conditions to deforestation. So many more companies will come to market to (try to) wrong the rights!
Philippines-based plant-based meat manufacturer WTH Foods has launched Umani, a new range of frozen plant-based products drawing on Filipino culture.
The mission-driven WTH Foods says its new range of frozen meals is part of its goal of helping to feed the planet’s estimated population of ten billion people by 2050.
Umani
The new WTH Foods Umani range, a combination of the Japanese word “umami”(“delicious) and the Filipino word “ani” (“harvest”), the frozen range includes sausages, burgers, meatballs, mince, sisig, tapa, tuna, and a holiday ham roast.
Umani’s products are made from wheat, soy, and microalgae. The company says they offer a good source of protein and fiber while being free from trans fats, cholesterol, hormones, and antibiotics common in conventional meat.
“We, at WTH Foods, innovate food experiences and transform the way the world eats one plate at a time,” Carissa Lim, co-founder and chief operating officer, told The Philippine Star.
“We hope to raise awareness on nutrition, sustainability and food security, and find new ways to satisfy the population’s dietary protein requirements,” Lim said.
Diving into plant-based seafood
The company, which Lim co-founded alongside Stephen Co and Carlo Ng, says it will also turn its attention to the booming plant-based seafood category beyond the tuna offered in the Umani range.
“We use microalgae for food applications, such as plant-based seafood, beverages, sauces and high-moisture extrusion,” Lim said.
Umani is taking on traditional meaty Filipino dishes like sisig with plants | Courtesy
“Our R&D will develop our microalgae solutions for biomass supply, extraction of value ingredients, and development and isolation of our own strain,” she said.
WTH has been working with universities, government agencies, and R&D teams to develop new products and expand its reach. It’s eyeing expansion to Southeast Asia, Europe, North America, and the Middle East over the next few years.
“We expect to grow in terms of distribution and register the products with appropriate regulatory agencies for global expansion and presence in Asia Pacific and Europe. We would collaborate with other businesses and improve accessibility to our products and services,” she said.
Lotteria Co. Ltd., the South Korean quick-service restaurant chain with more than 1,300 locations, has added a new version of its Ria Miracle plant-based burger to the menu.
The Ria Miracle Burger II, which follows its Ria Miracle Burger launch in 2020, is now on the menu at Lotteria locations across South Korea.
The chain, known for Korean-style hamburgers and fried chicken, says the new burger is soy based. Its predecessor was made from wheat gluten.
The Ria Miracle Burger II
Lotteria received pushback when it launched its first Ria iteration; the burger buns contained milk and eggs and the sauce had beef extract in it. The chain reformulated to meet the growing demand for plant-based options.
“These days, a growing number of Koreans are interested in plant-based burgers,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “Our new burger would be good for those who eat and have started to eat plant-based food.”
Lotteria’s Ria Miracle Burger || is made from ‘veef’ | Courtesy
Ria Miracle Burger II is made from soy protein, which the company says gives it a meaty texture and flavor. It comes with a soy-onion sauce and tomato. Lotteria also launched ‘Lea Miracle Burger II’ and ‘Double Ria Miracle Burger II’ options.
“Customers who prefer alternative meat are gradually increasing due to the expansion of new consumption trends among customers,” An official from Lotte GRS said in a statement. “We plan to take the lead in the athletic burger market.”
‘Ethical consumption’
Following the 2020 launch of its first Ria Miracle Burger, Lotteria said it sought to reflect the market trend, “in which more people are showing an interest in ethical consumption. We will continue to expand the market, so that customers who care about the environment and their health can enjoy various types of veggie burgers.”
Burger King is launching 2 new vegan burgers for Veganuary
In a LinkedIn post, The Good Food Institute said the menu update “is just the latest sign that alternative proteins are picking up steam among local consumers.” It cited data from The Korea International Trade Association, which has previously predicted that plant-based meat “could overtake conventional meat for market share by as soon as 2040.”
The launch comes as other fast-food chains, chiefly, Burger King, are leaning into plant-based offerings. Burger King just unveiled a new vegan bacon cheeseburger at its U.K. locations for Veganuary.
The idea that plant-based meat is over is ridiculous. Sure, too many mediocre brands launched too fast and too early. But amidst a burning planet and worsening climate crisis, the category is just getting started.
Over the past few months, media headlines decrying plant-based meat’s demise have dominated US airwaves. These headlines are grossly misleading. First of all, it’s a very North America-centric view of the world- around the world, there is evidence that consumers are decreasing their animal meat consumption and embracing plant-based meat. In fact, we published an entire report on the growing alt protein industry across Asia Pacific. Secondly, a lot of these headlines use Beyond Meat as the industry avatar by which to judge a sector that has over 1,000 companies. This is a misguided way to look at things, as I write about here.
The idea that plant-based meat is over is ridiculous. Did too many brands launch too fast? Sure. Did a lot of mediocre products end up on grocery shelves? Absolutely. Does that mean we should pack up our plant-based leather bags and go home? Heck no.
Reality check: in the US, plant-based meat sales are down or flat. Investment into the space has more than halved according to Crunchbase data (from $ 2 billion in 2021 to $800 million in 2022). And anecdotally, I used to get dozens of new product pitches and funding announcements in my Green Queen inbox every week and now we are down to less than five. Across the world, plant-based meat is taking a beating. For a deeper look at what’s going on with plant-based meat sales in the US and abroad, I recommend this alt protein investor’s analysis.
I am in no way suggesting that the industry does not have its problems. There are too many plant-based products that simply don’t taste great – vegan commercial cheese is a particularly disappointing area. A number of consumers find the products overly processed (though let’s get real about what’s in our meat and remind ourselves that it’s carcinogenic!). Investors absolutely got caught up in the hype and didn’t always do their DD, backing companies that were undeserving. The products are often more expensive than their animal counterparts, which is highly problematic, especially when regular folks are battling skyrocketing food inflation due to an uneven economy, rising interest rates and supply chain chaos.
All that said, Impossible Foods just reported a 50% increase in retail sales in 2022, which shows that good governance + good branding + good product R&D (over the past 18 months, the company debuted chicken nuggets, meal bowls, sausage links and more) is still a recipe for success and repeat consumers. Hot take: Beyond Meat is having a bad year because the company could be run better, not because plant-based meat is done and dusted.
If anything, the justification for the sector has never been clearer. Here are some of them. 1) Gen Z is hyper climate aware and they are ditching meat, and their friends and families are becoming social omnivores. 2) Our global food supply is increasingly interrupted by climate change-related extreme weather- your pantry will not look the same in five years- many of your favorite foods will be too expensive or impossible to source. 3) Food insecurity continues to be a major problem and governments are turning to alternative protein as a solution – Singapore’s 30 by 2030 plan is a good case study. 4) Industrial meat production requires too heavy a GHG emissions price. 5) Industrial meat consumption is linked to a slew of diet-related diseases. That means sick folks, skyrocketing healthcare costs, and a less productive population. 6) Industrial meat requires more land, more water and more energy than we have to give if we are being realistic about our resource allocation. 7) It also produces more methane and demands more antibiotics than we (humanity) can afford. Cue the superbug resistance crisis. 8) Demand for animal protein keeps growing, particularly in Asia, where hundreds of millions of people are becoming middle class and looking to increase their dietary status via meat consumption.
I could go on and on (I haven’t even touched upon the ethical case against eating meat- here are the best books to get you started if you learn more) but you get the gist. Animal protein production is broken and the status quo needs to be upended. Hence, the case for plant-based meat.
Are you an advocate of organic, whole food, plant-based diets who can’t understand why folks need beef replacements? Good for you! Keep on enjoying the healthiest diet around.
For everyone else, we need lower emission options. The world’s largest fast-food chain, McDonald’s, sells over 2.36 billion burgers a year (this is a 2021 stat). That’s the industrial meat we desperately need to convert to plant-based.
Some back-of-the-napkin climate math. The average burger is responsible for around 2.84 kg of CO2. So that’s approximately 6.7 million tonnes of CO2 in McDonald’s burgers alone (excuse my crappy, back-of-the-napkin math). According to tree offsetting data, you’d have to plant 300+ billion trees* to offset the carbon cost of the burgers, not to mention everything else on the menu. And all the other fast food chains. And all the industrial supermarket meat. For perspective, we currently plant 1.9 billion trees a year.
And no, we can’t feed the world’s animal protein appetite using 100% grass-fed, regeneratively-grown beef, sorry. That type of meat will remain a tiny proportion of total meat production and only be eaten by an elite, privileged (mostly Global North-dwelling) sliver of our global population.
So, onwards for plant-based meat! Tomorrow, I will share my 2023 alt protein trend predictions, and they include plenty of suggestions and ideas for the industry on how we can better serve our customers and our purpose. Stay tuned.
*According to the agency Encon, “to compensate 1 tonne of CO2, 31 to 46 trees are needed.” So 6.7 million tonnes x 46 trees is how I got to the 300+ billion trees needed.
Israel-based Vgarden, Ltd., has launched its first vegan tuna in tins and pouches.
Vgarden says its plant-based tuna has the same appearance, texture, and flavor as conventional tuna. And it is competitively priced to other canned tunas, too. It joins a growing category in the protein successors market.
‘Clean-label, scalable, affordable, and sustainable’
“Tinned tuna has a very distinct flaky, yet moist and chewy texture, with a powerful fresh-from-the-sea aroma,” Ilan Adut, CEO of Vgarden, said in a statement. “Our new tuna-like product is clean-label, scalable, affordable, and sustainable. But for our plant-based creation to serve as a true substitute, even beyond compellingly mimicking all of the sensory qualities, it also has to match tuna as much as possible in nutritional value.”
Vgarden, founded by Kibbutz Gan Shmuel and the Eliav family, has already brought vegan meat and dairy products to market under the MashuMashu brand with placement in Australia, Canada, Asia, and Europe.
Vgarden tuna is sustainably made | COurtesy
The company says it dived into vegan tuna as a growing number of consumers are becoming more concerned about seafood and overfishing, especially wild tuna populations. According to the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation,13 percent of tuna stocks are considered overfished.
Tuna is the world’s most popular fish; the global tuna market is expected to grow from more than $41 billion in 2022 to nearly $50 billion by 2029.
Tuna is an affordable and accessible protein, but consumers are also wary of ocean pollutants including heavy metals and microplastics, both of which are increasingly common in tuna.
Vgarden tuna
The new vegan tuna was a 12-month development process. The “short list” recipe includes pea protein for a protein count of 11.2 to 14 percent. The company says the manufacturing process used minimal energy and water, further lifting the burden on marine life. The tuna comes in pouches for chilled storage and shelf-stable tins that use patent-pending technology to protect its flavor and texture.
Vgarden’s tuna is canned in a patent-pending process | Courtesy
“Aquaculture and the overfishing of this high-in-demand fish has had a devastating effect on their numbers to the point that it has put several species, such as the yellowfin and the Atlantic Bluefin, on the edge of extinction,” said Tom Rothman, Head of global sales at Vgarden.
“This not only poses problems in terms of food security but also negatively impacts the delicate and fragile balance of the marine environment,” Rothman said. “Our plant-based tuna solution can help turn the tide on this ecocatastrophe and contribute to the restoration of the ocean’s wild tuna populations.”
In a sign that widespread regulatory approval for cultivated meat is imminent, regulatory experts from the U.S. and China met to discuss the next steps.
A recent virtual event organized by the AgFood Future Center of Excellence (AGF) and the Agriculture Food Partnership (AFP), saw the meeting between China and the U.S. regulators come just after Upside Foods became the first cultivated meat producer to earn U.S. FDA GRAS status (generally recognized as safe).
The event saw Jeremiah Fasano, senior policy advisor at the FDA’s Regulatory Review Office, deliver a keynote address. Fasano encouraged the industry to connect “early and often” to keep the sector moving forward.
‘Preparing public guidelines for the industry’
“FDA is communicating with different companies, and we are preparing public guidelines for the industry,” Fasano said. “As companies engage with more regulators, more reviews and approvals get completed, adding to the global body of knowledge to jointly promote food technology innovation and food safety.”
Meatable’s cultivated pork is coming to Asia soon | Courtesy
Ryan Xue, chairman of Agfood Future, says the meetings provide vital opportunities for “all players involved” in the protein innovation sector including the start-ups producing the meat and their financiers. “This in-depth sharing between the U.S. and China will have far-reaching significance for governments and industries interested in seeing the adoption of food innovation that will help shape food innovation and the future of food in the U.S., China and the world,” Xue said.
China says it will focus on safety assessments of cultivated meat this year. “In addition, 2023 plans include setting up expert working groups to ensure innovation, industry development, and food safety move forward together,” said Yan Song, director of Division III Risk Assessment at CFSA.
Regulatory approval for cultivated meat
Currently, Singapore is the only country in the world that’s approved the sale and consumption of cultivated meat. It granted Bay Area food tech company Eat Just regulatory approval for its cultivated chicken in 2020.
GOOD Meat cultivated chicken | courtesy Eat Just
The GRAS status granted to Upside Foods, another Bay Area cultivated meat producer, is the first step in the U.S. toward receiving approval. The meat must also receive USDA approval.
According to Wired, the GRAS status came through a “premarket consultation process,” during which “food manufacturers provide the FDA with details of their production process and the product it creates, and once the FDA is satisfied that the process is safe, it then issues a ‘no further questions’ letter.”
New data from leading food service distributor Sodexo shows ten percent of all meals sold through its U.K. and Ireland sites in 2022 were vegan or vegetarian.
The number of plant-based meals sold through Sodexo’s nearly 500 U.K. client sites grew from eight percent in 2021 to ten percent last year. Leading the growth were clients in the health care industries, selling an average of 17 percent vegan or vegetarian meals. Clients in the East Midlands saw the biggest proportion of plant-based meals at 21 percent.
‘A shift in consumer awareness’
“Whether people are vegan, vegetarian, or just want to try something new, it’s great to see that more and more customers are trying plant-based meals across our sites. This really demonstrates a shift in consumer awareness, a wider range of options, and a marketplace responding,” Claire Atkins-Morris, Director of Corporate Responsibility at Sodexo, said in a statement.
Sodexo’s vegan options include lentil celeriac chestnut pie, potato mixed bean chilli, tofu summer tart, Southern Indian vegan chickpea curry, vegan mushroom burger, vegan chicken nuggets, and aubergine masala among others.
Photo by Anastasia Shuraeva from Pexels.
Sodexo says its Energy and Resources clients saw the biggest increase in vegan and vegetarian meals year-on-year, growing from two percent in 2021 to 12 percent last year. Schools and universities were surprisingly lower at five percent, despite younger generations driving demand for plant-based options. Government sites grew from five percent to seven percent. Corporate Services client sites made up 13 percent of meals, up from ten percent in 2021.
Veganuary
Sodexo released the data ahead of Veganuary, the popular U.K.-based campaign that encourages people to eat vegan for the entire month of January.
“We’re delighted to see Sodexo reporting an increase in sales of vegan and vegetarian meals across their UK and Ireland client sites,” Toni Vernelli, Head of Communication & Marketing at Veganuary said.
Veganuary is coming
“Veganuary is here to support anyone who wants to try being vegan, but it makes our job a lot simpler when organisations like Sodexo are offering delicious, nutritious, and easily accessible options,” Vernelli said.
“We are a proud supporter of Veganuary, and our community of chefs are encouraging more customers to try our plant-based meals by developing delicious vegan and vegetarian recipes that show the variety of meal options people have at our client sites,” Atkins-Morris said. “As part of our Net Zero commitment, we have set ourselves the goal of increasing the number of plant-based meals and recipes our clients choose from to 33 percent by 2025.”
Burger King has launched a new Bacon King range with two vegan options for Veganuary: The Vegan Royale Bakon King and The Plant-Based Bakon King (Single or Double).
The new burgers, available at U.K. locations, build on Burger King’s growing vegan offerings. The new burgers feature vegan from Natalie Portman-backed brand La Vie and dairy-free cheese from Greek company Violife. Last month, Burger King made La Vie’s vegan bacon a permanent menu item at more than 500 locations.
‘A diverse and innovative range of products’
“We’re incredibly proud of our new menu additions and confident that our customers will enjoy the new plant-based bacon and cheese as much as we have in taste tests,” Katie Evans, a Burger King U.K. representative said in a statement. “The extension of our plant-based offer reflects our ongoing commitment to serve a diverse and innovative range of products, whilst aiming to reach a 50 percent meat-free menu by 2030.”
Courtesy
Romain Jolivet, La Vie’s chief marketing officer, praised Burger King for its “open-mindedness” and its leadership that allows “millions of consumers” to be able to try “our next generation of plant-based bacon.”
“With only 7 ingredients and a product packed with proteins and fibers, this is a bakon for the kings, not for the clowns,” Jolivet said.
Soco Núñez de Cela, brand and communications director at Burger King U.K., said the fast-food chain is thrilled to be joining forces with La Vie.
“The synergy between our two brands and fierce campaign tactics meant this partnership was a match made in heaven.
Nuñez says that after the success of the Bristol and Leicester Square meat-free restaurants, the chain is looking forward to building on its partnership with La Vie “to ensure we meet our goal to become 50 percent plant-based by 2030 in the U.K.”
50 percent plant-based by 2030
Last year, Burger King added vegan nuggets to its U.K. locations. And following its plant-based location in London and Bristol, it hosted similar pop-ups in Portugal, Austria, Spain, and Switzerland. In Germany, the chain now offers a vegan version of everything on its menu
Burger King vegan pop-up | Courtesy
“Adapting to customer preferences is a key focus at Burger King,” the chain’s U.K. chief executive Alasdair Murdoch said in a statement.
“We are committed to helping our guests make good decisions about what they eat and drink and providing them with informed choices.”
The California-based Climax Foods is using biotech and plants to create ‘moonshot’ cheese — a sustainable dairy alternative that can help fight the climate crisis.
Climax’s German-born founder and CEO, Dr. Oliver Zahn came to the category with a science background; he worked at Google, SpaceX, and Impossible Foods prior to launching the vegan cheese brand in 2020 and was armed with a deep understanding of the climate crisis and the need for tangible solutions.
Climax Foods
Following its Seed funding round — $7.5 million, the largest Seed raise for a food-tech startup — the company turned an old chocolate factory in Berkeley, California, into its cheese laboratories.
Climax Foods’ first products are Blue cheese, Brie, Chèvre, and Feta | Courtesy
That work is now coming to fruition as the company has announced plans to launch its artisanal cheese in three U.S. markets: New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
The first cheeses it’s bringing to market include Blue, Brie, Feta, and Chèvre. Climax says they taste and perform like conventional cheeses. The dairy-free cheeses are made from seeds, legumes, and plant oils.
Rethinking ancient practices
“We started from a profound appreciation for the complex flavors and textures of dairy products,” Zahn said. “Cows have made our milk for thousands of years. However, less than ten percent of the plants they eat get turned into food for humans, which has led to significant environmental and health problems in today’s much more crowded world.”
Zahn says It is human nature to rethink ancient practices, “so we came up with a smarter way. By using data science to accelerate plant-based ingredient and process discoveries, we are saving thousands of years of tinkering to create products that are just as tasty as the cow-based predecessors without the downsides, today.”
The company is using tech it calls “Deep Plant Intelligence” — a combination of molecular-level data about animal products and its proprietary plant-based ingredients database. The tech allows Climax to create its recipes from thousands of plants.
Climax Foods is building a new production facility | Courtesy
Climax is partnering with Caroline Di Giusto — a world leader in conventional cheesemaking. Climax is also building a new production and pilot hub in Petaluma, California.
“Our technology and ingredient discoveries will soon power the replacements of bigger categories with successors that will be equally delicious and nutritious but more sustainable and – because our products are not heavily processed – substantially more economical and environmentally friendly,” says Zahn.
Hello Plant Foods can’t keep its vegan foie gras, Fuah!, in stock.
Following King Charles’ recent ban on foie gras at all royal residences, the longtime decadent favorite food got an ethical makeover. The royal ban follows other efforts to restrict foie gras including bans in California and New York.
Spanish plant-based meat brand Hello Plant Foods first announced its vegan foie gras last month, several weeks after King Charles announced the royal ban. The brand says it’s also the first vegan foie gras for food service distribution.
Fuah! Gras
Hello Plant Foods didn’t take the responsibility of recreating the popular luxury food lightly; the company says it tested 800 recipes over the course of a year before its launch.
The market appeared to be ready; just 12 hours after it launched 5,000 units of the product, it sold out at supermarkets and specialty stores across Spain. A second production round of 30,000 units also sold out.
Fuah! Gras is the first vegan foie gras for for food service | Courtesy
Hello Plant Foods is capitalizing on a market gap; only Nestlé’s limited edition vegan foie gras has widespread European placement, but demand is high.
“We’re absolutely gobsmacked,” Javier Fernández, Hello Plant Foods founder, told The Guardian. “Our plan was to start slowly … but we’ve just increased our production sevenfold. It’s crazy.”
Fernández launched Hello Plant Foods during the pandemic with the goal of developing vegan products that mimic organic meats; foie gras is made from duck and geese livers.
Hello Plant Foods says it mimics the taste and texture of conventional foie gras using cashews, coconut oil, lentil flour, potato starch, and spices. The Spain-produced foie gras costs about half as much as conventional.
“Our vegan foie gras is so similar to the traditional animal product that consumers will not notice the difference. Everyone who tries it says that it is hyper-realistic. We are sure that soon many more people will take the step and join our vegan alternative because more and more consumers are becoming aware of the food’s impact on the environment,” Fernández said.
Late last year, Nestlé’s Garden Gourmet laucnhed a limited-edition vegan ‘voie gras’ ahead of the holidays season.
Nestlé’s Garden Gourmet launched vegan foie gras last year | Courtesy
“Hello Fuah! will become the category’s benchmark product and will be available throughout the year,” says Fernández. The company also makes vegan burgers and bacon.
But all focus is now on Fuah! as Fernández says there’s a “hidden” consumer that loves foie gras. “But what happens is that a photo of the ducks with the tubes sticking out of them flashes before them and they don’t want it,” he said. “When they try Fuah! their eyebrows shoot up and they go: ‘Madre Mia.’”
Climate change will affect hundreds of millions of Indians and bring about widespread food insecurity- government support of alternative proteins is essential to achieving national food security and independence.
By: Ambika Hiranandani of the Good Food Institute India, MPhil., Public Policy, University of Cambridge and Shyam Mehta, Vice President at CREAEGIS India, Consumer, Retail and Consumer Technology Sector
Implementing strategic sustainable food policies today will be the foundation that will help bridge nutritional gaps and feed India in the future. This month, a report from the World Bank jolted the billion-strong nation by forecasting that India will be one of the first countries to face heat waves that break the human survivability limit. According to the report, over 160-200 million people in India will be vulnerable to heat waves by 2030 and 34 million people will lose their jobs because of heat stress associated with productivity decline.
Climate scientists have long cautioned that heat waves caused by global warming will create obstacles in India’s quest for food security. This March was the hottest on record and shrunk wheat production in key producing states, increased the price of the crop by 20%, and led to an export prohibition. Other crops that will bear the brunt of these heat waves will be soya, barley, and mustard. Faced with weather-related uncertainty and other challenges, India’s farming communities are forced into debt which they can often never return. In the Marathwada district of Maharashtra alone, 600 farmers have committed suicide because of their inability to pay back debt and make their operations profitable. Over 70% of rural Indian households depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute, by 2030 73.9 million Indians will be at risk from hunger; if one were to factor in the effects of climate change this figure increases to 90.6 million.
Flaws with the government’s response to food security concerns
To meet food security needs, the government is investing heavily in the livestock sector which is yielding tremendous financial results. Over a six-year period that ended in 2021, the livestock sector registered a compound annual growth rate of 8%. India is currently home to over 35% of the world’s livestock and India is one of the top 5 methane emitting countries. We are aware that 14.5% of the total GHG emissions come from livestock and 44% of these emissions are composed of methane. Over 20 years, methane’s global warming impact is 80 times that of carbon dioxide. India has not signed the Global Methane Pledge. The Global Methane Pledge was signed by over 100 countries at COP 26 who have committed to reducing their methane emissions by 30% by 2030. Professor Partha Dasgupta in his report on the Economics of Biodiversity emphasized the need for us to understand the hidden costs of environmental destruction and for us to quantify this in economic terms. If we were to analyze India’s livestock growth with this lens, it would perhaps tell a very different story.
Alternative proteins: sustainable hero foods
This is where alternative proteins come in as a sustainable hero food to provide nutritious, tasty and inexpensive food to the nation and help strengthen the economy. India’s sherpa to the G20, Mr. Amitabh Kant, in his speech at the Good Food Institute’s Future of Protein Summit referred to this sector as a “sunrise sector” which is filled with potential to help mitigate problems ranging from malnutrition to climate change. By 2030, according to Bloomberg Intelligence, the plant-based food market is expected to be worth USD 162 billion and account for 7.7% of the global protein market. In a high growth scenario India’s local market will be worth approximately USD 713 million and, in a low growth scenario, will be USG 217 million. So far there are start-ups that have brought plant-based mince, kebabs, and patties. These companies have created high-end products which are gaining popularity in an urban environment; however, the rural consumer has not been catered to. The potential for plant-based meats to meet the nutritional needs of those at the margins remains largely unexplored. The global CM economy is expected to be worth USD 450 billion by 2040. There are a couple of CM start-ups in India, Clear Meat has developed and tasted its first cultivated chicken mince product in early 2020 and is planning to launch its first market-ready product by 2023. Sutapa Sikdar of Clear Meat explains that as there is no specific regulatory framework for cultivated meat in India, they have not been able to apply for regulatory approval. However, they are in touch with the Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) and are hopeful that structures will be put into place. MyoWorks, an early-stage start-up, is looking to manufacture a range of ingredients and scaffolds for the cultivated-meat industry globally. MyoWorks has received USD 50,000 from the Department of Biotechnologyto demonstrate preliminary proof of concept.
India has the foundation needed to develop alternative proteins; its agricultural biodiversity lends itself to developing plant-based meats from a diverse range of crops. It produces 25% of the world’s pulses and is of the world’s largest producers and exporters of millet. Startups are working with indigenous farming communities to grow Pongamia seeds which are a rich protein source and creating livelihoods for otherwise disenfranchised people. Its biopharma sector has the potential to pioneer innovation in cultivated meat.
The Food Safety Standards (Approval of Non-Specified Foods and Food Ingredients) Regulation, 2017 details the procedure for the pre-market authorization of ‘novel’ foods. Novel foods, according to the regulations, are new additives; processing aids; food ingredients consisting of or isolated from bacteria, yeast, fungus, or algae. However, the definition of ‘novel’ food stops short of making a direct reference to ‘animal cell culture’. Regarding plant-based products, the usage of the terms ‘milk’, ‘butter’ and ‘cheese’ for plant-based products was prohibited by the FSSAI through an executive order dated 15th July 2021. The reasoning behind this order was that the ‘General Standard for Milk and Milk Products’ under the Food Safety and Standards (Food Products and Food Additives) Regulations, 2011 did not permit the usage of a dairy term for a plant-based product. The order also directed that action be taken against companies flouting this rule and that e-commerce sites delist plant-based products using such terms. However, coconut milk and peanut butter were spared from the application of this order due to the international usage of these terms. This was challenged in the Delhi High Court by plant-based product manufacturing companies. As the issue currently stands, the court has temporarily permitted plant-based product manufacturers to use dairy terms pending their final decision on the issue.
The critical importance of government support
The government sets the public policy agenda which determines where research funding goes, details enterprises that will receive fiscal benefits and that those at the margins benefit from novel innovation. So far, India has not set the public policy agenda in favour of the growth of alternative protein companies. Food security is a major theme of India’s G20 presidency and India advocated for 2023 to be declared as the International Year of Millets by the United Nations. The building blocks for an alternative protein-positive policy are there and can be built on with tangible targets which also ties into India’s net zero commitment.
Policy options to mainstream these hero foods
Policy options such as creating a favourable regulatory framework, providing economic incentives to companies that leverage plant-based proteins to meet the rural needs of those at the margins, and creating structures within the government that focus exclusively on the development of alternative proteins need to be explored. The Swachh Bharat Mission focused on sanitation was the world’s largest nudge campaign and changed the habits of millions of Indians. Similar nudges can be employed to change India’s eating habits to nutritionally rich sustainable food.
Alternative proteins have the potential to ameliorate previously unsolvable wicked problems ranging from food insecurity to GHG emissions from food to malnutrition. Innovation can only go so far with limited government support to achieve its potential. India can get ahead of the curve by changing its local landscape and becoming a global player; however, the time to act is now.
Ohio-based Matrix F.T., a leading developer of plant-based scaffolds and microcarriers for the alternative protein industry, says it has developed the first cultivated chicken made in Ohio.
The team at Matrix F.T. says it has created a proof of concept cultivated chicken nugget to showcase its technology — edible microcarriers and scaffolds that function as key ingredients in cultivated meat products that look, cook, and taste like conventional.
Currently, the most common types of microcarriers used to provide a scaffold for cells are inedible and must be removed from cultivated meat before consumption. A number of companies and researchers are working to develop edible microcarriers. Last summer, UCLA researchers announced they had created an edible particle that produces a more natural muscle-like texture for cultivated meat. The researchers say they’re using a process that could be scaled up for mass production.
Ohio’s first cultivated nugget
Matrix F.T.’s headquarters include engineering labs and biological testing facilities where cell culture experiments are conducted to test performance, food safety, and sterility on its scaffolds and microcarriers. The company also conducts contracted research in its wet lab for cultivated meat companies.
GOOD Meat cultivated chicken | courtesy Eat Just
Microcarriers work by growing and proliferating cells in bioreactors. Scaffolding helps to mature and differentiate cells, signal gene and protein expressions, and turn cells into complex tissue structures, which become cultivated meat. It works with 3D extracellular matrices for cell growth and proliferation.
The company says its first chicken myoblasts — muscle cells — came from a University partner. The cells were cultivated by Heidi Coia, PhD., the Director of Product Development and Innovation at Matrix F.T. The harvested cells were combined with a proprietary mixture of plant-based proteins to create the hybrid chicken nugget.
“It had a great flavor, texture, and we were delighted to give a small example of how our customizable products can contribute to each of our customers’ unique cell-based foods that they are going to take to market,” Coia said.
Plant-based scaffolds and microcarriers
Matrix F.T. opened its new wet lab last April, aiming to expand its work in growing cultivated protein made with edible, plant-based nanofiber scaffolds and microcarriers.
The company said the new facility is instrumental in shortening the gap between engineering custom plant-based, nanofiber scaffolds and quickly delivering a final product for cultivated meat companies’ go-to-market timelines.
Upside Foods’ EPIC California factory, Courtesy
“Before opening the wet lab, Matrix F.T. relied heavily on customer feedback to learn if the scaffolds we custom-engineered for their applications were working,” Teryn Wolfe, Matrix F.T.’s VP of Corporate Development, said in a statement. “Now that we can provide partners with a more robust suite of R&D offerings, we’re able to have greater control and deliver results at the speed needed to help our customers scale. This is another important step in our ability to fuel innovation across the board, and we’re proud to continue to lead in the cultivated protein space, right here from Ohio.”
The new nugget launch is the latest in the quickly crowding cultivated chicken category. Late last year, California-based Upside Foods was the first U.S. company to receive the FDA’s GRAS status for its cultivated chicken. The company says it can produce 400,000 pounds of cultivated meat per year at its factory.
Spanish vegan meat brand Heura has released a sustainable, plant-based fish range with the oceans’ health in mind.
Leading Europe’s plant-based meat category, Barcelona-based Heura is now diving into the plant-based fish category with the launch of vegan F’sh Fillet and F’ish Fingers. “This is just the start,” the company says, noting it will expand the fish alternative range.
Heura F’sh
Heura says the new products are both low in saturated fat and rich in plant-based protein. The products also boast 40 milligrams of Omega-3 fatty acids – comparable to conventional fish. Omega fats are critical for healthy brain function, skin, and joint health.
The products were in development for more than a year, Heura says. It claims to be the first company to conduct a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) for plant-based fish based on the ISO 14040 standard. According to the LCA, the climate impact of Heura’s vegan fish products are 70 percent lower than conventional fish.
Heura is entering the vegan fish category | Courtesy
“Science and data have shown us the importance of keeping marine ecosystems intact, and the best way to do so is to reduce human activity to the minimum,” Marc Coloma, Heura’s co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. “As a mission-driven food-tech startup steeped in rich Mediterranean heritage, we recognized the need to introduce fish successors, so people across Europe can continue to enjoy the foods we love, while minimising the negative impact on the planet and animals.”
Heura points to the growing demand across Europe for plant-based alternatives to animal products. It says nearly half of European consumers are reducing their meat consumption as part of climate commitments.
“This reduction is a great step forward for the future of the earth and its inhabitants, since animal products account for 82 percent of the carbon emissions of European diets,” the company says.
But Heura says despite the growing awareness, much of the shift is happening with beef, pork, and chicken alternatives — a move it says “leaves global fish stocks to continue to plummet each year.”
The company points to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization data that show 70 percent of fish populations are already fully exploited or completely deleted.
‘Net positive food system’
“The launch of our 100 percent plant-based fish is our latest step towards Heura’s ambition of creating a net positive food system by accelerating the transition to plant-based protein and offering sought-after foods with a significantly lower CO2 impact that enables a more just food system,” Coloma said.
Heura says its vegan fish has a 70% smaller footprint than conventional | Courtesy
The two new products come on the heels of announcing expansion into the U.K., with placement at 200 Waitrose supermarkets, just ahead of Veganuary.
“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,” Coloma said.
“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.”
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 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.
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.
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 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 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.
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 | 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.
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.
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 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 leadscommunications 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 | 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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’ 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.
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 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 | 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.”
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.
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.
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’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.
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.”
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.”
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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 | 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.”
