A new food hall concept from the company behind Ikea spotlights local, plant-based cuisine with a focus on regenerative agriculture.
Swedish home furnishings giant Ikea has not been shy about its sustainability commitments. It’s made sweeping changes to operations as part of its 2030 target to become a circular and climate positive business. It’s working to regenerate resources and says it wants to “play our full part” in contributing to a “fair and equal society by respecting human right, creating a positive impact for people across our value chain and contributing to resilient societies.”
Part of that focus has included a gradual overhaul of its in-store cafes, increasing its plant-based offerings including vegan versions of its popular meatballs and hot dogs.
Now Ikea’s parent company, Ingka Group’s latest effort includes the launch of Saluhall, a “bold and fresh Nordic take on the food hall concept.” The food hall will initially be 80 percent plant-based, the company says, but its plan is to make the entire menu plant-based and zero-waste.
Saluhall
“Our food offering has long been a key element of our meeting places, and with Saluhall we will go beyond dining to inspire the many people with more sustainable food choices, like plant-based dishes,” Ingka Centres’ Commercial and Digital Director, Jens Nielsen, said in a statement.
“We want it to be about a whole lot more than what’s on the menu — a modern and original twist on the traditional food hall; providing local communities with a place to meet, while eating delicious food and socializing together in an even more inclusive and sustainable way,” Nielsen said.
Saluhall concept is coming to 3 cities | Courtesy
Ingka currently has three cities targeted for Saluhall: Changsha, China, San Francisco, California, and Gurugram, India.
Much like Ikea’s current cafe offerings center around a few key items such as its iconic meatballs, the food halls will also have a narrow focus. Saluhall’s menu will center on bread, burgers, ice cream, and beer, taking inspiration from Nordic street food.
A community focus
All items on the menus will be made with seasonal and local ingredients. And the third-party vendors selling at Saluhall must also meet Ingka’s principles of regenerative and sustainable agriculture.
“We are teaming up and connecting with other visionary minds who are eager to reinvent the traditional food court idea and bring a taste of local culture to Saluhall,” they company said.
Saluhall will focus on local food and regenerative agriculture | Courtesy
According to Stéphane Keulian, F&B Concept Development Leader at Ingka Group, the concept is more than just a place to eat and drink. “It is inspired by the New Nordic Food Manifesto movement that began nearly twenty years ago,” he said.
“Through lectures, cooking experiences and a cookery school, Saluhall will be a natural location that brings people and local businesses together. And we are not doing this alone,” Keulian said. “We are teaming up and connecting with other visionary minds who are eager to reinvent the traditional food court idea and bring a taste of local culture to Saluhall.”
Ingka Group says Saluhall will operate “as an ethos as well as a physical space.” The principles reflect “the explosive growth and influences of the sustainable Scandinavian dining scene over the past two decades, making quality food that is kinder to people and the planet more available,” the company said.
A recent study by the Plant Based Foods Institute and leading supermarket chain Kroger, found that consumers are changing their purchasing habits.
Consumer shopping habits are always in flux but the recent report found that’s especially true when it comes to protein choices. Notably, households that spent more on plant-based products decreased their purchases of animal-based options.
The findings come as sales for plant-based protein were flat over the last year. But according to the research even with declining sales in the plant-based category, those purchasing plant-based options still decreased their purchase of animal products, too, by about $60.
The findings
The study looked at Kroger shopper data across several key categories over two years of spending, including milk, cheese, yogurt, frozen meals, frozen meat, and refrigerated meat. According to the findings, nearly 60 percent of shoppers in 2020 were either new to the plant-based category or had increased or maintained their previous category purchases.
Photo by Joshua Rawson Harris at Unsplash.
In 2021, 54 percent were still in that category with nearly 30 increasing how many plant-based purchases they made over the previous year. Purchases of dairy-free cheese and yogurt last year saw more than 33 percent new shoppers to the category. Similar numbers were seen in the plant-based frozen meals category and refrigerated plant-based meat products.
“During Year One, the influence of covid ‘pantry loading’”’ was evident in consumer buying patterns,” reads the report. “Households that were increasing or decreasing their spend in plant-based categories also increased their spend in animal-based categories.
“In Year One, we observed new households trying different categories of plant-based foods. Plant-based meat had the largest portion of New households in 2020, with 63 percent of households classified as New. Plant-based cheese was the second highest with 40 percent of households classified as New. Growth in plant-based New and Increaser households from 2019-2020 translated to sales growth across plant-based categories. Most categories witnessed double-digit percent growth, with plant-based refrigerated meat seeing increases of over 200 percent.”
Continued interest
As covid panic buying decreased, the researchers say they noticed new trends emerging in Year Two.
“Coming off a year with many new households across each plant-based category, New households continued to grow in 2021 and made up 18 percent of the migration segment across the total plant-based categories,” the report explains. “This progression demonstrates that there is continued interest in plant-based categories building on the covid bump from the year prior.
“Following a year of record sales growth, a slowdown in category sales was expected; however, a majority of plant-based categories continued to grow. Most significantly, plant-based yogurt saw the largest sales increase of the plant-based categories with 13.5 percent growth; in addition, 37 percent of households were from the New segment. These numbers suggest there were successful new items and/or innovations in this space that brought new households in and notably, increased sales.”
The researchers say that in both 2020 and 2021, those who purchased more plant-based cheese increased their total overall spend compared to other groups by nearly $70, “suggesting that these households are the most loyal and engaged in plant-based overall out of all the target groups.”
Climate-tech company Hyfé says it has scaled up the production capacity of its mycelium protein to 400L pilot bioreactors.
On a mission to unlock low-cost production for sustainable products, the Chicago-based Hyfé is utilizing waste streams as a source for fermentation feedstock. It says it’s three months ahead of schedule, completing its scale-up last month.
“Our mission is to use our flexible fermentation platform to produce cost-competitive essential goods for multiple industries, repurposing millions of pounds of wasted nutrients and keeping tons of emissions out of the atmosphere every year,” co-founder and CEO Michelle Ruiz said in a statement.
Turning wastewater into affordable, sustainable protein
Launched last year by former LanzaTech and ExxonMobil engineers, Hyfé has already earned the support of Boston Bioworks and the University of Illinois Bioprocessing Research Laboratory. The Engine led its oversubscribed $2 million Seed round last May; the venture firm spun out of MIT and invests in early-stage Tough Tech companies.
hoto by rajeev ramdas on Unsplash
Mycelium is Hyfé’s first focus, which it says showcases the technology’s ability to make high-quality products. Hyfé uses patent-pending technology to capture nutrients otherwise washed away during food manufacturing. It takes the nutrients and converts them into fermentation feedstocks. Food manufacturing is the third largest contributor to wastewater, which accounts for 1.5 percent of all emissions. By salvaging those nutrients, Hyfé is able to reduce its costs and produce nutrient-dense fermentation products.
“Biomanufacturing has the potential to create solutions to some of the most pressing challenges facing humanity,” the company says. “It can enable improvements in health, climate, and quality of life if rendered economically viable.”
Mycelium flour
Hyfé says reducing the cost of production is key to making sustainable bioproducts competitive against subsidized commodities. “The feedstocks that power bioproduction represent a high-impact opportunity since they account for up to 50 percent of fermentation operating expenses and are vulnerable to supply chain disruptions.”
Hyfé is focused on mycelium protein Photo by Unsplash.
Ruiz says Hyfé’s mycelium flour tastes and acts just like wheat flour, “enabling people to eat the foods they love without negative health impacts. We are leveraging biotechnology to produce this ingredient that is carbon neutral, at scale, and at a very low cost,” she said last May.
“A bowl of Hyfé pasta has as much protein as a chicken breast, is high in fiber and has no refined carbs. We’re on a mission to make food better for you as well as better for the planet.”
SciFi Foods has conducted the world’s first Life Cycle Analysis on cultivated beef and the findings show significant benefits for the planet.
Researchers at The Ohio State University (OSU) conducted the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) on cultivated beef — the first peer-reviewed research on the climate impacts of lab-grown protein versus its conventional live animal counterparts. The findings were published in the journal Sustainability.
The researchers looked at burgers made from cultivated beef along with plant-based ingredients including soy protein, produced by ScIFi Foods, the Bay Area startup that emerged from stealth mode earlier this year.
The findings
According to the findings, the SciFi Foods’ burgers reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 88.5 percent when compared to conventional beef burgers. Energy use dropped more than 37 percent, land use dropped more than 90 percent, and water used dropped by nearly 97 percent when the beef was grown in bioreactors.
The researchers note that some parts of the process were very similar to conventional beef, such as cold storage, packaging, and distribution, but they note “there was little doubt overall that the SciFi Burger had a significantly smaller environmental impact.”
“There are many ways engineering and bioengineering is being utilized today to create a more sustainable future,” lead study author, Dr. Bhavik Bakshi, Richard M. Morrow Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at OSU, said in a statement, “and this is just the onset when it comes to what science can do for the food system.”
While the study only looked at SciFi’s products, the researchers say the findings validate the entire category — a significant milestone as regulatory approval nears in the U.S., following Upside Foods’ recent FDA GRAS status.
‘Leaving a positive mark on the planet’
[W]e’re proud to prove that yes, what we’re doing is truly making an impact, because as much as this is about delicious burgers, the crux of it is about leaving a positive mark on the planet,” said SciFi Foods’ co-founder and CEO Joshua March.
Photo by Joachim Süß on Unsplash
The researchers say the study does not assume exclusive use of renewable energy, suggesting a shift to renewable resources could prove even more climate-friendly than conventional cattle farming.
Animal agriculture is a leading producer of emissions. According to the OSU researchers, agriculture and the food industry is responsible for 25 percent of all global emissions. The world’s leading climate scientists and public health organizations have called for drastic dietary shifts to reduce animal products in order to meet the Paris Agreement target of keeping temperatures from rising more than 1.5°C.
As Singapore’s plant-based chicken brand TiNDLE continues its rapid global expansion, the Next Gen Foods’ brand announces new products and new team members.
Following what’s been a banner year for the startup that only launched in 2021, TiNDLE Tenders join the lineup, and former Impossible Foods executive Jared Umsted takes up the SVP of Foodservice role for the U.S. market.
Umsted served in a similar role as the Senior Vice President of Sales at Elohi Strategic Advisors where he managed TiNDLE’s relationship with the platform, working to scale TiNDLE’s foodservice partnerships. Prior to that, he worked for Ronnoco Coffee, vegan meat giant Impossible Foods, as well as Daring — the vegan chicken brand that recently partnered with Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker.
Expanding the executive team
“Jared’s deep bench of expertise in the plant-based industry will allow us to tackle new areas of expansion in foodservice and will further guide our plans as we consider launching in retail – we couldn’t be more excited to have Jared lead our new in-house team,” Andre Menezes, Co-founder and CEO of Next Gen Foods, said in a statement. “We are committed to growing our range of product offerings across the TiNDLE brand while meeting consumer needs as we move away from reliance on animal agriculture in the food system.”
Jared Umsted joins the TiNDLE team | Courtesy
“The quality, versatility and scalability of the offerings is unprecedented in the plant-based industry and one of the reasons that drove me to joining TiNDLE in-house,” Umsted said. “The adoption of new and cutting-edge technology at Next Gen – while simultaneously adapting to the growing and shifting demands from consumers – sets us up well for competing at a global scale in the plant-based industry.”
It has since expanded its restaurant placement with more than 1,500 restaurants across the globe serving TiNDLE. It has placement with more than 100 national distributors in the U.S.
TiNDLE adds chicken tenders to its lineup | Courtesy
The company says its chef-created chicken is versatile and allows for “endless dish possibilities”. It’s now using 3D scanning and printing technology to enhance its R&D and integrate feedback from its growing roster of chefs.
Its new tenders are part of its expansion plans, delivering similar taste and texture to its other pre-breaded products. It says they can be ready in less than five minutes — going from freezer to fryer.
Singapore’s Float Foods, the plant-based food tech startup known for its egg replacement OnlyEg, has announced a partnership with DayDayCook, a direct-to-consumer meal solutions platform.
Working with DayDayCook will bring the OnlyEg option visibility to the platform’s 20 million customers. The new meal kits will be available exclusively in the Hong Kong market beginning early next year with plans to roll out to the larger Asian market soon after.
The meals leverage plant-based eggs in a variety of Chinese and Asian preparations from a range of chefs, the companies say.
Plant-based eggs
Unlike conventional eggs, Float Foods says its OnlyEg is healthier and more sustainable with comparable protein to a chicken egg but with 70 percent less saturated fat and zero cholesterol.
Plant-based eggs are also less damaging to the environment by reducing the carbon footprint and requiring fewer resources to produce.
Vinita Choolani, CEO of Float Foods | Courtesy
As consumer demand for climate-friendly foods increases, options like plant-based eggs play a critical role in helping shift dietary habits.
“Float Foods and DayDayCook are uniquely positioned to meet consumers’ evolving taste, health and lifestyle requirements, including appreciating the time constraints faced by families, mothers, fathers, young adults in today’s fast paced world,” Vinita Choolani, CEO of Float Foods, said in a statement.
Choolani launched Float Foods during the pandemic after seeing its impact on the food supply and the increasing number of diet-related illnesses. The company raised SGD $2.2 million(approx US$1.6M) in Seed funding round last year.
Easy, tasty food
The new partnership follows Float Foods bringing the first plant-based egg Tamagoyaki to Singapore’s food service industry earlier this year.
Choolani says the new meal kits, which target 15 minutes of prep time, offer consumers wider choices to make conscious food decisions “that will impact their health and wellbeing, whilst injecting new flavours and taste experiences at the same time,” she says.
Float Foods OnlyEg | Courtesy
“People have enjoyed the experience of cooking and eating at home but are also hard-pressed for time and energy. The OnlyEg Meal Kits offer the chance to elevate the dining experience by introducing clean, contemporary, healthy meals,” Norma Chu, Founder, and CEO of DayDayCook, said in a statement. “Eating a healthy protein-rich meal should be accessible to everyone and bring a sense of celebration at the same time.”
The new ready-to-cook meals will be available through e-commerce, and B2B options including hotels, restaurants, cafes, supermarkets, caterers, cloud kitchens, and institutional cafeterias.
Mumbai-based Another Foods says its new plant-based chicken is made specifically for food service to support the demands across the hospitality and restaurant industries.
Another Foods says it worked with hospitality and food service experts to co-create its new line of plant-based chicken.
“Having our own lab and manufacturing setup, Another Foods is able to create products specifically required by our partners,” Sharvil Desai, Founder, Another Foods, said in a statement. “We’ve started with three SKUs including plant-based chicken mince, chicken burger patty, and chicken chunks.”
‘Just like chicken’
Desai says the new products taste “just like chicken” and are texturally identical to conventional meat. But Desai says the new items are non-flavored, which offers chefs the versatility to cook these products in different ways for different cuisines. “We want restaurants and hotels to think of us as their raw chicken supplier — just like a Godrej or a Venky’s — the only difference being that our products are plant-based.”
India’s demand for plant-based food is on the rise | Photo by Sylvia Bartyzel at Unsplash
The launch has earned praise from the Good Food Institute India, the think tank organization for the alternative protein industry.
“As category awareness in India grows, food service offers the opportunity for curious and conscious customers to try plant-based meats at their favorite restaurants,” said Nicole Rocque, Senior Innovation Specialist, GFI India.
Awareness is growing across the country, with India’s smart protein sector on track to reach $4.2 billion by 2030, according to projections from GFI India and Deloitte India. There are currently more than 50 startups in the alternative protein space in the country with more than 80 companies in total supporting the category growth.
‘More inclusive dining’
As India’s population boom is expected to continue, Rocque says adding plant-based dishes to the menu “can help hotels, restaurants, and cafes attract new consumers, offer more inclusive group dining options, and appeal to younger demographics.” She says startups like Another Foods entering the plant-based market “gives back culinary creativity to chefs,” especially with its tailor-made product and marketing solutions for restaurants. “This model has great potential to scale as it leaves room for versatility, experimentation, and ultimately sustaining consumer interest for an extended period of time.”
This month, Mumbaikars will have the opportunity to try Another Foods’ plant-based chicken at the Indigo Deli Colaba and its ghost kitchen, the Indigo Burger Project.
Indian consumes want more than traditional meals as they embrace plant-based dining | Courtesy GoodDot
“I have been interacting with [Desai] and Another Foods for quite some time now,” Anurag Katriar, Founder, Indigo Hospitality and former President, National Restaurants Association of India, said. “My first meeting with him was over product trials and I remember offering blunt feedback about the necessity to work on the product further, before its commercial launch. To my pleasant surprise, instead of being defensive, Sharvil took my feedback on board positively and came back a few months later with a superior, improved product line! This incident speaks volumes about the culture of Another Foods and its promoters – they are chasing excellence, and that will surely hold them in good stead in the long run.”
Desai says Another Foods’ team of scientists and chefs combine art and science to best serve its customers.“One of the biggest hurdles stopping people from being more sustainable is the notion that sustainability comes through compromises,” Desai said. “I wanted to create something that gives people what they want, without making them think they are compromising.”
With $1 million in assistance from the Australian Government’s Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre, Harvest B has opened the first facility dedicated to plant-based meat ingredients in Australia.
The new Sydney-based facility will be capable of producing up to 1,000 metric tons of plant-based protein made from Australian-grown grains, with plans to scale up. Harvest B says its novel tech creates a less expensive protein that eliminates the need for cold-chain and artificial ingredients while still delivering a meaty texture.
Locally sourced, locally produced
“When investigating the plant-based protein market, it became apparent that there was not a single large-scale ingredient brand supplying high-quality, locally made plant proteins to Australian food manufacturers,” Harvest B Co-founder and CCO, Alfred Lo, said in a statement. “Now food manufacturers have the option to source locally developed products leveraging local inputs rather than resorting to international suppliers,” Lo said.
“Australia is a nation blessed with abundant natural resources, yet we have relied too heavily on the luck associated with trading these commodities in a raw state. Like Harvest B, we should be leveraging our smarts and add value to these high-quality natural resources – right here in Australia,” said Jens Goennemann, Managing Director for the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre.
Harvest B co-founders Alfred Lo and Kristi Riordan | Courtesy
Harvest B says by incorporating locally grown grains, it will deliver a sustainable ingredient solution to consumer-facing food brands, manufacturers, and food service companies across the continent. Notably, Harvest B says it can do this at a price less than locally sourced animal ingredients and imported plant-based protein.
“It made absolutely no sense that high quality, Australian grown produce is shipped offshore to be processed only for us to buy it back at higher costs as finished consumer products,” said Harvest B Co-founder and CEO, Kristi Riordan. “It became quickly evident to Harvest B that there was a significant opportunity for this value add to be done in Australia, creating local jobs and greater export opportunities.”
Supplying the demand for smart protein
Harvest B says it will supply food manufacturers and food service providers ingredients for plant-based mince, sausages, and patties as well as develop its own range of proprietary plant-based products. The company says it will initially develop ten different product lines, some of which will be positioned for export to Southeast Asia where demand for plant-based protein is on the rise.
Harvest B team at the factory opening | Courtesy
“To ensure we can grow our business, Harvest B invested heavily in research and development to create a novel product range that we believe exceeds the taste, texture, and price expectations of our consumers,” said Riordan. “In fact, industry and consumer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive to the point that we now have customers, both locally and abroad, approaching us.”
The launch comes just months after Australian cultivated meat producer Vow debuted Factory 1, another facility aimed at disrupting the conventional protein sector. It says its new facility can produce 30 tons of cultivated meat per year.
NotCo, the Jeff Bezos-backed Chilean vegan food tech company working with a novel AI tool to develop plant-based milk, meat, and chicken, has announced the closing of a $70 million Series D1.
With funding led by Princeville Capital and existing backers Jeff Bezos through his Bezos Expeditions, Tiger Global, L Catterton, Kaszek Ventures, Future Positive, and The Craftory, as well as new backers Marcos Galperin, founder and CEO of the largest Latin American tech company, MercadoLibre. The funding underscores the food giant’s $1.5 billion valuation.
AI-developed vegan food
NotCo’s AI tech, which it’s dubbed Giuseppe, helps it to identify ingredients that can best mirror the taste, texture, and nutrition profiles of animal products. It recently announced a partnership with Kraft Heinz to bring plant-based versions of some of the brand’s iconic products to market. The first items to launch are vegan cheese slices similar to the popular Kraft Singles.
Kraft Heinz and NotCo have signed a joint venture agreement earlier this year
The company’s own brand of products has taken off over the last several years after becoming the first investment of Bezos Expedition in Latin America in 2019. Its product lineup under the ‘Not’ label includes burgers, meat, milk, chicken, mayonnaise, and ice cream available across LATAM countries including Chile, Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia. It’s also increasing its shelf space in the crowded refrigerated and frozen sets across 10,000 stores in the U.S. It is now the fastest-growing food tech company in Latin America.
“Since day one, our mission has been to create a more sustainable world, transforming the food industry by creating delicious plant-based food available for all tables, kitchens and pantries,” NotCo co-founder and CEO, Matias Muchnick, said in a statement.
‘New, impactful partnerships’
“Building off the example of our joint venture with Kraft Heinz, we’re excited to develop new, impactful partnerships leveraging our proprietary technology. These partnerships will help diversify and accelerate our impact while scaling the accessibility of truly delicious plant-based options to further propel the industry forward,”Muchnick said.
NotCo’s vegan mayo was one of its first AI-developed products | Courtesy
The new funding will fuel NotCo’s new B2B efforts, which it says include other CPG brand partnerships, as well as suppliers and technology providers, enabling them to use the Giuseppe AI.
“The food industry desperately needs to adopt technology to dramatically accelerate the product development process, reduce cost and address the challenges posed by climate change. NotCo is a very unique company in the food tech space globally with immense potential thanks to the team they have built and its one-of-a-kind AI technology,” said Joaquin Rodriguez Torres, co-founder of Princeville Capital. He also joins NotCo’s board of directors. “It’s rare to find a company with such an incredible track record of success in a short period of time, and we’re excited to help bolster the company’s growth and expansion.”
Black Sheep Foods, the Bay Area plant-based food tech company working to create vegan lamb meat with proprietary patent-pending technology has closed a $12.3 million Series A funding round.
Black Sheep’s funding was led by Unovis, Bessemer Venture Partners, AgFunder, and Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed, bringing total investment to $18.05 million since the company launched in 2019. It raised more than $5 million in seed funding last January.
‘Giving consumers access to the most delicious meat variety’
“Our minds associate meat with a shape, a texture, and a flavor,” Sunny Kumar, co-founder and CEO of Black Sheep Foods, said in a statement. “While texture has been the focus of meat innovation, flavor is a white space. Our debut lamb made from plants has more depth of flavor, richness, and appetizing aromatics than other meats, full stop. We’re in the business of giving consumers access to the most delicious meat variety, using plants instead of animals.”
Black Sheep’s vegan lamb | Courtesy
Black Sheep says the fresh funding will go toward scaling up production and moving into a new facility that will increase production significantly, moving Black Sheep’s output to 16 million pounds per year. It will also focus on securing national distribution; it launched its plant-based lamb meat in California restaurants last year, including Michelin-starred fine dining and quick service eateries including Ettan, Souvla, and Nick’s on Beverly. Its restaurant placement is now teetering toward 50 locations.
The company says its sales volume “is on a tear,” with a large number of repeat customers. One repeat customer, the Greek Bay Area restaurant, Souvla, says Black Sheep is a hit with its patrons.
“At Souvla, we were incredibly thoughtful when selecting a plant-based meat partner. Since launching Black Sheep Foods’ product in our restaurants last year, we’ve been seriously impressed with its integration into our menu and the overwhelmingly positive response from our many loyal guests,” Charles Billies, CEO and Founder of Souvla, said. “We remain excited about the future of their product offerings and this important movement in the years to come.”
Global meat market
While the leading plant-based meat brands including Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, as well as the sea of competitors in their wake, have focused on replicating beef, pork, and chicken — lamb, and other less common meats in the U.S. market, hold great potential in other parts of the world, particularly Asia and the Middle East.
Black Sheep’s lamb meat has global appeal | Courtesy
Black Sheep’s lamb has already earned a following in the Middle East, the company says. Prince Khaled calls the lamb, “shockingly good.” He says, as someone who grew up with the taste profile in Saudi Arabia, he couldn’t believe the “authentic mouthfeel and flavor. With taste being a vital aspect of customer adoption, Black Sheep Foods will easily dominate amongst plant-based meats.”
Khaled says game meats are also a wide-open playing field. “There’s a whole range of taste profiles that Black Sheep will be able to explore, especially with the company’s technology, allowing for an amplified flavor, excellent texture, and a strong nutritional profile.”
Malk Organics, the Texas-based organic dairy alternative brand, announced a $9 million Series B funding round led by Benvolio Group and Rotor Capital.
Malk was launched in 2015 by August Vega after she discovered her one-year-old son had a dairy allergy. But with her son in mind, Vega launched with a commitment to organic ingredients and a shorter list of ingredients overall compared to its competitors. It’s a move investors say gives the brand a competitive edge.
“We are extremely bullish about Malk’s growth prospects, because not only is the product highly differentiated in a growing on-trend category, but the seasoned team in place has delivered exceptional results in 2022 and has a strong plan to accelerate future revenue and achieve profitability,” said Managing Partner of Benvolio Group, Sam Frankfort.
‘A strong foundation’
Malk may have been ahead of the curve, with the industry leaders now touting cleaner products and shifting to unsweetened and organic as consumers seek out healthier dairy-free options.
“Over the past 12 months, the Malk team has built a strong foundation by pioneering the premium plant-based milk segment, cultivating existing and new retail customer relationships, and attracting a dedicated, passionate team,” said Managing Partner of Rotor Capital, Rich Keller. “We are excited to continue to support their journey to helping Malk achieve its greatest potential.”
August Vega, Malk founder | Courtesy
The funding comes after Malk increased its distribution and expanded its offerings to include a chocolate oat milk that’s rolling out to stores now.
Malk says the new funding will support its retail growth and marketing efforts as well as add key hires.
“We are very pleased to announce this round of funding from our valued partners at Benvolio, Rotor, and more, which will help us continue to emerge as a leading organic plant-based milk brand,” said Malk’s CEO Jason Bronstad. “We have bold plans for Malk and are eager to build on the momentum we have garnered thus far as we continue to bring the cleanest milk alternative on the market to households throughout the country.”
Demand for dairy-free milk
The funding comes as demand for dairy-free products continues to rise even amid declining sales for other plant-based sectors. Dairy-free milk has long been the plant-based category driver as consumers opt for alternatives for health reasons such as lactose intolerance, as well as for climate and ethical reasons.
Malk Organics | Courtesy
A recent survey found nearly half of young consumers were ashamed to order dairy products in public. Retailers are also supporting the trend with Blue Bottle coffee announcing it would make non-dairy oat milk the default at all of its stores following a two-store trial.
Eat Just’s Good Meat is now available through a Singaporean butcher shop, Huber’s Butchery.
Eat Just’s cultivated Good Meat is coming to the display case and bistro menu of Huber’s Butchery in Singapore, beginning early next year. The launch includes a tasting preview happening this Saturday.
‘Another historic moment’
“Offering this new approach to making meat at a butchery is another historic moment in the long road to making our food system more delicious and sustainable,” Josh Tetrick, co-founder and CEO of Eat Just, said in a statement. “I’m very proud to partner with the Huber’s team to give people a whole new way to experience our cultivated chicken in the new year.”
The news follows several recent launches across Singapore including a partnership with the delivery platform Food Panda, and a recent partnership with a number of hawker stalls, as well as fine dining restaurants.
Good Meat’s cultivated lab meat | Courtesy
Last month, during the COP27 conference in Egypt, Eat Just served its Good Meat chicken to global climate leaders, media, and consumers for the first time outside of Singapore. Cultivated meat is poised to reduce the protein industry’s carbon footprint by producing fewer emissions than conventional meat production — some estimates put it at 90 percent fewer emissions. It’s also less resource intensive, requiring less land and water than conventional meat.
The Huber’s partnership will see the company’s first placement alongside conventional butcher shop meat, something Huber says aligns with its longstanding commitment to quality.
“When we founded our butcher shop, we made it our mission to provide top quality and exceptional tasting meat products with the highest food safety standards at an affordable price. Partnering with GOOD Meat is in keeping with that vision and the realities of our ever-changing food system,” said Huber’s Butchery Managing Director Ryan Huber.
Executive Director Andre Huber said cultivated meat “could be one of the solutions to over-farming due to increased population size and density and an increase in animal protein consumption in many parts of the world.”
Cultivated protein poised for regulatory approval
The launch into the family-run butcher overlaps with the two-year anniversary of Good Meat’s approval in Singapore; it’s currently the only company with regulatory approval to sell its cultivated meat.
Upside Foods’ EPIC factory, Courtesy
But that will likely change in 2023 as fellow U.S.-based cultivated meat company, Upside Foods, has completed the first regulatory hurdle with the FDA GRAS status for its cultivated chicken.
The meat is likely to receive USDA approval within the next year, which would make it legal for sale and consumption across the U.S.
A new cultivated meat factory slated to open in North Carolina will be the world’s largest.
In what Israel-based Believer Meats says is a watershed moment for the cultivated meat industry, its forthcoming 200,000-square-foot factory, which doesn’t yet have a target opening date, will be able to produce 22 million pounds of meat annually once operational, making it the largest cultivated meat factory in the world.
The facility, which broke ground earlier this week, is coming to Wilson County, North Carolina — the heart of the state’s hog farming industry. North Carolina is the third-largest hog-producing state in the U.S. The facility will bring as many as 100 jobs to the region over the next three years, and an investment of $123.35 million to Wilson County. The company has raised more than $387 million since its 2018 launch.
One step closer to commercialization
“Our facility propels Believer forward as a leader in the cultivated meat industry,” Nicole Johnson-Hoffman, Believer’s CEO said in a statement. “Our brand has continually proven our commitment to scale production technology and capacity, and with our new U.S. production center, we are one step closer to commercialization. Believer is setting the standard globally to make it possible for future generations to eat and enjoy meat.”
Believer, formerly Future Meat Technologies, said it specifically targeted North Carolina because of its talent pool and its success in integrating technology-driven solutions.
Courtesy Believer
“We’re pleased to welcome Believer Meats to North Carolina,” said North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper. “This important decision to build its first U.S. commercialization operation in Wilson County validates our innovative research and development and highly skilled talent while further cementing our state as the best in the nation to do business.”
The new facility will feature custom-made bioreactors that Believer says can achieve high cell densities and yields. The company has developed cultivated lamb, which it hails as an R&D breakthrough.
Robert Rankin, Executive Director of the Association for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation (AMPS) oday’s hailed the announcement as “another example of the growth, progress and increased interest in this cutting-edge industry,” he said.
The announcement also earned praise from the industry think tank, the Good Food Institute.
“We celebrate this milestone and are thrilled to see the North Carolina and Wilson County officials and community providing critically important support to scale cultivated meat production. These steps pave the way for cultivated meat to come to market in the U.S. at scale and helps ensure as many consumers as possible have access to these groundbreaking products,” says Liz Specht, Ph.D., Vice President of Science and Technology at the Good Food Institute. “Further government investment like this will advance the sector toward commercialization, helping to feed a growing population more sustainably, spurring economic growth, and improving environmental and global health outcomes.”
The future of protein
Johnson-Hoffman said Believer, and the cultivated meat industry at large, are “on the path” to creating change. “Through affordability, approachability, and availability, we want our products to become the meat of choice globally, and with the announcement of our new production facility, we are well on our way.”
Upside Foods’ EPIC factory, Courtesy
Believer’s new facility will be among a growing handful of dedicated cultivated meat factories across the globe. Upside Foods’ EPIC factory in California could soon be operational as the company just earned FDA GRAS status for its cultivated chicken. Once it receives USDA approval it could begin producing for commercial distribution.
Eat Just, which is currently the only company with approval for cultivated meat in the world, is expected to bring its Good Meat factory online in Singapore early next year. The company says it will be able to produce tens of thousands of pounds of meat per year.
Elsewhere, Ivy Farms opened the largest cultivated meat factory in Europe last summer, capable of producing three tons of cultivated meat annually. And in October, Australian cultivated meat company Vow debuted Factory 1, its NSW-based factory capable of producing 30 tons of cultured meat per year.
The Zurich Administrative Court has sided with Swiss plant-based protein manufacturer Planted Foods and its use of terminology including “chicken” and “BBQ.”
“The use of animal names on the packaging of plant-based foods made from pea protein is not deceptive in view of the specific product presentation,” the court said in its decision, supporting the Swiss-based Planted Foods, which produces a range of vegan meat products.
‘The public recognizes the products as a vegetable substitute for meat’
Further, the court said a consumer survey clearly indicated that “the public recognizes the products as a vegetable substitute for meat. By stating the name of an animal, the intended use of the food as a meat substitute product can be explained to the public in the interest of providing sufficient information required by food law.”
Courtesy Planted
The decision comes as labeling on plant-based food faces increasing challenges as the industry expands. Neighboring country France enacted a ban on mean names on plant-based foods earlier this year in an attempt to avoid “consumer confusion.” That decision was ultimately overturned by the country’s highest court, but the attempted ban highlighted unfair scrutiny directed at the plant-based category.
Label restriction attempts tick up
Other efforts to restrict labeling have gone into effect, though. In South Africa in June, a government ruling outlawed using “meaty” names on plant-based food including terms like “vegan nuggets” and “plant-based meatballs.” The ruling was also announced as a way to minimize confusion.
“Regulations such as this is exactly what we don’t need when the world’s scientists are telling us we urgently need to reduce our meat consumption to help brake dangerous global warming,” ProVeg South Africa’s country director Donovan Will said in a statement earlier this year. “The regulation disrespects consumers. There is no evidence to show that people are confused by meaty names for plant-based foods. In fact, evidence from Australia, Europe, and the U.S. prove they are not confused. We really urge the government to overturn this regulation.”
Miyoko’s won the right to call dairy-free products cheese
Turkey could see even greater restrictions following a June decision by the Turkish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry banning the sale and production of vegan cheese. Organizations are hoping to reverse the ban through legal action; The Vegan Association of Turkey filed a lawsuit to defend the rights of plant-based brands and manufacturers in Turkey.
In the U.S. vegan cheesemaker Miyoko Schinner won a court case against the California Department of Food and Agriculture over similar attempts to block words like “cheese”, “milk”, and “butter” from dairy-free products.
Collaborating with synbio tech solutions provider Solar Biotech, cultivated meat pioneer Orbillion Bio says it can produce upwards of four million pounds of cultivated meat per year.
Known for its premium cultivated Wagyu beef, California-based Orbillion Bio says the new partnership with Solar Biotech will see it scale up to 20,000L bioreactors — enough to produce more than four million pounds of cultivated meat per year.
The announcement follows the recent FDA GRAS status for Upside Foods’ cultivated chicken, moving the cultivated meat industry closer to U.S. regulatory approval.
In position for mass production
The partnership is the first of its kind for Solar Biotech, marking its official entry into the cultivated beef industry, following its launch into animal-free chicken and work with Motif Foodworks on a yeast-derived heme protein.
Orbillion’s founders Samet Yildirim, MSc, MBS, Patricia Bubner, PhD, and Gabriel Levesque-Tremblay, PhD
“At Solar Biotech, we develop world-class bioprocessing technology together with leading players in biotech. We now want to bring our knowledge and decades of experience into creating real impact in the sustainable food tech space, and there is no better partner than the Orbillion Bio team. We see our technical synergy with Orbillion as an opportunity to enter a rapidly growing higher value cellular agriculture segment, which will yield long-term significant recurrent revenue for both parties with attractive profit margins” Alex Berlin, CEO and CTO of Solar Biotech, said in a statement. “They bring significant expertise in world-class bioprocessing and food, and we are looking forward to investing in this partnership to bring cost-effective and nutritious foods to market.”
The partnership marries Orbillion’s proprietary cell culture platform with Solar Biotech’s scale-up bioprocess development capabilities and infrastructure, proprietary AI-driven bioprocess controlling software, new biosensing technologies, and vertically integrated engineering, and previous experience commercializing mammalian cell cultures for animal-free meat, the companies said in a statement.
Quality, parity, and sustainability
“Orbillion’s innovative business model will bring to market the highest quality cultivated beef, while being cost competitive,” Patricia Bubner, CEO of Orbillion, said in a statement. “Our unique technology has already allowed us to produce meat that comes from non-GMO cells and that is free of fetal bovine serum (FBS), and by partnering with Solar Biotech we can move more swiftly to reach price parity.”
The new partnership will see Orbillion produce its meat at lower costs — part of its commitment to achieving price parity with conventional meat by 2026, and commodity pricing for beef by 2030.
Orbillion Wagyu beef | Courtesy
It will also help tackle the food industry’s emissions. Orbillion says if produced using renewable energy, cultivated meat could reduce global warming impacts by between 85 and 92 percent versus conventional beef. Lab-grown meat also reduces the amount of land needed to produce protein, and requires fewer resources including fresh water.
As the cultivated protein sector positions itself for widespread regulatory approval, Orbillion hope it is setting itself apart with a focus on premium meats. In addition to its Wagyu beef, it’s also developing elk and lamb meat. A recent partnership with Luiten Foods will bring its range of cultivated meats to Europe by 2025, pending regulatory approval.
An interview with Chloe Sorvino, financial journalist, Forbes Food & AG editor and author of Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed, and the Fight for the Future of Meat, a new book that takes an in-depth investigative look into the mafia-like world of Big Meat in the US.
Sorvino’s book is particularly relevant given the industry’s reckoning during Covid-19 when supply chains were so broken that meat supermarket shelves were empty and slaughterhouse workers found themselves in dire conditions, not to mention the ever-growing link between meat consumption and the climate crisis. Raw Deal is a shocking and page-turning read that exposes the many ills that plague neat corporations in the US, including price-fixing, elite power grabs and a systemic lack of transparency, with NYU Professor of Nutrition Marion Nestle calling it “a must-read for anyone who cares about where our food comes from”.
Sorvino talks to Green Queen‘s Sonalie Figueiras about what surprised her most whilst researching the book, whether consumers have any choice when it comes to the meat they buy, what role alt protein can play in the future of meat and why regional supply chains are key for food security.
What surprised you most whilst researching this book?
Chloe Sorvino: Even though hoards of startup founders are drooling over the idea of dethroning industrial meat, the top meatpackers continue to control massive amounts of power and profits, at the detriment of producers and consumers. Business is booming, while we are running out of time to solve the problems of today’s meat industry — even though it’s crucial that meaningful gains for more accessible and wholesome protein are made before the end of the decade. The climate clock is ticking. Industrial meat is already responsible for irreversible damage, and the system which produces America’s meat, as is, needs an overhaul. Community-based solutions need a chance to work out the operational kinks before systems are further put to the test as the planet warms more.
A lot of the book is about this connection between meat, politics, power and profit. Can you talk more about this?
Chloe Sorvino: The meat industry has amassed power and profits and has even minted billionaires while funding lobbying that makes it harder for independents to compete, as well as against regulations that aim to prevent environmental destruction.
Yet, the systems of production underpinning the meat industry have harmed the long-term health of the communities, often Black, Latinx or Indigenous, who live near part of the meat supply chain. At the same time, there’s persistent hunger, antibiotic resistance, soil erosion and water pollution spreading. Workers are put in harm’s way, and animals live in inhumane conditions. In a world where industrial meat passes the costs down the line, someone along the way pays the price.
If you could remake the protein industry from scratch, what would you prioritize?
Chloe Sorvino: Regional supply chain networks that support the communities surrounding them. That means infrastructure built so that traditional techniques — which require less processing and additives — can thrive from a network of local purveyors and producers. That would be for plant-based foods and preserving regional grains, tubers like potatoes and mushrooms, as well as for meat products from pasture-raised farms in the area. I’d prefer the meat to be a small amount of total production, and for the farms that exist to focus on reinvigorating land degraded by industrial agriculture and decades of monoculture. There’s a whole host of specifications I’d like to see these operations adhere to, from adaptive grazing to no antibiotics used. I’d also prioritize repurposing subsidies, along with systems of production and distribution, to create a public food sector that would help communities withstand crisis, and especially climate-inflicted crises. The bottom line is that livestock operations of confinement, pollution and antibiotics use must come to an end.
Graphic courtesy Green Queen
After reading your book, it’s hard not to wonder: how does a consumer navigate all these power plays and systemic issues? Do consumers have any real choice at all? How can a consumer be a “good meat” activist?
Chloe Sorvino: It’s really hard, because there’s been so much green-washing. Even more than that, there’s been a lot of backers who have been obscured, as brands have changed owners and investors. Whole Foods Market, for example, has a completely different ethos under Amazon than it did two decades ago. That’s why the best way to navigate this complex food system is to focus on how many times your money goes through a layer before getting to the actual producer. Supporting a community-supported agriculture group, which may offer weekly or monthly farm box distributions in your neighborhood, is a great place to start. Or a co-op grocer. These types of membership-based organizations often require volunteering for a shift, and taking an active role in how you get your food helps to strengthen local communities. What we need are more collective impacts that can become the foundation of a food system that’s more democratic, healthier and safer, while having a better chance at withstanding a crisis.
Do we need to eat less meat? Is consumption reduction one of the major solutions going forward for you?
Chloe Sorvino: Absolutely. Global projections have meat demand increasing when it needs to decrease. Significantly. That’s why I address meatpacking executives gushing about demand increasing and global projections for meat rising early on in the book. There’s a massive disconnect between what industry and the financial institutions backing these corporations are working to achieve versus what needs to happen to decarbonize the globe. In Raw Deal, I tackle this question in the introduction head-on in my thesis, on page 9: “Far less meat needs to be consumed overall, and meat from cramped factories that pollute must come to an end.” This is teased apart more throughout the book, including, for example, in a key section on page 157, which discusses how the same amount of meat can’t be produced if all production were to switch to grassfed, and how an entirely grassfed beef sector would still increase methane emissions and have significant land trade-offs.
Big Meat has a major climate problem: emissions, land, water. How can the industry fix this?
Chloe Sorvino: To start off, stop trying to blindly pilot-test their way into the future. We need more transparency, more accountability, and less goals that have dates decades into the future. Most projects have such a tiny scale right now that it’s hard to imagine the company is doing it for much beyond marketing and the ability to point to an example to say, ‘we swear we are trying.’
In the U.S. particularly, there needs to be stronger environmental enforcement, on the federal level, but also the state and local level. Some regions have stronger air and water protections than others, but a lot of states where there’s a lot of farming are significantly lacking. The meat industry has lobbied directly for a lot of this.
It’s sadly ironic. This industry has reaped billions in profits as production has relied on chemically farmed corn and soybeans to be produced for animals’ feed. But climate change will make those crops harder to farm, as drought and extreme heat and weather hurt output. Warmer temperatures also make these crops less nutritious, while soil erosion and chemical degradation are going to make it impossible to grow food from some land. It’s a ticking time bomb, but the executives seem to only care about the short-term bottom-line gains.
Courtesy Pexels
What role do you see the alt protein industry playing in the greater food industry?
Chloe Sorvino: Alternative proteins have a significant role to play in the future of food. As World Resources Institute’s Richard Waite calculates with me in the book, if plant-based foods can take a significant bite out of total meat consumption, the impacts are big. Reaching 15% of total meat industry volume would be the equivalent of taking a quarter of all vehicles in the U.S. off the road. In the U.S., it’s still less than 1%. But the potential can’t be underestimated.
Yet the brands that have been commercializing these foods so far have been hurt by crazy expectations set by overzealous investors and the pressures from financial markets. There’s promise among the third-generation of startups, many of which are focusing on mycelium-based technologies. I also see promise in strengthening regional infrastructure so that locally sourced plant-based foods can better thrive from independent regional purveyors and compete against big food companies.
You write about the cultivated meat “power grab”. Do you think cultivated meat can be produced at scale? Do you think governments should underwrite the R&D for this (See Singapore, Israel, and potentially China)?
Chloe Sorvino: There are significant questions about whether meat produced from animal cells will be able to hit scale at a price point that is accessible. Costs are multitudes of what they would need to be to sell at a restaurant or grocery store. There’s also the question of the energy involved in fueling the labs that produce no-kill meat: In the U.S., renewable energy infrastructure is still quite limited and it seems these startups are banking on the government eventually transitioning the entire grid — which is a long way off. I question whether governments should underwrite the funding when the private sector has already invested billions, and accessible price points are still so far-off. I’d far prefer to see U.S. Farm Bill funding or other government support going to land access for underrepresented farmers and rebuilding local food infrastructure. If the government could ensure that funding this research would eventually help to create an open source code for cell-based meat that would eventually provide the foundation for regionally based production, like in a public food sector, I’d be far more optimistic.
You write about the foreign ownership of a lot of meat companies. Do you believe a certain % of national food suppliers should be local companies/locally owned entities? If only for reasons of national security?
Chloe Sorvino: National security is a broad term, and what researching for this book taught me was that mismatched interests, combined with uneven power dynamics, could be a perfect storm with devastating consequences. The national security risk to me is that there could eventually be major food insecurity, while foreign-backed meatpackers have proven they prefer to degrade environments where they are to make more profits and even export back home, often while putting workers in harm’s way. Consumption needs to decrease overall. The tale of Smithfield and its billionaire owner Wan Long is a cautionary tale in the book for that reason. The problem with foreign owners is that they simply have less incentive to care about the long-term environmental damage. It’s similar to how later on in the book, I write about Bill Gates being the world’s largest farmland owner and how he mostly rents out his land to corporations that aren’t organic or all that sustainable. The interests are not aligned to coalesce around major climate collaboration.
Illegal deforestation found in the indigenous Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau territory in Brazil’s Amazon – Courtesy Canva.
Looking ahead, what are you hopeful about when it comes to Big Meat and the food system?
Chloe Sorvino: I am realistic. What faces us is not pretty, and the climate crisis will continue to hurt those most vulnerable the most. But I am optimistic that there’s momentum to make significant change. And that’s desperately needed because irreversible damage has already been inflicted thanks to fossil fuels and the meat industry. Meaningful reform needs to take place before 2030 if we want any shot at having a say in what we eat when the climate crisis gets even worse.
A lot of the book’s analysis is very US-centric. Did you look at meat industries in other countries/geographies during your research? Were there any parallels?
Chloe Sorvino: Meat is so linked to American politics and the economy that, to make the argument that I wanted to make, the book had to focus on the U.S. market. But there are several stories of international billionaires featured in the book which I’ll note: the takeover of the American meat market by the Batista brothers in Brazil and the bribery scheme that fueled it; WH Group’s Wan Long, and why global demand rising is driving Smithfield to increase exports; German breeding giant EW Group, and the secretive billionaire Erich Wesjohann who I uncovered for Forbes.
A lot of what America’s meat market does then creates ramifications across other global markets. The influx of so-called better-for-you meat subscription box startups in the U.S. has actually driven an influx of cheap grassfed beef raised in Chile and other countries in South America, for example, to be imported in the country. I cover how that’s been hard for U.S. grassfed producers, who can’t compete with international prices. That’s just another pressure that makes it challenging for small-scale independents in America to thrive.
On the alt-protein side, I did a lot of research that ended up getting cut from the book about how Impossible couldn’t launch in China due to the regulations around its controversial ingredient, heme. That created an opening for Unilever’s brand there, while Beyond Meat opened up a factory in China. JBS is also heavily involved in the European plant-based market, while seemingly abandoning its line in the U.S.
Senator Cory Booker wants to stop taxpayer bailouts for Big Meat with his Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act. What’s your view on the bill? Does it go far enough?
Chloe Sorvino: It’s going to take a lot more than one bill in Congress. Sen. Booker has put forth a strong bill — especially to increase the legal responsibility among industrial meatpackers to pay up for their true costs and waste — which would be crucial as the climate crisis progresses. But he and others have put out a lot of bills in the past two years aiming at more transparency and accountability for the meat industry, and not much has actually come from any of them so far. With a divided Congress, it’s pretty unlikely that this latest bill will make it through to law — especially with the legal teeth intact. Momentum to build reform is important. But insuring that there is strong enforcement of any meat industry reform is just as key as securing the reform itself.
A new report by Green Queen Media argues that while plant-based meat sales may be flat in the US and Europe, in Asia Pacific, the alternative protein industry is booming.
Green Queen Media has published the 2022 edition of its award-winning APAC Alternative Protein Industry Report today, titled The Future is Asian and presented by plant-based chicken leader TiNDLE. The 150-page report, now in its third year, is the result of over 14 months of original reporting and dozens of first-hand interviews, as well as featuring expertise and insights from over 30 ecosystem insiders and sector investors.
Both the 2020 and 2021 editions grabbed the top prize in the category of Special Awards for best Global Report at the Hallbars Sustainability Reports Awards in Sweden. Hallbars is an organization that recognizes the best climate-forward publications around the world.
Representation matters
It’s been a challenging year for alternative protein, particularly for plant-based meats, with flat sales in the US and some European markets, a challenging environment for public plant-based companies like Beyond Meat and Oatly, and constant media attacks by pro-meat and pro-dairy lobbies. However, these headlines belie the global picture. “Across the Asia Pacific region, alternative protein companies have been going from strength to strength, hitting major milestones, attracting significant government support and raising record funding rounds,” said Sonalie Figueiras, the report publisher and Green Queen Media’s founder and editor-in-chief, in a statement. “Our report illustrates the importance of reporting and media representation. Western-centric media would have you believe that alternative protein is an industry in trouble. In reality, the sector is headed for boom times in Asia and beyond.”
“What is perhaps obvious to some, but became incredibly clear upon writing the report and working with our industry experts, is just how differently the various countries within APAC approach alternative proteins, both in terms of technology and consumer behaviour,” said Nicola Spalding, the report author.
The future is Asian
Where the 2020 report focused on examining making the case for why alternative protein was necessary in a region that boasts 60% of the world’s population but only 20% of the world’s agricultural land, and the 2021 report provided an exhaustive look at the industry in APAC and dug deep into the three technology pillars, the 2022 edition highlights the 10 most important growth stories and historic firsts that the industry has achieved, as well as the unique products created to serve consumers with vastly different food traditions, culinary tastes and dining preferences.
On the funding front, record-breaking rounds made headlines across the globe, as APAC was home to both the largest cultivated meat Series A ever and the largest plant-based meat Series A ever. The report chronicles every round raised in 2022, with an emphasis on the 10 biggest.
In addition, precision fermentation, which in 2021 was a fledging sector in Asia, experienced real traction this past year, with China’s first animal-free dairy company coming out of stealth and the launch of the region’s first animal-free dairy milk onto supermarket shelves amongst many other announcements.
Several APAC cultivated meat players celebrated major product firsts, from the first cultivated pork belly to the first cultivated duck breast to the first cultivated fishball to the first cultivated Dokdo shrimp- huge leaps, especially given how young the sector is.
The Future is Asian features extensive interviews with 10 local ecosystem insiders from Japan to Taiwan to India, and spotlights the insights of the top venture capitalists investing in the region’s startups.
For the first time, the report authors provided recommendations aimed at the many players of the region’s ecosystem on the road ahead amidst a changing global landscape fraught with supply chain disruption, the ongoing Ukraine war, rising food inflation and the looming threat of a worldwide recession, on top of a worsening climate crisis.
In-depth: APAC’s alt protein pioneers
After years of ecosystem building, the region now boasts hundreds of startups working towards a future of food that promises to feed over three billion people sustainably, safely, and ethically.
The report showcases a range of in-depth case studies spotlighting some of the region’s most exciting players such as South Korean cultivated meat and seafood startup CellMEAT, Singaporean plant-based chicken and seafood player Growthwell Foods, US-Australian animal-free casein maker Change Foods, global fats leader AAK, specialty distributor Classic Fine Foods, Californian precision fermentation company Perfect Day and Hong Kong-based foodtech accelerator Brinc.
Also included are greater China-based plant-based pork and dumpling brand Plant Sifu, US whole-cut fermentation-based seafood pioneer Aqua Cultured Foods, Singaporean cultivated seafood startup Umami Meats and Swiss flavor manufacturer Givaudan.
The climate crisis presents a clear and present danger for Asian countries. The region will feel the brunt of many of the worst tolls of environmental degradation from worsening air pollution to mass climate migration to declining food security. As Figueiras writes in the report’s introduction, “Alternative protein is an important part of the future food toolbox if we are to build a stronger, more resilient regional food system that will face water shortages, land degradation, and more frequent climate-related weather events, amongst many other challenges.”
Download The APAC Alternative Protein Industry Report 2022 – The Future is Asian now.
France-based vegan meat brand Umiami has announced the acquisition of a Unilever factory to begin production of its “vegetable meat made in France.”
Umiami says the 14,000 m2 factory, located in Duppigheim near Strasbourg, will begin production in mid-2023 and bring 65 jobs to the region with as many as 200 as it ramps up production. The acquisition comes after Umiami’s $30 million Series A funding round last spring and the opening of its R&D Center in Ile-de-France.
France’s Grand-Est region will support the project with €3 million in funding to help with the factory renovation. Umiami will also receive €7.4 million from the State to complete the financing for the site.
Could meat-loving France become the biggest producer of plant-based meat?
The site was formerly a production factory for Unilever’s Knorr brand. Umiami says once it’s updated, it will be the first factory in the world capable of producing any type of plant-based meat or fish at that scale level. It says it will be able to produce 7,500 tons per year initially, moving to upwards of 22,000 tons of whole-cut meat.
Umiami’s whole cut meat | Courtesy
“All the local authorities welcomed us with extraordinary professionalism and enthusiasm, underlining the sacred union of all political sides to promote local economic and industrial dynamism,” Tristan Maurel, Umiami’s co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. “The industrial know-how of the region and the strategic positioning at the heart of Europe convinced us that Alsace was conducive to our development. We are delighted to be able to contribute to local job creation and national food sovereignty by establishing ourselves in Duppigheim.”
“The products we offer are based on totally innovative technology. They must be perfect both for the taste pleasure and for their nutritional qualities and the regularity of the quality over time. The transition to industrial production could not support the slightest deviation. We tweaked it for months in our pilot plant for a result we can be proud of,” said Reechad Benyahia, Umiami’s Chief Operating Officer.
Umiami says its plant-based meat mimics meat “in every way” from taste and texture to color and juiciness. Its hallmark is umisation — a proprietary tech that allows it to produce whole-cut meat and fish with vegetable fibers serving up a texture similar to animal meat. The company says its vegan meat has passed muster with its native French consumers historically known for eschewing plant-based alternatives to meat and dairy.
France embraces plant-based food
Palates are changing in France as consumers become more interested in sustainability, a move being championed by the French government. The country has taken a firm stance on protecting its biggest export, French wine, by moving the industry toward more sustainable practices. It’s aiming for 100 percent compliance before mid-century.
Gourmey Foie Gras | Courtesy
Food is not far behind. While the French still consume large amounts of animal products, sustainable alternatives are taking a foothold.
In October, Paris-based cultivated meat company Gourmey closed an oversubscribed €48 million Series A. In February, French supermarket chain Carrefour opened what it says is the first vegan butcher counter in the meat-loving country.
Precision fermentation cheese recently saw a boost, too. In September, Paris-based Nutropy announced it has raised €2 million in a pre-seed funding round for its novel precision fermented cheese expected to launch by 2025.
The plant-based U.K. meal replacement company Huel has closed a $24 million Series B funding round, bringing its valuation to more than $560 million.
Huel’s fresh funding was led by existing investor Highland Europe, with support from actor Idris Elba and his wife Sabrina Dhowre Elba — both are UN Goodwill Ambassadors. Funding also came from TV presenter Jonathan Ross, and TALA’s CEO Grace Beverley.
Huel, which takes its name from ‘human fuel’ says the new funding will support its expansion plans, including a focus on the U.S. market. It is also working to develop new products and expand its online and retail presence.
The funding comes as Huel says it has sold more than 270 million meals worldwide since its launch in 2015. It showed a 40 percent increase to $170 million in revenue for the fiscal year ending in July.
Focused on growth
“We’re at the stage where having this second round of funding allows us to keep focusing on that growth,” James McMaster, CEO of Huel, said in a statement. “We are going to keep innovating with new products, and are really proud of where we’re heading. We’re now the business that we hope can be a truly global brand.”
Huel will use its new funding to expand | Courtesy
Elba, who identifies as a “Hueligan” says he started using the products while preparing for his role in “Thor.”
“So to come on board with Huel was an easy decision,” Elba said. “I believe in their mission to deliver nutritionally complete food, sustainably. We have some exciting projects coming up and I look forward to spreading the message and raising awareness around healthy, low-carbon food.”
The Elbas will work with Huel “to support healthy, low-carbon footprint diets, as well as agricultural development in Sierra Leone — Idris’ father’s native country,” the company said.
Food that’s better for humans and the planet
Huel touts its products as better for the planet and for the body — all of its products, which include bars, protein powder, and ready-to-drink shakes — contain all 26 essential vitamins and minerals, as well as plant-based protein, essential fats, healthy carbs, fiber, and phytonutrients.
Huel’s closest competitor, the U.S.-based Soylent, found a following in its Silicon Valley backyard fueling “tech bros” with its easy meal replacements. Like Huel, it’s also pivoted to try and reach a wider audience seeking more accessible healthy food. It’s on track to do $100 million in sales this year.
Huel is focused on personal and planetary health | Courtesy
“Each Huel product in our rapidly-growing range has low GI and very low sugar content, with no added sugar, genetically modified ingredients, soy, eggs, dairy meat, and animal products at all,” the company says. “They can all be prepared in just a few minutes (or less!) and contain 100 per cent of the vitamins and minerals your body needs to thrive, allowing people to gain or lose weight, eat healthier, and save time, all in the knowledge that what they’re eating is sustainable and healthy.”
It has also increased its sustainability commitments by pledging to shift to 100 percent recyclable packaging by 2025. Its current bottles are made with more than 50 percent recycled bottles. It’s also working to curb its emissions, supporting renewable energy throughout its supply chain and being strategic about its distribution center locations in order to decrease travel time.
ImpacFat has unveiled the world’s first cultivated fish fat during the Big Idea Ventures Demo Day showcase underway in Singapore.
With a rich mouthfeel and increased nutrition profile, ImpacFat’s newly cultivated fish fat is the latest cultured fat poised to disrupt the alternative protein sector.
The company is holding tasting sessions today for select participants following approval from the Singapore Food Agency. Tastings are taking place at the Big Idea Ventures’ 6th Demo Day happening at Singapore’s National Gallery, following the culmination of its five-month accelerator programs in Singapore, New York, and Paris. Big Idea Ventures is a leading impact investor in the food tech space.
The fat market swells
“As a consumer, we may think that fat is bad and want to reduce our fat intake. However, ImpacFat wants the world to know that fat can be good too,” Mandy Hon, Managing Director, ImpacFat Pte. Ltd., said in a statement. “Since fat is essential in our diet, why not take the healthiest one? ImpacFat aims to give that healthiest fat that you will want to gain, while at the same time protecting the animals and environment. We can’t wait to let everyone taste our healthy and tasty fish fat,” Hon said.
Photo by Tony Sebastian on Unsplash
Fat cells play a key role in animal products, delivering mouthfeel and texture. In the case of fish fat, there are also beneficial oils including those in the omega category. ImpactFay says there has been a lack of focus on fat production, and it’s one of the biggest gaps in addressing consumer concerns about alternative protein.
According to ImpacFat, its cell-based fat is rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which it says are more resistant to oxidation and other chemical or physical changes than conventional fish oils.
The company also touts the sustainability of its products, free from the impacts overfishing is having on the world’s oceans and fish stocks. Like other cultivated products, ImpacFat’s fish fat requires fewer resources and produces fewer emissions than conventional animal products.
Redefining fat
The cultivated fish oil delivers another benefit: the absence of heavy metals such as mercury, microplastics, and pathogens.
“Consumers want alternative proteins that exceed the taste and nutrition profiles of the conventional meat and seafood they know and love—a standard most believe the sector has not yet achieved,” says Mirte Gosker, Managing Director, The Good Food Institute APAC—Asia’s leading alternative protein think tank. “The addition of cultivated fish fat, developed by expert-led startups like ImpacFat, could be exactly what’s needed to take such products to the next level.”
ImpacFat has been the recipient of several awards including Grand Finalist at The Liveability Challenge 2022 and Winner of Asia-Pacific Agri-Food Innovation Summit pitch day 2022.
Photo by Richard Bell at Unsplash
The company joins a bevy of alternative fat producers using cell-based tech. Last month, German cultivated fat startup Cultimate raised €700,000 in a pre-seed funding round to bring its fat tech to the alternative protein sector. In October, U.K.-based Hoxton Farms closed a $22 million Series A funding round for its novel cultivated animal fat.
In a recent analysis of nutritional profiles of plant-based meat and conventional, the food-focused think tank the Good Food Institute underscores the benefits of plant-based protein over the alternative.
“No matter which way you slice it, plant-based meat has significantly more nutritional benefits than conventional meat,” says non-profit the Good Food Institute (GFI). “Whether it’s introducing a new source of fiber to your diet or cutting down on cholesterol, plant-based products lead to better health outcomes.”
GFI says plant-based meat is a market-based solution that can feed a growing global population while also building a more stable food system, stem antibiotic resistance, and meet climate goals.
Courtesy Beyond Meat
The group says consumers who buy conventional meat are also buying plant-based options and most perceive the products favorably. But questions still persist about plant protein health compared with conventional meat, as many critics say the products are highly processed and can be higher in sodium than animal meat.
There are also narratives pushing the benefits of cattle grazing and other free-range animal products in slowing climate change and promoting soil health. But the group says that’s not the case when more than 99 percent of animal products come from factory farms.
GFI makes the case for adding more plant-based protein to your diet. Here are four key takeaways.
1. Not all processed foods are created equal
“Food processing is not inherently bad,” GFI says. “The golden rule of effectively processing food is nothing bad added, nothing good taken away.’” It uses the example of cacao beans, which are separated into cocoa butter—a product high in saturated fats— and cocoa powder, a product rich in healthy flavanols that can be used healthily on its own.
Naturli | courtesy
‘Ultra-processed’ foods, however, take food processing techniques to the next level to make foods like chips, sodas, and candy bars hyper-palatable. “Many nutritionists would recommend choosing fruits, vegetables, or nuts as snacks. Compared with minimally processed foods, ultra-processed foods generally have less (or zero) fiber and a lot more sugar, total fat, saturated fat, sodium, and calories.”
2. Healthier than conventional protein
Compared with conventional beef burgers and chicken nuggets, popular plant-based options including those from Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have fewer calories and fewer grams of fat per serving. The plant-based burgers contain several grams of fiber while the beef burger contains zero. Plant-based burgers are significantly higher in sodium than conventional beef burgers, though, with some containing more than 400 percent more sodium than beef. But GFI says that’s pre-preparation.
The Impossible Whopper has been a tentpole achievement for alternative protein | Courtesy Burger King
“The difference shrinks dramatically after meal preparation: For instance, the Impossible Whopper contains only ten percent more sodium than the traditional Whopper.” And GFI says adding cheese to the Whopper (or similar burger) contributes more than 3.5 times the sodium that swapping a conventional patty for the Impossible. For nuggets, the sodium levels are nearly identical for plant-based and conventional.
According to a trial done by Stanford, there was no statistically significant difference in blood pressure or sodium intake between people consuming plant-based or conventional meat.
“Plant-based meat is not here to replace apples or kale,” GFI says. “Consumers are often choosing plant-based meat to reduce their animal meat consumption. Thus, plant-based meats can be a better choice because they have more fiber, less fat, and fewer calories than what people may otherwise eat.”
The research also looked at protein from plants in muscle growth. According to one study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, male athletes saw double their muscle growth rates after consuming Quorn’s mycoprotein when compared with milk consumption.
3. Reduces the risk of heart disease and cancer
The group points to a growing body of research that says plant-based meat can help to reduce cardiovascular disease risk factors, as well as support gut health and a healthy weight, among other benefits.
Photo by tommao wang on Unsplash
Plant-based meat is also free from preservatives including nitrites and nitrates, both of which have been linked to an increased risk of certain types of cancer. Processed meat containing nitrates and nitrites was declared a human carcinogen by the World Health Organization in 2015.
4. Reduces the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria
Plant-based meat may also help to reduce the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. According to GFI, 70 percent of the U.S. supply of medically important antibiotics is used for animal agriculture. This not only reduces access for humans but also increases the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria—a leading cause of infections and cause of more than 35,000 U.S. deaths per year.
Photo by Joachim Süß on Unsplash
“Further, due to the end-to-end process control, alternative proteins have orders of magnitude less bacterial contamination, which reduces the risk of foodborne illness,” GFI says.
“Alternative proteins benefit planetary health and public health, and the evidence suggests that eating alternative proteins in lieu of conventional meat can be good for individual health as well.”
London-based food tech startup Julienne Bruno has raised £5 million in a seed round, bringing its total funding to more than £6 million for its dairy-free cheese made from dry-aged vegetables.
Funding for the fresh round was led by Cherry Ventures, Outsized Ventures, Seedcamp, and Nicoya and follows the pre-seed £1 million raise last year. That funding round, led by Seedcamp, helped the company develop its Collection 01 of dairy-free cheese including Burrella, Crematta, and Superstraccia.
Vegan cheese for food lovers
The company emphasizes the human love affair with gastronomy. “We are an international team of chefs; devoted to flavour, hungry for discovery. The kitchen is our workshop. Our playground. Our canvas. It’s where we create joyful everyday products from humble plant-based ingredients,” the company says on its website.
“Our world revolves around gastronomy: sourcing. Sampling. Serving. Savouring. Every step in our process is a decision that builds flavour.”
“I’d like to take this opportunity to give a warm welcome to everyone who is just hearing about us for the first time,” said Axel Katalan, Julienne Bruno’s founder. Katalan, who also co-founded the smart building tech company Pointr, launched Julienne Bruno in 2020 during the covid pandemic. “We are one heart and many hands. Always curious and always hungry. The kitchen is our creative workshop and hospitality is our culture. Now, let’s sit and eat.”
Julienne Bruno is now available at Holland & Barrett, among other U.K. retailers | Courtesy
The company, which takes its name from popular vegetable cut styles, is working to disrupt the conventional dairy industry. Its dairy-free cheeses are currently stocked at Selfridges London, Holland & Barrett, and Whole Foods Market in the U.K., with more retail placement to come as demand for dairy continues its ascent, particularly across Europe. The vegan cheese category alone is expected to surpass $4 billion by 2027.
‘Best-tasting dairy-free plant-based cheese’
“At remarkable speed–less than a year of development–the Julienne Bruno team has created and brought the best-tasting dairy-free, plant-based cheese to market,” Christian Meermann, founding partner at Cherry Ventures, said in a statement.
“Julienne Bruno’s Collection 01 is not only a more sustainable and ethical alternative to dairy products but also tastes even better! Axel and his team are elevating the dairy-free food experience without compromising on taste or texture,” Carlos Eduardo Espinal, managing partner at Seedcamp said.
The company has enlisted top chefs to help accelerate its mission, including multiple Michelin-starred chefs Albert Adria, Sunjiv Shah, and Board Advisor Alan Yau MBE.
Julienne Bruno uses soy milk and vegetable fibers for its dairy-free cheese | Courtesy
Julienne Bruno is turning to a classic dairy-free ingredient for its cheese: soy milk. It also uses vegetables as well as coconut oil to achieve a fatty texture. Grounded Foods, the California-based vegan cheese company, is also working with vegetables, chiefly cauliflower, to achieve a dairy-like taste and texture in its products.
Julienne Bruno says its versatile cheeses are not vegan versions of dairy-based cheese, though, but stand in their own category as bona fide cheese products. “We’re taking plant-based to new levels through exploration, creativity, and delicious discovery,” the company says on its website. “By bringing together innovative techniques and simple, natural produce, we’re showing plant-based is the most exciting area in gastronomy.”
Specialty minerals company ICL Food Specialties, and Protera Biosciences, have partnered on an AI-backed tech to create protein-based products via precision fermentation.
The collaboration between Israel’s ICL and Chile’s Protera follows ICL’s 2021 investment into Protera through its ICL Planet Startup Hub. Protera raised $10 million in a Series A last year.
The companies say the new partnership will help to develop and commercialize sustainable protein-based ingredients through the novel precision fermentation technology that sees genetically modified microbes produce proteins identical to those made by animals without the need for animals.
Current market demands
“These clean-label ingredients will address current market demands and offer a replacement for chemical additives or less appealing ingredients,” the companies said in a statement. “They will also improve the sensory properties in plant-based food applications, while positively impacting the world’s food security challenges.”
Protera Biosciences Team | Courtesy
Protera uses a deep-learning platform it calls Madi, which it says can predict and match the structure and functionality of vegetable proteins. Its database features more than 1.5 billion edible protein sequences. It then matches the proteins to the current precision fermentation parameters, which it says results in products with a short list of ingredients compared to a number of plant-based protein alternatives.
Other companies including the Bay Area’s Eat Just and fellow Chilean startup NotCo, are also using deep learning AI tools to crack the codes on protein. Eat Just credits its tech for the development of its mung bean-based egg. NotCo has used it to develop plant-based dairy and meat products.
NotCo uses AI to develop its products
“Thanks to this collaboration, we can offer novel ingredients via breakthrough technology currently not available in the market,” says Hadar Sutovsky, ICL vice president of External Innovation and general manager of ICL Planet. “Once these functional ingredients are launched, food manufacturers will be able to speed up development of clean-label and sustainable plant-based products.”
Tapping the untapped ingredients
Under the new partnership, the platform will identify still-untapped plant-based proteins with high-performance potential which the companies say can replace common texturizers, stabilizers, and preservatives. This, the companies say, makes replacing emissions-heavy animal products easier than ever.
“We’ll soon be able to provide global market access to these ingredients for key food producers, in a sustainable manner,” says Rado Sporka, vice president of the Food Specialties Commercial Business for ICL. “This will further diversify and strengthen ICL’s engagement and offerings in the alternative proteins space and accelerate impactful solutions for global environmental challenges.”
Courtesy Perfect Day
“We are excited about this collaboration with ICL Food Specialties to bring new proteins to market,” adds Leonardo Alvarez, founder and CEO of Protera. “Combining the forces of our two companies will dramatically accelerate our vision of using biology to create protein-based ingredients. We already are validating functional targets in the lab, with unprecedented speed and accuracy.”
Precision fermentation is already widely used across the dairy sector with U.S.-based Perfect Day leading the category. Most recently, multinational food giant Unilever announced that it was exploring the tech as a means to address its dairy-based products’ footprints. The parent company to Magnum, Breyers, and Ben & Jerry’s, could be the first major food company to launch ice cream made from precision fermentation dairy.
Your favorite Unilever-owned ice cream products could soon be made from microbes. The company is exploring precision fermentation as a means to address its portfolio’s climate impact.
Multinational food giant Unilever says it is investing in precision fermentation to bring cow-free dairy to its portfolio. The company, which owns the Magnum ice cream brand, Ben & Jerry’s, Breyers, and Cornetto, among other dairy-based companies, says it’s working with European-based startups on developing products that could be on shelves as early as next year.
Bringing precision fermentation to Unilever’s ice cream portfolio
The move would mark a major turning point for precision fermentation, making Unilever the first major food company to add the novel tech to its frozen dessert offerings.
But it wouldn’t be the first major food company to embrace precision fermentation; California’s Perfect Day has been leading the shift, partnering with a number of companies on launching products that use precision fermentation—genetically altered microbes that produce dairy proteins without the need for cows.
Could a Magnum bar made from precision fermentation be coming soon?
The technology is vastly more sustainable than conventional dairy production; according to the company, if every U.S. consumer switched to precision fermentation-based milk, it would reduce emissions by 246 million tons.
Bringing precision fermentation to mainstream products
General Mills recently brought precision fermentation to market via its Bold Cultr cream cheese label, and the Bel Group is exploring the tech for its Laughing Cow, Baby Bel, and Boursin labels. Mars partnered with Perfect Day earlier this year on a chocolate bar made with precision fermentation whey. Nestlé also announced it’s working with Perfect Day on developing animal-free dairy products.
Mars and Perfect Day partnered on a precision fermentation milk chocolate
Unilever is following suit—and poised to take the lead. “We’ve got some things coming [in precision fermentation] in the next year or so. We’re working with a number of start-ups on that,” Unilever’s chief R&D officer for ice cream, Andrew Sztehlo, said recently.
Matt Close, president of Unilever’s ice cream division, called dairy “problematic” and said the company sees precision fermentation as a “significant trend.”
According to Sztehlo plant-based product development brings challenges—from taste and texture to allergens such as nut-based dairy. Ben & Jerry’s has been using nut milk bases to recreate some of its most popular flavors. Sztehlo says precision fermentation could eradicate some of those issues. “The challenge we have [with vegan products] is that the structure is different, the stability is different and the taste can be different,” he said.
While Unilever isn’t ready to disclose more details just yet, Sztehlo told reporters that it would probably be “one of our big global brands,” he said, “possibly one of our North American brands.”
Food’s climate problem is getting worse and yet, we’re more stuck than ever. Why is it so hard?
COP27 ended on a bittersweet note, with some achievements but mainly with a growing sense of frustration. For once, food and agriculture were given a more central place in the discussions. That’s good news, as only 3% of public finance directed to climate change goes to food. However, this creates intense debates that I feel will only get stronger in the years to come.
First, let’s rewind a bit to have a broad overview of why acting on agriculture and food is key if we want to achieve our goal of limiting climate change
As you can see from the graphs below, food is responsible for 26% of global emissions (estimates vary, some say up to a third). Animal products are responsible for a large share of it, directly and indirectly (because: pasture land). However, many other components of our diet also have a significant impact, such as coffee and chocolate, though it’s balanced by the small amounts we eat (the average North American eats 100kg of meat each year, and ‘only’ 5kg of chocolate).
It should be noted that there are many controversies around this data, notably on the impact of animal land use. It is hard to estimate the impact of a global food system made up of very different components (how cattle is raised in countries such as the UK and Brazil varies widely).
Then, what should we do about it? If assessing the situation is complicated, acting on agriculture and food is an even more delicate subject as people have very different thoughts about it. We could say that there are three “schools” or ways to look at the problem:
1) Team ‘Technology Will Save The Day’
This is where most solutions developed by food tech startups can be found:
replacing animal proteins with equivalents, either plant-based or coming from bioreactors (through precision fermentation or cellular agriculture). These are moving fast, with new pilot facilities announced almost every week. Alternatives to key animal products are on the verge of reaching a wider distribution (even if scaling remains challenging).
replacing other “problematic” products such as cooking oils, coffee, and chocolate with alternatives
reducing food waste by digitizing the value chain
replacing plastic with new biopolymers
reducing the impact of farming by using new crops and sensors, and developing more energy and input-efficient (indoor) farms.
With these technologies, we can imagine a drastically different future with far less of our land devoted to food (up to 40% less), no animals used for our food, and lots of indoor farms. If public money is slowly moving there (more and more projects are being supported by the EU, the US, and some other countries), entrepreneurs are heavily funded (more than $5B went to alternative proteins last year) by private investors, which sees there a way to disrupt food as we know it.
2) Team ‘Regenerative Ag & Adaptation’
This is where you will find many people for whom the aforementioned technologies and radical changes imply are unpalatable. They defend the idea that by adapting our agricultural practices, we could significantly impact the food system’s impact on climate.
A (large) subgroup of these folks could be called ‘Team Tradition’ and is made up of people who see the development of new food technologies as an attempt to change their way of life without their consent. The talk about lab-grown meat has often been frightening, and the activist behaviour of some startups may radicalize people against them. For example, should a startup do this?
3) Team Business
Team Business doesn’t focus on the negative impact of climate change but looks at the opportunities it is creating. They know they shouldn’t talk about it, but the opportunities and their consequences are huge. It’s not just about avocados (a tropical fruit) being grown in Sicily. Just look at the map below and consider the geopolitical and economic impact of the yield variations related to climate change.
Coming back to this report, which shows that only 3% of the climate-related public funding is going to agriculture and food, we understand how funding change in agriculture and food can be complicated. Even beyond choosing a path, it is extremely sensitive to have a public policy about what people should eat, especially when it is not for their health but for the environment. However, this should be something that goes beyond debates between industry experts, it’s a discussion that should be happening far more often and far more openly. We need many voices- no comprehensive solution will come from a single voice, or we will keep discussing missed targets.
As attention turns toward agriculture in the fight against climate change, cellular agriculture emerges as an invaluable solution.
During COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced its plan to develop a roadmap for agri-food systems to better address the 1.5°C Paris Agreement climate targets. Zitouni Ould-Dada, Deputy Director of FAO, set a COP28 deadline for publishing the roadmap.
A map to net-zero
“Investors representing $18 trillion, led by FAIRR, have made their voices heard,” Jeremy Coller, Chair of FAIRR Initiative and Chief Investment Officer at Coller Capital, said of the announcement, which came at the urging of FAIRR, and was announced during the FAIRR-hosted COP27 Blue Zone event.
“We welcome the FAO’s commitment to producing a roadmap for food and agriculture which will provide much-needed clarity to both companies and investors, which will allow companies to plan for the transition and investors to assess investment risk and opportunities. It’s a huge challenge and investors will be looking for the roadmap to include clear guidance on methane emission limits, halting deforestation, scaling up alternative protein production, and support to ensure a just transition for farmers.,” Coller said.
Photo by Zubair Hussain on Unsplash
“Without a map to get to net zero, the food sector will never get there,” Steve Waygood, Chief Responsible Investment Officer at Aviva Investors, said. “That’s why the FAO commitment to set a clear path towards 1.5°C is so important. It will help investors to better determine where capital should flow in order to finance those businesses and sectors best placed to deliver both food security and the low-carbon transition.”
According to FAIRR, only 16 of 54 OECD countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) have agricultural targets, despite the industry’s significant impact on climate change.
“A roadmap for the food system will help investors to identify new, sustainable investment opportunities, and to identify risks for companies that are not aligned to the likely direction of future policies,” Chris Dodwell, Head of Policy & Advocacy at Impax Asset Management, said. “The IEA’s net zero roadmap has provided much-needed guidance for investors in the energy sector, but there is a gap when it comes to the food sector that we hope the FAO’s roadmap will fill. The roadmap will also give countries the confidence needed to include the agriculture sector within their NDCs and develop the policies needed to move us closer to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement.”
Cellular agriculture’s role in the future of food
World leaders are also being urged to prioritize cellular agriculture as part of their plans to reduce emissions. The urging comes from a new global alliance formed during COP27 earlier this month. The new alliance is made up of the Alliance for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation (AMPS Innovation), APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture (APAC-SCA), and Cellular Agriculture Europe (CAE).
“It is great news that the FAO has committed to producing a climate roadmap for food and agriculture next year,” said Robert E. Jones, President of Cellular Agriculture EuropeJones. “We encourage them to include a full suite of solutions to reform the global food system to make it sustainable for people and the planet.
“Cellular agriculture can be a powerful tool in that mix, but we need governments to step up and help create the enabling conditions necessary for it to thrive and scale up quickly,” said Jones. “Considering the role agriculture is playing in the climate crisis, world leaders should be as committed to innovations in food production as they are to the energy transition.”
COP27 attendees from approximately ten countries attended events featuring cell-based meat, presented by California-based Eat Just, which brought its cultured Good Meat to the Singapore Pavilion. Cell-based meat is currently only approved for sale in Singapore, but a major milestone came to the U.S. last week when California’s Upside Foods earned the FDA’s GRAS status for its cultivated chicken.
Courtesy Upside Foods
Some experts put cellular agriculture’s impact on the environment at more than 90 percent lower than conventional agriculture. Recent findings suggest technologies such as cellular agriculture could feed the entire global population on a fraction of the land currently used to raise livestock. The industry is tied to a number of issues beyond just emissions leading to climate change; livestock production is linked to deforestation, biodiversity loss, and overuse of resources, including medically important antibiotics.
Dr. David Tonucci, President of AMPS Innovation, applauded the COP27 events. “It is great that cellular agriculture was part of the conversation,” he said. “Now we need to see concrete efforts to lift up this important innovation into the policy frameworks for emissions reductions around the world.”
Dr. Sandhya Sriram, President of APAC-SCA, said countries must also be “ready and willing to use public resources to level the playing field for innovative and sustainable protein production methods like cellular agriculture.”
Current food production methods are responsible for one-third of the climate crisis, according to Sriram. “Just reforming conventional animal agriculture methods will not be enough alone to sustainably feed ten billion people in 2050, especially with the FAO predicting meat consumption rising over 50 percent in the same time period,” Sriram said.
With full regulatory approval expected in the U.S. and elsewhere soon, cell-based meat is being looked at as a key alternative to emissions-heavy conventional meat production.
Wilk, the publicly traded Israel-based food tech company developing cell-based human and animal milk, says it has developed the world’s first yogurt made from cell cultures.
External laboratories verified that Wilk’s yogurt meets all necessary chemical and biological requirements to qualify as yogurt. Wilk says its yogurt is a first-of-its-kind development using cell-based milk fat that mirrors the nutritional benefits of real milk fat.
Cell-based milk fat
The release follows Wilk’s announcement over the summer that it was working to develop cell-cultured milk fat for use in yogurt. The milk fat will be the only cell-based ingredient in the new yogurt, which typically also contains dairy-based whey, but it’s an important step toward greening the dairy industry.
“This is a significant milestone, not just for Wilk, but for the Israeli FoodTech space and wider global industry,” Tomer Aizen, CEO of Wilk, said in a statement.
Photo by micheile dot com on Unsplash
“It signifies a major breakthrough in demonstrating our ability to produce functional cell-cultured milk components that can be integrated into a wide array of dairy products and brings us closer to realizing our goal—to produce authentic dairy products in a sustainable and environmentally conscientious manner that will drive the industry forward,” Aizen said.
According to Wilk, it chose to develop cultured milk fat because it is necessary for adding flavor and texture to dairy products like yogurt. The company says the milk fat is also critical in its human breast milk as it plays a key part in infant digestive, brain, and nervous system development for infants. The company is one of several working to create human breast milk from cell cultures for sustainable alternatives to infant formula.
Fueling the future of dairy
The launch follows Wilk’s 2021 announcement that Coca-Cola Israel invested $2 million into the company and will help develop products made with Wilk’s cell-based milk and milk fat.
Courtesy Canva
“We will continue investing our efforts and resources to develop cell-cultured milk and breast milk components that will help our partners produce healthier products in a more sustainable manner,” Aizen said over the summer.
Wilk’s announcement follows news from Australian food tech company Me& that it has developed the world’s first cell-based fortified human breast milk. Like Wilk, Me& is working to address infant nutrition needs while also reducing the carbon footprint of the conventional dairy industry.
Australia’s first cell-based milk startup, Me&, says it is developing cell-based breast milk just like a human mother would.
Me&’s cellular and molecular technology captures the inbuilt program in breast tissue cells allowing it to control the cell-based milk development and modify its composition to offer superior nutrition. The company recently closed an oversubscribed $2.5 million seed round led by Horizons Ventures and CSIRO Fund Main Sequence.
It’s the latest company to bring novel tech to the infant formula category. Israel-based Wilk and U.S.-based Biomilq are using cell tech to develop human breast milk, and U.S.-based Helaina is using precision fermentation to ‘brew’ breast milk in microbes.
Breast milk from cells
“I’ve had two babies born prematurely and spent their first weeks of life in the NICU,” Esha Saxena, Me& co-founder. She developed the product alongside Dr. Luis Malaver. Combined, they bring together more than 30 years of experience in product development, bioengineering, and cell biology.
Saxena saw the dire need for change when her children were in the NICU, but her motivation also comes from decades of wanting to change the planet for the better. “I was born in India and at a very young age, about 3 [years old], I made a deliberate choice to stop eating meat, almost overnight,” she said.
The Me& team including co-founders Esha Saxena (left) and Luis Malaver (centre).
“It was a big surprise to my family, none of whom were vegetarian at the time, there was nothing I was exposed to that introduced me to the idea, and my mum took me to many pediatricians to have me tested for intolerances, food aversions, all of whom concluded it came down to nothing but, a choice I had made a lot earlier than expected.”
Saxena says there is a global lack of supply and a critical need for human milk “to ensure adequate development of preterm and newborn babies,” she said. “My inspiration for this business is to fill this much-needed gap, and reduce the reliance on cows’ milk that we know is not good for babies, the environment or the animals.”
Bill Bartee, General Partner at Main Sequence says the product is an example of science changing the world for the better.
“We are in the midst of an exciting time in history,” he said. “Advances in science have provided us with the tools to deliver bio-based engineering solutions and build new ways of doing things. The technology has come together to enable us to build biological factories to make new things — and do it very efficiently. The Me& team have harnessed this expertise and paired it with a market need to create a world-first innovation—cell-based fortified human milk.”
Replicating the infant nutrition response of breast milk
The company is based at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne. The institute is a world leader in medical research on infant and child health and development.
“Being based at the Hudson allows us to be part of the translational research ecosystem contributing to critical initiatives in infant health,” Malaver says. “We are fortunate to be next door to world-leading neonatologists and an extensive NICU hospital to stay connected with our customers and tiniest little consumers.”
Photo by Rainier Ridao on Unsplash
According to the founders, there is a very broad spectrum in infant nutrition, and what’s available now is not ideal, they say. Infant formula, most of which is cow’s milk-based, covers the nutritive and non-bioactive factors. Some formulas are including prebiotics, which are critical for gut health development. But these formulas pale in comparison to traditional mother’s milk.
Me& says there are scientific theories that mammary gland receptors interpret the saliva from the baby sucking for bacteria and viruses and the mother’s body can alter the milk’s immunological composition in response. Breast milk is also dynamic in other ways, changing the composition depending on the weather‚ such as offering more hydration on a warm day. Breast milk has more melatonin at night to promote sleep, for example.
Like other cell-based products, Me&’s breast milk delivers near-identical nutrition benefits but at a lower impact than dairy milk—the go-to substitute for human breast milk. Animal agriculture is resource intensive and a leading cause of climate change and deforestation.
“I have fallen in love with the potential of deep biotechnology to solve the problems we are facing today,” Malaver says. “Cell-based human milk represents a huge opportunity to make an impact in both helping vulnerable kids and contributing to ethical and sustainable food production.”
A new survey finds nearly 40 percent of Chinese consumers are reducing their meat consumption—a move driven by health benefits, taste, ethics, and a ‘cool factor.’
The new research, led by Good Growth, finds that more than half (60 percent) of a sample of more than 1,200 Chinese consumers have tried plant-based meat, with more than half of those identifying as omnivores.
Meat alternatives in China
Meat alternatives aren’t new in China—tofu and other plant-based meats go back centuries or longer. Those meat replacements are still staples in rural communities but urban, middle-income consumers are now leading the shift toward modern plant-based meats with companies including OmniFoods and Beyond Meat widely available.
While vegetarianism and veganism remain low—under three percent for both demographics combined—the researchers say the number of consumers working to reduce meat consumption mirrors demographics in Europe with more than 38 percent saying they’re actively reducing meat,
Source: Good Growth Co
Despite the interest in reducing meat, fewer than six percent of Chinese consumers say they’re regularly eating plant-based meat.
“Although plant-based meat was generally seen positively, most respondents gave fairly neutral responses,” the researchers noted. “We found that Chinese consumers generally see plant-based meat as animal-friendly and good for the environment. To a slightly lesser extent, they also see it as convenient, healthy, safe, and trendy. On the other hand, they don’t have strong perceptions of plant-based meats as being real, natural or affordable.”
Chinese consumers increasingly interested in plant-based meat
Overall, the trend shows increasing interest in trying plant-based meat with 42 percent who haven’t tried it saying they would, and 48 percent of those who had tried it said they would again.
Source: Good Growth Co
With China leading the global climate crisis, Good Growth says there are ways to increase the consumption of more climate-friendly plant-based foods.
Chiefly, the group recommends increasing opportunities to try plant-based meat. It also suggests appealing more to early adopters such as younger parents and married couples in Tier 1 cities with more resources to try. It’s also encouraging marketing and product design to stay relevant and on-trend to appeal to consumers seeking out novel products. Likewise, it recommends using messaging to craft ‘new perceptions’ about plant-based meat and its benefits.
“Chinese consumers do not currently have strong views towards plant-based meat. Thus, this may be a timely opportunity to proactively shape yet undeveloped consumer perceptions through media and marketing,” the group says.
Following its investment in Standing Ovation earlier this year, the Bel Group says it has entered into an exclusive partnership with the dairy producer to bring precision fermentation into its catalog of products.
The Bel Group, whose brands include Babybel, Laughing Cow, and Boursin, recently launched vegan versions of several of its cheese offerings. And it looks to be that more is on the way with the new partnership. The announcement follows Standing Ovation’s recent €12 million Series A funding round, which closed in September.
Microbial fermentation cheese
France-based Standing Ovation produces dairy cases through microbial fermentation, eliminating the need for dairy cows. The process delivers dairy casein with the same taste and texture but with a significantly lower carbon footprint.
“We have developed a unique process to produce non-animal caseins,” Frédéric Pâques and Romain Chayot, respectively President and Scientific Director, co-founders of Standing Ovation, said in a joint statement.
“Our ambition today is to see the first products arrive on the market quickly, with a very wide distribution. We are proud to partner with Bel Group to accelerate the deployment of these alternative proteins, whose market is growing exponentially, and where we want to play a key role. We look forward to working with a Group with proven cheese expertise, iconic brands and a collaboration model that is ideal for start-ups.”
Imagining tomorrow’s cheese recipes
The companies are expected to work together on the development of new products featuring Standing Ovation’s casein. Bel Group’s R&D center is located in Vendôme, France, and Standing Ovation’s facility is in Paris. The groups say Standing Ovation’s ability to produce casein by fermentation and Bel’s unique cheese-making expertise allow for easy integration and innovation of products and processes.
“Caseins are essential to the quality of cheeses—they are nutritious and provide firmness, texture, and the capacity to melt,” Anne Pitkowski, Bel Group Research and Application Director, said in a statement.
Standing Ovation dairy | Courtesy
“Standing Ovation’s technology combined with our knowledge of the links between structure and function will enable all these features—and more—to be developed. Our unique cheese-making expertise will put these advances into practice. This partnership opens many possibilities for imagining tomorrow’s cheese recipes and products, combining nutritional quality, accessibility, and responsibility.”
Precision fermentation is making its way to the French cheese market; newcomer Nutropy recently raised €2 million in a pre-seed funding round for its fermentation-based cheese.
