The APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture and Cellular Agriculture Australia have teamed up to advance the Asia-Pacific future food industry.
To boost the Asia-Pacific market for cultivated meat and fermentation-derived food ingredients, two industry bodies have signed a strategic collaboration agreement.
The APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture (APAC-SCA) and Cellular Agriculture Australia (CAA) have teamed up in an effort to foster international cooperation and advance the sector across Asia-Pacific.
“Through this partnership, we’re bringing together our regional strengths to drive transparency, coordinate regulatory efforts, and engage the public in meaningful ways,” said Peter Yu, programme director of APAC-SCA.
“This marks a significant step forward in international collaboration to accelerate the future of food – which the industry truly needs,” he added.
Collaboration focuses on public and policy engagement
CAA, meanwhile, is a think tank that works across Australia’s entire cellular agriculture sector to identify common, non-competitive priorities. It has published white papers on precision fermentation and held a host of cross-sector workshops, and counts local animal-free dairy firms All G, Eden Brew and Noumi as its sponsors.
Their collaboration aims to promote knowledge exchange and coordinated public engagement, while speeding up progress in regulatory alignment, trust building, and science-based policymaking.
“This MOU isn’t just a document – it’s a reflection of the collective vision for a more sustainable, secure, and equitable food system,” said Yu. “Cross-border collaboration is essential to building a thriving and trusted ecosystem for cellular agriculture,” he added.
The non-binding agreement focuses on several key areas. Through policy and regulatory exchanges, APAC-SCA and CAA will share timely insights and best practices on evolving regulatory landscapes.
As part of policy engagement efforts, they will co-author thought leadership pieces, white papers, and policy briefs to promote evidence-based regulation.
In addition, the two industry bodies will coordinate and amplify initiatives that build public confidence in cell ag technologies and products. Plus, they’ll explore and launch joint knowledge-sharing initiatives to contribute to sectoral growth and innovation.
Asia’s cellular agriculture industry is second to none
Courtesy: Vow
The trade organisations represent countries that are leading the future food race. There’s hardly a better example than Singapore, a global hub for food tech. It was the first country in the world to approve the sale of cultivated meat and gas-fermented proteins, and Asia’s first to allow the sale of precision-fermented dairy proteins.
Meanwhile, Sydney-based Vow has propelled Australia’s cultivated meat ecosystem to new heights, and is now selling cultured quail and foie gras in eateries across the country (as well as Singapore). It is also approved to do so in New Zealand. Another startup from down under, All G, has secured clearance to put its precision-fermented lactoferrin on the Chinese and US markets.
As Europe continues to play catch-up with its novel food regulation (with promised reforms still at least a year away) and the states in the US ban cultivated meat, Asia-Pacific is a prime destination for the world’s cellular agriculture companies. This latest collaboration will hope to build on that.
“This partnership reflects our shared commitment to advancing cellular agriculture. Together, APAC-SCA and CAA aim to foster an enabling environment for innovation, support science-based policymaking, and cultivate a regional ecosystem where cellular agriculture can thrive,” said Yu.
German engineering firm GEA has opened its New Food Application and Technology Center in the US with a $20M investment to scale up alternative protein production.
To boost alternative proteins like animal-free dairy and cultivated meat, GEA has unveiled a new future food innovation hub in Janesville, Wisconsin.
The New Food Application and Technology Center (ATC) is supported by a $20M investment by the company, which supplies production-scale equipment to the food and beverage industry, and its second such Center of Excellence. It is a sister facility to the ATC in Hildesheim, Germany, which became operational in 2023.
Powered entirely by renewable energy, the US hub features pilot-scale infrastructure for precision fermentation, cell cultivation, and plant-based processing. The move aims to bridge the gap between lab innovation and industrial-scale production, with a focus on sustainability and the region’s economic transformation.
“With this investment, we are helping our customers scale up the production of novel foods such as precision-fermented egg white and cultivated seafood,” said GEA Group CEO Stefan Klebart.
The centre “shows how innovation and agriculture can work hand in hand to create good jobs, strengthen food security, and help address climate challenges”, according to Jessica Almy, interim CEO of think tank the Good Food Institute.
New GEA hub focuses on key process technologies
Courtesy: GEA Group
The new facility expands the GEA Janesville campus, which has served as a production, repair, logistics, and training site since 2024. According to the company, it combines core process technologies essential for producing next-gen proteins at scale.
The ATC has pilot-scale bioreactors for precision fermentation and cell cultivation, which simulate industrial conditions and allow companies to validate and optimise their processes early. Further, it offers a range of options to test UHT configurations, including thermal processing and aseptic filling.
Direct and indirect heat treatment options allow liquids of varying viscosities and sensitive components to be heat-treated on site, and packaged with an aseptic bag filler to retain the product for further quality checks. These tools can support shelf-stable storage for the alternative beverage industry, providing flexibility in distribution chains and cutting food waste.
Meanwhile, membrane filtration, spray drying, and centrifugation support downstream separation and formulation, helping enhance the quality, texture and cost efficiency of products. And advanced lab capabilities enable microbiological, cell-based, and analytical testing under one roof.
The construction of the centre supported up to 500 contractor and subcontractor jobs, and its opening has added up to eight jobs to GEA’s 74-strong workforce in the city. “This facility reflects how Janesville’s rich agricultural and industrial heritage can intersect with cutting-edge innovation,” said Jimsi Kuborn, Janesville’s economic development director.
“It not only honours our community’s roots, but also creates new opportunities for partnerships, workforce development, and sustainable growth. This project is a model for what’s possible – not just for Janesville, but for the entire Midwest and beyond,” she added.
Further investment crucial to meet cellular agriculture’s capacity needs
Courtesy: GEA Group
GEA said the new centre will look to foster collaboration between startups, the food industry, academia, and investors. It allows cell-based and microbial food players to generate true proofs of concept for their processes and support scale-up models to commercial manufacturing without any capital expenditure or other investment costs.
One of the first collaborators of the Hildesheim ATC was Israel’s Imagindairy, which makes cow-free whey proteins using precision fermentation. GEA is separately working with fellow Israeli firm Believer Meats, helping it develop technologies to lower the costs and emissions associated with producing cultivated meat.
“GEA technology hubs are the crucible where visionary science becomes transformative industry, uniting biological innovation with cutting-edge engineering to move towards a more sustainable future,” said Believer Meats CEO Yaakov Nahmias, who is also the director of the Grass Center for Bioengineering at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The US centre, first announced last year, complements GEA’s other food tech hubs in Skanderborg, Denmark (for bioreactors), Oelde, Germany (for cell separation), and Bakel, Netherlands (for plant-based foods).
“The food industry is at a crossroads. To feed future generations sustainably, we must turn vision into a scalable reality,” said Klebert. “Our new centre in Janesville is a key milestone on our shared journey, both for our customers and for us as a company.”
Cost and scale are the two major obstacles faced by the cellular agriculture sector. According to McKinsey, cultivated meat firms would need up to 22 times more fermentation capacity than currently exists in the global pharmaceutical sector. In a recent report, it noted that the sector needed $250B to meet its capacity needs.
GEA isn’t the only systems supplier helping cultivated meat companies scale up. Swiss manufacturer Bühler is working with Israel’s Ever After Foods to produce these proteins at a mass scale with much smaller equipment.
And its ATC is among a number of food tech hubs that have opened in the US recently. Last year, the University of California, Davis led the launch of the Integrative Center for Alternative Meat and Protein to speed up the commercialisation of alternative proteins, and Bezos Earth Fund opened the first of its three Centers for Sustainable Protein at North Carolina State University.
Barry Callebaut, the leading supplier of chocolate to the food industry, has signed a partnership to explore cell culture technology for cocoa alternatives.
With the cocoa industry keenly feeling the effects of climate change on their supply chains and bottom lines, the world’s largest chocolate supplier is looking to cellular agriculture as a solution.
Swiss manufacturer Barry Callebaut has teamed up with the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) to explore the potential of cell-based chocolate, after climate shocks and rising cocoa prices caused a 6% drop in volume sales over the last nine months.
Cellular agriculture has the potential to drastically reduce emissions, resource use, water consumption, and land use. By culturing cocoa cells in bioreactors, chocolate producers don’t have to rely on unpredictable land, soil and weather conditions.”
“This partnership reflects our proactive approach to building innovation capabilities that will shape the future of chocolate,” said Dries Roekaerts, president of customer experience at Barry Callebaut.
Cell culture tech will futureproof Barry Callebaut’s cocoa supply
Courtesy: Barry Callebaut
The deal combines Barry Callebaut’s chocolate prowess with the scientific know-how of ZHAW professors Tilo Hühn and Regine Eibl-Schindler, who are experts in cell culture technologies. The teams bring decades of experience and a strong portfolio of scientific publications to the project.
While the partnership is still in its early stages of development, Barry Callebaut highlighted that cell cultivation can allow it to develop new chocolate products with unique flavour and enhanced health benefits.
The technology also provides an alternative cocoa source to diversify its portfolio, while boosting its supply chain resilience and supporting traditional cocoa farming communities.
To that point, Roekaerts noted that the chocolate manufacturer isn’t looking to eliminate conventional cocoa from its portfolio. “We are not replacing cocoa from farms, but rather preparing for a future where we can offer consumers additional choices and ensure long-term supply security,” he said.
“Our research into cocoa cell culture technology opens up exciting possibilities for sustainable innovation in the chocolate industry,” Hühn and Eibl-Schindler said in a joint statement. “With Barry Callebaut’s support, we’re able to accelerate our scientific exploration and bring academic insights closer to real-world applications.”
Alternative cocoa heats up
Courtesy: Food Brewer
Barry Callebaut’s focus on alternative cocoa comes after a year when cocoa prices have broken all-time records, thanks in large part to the climate crisis. Global cocoa stocks have slumped to their lowest in a decade. Plantations in Ivory Coast and Ghana – the two largest producers – are the hardest hit due to extreme weather and crop diseases.
In fact, scientists have warned that cocoa trees are threatened, and a third of them could die out by 2050, which could lead to a global chocolate shortage. Meanwhile, only beef emits more greenhouse gases than dark chocolate, while a bar of chocolate requires 1,700 litres of water to produce on average.
Barry Callebaut already offers cocoa alternatives, using precision-fermented sunflower seeds for some of its offerings in Europe. “Our non-cocoa solutions from precision-fermented sunflower seeds offerings… expand the portfolio of Barry Callebaut and offer all the variety of chocolatey experiences for our customers,” CEO Peter Feld said in an earnings call earlier this year.
A leader in green energy and electric vehicles, China is spearheading the protein transition too, with more cultivated meat patent applicants than any other nation.
Could China be winning the alternative protein innovation race?
Experts suggest that as the world’s largest consumer of meat, it can only decarbonise if half of its protein supply comes from alternative sources by 2060. And the country is responding to that call, mirroring its advances in green energy, mobility, and artificial intelligence.
New analysis by the Good Food Institute (GFI) APAC has found that of the top 20 all-time patent applicants for cultivated meat, eight are from China. That’s twice as many as the next on the list, Israel (with four applicants), followed by three each from South Korea and the US.
“Given that China’s earlier commitments to accelerating clean energy technologies are what ushered in a worldwide shift towards electric vehicles and solar power, China’s heavy involvement in the ‘future food’ sector has the potential to single-handedly drive down global production costs and turn niche products into mainstream staples,” Mirte Gosker, managing director of GFI APAC, told Green Queen.
“China is strategically positioning itself as a locus of technological innovation, government-funded R&D, and policy leadership that can supercharge Asia’s ascendant ‘future foods’ industry,” she added.
China tops list of cultivated meat patent families
Graphic by Green Queen
While the US leads in total unique patent applications, thanks mostly to Californian firm Upside Foods’s 143 filings, patent families are a better indicator of where technical innovation is most diverse, according to GFI APAC.
This is because patent families are collections of applications related to the same invention, while unique patents include individual patents filed for the same invention in multiple jurisdictions. So a higher number of patent families indicates progress on a wider range of scientific fronts.
The number of patent families is significantly greater from Chinese entities than other markets (totalling 160), with cultivated pork maker Joes Future Food leading the way in China with 25 applications. Globally, it is only surpassed by Upside Foods, which has 43 patent family filings.
While these patents cover a broad variety of technological innovations, they are all related to animal cell cultivation for food. Specific applications include cell line development, cell culture media development, cell scaffolding for creating particular meat products, or enabling technologies to produce cultivated meat more efficiently, GFI APAC said.
It’s worth noting that China’s applicants include multiple universities, such as Zhejiang University (21 patent families), Jiangnan University (16), and Ocean University of China (12). This suggests “very strong” government interest and an intentionally collaborative approach to build a national cellular agriculture ecosystem.
The country’s universities have filed more cultivated meat patents than public institutions in the US and Europe combined. In fact, Asia-Pacific is home to more cultivated meat patents than North America and Europe collectively.
Asked why China is home to such a high number of patents, Gosker contended: “By mastering the art of making delicious and affordable protein directly from animal cells, China can produce a whole lot more of it, while bolstering its self-sufficiency.”
Courtesy: GFI APAC
Public support for alternative protein ramps up in China
The patent research comes on the back of a big few months for China’s alternative protein ecosystem. At the annual Two Sessions summit, top government officials called for a deeper integration of strategic emerging industries (which included biomanufacturing), and identified “strengthening IP protections for microbial proteins” as a food system priority.
In an official notice about China’s agricultural priorities before the summit, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) identified the safety and nutritional efficacy of alternative proteins as a key priority, while research in novel food tech to create the next generation of food was also highlighted.
And a week later, the No. 1 Central Document (which signals China’s top goals for the upcoming year), underscored the importance of “building a diversified food supply system”, including efforts “to cultivate and develop biological agriculture and explore novel food resources.” The following day, a briefing by MARA featured a call to action to “develop new food resources such as plant-based meat”, according to GFI APAC.
At the start of the year, the country saw its first alternative protein innovation centre open in Beijing, fuelled by an $11M investment from public and private investors to develop cultivated meat and fermentation-derived proteins.
Courtesy: Fengtai District Media Integration Center
And in May, the Beijing Municipal Commission of Development and Reform released a 2025-27 joint action plan with the Pinggu District Government, marking the capital’s first district-level special policy to advance the green economy. It’s also the first time China has released a government-issued action plan specifically for alternative proteins.
Further, the national government’s current five-year agriculture plan encourages research in cultivated meat and recombinant proteins, while the bioeconomy development plan aims to advance novel foods. And President Xi Jinping has called for a Grand Food Vision that includes plant-based and microbial protein sources.
China has additionally formed a new UN working group with its regulatory counterparts in Singapore, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia, which centres on the implementation of global guidelines for food safety assessments of cell culture media for cultivated meat production. These will help streamline regulatory review processes and fast-track the market entry of these proteins.
“One cannot overstate the significance of Asia’s largest economy putting cultivated meat and other novel ingredients at the centre of its national food strategy,” said Gosker.
“It remains to be seen whether the country’s political leaders will ultimately pull all of the policy and manufacturing levers at their disposal – but staking out a key role in the alt protein sector’s development all but guarantees that if cultivated meat becomes a globally traded commodity, China will join Singapore, South Korea, and other forward-thinking nations in reaping the rewards.”
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers a new GLP-1 alternative drink, Canada’s pea protein bet, and the European Space Agency’s cultivated meat project.
New products and launches
Texas-based Ozzi has launched Crave Crusher, a plant-based drink designed to suppress appetite and serve as an alternative to GLP-1 drugs. It’s free from caffeine and is available on its website for $60 per 20-stick pack in watermelon, grape and lychee flavours.
Courtesy: Ozzi
Meanwhile, California’s Glucostra has introduced a plant-based supplement with 20 botanicals and metabolic nutrients to support healthy blood sugar management.
NBA player Chris Paul’s vegan snack brand, Good Eat’n, has rolled out five of its products at over 1,000 Walmart stores nationwide, including popcorn, tortilla chips, and puffs.
US plant-based milk producer Malk Organics has released a four-ingredient shelf-stable vanilla almond milk, which is available at Whole Foods Market and Amazon.
Courtesy: Malk Organics
Finnish gas protein firm Solar Foods has partnered with US-based Sensapure Flavors to create new flavour combinations for its shake and ready-to-drink beverage concepts made with Solein protein.
Swiss firms Yumame Foods and Le Patron have teamed up to develop tasty, healthy and sustainable plant-based foods.
Courtesy: Plantein
And vegan discovery platform abillion has partnered with Australian meat-free startup Plantein Foods to expand its distribution.
Company and finance updates
Snacking company Pladis has kicked off its first Accelerator Programme with 12 startups, including fibre-to-sugar startup Zye and AI protein discovery firm Shiru.
Dutch cultivated fat startup Upstream Foods has ceased operations, with its founder and CEO citing fundraising difficulties.
Speaking of cultivated meat, India’s Biokraft Foods has announced The Great Indian Cultivated Chicken Cook-off for chefs and innovators to cook with its cultured chicken.
More from this sector: Multus Biotechnology and Fishway have teamed up to develop scalable, cost-competitive cultivated fish, combining the former’s AI-led media optimisation platform with the latter’s expertise in fish cell line development.
Courtesy: Multus Biotechnology
Protein Industries Canada has announced a C$4.87M ($3.6M) new pilot project to meet the demand for better-tasting and more nutritious pea protein, in partnership with Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC) and the Seven Oaks Hospital Chronic Disease Innovation Center.
South Korean plant-based dairy companyArmored Fresh has appointed David Benzaquen as its new director of sales strategy and Geo-Yoo Kim as its new CTO.
Research and policy developments
The European Space Agency is seeking proposals to investigate cellular agriculture as a novel technique to produce food, especially cultivated meat, in future space missions.
Courtesy: European Space Agency
The term ‘lab-grown’ meat enjoys a 20-point advantage in consumer understanding over ‘cell-cultivated’ in the UK, where 26% are willing to include it in their diet, according to the Food Standards Agency.
Also in the UK, over 100 parents have signed a petition to reinstate meat-based dishes at Sharow School in Sheffield, which advertises itself as a vegetarian primary school.
In the Philippines, 91% of consumers believe plant-based foods and meat analogues are healthier than animal proteins, and 83% want to increase their intake in the coming year.
Courtesy: Corbion
Dutch ingredient specialist Corbion has secured multiple regulatory approvals from China’s General Administration of Customs for its algae-derived omega-3 products, marketed under the AlgaPrime DHA and AlgaVia DHA brands.
And researchers at India’s Lovely Professional University have developed plant-based fermented probiotic gummies to offer a palatable, safe, and effective natural digestive health solution, particularly for children and those seeking clean-label alternatives.
EU politicians have voted in favour of advancing the bloc’s biomanufacturing and biotech prowess to promote sustainability, public health, and food security.
It’s a big month for biotechnology in the EU.
The European Commission just released its life sciences strategy, which sets aside €350M for the development of sustainable innovations, improved biomanufacturing efficiency, and promoting the bloc’s bioeconomy leadership.
The strategy includes the long-awaited Biotech Act. While delayed by a year to late 2026, it will help accelerate the approval of novel products, including cultivated meat and precision-fermented proteins.
And now, MEPs have voted overwhelmingly in favour of the European Parliament’s report on the future of the EU biotechnology and biomanufacturing sector, which paints it as an industry “of strategic importance in several different areas such as sustainability, economic security, food security and public health”.
The industry was further recognised as one of 10 strategic tech sectors to boost Europe’s competitiveness, economic security, and sustainability.
“Europe cannot succeed with its ambitions on competitiveness, decarbonisation and economic resilience without acknowledging the crucial role played by the EU’s biotechnology and biomanufacturing sector,” the Parliament’s report argues, highlighting the key bottlenecks faced by the sector, and calling for the creation of a chief biotechnology officer position in the EU Commission.
Greater investment and public awareness critical for biotech sector
Courtesy: Those Vegan Cowboys
“The EU is a global leader in research and biomanufacturing capacity, yet its potential remains unexploited due to the lack of a sufficiently coordinated policy framework that enables the efficient scaling up of innovation, the attraction of investment and the commercialisation of new technologies,” the Parliament acknowledged.
It called for “urgent, coherent and consistent action” over the next few years to make the region a world leader in biotechnology.
For example, the market demand for bio-based feedstocks can be further incentivised to speed up the transition from fossil fuels. These products, like sustainably sourced biomass, recycled waste, and carbon captured from biogenic sources, could be used to manufacture various products.
But the Parliament expressed concern that the way the European Investment Bank (EIB) interprets sustainability criteria “may result in access to funding for bio-based materials and projects being denied”. It called on the EIB to propose de-risking instruments for biomanufacturing.
It further noted that scale-up and commercialisation remain major challenges for the sector, stressing the need to enhance knowledge and tech transfer between academia and industry, and highlighting the importance of bolstering public-private collaborations. It called on the EU Commission to help create world-leading R&D hubs and robust physical testing facilities.
“The sector is characterised by high levels of risk, and reducing the cost of investment failure in the EU is necessary for attracting large-scale capital investment,” the Parliament suggested. “Public awareness of biotechnology and biomanufactured products in the EU should be further strengthened to boost public acceptance.”
EU Parliament calls for overhaul of ‘lengthy’ regulatory approval process
Courtesy: Sherry Hack
The EU Parliament laid out several criteria for a comprehensive Biotech Act, largely focusing on the regulatory challenges facing the industry, which includes novel foods.
“Current EU regulatory frameworks do not cater precisely to the specificities of bio-based products,” it said, suggesting that their inconsistency across sectors creates legal uncertainty and slows market access for innovative solutions. “The lengthy authorisation processes, particularly concerning approval times, need to be urgently addressed.”
Under the Biotech Act, it urged the EU Commission to take into account the regulatory frameworks of non-EU countries and learn from their best practices, as well as consider a simplified process for products already authorised for sale by “trusted regulatory bodies in like-minded countries with EU-equivalent standards”. Its former member state, the UK, is already doing so.
The UK has also created a regulatory sandbox to help cultivated meat companies get approved and enter the market, and the EU Parliament is recommending using its own sandboxes to assess biotech applications, while developing a strategy that supports companies transitioning from the sandbox regime to full market access.
It further called on the EU to double its research budget and reach the target of 3% of its GDP being set aside for R&D by 2030. The Commission, meanwhile, should integrate biotech and biomanufacturing in its digital and artificial intelligence (AI) strategies – the life sciences strategy already committed to creating an AI tool to help researchers embed regulatory compliance at early design stages.
“The European Parliament has taken a strong position in recognising biotechnology as a strategic priority, and made it clear that food biotechnology must be central to that vision,” said Pauline Grimmer, policy manager at the Good Food Institute Europe. “This creates opportunities for the EU to support innovations in plant-based foods and fermentation as part of a diversified protein system, which can boost Europe’s competitiveness, sustainability, and food security.”
She added: “The next step is for the Commission to follow through with a Biotech Act that delivers the funding, regulatory clarity, and ambition the sector needs to thrive.”
A majority of consumers globally remain interested in plant-based meat and dairy alternatives, while millennials are keenest on blended proteins.
Despite the doom-and-gloom coverage of the plant-based sector, three-quarters of global consumers are interested in plant-based alternatives to meat and dairy, according to new research.
Every generation wants to eat more protein, with its appeal peaking among millennials and Gen Zers (70% of whom say so). And nearly 80% of consumers believe eating plant proteins will help them age better and build or maintain muscle strength.
The data from ADM’s 2025 Alternative Protein Landscape Report shows that 46% of consumers identify as flexitarians, a movement led by Germany, South Korea, the US and Brazil. Vegetarians and vegans make up a further 4% and 1% of the population.
The rest are deemed “carefree” eaters, who eat both plant-based and animal proteins and don’t intentionally seek out or avoid either one. They skew slightly older and retired, and two in five don’t follow any specific dietary pattern. In fact, 73% of these consumers believe it’s healthier to obtain protein from a variety of sources beyond just animal products.
“Gen Z and millennial consumers are particularly open to protein variety,” said ADM. “And with Gen Z’s purchasing power just beginning to emerge, we anticipate amplified acceptance and adoption of a wider array of protein offerings.”
Here are five other takeaways from ADM’s annual report.
1. Is fermentation the darling of alternative proteins?
Courtesy: ADM
According to ADM, fermentation might be the future of alternative proteins, having garnered consumer acceptance for use in meat, dairy and seafood alternatives, as well as specialised nutrition. Notably, this is the only alternative protein vertical that has continued to attract investment against the tide.
While flexitarians are most attracted to novel plant-based ingredients, blended proteins and fermentation-derived ingredients aren’t far behind – 64% express interest in such meat and dairy products. Millennials are the biggest market for the latter, with 72% interested in these foods, followed closely by Gen Z (68%).
Meanwhile, 59% of global consumers show interest in cultivated meat, and 61% say the same for cell-cultured dairy proteins.
2. Traditional plant proteins on the rise
ADM’s research found that chickpeas and soybeans are among the most recognisable sources of plant protein globally. In fact, 83% of plant-forward consumers say soy protein is a good base for building and maintaining muscle, 81% call it a great option for reducing fat intake, and 79% link it with an active and healthy lifestyle.
Lentils are the next big thing in the traditional plant protein space, according to the report. While they have an awareness-to-consumption gap of 20%, they’re thought of as extremely healthy and nutritious, as well as tasty, clean and natural, aligning with flexitarians’ top food drivers.
3. Health and taste over everything else
Courtesy: Kampus Production/Pexels
Taste and health are the dominant motivators for alternative protein trial purchases among both flexitarian and carefree consumers. Improved flavour and mouthfeel are increasingly important for products like baked goods, ready meals, meal kits, and sports nutrition offerings.
Flexitarians place an equal emphasis on taste and nutrition, with 63% calling them a joint top driver for plant protein consumption. But health continues to be their main reason for choosing a flexitarian lifestyle, with 86% feeling it’s healthier to get protein from a wider variety of sources.
For carefree consumers, taste is more important than nutrition when it comes to plant-based alternatives. That said, 67% of them say eating more plant proteins will help improve their overall health.
Meanwhile, 78% of flexitarians say private-label plant-based products are just as good as branded, a sentiment particularly popular in Brazil and Australia. “In future innovations, consumers also want to see more food safety certifications, along with enhanced functional health benefits and sourcing transparency,” ADM said.
4. GLP-1 boom could be a boon for plant-based
The report looked at the impact of GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Mounjaro, suggesting that their growth is positively influencing the uptake of plant-based food. Globally, 77% of flexitarians believe plant proteins make it easier to lose weight. In fact, weight management is among the top motivators globally for trying vegan snacks, sports nutrition, and ready meals, regardless of GLP-1 use.
In the US, 64% of weight-loss drug users pay more attention to a product’s protein content, and 44% are intentionally adding more plant-based sources to their diets.
Moreover, fibre is gaining relevance, with nearly half of consumers (49%) looking to eat more of this macronutrient. “New and reimagined plant-based foods and beverages that target portion control and deliver high protein and dietary fibre stand to succeed,” the report stated.
5. Blended proteins stand to win big
Courtesy: ADM
Blended meat and hybrid dairy are all the rage now. These products combine animal protein with plant- or fermentation-based ingredients to offer consumers a more balanced protein offering without significantly changing their diets.
Millennials are the most interested in these formats (75%), followed by Gen Zers (72%), Gen Xers (66%) and baby boomers (53%). There are several things that appeal to consumers here: they find blended proteins better for them and the planet, believe they add variety to diets and promote better balance between animal and plant proteins, and feel they’re more nutritious.
Some companies are betting on plant-based ‘meat extenders’ to boost animal protein’s volume for cost-conscious shoppers, like Nestlé has done in Chile. “While one in four global plant-forward consumers have never heard of meat extensions and only 16% claim to currently consume them, the perception of meat extensions is much more positive than expected,” said ADM.
“Protein blends meet every rising consumer demand – protein and ingredient diversity, higher protein content, elevated taste and texture, sustainability concerns and affordability,” it added. “And they do so better than the current selections in the marketplace, namely, traditional meat or dairy or all-plant products.”
The use of terms like ‘beef’ or ‘salmon’ on cultivated meat packaging labels helps, rather than hinders, consumer understanding, particularly with allergenicity.
Four in five Europeans are able to differentiate cultivated meat from conventional versions when presented with a front-of-pack label that uses ‘meaty’ terms, new research has shown.
While the labelling debate has been a major talking point for plant-based meat in Europe over the last decade, the emergence of cultivated meat has sparked similar discourse.
Some EU policymakers have cited consumer confusion as a reason to restrict how cultivated meat products are marketed, or whether they should even be sold.
However, research shows that European citizens are far from confused. A survey by the Good Food Institute (GFI) Europe, a future food think tank, last year showed that a majority of consumers are happy for cultivated proteins to use terms like ‘beef’ and ‘chicken’, as long as it’s made clear that they aren’t a product of livestock farming. The sentiment was particularly strong in Spain (81%), Portugal, Hungary, Czechia and Greece (all 79%).
Adding to that is new research from GFI Europe and Opinium, which analysed the impact of on-pack nomenclature and descriptors related to these foods on 2,000 respondents in France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.
They found that in all these markets, consumers are more likely to confuse cultivated meat with plant-based proteins when presented with an on-pack label and image, with only two-thirds able to differentiate the two. According to Seth Roberts, senior policy manager at GFI Europe, that “reinforces the need” for cultivated proteins to be able to use meaty terms to “ensure consumer understanding, and therefore safety”.
Consumers prefer ‘cultivated’ meat, not ‘artificial’
Courtesy: Eat Just
One key factor driving this argument is allergenicity. If people with seafood allergies are unable to discern between cultivated and plant-based salmon, they’re at risk of consuming a product that could cause an allergic reaction.
The research tested four names for cultivated meat – cultivated, cell-cultivated, cultured and artificial – as well as three descriptors: ‘made without farming animals’, ‘made from cellular agriculture’, and ‘made from synthetic protein’.
Terms that are seen as negative, like ‘artificial’ and ‘made from synthetic protein’ were the least helpful for identifying allergy risks, with only 32% of respondents doing so – much lower than the efficacy of ‘cultivated’ (55%) and ‘cultured’ (58%) meat labels. In addition, the negative terms were rated as “too technical”, “misleading” and “unappetising”.
This leads to a “strong consumer safety justification” for regulators to avoid mandating the use of such terms for cultivated meat, Roberts said, further pointing to concerns that these are inaccurate descriptors for the large-scale production of these proteins.
The research further found that ‘cultivated’ and ‘cell-cultivated’ were the clearest qualifiers across Europe, and ‘made from cellular agriculture’ the most appropriate descriptor.
These findings chime with previous research. In 2022, a peer-reviewed study found ‘lab-grown’ and ‘artificial meat’ to be the least favourable terms among consumers, and ‘cell-cultured’ and ‘cell-cultivated’ the most popular. A year earlier, in a GFI survey of 44 industry CEOs, 75% preferred ‘cultivated’ too.
GFI Europe pointed to a “variation in preferences” in the survey, suggesting that it may not be appropriate for regulators to mandate certain terms for cultivated meat, but instead set a range of options that producers can use as they commercialise.
One suitable approach could be inspired by Singapore, whose regulator doesn’t necessitate the use of any specific terms; it has instead introduced conditions to use “suitable” qualifiers that don’t mislead or confuse consumers.
Cultivated meat labelling under spotlight ahead of EU regulatory approval
Courtesy: Sherry Hack
In any case, Europeans still remain unsure of how cultivated meat is produced, and this affects their understanding of these proteins. That highlights the need for industry players to support consumer education via transparency about their manufacturing methods. For regulators, working with the sector on preferred terms while engaging with the public could be an important tool.
“We encourage industry and regulatory agencies in Europe and overseas to proactively engage on these topics, sharing resources, insights and perspectives to strengthen consumer understanding of what cultivated meat products are and how they are made,” remarked Roberts.
One industry-led solution to clear confusion has come from Swiss certification body V-Label, which established the C-Label for cell-cultured foods in January. The organisation’s founder, Renato Pichler, told Green Queen that the market for these products is developing “very quickly”, and the accreditation helps “increase the transparency of the whole cultured sector”.
“As we move closer and closer towards a world where cultivated meat will become the norm, certification such as the C-Label will be increasingly necessary for consumer confidence in this new and revolutionary product,” added Owen Ensor, co-founder and CEO of Meatly, Europe’s first company to be approved to sell cultivated meat (for pet food), and the first user of the C-Label.
Regulatory clearance for human food applications is still at least a year away in the EU, with France’s Gourmey leading the race. Setting labelling standards in advance to aid consumer understanding upon cultivated meat’s arrival on the market is crucial.
“This would not only go against the goals of simplification, competitiveness and innovation, but also raises the question of political priorities,” said Rafael Pinto, senior policy manager at the European Vegetarian Union. “While the world is facing wars, economic and humanitarian crisis, as well as an innovation race, our ministers are discussing ‘what is a burger’.”
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Beyond Meat’s Steak Filet debut, Quorn’s £18M injection, and Chocolat Stella’s apricot kernel milk bar.
New products and launches
Beyond Meat has debuted its new Steak Filet as part of the All-American Vegan menu at Next Level Burger and Veggie Grill, which has 28g of protein and is paired with potatoes, broccoli, and either melted blue cheese, a peppercorn sauce, or chimichurri. The menu also features Oshi‘s whole-cut salmon.
Courtesy: Next Level Burger
US plant-based company Better Balance Foods has partnered with Papa Johns to supply vegan protein products for the chain’s Green Ranch and Green BBQ pizzas and vegetable fingers in Spain and Portugal
Plant-based milk leader Califia Farms has expanded its barista oat milk range in the UK with pistachio and hazelnut, which are available at Ocado now and at Sainsbury’s next month.
Courtesy: Califia Farms
Still in the UK, Juice Plus has become the latest brand to jump on the 30-plants-a-week movement, launching a Superfood Powder drink mix with 30 different fruits, vegetables and berries, as well as plant-based vitamins. They’re available on its website starting at £104 for 30 single-serve sticks.
Austrian startup Kern Tec has teamed up with Swiss confectioner Chocolat Stella to introduce a limited-edition vegan chocolate bar using the former’s upcycled apricot kernel milk. Titled ApriCoa, it’s available on Stella’s website for 2.80 Swiss francs ($3.50) per 80g bar.
Courtesy: Chocolat Stella
And in Tokyo, the restaurant 8go has introduced new menu items using local startup Umami United‘s vegan eggs: Spanish omelette, financiers (in plain, matcha and chocolate flavours), and canelé.
Company and finance updates
Israel’s AlgoCell has raised $2.8M in pre-seed funding to build its AI-powered digital twin platform for bioprocess development and optimisation, targeting cultivated meat and fermentation companies.
Marlow Foods, which includes mycoprotein giant Quorn and tofu brand Cauldron, was injected with £18M in fresh capital by its Filipino parent company, Monde Nissin. It used the money to further pay down its debt as part of a turnaround strategy following a difficult few years for the business.
Courtesy: Finneato Fysh Foods
Speaking of mycelium meat, German firm Kynda has been named Startup of the Week by business magazine WirtschaftsWoche.
Finnish oat milk cheese maker Mö has witnessed a 135% increase in revenue this year after quick growth in the Nordic region.
Courtesy: Mö
Lallemand Bio-Ingredients has acquiredSolyve, a French producer of enzymes specialising in solid-state fermentation, from its parent company, InVivo Group.
In Canada, state-funded agency Alberta Innovates has committed $500,000 to support the Cellular Agriculture Prairie Ecosystem (CAPE) project, a $2.4 million programme led by New Harvest Canada.
Xanterra Travel Collection, the main foodservice provider of some of the US’s most popular national parks – including the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore – has committed to making 50% of all menu items plant-based by 2026.
Courtesy: Plant Based Treaty
El Masnou, a municipality in Catalonia, has become Spain’s second city to formally endorse the Plant Based Treaty, after the city council passed a motion to do so with 17 votes in favour (versus two against).
New research by NielsenIQsuggests that 37% of Indians are looking to add more plant-based proteins to their diets in the next 12 months.
German cultivated meat startup Bluu Seafood has teamed up with spice manufacturer Van Hees to create hybrid proteins combining cultured fish cells with plant-based ingredients.
As it awaits regulatory approval in multiple geographies, Germany’s Bluu Seafood has partnered with Van Hees, which makes spice blends and functional ingredients for the food industry, to develop proteins combining cultured fish cells with plant-based ingredients.
The partnership will leverage Van Hees’s technological and culinary expertise and Bluu Seafood’s cultivated fish platform to create customised hybrid seafood products with high sustainability and sensory appeal.
“We see great potential in cultivated fish as part of a sustainable protein supply,” said Robert Becht, managing director of Van Hees. “This cooperation enables us to contribute our innovative strength to a forward-looking segment and actively participate in the transformation of the food system.”
Bluu Seafood latest to embrace hybrid meat
Courtesy: Bluu Seafood
Van Hees has been operating for nearly 75 years, with a presence in over 80 countries. It produces spices, spice blends, processing additives, and marinades for use in a range of meat, sausage and vegan products.
Its collaboration with Bluu Seafood aims to optimise the texture, stability and flavour profile of cultivated meat products. Van Hees is working closely with Aromatech, a long-standing partner that has expertise in the field of flavour technology, and using the expertise of its Food.PreTect competence centre to enhance product safety and prolong shelf life.
Hybrid meat has been touted as the only viable way of commercialising cultivated meat, which suffers from cost and scale bottlenecks, in the near term. Most products that have entered the market have been mixed with plant-based ingredients with a low percentage of cultured animal cells. Some companies, in fact, are manufacturing cultivated fat to add to plant proteins.
This is the same approach taken by Wildtype, the only company to have successfully brought cultivated seafood to market. Its salmon, which is now being served at Portland restaurant Kann, combines fish cells with plant-based ingredients to replicate the structure and texture of conventional Pacific salmon. That said, the cells are the primary ingredient after water in this product.
Bluu Seafood itself is working on both salmon and rainbow trout, and indicated that the collaboration with an established food company like Van Hees is a key step in its path to market readiness.
“Both sides – we at Bluu Seafood as a pioneer in the field of fish cell cultivation and Van Hees as an established and experienced food company – can only benefit from the partnership,” argued Sebastian Rakers, co-founder and co-CEO of the alternative protein firm. “This offers enormous opportunities for the development of delicious yet sustainable foods.”
Targeting cultivated seafood approval in several markets
Courtesy: Wim Jansen/Bluu Seafood
Rakers founded Bluu Seafood with Simon Fabich in 2020 and has made several production and regulatory strides on its way to market.
The company opened Europe’s first dedicated facility for cultivated seafood production in Hamburg last year, sprawling 2,000 sq m and housing fermentation tanks with a capacity of 65 litres. It planned to scale up to the full 2,000 litre capacity this year, allowing it to produce cultivated muscle, fat and tissue cells from Atlantic salmon and rainbow trout in much larger quantities.
Bluu Seafood’s first products will be fish balls and fingers; in the works are prototypes for salmon sashimi and trout fillets. “If the scalability and market conditions are favourable, we will be able to offer cultivated fish at wholesale fish prices in as little as three years,” Rakers told Green Queen last year.
Like most cultivated meat companies, it plans to launch in foodservice first. “At the market entry point, we will only have a very limited number of products available. We will therefore take a careful positioning strategy, and initially work exclusively with well-known restaurants, chefs and influencers,” he said. “Rollout with exclusive retail partners will follow thereafter.”
The startup is pursuing regulatory clearance in Singapore, the US and Europe, though the timelines it expected have been delayed several times. “Considering that the EU approval process with its 27 members is a lot more complex, we will probably focus on European countries outside the EU first – for example, the UK and Switzerland,” Rakers said.
The EU’s novel food framework has been a hot topic in recent weeks. In the newly released life sciences strategy, the EU Commission said it will propose a Biotech Act to overhaul and speed up regulatory approval in the region. These measures would include regulatory sandboxes, better mobilisation of public and private funds, and an AI tool to help companies embed regulatory compliance at the early stages of product development.
“Even with centralised approaches, long authorisation procedures under regulatory frameworks that require pre-market authorisation to ensure safety for human health and the environment can delay market entry of innovative products,” the strategy states. “Efforts should also be made to increase efficiency and to significantly reduce the length of authorisation procedures in the health, medical devices and food areas, to make the EU more attractive in comparison to other regions in the world.”
The advanced biotech sector can cut global emissions by 5% and create $1T in annual economic value, but only with major investments to derisk scale-up and ensure cost competitiveness.
Technologies that use microbes to feed the world, produce fossil-free materials, and create high-performing products with low emissions have enormous potential for the global economy, but they haven’t reached their “full scale of impact” yet, a new report shows.
Up to 60% of all physical inputs globally could be produced or replaced with bio-based methods, though achieving that would require significant investment to help scale up the technologies and reduce costs, according to Advanced Biotech for Sustainability (AB4S), a coalition of companies and organisations including L’Oréal, Lallemand, EIT Food, the Good Food Institute, and Arsenale Bioyards.
“Advanced biotechnology leverages breakthroughs in biological sciences such as genetic engineering techniques, as well as advances in computing and engineering, to achieve the full potential use of microbes at scale,” the report states.
“Until recently, however, advanced biotechnology solutions and products have not been able to compete with fossil-based products and solutions on scale or price,” it adds. “We firmly believe that future goals can be more ambitious, positioning the industry on a more transformative trajectory.”
Food represents the biggest biotech opportunity
Courtesy: Advanced Biotech for Sustainability
The AB4S alliance teamed up with consulting giant McKinsey to quantify the environmental and economic benefits of the advanced biotech industry. They focused on four key technologies: precision fermentation, biomass fermentation, organism-as-a-product (think livestock breeding), and tissue-as-a-product (for example, cultivated meat).
They found that at its full potential, this industry could reduce three to four megatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, or 5% of the global total in 2022. In addition, it can free up as much as four million sq km of land (equivalent to the size of India), lowering 3-6% of the total land used for agriculture.
This land could then be repurposed in different ways, including growing feedstocks for other sectors to improve overall farming output and restoring land to ensure more resilient ecosystems.
By providing an alternative to agriculture, advanced biotechnology could save between 250 to 500 billion cubic metres of water every year. For context, that’s between three to six times the water that flows through the Nile River every year.
The sector can further help boost food security by lowering pressure on food demand without affecting affordability, and making food production resilient to supply chain, pandemic and geopolitical shocks. Governments dependent on food imports can achieve strategic autonomy through these technologies, which enable the production of nutritionally and environmentally superior goods.
According to the report, the current market for advanced biotech stands between $200B and $300B annually; at its full scale, this could expand to $700B-$1.1T by 2040. This includes various sectors, like agriculture (which could account for up to $225B), food (up to $395B), chemicals ($100B), personal care ($75B), and transportation fuels ($320B).
Fermentation and cell cultivation in focus
Courtesy: Ever After Foods
The food sector represents the highest economic potential for advanced biotechnology by far, while also effecting significant reductions in emissions, land use, and water consumption. This sector can complement conventional technologies by producing proteins and high-value ingredients more efficiently.
AB4S outlines several use cases to highlight advanced biotech’s impact on the agrifood system, for example, meat and dairy production. Livestock accounts for up to a fifth of all emissions and uses 80% of the world’s farmland, despite only providing 17% of global calories and 38% of our protein supply.
Cattle are the biggest culprit here, alone emitting over 10% of GHG emissions, mostly methane. Advanced biotech, however, can cut beef and dairy’s climate impact through both conventional and alternative pathways. The former group includes techniques like selective breeding, feed additives, manure management, and advanced crop breeding, which could lower the climate footprint of dairy by 30%.
Alternative solutions, however, are threefold. Precision fermentation can replace dairy proteins like whey and casein. Since they’re already at low concentration in cow’s milk, purpose-made molecules derived from microbes can enable production at higher volumes.
Precision-fermented proteins can generate less than 5% of the greenhouse gases emitted by the animal proteins they’re built to replace, while reducing water and land use by more than 95%. Moreover, they are bioidentical to conventional dairy proteins, offering the same taste, texture, and nutritional profile for manufacturers.
Then there’s biomass fermentation, a commonly used technology that converts feedstock into protein-rich microbes to produce meat analogues. “Its broader potential lies in producing versatile proteins that can serve as ingredients in fortified foods, improve nutritional value, or substitute for conventional soy or whey protein,” the report states.
Finally, cell culture technology enables animal cells to grow with the same biological process found in livestock, but in a bioreactor instead. It allows companies to produce cultivated fat and muscle for use in meat alternatives.
According to AB4S’s analysis, fermentation could capture 20% of the market for food derived from cellular agriculture by 2040, while the higher price of cultivated proteins would enable it to take up 80% of the market.
The three solutions to propel advanced biotech
Courtesy: Arsenale Bio
While these technologies are brimming with potential, they face some tall hurdles. Scaling them to meet consumer demand and reduce overall costs remains the biggest of them all. “Achieving cost comparability with traditional dairy products would require continued innovation, both in advanced biotechnology and in efficient industrial production processes,” the coalition says.
Moreover, consumer acceptance is still in its early stages, with many sceptical about the food safety aspects of cultivated meat and precision-fermented foods. Vast differences in regulatory approaches make things more complicated – while several such products are approved in the US, the EU is yet to join the race.
The report suggests that the industrialisation of advanced biotech at a greater pace will rely on three enabling concepts: minimising the variety of approaches to focus resources efficiently creating uniformity across processes, tools, roles, and technology to streamline operations, development, and scaling; and shifting from high-tech development to cost-effective, repeatable deployment of mature technology.
These concepts form the basis of AB4S’s three priority solutions. The first involves setting priorities based on market demand, focusing on products with the highest scalability and commercialisation potential. This entails overhauling policy and regulatory frameworks to steer demand and companies towards agreed goals.
The second solution centres around derisking the scale-up process to increase success rates and reduce financing costs. VC funding for food tech has fallen dramatically over the last few years, although fermentation startups have been an outlier. Since 2015, precision and biomass fermentation firms have received $5B in venture capital.
Courtesy: Advanced Biotech for Sustainability
The fermentation sector requires an exponentially larger amount to overcome the industry’s current challenges, $500B by 2040, to be precise. This accounts for both capital spending on the buildout and startup financing, with capacity expansion alone needing 85% of these investments. This amount would also be needed to overcome regulatory obstacles, bridge talent gaps, and improve consumer awareness and acceptance.
The third solution mentioned in the report is to ensure cost-effectiveness at scale. “This can be achieved by strategies such as optimising plant operations to minimise running costs; applying best practice capital investment methods to develop and commission additional capacity; and using flexible, modular design and shared capacity,” AB4S says.
Its analysis found that these measures could bring the unit costs of precision-fermented dairy molecules down to $8-13 per kg, making them 50-75% cheaper than current costs and reaching price parity with conventional proteins.
“Many [hurdles are fully in the hands of the industry – in particular, prioritising products with the highest market demand, derisking the scale-up process, and reducing costs at scale,” the report says. “The challenges are significant, yet the rewards for successfully addressing them are paramount.”
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Chike Nutrition’s plant protein coffees, a sunflower seed meat alternative, and US physicians’ letter to the government.
New products and launches
US protein beverage powder maker Chike Nutrition has introduced plant-based Toasted Coconut Mocha and Salted Caramel Latte. The two drinks contain 20g of pea and pumpkin seed protein, two shots of espresso and 3g of sugar per 34g serving; they will roll out on its website on July 15 and at Whole Foods Market in September.
Courtesy: Chike Nutrition/Nadiya Senko
US plant-based company Before the Butcher has debuted VegBurg, a line of whole-food veggie burgers designed for foodservice and at-home cooking enthusiasts, combining lentils, zucchini, carrots, quinoa, mushrooms, and more.
Californian frozen food startup Hey!Hunger has unveiled Indian-inspired Tikka Patties made from whole foods and free from isolates, gums and preservatives. The clean-label plant-based product is available at Good Earth, Berkeley Bowl, Rainbow Market, Woodlands, and over 30 independent stores in the state.
Meanwhile, Beyond Meat has become the official Plant-Based Protein Partner of the Premier Lacrosse League, with its products being integrated into team meals and player nutrition programmes across all eight clubs.
Vegan cheese pioneer Miyoko’s Creamery has launched a meltable Oat Milk Taco Blend Seasoned Shreds SKU. It’s available at Erewhon, Nugget Market, Hy-Vee and National Co+op Grocers stores nationwide for $6.99 per 7oz bag.
Courtesy: Daiya/Gulnar/Green Queen
Elsewhere in the plant-based cheese world, Canadian firm Daiya has added Chipotle Cheddar Shreds and Pepper Jack Slices to its oat milk cheese lineup, which can be found at retailers across the US.
Meanwhile, Canadian vegan fast-food chain Odd Burger has teamed up with retailer Vegan Supply to expand the distribution of its CPG line. These products will now be available at all Vegan Supply stores across British Columbia.
Courtesy: Odd Burger
Certification body V-Label LATAM has released Todo Vegan, an iOS and Android app to help users in Latin America search for vegan-certified products more easily and conveniently.
In the UK, Papa Johns has introduced a new vegan pizza with French plant-based pork brand La Vie. It features vegan ham, jackfruit pepperoni, and non-dairy cheese from Scotland’s Sheese, and costs £12 for a large option.
Courtesy: Papa Johns
Irish brand The Happy Pear has gained a listing at UK online grocer Ocado, which will now stock both chilled and ambient offerings, like hummus, tapenade, dip and snack pots, pesto and granola.
Indian online grocer Country Delight has expanded into the plant-based realm with an oat milk targeted at health-conscious Indians. It’s available in 400ml packs for ₹40 ($0.47).
Courtesy: Jacked Nutrition
In Pakistan, Jacked Nutrition has introduced a vegan brown rice protein powder with 24g of protein and 2g of fibre per 30g scoop. It’s available in chocolate and vanilla flavours.
Company and finance updates
Protein Industries Canada, in collaboration with NRGene Canada, Pulse Genetics, Hensall Co-op, and Yumasoy Foods Ltd, has committed $4.3M to bolster the national specialty soybean market and support the development of plant-based foods.
In Germany, Planet A Foods, the company behind ChoViva cocoa-free chocolate, has been named as a finalist for the prestigious entrepreneurial award, Deutscher Gründerpreis 2025.
Courtesy: Planet A Foods
Planet A Foods has also been recognised as a Rising Star at Manager Magazin and Bain & Company’s Game Changer Award 2025.
In Portugal, four major Lisbon hospitals have committed to offering more plant-based options under ProVeg Portugal‘s Sustainable Meals programme.
Luxembourg-based molecular farming firmMoolec Science has secured a US patent for its Piggy Sooy technology, which produces pork protein directly within soy seeds.
Policy and research developments
Over 130 physicians have penned an open letter to the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Department of Agriculture (USDA), urging the government to prioritise the consumption of legumes as a protein source in the upcoming national dietary guidelines.
Courtesy: Bold Bean Co
The UK’s Food Standards Agency has created a Business Support Service to help companies looking to file regulatory applications for cultivated meat, in its latest move to advance novel food regulation.
Over 60% of Hong Kong’s leading restaurant groups have committed to ending the use of caged eggs across all global operations, according to analysis by non-profit the Lever Foundation.
Courtesy: Luc Vietanh Soto/10 Billion Solutions
The International Institute of Refrigeration has urged all countries to establish National Refrigeration Committees to tackle food security, public health, energy use, and sustainability challenges.
Researchers from Brazil’s Institute of Food Technology and the University of Campinas have worked with Germany’s Fraunhofer IVV Institute to develop a sunflower-seed-based meat alternative.
Courtesy: Unicamp
In a redux of the conversation sparked by The Game Changers documentary, a new study has found that whole-food plant-based diets could lower the risk of erectile dysfunction, compared to animal-based and processed diets.
Finally, another study has revealed that healthy plant-based foods are linked to better heart health, but unhealthy ones are not.
In a potentially big win for cultivated meat and precision fermentation, the EU is set to publish a document outlining its push to overhaul and fast-track novel food approval.
Novel food approval could receive a boost under a new legislation proposed by the European Commission, helping the region catch up with regulators in the US and Asia.
The executive arm of the EU is set to unveil a draft of its Life Sciences Strategy on Wednesday (July 2), which will contain details of how the upcoming Biotech Act will seek to modernise the bloc’s novel food regulation, as reported by Euractiv.
“The Commission will propose a Biotech Act to make the EU regulatory system more conducive to biotech innovation in various sectors such as health and food; and will facilitate and accelerate the approval procedures for Novel Foods,” the document reads.
It would prove a major win for stakeholders in the alternative protein and future food industry, who have long called for an overhaul of the EU’s novel food framework.
EU pinpoints precision fermentation amid need for public education
Courtesy: Formo
Current EU law considers any food that wasn’t consumed to a significant degree before May 1997 a novel ingredient. This includes everything from cultivated beef and precision-fermented dairy to UV-treated vegetables and certain algae-based foods.
It has already approved over 200 novel food products, and many others are waiting in the wings for the go-ahead.
The Biotech Act was first announced by Margrethe Vestager, executive VP of the EU Commission, last year, with its final publication slated for 2026. Its aim is to drive economic development via high-value job creation and greater investment, ultimately enhancing the region’s global competitiveness.
Moreover, the EU hopes to meet its environmental goals and boost food security by promoting sustainable agriculture and developing bio-based products through the act. In a briefing released last month, the European Parliamentary Research Service explained how public acceptance of novel foods and GMOs remains a “major challenge” that can “polarise opinion”.
“Effective communication with the public could emphasise that biotechnology is already integrated in daily life, with many products relying on biotech processes or components, and to already very good results – not only in healthcare, but also in areas such as soil protection, energy, fertilisers, and combating water pollution, etc.,” it said.
The current regulatory process to approve novel foods, run by the European Food Safety Authority, is too stringent and long, “hindering uptake and competitiveness” in the sector, the EU Commission argues in the draft.
One of the technologies name-checked as having transformative potential for the food industry is precision fermentation, which combines traditional fermentation with the latest biotech advances to produce proteins, fats and other compounds. It enables companies to create bioidentical dairy, egg and other proteins, sans the animal.
The EU Commission is planning the launch of an annual Food Fermentation Conference, which would connect industry stakeholders and bolster support for this technology.
Cultivated meat and Impossible Foods’ struggles reflect the complicated EU novel food landscape
Courtesy: Sherry Hack
The EU’s regulatory framework for novel foods is amongst the world’s most rigorous, with the complexity and timelines driving many homegrown companies to look to other markets first. For example, Dutch cultivated pork startup Meatable is targeting Singapore as its debut market, as is France’s Vital Meat. Meanwhile, precision fermentation firms Vivici, Onego Bio and 21st.Bio have all focused on the US.
Despite changes by the EFSA hinting at a shift towards an easier pathway to file for approval, the current deadlock has come to the benefit of non-EU countries in Europe. The UK began shifting away from its pre-Brexit regulations last year and is now working with several companies to fast-track approval – it has already received applications from European startups Vital Meat, Mosa Meat, and Gourmey.
In addition, the latter two startups have filed dossiers in Switzerland (and are the only ones to have applied for EU approval too). Even companies from outside Europe, like Aleph Farms, have targeted the UK and Switzerland first.
It’s not just new products untested in the market – even established ones that have found success elsewhere have struggled to get into the EU. Impossible Foods is a prime example here. While the company sells plant-based meat in the US, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand, its use of soy leghemoglobin – a precision-fermented heme protein – has kept its signature alt beef lineup out of Europe for almost a decade.
The company first filed for approval of the ingredient in March 2021. Last year, the EFSA Panel on Food Additives and Flavourings issued a positive safety assessment of LegH Prep, a liquid preparation containing soy leghemoglobin and other ingredients.
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
This was followed by a ruling by the regulator’s GMO panel, calling soy leghemoglobin “safe for human consumption with regard to the effects of the genetic modification”. The EFSA’s opinion was then followed by a period of public consultation ahead of final approval by the EU Commission and member states. Then, in February of this year, the EFSA stated that the public comments didn’t raise any further concerns, moving Impossible Foods an inch closer to the green light.
In an interview at the Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summit in London this month, Impossible Foods CEO Peter McGuinness called the regulatory process in the EU (and the UK) “on the slow side”.
“That’s a double-edged sword,” he said. “When it comes to food and the health of people and the planet, the government should have a keen interest in that… The flip side of that is we’ve been trying for four years to get Impossible in [Europe], and we’re still not there yet. But we’re waiting patiently impatiently.”
The Biotech Act, therefore, will be keenly watched by industry leaders. It could usher in some long-awaited changes to position the EU, already a leader in R&D funding for alternative proteins, as a future food leader.
UK firm Multus Biotechnology has unveiled an animal-free media formulation for cultivated meat, allowing companies to eliminate serum from their products.
To ease ethical concerns, optimise production and lower costs, British company Multus Biotechnology has developed an animal-free culture medium to replace fetal bovine serum (FBS) for cultivated meat.
Animal serum contains high amounts of protein, alongside growth factors, hormones, antioxidants, lipids, and other components that replicate a fetal-like state for cell proliferation. It has been used as a key component in cell culture for decades.
The problem? It can contain unknown amounts of thousands of different components and poses the threat of antibacterial contamination. It’s also in short supply and thus highly expensive, and has sparked ethical concerns about the use of fetal animals to produce cultivated meat.
Over the years, many companies have moved away from cultivated meat to use animal-component-free (ACF) media formulations for production. Multus’s latest innovation, developed with the help of artificial intelligence (AI), adds to the list of solutions for producers in this space.
How Multus uses AI to develop serum replacements
Courtesy: Multus Biotechnology
The new serum replacement has been described as the first commercially available ACF media formulation for porcine adipose-derived stem cells. These are multipotent cells that differentiate into fat, bone and cartilage, which makes them valuable for a variety of applications, from food production to regenerative medicine.
Titled Proliferum P, the ACF formulation is said to match or outperform the functionality of FBS, while maintaining critical stemness characteristics and adipogenic differentiation capacity.
Traditionally, media development is expensive, labour-intensive, and slow – it can take two to four years to develop FBS alternatives, which delays product roadmaps. Multus uses AI and automation to speed things up, creating machine learning models and integrating them with high-throughput lab automation systems.
It uses machine learning to screen dozens of potential ingredients for each cell to figure out the specific formulation, and automate media preparation, cell culturing, data collection, and data analysis.
“We’ve built a process that not only accelerates the media development process, but also customises it to specific cell types,” said Soraya Padilla, project lead for Proliferum P.
The technology helped Multus develop Proliferum P in less than six months, while optimising for cost, cell growth and functional performance. This was faster than Proliferum B, a serum replacement for bovine fibroblasts that was created in nine months.
Proliferum P is said to be quality-controlled and scalable, and is available for testing and evaluation by companies working with porcine ASCs to create food and healthcare products.
Serum-free media becoming the norm for cultivated meat
Courtesy: Multus Biotechnology
Multus, which has raised over $14M to date, said the launch represented a “breakthrough in both development speed and performance”, and showcased its platform’s ability to deliver optimal formulations for diverse cell types.
“Our platform doesn’t just allow us to match industry standards – it ensures we continuously raise the bar,” said co-founder and CEO Cai Linton. “With Proliferum P, we’re delivering a superior product to FBS while demonstrating how AI and automation, in the hands of our experienced scientists, can transform biotechnology development timelines.”
It marks the firm’s third product launch in six months. In May, it introduced its food-grade basal media, developed in tandem with global food and feed ingredient companies.
Multus is working with bioprocess optimisation firm New Wave Biotech to create more affordable inputs for cultivated meat makers, as well as with Quest Meat to develop a cell culture ingredients platform as part of a £1M project co-funded by the UK government. And last year, it opened a food-safe media manufacturing facility that can support 500 tonnes of cultivated meat per year.
Efforts to eliminate FBS from cultivated meat production have been growing. Dutch firm Mosa Meat is a pioneer in this space, having removed animal serum from its products in 2019 and later making its serum-free formulation open-source.
Elsewhere, Japanese startup IntegriCulture developed cultivated chicken and duck liver cells using a serum-free medium, and South Korea’s CellMeat and Simple Planet have created serum-free cell culture media too. Meanwhile, Eat Just’s Good Meat won regulatory approval for its serum-free media in Singapore back in 2023.
By replacing animal serum in its cultivated pork production tech, US startup Clever Carnivore has achieved industry-leading media costs of $0.07 per litre. A 2023 industry survey by the Good Food Institute showed the benefits of eliminating ASF formulations, with 74% of companies reporting identical or better results after establishing a cell line in serum-free conditions.
While young men are driving the rise in meat consumption in the UK, they’re also more open to cultivated meat than other demographics.
Two in five young men in the UK are eating more meat than they did last year, and 83% of them don’t feel comfortable eating plants in public.
New research shows that this group is also the most likely to think that cultivated meat should be available for sale, demonstrating that their affection for meat isn’t limited to conventional options. That said, their opinion is still split – 44% of men are in favour of these proteins entering the market and 43% are against.
In contrast, only 28% of women are supportive of this, versus 51% who aren’t. Meanwhile, half of Brits aged 16-34 are in favour, and this receptiveness declines with age – only 26% of people between 55 and 75 want to see cultivated meat on the market.
The 1,100-person survey was carried out by Ipsos Observer UK this month and reveals the underlying trends informing sustainable food consumption in the country.
The results chime with another survey by YouGov last year, which found that men and people aged 18-24 (36% each) are much more likely than women (16%) and Brits aged 50 and above (18%) to try cultivated meat.
Cultivated meat is more popular among youth, but there’s a lack of awareness
Willingness to try cultivated meat in the UK | Courtesy: Ipsos
What would Brits do if cultivated meat became available? Nearly a third (32%) say they are open to eating it, though a much larger share (56%) is against. Gen Z is the only group where the willingness to try these products (cited by 47%) is higher than the reluctance (43%).
Cultivated meat becomes less popular with age in terms of potential consumption too – 39% of millennials say they’d eat it, versus only 21% of Gen Xers and 22% of boomers.
The results show that UK attitudes towards cultivated meat haven’t changed. A 2022 survey by the government found that a third of its citizens were willing to try these proteins, a year before they were approved for sale anywhere in the world.
This can be interpreted in two ways – enthusiasm for cultivated meat hasn’t waned, and it hasn’t magnified either. In fact, it remains low, with more people opposed to its sale and consumption than not.
One possible reason is simply a lack of awareness. Less than one-sixth of respondents to Ipsos’s survey said they knew “a great deal” or “a fair amount” about these proteins. More concerningly, a third have never heard of it, and a quarter are aware of it but know nothing about it.
It highlights the importance of marketing campaigns by businesses and the government to help familiarise the public with cultivated meat, which experts say will be a crucial cog in the future of the food system and help the UK meet its climate goals.
“With limited knowledge about cultivated, or ‘lab-grown’ meat, there is a chance for producers to shape perceptions before it’s done for them,” said Peter Cooper, director of global Omnibus services at Ipsos.
Animal welfare benefits are popular amid health concerns
Drivers of interest in cultivated meat in the UK | Courtesy: Ipsos
Ipsos’s new research underscores “a genuine potential growth market for cultivated meat in Britain, in particular among younger people”, according to Cooper.
The thing that draws most Brits to cultivated meat is the fact that it doesn’t involve raising and slaughtering animals – a third of respondents feel this is the main benefit. For 20%, cultivated meat reduces the risk of zoonotic diseases, and a similar number of consumers are attracted by the climate benefits, agreeing that it generates fewer emissions and takes up less land than livestock farming.
“That being said, consumers do still have some concerns, in particular around the unclear long-term health impacts of cultivated meat. This will need to be addressed for perceived environmental upsides to be realised,” Cooper said.
Indeed, Brits do feel strongly about the perceived health implications of cultivated meat. Nearly half (48%) feel the impact of long-term consumption is unclear, and 42% say it isn’t a natural food source, a nod to the discourse around ultra-processed food.
Barriers to cultivated meat consumption in the UK | Courtesy: Ipsos
Around a quarter, meanwhile, are concerned about the high price and the potential negative impacts on farming – although several cultivated meat startups have made major strides in cost reductions lately (including one based in the UK), and British farmers recognise the opportunities presented by these proteins, finding the climate change and global market volatility a much bigger threat.
There was one more interesting finding from the Ipsos survey, specifically from omnivores who say they’ll eat cultivated meat in the future. Assuming it becomes widely available and cost-competitive, more than half (52%) say it will replace at least half of their meat consumption.
Only 9% said it wouldn’t substitute their conventional meat intake, outlining these proteins’ true potential for dietary change.
French startup Gourmey, which is awaiting regulatory approval for cultivated meat in six markets, is betting on AI to solve the industry’s greatest problem.
Gourmey, the Parisian firm producing foie gras by cultivating duck cells in bioreactors, is leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to address the scale and cost challenges that have long plagued the future food sector.
The startup has partnered with DeepLife, an AI-led cellular digital twin tech company, to develop the world’s first avian digital twin. This is a virtual replica of poultry cells engineered to optimise growth conditions, nutrient density and flavour expression in cultivated meat.
“The digital twin is an AI-powered virtual replica of our cell cultivation process. We train the model using comprehensive ‘omics’ data, such as gene expression and cellular composition, collected throughout the production cycle,” Gourmey co-founder and CEO Nicolas Morin-Forest tells Green Queen.
“By integrating this data with first-principle models of cell metabolism, the digital twin enables us to run thousands of virtual experiments. This helps us identify the optimal feed formulations and bioreactor conditions to maximise yield, minimise resource use, and enhance the sensory qualities of our cultivated meat,” he adds.
“Much like how animal feed impacts the quality of conventional meat, our digital twin helps us precisely tune every aspect of cell nutrition to deliver consistently high-quality products.”
How DeepLife and Gourmey are leveraging AI to lower costs
Courtesy: Sherry Hack
The collaboration is initially centred on cultivated duck and poultry products, and combines DeepLife’s biology simulation engine with Gourmey’s proprietary cell cultivation platform. The goal is to produce cultivated meat on a large scale, at lower costs, and faster.
DeepLife’s systems biology engine simulates and enhances key cellular behaviours, enabling companies to tweak variables like media composition (which tends to be the most expensive part of producing cultivated meat) and metabolic efficiency, ahead of conducting costly wet lab experiments.
“Our goal is to tailor the feed and cultivation conditions to the exact needs of our cells. This optimisation increases yield and reduces feed waste, directly lowering our production costs. Moreover, the composition of the feed has a major influence on the sensory attributes, such as flavour and texture, of the final product,” says Morin-Forest.
“By using digital twin models, we can optimise feed formulations not only to maximise efficiency but also to deliver the highest nutritional and sensory quality. And because we can simulate these changes virtually, we accelerate our R&D cycles and reduce costs associated with traditional trial-and-error.”
The two firms are banking on the potential of an “integrative multi-omics approach” to optimise cultivated meat production. This combines studies of genomes, proteins, transcriptomes and metabolites to offer a powerful framework for characterising and validating cultivated meat at multiple biological levels.
“These approaches can help ensure the stability of cell lines, characterise cellular composition, identify potential allergens, metabolites and other bioactive compounds, and assess the bioavailability of key nutrients,” reads a study by the two companies.
“While many techniques can be adapted from pharma-oriented bioprocessing, cultivated meat production presents distinct challenges, including stricter cost constraints on culture media, constraints on the nutritional value of the cultured cells themselves, and a regulatory landscape that differs from that of pharmaceuticals,” it adds.
“Currently, integrative omics strategies are not widely used in novel food risk assessment, due to a lack of validated approaches, although they represent a potential powerful tool to complement risk assessment and regulatory science.”
Price reductions paramount for future of cultivated meat
Courtesy: Sherry Hack
Gourmey’s announcement of its partnership with DeepLife comes a month after a techno-economic analysis revealed that its 5,000-litre bioreactor system can potentially enable it to manufacture cultivated meat for as little as $3.43 per lb.
“Because our cells thrive without proteins or growth factors, we can bring our food-safe feed price down to around 20 cents per litre, just a fraction of what’s typical in the industry,” Morin-Forest explained in an interview with Green Queen at the time.
“This shows that cost-competitive, scalable, and economically viable cultivated meat is now within reach. Bringing costs down enables us to expand access, accelerate adoption, and maximise our positive impact across both premium and commodity protein markets,” he says now.
“Lowering costs is critical for cultivated meat to become a mainstream, sustainable protein,” he adds. According to a 4,000-person survey, three in five Europeans feel cultivated meat will only be successful if it’s affordable for everyone. In fact, nearly half expect it to be cheaper than conventional meat, and only 15% would buy it if it’s more expensive (versus 60% who wouldn’t).
Efforts to do so have been top of mind for companies in the space. Experts suggest that cultivated meat can compete with conventional animal protein at a production cost of $2.92 by 2030. The industry has already lowered this by 99% in the last decade or so.
Over the last year, several startups have achieved breakthroughs on this front. Meatly, which is approved to sell cultivated chicken to pets in the UK, recently reduced culture media costs to $0.30 per litre, which will further be lowered to just $0.02 at industrial scale.
Another cultivated pet food startup, BioCraft Pet Nutrition, has developed a plant-based growth medium that reduces the cost of its ingredient to $2-2.50 per lb. And in Israel, SuperMeat has made several breakthroughs to produce its cultivated chicken for $12 per lb, while Believer Meats has described how its continuous process can potentially produce cultivated chicken for $6 per lb at scale.
And last week, Chicago’s Clever Carnivore announced it has been operating with a media cost of $0.07 at pilot scale for over two years now.
How AI can support filings for regulatory approval
Courtesy: Romain Buisson
Gourmey is pursuing regulatory approval in six markets, including the US, the UK, Switzerland, and the EU, and expects the greenlight in Singapore soon. It is using these AI-led optimisations to inform commercial-scale production and support its regulatory filings.
“AI-powered digital twins provide a deep, data-driven understanding of our cell metabolism and production process. This allows us to demonstrate consistent product quality, traceability, and safety, key requirements for regulatory approval,” explains Morin-Forest.
“By having robust, predictive models, we can more effectively document and verify the nutritional and sensory attributes of our products, which supports our applications with regulators in Europe, the US, and Asia.”
Its partnership with DeepLife comes at a critical juncture for the cultivated meat industry. Seven countries have granted some form of approval for the sale of these proteins, and several others are evaluating applications. Currently, however, you can only buy cultivated meat in three nations (Singapore, Australia and the US).
Meanwhile, in Italy and certain states in the US, politicians have banned the production and sale of cultivated meat, a move many others are trying to replicate. “We believe that consumers should have the freedom to choose foods that align with their values and preferences,” says Morin-Forest. “Rather than restricting choice, we encourage constructive dialogue and science-based regulation to ensure safety, transparency, and trust.”
This is one of the many obstacles to large-scale, cost-competitive production of cultivated meat. And with investors no longer pouring sufficient capital into the industry to tackle these issues, it has prompted Gourmey to leverage their new favourite technology: AI.
“This isn’t just a new biotech innovation – it’s the first step toward a food revolution,” claims DeepLife CO Jonathan Baptista. “And we are delighted to launch this partnership with Gourmey to create the AI-native leader in this emerging market.”
Asian biotech startup Avant has received the C-Label accreditation for its ZelluGen peptide complex, a first for a non-food product.
Aiming to clean up both our skin and the marine peptide industry, Avant’s ZelluGen peptide complex – marketed under its Biotecq brand – has received the first non-food certification from the C-Label.
Launched by Swiss organisation V-Label in January, the C-Label is a globally registered “robust certification system” to ensure the highest standards of cultivated meat production and distribution. Its first recipient was UK pet food startup Meatly, which is the only company to have commercialised cultivated meat in Europe.
The label covers non-food products too, and Avant’s ZelluGen is the inaugural recipient. Derived from fish cells using its Zellulin BioPlatform, this is a cultured skincare bioactive that has the same functional benefits, sans the animal, for moisturisers, creams and serums.
“Certifying Zellulin marks a significant step in our mission to extend ethical standards to all products derived from cellular agriculture,” said Lubo Yotov, head of C-Label. “We are excited to support innovations that align with our vision of a more compassionate and sustainable future.”
How Avant makes its ZelluGen peptide
Courtesy: Biotecq
With operations in Hong Kong and Singapore, Avant makes cultivated seafood under its Avie brand, and first unveiled Zellulin when it expanded its cell-based marine protein expertise to skincare in 2021.
ZelluGen powers its Biotecq brand of ethical skincare, which only debuted in February. The bioactive is produced through the advanced Zellulin BioPlatform, which eschews the animal-derived materials and ocean harvesting that conventional peptides require.
Peptides are a class of short-chain amino acids that act as building blocks of proteins like collagen, keratin, and elastin. In the skincare industry, these ingredients are revered for their anti-ageing, anti-oxidation, regeneration and skin-repairing properties.
The reliance on sea sponges, molluscs, and fish needs to be addressed immediately, thanks to the 56% decline in marine populations in the 50 years since 1970, and continued threats to and from the climate crisis. Moreover, current production methods involve chemical extraction and conditioned medium using animal-sourced raw materials and synthetic processes.
Avant leverages cell cultivation technology to produce bioidentical peptides without animal inputs, isolating healthy cells from a small number of fish just once before cultivating them, meaning there’s no need for a continuous supply of seed cells. The resulting ingredients have a 75% lower greenhouse gas footprint.
ZelluGen works by instructing skin cells to boost the extracellular matrix and generate more collagen, integrin and fibrinogen. Both efficacy and consumer perception studies show that small amounts of the peptide, as little as 1%, improve the skin significantly.
V-Label helps keep pace with innovation
Courtesy: C-Label
All this is crucial for cosmetic manufacturers, whose consumers are demanding better ethical standards. ‘Cruelty-free’ is the second most important factor for beauty shoppers in the US, 93% of whom describe clean beauty as very important to their purchasing decisions. In Asia-Pacific, a quarter of shoppers rate ingredient transparency as the most influential factor in deciding what beauty products to buy.
Communicating the use of ethical, cruelty-free ingredients with a certification like the C-Label will likely become an important part of their marketing.
To attain the label, a product must be free from the use of animal-free media and adhere to ethical cell sourcing practices. In addition, it must not contain any pathogens, antibiotics, heavy metals, plastics and GMOs.
“The C-Label establishes clear standards, supports industry collaboration, and helps educate consumers, ensuring the industry develops responsibly and is ready to scale when approval is gained in each region,” Renato Pichler, founder of V-Label, told Green Queen in January. In addition to C-Label, V-Label also offer the V-Label certification for vegan products and the recently introduced F-Label for proteins derived via fermentation.
“The pace at which we create new things far outstrips our ability to name, regulate, and adopt them. This lag often becomes a significant hurdle for innovations and for those trying to fund or support them,” said Avant co-founder and CEO Carrie Chan. “That’s why foresight and timely action from those in key positions are so critical to the progress of innovation.”
She added: “We commend V-Label for its foresight in pioneering the C-Label, a timely and important step toward greater transparency and acceptance of novel sustainable food and biotech products.”
Certifying ZelluGen with the C-Label would pave the way for further non-food cellular agriculture applications, the accreditation body predicted. A host of companies are using the technology to produce materials like leather (including Faircraft, Modern Meadow, Lab-Grown Leather, 3D Bio-Tissues, Qorium and Pelagen) and cotton (Galy).
US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has pledged to cut red tape and maintain the country’s biotech leadership, despite the rollback of a Biden-era biomanufacturing mandate.
From MAHA to MABA, the current US administration sure loves an acronym.
Amid his war on pesticides and ultra-processed foods (UPFs), health secretary and former CRISPR investor Robert F Kennedy Jr has announced his intention to “Make American Biotech Accelerate”, as foreign powers gain ground in the sector.
“The mission to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) includes MABA – Make American Biotech Accelerate,” he tweeted earlier this week. “We’re clearing the path to transform great science into real cures, at lower costs, and better health for the American people. Life science and biotech are at the heart of that.”
The move is in direct contrast with Donald Trump’s executive order that rescinded his predecessor’s actions to advance biomanufacturing, as well as the government’s mass job cuts at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) earlier this year.
But could this biotech focus extend to food tech – and particularly alternative proteins, which have come under threat from state-level bans, a lack of investment, and the UPF discourse?
The mission to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) includes MABA — Make American Biotech Accelerate.
President Trump showed in his first term what happens when you unlock American science — breakthroughs happen fast.
RFK Jr looks to speed up regulatory approvals with MABA
“President Trump showed in his first term what happens when you unlock American science – breakthroughs happen fast. Now, we’re going to do it again,” said Kennedy.
Within the food tech world, cultivated meat firm Upside Foods previously told Green Queen that “most of the work” it did to get its chicken approved for sale in the US “was under the first Trump administration”. The same goes for Eat Just’s Good Meat, which was simultaneously greenlit by the US Department of Agriculture in June 2023.
When RFK Jr took office, there were suggestions that the regulatory pathway for novel foods could become much more complicated. One close ally indicated that the health secretary was likely to make things much more complicated for startups pursuing FDA approval for cultivated meat.
Courtesy: Win McNamee/Getty Images | Illustration by Green Queen
Shortly after, he moved to eliminate a rule that allowed food and drug makers to self-affirm new ingredients under the FDA’s Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) pathway, calling it a “loophole” exploited by companies.
“If the agency moves toward stricter oversight, it risks stifling innovation in the US, making it harder to bring groundbreaking, sustainable food solutions to market,” Brittany Chibe, co-founder and CEO of Aqua Cultured Foods, told Green Queen in March. Her startup uses biomass fermentation to make seafood analogues, and obtained self-determined GRAS status last year.
Responding to the uncertainty, an FDA official told this publication at the time: “As the FDA continues to support innovation in food technologies, the agency’s priority is the safety of food produced through both innovative and traditional methods. The agency is committed to transparency on our approach to regulating foods made using innovative food technologies.”
“We’re going to make sure that the United States remains the centre of [the] biotech revolution,” he said. “We’re going to try to dismantle the barriers to biotech development and approval, and to make sure that we do everything that we can to support that industry.”
Already this year, Mission Barns and Wildtype have both received the FDA’s go-ahead to sell their cultivated pork and salmon, respectively, making the US the only country to have approved four such products. RFK Jr’s MABA initiative has a chance to extend this leadership, if deployed correctly.
MABA is in contrast with Trump and RFK Jr’s actions
“We know the power of US biotech. It’s time to let it flourish – not tie it up in red tape, misalignment, and a process that gives the edge to foreign interests and large incumbents,” Kennedy’s tweet read.
Indeed, slowing action by the US government has driven increased innovation elsewhere. Singapore has long been a food tech leader (and was the first to clear the sale of cultivated meat), but China has made a wave of strategic advancements and backed alternative proteins to strengthen its biotech leadership.
That has grasped the attention of Republicans, who last year aired their concerns in a letter responding to the director of national intelligence’s annual threat assessment. “Put simply, we cannot allow China to control more of the world’s food supply than it already does. To cede American leadership in the global innovative protein market to foreign adversaries like China is to forfeit the food security of the United States and its allies,” they wrote.
Courtesy: Jose Luis Magana/AP
It’s in line with RFK Jr’s comments to the House this week, where he pointed out how China is “putting huge amounts of money into this space, and it’s important that we do the same thing”.
But money is precisely the problem. Food tech funding has been on the decline, thanks to geopolitical uncertainty, rising costs, Trump’s tariff wars, and the rise of AI. But it’s not just private investors – the US government itself is divesting from the sector.
One of the myriad executive orders signed by Trump upon his return to office rescinded a 2022 action by former President Joe Biden, which sought to advance biotech and biomanufacturing by prioritising R&D funding and streamlining regulation for precision fermentation, cultivated meat, and other novel foods. It led the Department of Defense to invest over $60M in 34 companies, including a host of alternative protein players.
So the president has shied away from biotech innovation – how will that dovetail with RFK Jr’s promise? There’s also another conflict to consider. The health secretary wants to make it easier for biotech companies to secure regulatory approval, but seven states have now banned cultivated meat, and many others are planning to do the same.
Courtesy: Margo Martin
RFK Jr has also railed against UPFs, a classification most alternative proteins fall under. The government is now planning to launch a “bold, edgy” campaign to warn Americans about the health impact of these foods. These products have drawn ire from across the aisle, as well as Kennedy’s nominee for surgeon general, Casey Means, despite nutritionists warning against a blanket rejection of all UPFs.
It remains to be seen what the MABA programme really entails – and how it will sidestep the barriers created by its own proponents.
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Violife’s protein-packed Cheddar alternative, Petaluma’s plant-based dehydrated dog food, and the EU’s vegan labelling war.
New products and launches
Vegan cheese giant Violife has launched Supreme Cheddarton in the UK. It’s a Cheddar alternative with at least 30% less fat and over 9g of plant protein (a rarity for coconut-oil-based cheeses), and is available at all major supermarkets for £2.95 per 200g block.
Courtesy: Violife
British frozen vegan pizza startup One Planet Pizza has revamped its recipe to add a bigger sourdough base, hand-stretched cheese, and more toppings.
Still in the UK, the ongoing heatwave has led to plant-based meat firm Thiswitnessing a 21% hike in sales of its vegan burgers and sausages over the past two weeks.
German ingredient producer Raps has introduced Compound Vegan Roast, a functional solution to enhance the flavour of plant-based roast meat analogues.
Courtesy: Raps
Likewise, French plant-based ingredient supplier Roquette has expanded its Nutralys line with two new textured solutions from wheat and pea protein.
Following its success in the Netherlands, discount retailer Lidl has launched blended burger and mince SKUs with 60% beef and 40% plants in Belgium.
In the UK, meanwhile, Lidl has unveiled high-protein vegan pudding pots in chocolate, caramel and hazelnut flavours under its Vemondo brand. They’re priced at £1.29 per 200g pack, each of which contains 20g of protein.
Courtesy: Unlimeat/Green Queen
South Korean plant-based brand Unlimeat has launched two desserts in the US. The Oat Cream Buns and Hotteok will be sold under the new Bbang label.
Speaking of the US, plant-based chicken makerRebellyous Foods has expanded its offerings with Spicy Kickin’ Nuggets, Tenders and Kickin’ Popcorn, which are now being served in over 390 school districts.
Californian vegan pet food firm Petaluma has introduced the Whole Food Mixer, a dehydrated dog food topper with organic kale, spinach, and antioxidant-rich fruits.
Courtesy: Petaluma
And Indian vegan startup Plant Yum has released a millet-based, protein-packed mango shake premix as part of a new suite of instant drink powders aimed at the health-forward consumer segment.
Company and finance updates
Greek functional dairy-free ice cream maker Plan(e)t Foods has scooped up €1.05M to fuel its product development and expand into other European countries.
Univer Solutions Belgium has expanded the distribution deal between its Foodology division and ingredient giant Ingredion to introduce plant proteins, functional native starches, and a range of stevia sweeteners to the Benelux region.
Courtesy: Proeon
Dutch startup Proeon Foods is scaling up the production of its mung and peanut protein isolates in Pune, India, through funding from Invest International and national government agencies.
Canada’s Burcon NutraScience Corporation, meanwhile, has signed a multi-year deal worth $6.8M to supply a leading provider of clean-label plant-based ingredients from its facility in Galesburg, Illinois. The first year is set to generate at least $1.4M in revenue for the manufacturer, which is set to increase every year.
Swiss giant Nestlé will let go of 80 employees at its Krupka factory in Czechia, representing a fifth of the workforce. The move is in response to slowing demand for plant-based meat products in Europe.
Courtesy: Edinburgh Innovations
The University of Edinburgh is leading the £14M state-backed Carbon-Loop Sustainable Biomanufacturing Hub, which aims to turn carbon-based waste into next-gen pharmaceuticals and cosmetics via microbial fermentation.
Singaporean deep tech startup KosmodeHealth has shut its pilot plant for the production of its upcycled, high-protein W0W Noodle range, and shrunk its team by 80% as it is “trimming to grow”, its founder has announced.
Belgian early-stage investor Biotope Ventures has announced the first close of €5M for its Biotope Ventures 2 fund, with an additional €4M set to be raised over the next 12 months to allow the fir to invest in up to 30 early-stage biotech startups.
Research and policy developments
The ‘veggie burger’ debate has cropped up again in the EU, with a group of ministers looking to introduce new rules to ban the use of meaty terms on plant-based products. It comes just months after the EU’s top court rejected a similar effort by France.
Belgium has released its new food-based dietary guidelines, advising citizens to limit unprocessed red meat intake to 300g a week and promoting plant proteins, but there’s a lack of focus on dairy alternatives and sustainability-based recommendations.
Researchers from South Korea have developed a scaffolding technology that can achieve precise marbling textures in cultivated meat. They used self-healing hydrogens that achieve robust, reversible bonding at a neutral pH.
A report by tech forecasting firm GetFocussuggests that cultivated meat technologies are advancing faster than livestock farming, potentially accelerating the path to price parity.
Courtesy: GetFocus
Food awareness organisation ProVeg International has rolled out Future Plates, a catering guide to help large-scale event organisers offer plant-based meals to attendees.
Events and awards
Dutch cultivated pork startup Meatable is continuing its outreach efforts by participating in the Blue Earth Forum at the ongoing London Climate Action Week 2025 (June 21-29).
On International Picnic Day, animal rights charity PETAunveiled a 23-metre-long vegan ham and butter sandwich at Place de la Bastille in partnership with La Vie, to symbolise the 23 million pigs killed for meat each year in France.
Courtesy: Pam Méliee/PETA
World Animal Protection, meanwhile, has launched the first Dine Vegan Nashville event. Running from June 22-28, it will promote vegan dining across the Music City via partnerships with local restaurants.
In Hong Kong, animal welfare organisation Planet for All partnered with cruelty-free beauty pioneer Lush to promote Cage-Free Hong Kong, the city’s first welfare campaign for laying hens.
In the US, organic plant milk brand Mooala‘s Simple Almond Milk has been named the Best Almond Milk in Good Housekeeping’s 2025 Snack Awards and Self Magazine’s 2025 Pantry Awards.
Finally, ClimateCats Studios, the film studio run by the influencer duo Root the Future, has won the Best TV Series 2025 for its upcoming docuseries, Culturally Plant-Based, at the Milan Independent Awards.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has made the state the seventh in the US to ban the sale of cultivated meat. He has also ordered an investigation into ultra-processed foods.
Despite two more companies receiving regulatory approval to sell cultivated proteins in the US this year, the number of states banning these foods continues to rise.
Texas has become the latest state to prohibit the sale, the result of an effort that began in November. SB 261 was one of the 300-plus bills signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott last week, imposing a two-year ban that starts on September 1 this year.
“The offering for sale or sale of cell-cultured protein for human consumption within this state is unlawful and prohibited,” the bill read.
It was backed by the cattle industry, which took a familiar line to its bipartisan passage last month. “The bill prohibits the sale and offer of sale of cell-cultured proteins to prevent Texas consumers from being a science experiment as companies seek to profit from selling cell-cultured protein with no long-term health studies,” said the Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA).
“This bill also pushes back on an agenda by certain radical groups and companies who seek to end traditional animal agriculture,” it added.
Texas takes aim at cultivated meat and ultra-processed foods
Courtesy: Mission Barns
The effort to ban cultivated meat in Texas was spearheaded by Senator Charles Perry, who authored 2023’s SB 664, which successfully restricted how these proteins are labelled.
The bill was read for the first time in February, and eventually passed the Senate with no opposition. In the House, two-thirds of representatives voted in favour, while only a quarter were against the measure. It moved to the governor’s desk last week, and was signed alongside hundreds of bills.
Despite banning their sale, it still outlines how cultivated meat products must be labelled. It necessitates that these foods need to be labelled in a prominent font that’s equal to or larger than the surrounding text, using the terms ‘cell-cultured’, ‘lab-grown’, or “a similar qualifying term or disclaimer intended to clearly communicate to a consumer the contents of the protein”.
“Ranchers across Texas work tirelessly to raise healthy cattle and produce high-quality beef,” TSCRA president Carl Ray Polk Jr said last month. “Our association is grateful for those legislators who voted in support of this legislation and understood the core of this bill, to protect our consumers, the beef industry and animal agriculture.”
As the leading cattle producer in the US, Texas’ impact on the planet is outsized. Beef is the food system’s single-worst polluter, emitting twice as many greenhouse gases as the next product on the list (dark chocolate).
Instead of mitigating the impact of beef, Texas – like many other US states – is exploring ways to protect the industry, which is the third-largest economic generator in the state. It comes amid a wider backdrop of a federal administration that has rallied against what they call “fake meat”, coupled with the rise of the meat-eating manosphere, which led Americans to spend more on meat last year than ever before.
Apart from banning cultivated meat, Abbott signed a bill called Make Texas Healthy Again, aligning with health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s MAHA movement. A key focus? To review the impact of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) on human health, keying into a major point of discourse in American food culture.
It chimes with a similar executive order from California Governor Gavin Newsom, and RFK Jr’s opposition to these foods, which include alternative proteins like plant-based and cultivated meat. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is now working to develop a definition of UPFs too.
US both the most receptive and opposed to cultivated meat
These bans have been criticised for limiting consumer choice, stifling innovation, and being anti-competitive. One farmer told the AP that he welcomes cultivated meat producers to “jump into the pool” and try to compete with his Waygu beef, while the North American Meat Institute has suggested that these bans “bills establish a precedent for adopting policies and regulatory requirements that could one day adversely affect the bills’ supporters”.
Even consumers are against these efforts. Every American who tasted Upside Foods’ cultivated chicken ahead of Florida’s move last year opposed political bans on these foods.
States are already facing legal challenges. Florida has been sued by Upside Foods, the first company to receive federal approval to sell cultivated meat in the country, with a judge recently rejecting the state’s request to throw out the case.
And in sharp contrast to the legislative upheaval, the FDA approved two additional companies to sell cultivated meat, with Mission Barns now awaiting the greenlight from the Department of Agriculture for its pork fat, and Wildtype’s salmon already available in a Portland restaurant. These companies have joined Upside Foods and Eat Just’s Good Meat in getting the FDA greenlight.
All this illustrates the contradictory landscape around cultivated meat regulation. While the US is the country with the most attempted (and successful) bans on these proteins, it’s also the one with the most approvals. Over the coming months, more of both are expected.
A new map by RA Capital Management and the Nature Conservancy uncovers ‘the true impact’ of agriculture on Earth’s systems, and why it’s the most overlooked opportunity to improve public and planetary health.
Despite the food system using half of Earth’s habitable land and 70% of its freshwater resources, and generating more methane than any other industry, its impact and scale often go unnoticed.
A new Agriculture Map aims to change that. Created by investment firm RA Capital Management’s Planetary Health team and NGO the Nature Conservancy, the tool blends “proprietary data analysis” with a “systems-level approach” to help visualise agriculture’s effects on the planet and provide solutions to stakeholders at all levels.
“The environmental and human health challenges posed by the food system are well-understood in some circles, but making this information material and actionable to stakeholders can be a real challenge,” said Stephen Wood, a senior scientist of agriculture and food systems at the Nature Conservancy.
“This map makes it possible for non-experts to quickly understand the scope and scale of the problem, as well as the solutions,” he noted.
Here are some key takeaways from the Agriculture Map.
Agriculture’s climate impact outweighs other industries, including oil and gas
Courtesy: RA Capital Management/Nature Conservancy
The agriculture industry produces more output by weight, from food and fibre to fuel and wood, than each of the cement, steel, and oil and gas industries. When it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, its impact is larger than all three of these heavy industries combined.
Further, agriculture consumes more water and causes more water pollution than any other human activity. The other industries use just a fraction of the water agriculture does, and less than 1% of its land footprint.
Energy is the only area where these heavy industries surpass agriculture, given the use of fossil fuels as power sources.
Food production is the biggest methane culprit
Courtesy: RA Capital Management/Nature Conservancy
More than any other human activity, it’s agriculture that releases the most amount of methane into the atmosphere. This gas is 28 times more potent than carbon over a 100-year period, and is linked to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths.
The map shows that enteric fermentation, manure, and rice paddies contribute to 24% of global methane emissions. The digestive system of cows alone emits more methane than the oil, coal and bioenergy sectors combined. In fact, the overall GHG impact of cattle is roughly the same as all cars on the road globally.
The amount of food we waste is off the charts
Roughly a third of all food produced never ends up being eaten. That could actually feed a quarter of the world’s population, helping alleviate global hunger.
It’s not just a blight to food security, but also to the planet. The land required to grow all the food we waste is almost twice the size of the US, and the water needed would fill 100 million Olympic-sized swimming pools. That’s a lot of resources to eventually toss into the bin.
Courtesy: RA Capital Management/Nature Conservancy
Ozempic could make the food system more equitable
The report suggests that the food system produces twice as many calories as needed to support the global population, concluding that the driver of malnutrition and food insecurity isn’t a lack of food, but rather inadequate distribution.
The rise of weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro “likely foreshadows [a] further reduced need for producing excess calories in richer countries”.
Switching to cultivated meat brings massive land benefits
If the entire meat industry were to exclusively switch to cultivated proteins, it would save over 36.3 million sq km of area currently being used for pasture and animal feed. It would free up 96% of land currently being used by the livestock sector – that’s equivalent to more than 18 Mexicos.
Courtesy: RA Capital Management/Nature Conservancy
So, what can we do?
While these stats make for grim reading, there are a host of solutions that can help decarbonise the food system and safeguard the planet’s future.
The report touts the use of feed additives, vaccines, improved manure management, and rotational grazing to cut the methane impact of cattle, although studies have warned that the efficacy of some additives is vastly overstated.
Optimising yields by applying the most productive practices across all staple grains and produce globally can help clear up land the size of Mexico. Shifting a significant chunk of fruit and vegetable production to greenhouses could save up to 40% of the land it currently uses.
The report advocates for on-field interventions like cover crops, nutrient optimisation, weed control, and genetically optimised plant traits, as well as edge-of-field measures such as land restoration and terracing.
Finally, the adoption of alternative proteins to reduce or replace animal-based foods represents a $14B opportunity, with more than 200 startups working in the space. The impact of displacing conventional meat with cellular agriculture exhibits the potential of protein diversification in the long term.
“If we are serious about tackling climate change, water pollution, and food security, we must rethink how we grow, produce, and manage our resources,” said Kyle Teamey, managing partner of RA Capital’s Planetary Health team. “Sustainable solutions are not just an option – they are a necessity to transform agriculture into a cleaner, more efficient, and resilient industry that can feed the world for generations to come.”
British cultivated pork startup Hoxton Farms has teamed up with Japan’s Mitsui Chemicals in its latest move, spotlighting Asia’s biomanufacturing leadership.
When it comes to cultivated meat, Europe is still playing catch-up thanks to its regulatory framework, leading many startups to look elsewhere. But while the US may be the only country to have approved four of these products for sale, the protein culture wars have left the novel industry vulnerable.
That leaves an Asia-sized opportunity for Europe’s alternative protein leaders, and they’re going all in. Several firms have applied for regulatory approval and struck partnerships to manufacture cultivated meat in the world’s largest continent, thanks to a thriving biomanufacturing ecosystem and an increasingly inviting regulatory landscape.
One of those companies is Hoxton Farms, the London-based producer of cultivated meat. In March, it teamed up with Japanese conglomerate Sumitomo Corporation to commercialise its pork fat ingredient in the country and the wider Asia-Pacific region.
Now, it is doubling down on Japan through a partnership with Mitsui Chemicals, which has joined as an investor in the British startup. They will work together to expand biomanufacturing, cultivated fat, and other cell-based ingredients across Asia-Pacific.
Hoxton Farms and Mitsui Chemicals to develop suite of cell-based ingredients
Courtesy: Hoxton Farms
The collaboration will leverage Hoxton Farms’s technology and Mitsui Chemicals’s manufacturing expertise to accelerate the scale-up and commercialisation of biomanufacturing tech for high-value industries, including food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and sustainable materials.
Hoxton Farms’s modular bioreactor systems are designed for large-scale cell culture at drastically low costs, paving the way for the manufacturing of a range of bioproducts. Mitsui Chemicals, meanwhile, has decades of experience in chemicals manufacturing, process engineering, and infrastructure development, alongside a portfolio of biomanufacturing-ready materials.
The two companies said they will co-develop and deploy advanced materials that enhance the efficiency, durability and scalability of biomanufacturing systems.
They will start with Hoxton Fat, a lipid derived from cultivated pork cells that offers manufacturers a “drop-in” replacement for unhealthy animal fats and poor-performing plant oils in products like soups, sauces, and even conventional meat. The alliance will further explore opportunities for other cell-cultured and bioengineered products – think cosmetics, cell therapies, or bio-based chemicals.
“Starting with Hoxton Fat, an innovative and delicious ingredient that aligns with the sustainability policy of Mitsui Chemicals Group, we look forward to working together to establish an ecosystem for a wide range of applications and worldwide regions, leveraging our knowledge of materials and manufacturing,” said Shunsuke Fujii, general manager of Mitsui Chemicals’s New Business Incubation Center.
Tapping into Asia’s biomanufacturing leadership
Courtesy: Hoxton Farms
Max Jamilly, co-founder and CEO of Hoxton Farms, said: “As demand for sustainable alternatives grows across industries, we need a new generation of biomanufacturing infrastructure.” The goal of the collaboration is to unlock cross-sector innovation and economic growth in Asia-Pacific and across the world.
Globally, the next-gen biomanufacturing market, which offers low-carbon alternatives to petrochemicals and animal-derived products, was valued at $24B last year, and is expected to nearly triple by 2037. While North America retained the largest share, Asia-Pacific isn’t far behind.
This is thanks to a rise in policies establishing robust local supply chains that lower the reliance on imports and boost the economy. China has already established itself as a biomanufacturing leader, integrating biotech into its Made in China 2025 strategy and the 14th Five-Year Plan (covering 2021 to 2025).
Others are gaining ground too. South Korea’s Bio-Health Industry Promotion Plan looks to enhance its biotech ecosystem via initiatives like the Advanced Biotechnology Initiative and the National Synthetic Biology Initiative (which aims to turn 30% of its manufacturing into the bio-industry within a decade).
Singapore has long been a pioneer of food tech innovation, having been the first country to approve the sale of cultivated meat and gas proteins. The Biologics Pharma Innovation Programme Singapore, meanwhile, aims to boost local manufacturing via a public-private consortium.
Courtesy: Eat Just
Last year, India launched its BioE3 policy with a focus on accelerating tech development and commercialisation by setting up biomanufacturing hubs and biofoundries. Japan, meanwhile, wants to become the most advanced bioeconomy society by 2030, and has announced an $8B fund to support biomanufacturing.
Speaking to Green Queen in March, Jamilly said: “We will file this year in Singapore and the US, followed by UK and other jurisdictions such as Thailand, Japan, Korea, and Australia and New Zealand. We expect to go to market in Singapore first.”
US food tech startup Clever Carnivore has achieved industry-leading cost reductions for its cultivated pork, which it hopes to begin selling in the country next year.
As companies scramble to lower the production costs of cultivated meat, one Chicago startup has announced several breakthroughs to compete with the price of conventional pork.
Chicago-based Clever Carnivore has brought the cost of its culture media down to $0.07 per litre at pilot scale, sped up the doubling times of its porcine cells, and designed inexpensive bioreactors that could enable its demo facility to reach profitability in its first full year of production.
Typically, cell culture media costs hundreds of dollars per litre, thanks to expensive inputs like bovine serum albumin (BSA) and fetal bovine serum (FBS), as well as growth factors and basal media (like amino acids, vitamins, and glucose).
“Our expertise in media optimisation allows us to replace expensive components like BSA and FBS with carefully chosen alternatives, [and] ensure that we’re using only the absolutely essential components, maximising growth and minimising cost and waste,” CEO Virginia Rangos, who co-founded the startup with CSO Paul Burridge in 2022, tells Green Queen.
Clever Carnivore is now raising a $7M extension to its seed round from 2023 (which also closed at $7M) to focus on new products and regulatory approval. “We have a term sheet in hand and commitments from current investors. We’re beginning concerted outreach to fill out the round,” she says.
In addition, the firm is aiming to secure the regulatory green light from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and credits “pioneers in the space” that have already received approval and made it easier for companies to do so.
“In reviewing their published dossiers, we paid close attention to which data the FDA ultimately asked them to provide, and we’re providing as much information as possible in our initial submission,” Rangos explains. “We project [our] cultivated meat could be available on the market as early as summer 2026.”
How Clever Carnivore achieved industry-best media costs
Courtesy: Clever Carnivore
The bulk of the cost of cultivated meat comes from culture media. Over the last year, several startups have announced milestones to slash media costs, including Gourmey (€0.2/$0.23 per litre) and Meatly (£0.22/$0.30).
Clever Carnivore’s culture media cost – which has been at the $0.07 level for two years now – undercuts its competitors. “That’s what we’re paying today – including our in-house growth factor production, water purification and mixing. We anticipate further reductions as we scale to a production plant with a capacity of thousands of litres,” says Burridge, who has over 20 years of research experience in cell line development and growth media optimisation.
Most companies buy off-the-shelf bottled media or a pre-made powder. To help lower this cost, Clever Carnivore produces its media in-house, mixing it from stocks of vitamins, salts, and amino acids. This eliminates the cost of logistics, as well as the “massive profit margins of commercial media suppliers”, according to Rangos.
“We also make our own growth factors – reducing what would otherwise be the most expensive component of our media to a negligible cost,” she says. These are specifically engineered for optimal performance with enhanced temperature stability and cost-effective production. “Most companies are reliant on external suppliers, and these suppliers charge a premium.”
She adds: “To achieve a profitable, scalable process, cheap media is necessary, but not sufficient. Your media must also provide every resource your cells need to grow quickly and at high density. Our highly optimised media ensures the cells have exactly what they need (and nothing else) at each time point in their development.”
One key aspect is the creation of cell lines that are never exposed to animal-based inputs; instead, they grow in this custom culture medium from the get-go. “It’s incredibly difficult to eliminate FBS or BSA from your media if your cells are ‘used to’ these expensive components. If you take them away from cells that have been exposed to them, their growth rate will plummet,” explains Rangos.
Unlike human nutrition, cells aren’t influenced by the cost or variety of their diet. Once they’re adapted to a medium, they prefer it over others. “Our medium has the bare minimum inputs that cells require, and they thrive in that low-cost medium better than they would in a high-cost medium.”
Innovative bioreactors further drive down costs
Courtesy: Clever Carnivore
Aside from the culture media cost reductions and optimised cell lines, Clever Carnivore’s porcine cells are capable of doubling in less than 14 hours in adherent culture. “We use our media to signal our cells to enter a naturally highly proliferative state,” says Rangos. “We don’t have to use genetic modification to ‘immortalise’ cells, but our cells are still extremely proliferative.”
“With the right process and training, our method is actually much more robust than methods that rely on genetic modification. We can reliably produce new cell lines on demand, whereas methods like spontaneous immortalisation rely on chance mutations that cannot be reliably reproduced.”
The startup is banking on a proprietary bioprocess design to lower costs and increase efficiency. Having low-cost media and numerous bioreactors allows it to run bioprocess experiments at an “unmatched pace” and refine all the parameters contributing to cell growth. “Elements like ideal temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, and bioreactor design make a huge difference in yield,” says Rangos.
A key factor was the use of secondhand bioreactors for benchtop experiments, which the company bought on eBay. The company has since moved to large-scale stainless-steel bioreactors, which form the basis of the process described in the dossier it will submit to the FDA.
“Our goal has always been to submit for approval a process as identical as possible to our production process at full commercial scale, to ensure a streamlined path through approval,” explains Rangos.
The cultivated pork is produced in two 500-litre bioreactors, with a third on the way. The firm has managed to cut costs on these larger-scale tanks considerably by developing a design without expensive components – while they might be standard in biopharma applications, they are unnecessary for cultivated meat production.
It’s additionally working directly with steel fabricators that cater to food manufacturers, instead of ordering off the shelf from standard suppliers that usually serve the biopharma sector.
Clever Carnivore’s other bioprocess innovations include the growth of cells without microcarriers, which are “expensive, yield-limiting components that must be included in the final food product”, and a seed chain design and disaggregation/re-aggregation method that substantially increase yield and shorten the production timeline.
Upside Foods and Eat Just’s journeys paved the way forward
Courtesy: Clever Carnivore
The startup isn’t shy about the fact that it benefitted from being a late entrant to the space. Witnessing early pioneers hit R&D hurdles and various milestones allowed it to avoid common pitfalls.
Rangos notes how Upside Foods and Eat Just – the first two cultivated meat makers to receive regulatory approval in the US – “didn’t have the luxury of waiting to submit a dossier for regulatory review until they had developed a process viable at factory scale”.
“Investors wanted to see that cultivated meat could pass regulatory review, so that was a box they needed to check. We’ve had more flexibility to allow science to drive strategy because pioneers have already proven that cultivated meat can be sold and that consumers will buy it,” she explains.
“We didn’t have to pitch why cultivated meat was important – just that we had viable technology and strategy to get profitable products to market.
“We’re also unusual because – in part due to the personalities of the founders and in part through necessity – we’ve run a very lean operation. The executives take their turns cleaning the bathrooms, our team painted our new facility together, and if the bioprocess team have an idea, Paul is the first to drive over to the hardware store to find a part we can adapt to try it out right away.”
Rangos outlines how early regulatory submissions “took a lot longer to progress” because the government and businesses had to work together to figure out how to evaluate cultivated meat.
“Our path to approval should be relatively smooth because the groundwork for evaluation has already been laid, we’re presenting as much information as possible up front, [and] we’re submitting a process that is identical in all meaningful ways to what we intend to do at factory scale, ensuring we won’t need to complicate the FDA’s workflow by submitting substantive changes for review.”
Complying with the FDA and the US Department of Agriculture’s standards for production facilities is critical. Clever Carnivore is designing its demo plant with a “well-validated process, high-level quality controls, and equipment that is proven and can be amortised under known schedules”, explained Burridge. It features low-cost inputs and equipment, helping the firm keep buildout costs under $4.5M.
VC landscape forces Clever Carnivore to revise fundraising plans
Courtesy: Clever Carnivore
To date, Clever Carnivore has secured $9.1M from investors, most of which came from the seed round that it’s looking to extend now.
“We initially planned to raise a Series A round to build our demonstration facility. Our commercial-scale factory design is composed of modular units of bioreactors and related processing equipment. The demonstration facility is designed to get a complete module up and running, producing profitable cultivated meat and providing final proof of concept for larger-scale facilities.”
That plan would require an $18M raise. The problem is, capital is “tremendously expensive” now, as investors flock away from food tech. After attracting $1.3B in 2021, investment in cultivated meat has dipped dramatically. In 2023, funding fell by 75%, followed by another 40% drop in 2024, reaching just $139M. In fact, in the last three years, this sector has cumulatively raised less money than it did in 2021 alone.
The headwinds have continued in 2025, with Aleph Farms’s $29M round the only sizeable raise for cultivated meat this year. “We’ve revised our initial plan for a Series A raise because cultivated meat valuations are at an all-time low, and many investors are sceptical about the space, due in part to the political climate, and in part to challenges faced by first-gen cultivated meat companies,” says Rangos.
“Many food and ag tech investors made early bets in the space and aren’t looking to make additional cultivated meat investments, and many sustainability or generalist investors are taking a ‘wait and see’ approach to the space right now.
“We decided to pivot to a plan that allows us to raise less and focus on regulatory approval, commercial partnerships, and beginning beef R&D. That said, we’ve received positive feedback and interest from both seasoned alt-protein investors and more generalist funds. We look forward to building our demonstration facility when capital markets are more favourable.”
Taste tests attract consumers and chefs alike
Courtesy: Clever Carnivore
Investors aren’t the only source of positive feedback for Clever Carnivore – consumers and chefs have taken to its cultivated bratwursts, breakfast sausages, hot dogs and meatballs too. This month, it held two tasting events, where it served over 50 bratwursts to rave reviews, according to the startup.
“We’ve spoken to conventional meat advocates who candidly told us they ‘wanted to hate’ our product,” recalls Ramos. “But when presented with a product that cooks and tastes just like the sausage they’ve always loved, they quickly became intrigued.”
Aside from taste, consumers have expressed appreciation for its value proposition – think meat free from steroids, antibiotics or GMOs, a secure food supply chain with domestic production, and expanded options that will keep products on shelves amid shortages and price inflation for conventional meat.
“We’re very interested in partnering with existing conventional meat and restaurant chain brands. We know we’re asking consumers to try something new, and we think presenting Clever Carnivore’s cultivated meat for the first time under a label consumers recognise and trust will go a long way toward getting consumers to try the product.”
The nutritional profile will only help expand the appeal, with the cultivated pork exhibiting similar amino acid profiles and nutritional values to conventional versions. “Our prototype products incorporate a plant-based fat. Our cultivated pork delivers the ‘meaty’ flavour, allowing us to use plant-based fats and reap the nutritional benefits of plant-based vs animal fats.”
Why Clever Carnivore is targeting processed cultivated meat
Courtesy: Clever Carnivore
Clever Carnivore is among a number of companies working on cultivated pork, offering alternatives to products that the WHO has deemed carcinogenic, like sausages and hot dogs. These include Mission Barns (already approved by the FDA), Meatable, Mewery, and Magic Valley.
The decision to focus on processed pork instead of whole cuts was driven by “a combination of scientific considerations, budgetary constraints, and strategic market positioning”.
“Producing whole cuts requires more time in the bioreactors – you need to swap the media and allow cells time to form tissues. Transition to a specialty bioreactor for added tissue development might also be necessary,” says Rangos.
“We’ve progressed to this point with only $9M in investment so far. To use resources as efficiently as possible and to avoid overstretching our team, we decided to focus our R&D on pork before other meat and on formed products before whole cuts,” she adds. “We like the idea of debuting accessible products – cultivated meat not as a luxury, but as a high-quality, reasonably priced staple.”
That being said, its process does make it feasible to develop whole cuts someday. “Getting there will require additional time and money, and we believe it’s important to bring competitively priced and compelling products to market as soon as possible,” she says.
Aside from pork, Clever Carnivore’s expertise in mammalian cell biology and bioprocess enables it to fast-track other mammalian species through its R&D pipeline. “Our next priority is beef, but we’re also interested in working on lamb to expand our appeal to international markets where pork and beef are less popular.”
Sydney-based Vow received regulatory approval to sell cultivated meat in Australia and New Zealand, which will begin appearing on restaurant menus in the coming weeks.
Australians will soon be able to order cultivated meat from restaurant menus, following the country’s first approval of these novel proteins.
The joint food safety regulator of Australia and New Zealand has amended its Food Standards Code following a multi-year assessment of Vow’s cultured quail, allowing the startup to sell its innovation in eateries and supermarkets across the two countries.
It followed the preliminary approval granted by Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) in March, when its board had finalised the required food code changes, as first reported by Green Queen. They were then under review by food ministers across the two countries, before culminating in the approval decision for Vow.
Speaking to Green Queen in April, co-founder and CEO George Peppou had confirmed the company would launch in Australia first, via “high-end restaurants and elevated fast-casual concepts first, followed by retail partnerships later in the year”.
Now, the firm has announced that its cultured Japanese quail – sold under the Forged brand in concepts like parfait and foie gras – will debut at dozens of restaurants within weeks, including Bottarga and The Lincoln in Melbourne, and Nel, The Waratah, and Kitchen by Mike in Sydney.
“This isn’t about replacing the meats we know and love. It’s about trying something entirely new – something that can only exist because of how it’s made. For chefs, that’s incredibly exciting. But for all of us, it’s a huge opportunity,” said Mike McEnearney, owner and executive chef at Kitchen by Mike.
He has signed on as the first Australian ambassador of Forged, and will showcase its cultivated meat at the soon-to-open 1Hotel in Melbourne too. “The future always lies in bold ideas that seem impossible at first, but are rooted in real innovation – the kind that drives culture forward,” he added.
FSANZ approval could speed up future applications
Courtesy: Vow
Vow is already one of the leading cultivated meat players globally, becoming the only startup to be approved to sell in three geographies.
It first secured the greenlight in Singapore last year, where its quail has rolled out at a growing list of venues since, including Two Men Bagel House, Mirko Febbrile’s Somma, and sustainability-forward bar Fura. According to the company, it is posting a 200% month-over-month growth in the city-state. Now, it can be sold in Australia and New Zealand too.
In its approval decision, FSANZ confirmed that Vow’s cultured quail will be mixed with other ingredients – as is the norm for cultivated meat – to produce dishes in restaurants and foodservice establishments, and end products for supermarkets.
It further noted that the product cannot be included in “special purpose foods” like sports foods, infant formula, or food for special medical purposes without additional pre-market assessments.
And in the amended code, FSANZ clarified that these proteins must be labelled as “cell-cultured” or “cell-cultivated” on packaging, if it’s “represented in words, images or both as being from the animal” from which the food is sourced.
“FSANZ has now successfully developed a dedicated regulatory pathway for cell-cultured foods, opting to introduce two new standards for Cell-Cultured Foods rather than relying on the existing Novel Foods Framework. This establishes ANZ as only the second jurisdiction globally (after the US) to adopt a bespoke regulatory process for cell-cultured meat,” explained Kim Tonnet, head of regulatory affairs at Cellular Agriculture Australia.
“This move will make the requirements clear and defined for future applicants, reducing uncertainty and delays, and thereby streamlining the approval process. In a really positive step, FSANZ also indicated that future applications under these standards may benefit from faster and more cost-effective assessments,” she added.
Vow hits production milestone with largest-ever cultivated meat
Courtesy: Vow
To make its cultivated meat, Vow uses a small selection of cells from a Japanese quail and places them in a nutrient-rich broth, which is transferred into fermentation tanks that recreate the conditions inside a quail’s body and allow the cells to grow and multiply naturally. The meat is ready for harvest in 79 days, when it is separated from the broth and incorporated into delicacies like parfait and foie gras.
“Flavour is everything to us – it’s the reason Forged exists. We’re crafting meats that aren’t just rich and complex, but downright irresistible,” said Peppou. “Many [chefs] describe the product’s signature umami depth and silky, melt-in-your-mouth texture as unlike anything they’ve worked with before.”
The startup has raised $55M to date, entering the market with a smaller outlay than others that have received approval, including Upside Foods ($608M), Eat Just ($270M), Aleph Farms ($147M), Wildtype ($120M) and Mission Barns ($60M).
The FSANZ’s initial approval had come weeks after Vow cut back 30% of its workforce, a decision that stemmed from a longer-than-expected timeline for regulatory clearance, but one Peppou described as coming from a “position of strength as the industry leader, not a position of weakness”.
The company has hit several production milestones in recent months. Its cell cultivation capacity has extended to 35,000 litres within its second factory, which it says was 20 to 50 times cheaper to build than competitors. It operates the largest food-grade cell culture bioreactor at 20,000 litres, and claims to have completed the largest cultivated meat harvest in history (538 kg) last month.
By the end of the year, Vow expects to reach a production capability of up to 900 kg per harvest, scaling to 10,800 kg monthly or 130,000 kg annually. Longer-term improvements that make use of the full factory capacity will allow it to eventually surpass 20,000 kg a month.
A ‘momentum shift’ away from the US?
Courtesy: Vow
“Meat has never been more popular, especially in Asian markets that import top-quality proteins from down under. The challenge is that conventional production methods are highly inefficient: we currently feed up to 100 calories to a cow to produce just one calorie of beef,” said Mirte Gosker, managing director of alternative protein think tank the Good Food Institute.
“Sustainably satisfying rising meat demand will require scaling up additional forms of protein production that can complement the traditional farming methods Australia is renowned for,” she added.
“Australia’s public embrace of cellular agriculture could enable local food producers to sell healthy and delicious cultivated proteins through existing agricultural distribution networks and add substantial new revenue streams to their ledgers. It also sets the stage for greater international regulatory harmonisation, which has the potential to unlock export opportunities across the world’s most populous region.”
Globally, six other companies have received some form of regulatory clearance to sell cultivated meat, including Eat Just (in Singapore and the US), Upside Foods, Mission Barns and Wildtype (all in the US), Aleph Farms (in Israel), and Meatly (in the UK). Regulators in the EU, Switzerland and Thailand are evaluating applications too.
Vow’s success over the last 18 months comes as “momentum shifts away from the US”, according to the company, which appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for its viral woolly mammoth meatball stunt in 2023. Cultivated meat has become entrenched in the culture wars, with six states having banned these proteins from being sold or produced.
Meanwhile, investment in cultivated meat has also continued to fall, by 75% in 2023 and another 40% in 2024. In the last three years, startups in this category have cumulatively raised less money than they did in 2021 alone.
Currently, Wildtype and Vow are the only two companies actively selling cultivated meat in restaurants, highlighting the scale and commercialisation challenges faced by many startups. Vow’s cultured quail, however, will soon be served in over 50 venues, showcasing the true potential of the sector.
“With an expanding network of restaurants in Singapore continuing to serve Forged just 14 months after launch, the appetite for what’s next is already clear,” said Peppou. “This is a new category of food that hasn’t just been accepted – it’s been embraced. And if that’s any signal, Australia’s just getting started.”
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers a host of protein lattes, Better Nature’s tempeh rollouts, and Meatable’s presentation at a Wall Street Journal forum.
New products and launches
New York-based Laird Superfood has released an instant protein latte powder with 10g of plant protein per serving. It combines pea, hemp and pumpkin seed protein with mushroom extracts, coconut MCTs and Aquamin. It retails for $19 per six servings and is available on its website and at Sprouts Farmers Market nationwide.
Likewise, plant-based milk brand Califia Farms has introduced a ready-to-drink protein vanilla almond latte, offering 10g of pea protein per serving. It can be found at Target stores for $5.29 per 40z bottle.
In similar news, Indian fitness and lifestyle brand HRX – co-owned by Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan – has unveiled a line of oat milk protein shakes, starting with a chocolate flavour (with 25g of plant protein per 100ml), ahead of introducing vanilla, cold coffee and lighter chocolate variants.
Courtesy: HRX
Still in India, Néktar Bakerymakes vegan desserts and viennoiseries, and will open a cloud location this month in the city of Pune.
Back in the US, the owners of Salt Lake City’s Vertical Diner have inaugurated a new plant-based deli, with a menu featuring sandwiches, burgers, bowls, pastries, and more.
Courtesy: Better Nature
Elsewhere, British tempeh brandBetter Nature has rolled out its organic tempeh into around 150 additional Asda stores, and added a new Mediterranean-flavoured block to its lineup, which is available on Ocado for £3 per 220g pack.
Beyond Meat, meanwhile, has introduced its jalapeño-flavoured burger to 317 Asda stores in the UK, in addition to bringing its original burger to 350 of the retailer’s sites.
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
And Danish mycelium meat maker Tempty Foods has brought its Spicy Korean Sticks to 7-Eleven Denmark stores. The product was created through 7-Eleven’s Innovation Corner competition last year.
Company and finance updates
Dutch cultivated meat producer Meatable was present at the Wall Street Journal’s Global Food Forum event in Chicago (June 16), where CEO Jeff Tripician spoke on how cultivated meat can complement conventional agriculture and boost global food security.
Fresh from hosting a cultivated meat tasting in the New South Wales parliament, Australia’s Magic Valley is raising A$3M ($1.9M) to build its first manufacturing facility (which is expected to cost A$5M, or $3.3M) and produce 500 tonnes of product per year.
Planted, the Swiss plant-based meat maker, has opened its new production facility in Bavaria, Germany, featuring “state-of-the-art fermentation technology”, which the company says will double its manufacturing capacity.
Courtesy: Magic Valley
Agriculture giant the Groan Group has signed a strategic partnership with plant-based ingredient maker Aminola to accelerate and expand the use of sustainable ingredients in the human food, pet food and aquafeed sectors.
British plant-based ingredient maker Novo Farina has ceased trading, with its former managing director citing “market factors and ever-increasing cost challenges”.
AgFunder News reports that Yasir Abdul, the executive behind InvenTel, the company known for ‘As Seen on TV’ infomercials, has surfaced as the unexpected potential buyer of Meati, a fungi-based alternative meat company. The acquisition is being pursued through an entity named Meati Holdings, with Ryan Bethencourt, CEO of Wild Earth and an early-stage alt-protein investor, providing support during the transition.
Courtesy: Little Island
In New Zealand, plant-based dairy and ice cream firm Little Island has entered liquidation after 15 years in operation.
Luxembourg-based Moulins de Kleinbettingen has installed its second production line for plant proteins with a total investment of nearly €20M in its plant-based business, doubling its initial capacity and making co-manufacturing deals more flexible.
In Sweden, Stockeld Dreamery and Jävligt Gott have openedLabbet, a food tech hub equipped with a kitchen, lab spaces and offices for small and growing businesses.
Courtesy: Jävligt Gott
Similarly, Malaysia’s Pure Mylk has opened The Mylky Way in Kuala Lumpur, which is Southeast Asia’s first end-to-end innovation hub for plant-based milk and beverages. It aims to support companies small and big with product formulation, testing, and scaleable production.
Research, policy and awards
A Canadian-American study shows that a low-fat vegan diet can reduce moderate to severe hot flashes by 92% after women hit menopause, while also losing 16 times more weight than the control group.
UK coalition Plant-Based Universities is convening over 200 students for a Plant-Based Universities Europe Camp in August.
Bruce Friedrich, founder and president of alternative protein think tank the Good Food Institute,has been appointed to the Board of Advisors of EAT, the global food systems transformation non-profit.
Strategic consultancy Mission Plant has compiled a list of job boards and resources for folks looking for positions in the alternative protein industry.
Courtesy: Institute for Organic Farming
Research by the Institute for Organic Farming (commissioned by the WWF) has revealed that a vegan diet is the cheapest expensive for a family of four in Austria, saving €225 per month compared to an omnivore diet.
Finally, Hélène Briand, co-founder of French precision fermentation startup Verley (formerly Bon Vivant), won the Female Founder Challenge at Vivatech in Paris.
Owen Ensor, co-founder and CEO of British cultivated pet food startup Meatly, on why political bans shouldn’t deter investors from the alternative protein ecosystem.
There is a dark cloud of local bans in the US and labelling disputes alongside this exciting industry progress. However, we need to have a perspective on these and look at what is actually going on.
In the last few years, many governments have funded, approved, or supported cultivated meat. By contrast, cell-cultivated meat has been banned in a handful of right-wing US states. The balance of debate is clear – there is great technical progress, and almost all governments are backing this innovative product.
So we need to ask ourselves: why are we giving these bans so much attention?
Even the meat industry is against the bans
Courtesy: Meatly
This negative coverage is driven largely by right-leaning political factions, attempting to cast this innovative food technology as the latest battleground in the ever-escalating culture wars. Alarmist language, such as accusations of “global elite authoritarianism“, has been deployed to fuel opposition, particularly in ultra-conservative strongholds.
To date, six US states have banned cultivated meat. At the same time, bans in other regions have been attempted, including Romania, where the bill is stuck in the legislature and is unlikely to proceed, and Italy, where a proposed ban contravenes EU law.
To my knowledge, cultivated meat is the first food ever to be banned before even being on sale, and for political reasons. These bans are purely to appeal to a hard right-wing electorate in certain states. The US meat lobby doesn’t even want cultivated meat banned.
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association recently stated: “Telling Americans what they can and cannot buy at the grocery store does not align with NCBA’s policy book or our conservative values… and setting a precedent that the federal government can remove a product from the shelves completely is not wise for the cattle industry, when we have no idea who might be sitting in the White House or in Congress 10 years from now.”
The global excitement for cultivated meat
Courtesy: Meatly
Looking beyond these bans, we get a clearer, more genuine understanding of the development and excitement of this industry.
Globally, there is a growing consensus in some of the world’s largest economies that cultivated meat and other cell-cultivated food solutions hold the keys to bolstering food security and creating a food system which supports sustainable farming.
Several markets across the globe – including the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, and Singapore – have already granted regulatory clearance for cultivated meat for either human or pet consumption. A Trump appointee has also signed off on the most recent US approvals.
These nations and regions, spanning diverse political landscapes and geographical locations, have undertaken rigorous safety assessments and concluded that cultivated meat is a viable and safe food source. This crucial step of regulatory approval signals a fundamental acceptance of the technology and paves the way for its integration into a sustainable food system.
But that’s not all. The financial backing for cultivated meat research and development paints an even broader picture of commitment to this new food industry. A remarkable 22 countries, encompassing virtually every major global economy, have actively funded cultivated meat initiatives.
This extensive list includes nations such as Canada, China, Norway, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Israel, France, Germany, Poland, Spain, India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Brazil, in addition to those with regulatory approvals.
It’s clear that while a handful of regions grapple with politically motivated bans, the overwhelming global direction of travel points firmly towards acceptance and support.
A trillion-dollar opportunity
Courtesy: Jack Lawson/Meatly
Such widespread investment and attention underscore a deep-seated understanding of the potential benefits that cultivated meat offers across a spectrum of critical areas, beyond just tackling the substantial emissions behind industrial animal agriculture.
The biggest benefit is an economic one. The global meat market is worth $1.55T, and global demand for meat continues to grow. Countries that can get ahead on cultivated meat and other cellular agriculture technologies are looking at a major economic win, creating local industries that can feed people sustainably while creating jobs and generating revenue.
Cultivated meat will also boost food security, not threaten it. This innovation can help produce sustainable meat in high volumes, while farmers can focus on high-quality, high-value regeneratively farmed meat. These proteins can also shorten supply chains and make nations less dependent on imported meat. This will have knock-on benefits for human health, where a reliance on industrial agriculture will limit the use of antibiotics and the risk of spread of zoonotic diseases such as avian flu.
That’s why, when a handful of conservative US states push back with politically motivated bans, it feels increasingly out of sync with this broader global momentum and more like an attempt to stifle innovation and limit consumer choice. The sole outcome of this is that the future of food is passed from the US to Europe and Asia.
It’s clear that by focusing on these bans, we obscure the significant progress being made globally, the substantial investments being channelled into the sector, and the growing recognition of its crucial role in building a more sustainable and secure food future.
What this means for the industry
Graphic by Green Queen
For cultivated meat companies, the advice is simple: stay focused.
The world is vast, and almost all regions actively support and encourage the development and commercialisation of cultivated meat. Direct your attention, resources, and efforts towards these receptive markets. Engage with governments and regulatory bodies that understand the value proposition and are committed to fostering innovation. The long-term trajectory is undeniably positive, and short-term political noise should not derail strategic goals.
For investors, the message is equally resolute: recognise the global landscape.
The commitment to cultivated meat is not confined to a few progressive enclaves; it has widespread support, embraced by major economies and forward-thinking governments worldwide. We’ve had VCs say they will not invest because of the ‘geopolitical debate’. It’s really staggering to hear a global VC fund is making investment decisions based on what a provincial hard-right legislator is doing.
Let’s be very clear: you can build an exceptionally profitable, high-return business outside of Alabama… in fact, you can build an exceptional business outside of the US.
The potential for significant returns and the opportunity to contribute to a more sustainable future remains, with the global support for cultivated meat providing a robust foundation for long-term growth and success. Now is actually the ideal time to be investing, given the suppressed valuations that the current debate has created.
The direction of travel is clear. Governments around the world realise the environmental, health, economic, security, and ethical potential of cultivated meat, as well as the value in allowing consumers and the free market to decide which safe products should be sold. It’s time we started having this define the political conversation around cultivated meat.
A study of Upside Foods’ cultivated meat tasting shows what consumers want from these proteins and what they don’t want from their lawmakers.
On June 27, 2024, a California company took a stand against the state of Florida.
Upside Foods, the first startup to be approved to sell cultivated meat in the US, held a public tasting of its chicken at a rooftop in Miami. It was a precursor to what was to come four days later: a statewide ban on these proteins, championed by Governor Ron DeSantis.
Since then, five more states have followed suit. Alabama, Mississippi, Montana, Indiana, and Nebraska have all outlawed the sale of cultivated meat, but the public doesn’t seem to be aligned with their leaders on this issue.
In an analysis of Upside Foods’s tasting event, researchers at Tufts University found that cultivated meat is viewed favourably both on a sensory and political scale. Every attendee who was interviewed opposed a ban on these foods, be it Democrats, Republicans, or those with another political inclination.
It comes during a year when the Food and Drug Administration has approved two additional companies to sell cultivated meat in the US, with Mission Barns now awaiting the greenlight from the Department of Agriculture for its pork fat, and Wildtype’s salmon already available in a Portland restaurant.
Courtesy: Upside Foods
How do Americans feel about cultivated meat?
Attendees lining up to taste the cultivated meat spanned all ages, and while most attendees were white or Latinx, people from other ethnic and racial backgrounds were also present. That said, there were roughly twice as many men as women.
They tasted the chicken as part of a tostada created by Caja Caliente owner and TV personality Mika Leon. The cultivated chicken was made a la Plancha con Sazón and accompanied by avocado, chipotle crema, beet sprouts, and fresh lime zest.
Of those interviewed, 73% had a favourable review of the taste, but an equal share called for sensory improvements, mostly in terms of the chicken’s texture. This split opinion. Some found the cultivated meat indistinguishable from conventional chicken, while others found it similar or inferior to plant-based alternatives.
Aside from complaints about a “rubbery” texture, one key concern was the use of fetal bovine serum, which led to “striking and sudden reversals” from acceptance to rejection. “I wish I’d known they use animal ingredients. If I had known, I wouldn’t have tried it. I wouldn’t have eaten it,” said one taster.
Courtesy: Kevin Martin Galante/Upside Foods
Yet others indicated that they’d like to see cultivated meat reach price parity, an effort being accelerated across the industry. These reasons are why, while 80% expressed a willingness to try it again, only a quarter said they would do so regularly, pending further product development.
Interestingly, many attendees wanted to try it in other formats and see if they could cook it themselves. “The skill of a celebrity chef cooking the food was highly salient for respondents and led to caution or hesitation when answering whether what they tried would influence future food decisions,” the study notes in the NPJ Science of Food journal, quoting one attendee who said: “This was definitely cooked by someone who knew what they were doing.”
Democrat or Republican, nobody wants a cultivated meat ban
While Floridians had some words of advice for cultivated meat manufacturers, they had stronger words for the politicians looking to ban the innovation.
“I support innovation and I’m usually a big DeSantis supporter. But I don’t support him on this. I would vote against the ban,” said one attendee. “I feel like the ban is an interesting choice for a state that allegedly supports smaller government,” added another.
For one taste-tester, the ban was “completely based on scare tactics and political nonsense” and set a “really terrible precedent”. “We don’t ban foods in America. That’s not who we are, that’s just not what we do,” they said. “There’s no science behind the ban. It’s nonsense.”
The divergence from traditional party positions, particularly for those identifying as Democratic or liberal (who typically do not oppose government intervention), suggests that cultivated meat “might create new political fault lines defying traditional party stances”, the researchers write.
Miami chef Mika Leon and Upside Foods CEO Uma Valeti at the Freedom of Food tasting event in June 2024 | Courtesy: Kevin Martin Galante/Upside Foods
At the same time, the opposition to banning cultivated meat is non-partisan. “Self-identified Democrats, liberals, Libertarians and Republicans aligned on the belief that these technologies and foods should be allowed to progress and that government interference was overreach,” they explain.
“The ban violates ingrained values of freedom for Libertarians, free markets for Republicans, and signifies moving away from progress for societal benefit for Democrats and liberals.”
The study uncovered three theoretical pathways of acceptance: American identity, perceived sensory and cultural values, and the need for transparency and further innovation.
“Cultivated meat companies must prioritise transparent communication that dispels misconceptions and educates consumers about the production process, while avoiding marketing strategies that could provoke a backlash when setting unrealistic expectations,” says the study.
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Oatly’s recipe lookbook, Villareal CF’s tofu seminar, and People Magazine’s plant-based awards.
New products and launches
Swedish oat milk giant Oatly has unveiled a lookbook for the Spring/Summer 2025 season, featuring a range of recipes using its products. Think a maple miso latte, a lacto-fermented blueberry matcha, and a salty banana split.
Courtesy: Oatly
Dutch alternative protein producer Schouten has launched three Taste of the World veggie burgers inspired by Mexican, Italian and Thai cuisines.
McDonald’s Netherlands has re-released the Meatless McKroket two years after it was first launched, with a jackfruit filling made from Fiber Foods‘s PrimeJack ingredient.
Swiss plant-based meat giant Planted has introduced ready-to-eat steak bites in select Coop stores across the nation.
Courtesy: Yellow Sunshine
Yellow Sunshine is a new Swiss brand established by the founders of vegan creamery New Roots, Alice Fauconnet and Freddy Hunziker. It makes lupin protein blocks in plain, garlic and herbs, and pepper-paprika flavours.
While Ferrero has just launched its vegan Nutella in the UK, a new competitor has already emerged. Pip & Nut has released a chocolate-hazelnut spread with a sixth of the sugar content. It retails at Sainsbury’s for £3.50 per 165g hat and £7.65 per 400g tub, before rolling out at Whole Foods Market, Ocado and Amazon.
Spanish football club Villareal CF and the Embassy of Japan in Spain partnered to host a tofu seminar with Somenoya Co, a 163-year-old tofu company from Tokyo.
Courtesy: Yellow Sunshine
In response to the high prices and market volatility of cocoa, German food giant Dr. Oetker has released a carob flour for consumers in Turkey to replace cocoa powder at home.
In more alt-cocoa news, US flour giant Ardent Mills has launched a wheat-based Cocoa Replace product. It can substitute 25% of cocoa powder in baking applications.
Kraft Heinz Not Company has unveiled the latest innovations in its US lineup: a NotMayo Chipotle Squeeze and Kraft NotMac & Cheese Cups.
Courtesy: Kraft Heinz Not Company/Green Queen
US breakfast foods company Purely Elizabeth has rolled out a Protein Oatmeal range in Apple Harvest Crumble, Chocolate Chip Banana Bread and Maple Cinnamon Roll. The vegan products have 10g of protein per serving and retail for $6.49 per 235g pack in supermarkets nationwide,
Also in the US, the Plant-Based Seafood Co‘s Mind Blown brand has reignited its partnership with PLNT Burger to offer its Maryland-style crab cake in a limited-edition Happy Crabby Sandwich for the third year in a row.
Häagen-Dazs Shops, meanwhile, has launched a summer blueberry collection featuring the brand’s first oat milk offering in the US. The Blueberry Lemon Non-Dairy Freeze drink combines its blueberry and lemon sorbet with oat milk and blueberry preserve.
Courtesy: Häagen-Dazs Shops
Plant-based ingredients maker Planteneers has introduced a methylcellulose-free texturiser blend with functional yeast protein for clean-label plant-based meat.
And Israeli startup Alfred’s Foodtech has released dairy-free Gouda slices with 18% protein under its new Alfred’s Deli brand. They come in original and pesto flavours.
Company and finance updates
Danish ingredients firm Feast Foods has ceased operations after failing to secure funding for its yeast extract replacer.
Also in the Nordics, Swedish dairy giant Valio has announced that it will close the Kauhava factory it took over from Raisio by the end of this year, relocating operations to its Joensuu site instead.
Courtesy: Valio
Online grocer Vegan Essentials has been acquired by Fake Meats owners Steven and Kim Skaff, who bought it from fellow retailer PlantX.
British cultivated meat firm Ivy Farm Technologies has appointed Rebecca Wright as chief legal officer, as part of its effort to work with regulators globally to bring its Wagyu beef to market.
US vegan fast-food chain Slutty Vegan has hired entrepreneur, investor and marketer Lauren Maillian as brand president.
Courtesy: Slutty Vegan/LinkedIn
The new owners of the Merit Functional Foods plant in Winnipeg, which went into receivership in March 2023, are not planning to restart it as a plant protein business.
But fellow Canadian company Burcon NutraScience has completed the first production run of its Peazazz C pea protein at its facility in Galesburg, Illinois.
Edinburgh’s Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre’s FlexBio facility is home to Scotland’s first open-access 300-litre fermenter, which was supported by an £847,000 grant from national agency Scottish Enterprise.
Courtesy: Blue Tribe Foods
As part of its 2025 sustainability initiative, Indian plant-based meat startup Blue Tribe Foods recycled 1,475 kg of plastic in the first quarter of 2025, building on the 2,333 kg it recycled last year.
A bankruptcy judge in Delaware has given vegan sushi chain Planta final approval to secure nearly $5M in financing after resolving comments from its debtor-in-possession.
Venture firm Nordic Foodtech VC has hit its first close of €40M as part of an €80M fund to invest in new technologies for the food and agriculture industry.
Policy, research and awards
Californian precision fermentation leader Perfect Day has asked a District of Columbia court to throw out a lawsuit alleging that it had misled consumers about its animal-free whey products.
Courtesy: Perfect Day
Scotland’s biotechnology sector is celebrating the launch of the country’s first open-access 300-litre fermenter, which has been installed thanks to an £847,000 grant from the national economic development agency, Scottish Enterprise.
Also in Scotland, the University of Stirling has developed the Clean Food Consumerism scale to help manufacturers meet evolving consumer preferences for clean-label foods.
Ahead of its Singapore approval, French cultivated foie gras maker Gourmey has joined the APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo have found a way to control the key amino acids responsible for flavour in a bid to get cultivated meat to taste closer to its conventional counterpart.
A study by the Federal University of São Paulo has revealed that 80% of these plant-based meat products in Brazil have good nutritional quality, based on the Nutri-Score indicator. Meanwhile, 73% of vegan alternatives were classed as ultra-processed, much lower than animal-derived meats (92%).
Along with its upcoming fundraise, Simple Planet is about to submit dossiers in South Korea and Singapore for regulatory approval – a feat its CEO says will make cultivated meat resurgent.
Despite continued declines in funding and escalating political challenges, regulatory progress shows that cultivated meat can weather the storm, according to the CEO of one major industry player.
Funding for cultivated meat startups shrunk by 75% in 2023, and another 40% last year, just as politicians in Italy, Florida, Alabama, and now Mississippi have banned the sale and production of these proteins. The industry, meanwhile, continues to face major headwinds due to high R&D costs, scaling difficulties, and the macroeconomic landscape.
“However, as more bio-food tech companies gradually receive regulatory approvals from various countries, we remain optimistic that the cultivated meat sector will continue to expand, leading to a resurgence in investment and funding,” says Dominic Jeong.
He is the co-founder and CEO of Simple Planet, a South Korean food tech startup that is taking a unique approach to cultivated meat. It produces cell-cultured ingredients like proteins (specifically, amino acids) in powder and paste formats, and omega-3 fatty acids in the form of an oil and a paste.
Graphic by Green Queen
The firm – which is prioritising beef, chicken, and fish from its suite of 13 cell lines – is preparing regulatory dossiers for food safety authorities in South Korea and Singapore, aiming to file them within the first half of this year. It means its products could come to market in 2026, given the timeline of approvals in each country.
“We are initially working on a muscle-derived cell line. This cell line will be submitted for regulatory approval upon completion of the necessary application data,” Jeong tells Green Queen.
Simple Planet also has an eye on Thailand and Indonesia, and is amplifying its presence in the Middle East and North America. These efforts will be helped by its upcoming bridge loan worth $10M, Jeong notes.
“It’s a complex time for cell-based food globally, particularly in funding and regulation,” Jeong says. “With investors becoming more cautious, having a clear path to market and a scalable business model is more important than ever. At Simple Planet, we’ve stayed focused on efficiency, partnerships, and long-term viability.”
The company has already raised $8M from investors, in addition to an $8M government grant it received as part of a food security project last year. The new funding, the CEO says, will primarily be used to drive commercialisation, establish an industrial production facility, and expand Simple Planet’s business operations.
Simple Planet’s multi-pronged path to market
Courtesy: Simple Planet
Simple Planet is producing a lyophilised cell powder with 16 times more protein than whey. “The powder has the potential to effectively substitute the whey protein currently used in Formula 75 (F-75) and Formula 100 (F-100), which are therapeutic milk formulations designed for the treatment of severe malnutrition,” explains Jeong.
“We are actively engaged in efforts to replace whey protein in these products to provide a reliable and effective source of protein nutrition.”
In addition to these ingredients, it has unveiled Balboa Kitchen, a healthy snacking brand featuring ready-to-eat granola, functional snacks, and “other clean-label products” made from the cell-based ingredients.
“We’re planning to enter global markets this year, starting with Southeast Asia and Japan, where demand for Korean-made healthy food continues to grow,” reveals Jeong.
Meanwhile, Simple Planet’s patented serum-free culture medium replaces fetal bovine serum with probiotic-derived metabolites, slashing costs by over 99.8% and addressing key ethical concerns. “Our serum-free culture media is aimed at research labs and biotech startups, particularly those working on cell-based food. We’re leveraging our network to support innovation across the industry,” he says.
Since its innovations are ingredients rather than fully formed products, a direct comparison with the cost of conventional meat is not an appropriate measure, Jeong argues. “However, the initial cost per kilogram is comparable to that of conventional meat, while the protein content per unit weight is significantly higher. As production scales up to industrial levels, the cost is expected to decrease significantly,” he explains.
“Our scale of production is using 1,000-litre bioreactors, and the capacity goal of ingredient production is a maximum of 3.2 tonnes per month,” he adds. “Our facility is currently in the process of obtaining GMP [Good Manufacturing Practice] certification, which will ensure that our production is conducted in a highly controlled, contaminant-free environment.”
Simple Planet is targeting CPG players with the cultivated protein and fat. “We aim to produce at scale and collaborate with food conglomerates to enhance the nutrition of their products. These ingredients are highly versatile and can be applied to snacks, beverages, ready meals, and more,” says Jeong.
“We’ve already completed successful proof-of-concepts with major Korean players like Nongshim and CJ, developing more nutritious versions of products like instant noodles and gyoza.”
Several projects underway to advance cultivated meat
Courtesy: Simple Planet
The purpose of the bridge funding is fourfold. Simple Planet will aim to set up a large-scale production plant, establish strategic partnerships for product integration with food and beverage companies, expand its presence in global markets while pursuing regulatory approval, and hire top biotech, food science, and commercialisation experts to help execute these goals.
In the meantime, it has embarked on several projects to advance its path to market. One of these is a proof-of-concept collaboration with a “global food conglomerate” to explore how its ingredients can enhance the taste and nutrition of its products across the food, beverage, supplement and wellness categories.
“We are also exploring ways to support Indonesia’s national priority programme for free nutritious meals, working with local partners to contribute to sustainable and accessible nutrition solutions,” says Jeong.
In February, Simple Planet announced it was collaborating with Chulalongkorn University’s Halal Research Center in Thailand to integrate Halal standards into its manufacturing practices. After the startup initiated discussions and shared data on its technology, the Korean Muslim Federation issued a fatwa confirming that cultivated meat can be consumed by Muslims if it meets certain criteria.
In addition, the company is working with the Indonesian National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) and Thailand’s National Food Institute to advance the development of cell-cultured ingredients. And the startup has signed an MoU to partner with the newly announced cultivated meat research centre in Uiseong County.
“For Simple Planet, government approval and halal certification are top priorities,” says Jeong. “We work closely with halal authorities and food regulators to ensure our serum-free, halal-compliant cell culture medium meets industry standards.”
Cultivated meat needs ‘stronger government support’
Courtesy: GFI APAC
Simple Planet has been engaging with regulators across key markets, including the Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (which established a novel food framework in 2024 and is expected to greenlight an application from local startup CellMeat soon). Further, it’s working with the Singapore Food Agency and the National Agency of Drug and Food Control (BPOM) in Indonesia.
“In Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea, and Singapore, there is increasing interest in alternative proteins as part of national food security and sustainability initiatives,” says Jeong. “Singapore has led the way with a regulatory framework, while other countries are actively developing policies on food safety and halal compliance.”
He calls for “stronger government support” in regulation, research, and halal certification, which is crucial to unlocking the full potential of cultivated meat in mainstream markets.
So far, cultivated meat has been cleared to be sold in Singapore (from two startups), the US (four), Israel, the UK, Hong Kong, and (preliminarily) Australia and New Zealand (one each). Despite all the turmoil in the sector, three approval decisions have come this year. Regulators in the EU, Switzerland, Thailand and South Korea are assessing applications too.
“Regulatory progress varies widely – countries like Singapore and the US are moving forward, while others are still developing frameworks. This creates uncertainty, but also opportunities to help shape the conversation,” says Jeong.
“Europe remains cautious about the commercialisation of cell-based food, although some products have entered the market as pet food. This might be an early sign that Europe may gradually open up to cultivated meat in the future,” he adds. Even in Singapore and Israel, challenges remain in terms of standardisation, market access, and regulatory consistency.
But he indicates that the wave of approvals over the last 18 months is a sign of good things to come after a period of turbulence: “These hurdles appear to be part of the natural progression of introducing a new technology to consumers, and we believe they will be resolved in the near future.”
Researchers have uncovered eight themes that prevailed in the media coverage of the USDA’s first two approvals of cultivated meat in 2023, which had implications.
Is cultivated meat ‘real meat’? Does it pose any benefits? Is it an inevitable, necessary marker of change to the food system?
If you were reading the coverage of the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) approval of Upside Foods and Eat Just’s cultivated chicken products in summer 2023, the answer to all of these questions would likely have been yes.
How the media frames a story has wide-ranging implications for policy and public opinion. For example, many people remain unaware of livestock’s significant impact on global greenhouse gas emissions, which is hardly surprising given that only 7% of stories about climate change mention animal agriculture at all. This media framing issue is true for cultivated meat, too, and the many other terms it is known by.
“The optimistic framing of cell-cultivated meat as a more ethical and sustainable alternative notwithstanding, significant uncertainties and political resistance persist in media narratives, which likely influence regulatory pathways and consumer acceptance,” researchers from Tufts University write in a new study published in the Future Foods journal.
Coverage of USDA’s approval of cultivated meat is largely positive
Eat Just’s Good Meat chicken at China Chilcano | Courtesy: Ana Isabel Martinez Chamorro
The study analysed 34 articles from leading publications – including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Fox News, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal – and found eight prevailing themes in the coverage.
The most common theme was the description of cultivated meat as “real meat”, which appeared in 92% of the stories. Most journalists defined cultivated meat through its production in facilities and termed it “lab-grown”, while simultaneously arguing that it is real meat, effectively differentiating it from plant-based alternatives.
A similar share of stories (91%) discussed the benefits of cultivated meat, most often discussing the emissions, land and water benefits these proteins present. “Removing animal suffering from the act of eating meat was a core talking point,” the study also found, as were health benefits, efficiency, food security, reduced antibiotic use, and increased choice for consumers.
Another major theme revolved around the technical feasibility of cultivated meat, with 79% of articles highlighting the challenge of scaling production while reducing production costs.
Some 71% of articles, meanwhile, talked about the taste experience of cultivated meat. There were suggestions that growing acceptance among the public is a “good bet”, though one carnivore said she’d “rather eat [her] shoe” instead. Others who had actually tasted it likened it to eating conventional chicken, with some room for textural improvements.
One positive frame that appeared in 61% of the stories put cultivated meat in the context of ecological damage and growing meat demand. Reporters highlighted the climate impact of the livestock industry, drew parallels with the popularity of vegan meat alternatives, and noted how large meat processors like Tyson and Cargill had invested in startups in this space.
Political and cultural themes were less common across coverage
Courtesy: Upside Foods
In 76% of the analysed reporting, two opposing frames persisted. One constructed cultivated meat as a “groundbreaking”, necessary, and good innovation that would eventually replace conventional meat, and the other described it as unnecessary and problematic.
“As a result, readers consuming articles where both frames are simultaneously offered might be left with a sense of uncertainty, or even ambivalence, surrounding the ‘true’ meaning of cell-cultivated meat,” the researchers wrote.
Certain hints of the political upheaval we see today existed in 2023, too, with 68% of stories discussing this theme. Safety and labelling dominated coverage about the USDA’s regulation of cultivated meat, while some suggested it paved the way for other countries to follow.
However, discussions about labelling showed political opposition to calling these proteins “meat”, with lawmakers in Texas, Chile and Italy looking to restrict labelling or ban their sale (the latter was successful in its effort, despite being unlawful). Fox News portrayed it as a “vested interest” of the left.
Overall, concerns about cultivated meat were the least commonly discussed theme in the analysed reporting. Only 53% of articles were found to do so. Some referred to bogus studies arguing that it’s worse for the environment, others warned of “a range of unknowns” and “unforeseen dangers”, and yet others were worried about the safety, naturalness and nutritional quality of these proteins.
The fate of farmers was a major talking point too, with some believing cultivated meat could “take local farmers and ranchers out of the equation”. Another viewpoint that permeates is that these foods are only for the rich, with Fox News quoting a chef saying: “Only the elites are going to be able to try it and tell their friends about it.”
Cultivated meat coverage is shaping regulation
Courtesy: Mission Barns
The researchers argue that the “media’s construction of the emerging meaning system of cell-cultivated meat” has both political and regulatory implications, and that this actively shapes consumer trust in the industry. “The reporting on this is widely believed to have brought added scrutiny to the process, resulting in a two-year slowdown,” they note.
The news coverage analysed in the study demonstrated that cultivated chicken is “appropriately inspected, approved, and regulated”; in addition, it discussed political contentions regarding its labelling and sales, which have “only grown since we started writing this paper”, the researchers argue.
Indeed, six US states have now passed laws banning cultivated meat, and 15 have proposed restrictive bills this year alone. Globally, Hungary has taken major steps to ban these proteins, but was blocked by fellow EU member states and the European Commission.
“The discussion of the policy debates and contentious political meanings surrounding cell-cultivated products may imply a precarious outlook for the future of cellular agriculture,” the study states, adding that for some people, the discourse about cultivated meat products has become “confounded with preexisting political identities”.
“Differences in perception of cellular agriculture across the political spectrum should be explored in further research for a better understanding of the emerging political meanings associated with this novel technology,” the researchers write.
“Improved regulatory processes, awareness of labelling guidance, creating standards of identity, and transparent quality assurance in a collaborative industry-government framework could perhaps address these concerns constructively while also fostering competition.”
