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.”
Australia must develop a national bioeconomy strategy and invest in new infrastructure to unlock key economic growth opportunities, scientists say in a new report.
Home to some of the world’s leading food tech companies, Australia has a significant opportunity to become a global bioeconomy leader and boost its economic growth, but only if the government invests in the industry.
In a new report by the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology, scientists are calling upon the government to urgently create a national bioeconomy plan to “risk losing the ability to compete” with other nations.
Most of the G20 economies already have such national strategies, thanks to the Bioeconomy Initiative, which creates a global framework to support this industry. This has provided governments with a focal point for coordinated action to unlock private investment.
“It is a pivotal moment of economic transformation for Australia, which is driven by the shifting global market, rapid technological advancements and the move towards a low-carbon economy,” said Professor Ian O’Hara, deputy dean at QUT’s Faculty of Engineering, and co-author of the report.
“Without a unified effort and strategic approach by government, industry and researcher partners, Australia risks losing the opportunity to compete effectively in this market,” he added.
Australia already has the ingredients to be a leader
Courtesy: Queensland University of Technology
The bioeconomy entails using biological resources like plants, animals, microbes and organic waste to produce climate-friendly food, energy and materials via new technologies. The global bioeconomy market is valued at $4T already, and is set to skyrocket to $30T by 2040 – a third of the total worldwide economic value.
Australia has a significant opportunity here, thanks to its “abundant and diverse natural resources”, well-established primary infrastructure, advanced logistics and supply chain capabilities, biotech innovation expertise, and a robust regulatory framework.
The bioeconomy can support existing industries and advance technologies prioritised by the government, ultimately boosting high-value exports, international market share, environmental stewardship, and workforce strength.
It will enable the country’s primary industry to diversify its revenue streams, with raw materials, byproducts and industrial waste given added value. The development of new synbio technologies would further enhance the country’s biomanufacturing capability by unlocking new feedstocks, products and processes.
“Our world-class research, education and innovation are key strengths that can underpin advancing Australia’s bioeconomy development,” said O’Hara. “Australia has one of the best biomass resources in the world, which provides a huge advantage in the development of these industries. By unlocking the value of these resources, we can add value to Australian agriculture and grow new biomanufacturing industries across regional areas.”
He added: “As examples, Australia is at the forefront of developing new food ingredients, including proteins produced through precision fermentation and has the potential to lead in the development of sustainable aviation fuels from agricultural industry byproducts.”
A bioeconomy blueprint for Australia
Courtesy: Cauldron Ferm
The report outlines the importance of scale-up facilities to help translate lab research into commercial-scale production. For example, a renewable biocommodities pilot plant at QUT was recently upgraded to help the sugar diversify into more value-added products, but the experts say more focus is needed on this transitional aspect.
Government investment is critical here. Australia is among a handful of countries that have approved cultivated meat for sale, with Sydney startup Vow now selling its cultured quail products in restaurants. Vow also has approval in Singapore and New Zealand, the industry’s only startup to secure the green light in three countries.
Australia is the base for several precision fermentation firms too, including Nourish Ingredients, Eden Brew, Daisy Lab, Cauldron, and All G. The latter, which makes animal-free whey proteins, has received regulatory clearance in China and the US, and last month was involved in a tech transfer by the government-backed Food and Beverage Accelerator.
Its lawmakers have shown a keen interest in food tech products. Melbourne startup Magic Valley showcased its cultivated pork at the New South Wales parliament in May, months after securing A$100,000 from the national government to transition from research to commercial production, as part of its A$392M Industry Growth Program.
The Queensland government, meanwhile, is providing financial assistance and facilitation for biomanufacturing firm Cauldron’s first-of-its-kind precision fermentation contract manufacturing plant.
The QUT report makes several recommendations to help advance Australia’s bioeconomy, chief among which is the creation of a dedicated national strategy to assess capabilities, prioritise growth and identify strategies for market, workforce and regional benefits.
Moreover, the government should invest in developing world-class, scalable feedstocks and optimising farm-to-market supply chains, as well as fund pilot and pre-commercial biomanufacturing infrastructure. Plus, it should expand education and training initiatives, with a focus on regional workforce development.
Finally, the scientists implore policymakers to invest in bioeconomy research, development and tech translation by establishing a large-scale collaborative research programme involving academia, industry and government.
These calls echo the conclusions of a report by non-profit Cellular Agriculture Australia last year, which urged the government to recognise precision fermentation as a research and infrastructure priority, increase investment into pilot- and commercial-scale fermentation facilities, and boost regulatory resources to advance domestic approval of novel foods.
Melvados, a gourmet retailer in Singapore, has launched a co-branded Coconut Latte ice cream without dairy or coffee, using local startup Prefer’s beanless alternative instead.
Singaporeans can get their hands on Asia’s first ice cream featuring beanless coffee at Melvados, the retail arm of local food company Foodedge Gourmet.
The new Coconut Latte ice cream is powered by Prefer’s coffee alternative, made by fermenting food industry byproducts. It’s the first product to highlight its bean-free coffee as a hero ingredient, and marks a milestone for the three-year-old food tech startup.
Melvados was founded in 2004 and has become a household name in Singapore’s gourmet food space, selling everything from ice creams and cakes to ready meals, condiments and snacks. Its co-branded coffee ice cream with Prefer is available on the retailer’s website and its 13 locations across the city-state.
“This is a permanent product with plans to expand the lineup together,” Prefer co-founder and CEO Jake Berber tells Green Queen. “The launch is just the first step in what we both see as a long-term collaboration.”
Prefer talks up hybrid coffee applications
Courtesy: Melvados/Prefer
To make its bean-free coffee, Prefer upcycles locally sourced waste ingredients like surplus bread, okara (the leftover pulp from tofu production), and brewers’ spent grain. These are fermented with food-grade microbes, then roasted and ground just like coffee beans, with the process unlocking the same aroma volatiles found in coffee.
Melvados pairs this coffee alternative with coconut milk, sugar, glucose syrup, emulsifiers and stabilisers to give the product a smooth and indulgent mouthfeel. And the best part? At S$11.99 for a 470ml tub, it’s priced in the middle of the company’s lineup, on par with 11 of its other flavours.
“Using our proprietary fermentation platform, we’re able to produce coffee that’s up to two times more affordable for coffee procurement teams. For companies that license our IP and produce it themselves, the ingredient can be up to 10 times more affordable than traditional coffee,” explains Berber. “In both cases, we help customers lower input costs while significantly reducing their carbon footprint. Sustainability is a core value for Melvados, so the alignment was natural.”
Berber doesn’t see Prefer’s alternative as a direct competitor to synthetic coffee flavourings. “It’s a better option for brands looking for an affordable, natural, and sustainable coffee flavour,” he says. “The taste profile is chocolatey, nutty, and is designed to maintain or enhance the flavour of the coffee our partners blend it with.”
The Melvados ice cream isn’t completely devoid of coffee – it blends the bean-free version with conventional instant coffee powder. “The thinking behind this is consistent with what we’ve seen across nearly all of our B2B partners. Prefer is being used as a coffee extender to help reduce cost and carbon footprint, while maintaining or even enhancing the flavour profile of their products,” says Berber.
“Every non-binding offtake agreement we’ve signed so far is structured around hybrid applications. Prefer is designed to work alongside traditional coffee, not to replace it entirely. We expect to see many more hybrid use cases going forward,” he adds.
Indeed, several beanless coffee startups are banking on hybrids. US startup Atomo launched a 50:50 blend last year, combining its upcycled alternative with medium-roast coffee that consumers preferred over Starbucks. Belgium’s Koppie is also working with coffee roasters, which “makes consumer adoption easier and is closer to their own core and capabilities, just like we’re seeing happening in meat and dairy at the moment”, its co-founder told Green Queen last week.
Scale-up plans and a two-pronged business model
Prefer co-founders Jake Berber and Ding Jie Tan | Courtesy: Prefer
The reason all these companies are making coffee alternatives isn’t simply to offer a caffeine-free alternative. Coffee is a carbon-intensive product, generating more emissions per kg than poultry and pig meat combined. Plus, it takes 140 litres of water to produce enough beans for the average cup.
At the same time, climate change has left 60% of coffee species endangered, and the area suitable for cultivating Arabica is shrinking. Crop failures and shortages pushed up arabica prices by 80% last year, with wholesale prices reaching a nearly 50-year high. That has continued in 2025 – this February, coffee futures in New York hit an all-time high of $4.34 per pound.
By its own calculations, Prefer’s product has an estimated carbon footprint 10 times smaller than conventional coffee, no doubt helped by the fact that it’s made from food industry sidestreams.
“Our current lineup includes soluble coffee powder, roasted and ground coffee, concentrates, and a ready-to-drink iced oat latte. As of today, Prefer is stocked in 75 locations across Singapore, and we’re actively expanding into new markets,” says Berber. The brand is on track to cross 100 points of sale by year-end.
“Additionally, we’ve signed $15M in non-binding offtake agreements with B2B partners, including FMCGs, ingredient manufacturers, and coffee chains. We’re scaling up production to meet this demand.”
The firm raised $2M last year to fund a larger-scale pilot facility. “Melvados first reached out to us about a year ago. At the time, we weren’t quite ready, as they required halal certification and the ability to scale production to meet their needs,” reveals Berber. Prefer has since secured the certification and built out the facility.
“Over the next 12 months, we have ambitious goals to scale to a 500-tonne annual capacity through toll manufacturing and partnerships with major food companies across the region,” he adds. “We’re focused on scaling production and rolling out improved product formats for B2B applications. Our business model is becoming clearer, with two primary paths: supplying our ingredients or licensing our IP.”
In January, the startup added beanless chocolate to its portfolio, tackling another high-carbon industry marred by the climate crisis. “Development is progressing well. Our cocoa-free chocolate is built on the same fermentation platform, working with the same customers and following the same commercial model,” says Berber. “We’ll be sharing more publicly this quarter as we approach launch.”
Fura’s New Age Sando, featuring Prefer’s bean-free coffee | Courtesy: Kahying
Prefer’s beanless coffee is part of another future-forward ice cream, in the form of a menu item at sustainable eatery Fura. Here, it was paired with an apricot kernel ice cream, raspberry crisps, and marigold in a dish titled the New Age Sando.
It isn’t the only brand to feature its bean-free coffee in an ice cream product. Atomo’s 50/50 blend is paired with Hello! I’m Ugly’s dried apricots and nectarines in a Coffee and Stone Fruit Marmalade flavour by US creamery Salt & Straw.
As Denmark kicks off its EU Council presidency, it is spearheading efforts to shift the bloc towards a plant-based food system.
For years now, diplomacy has thwarted the EU’s climate ambitions, whether that’s to do with redirecting agricultural subsidies towards low-emission foods, or creating a framework to aid protein diversification.
But change is afoot, and Denmark’s turn to take the rotating presidency of the European Council could serve as the much-needed reset. A green economy leader, the Nordic country is leading the EU’s lawmaking arm until the end of the year, and has laid out a plan to move the region’s food system in a future-friendly direction.
As part of its climate strategy, Denmark had promoted meat reduction in favour of plants in its updated dietary guidelines and established a $96M fund to advance the plant-based sector back in 2021, and became the first country to create a national plan for plant-based foods two years later.
These measures were followed by the landmark Green Deal in 2024, which convened government and industry groups to impose the world’s first carbon tax on meat and dairy farming, devise a $6B plan to buy land from farmers and convert it into forest, and add another $60M to the plant-based fund until 2030 (which could potentially reach $142M).
While Denmark was leading the way, the EU had been facing calls to set out its own plant-based strategy and encourage protein diversification. It caused controversy and the likelihood of such a plan being formalised remained uncertain, until now.
“European protein supply is vital for the development of plant-based foods, raw materials for the livestock sector, and the diversification of supply sources. It is also an important element in the transition towards a more sustainable food system,” reads Denmark’s programme for the presidency.
“The presidency will focus on the potential of a common EU action plan for plant-based foods and a common EU protein strategy,” it adds.
Denmark’s presidency could unlock EU’s plant-based ambitions
Courtesy: Dimarik/Getty Image, Alessandro0770/Getty Images, Canva AI | Composite by Green Queen
Agriculture is responsible for 11% of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions, and 81-86% of these come from livestock. That’s despite animal-based foods only providing 35% of calories and 65% of proteins in the region. The European Environment Agency has suggested alternative proteins (which include plant-based foods) are inevitable for safeguarding food security in the EU.
In last year’s Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture report, stakeholders – from farmer lobby groups to climate activists – advised the EU Commission to transition to a more sustainable agrifood sector and create an EU-wide action plan for plant-based foods.
Soon after, though, Christophe Hansen, the agricultural commissioner, pledged to create a protein diversification strategy to address the EU’s protein supply challenges. With Denmark at the Council’s helm, that effort could finally come to fruition.
It will draw inspiration from Denmark’s own plant-based strategy, and be supported by two events this autumn. The presidency will host a conference on plant-based foods in September, as well as a Plant Food Summit for “policy inspiration” a month later.
“Denmark is the country with the largest animal production per capita in the world. Yet, the country has successfully adopted groundbreaking policies paving the way for more plant-based foods,” the summit’s website reads. “The Plant Food Summit is integrating this very focus in all of its programme in the hopes to share valuable experiences for stakeholders across the European continent to be inspired from.”
The Danish presidency will also address the EU’s Common Agriculture Policy (CAP), 82% of whose subsidies go towards livestock farming. In fact, meat and dairy production receives four times more EU money than plant-based agriculture.
“The future CAP must support rural development, organic farming, generational renewal, and animal welfare, while ensuring greater coherence with sectoral legislation, including climate and environmental regulations,” its programme states.
Danish groups support presidency with diplomacy effort
Courtesy: _Wohtek_/Instagram
Advancing Denmark’s advocacy for sustainable food systems is a new coalition of trade groups and non-profits, which aims to inspire the EU and its member states to “pursue ambitious political action, building on the Danish action plan and its accompanying funding”.
“We clearly see how political initiatives and targeted business support can generate growth and innovation in the sector. The Danish action plan and the state fund of 1.3 billion kroner have given our members a significant boost – support we would also like to see across the rest of Europe,” said Stella Staunstrup, secretary general of the Plant-Based Business Association.
The organisation has joined forces with the Vegetarian Society of Denmark, the Danish Food and Drink Federation, the Danish Chamber of Commerce, the Danish Agriculture & Food Council and others to kickstart what they call “Danish Plant-Based Diplomacy”.
The initiative will promote active dialogue across Europe, with a focus on sending small Danish delegations to parliaments and embassies and participating in networking events and roundtable discussions. The hope is to create business opportunities and the right framework to shape the future of food.
“We see Danish Plant-Based Diplomacy as a strong platform for developing plant-based production while also supporting the continued green transition of animal-based agriculture. In a world where demand for nutritious and sustainably produced food is growing, this is not a matter of either-or, but of both-and,” explained Christian Høegh-Andersen, vice chair of the Danish Agriculture & Food Council.
A blueprint for a plant-based food system
Courtesy: Nicolas Tucat/AFP
Last month, over 70 civil society organisations unveiled a blueprint at the EU Parliament outlining measures to unlock the full potential of the plant-based value chain. They called on the EU to include plant-based food in national CAP plans, reward environmental achievements, and facilitate financial access for farmers.
The EU Commission was asked to update public procurement rules and the school scheme to include healthy plant-based products, and encourage member states to align their dietary guidelines with both health and sustainability aspects. Greater investment in R&D and policies to incentivise greater accessibility and affordability of plant-based foods were also key recommendations.
“Increasing the consumption and production of plant-based foods is part of the solution to many challenges the EU agrifood sector faces, including health, biodiversity, climate and food security – in line with the EU’s One Health approach,” the document stated.
“At the same time, innovating and investing in plant-based foods could position the EU as a global leader in competitive, resilient, and sustainable agrifood systems and provide opportunities for European farmers, businesses and SMEs.”
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.
São Paulo-based precision fermentation startup Future Cow has secured R$4.85M ($885,000) in equity and public funding to expand its platform for animal-free whey and casein proteins.
Future Cow, a Brazilian precision fermentation firm producing recombinant dairy proteins, has raised R$4.85M ($885,00) in new funding to scale up its technology and begin licensing it to companies.
The funds are a combination of crowdfunding and public investment. The startup attracted R$1.27M from 145 crowd investors on Captable in January, which was short of its initial target. But it has since secured additional financing from the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) and Brazilian research agency EMBRAPII, part of the National Center for Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM).
It takes the company’s total raised past $1.2M, including the $150,000 it raised as part of São Paulo’s Antler residency programme, and the $200,000 invested by Big Idea Ventures through its New Protein Fund II.
The startup will use the fresh capital to advance its R&D efforts to optimise production and increase efficiency, with the aim of reaching commercial scale in 2026.
Future Cow tests scale-up under state-backed accelerator
Courtesy: Future Cow
Founded in 2023 by Leonardo Vieira and Rosana Goldbeck, Future Cow is one of Brazil’s only startups using precision fermentation to create next-generation proteins.
The technology combines traditional fermentation with the latest advancements in biotech to efficiently produce a compound of interest, such as a protein or a fat. It involves identifying the genetic sequence in the animal’s DNA to ‘instruct’ a microbial host to produce recombinant proteins.
Future Cow uses a digitalised blueprint of cow DNA to grow proteins through yeast, which is fed on agricultural byproducts and multiplies in fermentation tanks. The resulting liquid is filtered and dried to extract the bioidentical milk proteins.
The startup is working on producing both casein and whey (including the iron-regulation bovine lactoferrin protein), enabling it to reach a wider consumer base for a range of applications.
It already has a functional yeast strain and is now looking to increase its production yields. “The more the strain produces, the more the unit price falls. So we’re optimizing the fermentation processes,” Vieira, who is the company’s CEO, told the FAPESP last month.
Future Cow’s techno-economic analysis shows that producing precision-fermented milk proteins on a 300,000-litre scale will be less expensive than conventional methods, though there’s some way to go before it reaches industrial manufacturing levels.
It has previously carried out a proof of concept in 15-litre tanks, and has planned to test its technology in fermentation vessels with a capacity of 200, 2,000 and 5,000 litres, as a precursor to commercial-scale production.
It’s scaling the process as part of a deep tech accelerator under CNPEM. “95% of biotechs fail when they leave a bench environment and go to a pilot plant or other relevant environment,” Vieira explained. “We’re very optimistic that with the support of the CNPEM and the available infrastructure, we’ll achieve the scale-up we need for the next stage.”
CEO talks up hybrid milk and Brazil’s future food potential
Courtesy: Future Cow
Future Cow operates a B2B-focused model, positioning itself as an ingredient supplier to the dairy and food industry, instead of an end product developer. This, the company said, will help accelerate its path to market.
“As an ingredient, our product can be incorporated into existing products without facing a high entry barrier,” said Vieira. He suggested that large dairy producers can’t increase production with current production methods and raw materials, so precision fermentation is a natural evolution for their goals.
“When precision fermentation began, it was all very black or white: the product was either animal or it wasn’t animal. Now, we see more hybrid models,” he said. “If [companies] can mix our ingredient with the animal product to create a hybrid product and increase the scale, it’ll be a significant gain.”
Dairy majors have been increasingly interested in the sector. The world’s largest dairy exporter, Fonterra, was an early backer of Dutch firm Vivici, which is now cleared to sell animal-free whey proteins in the US. French dairy giant Danone, meanwhile, has set up a biotech hub with a special focus on precision fermentation, with a view to lowering its emissions.
Speaking of which, Future Cow says its milk proteins can lower emissions by 97% and water use by 99%. “Even if precision fermentation doesn’t fully replace animal milk, a 10% or 20% reduction in the carbon footprint of large corporations in the food sector would already represent a considerable environmental impact,” Vieira pointed out.
His startup has already signed MOUs with dairy and food producers, including multinationals and the national market leader. “With the funds raised, we will accelerate the development of our precision fermentation technology, optimise production and prepare for commercial scale,” he said.
To get there, though, Future Cow will require regulatory approval from the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa). It will also need to fend off a legislative bill aimed at banning the manufacture and sale of “synthetic milk” in Brazil.
The country’s food industry is under the microscope as it prepares to host the UN’s annual climate conference this year. Its cattle industry has had a disastrous impact on Amazon deforestation, and its beef sector alone is generating more than twice the GHG limit outlined in the Paris Agreement.
Vieira believes precision fermentation is a unique opportunity for the nation. “Brazil is the only country in the world that has an abundance of water, sugar, and renewable energy, which are the three essential inputs for fermentation,” he said. “With these characteristics, Brazil can take the lead in a strategic industry for the future of global food.”
Japan’s largest retailer, Aeon, has debuted a private-label biscuit SKU featuring ChoViva, a cocoa-free chocolate alternative by Planet A Foods.
After establishing a foothold in Europe and the US with some of the world’s largest chocolatiers and supermarkets, Planet A Foods has brought its cocoa-free chocolate to Asia.
The German startup has teamed up with Japanese retail giant Aeon, which has released a new biscuit using the former’s sunflower-seed-based ChoViva alternative.
Called ‘Chococa?’ (which translates to ‘Is It Chocolate?’), the new product is being rolled out under Aeon’s Topvalu own-label brand. It’s available at around 2,2000 Aeon, Aeon Style, and MaxValu stores for a limited period.
Planet A Foods goes truly global with ChoViva
Courtesy: Aeon/AviavLad/Getty Images/Green Queen
The product consists of a wheat and oat biscuit coated with Planet A Foods’s milk chocolate alternative. It contains 7.1g of sugar and 3g of fat, and each 143g pack contains 12 pieces and costs 398 yen ($2.75).
To make its beanless chocolate, Planet A Foods puts a base of sunflower seeds through a proprietary fermentation process. This is then roasted to bring out a similar aroma, flavour and texture to cocoa, and mixed with sugar and plant-based fats to create a mass similar to cocoa.
ChoViva can be used as a 1:1 replacement for conventional chocolate or in hybrid formulations. Since entering the market in 2024, it has featured in over 60 products in over 42,000 points of sale in seven countries: Germany, the UK, the US, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.
The startup has partnered with the likes of Lindt, Piasten, Lambertz, Griesson-de Beukelaer, Peter Kölln, Lufthansa, Deutsche Bahn, and Seidl Confiserie, and worked with retailers such as Kaufland, Rewe (and its subsidiary Penny), Aldi, and Lidl for private-label innovations.
Planet A Foods itself is working to expand its annual production capacity from 2,000 tonnes to over 15,000 tonnes, an effort supported by a $30M Series B round in December. “Our mission remains unchanged: to provide sustainable food ingredients that are decoupled from price-volatile and limited resources such as cocoa,” co-founder and CEO Maximilian Marquart said at the time.
Japan bets on alternative cocoa
Courtesy: Planet A Foods
Speaking of which, chocolate alternatives are hot property thanks to the climate crisis. 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.
Global cocoa stocks have slumped to their lowest in a decade. Ivory Coast and Ghana – the two largest producers – are the biggest victims of extreme weather, crop diseases, and reduced plantations in favour of illegal gold mining.
All this has already caused major price hikes. In 2024, cocoa futures broke all-time records, and the cost will continue to remain high this year. That has hurt the sales of industry giants like Hershey’s, whose profit forecast for 2025 is below analysts’ expectations. Some are now turning to alternatives – Barry Callebaut, the world’s largest cocoa manufacturer, is using precision-fermented sunflower seeds for some of its offerings in Europe.
These factors are also what drove Aeon to partner with Planet A Foods. It cited tight supplies and high prices to advocate for enhanced production tech and alternative raw materials. It’s not the first to innovate with cocoa-free chocolate in Japan.
Since last year, food producer Ahjikan has been selling Govoce, which uses a sweet ingredient called MelBurd, replacing cocoa with burdock seeds. And in March, Fuji Oil introduced Anoza M, a B2B alternative made from uses pea protein, carob, and vegetable fats.
Belgian startup Koppie, which makes a single-ingredient coffee alternative using legumes, has emerged from stealth with a pre-seed funding round.
What if you could brew coffee with a different bean? Say, chickpeas? Or something more native to your region?
It’s an idea that spurred former Danone marketer Daan Raemdonck and bioscience engineer Pascal Mertens into action.
They are the co-founders of Koppie, a three-year-old Belgian startup that uses fermentation to give pulses coffee-like aromas and flavours. It has just come out of stealth mode with a pre-seed funding round led by Nucleus Capital, with participation from Mudcake, Rockstart, and several angel investors.
While the investment sum is under wraps, Raemdonck tells Green Queen that the amount was what “we wanted and feel we needed to reach our business goals”. Said goals include further enhancing the product, scaling up to commercial volumes, and landing its first customers.
The capital injection adds to the €400,000 it has secured in grants from the Flemish Institute of Innovation & Entrepreneurship. Moreover, the startup was selected as part of the EU-backed EIT Food Accelerator Network earlier this year.
Courtesy: Koppie
Why put chickpeas instead of single-origin coffee beans in your V60, you might be wondering? Well, your regular coffee bean soon may not be as regular anymore. Climate change is threatening the crop, with 60% of coffee species endangered and the area suitable for cultivating arabica shrinking.
Crop failures and shortages pushed up arabica prices by 80% last year, with wholesale prices reaching a nearly 50-year high. That has continued in 2025 – this February, coffee futures in New York hit an all-time high of $4.34 per pound.
“With yields under pressure, and prices rising, we believe novel and hybrid solutions will be essential for coffee companies looking to navigate volatile supply chains,” says Raemdonck.
How Koppie is using legumes and fermentation to futureproof coffee
A host of companies are now working to develop alternatives to coffee, from Atomo, Minus Coffee and Voyage Foods in the US to Northern Wonder in the Netherlands and Prefer in Singapore. These players use a variety of ingredients to replicate the flavour of coffee.
Koppie, however, offers a single-ingredient solution, turning locally sourced legumes into “Koppie beans” that can be ground and brewed the same way as conventional coffee. Consumer panels and specialists have validated the taste experience, with sensory coffee professionals (called Q Graders) giving it a 70/100 score, on par with commodity coffee.
“From the start, we set out to create a ‘coffee bean’, believing this would help industry and consumer adoption: just swap out coffee beans for our Koppie bean, and use it like you’re used to,” explains Raemdonck. “This, of course, significantly limited the base product options and automatically made it a single-ingredient play.”
He adds: “We then conducted a broad screening, based on numerous elements: sustainability, local harvests, known allergens, product size, as well as price. The next step was trialling it with our technology in mind, and validating the final product with taste experts. This is how we arrived at pulses and our current prototypes.
“The beauty is that our technology does the heavy lifting. Hence, we can review the above criteria depending on the region we’d be operating in.”
Courtesy: Koppie
While the details of the fermentation tech are patent-pending and thus under wraps, Mertens explains that the key lies in adjusting the pulses to such a degree that the roasting can create coffee-like flavours without any off-notes.
“The great element here is that it also allows us to be flexible depending on what flavour we want to create. Tuning the technology allows customisation for potential clients to use in their blends,” he notes.
Koppie hasn’t disclosed what microbial strain it’s using to ferment the pulses. “However, I can confirm that we’re not novel food and don’t require specific regulatory approval beyond standard food safety measurements and guarantees,” says Mertens.
But wait, what about the coffee farmers?
A common criticism of beanless coffee is the impact on farmers – the industry has 125 million people whose livelihoods depend on the crop.
“Ultimately, the value of coffee is not to produce a liquid that tastes like coffee, but what happens from the tree all the way down to the cup and what happens in between,” Elliot Bentzen, director of trade and traffic at Starbucks Coffee, told Green Queen last year. “So I don’t know if I’d ever be enamoured or thrilled or curious enough to be like: ‘Okay, some scientists boiled it down to a cup of coffee!’”
However, Bentzen acknowledged that the industry will need to adapt in the face of climate change. Alternatives like Koppie’s could be a key part of the solution.
“Farmer compensation is a massive and frankly underexposed topic. However, calling out alt-coffee as a driver feels like a red herring argument,” says Raemdonck. “We also believe the supply-demand imbalance which is coming is going to be so significant. We’re going to need all the solutions we can find to save a daily ritual for a very significant part of the global population.
“There’s a systemic issue within our food system globally, and one of those strange elements is how little farmers are benefiting from this beautiful product we all love,” notes Raemdonck, pointing to a 2021 Columbia University study that found coffee farmers earn above the poverty grade in only two of the top 10 producers, Brazil and Vietnam.
Courtesy: Anay Mridul/Green Queen
“Despite the unprecedented green coffee price points, your average farmer isn’t benefitting. This is not a ‘future issue’ – farmers not being compensated fairly is a ‘today’ issue,” he contends.
The impacts of climate change will be keenly felt by smallholders, who represent 60% of the global coffee supply. “It has so many implications for them. For sure, help will be needed to adapt and potentially diversify, simply in order to sustain their livelihoods,” he says.
Meanwhile, global demand for coffee is increasing by 2% every year. Given the supply issues, this will create a major gap, which “even in our wildest business plans, we’ll not be able to offset”. “We need more solutions to help save our ritual, not less. There will be plenty of demand to fill for people with good-tasting products, at a fair price,” says Raemdonck.
Working with the industry to produce hybrid coffee
Koppie is making a point to highlight that it is not trying to replace coffee; instead he is working with the industry to futureproof it. That’s why it is initially focusing on a B2B model, working with roasters to develop hybrid blends that combine coffee beans with its legume-based replicas.
“We’re seeing significant traction by coffee companies and manufacturers of coffee-derived products, who understand that the future will hold significant supply challenges. We’ve also found that our product, when blended with coffee, not only fits perfectly, but has the potential to uplift and improve the final product due to the slightly sweeter, less bitter profile,” says Raemdonck.
“The vast majority of these companies are looking to blend, as this makes consumer adoption easier and is closer to their own core and capabilities, just like we’re seeing happening in meat and dairy at the moment,” he adds. “This doesn’t mean we wouldn’t want to sell under our own brand at some point in time. However, that’s not the case currently.”
Courtesy: Koppie
Its debut product is likely to come from either chickpeas or yellow peas. “We’re looking to be ready for commercial volumes by end of year, hoping to conduct a market test by the middle of next year,” he says. “Of course, that depends on the timeline of our first customers.”
In fact, Koppie is aiming to reach commercial scale by the end of 2025, which will enable one or two relevant in-market tests.
“We believe we can be cost-competitive to coffee, now and in the future,” reveals Mertens. “Of course, time will tell what happens to the coffee price in the coming months and years. That’s perhaps the key here: we can guarantee a good, stable product at stable prices, something elusive in coffee at the moment.”
Coffee is a carbon-intensive product, generating more emissions per kg than poultry and pig meat combined. Plus, it takes 140 litres of water to produce enough beans for the average cup of coffee. Koppie’s alternative, however, is estimated to have a 70% lower carbon footprint, and use 60% less land and 90% less water.
This opens up the potential for innovative coffee products tailored to specific audiences. “Think lighter roasts, or blends which are naturally lower in caffeine,” says Raemdonck. “We’re taking a forward-looking category vision to secure the future of a beautiful daily ritual for many.”
In our interview series, we quiz future food investors about the solutions that excite them the most, their favourite climate-forward restaurant, and what they look for in successful founders.
Felix Leonhardt is a Managing Partner at Oyster Bay Venture Capital.
What future food technologies most excite you?
Sensor technology
Automation and robotics
Software and data (see below)
Fermentation, in all shapes and forms
In 2019, a large German retailer would order products from my previous startup by fax and pay by cheque. The whole supply chain was inefficient and barely digitalised. While in the past six years, some things have changed, this is still far from a data-driven supply chain. Using software and data in a very basic way can unlock a lot of value.
What are three future food verticals you are actively looking at for 2025?
Climate resilient crops
Alternative ingredients
Leveraging data and software to make the value chain smart
What do you consider the food tech sector’s greatest achievement in the past five years?
The fact that we have a vibrant ecosystem. When I started my first startup in the space in 2012, there was no VC investing in the sector. Having an ecosystem where we have some successful exits, some well-performing funds, and obviously also some high-profile failures, is a huge achievement.
If you could wave a magic wand, how would you fix plant-based meat?
I don’t think it needs fixing. Alternative protein will happen – it’s not a matter of sustainability, but rather of economics. It was just overhyped, and lots of companies received funding at crazy valuations.
There are some great alternative protein companies out there right now. It will take a while until the trough of disillusionment is over.
What’s the top trait you look for in a founder?
Resilience, grit, resourcefulness.
The One That Got Away: What is the deal you wish you had gotten into, but didn’t?
There are a couple of great companies in our space where the valuations were too ambitious for us, and so we never got close to offering a term sheet. Yet I’m rooting for their success. If I have to name one, I think Planted is doing a fantastic job.
What do you consider your most successful future food investment so far?
Nesto Software is likely up there. This was an angel investment prior to my joining Oyster Bay.
As Oyster Bay, thankfully, our funds are so far performing well, with several good exits on companies such as Oatly, True Gum, and Air Up.
What has been your most disappointing investment so far?
We don’t badmouth our portfolio. As an angel, I was once invested in Your Super and saw this go to the moon, only to come back down to Earth very quickly.
What do people misunderstand/get wrong most about VC?
That it is the right financing form for most food companies. It is not. The opposite is the case. It’s only a fit for a very small percentage of all companies in the sector.
What is the most ‘future food’ thing you have eaten this month?
Upcycled brewers’ spent grain into barley protein.
Where is your favourite climate-forward restaurant/dish/place to eat anywhere in the world?
Zeik in Hamburg, in our hometown, is a pretty amazing restaurant to try out.
What’s your ‘why’? What motivates you to do what you do?
I broke my neck when I was 17 – I’m very lucky to be able to walk. This knowledge of how fleeting our time on this Earth can be, combined with having two children, drives me to try to use my time and skills to make a difference.
Showing that investing in food can deliver financial returns is a way to enable more and more capital to flow into transforming the food system for the better. And transforming the food system is a key lever to creating a positive future.
Palm oil and cocoa fats are facing upheaval thanks to their climate and economic costs. For Smey, the solution lies with yeast, fermentation, and AI.
You likely used palm oil at some point today. The fat is ubiquitous, present in half of all supermarket items, thanks to its many functional advantages: it sets at room temperature, it’s shelf-stable, and it’s flavourless.
It’s also dangerous. Producing palm oil (and meeting the insatiable demand for it) requires vast amounts of deforestation that puts tropical animals, communities, and climates at risk.
Palm oil is widely used in the chocolate trade, itself under threat from the climate crisis. The industry is directly responsible for 94% and 80% of deforestation in Ghana and Ivory Coast, the two largest producers of the crop.
Cocoa prices are through the roof and will continue to rise this year, as extreme weather events wipe out harvests and push a third of the world’s cocoa trees towards extinction. That jeopardises cocoa butter stocks too.
Replacing these two fats isn’t easy. Using vegetable oils instead comes with its own unintended climate consequences. That has led many startups to resort to microbial fermentation, which significantly lowers the need for farmland and produces a fraction of the emissions.
Savor, NoPalm Ingredients, Clean Food Group, Palm-Alt, Äio and C16 Biosciences are just some of the startups using fermentation to decarbonise the global fat industry. Joining them is Smey, a German-French firm that uses artificial intelligence to create cultured oils for food manufacturers.
Courtesy: Smey
How Smey uses AI to find the ideal microbe strains
Headquartered in Paris with an R&D centre in Munich, Smey has launched the Neobank of Yeasts (NOY), a digital databank of yeast fatty acid profiles.
It’s designed to speed up the development of next-gen oils intended as a drop-in replacement in food and beauty products. The tool replaces genetic engineering with a “precision-matching process” – instead of modifying yeast to produce specific fats, its database finds strains that already naturally produce the desired oil. That cuts R&D timelines from two years down to 30 days.
Smey founder Viktor Sartakov-Korzhov explains that the NOY contains an extensive database of over 1,000 yeast strains and their metabolic profiles. “Using AI models, we identify strains that naturally produce specific fatty acid profiles like stearic acid for cocoa butter mimetics,” he tells Green Queen.
“Once a suitable strain is selected, we proceed to fermentation under optimised lab conditions. The goal here is to fine-tune the triglyceride composition, a critical factor that determines the oil’s melting profile, skin feel, and absorption rate,” he adds.
“Additionally, we apply adaptive laboratory evolution (ALE), a non-GMO method, to improve yield and stability. AI is primarily used upstream, at the strain selection stage, while downstream processes like solvent-free oil extraction ensure regulatory compliance and sustainability. The final oils mimic natural oils in performance, yet are more scalable and environmentally efficient.”
Courtesy: Smey
The NOY is seamlessly integrated with Smey.AI, a proprietary engine that maps genomic, metabolic, and fermentation data to identify the optimal strains for specific attributes (like melting point, texture, or oxidative stability) in just hours, instead of weeks.
To feed the microbes, Smey uses a variety of carbohydrate-based inputs, including glucose, sucrose, and sugars derived from agricultural byproducts.
The fats are produced without farmland and with minimal water, and generate up to 90% less emissions than conventional oils, offering the food industry a climate-friendly alternative that is better for their bottom lines.
Cocoa butter and tropical oil alternatives can ease EUDR concerns
All of the company’s operations have so far been financed through shareholder investments, and it isn’t raising funds from external sources at the moment. “Smey is currently B2B-focused, working with partners across cosmetics, oleochemicals, lubricants, and food industries,” says Sartakov-Korzhov.
Its two flagship ingredients, cHOB (Cultivated High Oleic Butter) and cCB (Cultivated Cocoa Butter), aim to provide stable and traceable options to conventional tropical oils. cHOB is a semi-solid fat for cosmetic use that offers a unique fatty acid profile, with “superior stability, skin feel, and sustainability” and a non-greasy texture.
cCB is a direct replacement for cocoa butter, featuring 35% stearic acid. It matches the functional properties of the latter while avoiding the environmental and ethical trade-offs.
These oils will appeal to companies looking to overhaul their supply chains ahead of the EU’s Deforestation Regulation, which will ban the import of cocoa, palm oil and shea butter linked to deforestation. Violators face fines of up to 4% of their global turnover.
Courtesy: Smey
Since Smey uses different fungi strains, its regulatory strategy depends on the use case. “[For] cosmetics, our oils are composed of safe, well-known triglycerides, which accelerate regulatory pathways. An INCI name can usually be obtained in six to 12 months, depending on customer requirements,” says Sartakov-Korzhov.
For lubricants, there are usually no special regulatory approvals required. As for food, “novel food approvals can take 1.5 to two years” in the US and the EU, he says: “But our solvent-free downstream processing aligns with both safety and sustainability requirements from day one.”
The company’s AI technology can also produce animal-free proteins, starting with ovalbumin (the main protein in eggs) and lactoferrin (an iron-boosting protein found in bovine and human milk).
“Smey’s primary focus is on cultivated oils, as these products are ready for industrial scaling and already showing strong commercial traction,” notes Sartakov-Korzho, though among its proteins, ovalbumin is first in line for scale-up. “Ovalbumin is a key functional protein in food formulations. Given the regulatory pathway, especially for food proteins, we expect Smey Ovo to reach the market in mid-2027,” he says.
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.”
Mumbai-based Prot has released Prot Block, a shelf-stable ingredient offering health-conscious Indians a new format of plant-based protein.
Walk into metropolitan India right now, and you might begin wondering whether you have a protein deficiency.
Protein is everywhere right now, from chocolates and coffee to kulfi and even water. It has given a boost to functional health startups and forced dairy giants like Amul and Mother Dairy to innovate and introduce protein-rich offerings.
Swathes of studies suggest that India has a protein problem—according to one survey, 73% of the country has a deficiency. That said, a separate analysis of household food intakes reveals that the risk of protein deficiency, when adjusted for digestible quality, is low in adults and non-existent in young Indians.
Either way, the protein trend isn’t going anywhere. And in a country with the world’s largest vegetarian population, it’s an opportunity for plant-based companies.
The challenge? Meat alternatives are still ultra-niche, and tofu (often marketed as ‘soy paneer’) is only just emerging into tier 2 cities. The industry’s USP, however, is health and nutrition.
Polling shows that protein and health benefits are the most influential purchase drivers of plant-based meat and dairy in India, even more so than affordability. It’s what spurred the 18% growth of the vegan market between 2021 and 2024.
According to market research firm Ipsos, this value is expected to expand 18-fold in the next decade, with plant proteins “set to be woven into everyday meals and snacks, attracting a wider audience beyond vegans”.
It leaves room for new, innovative products that pack a punch with protein and fibre, all while satisfying the taste buds of a food-loving population.
Not an alternative to tofu or paneer
Courtesy: Prot
Prot, a Mumbai-based startup formerly known as Seaspire, is tapping into the opportunity. It has released Prot Block, a novel format of plant-based protein that isn’t quite a meat alternative or tofu, and holds its own on the culinary and nutrition fronts.
“The motivation for us in developing this product actually came from an unintended blind test, where we just had some test consumers give insights on how they feel about the texture and early iterations of this product without any positioning… [except only] if they were given the option to eat plant protein,” co-founder Varun Gadodia tells Green Queen.
“And this got us a strongly positive early feedback that vegetarian consumers in India and some Western markets are looking for a protein texture that can be incorporated easily in their daily food habits without sounding like any alternative or plant-based meat positioning.”
Indeed, we’re already seeing this shift in Europe, where whole-food options and new formats are taking over the plant-based space. In the UK, Oh So Wholesome’s Veg’chop and This’s Super Superfood both offer protein blocks made from legumes and vegetables. Meanwhile, Austria’s Revo Foods uses mycoprotein to deliver The Prime Cut, which doesn’t mimic meat and is designed for functional nutrition instead.
Prot Block – available in plain and tandoori flavours – contains 15g of protein (on par with tofu) and 10g of fibre per 100g, as well as 7g of fat sourced from coconuts and sunflower. In fact, both the overall and saturated fat content are over three times lower than paneer.
“In the short to medium term, we don’t intend to raise this as a rival of traditional paneer or tofu, but more of an option in the vegetarian protein textures, as consumers don’t really have much to look at and they are looking for options more actively,” suggests Gadodia.
“The commoditisation of soy and paneer in India within a very complex yet mature supply chain has left consumers with a choice paralysis with a cluttered marketplace of paneer, tofu and other soy derivatives,” he adds.
“In order to meet the differentiated positioning, we took the road to break out of that clutter,” he continues. “An allergen-free offering is just another value-added category [in which] we aim to position this product as a counter.”
Prot Block spotlights peas over soy
Courtesy: Prot
Peas are the star ingredient, with the Prot Block comprising textured pea protein and pea protein isolate. Wheat fibre and spices close out the ingredient list.
Using pea protein was a strategic choice to reduce the Asian market’s reliance on soy. “Reinventing the wheel with any soy-derived texture doesn’t compel consumers enough to look over the likes of tofu and tempeh, and soy granules, chunks or chaap (heavily consumed in many parts of India as a vegetarian protein),” Gadodia says.
“The opportunity here is to establish bench standards for wider adoption of pea protein, which unfortunately has remained restricted to the supplement space,” he adds, contends that this will ultimately help lead to improved standards of protein processing and commercialisation.
Prot describes the product as a versatile option suited to both local and international cooking styles, as well as a range of applications, from curries and rice to wraps and barbecue. “But this is just the beginning,” he says.
“We are in the process of some process tweaks in the product, which can get us to position it as an on-the-go snack that can be consumed directly. The hint lies in packed halloumi sticks and cheese sticks,” Gadodia adds. “While the product is pre-cooked during the course of processing and can be consumed raw, we are not positioning this as a use case.”
By offering a shelf-stable format, Prot is tackling a key bottleneck for India’s plant protein sector—the cold supply chain—while offering a long shelf life and potentially mitigating food waste.
Government support is critical to tackling India’s protein deficiency
Courtesy: Prot
The release of the product follows a closed-group pilot with more than 500 fitness enthusiasts, home cooks, and health-conscious, food-savvy early adopters. According to Prot, the feedback on taste, texture, nutrition and usability was “overwhelmingly positive”, underscoring the need for functional, high-protein options in the country.
“India is largely protein-deficient, despite heavy dairy consumption,” says Gadodia. “The environment around plant-based protein as a healthier choice is offering a great stage. However, the motivators are high-protein, allergen-free, affordable, low-cholesterol, in contrast to slow or underperforming categories like plant-based meat alternatives.”
“The low-hanging fruit, even for us, is the audience seeking high-protein offerings and willing to try more value-added products, [whether] out of need or simply boredom,” he says.
“The fact that plant protein products are still a niche is [reflective of] the consumer behaviour in India, which varies between a wide spectrum of cultural differences. While consumption in many regional markets is getting an upgrade with more disposable incomes, when it comes to food, consumers have a taste for traditional offerings,” the Prot co-founder explains.
“Many of these traditional foods already include a good chunk of plant protein derived from lentils, etc., but clean and additive-free packaged foods that solve for convenience are still a white space.”
The government, he believes, has a crucial role to play. Gadodia likens it to the promotion of the millet-based trade: “More formative policies can support the growth of plant-based foods, which need a robust supply chain and processing support to overcome scaling challenges.”
This chimes with calls from other experts, who have urged the government to launch a national plant protein mission to scale the sector and build a dedicated policy framework for plant-based foods.
Prot attracts pre-seed investment
Courtesy: Prot
Prot’s protein block is priced at ₹199 ($2.3) per 200g product. That’s several degrees higher than what Indians pay for paneer and, in many cities, tofu.
Gadodia admits that there’s an initial premium, though he insists that it is “well-gauged to a number that consumers are willing to pay for a value-added and differentiated protein offering that not only serves their need, but also hooks an aspiration to include a new product in their lifestyles”.
“The current pricing is slightly higher than good-quality paneer offerings, yet it’s in a ballpark of what an early consumer is actively looking to spend to find a valuable offering. We have our early consumers who have found the product reasonable,” he says.
“Our pricing strategy has been gauged carefully by understanding the value creation, early customers, unit economics and supply chain costs,” he adds. “Yet we have plans to improve pricing further with greater traction and quick turnaround times that could enable us to improve operational margins.”
Prot Block is currently selling the ingredient on its website and via foodservice. “We have great foodservice partnerships in place with curated menus, kitchen takeovers, etc. taking place to raise consumer awareness, and driving it all to the B2C channel,” says Gadodia.
To boost the startup’s plans, Gadodia and co-founder Shantanu Dhangar are now fundraising. “We have just closed a pre-seed funding round to support our growth plans with Prot Block and our growing presence in the retail and CPG space,” Gadodia says, hinting at an investor announcement in the coming weeks.
In another example of the effort to diversify India’s plant protein sources, plant-based meat brand Blue Tribe Foods – backed by Indian actress Anushka Sharma and cricketer Virat Kohli – has just unveiled Klaw, a brand of protein puffs derived from “supergrains”.
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.
Snack giant Doritos has teamed up with food tech startup NotCo to launch co-branded vegan products with the iconic Flamin’ Hot flavour in Chile.
Known for its groundbreaking partnerships with food industry giants, Chilean food tech unicorn NotCo has unveiled its latest plant-based products that incorporate a renowned snack flavour.
The startup has collaborated with PepsiCo-owned tortilla chip behemoth Doritos to launch Flamin’ Hot Not Chicken Nuggets, as well as the nacho-cheese-infused NotMayo Doritos.
The result of an eight-month effort, the two products are available in NotCo’s home market of Chile, priced at $4.20 each. “Doritos, to me, is one of those things that you don’t need to be hungry to want one,” said NotCo co-founder and CEO Matias Muchnick.
“The conversation began with a random connection. That quickly led us to a ‘what if?’ (which is the same as a ‘why not’, but reimagined),” he explained. “There were no infinite decks or eternal presentations. There was just a desire to do it. There were guts and common sense to move forward.”
How NotCo and Doritos created the new products
Courtesy: NotCo/Doritos
While the ingredients of either of the new products have not yet been revealed, they bear a resemblance to NotCo’s core products. Its Not Chicken Nuggets are made from a base of flour, sunflower oil, pea and bean protein, wheat gluten, while the original NotMayo contains soybean and sunflower oils, modified starch, spirit vinegar, chickpea flour, and more.
The collaboration blends these innovations with the signature seasonings created by Frito-Lay, the PepsiCo subsidiary that owns Doritos, Cheetos, Lay’s and other snack brands. Flamin’ Hot originally contains a range of spices, cheese, MSG and food dyes, and the classic Doritos cheese flavour combines Cheddar and Romano cheeses with buttermilk, whey concentrate, and a host of spices.
NotCo is known for turning CPG classics vegan, using Giuseppe, its artificial intelligence platform. It sifts through an almost infinite number of combinations to find the most suitable ingredients to replace animal-derived ones, complementing the work of food scientists, chefs, and product developers, from concept creation all the way to the final version of the formula.
“When we sat down with the PepsiCo team, everything moved fast. The first thing was to try something out, and that was our bet – go big or go home,” said Muchnick. “Step one from Giuseppe? A Doritos ice cream sandwich covered in chocolate with Doritos-flavoured ice cream.
“There were several of us at the table, and being a somewhat perceptive person, I noticed the immediate faces of: ‘What the hell did we get ourselves into?’ And rightfully so,” he recalled.
But it was Benjamin Herrera, the marketing director for PepsiCo’s South Cone division, who stepped up and cracked the code. “I stared at him and saw the look on his face that screamed: ‘Holy shit,’ but he didn’t say it,” said Muchnick. “Instead, he smiled provocatively… and said: ‘Let’s go all in.’”
Creating a Doritos-flavoured NotMayo “was too obvious not to do”, argued Muchnick, outlining how it made Doritos “even more Doritos-y”.
“Then we jumped into the Flamin’ Hot craze and, with our collective obsession over Shaq’s reaction on one of YouTube’s most-watched shows, Hot Ones, we said: Not Chicken Nuggets Flamin’ Hot? Why (the fuck) not?” he added.
Courtesy: NotCo/Doritos
NotCo bets on AI tech to recreate more classics
Herrera called the two products “intense, unexpected, daring and built with the best of both worlds: the power of Doritos’ intense and iconic flavour and NotCo’s food technology”.
“This positions us at PepsiCo Southern Cone as a centre of talent and innovation. Because we are a global company, but we think locally in all the markets where we operate,” he said. “Thinking glocal is what allows us to continue surprising and growing.”
The new nuggets and mayo will be produced by NotCo and sold by both brands, and other co-developed products will follow soon.
PepsiCo is far from the only food and beverage leader working with NotCo, either on co-branded items or on tailored product development. Mars, Mondelēz International and Nestlé are all leveraging its AI platform to speed up their R&D and improve products.
“Usually, they need better nutritional labels, [and] more cost-efficient formulations. Regulations are changing all the time. Governments are pushing towards having better products from many aspects,” Karim Pichara, co-founder and CTO of NotCo, told Green Queen in March. “Now, we have several projects with all these companies that are related to reformulation and end-to-end product creation.”
Courtesy: NotCo/Doritos
Most notably, NotCo has formed a joint venture with The Kraft Heinz Company, which sells plant-based versions of classics like the blue-box mac and cheese and Oscar Mayer hot dogs in North America. This month, they released mac and cheese cups and chipotle-flavoured mayo to the market.
The company recently unveiled a new GLP Booster powder for people who have weaned off Ozempic and other weight-loss drugs, or those who can’t or don’t want to use them.
It’s already the largest alternative protein player in Latin America, and has teased more launches over the coming months. “We have a few products with some companies in Latin America, and also in the US and in Europe, where we are building entirely new concepts for them,” said Pichara.
“There are several products – very iconic and famous products – that are going to be rolled out this year with a newer version, and we were the ones that reformulated those,” he added.
Spanish mycelium meat firm Libre Foods has sold its brand, IP, and key assets to Swiss fermentation manufacturer Planetary.
Libre Foods, the startup known for its mushroom bacon, has been acquired by Swiss biomanufacturing platform Planetary. The terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.
The deal includes Libre Foods’ core brand, commercial agreements, and IP, and will help advance fungi-fermented protein production across Europe.
“We were happy with the work we’d done at both lab and pilot scale the past few years, and also quickly realised how important access to manufacturing was for commercial success,” Libre Foods founder and CEO Alan Ramos tells Green Queen.
“Considering the current complexities of raising private capital for capex, the nascent state of public and corporate financing for said endeavours, and, ultimately, how a ‘move’ to manufacturing would essentially be a pivot away from our specialisation and core business, we realised that the most effective way for our technology to realize its impact was through collaboration,” he explains.
“We had a few open discussions, yet Planetary was high on our list from the start. This was mainly due to the dynamic edge of their technological platform, the advanced commercial readiness of their manufacturing facilities, and their internal know-how to both seamlessly and successfully transfer our technology to their lines and infrastructure.”
As part of the deal, some staff members (Ramos included) will be part of the transfer, but won’t be joining Planetary’s team upon completion.
Planetary eyes Libre Foods’s fermentation and AI capabilities
Courtesy: Libre Foods
Using biomass fermentation to make fungal proteins, Libre Foods first made a splash in late 2022, when it unveiled its mushroom-based bacon product in Spain, using oyster mushrooms and pea protein. Months later, it teased a whole-cut chicken breast made from mycelium, the root-like structure of filamentous fungi.
Its products leverage the entire fungi organism, utilising upcycled materials and high-performing fungal strains to achieve “industry-leading yields” through its R&D and novel fermentation tech. At one point, its bacon was available at over 30 points of sale, and it received a €335,000 R&D grant from Neotec to develop a low-cost mycelium protein ingredient.
Last year, the startup worked with Spain’s Microfy Systems and Germany’s Software Logistik Artland to develop the Fungi.AI platform, an R&D tool for the fungi-based food industry.
It uses artificial intelligence to power rapid experimentation and conduct high-throughput screening to find the best growing conditions for a range of fungal strains. The enhanced data quality and real-time monitoring are said to accelerate the shift from lab experiments to commercial production.
Courtesy: Libre Foods
“After announcing our line of mycelium technology at the end of 2023, we spent 2024 scaling up our technology to pilot scale and into position for industrial trials,” recalls Ramos.
“In parallel, we optimised our discovery capabilities for both strain and bioprocess development, to not only increase efficiencies in our initial mycelium bioprocess, but also expand into additional fungi-based ingredient solutions, leveraging the opportunities offered by the immense strain diversity of the fungi kingdom.”
That work aligns with Planetary’s expertise. It operates the only active industrial mycoprotein facility in continental Europe, and is building a unique full-stack biomass and precision fermentation platform in line with the agro-industrial complex, titled BioBlocks. It’s designed to support the development and industrialisation of future-facing food and material solutions, using a wide array of feedstocks.
Now, through the acquisition of Libre Foods, Planetary will look to expand its product offering and bolster its capacity to connect AI-led ingredient discovery with productive biomanufacturing at a commercial scale.
Founders ‘bear some responsibility’ for alternative protein decline
Courtesy: Planetary
“This is a strategic acquisition for Planetary as we seek to continuously build and strengthen our BioBlocks platform,” says Charles Pontvianne, group CFO of Planetary. “We are proud to partner with Alan and will seek to extract both operational and commercial synergies from Libre’s brand, products and IP in a short timeframe.”
He added: “Combined with our full-stack fermentation platform, the acquisition of Libre’s assets will reinforce our asset-light licensing offering and further accelerate our commercial ramp-up.”
As part of the deal, Libre Foods’s lead backer, Green Generation Fund, is joining Planetary’s investor base too. “With Planetary’s unmatched infrastructure, scientific expertise and deep vision for scaling bio-based technologies, we believe they are the ideal home to carry Libre’s product innovation from lab to scale and will build out further their position as the leading player for the next era of sustainable biomanufacturing in Europe and beyond,” says Peter Dorfner, the fund’s principal.
Libre Foods’s acquisition comes at a challenging time for alternative protein. While the sector saw a 27% decline in investment in 2024, fermentation startups bucked the trend with a 43% hike in funding. That run has continued this year, with these firms attracting more than half of the sector’s financing in Q1.
“I think that as both the visionaries and pioneers that we consciously and unconsciously agreed to be when we kickstarted our industry, we do bear some responsibility for the current state of the industry,” says Ramos. “Yet, I also believe that it is highly unrealistic to place all the responsibility on the founders, teams and solutions that were brought forth as a result of it.”
“What the current state of global affairs is highlighting is precisely what we’ve been saying all along: just how fragile our food systems are, with everything from shortages to diseases to record-high prices, both across the value chain and ultimately, final products,” he continues.
“Because the world is changing so quickly, everyone is kind of forced to think more short term, and as a result, kicks both seemingly long-term problems and solutions to the back burner, which ultimately not only delays, but also accelerates, the negative impact on both society and our planet down the line.”
Libre Foods deal adds to industry consolidation drive
Courtesy: Libre Foods
The overarching downward trend for alternative proteins, both in terms of sales and funding, has led to widespread consolidation in the industry. While mycelium meat leader Meati was forced to sell for pennies on the dollar due to a technical banking default, other fermentation startups have filed for insolvency (like Arkeon) or been rescued from the brink (like Mycorena).
In the broader industry, British vegan dog food brand The Pack was acquired by Prefera Petfood, dairy-free formula maker Kate Farms by Danone, frozen ready meal maker Daily Harvest by yoghurt leader Chobani, and Dutch meat-free startup Vega Insiders by poultry giant Plukon Food Group – all in the last two months.
“On the one hand, you have M&A’s, which I believe are more often a combining of strengths or specialisations. And on the other, insolvencies, which can be due to a solution not solving a real problem, not solving it adequately enough, or a host of other factors outside of a company’s control,” says Ramos.
Courtesy: Libre Foods
“We’re seeing a bit of everything right now, especially after the future of food boom of 2020/21,” he adds, but outlines that sustainable food solutions are no less important now than they were then. “So most important now is to continue supporting the companies that continue carrying the torch, not only for our industry, but more so, for our food systems as a whole.”
What’s his advice to fellow alternative protein founders? “What makes our industry so unique is that it was birthed by many brave and bold founders who lived and breathed a personal mission to reinvent a food system – myself included – which I think is both noble and important,” he says.
“[But] it is more difficult to build a sound business around impact, than it is to build impact around a sound business. It’s a subtle distinction, yet I believe that the only feasible way to achieve both is by prioritising as such.”
Dutch supermarket Albert Heijn has introduced 15 products combining meat and dairy with plant-based ingredients in the largest such rollout of blended proteins yet.
The Netherlands really is going big on blends.
After Lidl and Aldi, Albert Heijn has become the latest supermarket to join the hybrid protein crusade. And it hasn’t just launched a singular burger or mince, the retailer has gone all out with 15 new products combining animals with plants, spanning both meat and milk.
The new range includes semi-skimmed milk, sausages, salami and deli meats, which are blended with ingredients like faba and butter beans, celeriac, and sugar beet fibre. They’re available in stores now, and crucially, are priced the same as their conventional counterparts.
“These products are more than just delicious. They are the future of food – where taste, health, and sustainability go hand in hand,” said Danilla Vegam, global senior VP of health and sustainability at Ahold Delhaize, the retailer’s parent company.
Can blended meat overturn poor plant protein sales?
Courtesy: Albert Heijn/Green Queen
By blending meat with plant-based ingredients, Albert Heijn is targeting both health and sustainability wins. Research shows that swapping just half of our meat consumption with plant-based proteins can lower agricultural emissions by 31% and land use by 12%, and halt deforestation.
Blended meat can be a useful solution, especially as concerns about poor taste and ultra-processing slow the uptake of plant-based meat products. While Ahold Delhaize announced a plant protein strategy at the start of the year, it has since admitted that sales of these products at Albert Heijn have been disappointing.
The supermarket aimed to raise the share of plant proteins sold to 47% in 2024, 50% in 2025, and 60% by the end of the decade. However, the ratio failed to increase in favour of plants last year, instead falling slightly from 44.5% in 2023 to 44.2%.
Courtesy: Nectar
Sensory testing shows that these products are more likely to appeal to meat-eaters and flexitarians than plant-based alternatives. In some cases, they even outperform 100% meat products. That’s likely what convinced Albert Heijn to go all out on blended meat. It is marketing the products as low-fat, and they cost the same or less than conventional meat.
The range includes seven beef products, including hamburgers, minced meat, sausages, and soup balls. They contain 66-76% beef, which is mixed primarily with 21-23% sugar beet fibre, alongside flavourings, preservatives, and starches.
For consumers, the big benefit lies in a lower saturated fat content. The blended burger and soup balls, for instance, contain 44% less saturated fat than their fully animal-derived counterparts. And while they contain slightly less protein, they offer fibre – a macronutrient currently in demand from consumers optimizing for better gut health.
Meanwhile, Albert Heijn has introduced a line of deli sausages blended with plants too. The salami and cervelaat slices are mixed with butter beans and offer a 30% reduction in total fat, while the grilled, cooked, sandwich and roasted minced meat sausages are combined with kohlrabi (helping halve the fat content).
Hybrid milk range targets saturated fat and emissions
Courtesy: Albert Heijn
The hybrid milks were developed by Dutch firm Farm Dairy and Denmark’s PlanetDairy, who recently introduced a three-strong lineup of cow’s milk blended with plant protein to lower saturated fat content and deliver a 20-30% reduction in emissions.
“The first challenge to overcome was taste and appearance. The new milk blend had to look and taste like traditional dairy milk that people are used to,” explained PlanetDairy CTO Paul Cornillon. “Then, of course, it needs to be affordable. So ingredients must be selected carefully. And in between, the team also had to ensure a strong nutrition profile.”
Each round of product development was met with consumer feedback before being presented to Albert Heijn. In the final range, they settled on 60% cow’s milk for the semi-skimmed version, combining it with sunflower oil, faba bean protein, sugar and salt, and fortifying it with vitamins and calcium. The whole milk, meanwhile, contains 70% conventional dairy.
There are several benefits here. By substituting some of the cow’s milk with plant-based ingredients, Albert Heijn is able to minimise the climate footprint of its dairy offerings. And while the blended milks have slightly lower protein (by 12-14%), they drastically reduce the amount of saturated fat by around 70%.
According to the company, they retain the taste of 100% cow’s milk while adding plants to people’s diets – a key ESG and planetary health goal. “The idea of combination products is new and may take some getting used to. But taste tests show that these products are just as tasty as the regular versions,” said Nienke Tjerkstra, VP of health and sustainability at Albert Heijn.
Courtesy: Roland Berger
A recent global survey, meanwhile, suggested that among the 38% of people who don’t buy non-dairy products, 58% showcase the potential to switch if certain needs are met. The biggest problem was unsatisfactory taste or texture, which left 57% of consumers resistant to these products, followed by limited availability (55%) and high prices (37%).
Previous attempts at hybrid dairy have been middling, and existing ranges – like Kerry Group’s Smug Dairy line of cheeses and butter – are much more expensive than conventional dairy (and even some plant-based versions). So pricing the new blended milks at parity is a shrewd move by Albert Heijn.
“This is just the first step. We are already working on our next project together: yoghurt blends,” said PlanetDairy CEO Jakob Skovgaard. This keys into what consumers want: a recent poll found that people are most receptive to hybrid yoghurts and ice creams, though they’re least interested in beverages and milk alternatives.
Albert Heijn’s Tjerkstra remains bullish on the idea. “We’re making it easier to eat plant-based more often, without customers having to compromise on taste or habits. Small changes can make a big difference – for yourself and for the planet,” she said.
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.”
Canadian whole-cut plant-based meat maker New School Foods has expanded its business structure and diversified from salmon to beef.
Following months of aggressive expansion for its plant-based whole-cut salmon in Canada, New School Foods is now broadening more than just its foodservice footprint.
The Toronto startup has now evolved into NS/TX (New School Textures) Industries, an expanded business that acts as a parent to its R&D and manufacturing divisions, as well as the New School Foods consumer brand.
The move sees the firm expand its portfolio past seafood and into red meat, with NS/TX’s scaffolding process and directional freezing technology able to create not just whole-cut salmon fillets, but also steak and bone-in ribs.
Expanding the business will allow it to operate both as a producer and as a manufacturing partner to other companies looking to experiment and scale up without having to build from the bottom up.
“We have spent the last year scaling up our manufacturing process into an assembly line that can create all of these products, and we decided that we don’t want to reserve this technology for a single brand,” explained founder and CEO Chris Bryson.
“The creation of NS/TX allows us to partner with other brands to develop and manufacture the next generation of alternative protein products.”
NS/TX’s technology is ‘species-agnostic’
Courtesy: NS/TX Industries
Instead of extrusion, a widely used technique in the industry that denatures proteins via heat, NS/TX employs directional freezing to allow products to start raw and cook like conventional meat.
The production method is built around a plant-based scaffolding that mimics animal muscle and connective tissues, with the same diameter, length, strength and behaviour. The layers of tissue are reproduced via a patent-pending injection process and give products a flaky texture.
The scaffold macrostructure can be made into any shape and size, and the texture can be modified by tuning the diameter, length and resistance of the muscle fibres to match any meat type. The pattern and composition of the connective tissue can also be customised, while the multi-layered scaffolds can be infused with “nearly any protein, liquid oil, flavour and colours”, the company explained.
NS/TX has previously described the platform as “species-agnostic”, hinting at its capabilities beyond seafood. Since the scaffolding can be used with plant-based, fermentation-derived or cell-cultivated proteins, it paved the way for the startup to enter B2B co-manufacturing and white-label partnerships.
Courtesy: NS/TX Industries
“Our scaffolding technology has proven to be more flexible than we imagined, and shown that it can be a superior manufacturing alternative to extrusion for red meat as well as seafood applications,” explained Bryson.
The scaffolds can be embedded with plant-based ‘bones’ to emulate steak and ribs, opening up a new avenue for the company. Slovenia’s Juicy Marbles made a splash in 2023 when it launched vegan Baby Ribs with edible bones, which were made from the byproducts of plant protein production.
In addition, NS/TX is utilising waste, finding that the excess material from shaping its whole cuts can form products like ground or flaked meats and fish. “We recently started processing the waste from our cutting process, and turned it into a salmon burger. We soft-launched it last month, and it’s doing super well,” Bryson told Green Queen last month.
Evolved company pulls focus on manufacturing and R&D
Courtesy: NS/TX Industries
Founded in 2021, NS/TX carries out all its R&D, engineering and production at its recently opened 28,000 sq ft facility in Toronto, using off-the-shelf food manufacturing equipment that significantly lowers costs compared to extrusion or cellular agriculture.
This year, the company has signed agreements to bring its whole-cut salmon to over 30 restaurants across Canada, spanning Michelin Guide standouts, boutique hotels, ramen and sushi shops, and emerging chains. It has penned distribution deals with Gordon Food Service, the largest family-operated food distributor in North America, and speciality food purveyor Bondi Produce.
Now, it’s moving into its next phase with the evolved entity, which houses three business units. New Schools Foods is the consumer-facing brand through which it will produce the salmon and beef analogues.
NS/TX R&D will feature a scientific and culinary innovation team that collaborates with other companies to develop custom formulations and products using its technology.
And NS/TX Manufacturing will open up its tech to a wider clientele, working with other food companies to develop and scale private-label, white-label and co-branded offerings. This division will be rolled out over time.
Courtesy: NS/TX Industries
The firm has raised upwards of $19M to date, including via a $6M funding round led by Inter IKEA, the holding company of the furniture giant, last year. That came during the ongoing investment drought for alternative proteins, where startups attracted 27% less capital in 2024 than the year before.
“The 2018-19 era showcased that there is indeed demand for more sustainable foods. We also see that all the time in our sales process. The problem is that there is an R&D and product quality gap, and customer expectations have not been met,” Bryson told Green Queen last month.
“At the end of the day, there needs to be a compelling value proposition for customers, and many products are just not there yet. Through proper investments in R&D and newer production technologies like ours, that can be solved.”
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.”
An interview with the author of a new book that exposes how flawed land-use math is derailing climate progress and argues that even eliminating fossil fuels won’t save us unless we fix food production’s massive emissions.
We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate is the latest book by award-winning journalist and author Michael Grunwald. Its main thesis is that we’re basing our climate decisions on the wrong math when it comes to land use, and that until we solve for this Brazil-sized blind spot, we cannot solve for climate change.
The book is heavy on science, numbers, and policy, which may discourage some, but Grunwald is a gifted storyteller. While he does not offer up any easy answers, Grunwald is a fan of humanity and an admirer of our capacity for world-changing innovation, and the book ends on a hopeful note. Below is an edited and condensed version of my interview with him. For a longer review of the book, see here.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Sonalie Figueiras (Green Queen): What was your plan when you started working on this book about food and climate?
Mike Grunwald: Honestly, I didn’t have one. I was pretty ignorant about the subject, despite being a policy reporter focused on energy and climate. I realised I was missing a huge piece of the puzzle, and I felt someone needed to figure it out, so I guess that would be me. I certainly didn’t know where it would lead.
GQ: Who is this book for? It’s heavy on science and policy, not terribly popular topics for the average Joe and Jane. Did you have a specific audience in mind?
MG: Publishers often tell you to find your “tribe”. The kind of people who are going to be your people, who are going to buy your book. One of the reasons I’m nervous about selling this book is that there isn’t one tribe. There’s going to be something in there that everybody—vegans, climate activists, farmers, foodies—is going to have a problem with.
So I guess this book is for people who are interested in policy, don’t know much about it, and want to learn. I’ve got to plead guilty to putting a lot of science and policy in the book…But I worked really hard to try to make the medicine go down easy, and make it fun and entertaining.
GQ: Let’s talk about the main character. The book focuses on the life and career of Tim Searchinger. Why tell his story?
MG: It happened organically. I’ve known Tim for 25 years. He was an important source for me early in my career. He gave me the tip that led me to write about the Army Corps of Engineers, so he was an important source for me early in my career. I knew him as incredibly honest and fact-driven, but also as someone who can be difficult and has a lot of enemies.
When I was trying to sell the book, someone advised me to have a human element rather than just focusing on abstract issues. Tim became that anchor. When I started looking into food and climate, he was my first call. I realised he had become a leading authority on the intersection of agriculture and climate. His story became central because it quickly became clear this was a story about land use and about “eating the earth.”
Courtesy: Simon & Schuster
GQ: How did you come up with this concept of “eating the earth”?
MG: It came from learning all these statistics, like how two out of every five acres of land on the planet are used for agriculture. And the main reason we’re losing tropical forests is agriculture. I realised that was the core story.
GQ: While the book is mostly about Tim and his journey, you take a detour into the story of Bruce Friedrich, the founder of the Good Food Institute, and the birth of the alternative protein industry for a couple of chapters. How did that happen?
MG: I wanted to tell the whole story about food, agriculture, and climate – the demand side, the supply side, carbon farming, all of it. As you know better than anyone, alternative proteins are a really important part of the food and climate story, and it’s an awesome story. It would have been disingenuous to make it all about Tim, so he disappears from the narrative for a bit. I knew some reviewers might question that, but it felt necessary.
GQ: And from your telling, Tim played a role in connecting Bruce Friedrich with the Bezos Earth Fund, which led to significant investments from Bezos towards three alternative protein research centres in the US, UK and Asia, which was fun to learn about!
MG: Well, I’m just a reporter, but I guess I might have accidentally played a part! [Laughs]. The butterfly wings may have flapped a little bit there.
GQ: Your alt-protein chapters do seem very US-centric, while I would argue it’s a global industry.
MG: That’s fair. The beginning of this tech story was in the US, with people like Bruce Friedrich, Josh Tetrick, Uma Valeti, Pat Brown, and Ethan Brown. I was lucky to attend the GFI Conference in San Francisco in 2019 when there were real conversations about the meat industry potentially disappearing.
Of course, things are happening all over the world, and I can’t cover it all, but I wanted to tell the story of the birth of the sector, which was taking place in the US, so those chapters ended up being more US-centric.
GQ: What are your biggest takeaways from the alt-protein chapters?
MG: What was different about this movement was the idea of trying to sell alt-proteins to non-vegetarians. It wasn’t just for a niche market…So I do feel like those few companies were doing something fundamentally different. I think there was a real story to tell about the start of that. Today, there’s a lot of doom and gloom in the alt-protein world, but I think it’s still a very exciting story.
Courtesy: Michael Grunwald
GQ: Overall, you seem bullish on alt-proteins and hopeful about solutions overall. But the book also acknowledges that progress is slow.
MG: Absolutely. It was important to me not to write a completely negative book. There are dozens of exciting solutions and fascinating people working on them, but none of these solutions has made very much progress yet. [When I started following the alt-protein industry], I was excited about what I was reporting on, but also objective enough to realise some people were being overly optimistic. Some people were predicting the end of animal agriculture by 2035, but that seems unlikely. One of the main messages of the book is that there isn’t just one solution. It’s not an all-or-nothing situation. We’re going to need many solutions. There will be advancements and setbacks.
GQ: You also say Western countries need to eat less meat, but you’re not telling people to stop eating meat entirely. That’s not always a popular message.
MG: No, it isn’t. People often want to hear a simple answer. But it’s about nuance. I believe “better is better than worse.” It’s okay if people make incremental changes. I still eat meat. I cut out beef for a while, but then I went to cattle ranches in Brazil and ate some delicious steak. We’ve been eating meat for millions of years. I think it’s great when people go vegan or vegetarian, but I also think it’s great when people just try to do better. I don’t expect anyone to be perfect.
GQ: That’s interesting. That idea of “perfect” feels very American. As a half-French person, my sense is that Europeans have a more balanced approach, with my French and German friends being very comfortable saying: “I believe in climate action, and also, once in a while, I eat beef.” You see the rise of flexitarianism in Europe, with people reducing their meat consumption but not necessarily going vegan.
MG: I think that’s true. This idea that it’s either black or white seems more American. Europeans tend to have a more balanced approach.
GQ: We do love a silver bullet, and I do think most people are going to ask you: “What’s the one solution, Mike?”
MG: The fact is, even if the rich world reduced beef consumption by 50%—which is extraordinarily ambitious—and let’s say we cut food waste by 50%, which is also really hard, and got rid of biofuels (a ridiculous waste of farmland), we’d still need to raise yields faster over the next 25 years than we did in the last 50. We’d have to make a lot more food with a lot less land. We need to produce more food without using more land.
Efficiency is key for food security and for protecting wildlands. High-yield agriculture is essential for feeding the growing population without destroying more of our planet. We can’t just hand-wave these numbers away and say: “Maybe it won’t get that bad.” We’re on track to deforest another dozen Californias by 2050 if we don’t change. So yeah, we’re going to have to make a lot of changes.
GQ: My sense is that climate people don’t want to hear that no matter what, in the future, we’ll be eating more meat.
MG: Look, the first thing humans do when they’re less poor is eat more meat. It’s silly to pretend otherwise. Consumerism is relevant to climate, but people have to eat. It’s not like fossil fuels, where we can find alternatives. Emissions might be peaking; we can see an energy transition happening. But with food? There are no alternatives. The problem’s getting worse—no positive trends here. We have to roll up our sleeves and get serious.
I can’t give people the simple answer they want, which probably will hurt my book sales and make me a less compelling podcast guest. But this shit is hard.
It’ll take nerds working on niche solutions, plus political, corporate, and behavioural change – none of which is happening now. That’s why I wrote the book. I’m banging my spoon, yelling: “Hey, world, we gotta do something!”
I’m trying a big-tent approach. Industrial ag can learn from regenerative ag, and vice versa. We can honour vegans without demanding universal veganism. Whether your issue is antibiotics, pandemic risk, animal welfare, worker rights, or Big Ag’s terrible politics—all valid. Let’s all try to make things better. We don’t have to agree on everything.
GQ: You wrestle with whether consumers are responsible for the climate. You push back against the popular eco argument – “stop blaming consumers, these are systemic issues” – but also cite Project Drawdown’s list, which says that the top climate actions are wasting less food and eating less meat.
MG: I hate this trend—I wrote about it for Politico during Covid—where it’s uncool to talk about individual action. Headlines like “I work in environmentalism”, “I don’t care if you recycle” or “Going vegan won’t save the world”. The idea is that focusing on personal behaviour makes environmentalists seem like scolds, or worse, does the work of oil companies and Big Meat. But Exxon and Trump aren’t driving your SUV to the mall. McDonald’s and JBS aren’t force-feeding you burgers.
GQ:Though many people live where McDonald’s is cheaper than almost any other food.
MG: Absolutely, and we should fix that. But it’s a bad look for the environmental movement to say: “Climate is an emergency! We’re past 1.5°C – we’re screwed!” and then add: “But your personal emissions don’t matter.” No, it all matters. We need better policy, yes—we must talk about McDonald’s, food systems, and perverse incentives. Too much of my book is about accounting (sorry), because bad climate accounting creates bad incentives.
But you nailed it: eating less beef and wasting less food are good. Beef is far worse than chicken or pork for climate and other reasons. If the average American swapped one beef burger a week for an Impossible Burger, we’d save a Massachusetts-sized chunk of land yearly. I won’t hand-wave individual actions away. They’re not the only thing—ignoring policy is a mistake—but we need better policy, better incentives, and better behaviour. When we fail, we try again.
GQ: That’s fair. Once again, very nuanced. Very tough for people to swallow.
MG: Doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker… [laughs].
GQ:Unlike most non-vegan food-focused climate books and groups, regenerative agriculture does not come off too well in the book. Can you talk more about this?
MG: It’s the ultimate silver bullet narrative: “Farm a little kinder, go back to the old ways, diversify crops, be nice to the soil, and all that atmospheric carbon will magically return to the earth—Kumbaya!” Carbon farming isn’t entirely bullshit, but mostly. Soil carbon is hard to measure, hard to keep in place, and hard to prove you’re not just robbing Peter to pay Paul. Worse, you can’t add significant carbon to soil without adding nitrogen, which has its own climate problems.
The idea that regenerative agriculture will solve climate change? I push back hard. And it’s being pushed by Al Gore, Michael Pollan… And it’s not just the left – Bobby Kennedy, Joe Rogan, plus the Rockefeller Foundation, the UN, and agribusinesses like Danone and General Mills slapping “regenerative” on everything. As a climate solution, it’s wildly oversold.
Look, I’m not just the “industrial ag guy.” The NYT gave my essay [about this] a provocative headline, but yes, we need better industrial ag—not its elimination. My North Star? High-yield agriculture. We must make more food with less land. Factories excel at mass production; factory farms are good at mass food. Sri Lanka tried ditching chemicals cold turkey—yields crashed, and the government fell. Disaster!
That said, I don’t think all regenerative ag is bad. It does improve soil health. In Brazil, I met Bolsonaro-supporting ranchers – definitely not Michael Pollan readers—using regenerative and industrial practices (feedlots, fertilised pastures). They just wanted higher yields. Efficiency and yield are my priorities, which, to some, makes me sound like a corporate shill.
“Factory” is a dirty word. But I’m not a farmer or agronomist. The agroecology crowd argues we haven’t invested enough in organic/regenerative yield research. I’m open to that. Still, yield must be the focus.
GQ: Would you agree that the book is fairly pro-GMO?
MG: Well, at least pro-concept. There’s nothing wrong with them. But I do point out that some claims about their yield benefits are exaggerated.
GQ: Tim offers some climate finance solutions, like air travel taxes and redirecting ag subsidies. How realistic are these?
MG: They’re definitely tough sells, politically speaking. Any changes to agriculture are challenging because the industry is powerful everywhere. People hate any tax increases on food products. But, Denmark has passed significant agricultural reforms that incorporate many of these ideas, showing it’s not impossible. Also, governments give huge amounts of money to farmers. If we start adding strings to that money, requiring more sustainable practices, we could make a significant impact. We just need to be careful about it, so farmers aren’t overly impacted in the long run.
GQ: What’s the main takeaway you want people to get from your book?
MG: We need to be pragmatic and find a middle ground. There are extremes on both sides of this issue, and we need common-sense solutions. We have to recognise that there are multiple valid perspectives here and that we have to work together to find solutions. We need higher yields, but also to make agriculture more efficient.
Dutch food tech firm Rival Foods has secured €10M ($11.5M) in funding to scale up its suite of whole-cut plant-based meats, which contain minimal ingredients and high amounts of protein.
If there are three things consumers want from their plant-based meat today, it’s fewer ingredients, lower prices, and better taste and texture.
Dutch startup Rival Foods is attempting to do it all. Using shear-cell technology to replicate animal muscle fibres with plants, its meat alternatives undergo minimal processing while maximising texture and protein.
To expand its technology, the firm has raised €10M ($11.5M) in a Series B funding round led by Dutch pension fund ABP, with participation from Pymwymic and ROM Utrecht Region and follow-on investment from PeakBridge.
“This investment marks a major milestone in our mission to make high-quality plant-based meat mainstream,” said Birgit Dekkers, founder and CEO of Rival Foods. “With the backing of world-class investors, we’re ready to scale fast and reshape the future of protein. We’re called Rival for a reason –we’re here to be one.”
Courtesy: Rival Foods
Rival Foods looks to meet anti-UPF demand
Founded in 2019 as a spinoff from Wageningen University & Research, Rival Foods is among several startups specialising in whole-cut meat alternatives. These products aim to mimic the fibrous texture loved by meat-eaters, addressing a key pain point for plant-based meat.
Sensory testing shows a 38-point gap in texture preference between the average animal and plant-based meat product, with the latter being liked by less than three in 10 omnivores in the US. Another survey found that 22% of Americans are reducing their intake of vegan alternatives due to poor texture.
Elsewhere, 26% of Germans say they’d pay more for a plant-based product if it has the same taste and texture as the food it’s hoping to replace. In the UK, too, 51% of people say taste/texture is the biggest factor driving them away from meat alternatives.
Courtesy: Rival Foods
Whole cuts offer a solution. Rival Foods uses patented shear-cell technology to recreate meat’s fibrous textures. “The process can simply be explained as a pressure cooker with a rotating part, using temperature and rotation to enable deformation and alignment of proteins for fibrous texture creation,” it says on its website.
Its current portfolio includes chicken and beef, which contain a blend of plant proteins alongside water, natural aromas, herbs and spices, and salt. The chicken contains 28g of protein and 0.6g of fibre per 100g, and is available in fillets, blocks and pulled formats. The beef, meanwhile, boasts 26g of protein and 2.5g of fibre per 100g, and comes in chunks and pulled variants.
The additive-free products are specifically designed to address consumer concerns about ultra-processed foods (UPFs). Viewing plant-based meat as overly processed has led many to perceive it as unhealthy, even though experts have warned that the level of processing doesn’t define how nutritious a product is.
“Rival Foods have built something special: a scalable process to turn standard plant proteins into exciting fibrous, meat-like structures. Rival Foods’ products offer a satisfying bite with high protein content and a clean label,” said Lodewijk Meens, senior portfolio manager at ABP Netherlands’s Energy Transition & Biodiversity fund.
Courtesy: Rival Foods
Cost reductions are key for plant-based meat
In the Netherlands, sales of meat analogues fell by 7% in retail, as consumers cooled on centre-of-plate formats like burgers and fillets. Instead, products like mince and strips worked better, possibly because they’re now 6% cheaper per kg.
Part of the reason why Rival Foods raised funds is to double its production capacity at its Geldrop facility, which will help the startup optimise its production costs and reach price parity with conventional meat.
Research shows that if plant-based alternatives are more expensive than meat, their preference falls below 20%, and if they’re priced equally, this increases to 21%. Whereas if vegan alternatives cost about half of a conventional burger, the number of people choosing the former would double. And lowering the price of the plant-based burger by even 10% would result in a 14% increase in sales.
In an interview with Green Queen, PeakBridge founding general partner Nadav Berger said if he had a magic wand to revitalise the plant-based meat sector, he’d make the products “20% cheaper than real meat”. “If it’s a really magic wand? 40% cheaper,” he added. “Texture and flavour are the other keys, but that’s already well on its way. The technology is there.”
Courtesy: Rival Foods
Reacting to Rival Foods’s Series B round, PeakBridge partner and COO Martina Pace echoed the sentiment. “Real success in the alternative protein space demands three tough things to achieve: great taste, texture, and competitive prices. We’re proud to see Rival Foods achieving all three, she said.
The company employs a B2B approach, working with chefs, retailers and brands across Europe to bring plant-based whole cuts to consumers. The new capital will help fuel its international growth, establish new partnerships with major clients, and expand its team.
Whole-cut meat alternatives stand to win
Expansion beyond Europe will only help the brand. In the US, while the overall category saw a 10% decline in annualised sales between 2022 and 2024, whole cuts like steaks, fillets and cutlets experienced a 16% increase.
Conventional whole cuts are also the most popular meat category stateside, regularly consumed by 68% of Americans. For plant-based versions, this drops to 30%, though 44% would consider eating them if these products improve.
Courtesy: GFI
Rival Foods’ successful round is proof that investor appetite for plant-based startups exists, particularly for scalable models that address consumer needs. While this sector saw VC funding fall by 60% last year, investors have continued to back innovative startups in 2025, such as Ecovative ($11M) and Project Eaden ($15.6M).
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.”
Slovenian plant-based meat maker Juicy Marbles has teamed up with Austrian mycoprotein firm Revo Foods to launch a whole-cut cod alternative tailored for the US market.
Meat and seafood alternatives may have suffered a 7% fall in sales in 2024, but that isn’t stopping two companies from debuting a new product that taps into what Americans are looking for from these products.
Juicy Marbles, the Slovenian startup known for its ultra-realistic plant-based marbled steaks, has partnered with Austrian mycoprotein seafood producer Revo Foods on a raw, flaky vegan cod packed with fibre and omega-3.
Seafood alternatives typically make up a fraction of the plant-based market, as well as the overall seafood sector. Consumers remain dissatisfied with the majority of the products, which tend to be in a breaded format. Complaints often surround their rubbery texture, translucent appearance, or disappointing flavour.
The two companies decided to develop a vegan seafood product because people kept asking for it, Juicy Marbles co-founder Luka Sinček tells Green Queen. “Our customers – the ones who cook, explore, improvise – wanted a plant-based fish that wasn’t breaded, gummy, or just a vague fishy shape,” he said.
“Kinda Cod is our answer. It’s not chasing a trend, it’s filling a need. A raw, whole-cut fish alternative you can actually cook with.”
Vegan cod delivers texture enhancements and key micronutrients
Courtesy: Juicy Marbles
The new vegan cod, available in 110g packs on Juicy Marbles’s website, has its roots in Europe. The latest among Revo Foods’s portfolio of 3D-printed seafood products is El Blanco – Inspired by Black Cod, which it released in April.
Its computer-guided models transform unstructured proteins (like mycoprotein) into products with aligned, heterogeneous fibres. The integration of fat into the protein matrix is key, leading to a ‘flaky’ texture reminiscent of black cod, which is produced using a new 3D extrusion technology.
“Revo created something special – a structured, flaky fish filet using fungi and tech we deeply respect,” explains Sinček. “Together, we refined the recipe to better suit the American palate, but the essence remains theirs. It’s unlike anything in our current lineup: lighter, leaner, subtler — yet unmistakably Marbles.”
He notes that Juicy Marbles’s role wasn’t technical, instead strategic and curatorial. “We didn’t throw our tech into a blender. We shared a vision,” he says. “We know our audience, we know food culture, and we knew this product needed to be brought to the stage – with a few flavour and texture tweaks to suit the American scene. That’s the real magic: taste meets timing.”
The Kinda Cod is produced at Revo Foods’s production site in Austria, and is designed for a variety of cooking methods and cuisines, for both home cooks and professional chefs. “It’s priced to be accessible for the quality and innovation it delivers,” says Sinček.
It contains 212g of DHA and EPA per serving from microalgae oil, making up a large portion of the daily recommended intake of omega-3 fatty acids in the US. It also boasts 40% of the daily value of vitamin B12, 30% of vitamin B6, 40% of folate, and 29% of fibre
Juicy Marbles kicks off partnership model after 242% growth
Courtesy: Juicy Marbles
The cod follows the launch of several new products by each of the companies. Alongside its black cod alternative, Revo Foods brought out The Prime Cut, a novel product format that doesn’t aim to replicate meat, and focuses on nutrition.
Juicy Marbles itself unveiled its Meaty Meat line of products this year, starting with Lamb-ish (with 34g of protein) and Pork-ish (with a Nutri-Score rating of A) in the US. These are precursors to the brand’s retail debut in the country, while the company is planning a wider rollout for them in Europe.
“Last year, we grew 242% – not in hype, but in actual product moving from shelf to plate,” reveals Sinček. “Our Thick-Cut Filet is a retail anchor, and Meaty Meat is carving its own cult following. It’s humbling and thrilling.”
The Revo Foods partnership isn’t a “one-off” – it’s rather the start of a new line of whole-cut alternative proteins imported for sale in the US, dubbed Juicy Marbles & Friends. The idea is to bring a wider range of innovations to consumers without relying on more investment (which fell by 27% sector-wide in 2024) or diverting from its core product line.
The line will include products meeting various taste profiles, health goals, and price ranges. “This wouldn’t be possible if we insisted on doing everything in-house,” says Sinček. “Nothing beats developing your own idea and taking it to market, but if our customers want something we cannot produce – that someone else has already done a fantastic job with – why not find a way to bring it to them?”
Courtesy: Juicy Marbles
Revo Foods founder and CEO Robin Simsa, points to how many startups “tried to do everything themselves” at the start of the decade while facing capital challenges – and says that letting startups combine their different strengths can bring the whole industry forward.
“Juicy Marbles has built an international brand and distribution network, which most European brands have never achieved. We have pent-up demand for our products from the US that we’ve been unable to supply,” he explains. “So the end result fulfils both of our companies’ missions. I think this collaborative mindset is key to ushering in a new, more mature era for the plant-based industry.”
As for Juicy Marbles & Friends, the future is “fluid”, according to Sinček. “More announcements are coming soon,” he says, adding that the brand has “many friends”. “And they’ve all been working on something weird and wonderful.”
The EU has extended its track record of investing in climate-smart food tech startups amid rising inflation and environmental threats in the region.
EIT Food’s RisingFoodStars, an EU-backed programme to help agrifood tech startups scale up, has announced 16 members for its 2025 cohort.
The startups’ focus spans alternative proteins, low-carbon alternatives to staple ingredients, sustainable agriculture, and eco-friendly packaging, which are helping tackle climate-change-induced supply chain risks, agricultural emissions (which only reduced by 2% between 2005 and 2022) and growing food inflation.
“With food inflation at 3.3% year-on-year – still the EU’s top cost-of-living driver – and climate disruption threatening core ingredients, the need for scalable agrifood innovation is more urgent than ever,” said Narjis Chakir, programme lead at RisingFoodStars.
“Our 2025 cohort brings tangible, science-led solutions, from carbon-smart farming to sustainable proteins, and we’re here to help them scale fast, access markets, and drive real transformation.”
EU bets on cocoa and palm oil alternatives
Courtesy: Kokomodo
Of the 16 startups, eight are producing future-friendly food ingredients via fermentation and other forms of cellular agriculture. UK-based Clean Food Group and Finland’s Perfat Technologies are both developing fat substitutes that can enable companies to transition away from polluting ingredients like palm oil.
Clean Food Group turns food waste into oils and fats by fermenting scalable yeast strains, with the ingredients suitable for both human and pet food, as well as cosmetics. Perfat Technologies, meanwhile, is leveraging advanced oleogel tech to create solid fat alternatives that are nutritionally and environmentally superior to unsaturated fats such as butter, palm oil, and coconut oil.
Also part of the cohort are two Israeli companies focused on decarbonising the cocoa industry with cell-based alternatives. Kokomodo grows its version all year round in controlled environments, which is optimised for functional health benefits in food and nutraceuticals.
And Celleste Bio produces cocoa butter and powder from cell culture technology, while applying computational models to drive innovation in the chocolate industry.
Palm oil is omnipresent in the CPG world, but is directly linked to large-scale tropical deforestation and human rights abuses. Its use in the chocolate industry contributes to dark chocolate’s sky-high emissions (only beef produces more greenhouse gases per kg), and climate change itself has decimated cocoa yields, leading to all-time-high prices.
In the EU, 96.5% of cocoa is imported from regions unprepared for the climate crisis, which threatens the ingredient’s supply chain, so investing in alt-cocoa startups is a shrewd move.
Fermentation scores big
Courtesy: ProteinDistillery
Precision fermentation is very much in the spotlight in 2025’s EIT Food RisingFoodStars cohort. Israel’s Imagindairy uses the technology to produce animal-free dairy proteins with the same flavour, mouthfeel, functionality and nutritional attributes of their conventional counterparts. Its AI-driven platform allows it to produce the ingredients in a cost-competitive manner, and it has received regulatory approval in both Israel and the US.
Based in Portugal, PFx Biotech leverages precision fermentation to produce speciality bioactive proteins, starting with human lactoferrin, an iron-regulating whey protein found in breast milk. It recently received €2.5M ($2.6M) from investors in a seed funding round.
In Germany, ProteinDistillery is upcycling beer waste with yeast to produce Prew:tein, which can act as an emulsifier, a gelling and foaming agent, and a binder to replace animal proteins and plant-based additives like methylcellulose in a host of products.
The other future food startup in the cohort is Adamo Foods. The London-based startup uses mycelium – the root-like structure of filamentous fungi – to create clean-label, whole-cut meat analogues that replicate the texture of animal muscle.
The EU’s bet on fermentation isn’t surprising. While plant-based and cultivated protein startups suffered from a 64% and 40% dip in venture funding, respectively, last year, fermentation firms attracted 43% more money – making it the only bright spot in the alternative protein sector.
EU is a leader in future food funding
Courtesy: EIT Food
Apart from the above, the cohort includes sustainable packaging startups Greentech Innovators and Kelpi, functional mushroom specialist Kääpä Biotech, and soil and crop solution firms FA Bio, Resurrect Bio, AgroSustain, Hudson River Biotechnology, and CroBio.
They will hope to add to the success of the RisingFoodStars initiative, which has supported 146 scale-ups since 2018, leading to 33 innovations coming to market, seven successful exits, and the creation of over 1,140 jobs. Alumni, which include seaweed packaging pioneer Notpla, animal-free dairy protein maker Verley, and palm oil alternative startup NoPalm Ingredients, have collectively raised €870M in funding.
The EU has been a keen investor in future food technologies. It spotlighted several startups at EIT Food’s flagship Next Bite event last year, has included a number of alternative protein firms in its accelerator programmes, and invested €50M in precision-fermented and algae-based foods via the European Innovation Council.
It’s part of the region’s broader leadership in research funding for alternative proteins. Since 2020, the region has pumped in €252M for future food research, half of which came in 2023 and early 2024, chiefly from the Horizon Europe programme, according to the Good Food Institute Europe.
This is because livestock farming accounts for 81-86% of agricultural emissions in the EU, despite only providing 35% of its calories and 65% of its protein supply.
Farmer groups and climate activists have both urged the EU Commission to deliver an action plan for plant-based food in its agrifood vision, a call backed by doctors, consumer groups, and even some of the largest food companies. While the Commission did not make that commitment in the final plan, it has pledged to create a protein diversification strategy to address the EU’s protein supply challenges.
