Fermentation startup Nature’s Fynd has teamed up with actor Justine Lupe in a marketing campaign for its dairy-free Fy yogurts.
How often do you get to break bread with a cast member of one of TV’s most popular shows ever?
It’s the kind of rarity that Chicago startup Nature’s Fynd is banking on, teaming up with Justine Lupe – star of the HBO mega-hit Succession – for its latest marketing drive.
The company, known for its fungi-based dairy and meat alternatives, has launched a sweepstakes where one winner will get to dine with Lupe at an Optimistic Brunch at Cabra Los Angeles.
The promotional campaign comes nearly a year after Nature’s Fynd introduced its line of dairy-free yogurts made from its signature Fy protein, which will also be the centre of the brunch with Lupe.
“You know, I’ve discovered that if I have to be up early, I deserve a treat,” Lupe says in a video accompanying the announcement. “A better-for-us dairy-free yogurt that actually tastes good.”
Highlighting the product range’s availability in Whole Foods Market, the actress encourages shoppers to buy the yogurt from the store. They will then need to submit a copy of the receipt on the contest’s website, with entries allowed until the end of the year, before a winner is drawn at random in January.
“You can win a brunch with me and we can do the whole ‘better thing’ together,” Lupe adds. The brunch will take place in February, with Nature’s Fynd covering the flights and accommodation for two nights for one winner and two friends.
The private brunch will feature a spread by Stephanie Izard, James Beard Award-winner and chef-owner of Cabra LA. “Winners will sip, savour, and schmooze about how much better brunch can be with a ’better for us” yogurt that actually tastes good,” Nature’s Fynd said in a press release.
“With 8g of complete protein plus 4g of fibre, our fungi-powered yogurt is convincing people that they don’t have to compromise on taste. We’re thrilled that Justine agrees and is excited to help us share this story with her fans,” said chief revenue and marketing officer Karuna Rawal.
“I’m so happy to have discovered Nature’s Fynd, as there’s something wonderful about not having to overthink whether what I’m eating is both good for me and good for the planet,” said Lupe, mostly recently seen in Netflix’s Nobody Wants This.
Courtesy: Nature’s Fynd
Well-funded Nature’s Fynd looks to tap mycelium boom
“They created this delicious ‘better for us’ and better for the environment, dairy-free yogurt based on a discovery in Yellowstone National Park. It is a little celebration of optimism about how we can find solutions in nature to some of our biggest challenges,” Lupe said.
Indeed, the startup’s Fy protein was born out of research conducted for NASA on a fungal strain found in the park’s geysers, called Fusarium strain flavolapis. The naturally occurring organism undergoes a unique type of fermentation, where biomass is grown atop a liquid surface, instead of inside a liquid or on top of a solid.
Nature’s Fynd feeds the microbes a select blend of nutrients to kickstart high protein formation – within a few days, filaments grow and interlace to form a mycelial ‘biomat’ with a similar texture to muscle fibres. Then is then steamed, pressed, rinsed and sliced to produce the Fy ingredient, which can be turned into a liquid, solid or powdered state.
The protein has formed the base of breakfast sausage parties and non-dairy cream cheese too. The yogurts, meanwhile, come in vanilla, strawberry and peach flavours, utilising live cultures and boasting essential amino acids and favourable digestion profiles.
Courtesy: Nature’s Fynd
These products also have a significantly lower climate footprint, with the fungal ingredient needing 99% less land and water than beef, while generating 94% fewer emissions. These attributes have impressed chefs Andrew Zimmern and Le Bernardin co-owner Eric Ripert, as well as investors like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Al Gore – to date, Nature’s Fynd has raised $500M in capital.
The partnership with Lupe comes at a time when mycelium has become the darling of the alternative protein industry. This year has seen Meati raise a $100M Series C round for mycelium startup Meati, Infinite Roots secure $58M, and Ecovative close a $28M round for MyBacon.
Meanwhile, The Better Meat Co has received a ‘no further questions’ letter from the FDA, Nosh.bio has launched single-ingredient Koji Chunks, and Matr Foods has obtained a €20M grant from the EU’s investment arm for a mycelium factory, and Beyond Meat has forayed into the world of fungi too, among other developments.
Italy’s plant-based market is bucking the global decline, but there are several missed opportunities for companies and the industry as a whole.
It has been two months since Gruppo Tonazzo, an Italian company that had been producing meat for 136 years, announced it was pivoting to a fully plant-based business model.
The move – described as “a gesture of great responsibility towards the environment and the nutritional wellbeing of future generations” – was a marker of vegan food’s strong foothold in Italy.
While the plant-based sector has seen setbacks in several markets across the globe – sales were down in countries like the US and the UK, all the way to Australia. But Italy was among the nations that went the opposite direction, with retail sales of vegan food reaching €641M in 2023, an 8% jump from the previous year.
In the first four months of 2024, too, Italians spent 6.5% more on plant-based food than the corresponding period a year ago, according to Circana data commissioned by the Good Food Institute.
These trends were driven by Italians’ shrinking appetite for meat, with nearly six in 10 aiming to cut back on these products last year – driven mainly by health reasons. At the same time, meat alternatives make up a third of the country’s plant-based market share, behind only non-dairy milk.
“Italy represents a unique gateway for companies looking to enter the plant-based sector, thanks to its culinary tradition and growing demand for sustainable solutions,” says Felippe Fontanelli, founder of the Virtuous Food Revolution Alliance and co-founder of Rethink Pasta.
He is the author of a new report, titled ‘The Hidden Gem of Europe’s Plant-Based Market: The Rise of a New Made in Italy’, which explores the country’s potential to be a leader for vegan food, and the challenges the sector faces.
“This report provides a detailed market overview and guides companies in navigating this complex landscape, aligning with Virtuous’s mission to strengthen the Italian plant-based ecosystem,” adds Fontanelli.
Here are five measures Italy could propel its plant-based industry to greater heights.
1) Look to the young
Courtesy: Emma Rahmani/Corelens
Young Italians are driving the adoption of sustainable diets, with 82% of 17- to 35-year-olds doing so on account of health and climate concerns, according to the 2024 Coop Report. This demographic, titled the Explorers, is leading the shift towards flexitarianism in the country, and three-quarters of them believe reducing meat is crucial to combat the climate crisis.
The demand isn’t just for plant-based burgers, but innovative and familiar plant-based products that fit into their lives seamlessly. This is an opportunity ripe for Italy’s €81B out-of-home market, with fast-food chains like Burger King and KFC – frequented by youngsters – introducing plant-based versions of menu classics.
Young and disruptive distributors, like Mr. Root in Milan, provide a crucial entry point for vegan food manufacturers. They cater to premium outlets and restaurants looking for unique, healthy, and delicious products to integrate into their menus.
“Specialised distributors give innovative plant-based brands market access, focusing on premium outlets, while larger distributors stick to established brands,” writes Fontanelli. The lack of receptiveness from the bigger distributors isn’t due to low interest, but because it requires “significant focus” to convey the unique value of each brand.
“Startups often face challenges, including high team turnover, unstable product availability, constant packaging revisions to meet local regulatory standards, and limited budgets, all of which make long-term continuity difficult in such a competitive market,” the report states.
3) Retailers must amp up collaboration
Courtesy: Anay Mridul/Green Queen
Fontanelli argues that Italy’s supermarkets are missing opportunities in the expanding vegan market. While centralised chains like Aldi, Lidl, Esselunga and Carrefour have expanded their plant-based lines, decentralised retailers that operate under regional purchasing models – such as Coop and Conad – have been slow to adapt. This has made it extremely difficult for startups and SMEs to get a foothold on their shelves, the report argues.
This is why the industry requires “a cultural shift towards more collaborative initiatives” between retailers and brands. This can be done by establishing strategic initiatives to reduce the operational barriers smaller companies face when trying to expand their reach, creating dedicated sections for plant-based products, supporting local supply chains, and developing marketing initiatives to highlight their benefits.
4) Reinvent the classics
Courtesy: Dreamfarm
Despite the dominance of industry giants like Nestlé, Valsoia and Tonazzo, significant prospects remain for innovative plant-based brands, heralded by young entrepreneurs. These startups can capitalise by reimagining Italian culinary classics with a sustainable and health-forward twist.
“This movement spans across the plant-based dairy, meat, and dessert sectors, blending modern innovation with culinary excellence,” writes Fontanelli. Among the challenger brands leading the charge are alt-dairy players Heaven, Dreamfarm and SQUP, as well as cocoa-free chocolate producer Foreverland.
That said, despite Italy’s cuisine being one of the homes of the whole-food, plant-forward Mediterranean diet, the opportunity for larger food producers to fully integrate plant-based innovation into the Mediterranean diet’s global appeal is largely untapped – addressing it could help position Italy as a leader in the industry.
5) Target the ready-meal vertical
Courtesy: De Angelis
Building on the local context, Fontanelli highlights the popular trend of vegan food producers collaborating with ready-meal brands to expand their customer base. These companies regularly veganise Italian classics like lasagne, filled pastas, sauces, snacks, and pizza toppings, and this allows plant-based brands to leverage consumers’ familiarity with local cuisine.
Successful examples include Beyond Meat’s partnership with De Angelis and Future Farm’s deal with Rethink Pasta. Even international cuisines are gaining in popularity, particularly among the Explorers. This is an area being tapped by brands like Planted, which has teamed up with I Love Poke, and Current Foods, whose vegan seafood is on the menu at Poke House.
“The Italian market is not for the faint-hearted. It is a market for those who are in it for the long haul, willing to put skin in the game to transform the food system,” warns Fontanelli. “The players succeeding in Italy today recognise the long-term potential and are prepared to navigate its unique challenges to drive systemic change.”
He adds: “For companies with vision and commitment, Italy represents one of the most dynamic opportunities in Europe’s plant-based landscape – a market with incredible growth potential for those ready to invest in its future.
TurtleTree is aiming to launch its animal-free lactoferrin in canned coffee drinks in mid-2025 via a partnership with fellow Singapore startup Mad Foods.
Singapore’s TurtleTree, which uses precision fermentation to make a bioidentical lactoferrin protein, has struck its first homegrown deal with ready-to-drink coffee maker Mad Foods.
The partnership will see Mad Foods incorporate TurtleTree’s LF+ ingredient into its line of canned oat milk lattes to deliver immune support, gut health and iron regulation benefits.
The functional beverages have been earmarked for a Q2 2025 rollout in the city-state, pending regulatory approval. If realised, this would mark the first time a precision-fermented lactoferrin product is available to buy in Singapore.
“We are currently working to submit our regulatory filing to the Singapore Food Agency in anticipation of this launch and anticipate confirmation mid-2025 to line up with the formal launch,” TurtleTree co-founder and CEO Fengru Lin told Green Queen. “We are excited that this will enable market entry for TurtleTree in Asia where lactoferrin is a well-known ingredient.”
She added: “Turtletree is very excited by Mad Foods’ mission and to support their expansion into functional nutrition as well as the accessibility of this high-value protein in Singapore, Australia and beyond.”
Precision fermentation combines the process of traditional fermentation with the latest advances in biotechnology to efficiently produce a compound of interest, such as a protein, flavour molecule, vitamin, pigment, or fat.
Lactoferrin, an iron-binding protein found in human milk and bovine colostrum just after birth, is a prized whey protein known for its antiviral, antibacterial, anti-carcinogenic, immunity-boosting, and gut-strengthening properties.
But it suffers from a supply shortage, since it takes at least 10,000 litres of milk to produce just 1kg of purified lactoferrin. This pushes up costs to between $750 and $1,500 per kg in retail, and limits applications to infant nutrition (which takes up 60% of the protein’s supply) and supplements.
However, some companies are hoping to ramp up lactoferrin supply for verticals like sports nutrition, women’s health, adult and elderly nutrition, and more. TurtleTree is one of them, having managed to scale up production to a point where its precision-fermented ingredient competes with bovine lactoferrin on price.
It also obtained self-determined Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) status in the US last year, allowing TurtleTree to sell its precision-fermented lactoferrin to manufacturers of baby formula, supplements, functional beverages, protein powders, meal replacements, and animal-free dairy products.
Several alternative protein startups are focusing on lactoferrin, including Australia’s All G Foods and Noumi, US companies Helaina and De Novo Foodlabs, Californian startup Triplebar Bio (in collaboration with FrieslandCampina), and New Zealand’s Daisy Lab. The latter recently diversified into lactoferrin to accelerate investment returns amid the high costs and scalability challenges of precision fermentation.
TurtleTree, founded in 2019, was one of the first startups working on animal-free lactoferrin, and has said its clients are interested in purchasing $500M worth of LF+ over the next five years. For Lin, seeing other companies follow suit is “very validating” to her focus on “building a product that has a better chance to get to gross profit positive”, in comparison to cell-based milk.
“We’re proud to be the frontrunners and hold a pole position in this race today, and welcome the others to join us,” she told Green Queen. “We believe the market is going to explode and there is space for more to join us in making this ingredient accessible to everyone.”
She added: “On top of this, not many consumers in the Western markets know what lactoferrin is and so together with these other players, we are creating a category – without them, this wouldn’t be possible.”
TurtleTree in talks with bovine lactoferrin producers globally
Courtesy: TurtleTree
Mad Foods supplies its ready-to-drink coffee SKUs in Singapore and Malaysia, and is set to expand to Australia soon. With TurtleTree’s LF+, it aims to offer a more health-conscious option and support the shift towards functional foods and drinks that support mental and physical wellness.
This plays into consumer trends, with 37% of people in Asia-Pacific actively treating stress and anxiety, and 39% seeking to alleviate sleep problems. The region’s appetite for functional drinks is massive too, accounting for 40% of the global market share. In Singapore alone, functional beverages are set to be valued at $271M by 2027.
“Our exclusive distributors in Singapore, Australia and Malaysia have a network of more than 5,000 doors, which include speciality grocery stores, supermarkets and convenience stores,” said Mad Foods co-founder and creative head Angelique Teo told Green Queen. “We are also expecting the HoReCa industry to be very excited about this partnership and are working hard to make MAD accessible across all channels.”
Teo added that Mad Foods is working to keep the prices of the lactoferrin-powered lattes as close to the current average of S$4 ($2.99) as possible.
Mad Foods is the third company TurtleTree has announced a partnership with this year, following its deals to produce lactoferrin-infused cold brew espresso shots with Cadence Performance Coffee and an immunity beverage and protein powder with Strive Nutrition. “Both Cadence and Strive are currently in progress, and we are aiming to launch them both formally in Q1 2025, quickly followed up by MAD Foods in Q2 2025,” said Lin.
“We have a number of strategic conversations with various parties who are existing lactoferrin producers. Some have know-how around strain engineering, process development and manufacturing, and some have specific market knowledge regarding Canada, Japan, Brazil, Columbia and more,” she added when asked about TurtleTree’s plans for 2025.
“These will include joint ventures around commercial activities, manufacturing and regulatory support. For these strategic partnerships specifically, we are looking to be seen as an extension in order to broaden accessibility to this important ingredient while demand is high and supply continues to be low,” Lin explained.
“In 12 months, there will be stronger clarity around TurtleTree’s regulatory goals and timelines in terms of products hitting shelves with partners. Consumers, while being more educated in the coming year, will also have more access to begin adding this into their daily routine.”
In our weekly column, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers new vegan parmesan products, an oat milk cocktail listing, and a bunch of AI developments.
New products and launches
French dairy giant Bel Group has rolled out a new iteration of its plant-based Boursin Garlic & Herbs cream cheese in the UK, swapping the plastic tub for the classic aluminium-wrapped packaging encased in a paper box. It’s priced at £2.99 for each 150g pack.
UK fast-food chain Greggs has brought back its Vegan Festive Bake in response to popular demand, which features Quorn pieces in an improved recipe. It has launched an ad with chef and cookbook author Nigella Lawson to announce its Christmas menu.
Oat milk liqueur company and Dragons Den alum Panther Milk will land on the shelves of 50 Co-op and Asda stores in the UK this Christmas.
South Korean vegan brand Unlimeat has transcended beyond meat analogues to launch a chocolate spread made from soybeans, Stevia and xylitol.
Fellow South Korean startup Armored Fresh has introduced vegan grated parmesan and kimchi parmesan SKUs. They’re available on its website and will be stocked at Walmart and on Amazon by the end of the year.
Courtesy: Armored Fresh
Advocacy group World Animal Protection has released an AI chatbot to answer questions about cultivated meat. Called The Cultivator, it was created in partnership with PubTrawlr and is constantly updated with new studies and insights.
Another virtual chatbot comes from tofu maker Nasoya, whose AI-powered assistant Tofie sits on its website to answer questions about the plant protein.
Courtesy: PKN
Pecan milk maker PKN has launched a barista edition called PKN Joy, which is certified by the Upcycled Food Association. It’s available on the company’s website and select retailers across the US.
And Californian giant Beyond Meat‘s veggie-forward Sun Sausages have expanded into Whole Foods Market stores nationwide.
Finance and business developments
Sustainability non-profit Food Systems Innovation‘s Nectar, a sensory testing initiative centred on the protein transition, has acquired the data assets of alternative protein discovery platform Taste Like.
KP Snacks, the UK’s leading peanut supplier owned by Intersnack, is foraying into nut butter with the takeover of bestselling peanut butter brand Whole Earth Foods from Ecotone.
Courtesy: Whole Earth Foods
State organisations Innovate UK and Protein Industries Canada have announced two projects as part of a bilateral R&D partnership, which involve plant-based meat ingredient solutions and nutritionally superior vegan products.
Another alliance on plant proteins comes from ingredient giant Ingredion‘s partnership with Sweden’s Lantmännen, which will focus on accelerating the development of pea protein isolates for the European market.
Courtesy: Oatly
Swedish oat milk giant Oatlyrecorded a 11% revenue growth in Q3 2024 compared to the corresponding period last year, with a positive sales performance in each of its markets (including Greater China, where it has struggled recently).
University of Potsdam‘s centre for knowledge and tech transfer, the Potsdam Trust, has won a €1.8M grant from the German economic affairs and climate protection ministry and the European Social Fund Plus to establish an impact incubator for sustainable startups.
Courtesy: Steakholder Foods
Israel’s Steakholder Foods has secured $270,000 in the second payment of its $1M Singapore-Israel Industrial R&D Foundation grant. It has so far received $490,000 as part of the funding.
Dutch bottling giant Refresco has completed its acquisition of Spanish plant-based milk company Frías Nutrición, a deal that was first announced in July.
Courtesy: Brevel
Israeli microalgae protein firm Brevel has successfully implemented a first-of-a-kind model for building a facility for industrial-scale fermenters, completing construction of its first plant and securing offtake agreements with two leading food and drink companies.
Policy, research and events
The APAC Regulatory Coordination Forum has released two white papers covering cellline development and culture media developments to help companies tackle safety assessment as part of regulatory procedures for cultivated meat.
Courtesy: Upside Foods
Cultivated chicken maker Upside Foods has appealed a Florida judge’s decision to deny a preliminary injunction in its lawsuit against the state’s ban on cultivated meat. Green Queen revealed the firm’s intention to do so last month, but it does mean a planned exhibit at next month’s Art Basel fair in Miami is likely scrapped.
Australian counterpart Vow, meanwhile, has now progressed to a second round of public consultation in its home country, after Food Standards Australia New Zealandupdated its standards to allow the sale of any cultivated meat product that passes premarket approval (rather than authorising as a novel food).
Courtesy: Vow
Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark have collaborated with Alchemist, a two-Michelin-starred eatery in Copenhagen to show how nutrient-rich mycelium can grow on discarded coffee grounds and wood, serving it to customers in the restaurant.
In response to the cow abductions in Mexico, Chilean vegan startup NotCocreated a decoy NotCow filled with its burgers as part of a marketing campaign, resulting in the fake cow being abducted.
During the Netflix fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul, vegan burger chain Mr Charlie’s was serving up plant-based chicken nuggets and sandwiches in partnership with TiNDLE Foods. Tyson recently invested in the restaurant company.
Nearly 2,000 students took to the streets in Taipei on Sunday to urge the Taiwanese government to introduce vegan meals at schools.
In France’s Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, Pessac has become the third town to ban foie gras from municipal events this year, joining Poitiers and Montpellier. Before 2024, 12 other cities had introduced this ban.
Courtesy: Michelle Del Cueto
Finally, speaking of bans, Berkeley has become the first US city to outlaw factory farming, with 60% of votes in favour of the move.
Scientists at Stanford University suggest that machine learning and mechanical testing can deliver data that can speed up the development of better vegan meat alternatives.
Sandpaper, a brain sectioning knife, and super glue. This assortment of tools might sound random and a little terrifying, but they can actually enable us to better test food products.
In a new study published in the NPJ Science of Food journal, researchers from Stanford University combined these items with 3D-printing techniques and artificial intelligence (AI) to prepare food samples for sensory testing, all in a bid to close the textural gap between animal- and plant-based meat.
The scientists noted that mechanical testing and machine learning can describe food textures with a striking similarity to human taste testers, a finding that could accelerate the development of vegan meat products that more closely resemble their conventional counterparts.
“Instead of using a trial-and-error approach to improve the texture of plant-based meat, we could envision using generative artificial intelligence to scientifically generate recipes for plant-based meat products with precisely desired properties,” the authors wrote.
A three-dimensional test for plant-based meat
Courtesy: NPJ Science of Food
“People love meat,” said lead author Skyler St Pierre. “If we want to convince the hardcore meat eaters that alternatives are worth trying, the closer we can mimic animal meat with plant-based products, the more likely people might be open to trying something new.”
His research grew out of a class project where she was looking for affordable materials to use in mechanical tests, turning to hot dogs and tofu. Undergraduate researchers joined in to test the foods and learn how engineers depict material responses to stress, loading and stretching. “These three loading modes represent what you do when you chew,” explained Ellen Kuhl, a senior author of the study.
While food scientists usually characterise meat using a double compression test, which involves only one-dimensional behaviours, the team at Stanford debuted a three-dimensional test comprising tension, compression and shear tests. The aim was to automatically discover the behaviour of eight protein products: vegan and animal-based versions of hot dogs, sausages and turkey, and firm and extra-firm tofu.
The researchers then designed a new type of neural network, which takes raw data from tests and produces equations to explain the properties of meat. To find out whether these equations can depict the perception of texture, they carried out taste tests where participants rated the products on a five-point scale in 12 categories, including softness, chewiness, moisture, fattiness, and likeness to meat.
They found that the vegan hot dog and sausage (from Field Roast) behaved very similarly in the three tests to their conventional counterparts, and showed similar stiffness levels. On the other hand, Tofurky was found to be twice as stiff as turkey, and tofu much softer than the meat products.
“We were surprised to find that today’s plant-based products can reproduce the whole texture spectrum of animal meats,” said Kuhl. “What’s really cool is that the ranking of the people was almost identical to the ranking of the machine. That’s great because now we can use the machine to have a quantitative, very reproducible test.”
AI can help make our food better
Courtesy: Kurt Hickman
St Pierre suggested that while food scientists analyse the texture of plant-based meat to improve upon them, traditional testing methods are not standardised and the results are rarely made available publically, making it harder for scientists to collaborate and create new recipes.
“Historically, some researchers, and especially companies, don’t share their data and that’s a really big barrier to innovation,” he said. Without doing so, “how are we going to come up with a steak mimic together?” he added. That’s why the Stanford team is sharing its data online for researchers to view and contribute to.
The scientists are continuing to build a public database and test foods, including the fungi engineered by Vayu Hill-Maini, who recently joined Stanford as an assistant professor of bioengineering. He was previously at UC Berkeley, where his work proposed the use of koji mould and Neurospora intermedia to produce better meat analogues and turn food waste into gourmet food, respectively.
The Stanford research isn’t the only instance of AI being used to improve plant-based products, although the technology’s carbon footprint needs to be reckoned with. Last year, sustainability non-profit Food System Innovations and machine learning expert Noa Weiss set up the GreenProtein AI project to optimise the extrusion and texture of plant-based meat.
Artisanal vegan cheesemaker Climax Foods also employs machine learning to reverse-engineer what makes cheese taste good, while Chile’s NotCo uses an AI platform to match thousands of plant-based ingredients and find the combinations best suited to replace animal proteins. The technology has helped it create its plant-based dairy and meat products, as well as the hot dogs, cheeses, and mac and cheese products it has co-developed with The Kraft Heinz Company.
These efforts can go a long way in persuading consumers to buy more vegan food. In the US, 42% of people are deterred from trying meat analogues because they feel they’ll dislike their texture, while 22% have cut back their purchases of plant-based food due to their texture. In the UK, too, half of consumers say taste and texture are the biggest factors driving them away from meat alternatives.
Globally, the texture of vegan meat products is as important as their animal-derived versions for 75% of consumers – but only about 60% are actually satisfied with it.
“Our approach to automatically discover the mechanics of plant-based and animal meat with constitutive neural networks could be a starting point towards using generative artificial intelligence to reverse-engineer formulas for plant-based meat products with customer-friendly tunable properties,” read the Stanford study.
Israeli startup SuperMeat has revealed how it can cut production costs of its cultivated chicken to under $12 per pound, on par with conventional poultry.
Just shy of its nine-year anniversary, Israeli food tech startup SuperMeat has made several breakthroughs to make its cultivated chicken at the same price as conventional versions.
In a 23-page report released last week, the company detailed how a combination of a highly stable cell line, a fully controlled animal-free media formulation, and rapid differentiation protocols have helped it achieve production costs of $11.8 per lb without depreciation (and $13.4 per lb with depreciation) at a 25,000-litre scale.
These costs are competitive with premium poultry products in the US, a key inflexion point for the startup as it gears itself towards a launch stateside.
“Current sentiment around cultivated meat includes scepticism regarding its scalability and market readiness, with concerns that cultivated meat may be more hype than a viable alternative,” said SuperMeat co-founder and CEO Ido Savir. “Our new report provides proof that with the right technology, there is a commercially viable path to market.”
The breakthroughs enabling SuperMeat to lower production costs
Courtesy: SuperMeat
One of the earliest players in the cultivated meat sector, SuperMeat’s chicken comprises muscle and fat derived from animal cells. It begins its process by growing cell culture in a seeding bioreactor until it reaches high density, before being transferred to an expansion bioreactor.
The startup’s robust cell line – which has “strong self-renewal capabilities” – allows it to reach densities of 80 million cells per ml in just nine days. In a continuous production process, 30-50% of the culture is then transferred to differentiation bioreactors daily for 45 days, where the mass matures into muscle and fat tissue.
“Our lines originated from single-cell clones of embryonic stem cells. SuperMeat refined its ability to closely monitor and select the ideal clones, enabling the production process to rely on resilient clones that can achieve very high densities, and maintain these densities while they keep cycling,” explained CTO Yuval Levy-Peretz.
The muscle is produced in four days and fat in just 24 hours, and the use of embryonic stem cells nearly doubles the weight of these cells, slashing costs by over 40%. These tissues are crucial for delivering the nutritional profile, taste and texture people associate with conventional chicken, but with more efficient pricing when manufactured at scale.
The other breakthrough concerns cell feed, which makes up more than half of the cost of cultivated meat. SuperMeat has developed a high-throughput system that allows it to replace expensive animal-derived ingredients like serum and albumin with more affordable alternatives, resulting in media costs of under 50 cents per litre.
After six days in culture, the cells begin independently producing essential growth factors, enabling the startup to reduce the reduced feeding regimen of only 1.5 vessel volumes per day, which makes the entire process more efficient and cost-effective.
Price parity for cultivated meat front and centre
Once the muscle and fat tissues mature, the meat mass is harvested daily in the form of ground chicken that’s ready to be cooked. SuperMeat’s process requires minimal space and resources and produces three pounds of meat (the same as the yield from one chicken) in just two days, compared to the 42 days it takes to raise and process a chicken.
But when scaled to an industrial facility, it is expected to manufacture 6.7 million pounds (or three million kgs) of cultivated chicken annually – equivalent to around 2.7 million chickens – with 80% less land required. “These breakthroughs deliver the efficiency and yield required to achieve the cost parity of 100% cultivated meat at scale, bringing commercial cultivated meat production within reach,” said co-founder and communications chief Shir Friedman.
Cost is one of the most significant barriers preventing companies from reaching scales large enough to sell cultivated meat, and consumers from buying it once it’s on the market. McKinsey suggests that it’ll take until at least 2030 for these proteins to reach price parity with conventional meat, and that’s despite companies having brought down costs by 99% in less than a decade.
“We see a tremendous opportunity for affordable cultivated chicken meat that supplies the same delicious taste and nutrition as premium chicken, which is a path for consumer and market acceptance and long-term adoption,” said Savir.
The race to make cultivated meat more affordable has been heating up this year. Rehovot-based startup Believer Meats has described how its continuous process can potentially produce cultivated chicken for $6 per lb at scale, while fellow Israeli firm Forsea Foods has reached what it claims is an industry-leading cell density of 300 million cells per ml, making its cultivated unagi cheaper than conventional eel.
Another Israeli company, Ever After Foods, has developed a bioreactor platform that offers a 90% reduction in cultivated meat prices for its B2B clients. And pet food producers Meatly and BioCraft Pet Nutrition have drastically reduced the prices of their culture media.
Courtesy: SuperMeat
It’s also important to note that SuperMeat’s techno-economical analysis centred around cultivated chicken made just from muscle and fat, but most cultivated meat products currently on the market feature a blend of animal cells and plant-based ingredients.
For example, Good Meat’s chicken – the only cultivated meat currently found in supermarkets – has a retail price equivalent to over $20 per pound, but cultivated cells only make up 3% of the product. This demonstrates the potential for SuperMeat to further reduce prices when it eventually enters the market.
California’s Plantible Foods has closed a $30M Series B round to expand production of its duckweed-derived Rubi Protein.
Among the constantly evolving search for nutritionally sound, climate-friendly, palate-appealing foods, a wave of startups is banking on weed.
Specifically, pondweed. Lemna – the free-floating, naturally occurring freshwater aquatic plants also known as duckweed, which combine to form a green carpet on the surface of water – is host to Rubisco, described for decades as the most abundant protein on Earth.
Having been consumed in Southeast Asia for centuries, duckweed has witnessed a rise in popularity in the last decade thanks to the fact that its immense environmental and nutritional benefits. Being aquatic, it doesn’t occupy any farmland or contribute to deforestation, uses 98% less water than soy, contains more micronutrients than many vegetables, has high protein digestibility, and is the fastest-growing plant in the world.
One of the most well-known companies that have commercialised duckweed protein is Plantible Foods, which has just raised $30M in a Series B funding round led by Piva Capital and Siddhi Capital. Additionally, new backers included Betagro Ventures, Cultivate Next (the VC arm of Chipotle Mexican Grill), Nourish Ventures, while Astanor Ventures made a repeat investment.
It takes the Californian startup’s total financing to $57M, and will help it scale up production of its Rubi Protein, which can be used across a breadth of applications, including plant-based meat and baked goods.
Rubi Protein can enhance meat alternatives and baked goods
Courtesy: Plantible Foods
Plantible Foods grows its lemna on controlled aquafarms that allow freshwater to be constantly recycled and refreshed, contributing to a water footprint 10 times lower than soybeans. Once the plants are harvested, they are milled, filtered and dried so that the pure protein in the duckweed’s leaves can be extracted.
The final product is an off-white and odourless protein that can grow anywhere in the world and contains all nine essential amino acids. The ingredient is free from 20 allergens and comprises 85% protein, with a protein digestibility score of 1 (similar to that of beef or eggs).
According to the company, Rubi Protein has a nutritional yield of 70%, much higher than the 27% for beef, with a fraction of the climate footprint. Its aquafarms can be built on non-arable land and prevent fertiliser runoff in freshwater streams, moving water quality and access in surrounding communities.
“At Plantible, we are not simply competing with other proteins; we are setting a new standard for the industry by providing a product that offers superior functional and nutritional properties,” said CEO Tony Martens Fekini, who founded the startup with Maurits van de Ven in 2016.
Rubi Protein has fat-binding properties that reduce the need for saturated fats, can be whipped to stiff peaks in three minutes while outperforming egg whites, acts as an emulsifier for plant-based foods, and boasts thermo-irreversible gelling properties to replace ingredients like methylcellulose.
The company has developed two ingredient blends leveraging the duckweed protein to enhance the texture and functionality of eggless and gluten-free baked goods and meat and dairy alternatives. These products use a combination of Rubi Protein and other commonly used allergen-free ingredients.
Rubi Whisk provides structural integrity, moisture and oil retention properties for foods like lemon tarts, macarons, cookies, pound cakes and breads. Rubi Prime, meanwhile, provide the emulsification and binding benefits of methylcellulose in a way that plant-based meat products like burgers, chicken, sausages, and even whole cuts can be served hot or cold, and with cleaner labels.
Plantible Foods targets tenfold revenue
Courtesy: Plantible Foods
“This funding will enable us to significantly expand our manufacturing capabilities and meet the rapidly growing demand for our Rubi Protein,” said Martens Fekini. The company aims to increase its revenue tenfold over the next year.
Plantible Foods has a 100-acre commercial plant called The Ranchito in West Texas, and has new manufacturing facilities in place to deliver on several multimillion-dollar offtake agreements with large companies. Last year, it partnered with functional ingredients provider ICL Food Specialties to produce the Rovitiras Binding Solution for vegan meat and seafood.
“Plantible’s highly functional protein is solving urgent food industry problems today. Their focus on superior functionality, modular scaled manufacturing, nutritional value and consumer-friendly clean labels convinced us that they have the right team, product, and approach to revolutionize the global food system,” said Steven Finn, co-founder of Siddhi Capital.
He added: “Their technology and vertically integrated manufacturing are already serving customers at scale and will improve supply chain resilience in a sustainable way with impacts reaching far beyond the plant-based alternatives market.”
Duckweed was namechecked as a ‘plant-based aquatic ingredient’ to watch in Whole Foods Market’s food trends predictions for 2025, with the retailer underlining how lemna is in the “early stages of emerging on the scene and boasts a higher protein content than other leafy greens”.
Several other startups are working with duckweed protein too, including Sustainable Planet (UK), GreenOnyx (Israel), MicroTerra (Mexico), DryGro (Kenya), Ful Foods (Pakistan), Rubisco Foods, Rinus & Hans (both Dutch), and Fyto (US).
Tokyo-based startup Integriculture has launched a starter kit to drive innovation and accelerate R&D in the cultivated meat sector.
In a bid to make cultivated meat prototyping easier, Japan’s IntegriCulture has created a starter kit for researchers and startups in the field.
The cellular agriculture specialist argues that producing cell-cultured foods – even at benchtop scale – requires extensive specialised equipment, expertise, and funds. The Cell-Cultured Meat Starter Kit removes these hurdles and simplifies the process.
“The starter kit is designed for researchers, entrepreneurs, and experimenters who are exploring cell farming as a new business or research area,” IntegriCulture CEO Yuki Hanyu told Green Queen. “It provides a complete set of essential tools to help you get started.”
It involves an oxygen-permeable bioreactor – created with manufacturing company Sumitomo Riko as part of IntegriCulture’s CulNet Consortium – as well as several other tools to help make prototypes of cultivated meat.
“The kit significantly reduces the time and cost required to source and test various materials for cell culture. By offering a proven combination of materials and culture methods, the kit helps accelerate research and development,” said Hanyu.
A novel bioreactor for cultivated meat
Courtesy: IntegriCulture
The cultivated meat starter kit includes IMEM1.0 (a base culture medium), iDisper (an agent for cell dissociation), iCoater, (a coating solution for the extracellular matrix), and iFreezer (a solution for cryopreservation).
But the flagship product of the starter kit is the Oxy-thru Cultivator. This novel bioreactor uses Sumitomo Riko’s unique materials and precision moulding technology, and is available in 200ml and 1,000ml sizes (with larger capacities under development). IntegriCulture plans to further design suitable containers and culture methods for each cell type.
“In order to create an environment in which cells can grow, an adequate supply of oxygen is required,” explained Hanyu. “Plastic and glass containers are commonly used for cell culture. Because many of these materials have low gas permeability, oxygen needs to be supplied from a dedicated external device and the medium must be changed frequently to allow cells to grow. This process involves complicated tube connections, which increases the risk of bacterial contamination.
“Because the entire container is made of a material with high gas permeability, oxygen can be supplied from the bottom and sides of the container, and the amount of oxygen in the container can be kept higher than that of conventional products without connection to external devices.
“As a result, the volume of the medium can be increased, leading to an increase in the amount of cells harvested per batch, thus improving productivity. Furthermore, because the material is heat-resistant, autoclave sterilisation is possible.
These features would enable cells to be cultured at higher cell densities while ensuring simple maintenance. “High cell density directly impacts the productivity and cost-efficiency of cultivated meat production,” said Hanyu.
“Oxy-thru Cultivator enables higher cell densities by maintaining optimal oxygen levels throughout the culture process. This increased efficiency allows for larger harvests per batch, ultimately reducing production costs.”
IntegriCulture aims to democratise cellular agriculture
Courtesy: IntegriCulture
According to IntegriCulture, the cellular agriculture starter kit paves the way for a broader range of entities to “engage in rapid prototyping of the nutritional, organoleptic, and other profiles of cell-cultured food products”.
The starter kit is available at different price points, ranging from S$600-1,400 based on the quantities of products, and companies can negotiate the cost for a more expansive kit too.
“By providing a pre-validated set of materials, the kit minimises the trial-and-error phase, saving time and research costs. The simplified setup also reduces the need for additional equipment and expertise, enabling startups to focus on scaling their operations rather than troubleshooting foundational processes,” said Hanyu.
He added: “Previously, limited access to materials and the secrecy surrounding proprietary combinations made it difficult for new entrants to join the field. Our mission is to democratie cell farming, enabling anyone to participate and contribute to the creation of a new food culture and the realisation of an exciting future.”
Hanyu revealed that IntegriCulture will soon release more products from the CulNet Consortium, which will be added to its B2B marketplace, Ocatté Base. It had already announced five new projects under the initiative earlier this year.
IntegriCulture has so far raised $16.4M in equity funding, and received a ¥1.87B ($13.1M) grant from the Japan government to advance the CulNet platform and make its developments open-source. It has also been working with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and the Tokyo Women’s Medical University on a project involving cellular agriculture and cultivated meat production in space.
The starter kit will be displayed at Agri-Food Tech Expo Asia 2024 in Singapore this week (November 19 to 21), and sold on Ocatté Base. “It will become much easier for anyone to start cultivating cells, which what IntegriCulture Inc is about,” Hanyu said.
Canberra-based Nourish Ingredients has partnered with Chinese fermentation specialist Cabio Biotech to produce and distribute its precision-fermented fat alternative.
Highlighting American fears of falling behind China in the biotech revolution, a new partnership looks to leverage the latter’s manufacturing might to produce future-friendly food ingredients.
Australia’s Nourish Ingredients, which makes alternatives to animal fats from precision fermentation, has joined forces with Wuhan-based fermentation and synbio firm Cabio Biotech to make and distribute its flagship Tastilux product for the Asia-Pacific market.
According to industry bodies the Precision Fermentation Alliance and Food Fermentation Europe, precision fermentation combines the process of traditional fermentation with the latest advances in biotechnology to efficiently produce a compound of interest, such as a protein, flavour molecule, vitamin, pigment, or fat.
Nourish Ingredients’s Tastilux is a precision-fermented fat designed to improve the taste, aroma and cooking experience of meat analogues to more closely resemble their conventional counterparts.
Partnership will extend beyond Tastilux
Courtesy: Nourish Ingredients
A result of three years of work, Tastilux was first exhibited at the South by Southwest conference in Sydney last year, as part of vegan chicken wings with calcium-based edible bones. The “designer fat” relies on naturally occurring lipids scaled through precision fermentation to provide the distinct flavour and cooking properties of meat fats when used in plant-based chicken, beef, pork and other alternatives.
Through the partnership, Cabio Biotech will leverage its state-of-the-art facilities and expertise to manufacture Tastlux in an efficient manner with minimal waste. This will enable global-scale production, helping Nourish Ingredients make its market entry with high product consistency.
Cabio Biotech has been supplying functional ingredients for over two decades, and owns one of the world’s largest factories for long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, with capabilities ranging from bio-fermentation and non-solvent extraction to refining, winterisation and microencapsulation.
While the initial focus is on Tastilux, the two companies hinted at an expansion into categories beyond plant-based meat, including ready meals and prepared dishes, leisure snacks, and spices and condiments.
“This collaboration aligns perfectly with our commitment to advancing biotechnology and delivering cutting-edge products. Together, we’ll set new standards in the alternative protein industry,” said Cabio Biotech VP Jimmy Wang.
James Petrie, CEO of Nourish Ingredients, added: “By leveraging Cabio’s established expertise, we’re not only derisking our supply chain for expansion but also enhancing our ability to deliver high-quality, innovative food solutions at scale.”
China market a key focus for Nourish Ingredients
Courtesy: Nourish Ingredients
Teaming up with Cabio Biotch will open the China door for Nourish Ingredients. The startup points out how China’s annual meat consumption is approaching 100 million tonnes to show that even a 1% replacement with plant-based alternatives by 2026 would create a market of one million tonnes.
China’s government has been encouraging its citizens to eat fewer animal products and more plant proteins, as part of a broader drive to connect public health with socioeconomic development, which began with the Healthy China 2030 policy. Chinese consumers are already eating more protein per capita than Americans now, and most of this comes from animal-free sources.
Cabio Biotech will utilise its local knowledge and networks to spearhead Nourish Ingredients’s distribution and sales within the country’s market, while the latter will lead commercial engagement and sales globally, armed with the Wuhan-based company’s manufacturing support.
Crucially, Cabio Biotech’s extensive experience will help Nourish Ingredients navigate China’s regulatory landscape – since Tastilux is a novel food produced via precision fermentation, it needs to obtain approval from the country’s food safety regulators. The aim is to facilitate rapid market access for Tastilux and additional products both locally and in other Asian countries. Nourish Ingredients is already awaiting regulatory clearance in Singapore.
“This collaboration combines our cutting-edge product development with Cabio’s manufacturing excellence and market insights, positioning us to meet the surging global demand for superior food ingredients,” said Petrie. “Together, we’re set to efficiently produce top-tier products, opening doors to both the dynamic Chinese market and broader international opportunities.”
Nourish Ingredients has so far secured nearly $40M from investors, and has also developed Creamilux, a sister fat alternative for non-dairy applications. The startup has partnered with New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra to create both dairy and plant-based products with the ingredients.
The alt-fat space is seeing a flurry of activity. California’s Yali Bio, New York’s C16 Biosciences and Sweden’s Melt&Marble are others using precision fermentation to produce fats and lipids.
Industry giant DSM-Firmenich has developed innovations that mask off-notes and replicate the creamy taste and texture of milk in plant-based alternatives.
Say what you will about the plant-based industry – sales have dropped, consumers are sceptical of processed food, and VC money isn’t cheap anymore – when you look at household impact, milk alternatives are doing better than what many have given them credit for.
In the US, 44% of homes bought plant-based milk at a supermarket last year, and once they did, nearly 80% went back for more. In Europe, more than 35% of households purchased non-dairy milks in countries like Germany, the UK and Spain.
But you can also look at it two ways – over half of people in these countries are yet to try plant-based milk, which signals obstacles and opportunities for the sector. Several factors are holding these consumers back, including price and nutrition.
One of the most challenging elements to fix for manufacturers is also among the most desirable: better taste and texture. Taste is a barrier for 35% of consumers in the UK, Singapore and Australia, as it is for 30% of people across Europe. Americans, meanwhile, find oat milk more bitter, nut milk thicker and saltier, and soy milk earthier compared to dairy.
Researchers have also identified the beany smell of soy milk and the starch granules often found in oat milk factors that affect the smooth taste of these products. “The dissatisfaction with plant-based milk alternatives stems from a discrepancy of expected taste and texture and specific product-related smell, taste, or mouthfeel coming from the main ingredient of the beverage,” one study put it.
Clearly, the industry needs innovations that can help these products jump these hurdles. DSM-Firmenich – the health, nutrition and beauty ingredients giant – says it has found a couple.
Flavour masks and textural enhancements
Courtesy: Anna Puzatykh/Getty Images
The flavourists at DSM-Firmenich have developed two solutions to address consumer concerns by replicating what they describe as the creamy, buttery flavour and rich texture of cow’s milk to transform dairy alternatives like oat, soy, pea and others.
The team drew on the firm’s SmartProteins line of products to enhance plant-based foods, developing a range called Smart Milk to capture the taste and texture consumers desire. Meanwhile, DSM-Firmenich has created Dynarome DA, a technology that masks the off-notes associated with non-dairy milk while offering the mouthfeel of the conventional version.
The flavours were developed based on sensory and consumer insights to align with what people are looking for in these products. Research by Firmenich Human Insights has found that only 22% of European consumers think plant-based milk tastes good, but 82% of them would buy it if it tasted exactly like cow’s milk.
This is why the company has developed the Best-In-Class Milk portfolio, which covers the full breadth of flavour notes in dairy and is optimised to perform in different protein types. Firmenich uses Smart 3D markers to ensure that off-tasting notes of the base ingredients are covered.
According to DSM-Firmenich, 70% of consumers are looking for vegan options that taste like true dairy. “With our Dynarome DA technology and Smart Milk flavours, we’re leading the charge in delivering a dairy-like experience that resonates with today’s health-conscious and flavour-focused consumers,” the company said.
Nutrition as important as the taste
Courtesy: Deniz A/Getty Images
“Our mission is to transform the perception of plant-based drinks by delivering the authentic flavours and textures associated with dairy. With our latest taste solutions, our aim was to do more than mimic dairy but rather redefine what plant-based beverages can be,” said JoAnn Fritsche, sweet goods director for North America at DSM-Firmenich’s Taste, Texture & Health division.
“We’re proud to offer products that combine the deliciousness of traditional milk with a nutritional profile that aligns with modern lifestyle goals, making it easier for everyone to enjoy their favourite flavours guilt-free,” she added.
The Best-In-Class Milk solutions also hit on another crucial pain point for consumers: nutrition. For Europeans, health is the second most important factor influencing their decision to buy plant-based food (after taste). In Australia, Singapore and the UK, health is the top purchase driver.
DSM-Firmenich states that 73% of people are open to buying more dairy-free milk products if they have a better nutritional profile. The Best-In-Class Milk portfolio has been specifically formulated to not just deliver the mouthfeel of dairy, but also improve the nutritional profile of plant-based analogues, making them healthier and more appetising to consumers (and the planet).
Utkarsh Shah, VP of the sweet goods division, said: “We’ve taken a deep dive into understanding what consumers truly crave and identified a significant gap in the market for authentic dairy-like experiences in plant-based beverages. Our new innovations bridge that gap, offering the indulgent, creamy flavours that people love without sacrificing nutrition or values.”
He added: “These advancements represent a pivotal moment for plant-based options, allowing consumers to savour the taste they desire while embracing a healthier lifestyle.”
Pet food with cultivated meat instead of beef fares far better for the planet and its resources, according to a new life-cycle assessment.
As it works to commercialise cultivated pet food, Czech biotech startup Bene Meat Technologies has revealed the environmental benefits its product offers over conventional meat.
It has published the results of a life-cycle assessment (LCA) determining the climate impact of producing cultivated meat for pets. The study found that Bene Meat’s pet food generates at least 84% fewer emissions than beef – depending on how the latter is produced, the difference could be as much as 95%.
It also uses between 80% and 97% less land than beef, with the potential to reduce this even further. And while these numbers were specifically calculated for pet food, the company believes its beef burgers for humans – which it unveiled last month – will perform similarly on the sustainability scale.
Smaller carbon footprint than beef and chicken
Courtesy: Bene Meat Technologies
To conduct the LCA, Bene Meat collaborated with scientists from the Czech Technical University in Prague, focusing on the industrial production of cultivated meat. The analysis was peer-reviewed by University of Nottingham professor Jon McKechnie, who specialises in cost-effective resource utilisation strategies to achieve sustainability goals.
The company claims the LCA is the “most accurate insight” into the climate impacts of manufacturing cultivated meat at an industrial scale so far. McKechnie confirmed that the study followed established standards and key results were presented transparently and adequately.
Bene Meat’s cultivated pet food needs only 3.1 sq metres of land per kg of meat, which includes the growing of all necessary raw materials. For context, beef takes up as much as 120 sq metres, while producing a kg each of pork and poultry requires 7.2 and 6.6 sq metres of land. The company forecasts a further reduction to two sq metres per kg.
Meanwhile, producing it emits 5.28kg of CO2e per kg of meat, and this could be gradually decreased to 3.29kg. This figure includes all necessary raw materials and energy, as well as the impacts of producing all the equipment and other inputs needed for the process. In comparison, beef generates 33-100 kg of CO2e per kg, and chicken is responsible for 10kg of CO2e.
Since the study includes all input materials – which account for over half of all emissions of meat – it implies that the cultivated technology is so optimised and efficient that most of its related emissions occur outside Bene Meat’s facility, at the raw material suppliers, according to production head Petr Bebeníček.
“The uniqueness of our study lies in it being the first conducted and calculated on real production. Bene Meat is pleased with the study results and believes there is potential to further reduce these figures in the future,” Kateřina Dvořák Vašová, media coordinator for Bene Meat, told Green Queen.
The findings chime with the results of other LCAs – a peer-reviewed analysis in 2021 revealed that cultivated beef can lower climate impact by 92%, air pollution by 94%, land use by 95%, and water consumption by 78% compared to conventional beef.
Bene Meat working on several cell lines
Courtesy: Bene Meat Technologies
“This LCA study provides the first comprehensive insight into the actual impacts of industrial meat cultivation,” said Miroslav Žilka from the Czech Technical University, who led the LCA.
“Our findings demonstrate that this technology has enormous potential, in terms of environmental impacts, and achieves significantly better results than, for example, traditional beef production,” he explained.
Žila will present more detailed information about the analysis at the International Scientific Conference on Cultured Meat in Maastricht, Netherlands next week. The results will also be published in a scientific journal soon.
Bene Meat has access to a variety of cell lines and currently plans to use different cell lines for pet food and human food, according to Dvořák Vašová. “We aim to begin as a supplier of feedstock in the pet food business,” she said.
The company was the first to register cultivated pet food as an EU feed material last year, though that is separate from the regulatory approval companies require to sell their products. Bene Meat recently submitted an application for its pet food to the US Food and Drug Administration. Currently, only UK startup Meatly is approved to sell cultivated meat for pets (in its home country), which it plans to roll out early next year.
Bene Meat has also managed to successfully store over 5,000 samples in a “cutting-edge” cell bank, and has previously hinted at a “significant update” on its pet food offering “in late 2024 or early 2025”.
“We believe that this study marks a key milestone in understanding the environmental impacts of cultivated meat, and confirms its potential as a sustainable source of protein,” said Tomáš Kubeš, head of strategic projects at Bene Meat.
In feeding trials, half of dogs fed Meatly’s cultivated chicken kept licking the bowl after finishing, and a majority enjoyed it more than their regular diet.
Months after receiving regulatory clearance in the UK, Meatly – the London-based startup making cultivated meat for pets – is inching closer to its market launch.
The company has completed feeding trials for its cultivated chicken, which indicate that the product is safe to eat and palatable for dogs. Meatly has also secured an undisclosed sum in fresh funding, adding to the £3.6M it had raised from investors to date. It includes a follow-on investment from retailer Pets at Home, and participation from new backers DSM-Firmenich Venturing, JamJar, and Joyful Ventures, among others.
The capital will support the startup’s plan to launch with its first brand partner in Q1 2025 – this will be in the form of a dog treat product, though the cost and other commercial decisions are “being figured out at the moment”, co-founder and CEO Owen Ensor told Green Queen.
Dogs like cultivated meat as much (or more) than their regular diets
Courtesy: Meatly
Meatly commissioned two voluntary trials, which were conducted by Treat Therapeutics and featured 31 pet dogs made up of 14 different breeds. The trials involved at-home feeding observations, including surveys with the dog owners to analyse their response to the product and veterinary checks. And a complete diet containing only cultivated chicken and plant-based ingredients was tested.
The first trial was a single-day test where the dogs were provided Meatly’s chicken for both meals of the day. And the second was a two-week controlled trial where a placebo group was fed just a plant-based diet, and selected dogs were given Meatly chicken for seven consecutive days after an adaptation phase.
Dogs were found to enjoy Meatly pet food as much or even more than their normal diet, according to the company. For example, 75% started their meal immediately or within the first few seconds of being presented with it, and 50% continued licking the bowl after completing it. Meanwhile, 75% of owners reported higher enjoyment than their pet’s baseline diet.
The cultivated chicken also improved the palatability of the plant-based placebo diet, and Meatly found no significant adverse effects of feeding cultivated meat over the 134 recorded meals.
“By collaborating with us on these exclusively home-based trials, Meatly have taken a significant step in validating cell-based meat’s relevance for real-world dogs,” said Treat Therapeutics founder Emmanuel Bijaoui. “The positive trial outcomes from a diverse pool of participants consolidate the potential of cultivated meat as a novel ingredient.”
A big year for Meatly – and cultivated pet food
Courtesy: Meatly
The trials “confirm the product’s quality”, Meatly said, following the collection of extensive safety and nutritional analysis data over the last two years. Its cultivated chicken is comparable to conventional versions when it comes to the protein profile, containing all essential amino acids in similar quantities, alongside important fatty acids, minerals and vitamins for pet nutrition.
The funding and feeding trials cap off a milestone year for the startup, which became the first company to receive regulatory approval for cultivated meat in Europe in July, after the UK’s Food Standards Agency, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Animal and Plant Health Agency deemed it safe to eat for pets.
Meatly has also created a protein-free culture medium – a mix of nutrients to facilitate the growth of animal cells – that lowers the cost from hundreds of pounds per litre to just £1.
“Protein-free media in biopharma is not kind of new, but in cultivated meat is. And it depends also on the type of cells on the species – some are a bit more challenging than others,” Helder Cruz, Meatly’s co-founder and chief scientific officer, told Green Queen in June. “Depending on the cell types and the species, you can grow them very well, without any protein.”
“We’re incredibly happy with how the trials went. Cultivated meat is still nascent, but we’re very much still working on developing a perfect product for UK pets. But given where we’ve come in the last year, we’re ecstatic with these results today,” Ensor said.
“Dogs will tell you if they don’t like the food you’ve served them – so we’re ecstatic that the pets in this trial enjoy Meatly Chicken even more than we thought they would,” he added. “These results demonstrate that we can feed our pets truly sustainable and kinder meat without compromising on taste or nutritional values.”
Cultivated pet food has had a big year, with Cult Food Science’s conducting feeding trials in the US in pursuit of regulatory approval for its Noochies! brand, Friends & Family Pet Food Co inking two partnerships to launch stateside and in Singapore, BioCraft Pet Nutrition slashing the cost of its growth media, and Bene Meat Technologies releasing a life-cycle assessment showcasing cultivated meat’s superiority to beef.
Artificial intelligence startup Shiru has closed a $16M Series B round to broaden its ingredient portfolio and expand its protein discovery marketplace.
Months after launching an AI-powered protein discovery platform for companies, Californian startup Shiru is already gunning for expansion with a $16M capital injection.
The Series B round was led by longtime investor S2G Ventures, with CPT Capital, Lux Capital, Nourish Ventures, and Meach Cove Capital also participating. It takes the company’s total raised to $36M, and will fuel Shiru’s plans to expand its ingredient portfolio and enhance the ProteinDiscovery.ai marketplace through commercial partnerships and new offerings.
“While we’re starting with proteins, our vision extends far beyond,” said Shiru founder and CEO Jasmine Hume. “ProteinDiscovery.ai is just the beginning. We’re building a comprehensive platform that will revolutionize ingredient discovery across multiple molecular classes, driving innovation that benefits both industry and consumers.”
Shiru eyes wider horizons for protein discovery platform
Courtesy: Shiru
ProteinDiscovery.ai, which came online in May, hosts the world’s largest database of plant-derived and microbial proteins. It enables corporate partners to swiftly identify and test highly functional, natural ingredients.
The platform combines the power of AI with an extensive database of natural protein sequences and automated biochemistry workflows, allowing companies to search discover, pilot and buy from a database of over 33 million molecules ranging from food and agriculture to personal care and advanced materials.
The marketplace “dramatically” reduces R&D and product development costs while accelerating the time to market and increasing the functional capabilities of nature-identical products.
“Our technology dramatically reduces development timelines and costs, empowering R&D teams to revolutionise products, categories and industries through our platform, enabling valuable innovation and competitive advantage,” said Hume.
Shiru’s innovations are fuelled by its Flourish technology, which discovers ingredients and seeds up the development of high-performance sustainable products like vegan casein, sweet proteins, methylcellulose alternatives, or structuring proteins.
The latest funding round will also help expand its product portfolio. It has previously launched OleoPro, a structured fat alternative made from unsaturated oils and a blend of plant proteins called uPro, which mimics animal fats for plant-based meat, dairy and cosmetics applications. The innovation can cut saturated fat content by 80%, and recently received a patent in the US.
Courtesy: Shiru
Artificial intelligence powering the future of food
The company has initiated partnerships with several global leaders. With Griffith Foods, it is looking to to discover, pilot and scale planet-friendly food ingredients, while its collaboration with Ajinomoto Health and Nutrition is centred around developing and scaling up sweet proteins.
The protein discovery platform was last month named by Time Magazine as one of 2024’s Best Inventions. “ProteinDiscovery.ai represents a fundamental shift in how we identify and develop sustainable ingredients,” Hume said in response to the honour. “This recognition affirms our mission to harness AI for creating better, more sustainable products that benefit both industry and our planet.”
Natural proteins represented in a 3D model based on their functional attributes – the bright red cluster is a group of sweet proteins discoverable only by Shiru’s Flourish technology | Courtesy: Shiru
Shiru is among a number of startups harnessing AI to safeguard the future of food in the face of the climate emergency. Irish biotech firm Nuritas, for example, is using precision AI tech to identify and commercialise rare plant-based peptides faster than the industry standard, while vegan cheesemaker Climax Foods employs machine learning to reverse-engineer what makes cheese taste good.
Chilean food tech unicorn NotCo similarly makes use of an AI platform called Giuseppe to match thousands of different plant-based ingredients and find the combinations best suited to replace animal-based foods. The technology powers its plant-based dairy and meat products, as well as the hot dogs, cheeses, and mac and cheese products it has co-produced with The Kraft Heinz Company.
And last month, NotCo partnered with fragrance and flavour giant Cramer to launch an AI-powered fragrance formulator – proving that fields beyond the food industry are also fertile for AI technology startups.
“AI-powered discovery isn’t only the future of ingredient innovation – it’s here today, and we’re eager to expand our capabilities across flavour, skincare and agriculture,” said Hume.
In our weekly column, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers a vegan tiramisu collection in Hong Kong, Dave Chang’s cultivated meat podcast episode, and a ‘super yoghurt’.
New products and launches
Good Food Technologies, the Hong Kong company behind Plant Sifu, has partnered with famed Japanese ramen restaurant Menya Musashi. The latter’s Hong Kong menu features a Veggie Chicken Tomato Tsukemen Set and Deep-Fried Veggie Pork Cutlet Teishoku Set, as well as three sides.
Courtesy: Menya Musashi/Plant Sifu
Singaporean oat milk brand Oatbedient is hosting a pop-up at K11 Art Mall in Hong Kong (November 19 to December 2) to celebrate the launch of its Café series in the city. Visitors will get access to discounts and offers on its entire oat milk range.
In similar news, The Cakery, a plant-forward cake shop in Hong Kong, and its vegan sister bakery Maya have teamed up with Singaporean oat milk leader Oatside to introduce a tiramisu collection, which includes a cake, cupcake, overnight oats, and drinks like tiramisu chocolate and a tiramisu Biscoff latte.
Courtesy: The Cakery/Oatside
In the UK, discount retailer Aldi has rolled out an Ultimate No Beef Flank Steak, a private-label whole-cut meat alternative. The vegan beef product isn’t part of its Plant Menu range, but instead will be marketed under its Specially Selected label with a price tag of £6.99 for a two-pack.
British startup The Coconut Collab has launched two new desserts: Choc and Caramel (£1.50 per 110g) and White Choc Pots (£2.95 for four 45g packs). They’re available at Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and/or Ocado.
Courtesy: The Coconut Collab
Carbon calculator and labelling startupMy Emissions has unveiled its second product, Company Carbon Footprints, a platform to help food companies measure their emissions more quickly and accurately. It has already been trialled by restaurant chain Wahaca and caterer Simply Lunch.
Armed with a new ambassador in Maya Jama, Swedish pea milk brand Sproud has introduced its Barista Zero SKU, debiting the product at the European Coffee Symposium in Berlin this week.
Courtesy: Sproud/Green Queen
Israeli entrepreneur Ola Baker has launchedEggless, a new company focused on innovating in the plant-based egg space.
Company and finance updates
South African cultivated meat startup Newform Foodshosted its biggest tasting event in Cape Town last week, showcasing its lamb meatballs to visitors.
Courtesy: NewForm Foods
Israeli startup Phyloton, which makes natural food colours from precision fermentation, has received funding from Rich Products Ventures, as well as additional financing from existing investors EIT Food, Arkin Holdings, and Yossi Ackerman (among others).
US-cultivated protein startup Jellatech, whose flagship product is a bioidentical collagen, has opened a 9,000 sq ft facility in Morrisville, North Carolina. It plans to obtain the FDA’s Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) certification by 2026.
Happy Plant Protein, a spinout from the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, has secured €1.8M in a pre-seed funding round led by Nordic Foodtech VC, alongside participation from Butterfly Ventures and Business Finland, to develop and license its patented vegan protein production tech.
Research, policy and events
In India, tempeh producer Tempeh Today, the Freedom Project India and the Netherlands Enterprise have launched the Tempeh for Education project. It involves the use of micro fermentation units to produce up to 100kg of tempeh per week, and the goal is to economically empower women through training and a guaranteed buyback programme.
Courtesy: Tempeh Today
Accor Group, Europe’s largest hospitality company and parent company of hotels like Novotel, Sofitel and Ibis, has announced its goal to introduce plant-based menu options at all of its locations in the coming years. It aligns with its Good Food Feels Great push to make 50% of its menus vegan by 2030.
In Germany, retail giant Rewe Group and fermentation companies Infinite Roots and Formohosted a “political breakfast” at the parliament. The discussion, which featured MP Albert Stegemann, explored how fermentation can help boost food security and lower climate impacts, while also touching upon regulatory sandboxes and farmer collaboration.
Courtesy: Formo
Also in Germany, plant-based shopping baskets are now only 9% pricier than their animal-based counterparts, with own-label milk alternatives now cheaper than dairy, according to a ProVeg Internationalstudy. At Lidl, which has made major sustainability strides this year, buying vegan private-label products is now more wallet-friendly.
At the Technical University of Munich‘s 2024 TFoodS Conference in Singapore, global experts explored alternative proteins and their potential to help the island nation achieve its 30 by 30 food security vision.
Courtesy: TUMCREATE
As Israeli-cultivated meat startup Aleph Farms continues to host tasting events ahead of the launch of its cultivated beef, five out of six chefs say they’d serve the Aleph Cuts product in their restaurants.
Researchers at Australia’s Monash University have created a “super yoghurt” made from sweet lupin beans and oats, which they say rivals both dairy and other plant-based yoghurts on taste, texture and nutrition.
Momofuku founder Dave Changfeatured cultivated meat on his podcast, The Dave Chang Show, interviewing the Good Food Institute‘s Eric Schulze about this future food.
The company’s Director of Sustainability talks to Green Queen about working towards a more sustainable food and ag value chain in Asia Pacific.
Earlier this year, ADM, a global leader in innovative solutions from nature, released its 2023 Corporate Sustainability Report, showcasing its sustainability achievements spanning three focus areas: feeding the world, protecting nature, and enriching lives. Among its milestones, ADM engaged over 25,500 smallholder farmers in India through sustainable agriculture practices, partnered with Water.org to provide water and sanitation solutions to over 800,000 people across six countries, and introduced a landfill diversion initiative at its Dharwad site in India, projected to divert approximately 100 metric tons of waste annually.
The report emphasises the company’s commitment to decarbonisation and building a sustainable future through innovative initiatives, which are key to fostering a resilient food system that can support a growing population.
In an exclusive interview, Ana Yaluff, ADM’s Director of Sustainability, spoke with Green Queen’s Sonalie Figueiras about how sustainability is deeply embedded in ADM. Yaluff discussed the company’s holistic approach and continued efforts to advance food security, including in Asia Pacific, a region facing heightened challenges due to rapid population growth and climate volatility.
Green Queen: What is ADM’s approach to sustainability, and how does it impact the communities you operate in, particularly in Asia?
Sustainability is the foundation of our purpose as a company, and a pillar of our growth strategy. Our commitment is anchored in three pillars: Feed the World, Protect Nature, and Enrich Lives – a holistic approach that enables usto unlock the power of nature to enrich the quality of life.
Feeding the World: The Asia Pacific (APAC) region is home to 60% of the global population, including some of the world’s most populous countries, with the number expected to increase to 5.2 billion by 2050. The region’s rapid growth – along with climate volatility – has heightened the need for secure, nutritious, and affordable food. At ADM, we are advancing food security by working at the intersection of innovation, sustainability, and agricultural development.
We understand the importance of working with growers across our vast supply chains to integrate regenerative practises, which ultimately enhance their resilience. For instance, in India, our team’s efforts on World Water Day focused on proactive water management, educating over 100 local farmers on sustainable water conservation techniques to help secure water resources for future generations.
Protecting Nature: In an era where the impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource scarcity have cast a spotlight on our global food system, the need for sustainable practises has become a priority for stakeholders across the food and agriculture value chain.
Our focus on regenerative agriculture is one of the most powerful ways we are addressing these challenges. Globally, we’ve expanded our regenerative agriculture initiatives to cover 2.8 million acres, with a goal of reaching 5 million acres by 2025. ADM’s commitment to achieving 100% deforestation-free supply chains by 2025 is another cornerstone of our strategy. We have made significant progress in tracing and monitoring the supply chains of key commodities, aspiring to protect critical ecosystems while maintaining the highest ethical standards.
Enriching Lives: Sustainability at ADM goes beyond environmental stewardship, we believe that it is also about enriching the lives of the people who are at the heart of the global food system. From farmers and communities to consumers and employees, we are dedicated to creating shared value and empowering individuals through meaningful, long-term impact.
ADM Cares, our corporate social investment programme, plays a critical role in driving these efforts globally. In Vietnam, for example, ADM Cares partnered with World Vision International in Vietnam (WVIV) for a targeted project in the Son Tay District. This initiative aimed to empower local farmers and households by equipping them with knowledge and technical skills in environmentally aware poultry breeding methods, along with financial education. As a result, it has improved the community’s livelihoods and the farming capacity of beneficiary households.
Green Queen: What are the key tenets of your decarbonisation plans? What data points are you most focused on to measure the company’s efforts?
Ana Yaluff: We are guided by a comprehensive, science-based approach that addresses emissions across our entire value chain. The key tenets of our plan include decarbonising our operations, leading in regenerative agriculture, investing in renewable energy, and collaborating with stakeholders across our ecosystem.
We have set a target to reduce absolute greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for Scope 1 and 2 by 25% from our 2019 baseline by 2035, along with a 25% reduction in Scope 3 GHG emissions from a 2021 baseline within the same timeframe. Together with our targets for energy, water, and waste reduction, these goals are collectively known as “Strive 35”.
Since announcing our Strive 35 goals, we have made significant progress, reducing Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by 14.7% as of 2023, and we are continuing to advance our efforts. Our initiatives include transitioning from coal to natural gas and optimising energy use. In 2023 alone, we completed 59 projects projected to reduce Scope 1 and 2 emissions by over 280,000 metric tons of CO₂e annually.
Meanwhile, to address Scope 3 emissions, which account for the vast majority of our carbon footprint, we are working closely with our farmers and partners to promote sustainable practises. This includes supporting farmers in adopting regenerative farming techniques that improve soil health and sequester carbon.
As we move forward, we remain focused on accelerating our efforts, leveraging cutting-edge technologies, and strengthening partnerships to drive further progress. With innovation, collaboration, and a steadfast commitment to sustainability, we are confident in our ability to shape a more resilient and sustainable future for the food system.
Green Queen: Given ADM’s scale and role in the global agrifood system, what is the company doing to enhance food access and security?
Ana Yaluff: Food security is a pressing issue, especially in the APAC region, which is home to over 370 million undernourished individuals – a figure that continues to rise due to climate volatility and supply chain disruptions. These challenges are exacerbated by extreme weather events, land degradation, and growing pressures on agricultural productivity. As a result, ensuring consistent access to safe, nutritious, and affordable food has never been more urgent.
In response to these challenges, ADM is harnessing its scale, expertise, and innovation to enhance food access and security. We operate an extensive transportation network that allows us to constantly adjust and shift the sourcing and delivery of agricultural and food products in the event of unexpected disruptions that may jeopardise food security. Beyond our supply chain, we collaborate with NGOs and government organisations to improve access to essential nutrition for at-risk populations. Through ADM Cares, we continue our partnership with the World Food Program USA to support the ERASE Hunger campaign, which aims to improve children’s nutrition by providing school meals.
A key aspect of our approach also lies in supporting sustainable agriculture. In 2023, ADM partnered with over 25,000 soy growers in India, delivering nearly 90,000 regenerative acres. We have supported these farmers in implementing regenerative agricultural practises, helping improve soil health and increasing crop resilience in regions facing environmental challenges.
As a global leader in the agrifood system, we are committed to driving systemic change. With our extensive footprint and innovative solutions, we address the complex challenges of food security – not just by focusing on feeding people today, but by building a more resilient, sustainable food system for future generations.
Green Queen: Why have you decided to invest so heavily in sustainable agriculture, particularly in regenerative practises? What opportunities do you see for advancing sustainable farming in India in particular?
Ana Yaluff: At ADM, we view regenerative agriculture as an essential part of the future of farming. In fact, it is a great example of how we’re committed to our purpose – to unlock the power of nature to enrich the quality of life.
Driven by the need to balance environmental sustainability with the growing global demand for food, our sustainable and regenerative agriculture efforts focus on building resilient farming systems that can withstand the impacts of climate change, reduce GHG emissions, and sequester carbon, all while improving the livelihoods of farmers.
As the world’s most populous country, India’s rapidly growing population will inevitably drive greater demand for food and resources. However, this growth also places additional pressure on agricultural systems already strained by issues like erratic weather conditions and water scarcity. In fact, India’s ambition to reach net zero by 2070 underscores the urgent need to embrace sustainable and regenerative practises that can restore degraded land, enhance productivity, and mitigate the effects of climate change.
For more than two decades, ADM India has been working in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture to support some 250,000 smallholder farmers in Maharashtra and Karnataka. Through this collaboration, we provide small and midsize growers with sustainability resources, technology, best practises in conservation, and important market connections. As a result, these farmers now have the opportunity to access global markets as registered vendors with ADM. This opens doors for them to meet the growing global demand for certified organic and non-GMO soy, all while increasing their incomes and improving their farming practises.
In 2022, ADM expanded its commitment through a partnership with Bayer, providing training to about 25,500 soybean farmers in the Latur, Osmanabad, and Beed districts of Maharashtra. These farmers are educated on seed treatments, pesticide management, and Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practises, ensuring that they are equipped to meet both sustainability requirements and market demands.
In addition, ADM’s partnership with Coromandel International Limited (Coromandel) strengthens our commitment to sustainable agriculture by training farmers through the ProTerra Foundation on non-GMO agricultural production. By analysing soil samples from 3,000 farmers, we aim to document improvements in organic soil carbon content and tracking the positive environmental impacts of regenerative practises.
As a bridge between growers and global consumer-facing brands, ADM leverages its global capabilities to scale sustainable practises across the value chain. By empowering farmers and providing them with the tools, knowledge, and market connections, we are driving long-term sustainability in India’s farming ecosystem and beyond.
Green Queen: As a commodity, palm is viewed as having a “high risk of deforestation” globally. What steps has ADM taken to ensure a responsible supply chain for palm, and how are you progressing with these initiatives?
Ana Yaluff: In today’s world, where environmental and ethical concerns are in the spotlight, responsible sourcing has become crucial for businesses. At ADM, we are committed to achieving a 100% deforestation-free supply chain by 2025 and are actively tracing and monitoring the supply chains of our commodities at high risk for deforestation, including palm, on a global scale.
We do not source palm directly from plantations; instead, we obtain palm oil, palm kernel oil, and palm kernel expeller (PKE) from processors. We collaborate with our suppliers to enhance supply chain traceability, engage with them, and ensure robust monitoring, verification, and reporting practises.
A key initiative in this effort is our PKE Responsible Sourcing Supplier Programme, which aims to continuously improve supplier sustainability performance and reinforce our responsible sourcing expectations. Built on four pillars – supplier engagement, supplier improvement, monitoring & verification, and investing in local communities – we engage all direct PKE suppliers in Indonesia and Malaysia and assess their sustainability performance through our palm scorecard tool. By working closely with our suppliers, we are increasing traceability and ensuring third-party verification of deforestation, successfully delivering responsibly sourced PKE to our customers.
Green Queen: What are your long-term sustainability goals for the APAC region?
Ana Yaluff: Looking ahead, ADM remains dedicated to advancing sustainability across all aspects of our operations. We will continue to innovate and strengthen partnerships with local, like-minded organisations to help feed the world, protect the environment, and improve lives. Through these efforts, we aim to actively contribute to the sustainable transformation of the food and agricultural value chain in the APAC region.
Reaching the UK food system’s climate goals isn’t possible without a reduction in red meat and dairy consumption, industry leaders say in a new report.
Food sector leaders in the UK have come together to produce a net-zero transition plan for the UK food system, highlighting the need for a 20% reduction in meat consumption by 2050.
The report was published by the Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD) and the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), in collaboration with accounting firm EY, and is based on talks with industry executives from across the UK food supply chain.
The authors note that achieving the UK’s net-zero target for 2050 would be “extremely stretching” without immediate action on diets. “The food industry should work urgently to develop an approach to diet that balances net zero and health objectives; the absence of a position stands in the way of progress and leaves the industry vulnerable to having policies imposed upon it,” they write.
Transformation is required on the demand side too, including high uptake of low-carbon agriculture, effective regulation and processes to eliminate deforestation, major infrastructure provision for green energy and zero-emission logistics, and advancements in recycling, reuse and alternative materials.
But change on the supply side is critical too, which involves significant reductions in household food waste and dietary shifts towards low-carbon alternatives and the national Eatwell Guide. The report suggests that “without diet change, the food system would not be able to make its contribution” to meet climate goals certified by the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi).
The report doesn’t propose a roadmap or target for delivering the emissions reduction potential of Brits shifting towards low-GHG dietary choices, but IGD and WRAP have agreed to draw up specific plans to help the industry commit to the protein transition.
Swapping meat for pulses most optimal for emissions cuts
Courtesy: IGD/WRAP
The publication was first announced in July, with the aim to create an evidence base to show what it would take for each agrifood industry segment to reach net zero, and serve as a useful framework for sector planning.
It notes how the food system accounts for 30% of territorial emissions in the UK, which is dominated by agriculture and land use change. Within this, meat (particularly red meats like beef and lamb) and dairy are much more carbon-intensive than plant proteins.
This is why the UK’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) has outlined several goals to reduce their intake in alignment with the net-zero strategy. It involves cutting red meat and dairy consumption by 20% by 2030 and 35% by 2050. But last month, it sent a letter to Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, calling for a 50% reduction by 2050 while replacing them with plant-based alternatives.
IDG and WRAP’s report falls short of this target and hasn’t set out a clear timeframe, advocating for a 20% cut in red meat and dairy by 2050, which would lower emissions by 9%. This, however, can only be achieved if they’re replaced with protein from pulses, as substituting them with chicken, fish or pork wouldn’t bring such emissions savings.
“A modest change in diet could be sufficient to meet targets, depending on emissions reductions in agriculture and food waste, but greater dietary shifts can support deeper cuts in carbon emissions,” the report suggests.
“Interventions to support dietary shift will need to be appropriately targeted to ensure the achievement of desired health outcomes. Greater alignment with the Eatwell Guide at a population level would be an appropriate direction of travel,” it adds.
“The key challenge to address is that the industry, working with government, should agree a position on diet change which balances net zero and health outcomes, fully accounting for impacts on nutrition.”
Catherine David, director of behavioural change and business programmes at WRAP, said: “We believe urgent action is needed by industry and government to establish a pathway for diets, with clear targets for 2030 that are rooted in the best current evidence and a range of expert perspectives, including from a nutrition and nature viewpoint.”
Dietary change is necessary to lower food’s carbon footprint
Courtesy: IGD/WRAP
WRAP is perhaps best known for its work on food waste reduction. It notes how the UK wastes a quarter of all food purchased, and 60% of the associated emissions are generated at the household level. WRAP’s flagship initiative, the Courtauld Commitment, aims to halve food waste by 2030 (from a 2015 benchmark) – but this would still mean 12.5% of food bought by Brits ends up in the bin.
This is why the report goes a step further, modelling a scenario where food demand decreases by 15% in 2050 compared to 2021, leaving waste at very low levels. This would reduce forest, land and agriculture (FLAG) by a further 10%.
But without dietary change, these cuts in food waste won’t be enough. If food waste is cut down to these levels in combination with a “high ambition” scenario for agriculture, it would create a gulf of 20 million tonnes of CO2e to achieve the SBTi’s FLAG targets in line with a 1.5°C limit.
Combining these with “less mature or more challenging approaches” like low-carbon feed and intercropping, however, would leave a gap that can be more than filled by a 20% cut in red meat and dairy consumption. Meanwhile, halving meat and dairy intakes and reaching very low levels of food waste would close this gap too.
Any diet change needs to maintain or improve nutritional balance, affordability, and accessibility. The Eatwell Guide incorporates all these factors in its dietary recommendations, which involve more diverse proteins to help supply chain resilience and a nutrient-dense diet, a switch towards sales of healthier and more sustainable products, and a greater proportion of sales of plant-rich sources.
“At WRAP, we do not shy away from challenging issues and for the food sector, no issue is more charged than diet change,” said David, acknowledging that the report sets a more conservative target than the CCC. “WRAP has published a 2030 pathway for delivering a 50% reduction in the GHG footprint of UK food and drink that includes significant mitigation from shifting diets towards the Eatwell Guide,” said David.
The authors noted that government policy and support must be strengthened to deliver emissions cuts across the food system. IGD and WRAP are now working with industry members to develop a food waste reduction strategy, which will include mandatory food waste reporting and address date labelling and pre-packaging of fresh produce.
They will also work on a dietary change strategy, which will cover information provision, education, and the revision of the Eatwell Guide in line with the latest evidence on consumption patterns.
A few weeks ago, at the Future of Protein Production conference in Amsterdam, thought leaders in sustainability and new protein production methods gathered to explore new pathways for the world’s protein needs.
Industry pioneers Ira Van Eelen from KindEarth.Tech and Ralf Becks from RESPECTfarms, along with Marcelo Beltrão Molento from the Federal University of Parana, held a compelling workshop: envisioning health and sustainability in farming through complementary protein sources.
The conversation covered the significant impact of industrial animal farming on ecosystems, particularly in the Amazon, and introduced RESPECTfarms’ vision: a future where farmers can continue to thrive as food providers and stewards of nature. This innovative approach promotes a future where traditional farmers and alternative protein advocates can collaborate rather than compete, emphasising that bridging these worlds is critical for sustainable food production.
Shifting the narrative around alternative proteins
Courtesy: RESPECTfarms
Historically, alternative protein companies have marketed their products by highlighting the environmental and ethical issues associated with conventional agriculture, often using terms like “slaughter-free” or “animal cruelty-free.” While these messages address genuine concerns, they’ve also unintentionally deepened divides. As workshop participants noted, framing alternative proteins in opposition to traditional agriculture has reinforced an “us vs. them” mentality, risking alienation within the farming community.
In an engaging exercise, Becks encouraged participants to write their opinions on whether the future of protein should be “with animals” or “without animals” on paper aeroplanes and throw them to the front of the room. This activity highlighted the binary thinking that often permeates these discussions. The workshop then pushed for a shift in approach: rather than positioning alternative proteins as replacements, there’s potential to present them as “complementary proteins” – new options that coexist alongside traditional sources. “We face a huge challenge in creating a diverse protein mix that can feed tomorrow’s world,” Becks emphasised, “and all protein sources are needed.” This vision of complementary proteins can allow for a full spectrum of choices – animal meat, plant-based meat, and cultivated meat – empowering consumers to decide, while the industry focuses on making all options accessible, enjoyable, and affordable.
Participants then crafted a second paper aeroplane, this time writing down ideas for collaboration that could create a true “common ground” approach. Suggestions ranged from subsidies for farmers transitioning to complementary protein production, to hybrid protein solutions that combine traditional and alternative methods. A shared theme emerged: dialogue and collaboration with farmers, not around them, is key to moving the industry forward. Each idea underscored the belief that constructive, open exchanges can pave the way for a sustainable and inclusive protein future.
Courtesy: RESPECTfarms
Building new business models for a resilient protein ecosystem
For RESPECTfarms, this vision translates into practical steps, such as creating new business models that integrate cultivated meat production within traditional agriculture. Their goal is ambitious: the world’s first cultivated meat farm where meat is grown directly from animal cells, with a vision to help decentralise cultivated meat production. This approach could enable farmers to produce cultivated meat alongside crops or livestock, fostering a system where small farms retain relevance and autonomy.
The current small scale of the cultivated meat industry could be well suited for early adoption by farmers. For many, starting with smaller production volumes – perhaps 500 litres – offers an achievable path to integrating cultivated meat into their existing operations. While larger centralised production methods, like those used by companies such as Mosa Meat (the technology partner for RESPECTfarms), may view this scale as a bottleneck, it may be an ideal entry point for smaller farms. In this sense, the RESPECTfarms project may hold greater short-term potential by providing a model that allows farmers to adopt cultivated meat incrementally while integrating it with traditional business models.
But does cultivated meat resonate with livestock farmers? It depends, noted Van Eelen, on each farmer’s motivation. Many farmers embrace animal farming because it’s a deeply rooted way of life, contributing to food security and supporting their local communities. Cultivated meat production doesn’t necessarily mean they have to abandon these values; rather, it offers an opportunity to produce meat differently, potentially in a way that brings additional economic and environmental benefits.
A balancing act: funding and infrastructure
Creating this shift won’t be easy. Becks noted that Dutch farmers currently receive around €795 million in government subsidies each year – a stark contrast to the €60 million invested in cellular agriculture through the Netherlands’ National Growth Fund. While this funding shows institutional support, it’s just a small fraction of what sustains conventional farming today.
To bridge this gap, Becks emphasised cooperation with existing meat distributors and leveraging their established networks in logistics, cold storage, and retail. Building a new protein ecosystem from scratch isn’t feasible. Instead, working alongside traditional industry players could enable cultivated meat to enter mainstream markets faster and more efficiently.
Courtesy: RESPECTfarms
Involving farmers in the cultivated meat value chain
Research from the Royal Agricultural University reveals that farmers themselves are warming up to the idea of participating in cultivated meat production. By repurposing existing crops and byproducts, like feed wheat for glucose or rapeseed oil meal for amino acids, farmers can supply the cellular agriculture industry with essential ingredients. This dual role allows them to maintain some aspects of livestock farming, while diversifying income streams and reducing reliance on powerful intermediaries that often dominate traditional supply chains.
RESPECTfarms is aiming to optimise its first farm by 2029, and hopes to scale out from there. With a vision to transform 1,000 farms by 2038, RESPECTfarms hopes to spark a global movement.
The challenge lies in making cultivated meat appealing, affordable, and integrated into the existing protein ecosystem. For this to happen, the cultivated meat sector must acknowledge the complexities of farming and seek collaborative solutions rather than adversarial relationships.
Finding common ground
While the discussion highlighted the potential for collaboration, some audience members voiced doubts, questioning whether true synergy is possible given certain non-negotiable values. Nonetheless, there was a shared belief that dialogue is essential. Cultivated and conventional farming communities may not always see eye-to-eye, but building bridges can foster mutual understanding, paving the way for a protein-rich future that respects both tradition and innovation.
In Becks’ words, “We need to find common ground.” The foundation for this new protein future could be built on shared goals: healthier ecosystems, resilient food systems, and, ultimately, a more sustainable world where all sources of protein can coexist and thrive.
Beyond Meat posted revenue growth for the first time in two years in Q3, buoyed by higher prices and a strong performance in Germany. It also teased its new mycelium steak.
After losing year-on-year revenue for nine quarters in a row, Beyond Meat returned to growth in the July-September period this year, boosting its profit margins and cutting losses from Q3 2023.
The Californian business, which has sought to pose itself as a “health company” this year with reformulated meat analogues and new whole-food sausages, recorded $81M in sales in Q3 2024, a 7.6% hike from last year.
This was largely thanks to the company jacking up the prices of its core products by 22% in the US and lowering trade discounts. These changes also helped the plant-based meat giant expand its quarterly margins to 17.7% – this is markedly higher than the 9.6% decline in margins in Q3 last year, and the 14.7% growth in the previous quarter.
And while the company’s volume sales were down by 7% in the third quarter, it saw improvements in year-on-year volume trends in three of its four sales channels, according to CEO Ethan Brown.
In a call with investors, he highlighted the need for Beyond Meat to celebrate and market its production process, announced an expansion of its partnership with Panda Express, and spilt some more details on its upcoming mycelium-based whole-muscle steak.
“The third quarter of 2024 serves as a pivotal quarter in our company’s history,” he said, noting how it seemed the protein markets would continue to be disrupted and pave the way for Beyond Meat to become mainstream after it went public in 2019.
“Turbulence, much of it generated by a concerted campaign supported by incumbent animal protein and pharmaceutical industries, destabilised the slipstream within which we travelled, and we fell from considerable heights,” he added.
“We responded by letting iron sharpen iron. We chose to get stronger, including moving our products along the continuum from relative to absolute health benefits, most notably in our Beyond IV platform and its broad endorsements from leading health institutions, and we got leaner and more focused.”
McDonald’s and Panda Express partnerships drive growth
Courtesy: Panda Express
Beyond Meat’s retail sales in the US rose by 14.6% in Q3 this year, primarily due to a 23% increase in net revenue per pound, as buyer rates for the new Beyond IV products saw an uptick. In foodservice too, net revenues grew by 15.5%, thanks in large part to the company’s reignited collaboration with Panda Express. The Beyond Orange Chicken dish is now available in 600 locations, doubling from its previous footprint.
Internationally, retail revenues were up by 17%, which the company attributed to greater distribution and demand in certain geographies. This was driven by Beyond Meat’s entry into Germany’s refrigerated channel, which it was unable to access due to shelf-life conditions until Q2.
“Having worked several years to meet shelf-life requirements, we are thrilled to now be in German retailers, Germany being one of the strongest plant-based markets in the world,” said Brown. “With a clear caution that it is very early days, we are seeing encouraging initial sell-through in this important market.”
The performance in these three channels reversed the decline in all sales channels in Q2 2024 (compared to the corresponding period a year ago). But the firm’s foodservice sales overseas took a hit, going from a 2.5% decline in Q2 to a 17% decrease in Q3. This was driven by a 22% drop in volume, reflecting “decreased sales of burger and chicken products to a large QSR customer in the EU”, explained COO Lubi Kutua.
However, the July-September period also saw Beyond Meat extend its partnership with the world’s largest restaurant chain, McDonald’s, which introduced Veggie McPlant Nuggets using the El Segundo firm’s vegan chicken at 1,500 stores. The Nuggets are currently planned to be a permanent menu addition, with France joining Austria, Germany, Malta, the Netherlands, Slovenia, the UK, and Ireland going Beyond at McDonald’s,” said Brown.
Beyond Meat aiming to raise funds this year
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
Reflecting its efforts to consolidate its production network, Beyond Meat managed to bring its cost of goods down to its lowest level in over three years ($66.7M). It shrunk net losses by 62% from the same period a year ago ($26.6M), and looking at the year so far, these were down by 37% from the first three quarters of 2023.
The improved performance here came as the company exited from five warehouses in the first half of the year, as part of its strategy to bring manufacturing in-house. This is one of its priorities for the year, alongside the launch of the Beyond IV line of products, the price hikes, lean management practices, and its investment in Europe.
The company, which remains $1.1B in debt, had reportedly been in talks with bondholders to restructure its debt. And it’s now looking to increase its cash reserves before the end of 2024 through an at-the-market offering, which involves selling shares over a period of time instead of all at once).
“We’re not going to, at this point, get into how much we may be looking to raise before the end of the year,” said Kutua. “But… we do intend to put additional liquidity on the balance sheet before the end of the year, and then we’re still looking at a more holistic sort of balance sheet restructuring at some point in the next year.”
Brown added: “You can see a very steep curve moving in the right direction. That’s why we feel so confident about our plan to bring the business into profitability. I can’t say when. I don’t want to imply it’s going to be anytime soon. But that is where we’re headed.”
He predicted full-year revenues of $320-330M, which was at the lower end of the firm’s previous forecasts. If realised, this would represent a 4-7% decrease in annual earnings compared to 2023.
Brown criticises ‘weaponisation’ of processed foods
Courtesy: Beyond Meat/Green Queen
The Q3 earnings are a welcome change for Beyond Meat, which has had a turbulent two years in terms of sales, leading to multiple rounds of job cuts, discontinued product lines, and new health-focused packaging. All this has come amid a wider decline in the market for meat analogues, whose revenues shrunk by 9% in the 52 weeks to July 14, 2024.
Part of this is due to prices and inflation too, whose impact was in full focus after the results of the US presidential election this week. In May, one survey showed that the price premium on plant-based meat deters 53% of Americans from buying it. In another poll published last month, 28% of Americans said high costs were driving them to purchase fewer meat analogues (a sentiment 12% more popular than last year).
Beyond Meat’s pricing strategy is reflective of the overall market for vegan meat, which is 77% more expensive on average than animal protein. Prices for the former were up by 9% in 2023, compared to 3% for the latter. “We have not seen anyone sort of tap out based on pricing,” Brown said. “People do complain about the prices of our products in general, but that’s always been the case.”
He added: “The biggest thing that is dissuading the consumer from our products and plant-based meat is a misperception around the health benefits and around the ingredients, full stop.” It’s why he previously labelled Beyond Meat as a “health and wellness company that makes plant-based meat”, and why it has changed recipes to include fava beans and avocado oil, championed vegetables in the Sun Sausages, and sought certifications from heart and diabetes health associations.
This direction has also prompted the company to delve into the world of mycelium with a clean-label, whole-cut steak fillet, which is set to be launched soon. The product has been in the works for many years under the company’s Rapid and Relentless Innovation programme.
“Beyond Steak Fillet is made with mycelium, a root-like structure found in mushrooms, legume protein, and a limited number of natural ingredients,” said Brown. “I personally love this product not only for its texture and savoury taste but its concise and clean ingredient list, coupled with very high levels of protein contrasted with very low levels of saturated fat.”
Remarking on the ultra-processed food debate, he said: “The weaponisation of the word ‘process’ – a tactic emphasised in the incumbent industry playbook on how to undermine plant-based meat and preserve the status quo – has grown long in the tooth. It is past time we put it to bed.
“We plan to do that by applying generous amounts of sunlight to our own process, educating consumers on how we build meat directly from plants. It’s a clean process. It’s a process that is elegant in its simplicity, and it’s a process that produces better outcomes for the human body and earth.”
Soon to be the EU’s farming commissioner, Cristophe Hansen has called meat “part of a balanced diet”, but admitted that we’re “massively underproducing” plant proteins – not in the way you think, though.
In three weeks, Cristophe Hansen will be confirmed as the European Commission’s new agricultural commissioner. He will have the unenviable task of helping president Ursula von der Leyen’s promise to deliver an agrifood roadmap within the first 100 days of her new mandate.
But in his confirmation hearing on Monday, Hansen appeared to toe the line between cosying up with the livestock lobby and moving the EU towards a more sustainable food system, at times asserting contradictory statements that left more questions than answers.
For instance, he appealed to conservatives when he said lawmakers shouldn’t impose a cutback in meat consumption, but also courted green MEPs by noting the importance of ramping up the production of plant proteins.
His comments come weeks after lobby groups representing farmers asked the Commission to create an EU-wide action plan for plant-based foods by 2026, as part of the Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture. How will Hansen, a farmer’s son, fare in a political operation that has repeatedly failed to deliver on its green policies?
Hansen says it’s ‘tricky’ to impose what people eat
Courtesy: European Parliament
Anna Strolenberg, a Dutch MEP for the Greens, noted how the FAO, the WHO and the IPCC have stressed the importance of dietary shifts, and the Strategic Dialogue agreed with the societal consensus on the topic. “So science and society are clear, now the EU must take action,” she said. “Protein diversification is of strategic importance for the EU.”
She then posed her questions: “Will we bring forward an action plan for plant-based foods as proposed in the Strategic Dialogue? Will this action plan include elements to tackle both consumption and production? And lastly, will you commit to policy actions to reduce our dependency on imported feed?”
Hansen responded that his view of the Strategic Dialogue was a little different, but didn’t delve further into that. “It is very tricky to say and impose top-down who has to eat what,” he offered, suggesting that doing so would be “very dangerous” and create a bigger gulf between the EU and its citizens. “That is not how the European Union should work.”
The Luxembourger added that meat products are part of a balanced diet, but suggested that everything “needs to be consumed in moderation”. “My doctor told me to eat less red meat. That was medical advice to me,” he admitted.
But there was one thing he said he agreed with Strolenberg on. “We are heavily underproducing plant-based proteins in the European Union, and they have at least two benefits,” he said. “They are beneficial for the climate, because they store emissions and are in that sense already very important.”
However, this was a deliberate misdirection, given that the second “benefit” of plant protein he mentioned was to reduce the EU’s reliance on feed imports. So while Strolenberg was talking about plant-based foods for humans, Hansen banged on about producing more soybeans to feed animals, who would then be fed to humans.
“Strengthening the EU’s food security is becoming central for the European Commission and will be a top priority for this new term. A key element of this issue revolves around protein, as the EU is highly dependent on imports for protein feed for its animal agriculture,” Soizic Larcher, EU policy officer at food awareness group ProVeg International, told Green Queen.
“The Commission recently acknowledged that policy and public debate on the EU protein sector needs a comprehensive approach, covering EU plant protein production, supply, and the broader challenges and opportunities in food and feed demand,” she added.
“ProVeg sees the need for a food systems approach that balances sector-wide needs and synergies, focusing on farmers and considering both human food and animal feed demand to find new efficiencies.” Larcher continued, outlining that ProVeg supports the need to reduce dependence on feed imports, but as “part of a broader transformation of the food system” that aligns with the goal of further developing the plant protein sector.
Shifting political environment impeding the protein transition
Graphic by Green Queen
Much of the hearing was about agriculture rather than food, but even then, Hansen didn’t commit to a sweeping change towards the EU’s approach to sustainable farming. He dodged a question about whether the EU should maintain or even increase its farming subsidies for red meat, merely stating that he was optimistic about the Commission’s budget for food promotion in the next financial framework.
The problem is, the EU spends nearly 30% of its Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) budget on agriculture – but 80% of this is directed to livestock farming (and 44% alone goes to feed crops).
This is at least four times higher than what the EU invests in plant-based farming, despite animal proteins providing only 35% of calories and 65% of proteins in the EU, and contributing to 84% of its agricultural emissions. And a recent investigation showed how these subsidies ultimately benefit some of the world’s richest people, at the expense of the farms that are supposed to profit from them.
In his written answers before the hearing, Hansen looked to promote organic farming as a way to greenify the EU’s farming sector. But he said the Commission wouldn’t publish a new framework for sustainable food systems: “Rather than new legislative proposals, we can achieve our objectives by better implementing and enforcing existing legislation while using incentives and new market-based tools to promote change.”
That would be fine if the EU had a good track record of putting its money where its mouth is on green policies. MEPs, working with lobby groups, have managed to stall Farm to Fork reforms, resist Green Deal legislations, and delay the promised ban on caged farming, which has now been put on hold indefinitely and led to a legal complaint against the EU. The CAP’s environmental controls were further weakened this year after intense lobbying efforts.
Hansen also indicated that it was important for the EU to update its protein strategy from 2018 to include plant protein needs more prominently. But he said the Strategic Dialogue report was “rather a vague formulation” and needed to be discussed in greater detail.
ProVeg’s Larcher said the organisation “advocates for a well-balanced plant-based diet” comprising plenty of whole foods. “With the current political environment leaning to the right, we increasingly hear these more conservative narratives and see resistance to recognise the need to transition towards more plant-based diets,” she outlined.
“Many people, including Mr Hansen himself, are aware of the value of reducing meat in their diet, but it will be essential to showcase the multiple benefits of this transition for the EU, for health, food security and the environment, so that it is translated into actual policies.”
In our weekly column, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Oatly’s new barista milk for light-roasted coffee, European precision fermentation developments, and the world’s best vegan chef.
New products and launches
First announced to investors in its 2023 earnings call, Swedish oat milk giant Oatly has rolled out a new version of its barista milk, formulated specifically for light-roasted coffee. The Barista Lighter Taste offering has 2.1% fat content (versus 3% for the regular barista edition) and enables the more nuanced flavour notes of specialty coffee to shine.
Courtesy: Grubby
After delivering over 100,000 dishes together, UK vegan meal kit startup Grubby has extended its partnership with plant-based chef duo Bosh! They have developed a new range of 10 dishes that can be made in under 30 minutes, including Gochujang Tofu Mac & Cheese and Peanut Butter & Tenderstem Udon Soup.
Months after acquiring Swedish mycoprotein startup Mycorena, Belgian animal protein company Veos Group‘s Naplasol has expanded the former’s Promyc line with two new ingredients at the Food Ingredients Europe event in Frankfurt (November 19-21).
Courtesy: Chosen Foods
US avocado oil startup Chosen Foods has debuted a vegan shortening made with just one ingredient: fractionated avocado oil. It’s available online and at Target for $10.99 to $12.99 per 16oz tub.
Fellow US firm the Plant-Based Seafood Co. has added Crispy, Crunchy, Fried Shrimp to its Mind Blown range of vegan seafood products. It’s available online for D2C and foodservice for a limited time.
Seattle-based vegan chicken playerRebellyous Foods has launched a Spicy Kickin’ Patty for K-12 schools, restaurants, and food service providers. It meets the USDA National School Lunch Program’s requirements for two meat/meat alternate credits and offers 1/4 grain credit as well.
Courtesy: Rebellyous Foods
And German startup Ohly, which makes yeast-based bionutrients for the food industry, has expanded its X-Seed product line with new nutrients designed to boost enzyme production.
Company and finance updates
UK vegan confectionery brand Doisy & Dam has been sold by Nurture Brands to organic cocoa company Food Thoughts. The deal will see the formation of an ethical plant-based chocolate offering for home bakery and snacking goods.
Courtesy: Doisy & Dam
Across the Atlantic, vegan baked doughnut maker Drumroll has received a $3M investment from CPG incubator 7 Mile Brands.
The Global Agri-Food Advancement Partnership (GAAP), which supports agrifood companies with funds, incubators and labs, has invested an undisclosed amount in Argentinian molecular farming startup Ergo Bioscience. GAAP will host Ergo in its Saskatoon labs in the coming months to help expand its operations to North America.
Chipotle is the top US restaurant chain when it comes to plant-based options and meat reduction policies, according to a report by World Animal Protection that ranks 23 major companies on these metrics. McDonald’s, Wendy’s and chicken chains like KFC and Popeyes received a failing grade.
In Chicago, PlantX‘s XMarket Food Hall – the largest vegan food court in the Midwest – has closed after a year of operations.
Since opening in Berlin this April, the fully plant-based Rewe store has been welcoming 5,500 visitors every week.
Speaking of Berlin, fermentation-derived dairy startup Formo has kickstarted its first out-of-home marketing campaign.
Courtesy: Formo/LinkedIn
Also in Germany, the federal food and agriculture ministry has invested €400,000 in sausage producer Metten Fleischwaren‘s project to develop a blended sausage with mycoprotein and meat.
Meanwhile, Dutch meat giant Nutreco has opened what it claims is the world’s first facility dedicated to food-grade powder production for cell feed, in an inauguration event attended by several cultivated meat companies.
Courtesy: Nutreco
New Zealand startup Daisy Lab, which makes precision-fermented dairy proteins, has partnered with two dairy processors to supply its plug-and-play technology for large-scale production of bioidentical proteins.
Speaking of precision fermentation, French player Bon Vivant has released a life-cycle assessment that shows its animal-whey protein cuts greenhouse gas emissions by 72%, reduces water use by 81%, and requires 99% less land compared to conventional dairy.
Courtesy: Bon Vivant
In further news from this industry, Belgian precision fermentation startup Paleo and Austrian 3D-printed seafood producerRevo Foods have received a €2.2M grant from the EU’s Eureka Eurostars programme to develop animal-free myoglobin for vegan salmon.
British peanut butter maker ManiLife has invested over £1M in a new 13,5000 sq ft manufacturing facility that can store up to 15 million jars of peanut butter. Raising £500,000 to fund the move, the factory is set to begin production in early 2025.
Courtesy: The Better Meat Co
Californian mycelium startup The Better Meat Co has received its patent from the US Patent and Trade Office, which covers its innovative shelf-stable mycoprotein production process, methods of sizing and separating mycelium particles, and million process to turn the dry mycleium into a powder.
Policy developments and awards
In the UK, conservation agency the National Trust will make menus at its 300 food and drink outlets at least 50% plant-based, after 75% of its 2.6 million members voted in favour of the move to speed up its path to net zero. Around 40% of its existing catering options are plant-based.
Alternative protein think tank the Good Food Institute has been recognised as one of Giving Green‘s top six climate impact charities globally for the third year running. It has recommended philanthropists to provide $2.1M in grants to the charity, contributing to its ongoing three-year raise of $125M.
Luxembourgish chef Steve Lentz has won the Best Vegan Chef title at the Global Chefs Challenge, who won over judges with a vegan foie gras and a cabbage-based dessert.
Luxury hotel group Four Seasons has teamed up with Israel’s Oshi to put its plant-based whole-cut salmon on the menu at MKT Restaurant and Bar in San Francisco.
Showcasing the potential of plant-based seafood to adorn high-end restaurant menus, Four Seasons – one of the world’s best-known luxury hotel operators – has partnered with Oshi, an Israeli startup that makes a whole-cut salmon analogue from fermented fungi, algae, soy protein and a blend of vegetable oils.
At Four Seasons Hotel San Francisco’s MKT Restaurant and Bar, executive chef Kevin Tanaka will introduce the vegan salmon on the menu, in a move touted as part of the hotel group’s “ongoing commitment to sustainable luxury”.
“We’re honoured to work with Four Seasons to introduce plant-based salmon to their guests,” says Oshi co-founder and CEO Ofek Ron. “Chef Tanaka’s expertise and creativity are the perfect match for Oshi’s product, and we’re excited to be part of this shift towards more sustainable dining experiences.”
Oshi salmon to roll out at several Four Seasons hotels
Courtesy: Oshi
Oshi, which rebranded from Plantish in 2023, hopes to tap into the signature taste and texture of salmon, but without the climate and health concerns (think the presence of mercury and antibiotics, and the impact of overfishing).
To do so, it uses a blend of mycoprotein, soy protein, algal and vegetable oils, and rice flour that is put through a proprietary modular layering technology. This involves incorporating fats between layers of plant proteins and algae extracts to create a whole-muscle structure similar to conventional salmon.
Ron, who founded the startup with Ariel Szklanny, Ron Sicsic and Hila Elimelech in 2021, confirmed that Oshi recently received approval for its patents. The team moved operations from Israel to the US late last year, owing to a more receptive regulatory environment for mycelium, and set up a co-manufacturing production facility stateside.
The salmon has been rolled out at a number of restaurants across the US this year, including Urban Vegan Kitchen, Mercury Bar West, and Neat in New York City, V-Spot Food in New Hope, DVASH in Boca Raton, and BeeWali’s Vegan AF in Los Angeles.
But part of Oshi’s foodservice plan was to target the luxury market, which it is kickstarting with the Four Seasons collaboration. “We first connected with Four Seasons chefs at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago, where they had the chance to experience our product firsthand,” Ron tells Green Queen. “Our distribution partner, Royal Hawaiian Seafood, introduced Oshi to their team, and from there, the collaboration began.”
It’s a shrewd move considering that food is amongst the most popular luxury items consumers want to spend more on. A YouGov poll in 2023 found that more than one in four Americans (27%) were looking to buy luxury meat and produce over the next 12 months.
Meanwhile, a recent global survey by the Marine Stewardship Council found that 30% of people have been eating less seafood in the last two years, as nearly half (48%) are concerned about overfishing and 35% are worried about climate change impacts. At the same time, over 80% of people have changed their dietary habits in this period, and 43% are doing so for sustainability reasons.
While the MKT will be the first Four Seasons restaurant to introduce Oshi’s vegan salmon, it won’t be the last, with expansion to other locations planned for 2025.
“Oshi’s salmon has an authentic texture and flavour that beautifully complements our offerings here at MKT,” said Tanaka. “I’m excited to work with such a high-quality, sustainable product, giving our guests a delicious way to enjoy seafood without the environmental impact. We look forward to presenting Oshi in a variety of dishes that highlight its versatility.”
Treading rough waters for alternative seafood
Courtesy: Oshi
“Our focus is on expanding into luxury hotels, corporate kitchens, and casual restaurants across the US,” says Ron. “By 2025, we’re planning to launch our plant-based salmon in retail and begin a pilot in the EU.” Oshi will further launch a new product in early 2025, which it will reveal next month.
Apart from the partnership with Royal Hawaiian Seafood, it has also linked up with distributors like ACE Naturals, Earthly Gourmet and Webstaurant Store, which will enable Oshi to supply its products to more foodservice clients across the US.
The company has so far secured $14.5M, most recently closing a bridge funding round. It is planning to fundraise further in 2025. “I believe that as alternative protein becomes more mainstream, funding will naturally align with the growing demand for sustainable options,” he says.
Alternative proteins saw funding fall by 44%, and for plant-based and cultivated protein startups, the numbers are even worse this year. Companies dealing with fermentation (like Oshi), however, have bagged nearly 30% more investment in the first three quarters of this year than they did in all of 2023.
Meanwhile, sales of plant-based meat and seafood fell by 12% last year. But vegan seafood takes up just 1% of the overall seafood share in the US, and several companies – like Akua, Ordinary Seafood and New Wave Foods – have shut down over the last year, underscoring the tough market landscape.
“The alternative seafood market is still in its early stages, unlike alternative meat, which has decades of consumer familiarity. Brands like Tofurky and Gardein paved the way, and now Oshi is helping drive growth in the alt-seafood category with whole-cut options that make up over 70% of the traditional fish market,” says Ron.
“We’re seeing strong interest from major clients who are considering plant-based options for the first time, and consumer awareness of the health and environmental concerns around fish consumption is rising, which will help grow the category.”
“Change starts here,” Ira Van Eelen, co-founder at KindEarth.Tech and RESPECTfarms noted on the opening day of the Future of Protein Production Amsterdam 2024. With over 500 delegates, 45 exhibitors, and two packed days of panels, keynotes, and workshops, the event was a deep dive into the future of sustainable food production.
Green Queen was there to witness the cutting-edge ideas shaping this future and hear from the innovators, regulators, and entrepreneurs leading the charge. Here’s what we learned about the shifts reshaping alternative proteins – and why they matter.
1) Processing, not products
The event showcased a shift from end products to enabling technology, highlighting a new focus on scaling production. As the industry moves from lab to large-scale, managing costs while optimising processes has become the biggest challenge – especially as most companies are working to cut costs as they do so. Many companies are operating more cautiously now that food tech is no longer the trendy sector du jour, spending less on their own Capex and instead seeking external solutions – like ERIDIA’s nanosecond pulsed electric field technology, or Ziemann Holvrieka’s massive, industrial-grade tanks.
And, for several companies, the end goal isn’t necessarily to serve consumers. Robin Simsa highlighted this perfectly when he shared that Revo Foods’ longer-term aim is to supply its unique 3D printing technology to other producers, but first has to prove that it works with products in the market – hence the company’s ongoing retail partnerships with the likes of REWE, BILLA, SPAR and EDEKA. This shift from consumer-facing products to process-oriented B2B solutions could mark a key change in the alt-protein industry.
2) New media for cellular agriculture
To meet the high costs and volume needs of cell-based production, several companies are developing innovative, low-cost media. Susanne Wiegel, Head of Alternative Protein Program at Nutreco, predicted that, by 2040, the cell ag industry’s media needs will “leapfrog from niche production to commodity-scale demand”.
With its first dedicated cell feed powder plant in Boxmeer, Nutreco is creating high-volume, low-cost, food-grade media that it sees as critical for the future of cellular agriculture. Newcastle University spinout MarraBio is developing ultra-stable, low-cost alternatives to the extracellular matrix and growth factor proteins used in cultivated meat production, and Belgian startup FlyBlast is using black soldier flies to create human insulin, view a view to then creating bovine and porcine insulin, so removing the cost and ‘ick factor’ barrier of human insulin for cultivated meat production.
3) Leveraging AI to scale production
It’s becoming clear that AI could help to optimise everything from ingredient selection to production processes, supporting alt protein companies to reduce costs and improve their scalability. Sam Tucker from OpenPaws described it as “enabling smarter decision-making at every stage.” Sebastian Blum of Beckman Coulter Life Sciences emphasised that AI can improve bioprocesses in unprecedented ways—a claim demonstrated by Multus, which uses machine learning to optimise media formulations, making their production more efficient and affordable.
Tucker also outlined that, in the longer term, AI could enhance collaboration across sectors, bringing together innovators, regulators, and producers to strengthen the sustainable food ecosystem. In fact, a panel led by Thomas Cresswell of Melt&Marble concluded that the next decade will see AI-driven production processes playing a central role in shaping new protein technologies.
Courtesy: The Future of Protein Production
4) Meeting consumer expectations with personal benefits
There was a strong message throughout the event that consumer interest in alt-proteins centres more on personal benefits than environmental impact. Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Sodexo Netherlands, Marloes van der Have, explained that in their foodservice facilities consumers are making choices based on financial triggers, not necessarily the environment. “While some may have an ideal view about looking after the environment, when it comes to it, it’s much more about personal benefit – so taste, health, and cost – than the bigger picture of climate impact.”
The emphasis on personal benefit over environmental impact is a valuable insight for industry leaders. Aligning consumer messaging with what truly resonates—taste, health, and cost—could redefine how alternative proteins are marketed, helping the sector grow without losing sight of its ultimate sustainability goals.
5) Tech for taste and texture
While health drives consumer interest in plant-based eating, taste is what seals the deal, according to Catherine Caro, Global Diet & Health Manager at Unilever. This insight is central to development at The Vegetarian Butcher.
Robin Simsa talked about Revo Foods’ 3D Food Structuring Tech, which allows it to produce unique, flaky, and juicy textures, while Dr Lily Nur Sulaiman, Senior Research Scientist at THIS, also shared insights into the company’s mission to deliver nutritious and delicious plant-based food while tackling the common barriers around health and protein quality. THIS uses high-protein ingredients like concentrates and isolates, mixing protein sources to enhance the amino acid score, and its protein extraction processes are designed to improve protein digestibility by removing anti-nutrients.
6) Doing tastings the right way
At some point, all novel food companies will host public tastings (like Vital Meat just did in Singapore). Van Eelen underlined just how important it is to do them the right way – after all, these lay the groundwork for broader consumer acceptance. That is, by avoiding elements that could distract from the product people are there to taste (too much breading, strong herbs, overpowering spices), by allowing people to enjoy food together, as they would in a restaurant, and by honouring the chef in the process. “People believe in chefs, and what they can do. Don’t hide them at the back or make them wait for journalists or a lab tour. Make them the star of the show, and so the food will become the star of the show.”
Courtesy: The Future of Protein Production
7) Shifting the narrative: mindset matters
Some of the speakers and panellists suggested that alt proteins launched with the wrong pitch; there was too much noise about the morals and the environment, when instead the focus should be on the food and potential European sovereignty for novel technology. As Anna Handschuh, Founder and Managing Director at Future Affairs, put it: “Being right doesn’t mean you win.” Instead, understanding “what business you are actually in” and crafting compelling narratives that resonate with consumers to drive the widespread adoption of alternative proteins are important here.
8) Collaboration is key
BlueNalu founder Lou Cooperhouse asked: “What if 1+1=3? Then perhaps 1+1+1 could equal 7 or maybe 9.” Being greater than the sum of our parts was the thread that pulled together the whole conference, and the realisation that, as the industry matures and recalibrates through difficult times, working together will become the rule, not the exception. The sentiment of collective effort resonated across companies and sectors, with partnerships like that between Formo and Those Vegan Cowboys serving as examples of how collaboration and open innovation can accelerate scaling.
This collaboration could even extend to regulatory bodies. Cedric Verstraeten, CEO at revyve, stated that, when it comes to regulations: future of protein production “There is no EU,” describing how the different countries’ attitudes and approaches to novel foods are in no way unified – let alone across the world. Perhaps the industry should advocate for internationally accepted standards and categorisations; after all, a unified approach to approvals could only serve to speed up the process and inspire consumer trust.
Jasper Snoek from Fair Capital Impact Fund provided an investor’s perspective, highlighting how blended financing models can help companies scale in a capital-intensive environment. He stressed the need for building strong coalitions that transcend political divisions to drive real progress in alternative proteins. The message was clear: shared resources and knowledge will be crucial in driving progress.
This theme of collaboration resonated throughout the event, suggesting that the future of protein production might be a collective effort where joint innovation creates exponential growth.
After all, as Those Vegan Cowboys’ Will van den Tweel put it: “It’s impossible for one player to capture what is a $1 trillion dairy market. Together, we are better.”
At EIT Food’s new flagship event, Next Bite, six startups working in the future food space gained funding to test their technologies and accelerate their path to market.
From cultivated meat and mycelium protein to cell-based chocolate, the EU is investing tens of thousands in early-stage food tech startups to advance their route to commercialisation.
At Next Bite, the flagship event of EIT Food in Rome last month, the EU-backed accelerator programme announced the winners of the 2024 EIT Food Accelerator Network Tech Validation Awards, with 17 companies receiving grants between €20,000 and €50,000.
Of these, six startups are working on alternative proteins, cell-based cocoa or palm oil alternatives, shaping the future of an increasingly volatile food system hit by the climate crisis.
Which startups piqued EIT Food’s interest?
Courtesy: Esencia Foods
Esencia Foods, the German startup making clean-label whole-cut seafood analogues from mycelium, was among the biggest beneficiaries, receiving €50,000. The company debuted its fermentation-derived seabass and cod at the Anuga gastronomic fair in Cologne last year.
Two future food companies were awarded €30,000 from EIT Food. London startup Clean Food Group, which uses waste bread to ferment yeast into a palm oil alternative, will use the money to identify technology gaps and implement a clear product development roadmap.
Fellow UK startup Quest Meat is developing ingredients to make cultivated meat affordable and scaleable, and will use the €30,0000 to advance its edible microcarrier material Neutrix. It is collaborating with Campden BRI to conduct food safety screenings and nutritional composition testing to ensure the material meets international standards and can help expedite regulatory approval for cultivated meat products that make use of it.
Another British company, New Wave Biotech, received €20,000. It has created an AI-powered software to help precision fermentation companies optimise their downstream processing. It will use the capital to test and validate its technology with research organisation CPI to help clients gain confidence in its system’s predictions.
EIT Food deployed a further €20,000 to Israel’s Kokomodo. The company emerged from stealth this summer and produces cell-based cocoa for the food and beverage, supplements and cosmetics industries. It plans to enhance its product development efforts with the capital.
And finally, another €20,000 went the way of Sao Paulo-based Typcal under the Brazilian Tech Validation Award. The startup employs fermentation to make mycelium ingredients, including snacks and powders, for the food industry.
Courtesy: Typcal
EU ramps up future food research investments
The winners of these awards will use the funding to run projects to test and accelerate their technologies further, in collaboration with EIT Food’s network of partner universities, research centres and facilities across the continent.
This is far from the first time the accelerator has poured money into the alternative protein category. Last year, it awarded a €5,000 prize to mycelium meat maker Bosque Foods and fermentation-derived seafood producer Pacifico Biolabs (both from Germany).
It also collectively invested €1.2M to 3D Bio-Tissues, BioBetter, LenoBio, and S2aquacolab to reduce the cost of culture media for cultivated meat production, as part of its Cultivated Meat Innovation Challenge in partnership with the Good Food Institute (GFI) Europe. And this year, its Seedbed Incubator includes methane-to-protein startup ChangeBio and cultivated meat tech species ForMeat.
Members of its 2024 Accelerator Network include precision-fermented ingredient startups Melt&Marble and Ironic Biotech, Spanish vegan egg maker Uobo, fermented protein startup Fabas, cocoa-free chocolate startups Foreverland and Nukoko, and molecular farming player Amatera, alongside the aforementioned companies that won the funding under the Tech Validation Awards (except Typcal).
Courtesy: GFI Europe
This is part of the EU’s broader leadership into 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, according to GFI Europe. And this doesn’t include the European Innovation Council’s €50M investment for precision-fermented and algae-based foods.
A bulk of this funding (€117M) went to cross-cutting projects that covered a combination of plant-based, fermentation, or cultivated protein research. But in terms of publications, Europe as a whole lacks collaboration with overseas researchers and studies on certain alternative protein pillars remain underdeveloped.
The landscape was found to have an “inconsistent approach to funding and an urgent need to build a more coherent network”, according to Stella Child, research and grants manager at GFI Europe.
“To capitalise on this growing expertise and make sure innovations developed by European scientists can be commercialised here, governments and funding bodies must create more opportunities for alternative protein scientists to collaborate and provide dedicated funding to boost research in overlooked areas,” she said.
Time Magazine has recognised a cultivated meat technology as one of the year’s best inventions, alongside lab-grown cotton and an AI platform for functional plant-based ingredients.
As further proof of the technology’s potential for safeguarding the future of the planet and its food supply, cultivated meat has been recognised as one of the top inventions of the year.
Time Magazine’s list of the Best Inventions of 2024 comprises 200 innovations “changing how we live, work, play, and think about what’s possible”, and covers everything from consumer electronics and beauty to food, gaming and medical care.
It’s a tradition that dates back two decades, and is built on nominations from both Time’s editors and correspondents globally. Each contender is judged on factors like originality, efficacy, ambition, and impact.
This year, the list includes Dutch startup Meatable’s cultivated pork technology, Boston-based Galy’s lab-grown cotton, and Californian firm Brightseed’s AI-led Forager platform.
Courtesy: Jo Whaley/Time
Meatable recognised for world’s fastest cultivated meat tech
Meatable was chosen for Time’s Best Invention list because of its proprietary Opti-ox technology, which allows it to produce cultivated meat in just four days, faster than any other company in the space.
Within the industry, it’s common for producers to use immortalised cell lines, but these need to be altered to multiply indefinitely. Meatable’s technology, however, uses pluripotent stem cells (PSCs), which have the natural ability to multiply continuously and rapidly.
While it can be challenging to change PSCs into more specialised cells like muscle or fat, combining them with the Opti-ox technology enables the Dutch startup to produce fully differentiated muscle and fat cells in just four days. This is then combined with a perfusion process that allows Meatable to work in a continuous cycle and generate very high cell densities, increasing productivity and making it easier to scale up the process.
“We’re deeply honoured to be recognised by Time for our Opti-ox technology, which we believe is at the forefront of the cultivated meat revolution,” said Daan Luining, co-founder and chief innovation officer of Meatable.
Courtesy: Meatable
“With our planet’s resources under increasing pressure and demand for meat only growing, it’s evident that our current food system is unsustainable,” he added. “This acknowledgement from TIME is a tremendous validation of our approach, and of our incredible team working day and night to make this happen.”
Meatable is currently working with regulators in six countries to get its cultivated pork approved for sale, with authorisation in Singapore expected in the first quarter of 2025, as CEO Jeff Tripician revealed to Green Queen last month.
The startup is aiming to raise a Series C round around the $35M mark to add to the $95M it has secured from investors since it was founded six years ago. It will host a large tasting event in Singapore next February with investors, the company’s board and meat companies interested in incorporating the cultivated pork in their products.
“I see us moving with pretty good speed through 2025,” Tripician said, indicating that Meatable would use its Singapore application to file dossiers in countries that largely follow the same process. “At the end, I would be very disappointed in our team if we don’t have approval in five, six countries by this time or the end of next year,” he added.
Lab-grown cotton and plant-based compounds join Time’s Best Inventions list
Courtesy: Galy
Meatable wasn’t the only cellular agriculture company present on the Time Best Inventions of 2024 list. Galy may not be working on food, but it’s using a similar technique to grow bioidentical cotton, minus the huge amount of water, chemicals, or deforestation.
Galy takes cotton cells and cultivates them in large bioreactors by feeding them sugar. Once they’ve proliferated to the required volumes, it selectively activates and deactivates genes in the cells, transforming them into cotton fibre. The process is 10 times faster and 500 times more productive than conventional cotton farming, uses 99% less water, takes up 97% less land, and emits 77% less CO2.
“Cellular agriculture offers the best way to address environmental challenges at scale while producing a material with the same characteristics as traditional cotton,” Galy co-founder Luciano Bueno told Time. “With all due respect to agriculture, we believe we can produce the same thing in a lab facility, better.”
The startup recently secured $33M in a Series B round led by Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures, taking its total raised to $65M. It hasn’t been commercialised yet, but it counts H&M Group and Inditex (the parent company of Zara, Bershka, Stradivarius and more) as investors, and has secured agreements with several industry leaders, including health and pharma giant Suzuran Medical.
Courtesy: Brightseed
Another company working in the realm of future food is Brightseed, which was recognised by Time for its proprietary AI platform Forager. This helps it discover bioactive compounds found within plants to deliver health ingredients for functional food, beverages, supplements and specialised nutrition companies.
Brightseed, which closed a $68M Series B round in 2022, has assembled the largest library of natural mall molecule compounds anywhere in the world (with over seven million already), linking them to potential health benefits and allowing food companies – like Danone and Blue Diamond – to understand their bioactives and optimise their products accordingly.
“This recognition from TIME is a tremendous honour,” said Brightseed co-founder and CEO Jim Flatt. “Forager marks a significant technical breakthrough, enhancing our ability to explore nature for insights and ingredients that transform our diet into targeted tools for health and longevity. Together with our customers and partners, we look forward to delivering a new class of powerful and sustainable health innovations for consumers worldwide.”
This isn’t the first instance of Time recognising alternative protein and future food companies in its Best Innovations list. Since 2020, Impossible Foods‘s pork analogue, Perfect Day’s precision-fermented whey protein, Upside Foods and Good Meat‘s cultivated chicken products, and MeliBio‘s bee-free honey tech have all appeared on the list.
Finnish startup Enifer has filed for novel food approval in the EU for its Pekilo mycoprotein, and is planning applications in Singapore, the US, and the UK.
Months after closing a Series B funding round and securing loans for a new factory, Finnish mycoprotein producer Enifer is pursuing regulatory approval in several markets as it looks to accelerate its route to market.
The startup has applied for novel food approval from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), a first for a Nordic mycoprotein maker, and is now looking to make applications in Singapore, the US, and the UK, CEO Simo Ellilä tells Green Queen.
“Besides Europe being the natural market for the product from our first factory in Finland, we decided to compile the safety data according to the most rigorous standard, which is the EFSA,” he explains when asked why the company decided to apply in the EU first. “With that comprehensive dataset at hand, we can also file in other jurisdictions relatively easily.”
To date, Enifer has raised €50M in financing, including equity, loans and grants. This includes a €24M sum comprising Series B funding, state-backed loans, and EU grants to build a mycoprotein factory in Kirkkonummi, Finland.
Set to be completed by the end of 2025, the facility will have the capacity to produce up to 3,000 tonnes of mycoprotein annually, enough to meet the protein needs of 40,000 people in a sustainable manner – 1kg of Pekilo only emits 1.66kg of CO2e, 98% lower than beef and half as much as milk production.
Pekilo to compete with conventional proteins on price from ‘day one’
Courtesy: Iiro Muttilainen
Enifer spun off from the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland in 2020, with its five founders aiming to develop and commercialise its flagship Pekilo protein.
The ingredient is a nutrient-rich drop-in made via a submerged biomass fermentation process similar to brewing soy sauce. Originally developed in the 1970s, it made use of byproducts from the forest industry, upcycling fungi into chicken and pig feed.
But with tech advancements in the forestry sector in the 1990s, the sidestreams the fungi strain was fed on were no longer available. Enifer revived that process by adapting it to food and agricultural sidestreams to develop food-grade mycoprotein – currently, it uses lactose permeate (which is derived from the ultrafiltration of milk to separate lactose from proteins and fats) as one of its feedstocks.
The result is a fibre-rich mycoprotein powder with a neutral taste and colour with varying quantities of protein, depending on the application. Pekilo can be used in pet food (with a protein content of over 60%), aquaculture feed (up to 65% protein), and human food applications (up to 55% protein).
“The neutral colour and flavour of Pekilo make it an ingredient that’s easy to incorporate into nearly any recipe, from baked goods to alternative dairy and meat,” says Ellilä.
To prepare for launch, the company has partnered with Nutreco’s aquafeed division, Skreting, pet food giant Purina, and dairy leader Valio (for consumer products) to incorporate Pekilo into their offerings.
“Pekilo can be produced at a competitive price point, thanks to the efficient bioprocess and the use of food industry side streams as raw material,” explains Ellilä. “We aim to compete with conventional proteins, such as plant protein isolates, on price from day one.”
Enifer expects to launch in Singapore first
Courtesy: Iiro Muttilainen
In the EU, any food that wasn’t consumed to a significant degree before May 1997 is considered a novel ingredient. Pekilo’s revamped process of using agricultural sidestreams instead of forestry byproducts mean it is classed as a novel food too, requiring pre-market authorisation from the EFSA.
The EU’s regulatory framework, however, is amongst the world’s most rigorous. The complexity and timelines involved have spurred many companies to look to other markets first, but recent changes are meant to make it easier for both homegrown and overseas businesses to file for approval.
“Making predictions on EFSA approval timelines is notoriously difficult. Some companies have been in the process for more than four years already,” says Ellilä. “However, EFSA has been clarifying the process in recent years, and we’ve been able to learn from some of the difficulties faced by other companies.”
He adds: “Thanks to the long, safe history of the use of Pekilo in animal nutrition, we also believe we have a particularly strong case. We believe that three years is a realistic timeline, all things considered.”
Enifer will also kickstart its efforts in the US and Singapore “as soon as technically possible”. “Filing in Singapore should happen within a few months,” Ellilä says. “A GRAS [Generally Recognized as Safe in the US] filing will take longer as the process is somewhat different.”
Asked about the company’s market launch strategy, he reveals: “Considering that regulatory approval is likely first in Singapore, we would probably go for a first limited launch in products like snack bars, where Pekilo can bring a healthy dose of protein and fibre without imparting negative off-flavours.”
The development comes as interest in fungi protein booms. While plant-based and cultivated meat startups have struggled, fermentation-derived alternative protein startups raked in nearly 30% more investment in the first three quarters of this year than they did in all of 2023. This includes a $100M Series C round for mycelium startup Meati, a $58M Series B round for mycoprotein maker Infinite Roots, and a $28M growth equity round for MyBacon producer Ecovative.
In our weekly column, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Beyond Meat’s European exploits, a big week for plant-based milk in the US, and cultivated seafood’s national TV debut in Japan.
New products and launches
Plant-based giant Beyond Meat has partnered with foodservice operator SSP Group to bring the Beyond Burger to UK airports and train stations. It is available at 13 locations, including The Camden Bar & Kitchen at London Stansted and Brigg & Stow at Bristol Airport, and will be rolled out at another six in December.
Courtesy: Beyond Meat/SSP
Beyond Meat is also delivering on its promised expansion in Germany, expanding from freezers into the chilled aisles of Edeka, which now stocks burgers, hack (mince), sausages, and more.
Speaking of Bristol, local favourite VeBurger is opening a second location on Whiteladies Road in Clifton. It will give away 100 free vegan burgers on day one.
Across the Atlantic, Slutty Vegan‘s location in Birmingham, Atlanta is reopening months after it was temporarily shut, but this time under new ownership. Company founder Pinky Cole has gifted the restaurant to its former general manager Reatta Hall, a local resident who has been at the company for three years.
London-based Grounded has brought its clean-label plant protein milkshakes to the US, with Whole Foods Market carrying its chocolate and mint-chocolate variants in 150 stores across both coasts.
Courtesy: Rebbl
In more milkshake news, Californian functional beverage maker Rebbl has launched a line of vegan protein shakes with 26g of protein per bottle. They are powered by EverPro, an upcycled barley protein developed by AB InBev’s EverGrain, and come in chocolate, vanilla, and cookies and creme flavours.
Californian juicer manufacturer Nama has unveiled its M1 Plant-Based Milk Maker, which can produce “barista-quality milk” in under two minutes, alongside infused oils, soups and flavoured waters. It’s available in North America for $400.
Courtesy: Nama
On the opposite coast, New York-based Edenesque has introduced its debut line of “chef-crafted” milk alternatives, featuring unsweetened and barista oat milks, and a barista pistachio-cashew milk.
Also in New York, Elmhurst 1925 has released a limited-edition OatNog for the holiday season, made from a base of oats and cashews.
Courtesy: Silk
Another US alt-dairy launch comes from Danone-owned Silk, which has rolled out an oat milk for kids aged five and over with 8g of protein per serving, alongside DHA omega-3, choline, and prebiotics.
In Italy, vegan cheesemakerDreamfarm has expanded its lineup with a new almond and cashew ricotta, which is currently available exclusively at Esselunga ahead of an EU-wide launch.
Courtesy: Dreamfarm
And Australian firm Pectin 360 has teamed up with The Original Juice Company to transform food waste into pectin and fibre. The two will set up a pilot plant with an undisclosed research and commercialisation entity, with the aim of saving over 10,000 tonnes of citrus peels and apple pomace waste annually.
Company and finance updates
In Canada, Modern Plant-Based Foods has acquired vegan pet food startup AnimalKind, marking its expansion beyond human food products.
Courtesy: AnimalKind
French firm C&DAC has brought in €1.6M ($1.7M) from Yeast, ILP Group, and Alsace Business Angels to speed up the development of its fermented legume-based flour for the plant-based industry.
Polish food waste platform Foodsi, which allows restaurants and stores to sell discounted surplus food, has raised €1.2M ($1.3M) in a seed extension, taking its round’s total value to €2.5M ($2.7M).
US biomanufacturing firm Liberation Labs has secured a $3.5M investment to support the ongoing construction of its large-scale precision fermentation facility in Richmond, Indiana. It comes ahead of its Series A round, which is expected to close at $37.5M.
Courtesy: Liberation Labs
Also in the precision fermentation realm, Chicago’s Hydrosome Labs – whose H2O technology can double yields and decrease production time by up to 25% – has bagged $3.7M to scale up operations to improve nutrient uptake in skincare and provide enhanced hydration in performance drinks.
German dairy giant Hochland, which has been around for almost 100 years, has joined Food Fermentation Europe, a coalition of companies aiming to advance regulatory approvals of novel fermentation-derived proteins.
In sadder news, molecular farming startup Tiamat Sciences has announced that it ceased operations a few months ago, a decision it attributed to “financial constraints”. As of last year, it had raised $5M in total funding.
Courtesy: Meatable/Green Queen
Dutch cultivated pork startup Meatable, Chilean biotech firm Sticta Biologicals, and the University of Chile‘s Center for Mathematical Modeling have been awarded a research grant by the Good Food Institute to develop a precise and genome-scale metabolic model of porcine cells.
Finnish state investor Business Finland has granted €10M ($10.8M) in R&D funding to FoodID and FinBioFAB for projects to create alternative proteins and materials, which have been accepted into the Global Centers research programme led by the US National Science Foundation. Participating collaborators include Onego Bio, Enifer, Fazer, MeEat, and others.
The US Department of Agriculture has announced $1.5B in grants for 92 partnership projects to advance nature conservation and climate-smart agriculture, as part of the Inflation Reduction Act and the Farm Bill.
Courtesy: Melbourne City FC
Hong Kong-based alt-dairy giant Vitasoy has agreed to be a shirt sponsor for A-League club Melbourne City FC. The brand’s logo will appear on the men’s team’s training shirt and shorts for the 2024-25 season, alongside LED signage at AAMI Park.
Alternative protein advocacy group ProVeg International has opened an outpost in Brazil, its first office in South America. It comes months after it set up an office in Portugal.
Policy and research developments
New York startup Pureture, which has been working on a vegan casein alternative, has developed a yeast-based protein with a complete amino acid profile to match the muscle recovery and growth attributes of casein and whey.
Courtesy: Pureture
The China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment has released new safety assessment materials for GMOs used in food processing trials, a regulatory step that can help commercialise precision-fermented foods in the country.
Further progress for precision fermentation comes from the Netherlands, whose House of Representatives has voted in favour of allowing public tastings of foods made from this technology. The agriculture ministry will now consult with stakeholders on the motion’s contents.
Courtesy:
Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
Researchers in the US have created a prototype of cultivated pork grown on a new scaffold: kafirin proteins isolated from red sorghum grain.
The City of West Hollywood, California has unanimously voted to endorse the Plant Based Treaty, calling on the federal administration and other national governments to negotiate a Global Plant Based Treaty.
Courtesy: Oato
PETA UK has announced the winners of its Vegan Food Awards 2024, with La Fauxmagerie, Oato, Strong Roots, One Planet Pizza, and Lurpak among those receiving honours.
Yelp, meanwhile, has published its list of the best 100 vegan restaurants in the US, based on user reviews. Lil’ Vegerie in Redondo Beach, California bagged the top spot.
Courtesy: Yelp
Finally, cultivated seafood has made it to Japanese TV, with actor Keita Machidaexplaining the concept on featuring on an episode of Manga Artist Ienaga’s Complex Society Redefined.
US food tech startup Chunk Foods is rolling out its whole-cut vegan steak products at independent retailers, before a wider launch in 2025.
Chunk Foods, which makes plant-based steak products that replicate the whole muscle structure of beef, is making its retail debut in the US.
It is introducing four cuts of its vegan steak that lean into consumer demand for high-protein and clean-label options, containing eight ingredients (plus fortifications) and up to 37g of protein per serving.
“We are focusing on local and independent grocers in Los Angeles and New York City as part of our initial retail strategy,” founder and CEO Amos Golan tells Green Queen.
“These retailers align with our goal of engaging with communities that are passionate about high-quality, plant-based options. E-commerce will follow in late November, with plans to expand to national retailers in 2025.”
Asked what supermarkets could stock the steak SKUs next year, he says: “We are currently in discussions with Whole Foods, Sprouts, Wegmans, HEB, and several other national retailers.”
Appealing to consumers with high-protein, clean-label meat analogues
Courtesy: Chunk Foods
Golan founded the startup in 2020, targeting what many have described as the “holy grail” of meat analogues: whole-muscle cuts.
Chunk Foods’s USP lies in its solid-state fermentation tech, through which it creates its cultured soy protein base for the steaks (made from defatted soy flour, soy protein isolate, and wheat gluten.
The startup took a foodservice-first approach for its initial launch, appearing on the menus of New York establishments like Coletta, Anixi, The Butcher’s Daughter, Leonardo DiCaprio-backed chain Neat, and Pastrami Queen.
It has also established a partnership with the Florida-based restaurant group Talk of the Town, having launched into Charley’s Steak House in Orlando last year. Last December, it headlined a culinary experience at Art Basel Miami Beach, as part of a Philly cheesesteak.
Chunk Steak is in Philadelphia too, appearing in a short rib ragu at Monster Vegan. And it has an ongoing partnership with popular fast-food chain Slutty Vegan and its sister establishment Bar Vegan.
These collaborations have proved to be a testament to the whole-cut steak’s pedigree, which won the Plant Based Meat Product of the Year honour at the 2023 AgTech Breakthrough Awards.
Among the products being launched in retail are 4oz fillets ($8.99 for a two-pack) and a pulled format ($7.99 per 8oz pack), both of which contain 25g of protein per serving. There’s also a steakhouse cut ($9.99 per 6oz), which delivers a whopping 37g of protein, and a 10oz slab with 31g of protein ($12.99).
The prices of these products are on the higher side, at a time when inflation continues to squeeze consumer budgets and price becomes an increasingly important purchase driver.
“We are confident in our value proposition,” says Golan. “While price is undoubtedly a critical factor for consumers today, we believe that offering delicious, whole-cut plant-based alternatives that deliver on taste and texture will resonate with shoppers seeking quality and convenience in their food choices.”
He adds: “We’ve been mindful in positioning our pricing to remain competitive within the plant-based category and traditional beef products.”
Chunk Foods enters a stagnating retail market for meat alternatives
Courtesy: Chunk Foods
Chunk Foods’s move into retail comes during a sustained decline in sales of meat analogues. In 2023, these products suffered from a 12% drop in revenue compared to the year before. And this year, too, sales were down by 9% in the year ending July 2024.
So for any meat alternative brand to enter the grocery sector right now is a bit of a risk. “Despite the broader market challenges, there is still strong demand for high-quality, healthy, and delicious plant-based products,” argues Golan.
“We’ve received significant interest from consumers and retailers alike, which has been a driving factor in our decision to enter the retail space,” he adds. “Our clean-label, high-protein whole-cuts offer a unique edge in the market, and we believe the timing is right to bring something new and exciting to the retail landscape.”
Asked how companies in the space can turn things around, he believes delivering on consumers’ expectations for taste, texture and nutrition is critical. The industry needs to focus on making plant-based foods more approachable and satisfying, and that’s exactly what we’re doing at Chunk Foods,” he suggests.
“Continued education about nutritious plant-based options, clearer product differentiation, and better storytelling about the benefits of our clean label products will help reinvigorate the category.”
Last year, Chunk Foods completed the construction of what it says is one of the world’s largest factories of its kind. It has also teamed up with plant protein company Better Balance to create new whole-cut meat analogues for the Mexican market.
And to date, it has raised $24M in funding (including a $7.5M round earlier this year). Golan confirms that the business is well-capitalised for now, so it isn’t actively fundraising. “Over the next year, we’re focused on our retail expansion,” he says of the company’s immediate plans. (It is also working on pork, lamb and poultry alternatives.)
“Additionally, we’ll continue to grow our presence in foodservice, with new partnerships and menu innovations,” he continues. “There’s also a lot of excitement around an e-commerce partnership, which will launch by late November, allowing us to reach more consumers directly.”
In a detailed opinion, the EU Commission has rejected the evidence provided by Hungary to justify banning cultivated meat, alongside a number of other member states.
At the EU’s Agriculture and Fisheries (Agrifish) Council meeting in July, the Hungarian presidency called for efforts to “protect” Europe’s culinary traditions from novel foods like cultivated meat. It was a move welcomed by Italy and Austria, which (along with France) led a similar effort at the council’s January meeting.
Essentially, what Hungary was proposing was a ban on cultivated meat, which Italy had become the first country to introduce last year. France and Romania have floated similar proposals in their parliament too.
But in a detailed opinion published by the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm has opposed these legislative attempts, throwing doubt on Hungary and other countries’ proposed restrictions, as well as Italy’s ban.
Commenting specifically on the Hungarian proposal, the EU Commission noted that all novel foods are subject to the European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA) pre-market authorisation process. If approved, the product is placed on the EU-wide novel food list. But since no cultivated meat company has received the greenlight in the region so far – the first application was filed in July by France’s Gourmey – a ban is “unnecessary”.
“The prohibition to market it results from Union law and applies to all the Union territory,” the Commission stated.
“The scientific assessment to be performed by EFSA within the procedure for the authorisation of novel foods is aimed to ensure that foods to be placed on the EU market are safe and do not present risk for human health,” it added.
“A ban is therefore unjustified, since it could pre-empt the harmonised authorisation procedure for novel foods at EU level, which includes a scientific assessment by EFSA.”
EU Commission opinion puts cultivated meat bans in jeopardy
Courtesy: Mosa Meat
The EU Commission’s comment was in response to a Technical Regulations Information System (TRIS) notification submitted by Hungary – this is a procedure aimed at preventing the creation of barriers to the free movement of goods among member states.
“In addition to the protection of human health and the environment, the sustainable production of agriculture and the preservation of the traditional rural way of life justify the introduction of regulation,” the TRIS notification read, suggesting that it is unclear how the safety of cellular agriculture can be guaranteed (although that is exactly what the EFSA does).
“Traditional livestock-based meat production is of paramount importance for the future of the domestic food economy, in particular the sustainability of food production and the retaining power of the countryside,” it continued. “Increased production of laboratory-grown meat can have an adverse impact on the agricultural sector and rural living conditions as a whole.”
Italy had already sparked some controversy with its TRIS notifications earlier. The process allows fellow member states to give their opinion on bills that can hinder the EU free market, before it is approved by the country. Italy withdrew its first note attempting to ban cultivated meat, knowing it would have been rejected by the bloc.
But it still went ahead and banned cultivated meat anyway – potentially unlawfully – before presenting a second TRIS notification, which the EU closed because the law was already in place.
To avoid this mess, Hungary did not implement the ban before the Commission and member states got a chance to voice their opinions.
“The Hungarian proposal clashes with the principles of European law, just as would have happened with the Italian law if it had complied with the TRIS procedure,” explained Francesca Gallelli, public affairs consultant at the Good Food Institute Europe. “Both bans are unfounded, as they are not based on scientific evidence, especially considering that cultivated meat is not yet available to European consumers.”
She added: “The Italian law is also potentially unenforceable since it was notified to the European Union after being approved, in violation of the TRIS procedure.”
Across the Atlantic, a host of states in the US are attempting to restrict cultivated meat too, including Arizona, Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska, Iowa, Michigan, New York, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Two states – Florida and Alabama – have already banned it.
Member states step up in favour of cultivated meat
Courtesy: Meatable/Green Queen
Hungary’s explanation for the attempted ban wasn’t just rejected by the EU Commission’s assessment of the TRIS notification, but also by several member states.
Sweden noted that the reasons justifying the move to ban cultivated meat because it’s harmful to human health were “unacceptable”, highlighting that Hungary hasn’t provided any risk evaluations or demonstrated that these products might threaten human or planetary health.
The Czech Republic also disagreed with the proposal, citing the obstacles to the EU free market and outlining its support for the “development of innovations in food technologies, including laboratory-grown meat”. It stressed the need to “respect the existing EU legal framework”.
Another country against the ban was Lithuania, which posted a detailed opinion that also underscored the potential of alternative proteins. The country pointed out how the global population will peak by 2080 and demand much higher amounts of protein. “The development of the alternative protein industry will generate new, high value-added jobs and promote the integration of businesses into international value chains and the export of high value-added food products,” it said.
Lithuania’s response added: “Given that countries such as the US, Israel, and Singapore already allow the sale of these products, it is important that the EU remains competitive in the development of these technologies and dictates the conditions for regulation and standards globally.”
Finally, the Netherlands – a cultivated meat leader in Europe – expressed doubt that an “absolute ban” is proportionate to any issues presented by these proteins, and believed that the policy objective can be achieved in “an alternative, less far-reaching way, without introducing a ban on a product that has not yet been placed on the market”.
It presented another case against the ban: cultivated meat can economically benefit farmers. “The possibility of in-vitro meat production on a farm has been investigated and found feasible, and in the Netherlands, livestock farmers have already come forward who want to investigate how this production can be achieved on their farm,” it said.
“Stimulating this development can therefore also ensure the preservation of the agricultural sector and make it futureproof, thus providing an alternative way to achieve the Hungarian goals.”
Hungary now has until mid-January 2025 to respond to the issues raised. The EU Commission has also warned that if the country doesn’t comply with the obligations or goes ahead with the ban without taking these objections into account, it could take the matter to the European Court of Justice.
Californian food tech startup MeliBio has secured a “strategic investment” as part of a pre-Series A round to accelerate the growth of its vegan honey.
As it makes inroads on its precision-fermented honey, San Francisco-based MeliBio has obtained fresh capital to scale up the distribution of its plant-based sweetener, Mellody.
The “strategic investment” from Future Food Fund by Oisix, a food tech investor from Japan, is part of MeliBio’s pre-Series A financing round. It means the company has raised around $10M in total funding since it was established in 2020, co-founder and CEO Darko Mandich tells Green Queen.
MeliBio was initially planning a Series A round this year – as revealed by Green Queen – which was expected to bring in a further $10M. But the challenges of the food tech market, where investment dropped by 61% last year, made it difficult to do so. “We shifted to [the] pre-Series A round, and will reopen Series A next year,” says Mandich.
Mellody honey now available nationwide
Courtesy: MeliBio
The startup initially launched Mellody through foodservice partners, before debuting the product in the D2C channel via a partnership with famed New York eatery Eleven Madison Park’s online store.
Since then, the product has been introduced across the US (alongside a new hot honey variety), available at independent retailers and a growing list of restaurants – recent partnerships include Palmetto Superfoods and Joyride Pizza in California and Moto Pizza in Seattle. Moreover, MeliBio has also expanded its distribution through KeHE, UNFI, Greco and Sons, and ACE Natural.
Unlike other vegan honey products, which make use of apples and lemons, elderflower, carob, or other ingredients, Mellody aims to replicate the honey through a combination of fructose and glucose, complemented by a range of plant extracts (red clover, jasmine, passionflower, chamomile, and seaberry), gluconic acid and natural flavours.
It aims to solve a key biodiversity problem. The demand for money has proliferated honey bee populations, and that has plunged wild bees into chaos. Many of the 20,000 wild bee species are endangered, and some are facing the threat of extinction, but they’re important pollinators (even better than honey bees) and protecting them is crucial for the survival of natural habitats.
This makes them a major cog in preserving the planet’s biodiversity and maintaining its ecosystem. But continued honey production spells grave trouble for these bees. And as for honey bees, their own ability to produce the sweetener itself has declined, thanks to widespread herbicide use, conversion of flower-rich land into monocultures, a drop in soil productivity, and climate change. It’s why plant-based and precision-fermented alternatives like MeliBio’s are needed.
The company, which can produce 10,000 lbs of Mellody per day, has also launched vegan honey in Europe through a partnership with Slovenia’s Narayan Foods. In the UK, this is in the form of Vegan H*ney under the Better Foodie, whereas it sells as Vegan Hanny or Ohney under Aldi’s private label, Just Veg. The $10M, four-year deal aims to put MeliBio’s vegan honey into 75,000 stores eventually. Additionally, it recently secured a patent win in Germany for its plant-based honey technology.
MeliBio makes gains in precision fermentation
Courtesy: MeliBio
MeliBio began as a precision fermentation company, and that remains its core target in the long term. The technology combines the process of traditional fermentation with the latest biotech advancements to efficiently produce compounds like proteins, flavour molecules, vitamins, pigments, or fats.
It involves inserting a molecular sequence – derived from digitised databases rather than the relevant animals or plants – into microorganisms to give them instructions to produce the desired molecule when fermented. This enables companies like MeliBio to produce bioidentical versions of animal-derived products like honey.
While its plant-based products have been expanding, MeliBio has been working on the precision-fermented product in the background, and recently made some advancements. Aaron Schaller, the startup’s co-founder and CTO, recently announced that the team has taken three of its protein and enzyme targets from ideation to proof-of-concept to bioreactors, with a fourth soon to come.
And this week, he noted that MeliBio has increased the titer – the amount of product per unit volume at the end of the fermentation process – of its main enzyme target by 1,300%. “Taking our strains from the bench to bioreactors sent our strain productivity through the roof across only two runs,” he said. “With ample room to further optimise our bioprocess, future titer and yield improvement is imminent.”
This was a result of its collaboration with AI-led biomanufacturing startup Pow.Bio, with whom it has been engaging in scale-up efforts since March. The firm is now evaluating further biomanufacturing partners for the next phase of its precision-fermented honey.
“This investment from Future Food Fund is an exciting step forward for MeliBio. It aligns perfectly with our mission to not only transform the honey industry but also to make a measurable impact on biodiversity and the environment,” says Mandich.
“At Future Food Fund, we are excited to support MeliBio’s vision of giving bees a break while offering a new model for food production through their exceptional products,” adds Hiro Hasegawa, venture partner at the VC firm.
Meatable’s Jeff Tripician on his journey from meat industry veteran to cultivated meat CEO, why these proteins should be more expensive, the company’s upcoming Series C round, and its global regulatory plans.
“It’s just a very practical conversation,” says Jeff Tripician. The current demand for eight billion people is taxing the food system. You have rising emissions, alarming rates of soil degradation, a huge amount of freshwater used to feed and grow animals that we eat.
“What do you do 25 years from now, when [the demand for meat] is 70% bigger, there are two billion more people, and developing countries eating more?” he asks. “Hell, that’s why I joined this.”
The ‘this’ Tripician is referring to is Meatable, the Dutch startup making cultivated meat. He joined as CEO in May, taking over from co-founder Krijn de Nood (who remains on the board). His appointment was a marker of the company’s plans to expand in the US, leveraging his decades-long experience as a meat industry executive.
“I was part of the meat industry. I’ve run these companies, and I don’t have an answer to that question,” Tripician, who has worked at Perdue Farms and Grass Fed Foods, tells me. “I don’t know if cultivated meat is the perfect answer, [but] I know that it has huge positives.”
It can do in 12 days what takes a pig eight months, or a cow two to three years. There’s minimal waste, a fraction of the land and water use, and a dramatic reduction in emissions. “It does a lot of things, and it does it at once, at scale, and at a price that’s reasonable,” suggests Tripician.
“In our case, the taste is so close to conventional pork that if you use it as an ingredient, like a sausage, or in a taco, burrito, or meatball, you cannot tell the difference. Because it’s real meat, it comes from real pig cells.
“So you sit there. You go: ‘If this isn’t the answer, I would like to know what is.’ And you hear nothing. The meat industry goes: ‘Well, we’ve already invested in all of this, so we’ll just continue to push.’ If they’re successful, they further stress the planet. If they’re unsuccessful, they don’t have enough meat to feed the planet. Which is worse?”
Cultivated meat appeals to tech-savvy Gen Z
Courtesy: Meatable/Green Queen
Tripician the company has had a “big change” in approach: “The role of Meatable is to help meat companies gain access to more meat. We’re a supplier to them. We show them the technology. We transfer the technology so they can do what they do. They take raw material – meat – they turn it into food, and they sell it. We now provide them with some of the meat. Very simple.”
Meatable conducted a survey of 500 chefs in the US, 60% of whom said they’d put its cultivated pork on the menu, alongside the message and the brand name. It then polled thousands of consumers – while older ones were more apprehensive, younger Americans were excited.
In Tripician’s mind, there are two ways meat companies (this includes plant-based) can cater to the growing protein demand. The first involves combining a plant-based product – which “just doesn’t taste as good” – with a percentage of cultivated cells. This hybrid route is what’s currently being taken by most cultivated meat startups right now.
The problem here is that “there’s a younger consumer that says food is supposed to do more than provide calories and nutrition”. Indeed, taste is the most important purchase driver for nearly three-quarters of Gen Zers in the US.
That’s where the second approach comes in. “You take your conventional product, add in some Meatable, and now some of that is helping make it a better place. I think that’s a route that would work, and it’s cost-effective at that size.”
He points out how younger Americans are holding sustainability dearer than perhaps older generations do. Their purchasing power is massive, and they’re not afraid to switch to a different brand if it doesn’t meet their ethical needs.
“So if the meat industry wants to help itself, they should say: ‘I’ll put some of those things on the shelf with my name on it, not Meatable’s name, and have those consumers go: ‘Great!’” says Tripician.
“We saw it with plant-based,” he adds. “People tried it, didn’t really buy it again, it fell off dramatically. That’s fixed simply with a taste. Change the taste, change the texture. We tested that at about a 25-30% blend. For an average person, you could not tell the difference between that and a 100% pork product.”
‘I won’t tell billion-dollar meat companies what to do’
Courtesy: Meatable
Meatable has been using similar rations for its tastings. The company held two events in Singapore last year, and one at its Leiden headquarters in the Netherlands in April – this was the first on EU soil.
“We try to keep investors and government agencies and so on, just give them a chance [to try], because they can’t go buy it yet. Really, Singapore is the only place that’s embraced it – we do regular tastings there,” says Tripician.
“It brings the media into the discussion and parties that can influence positive outcomes. It was really well received. We continue to do them in other places, with other people… What we’re talking about at the end of it is: this is food, how do you feel about it?”
Meatable has a large tasting event coming up in February with investors, the board and meat companies that are interested in trying to figure out how to feed 10 billion people by 2050 with fewer resources at hand.
As for how much cultivated meat clients want to add to their product, Meatable leaves it up to them. The startup can show them different recipes, whether that’s a mix with pea or soy protein, or even a vegetable patty with butternut squash, carrots and mushrooms. “You can blend other things in here that have high nutritional value, no sugar added, all kinds of health benefits.”
“It’s really up to the business, meat company, grocery store, restaurant,” says Tripician. “So if you’re a meat company – Impossible, Cargill, JBS, whoever it is – and you go: ‘You run plants, you bring in livestock, you harvest, you fabricate, you turn it into food, put it in cold storage, put on a truck, you sell to restaurants and grocery stores.’
“All we’re going to do is say: ‘We’ll give you the technology, so you can have the equipment in your plant to make cultivated meat.’”
Tripician doesn’t want to change what meat producers do. “I’m not going to tell a $15B company how to make their product. I’m going to say: ‘I can get you raw material at a competitive price in 12 days, guaranteed, regardless of whether, regardless of feed prices, regardless of pandemics or diseases like avian or swine flu, regardless of all of that hailstorm, none of that matters.”
He continues: “When they go to their customers, they would be able to say: ‘Look, you seem like a progressive chef. You’ve got the younger people, they’re all on their iPhones… Do you think a product like this would make sense?’”
Meatable looks to collaborate with fellow cultivated meat producers
Courtesy: Meatable/Green Queen
One of the defining features of Meatable’s business is its production process, which was recently updated to halve the manufacturing time to just four days. This is made by its Opti-ox technology, which allows it to make products by isolating a single animal cell, without the need for fetal bovine serum.
The process uses pluripotent stem cells (PSCs), which – unlike immortalised cell lines that need to be altered to multiply indefinitely – have the natural ability to continue multiplying, and do so rapidly. This is coupled with a perfusion process that allows the startup to work in a continuous cycle to generate very high cell densities and produce fully differentiated muscle and fat cells faster than any competitor.
The company moved to its Leiden facility in November 2023, which houses 200-litre bioreactors (with the potential of expanding to 500 litres). It has also partnered with Singapore’s ESCO Aster, the world’s first approved contract manufacturing facility for cultivated meat, and plant protein manufacturer Love Handle.
But scaling up to meat industry levels is an immense challenge that has troubled even the most well-capitalised companies in the space. Tripician, for his part, doesn’t want to own a pilot plant. “We’re going to go to people that are our colleagues, and we’re going to say to them: ‘You figured this out. Why don’t we work together?’” he says.
Meatable is reaching out to cultivated meat pioneers in Australia, Europe, the UK and elsewhere to collaborate. “I want to use their pilot plant. I want to use the things they know, so that when we figure it out, we obviously benefit. And so do they. There’s more than enough demand for a bunch of us to be successful.
“Because – this isn’t going to shock anybody – what happens if, five years from now, the technology changes and the equipment’s different, you have to redo all the equipment. I don’t own any equipment. I don’t want to own any equipment.”
Cultivated meat ‘should not be at price parity’
Courtesy: Meatable
One key advantage of scaling up is that it will bring costs down, which is critical if cultivated meat is to reach the masses one day. The sector has managed to lower costs by 99% in the last decade, but McKinsey suggests it will take at least until 2030 for these proteins to reach price parity with meat.
Tripician, however, doesn’t believe cultivated meat should cost the same as its industrially farmed counterpart. “I think it should be a little bit of a premium,” he says. “As an industry steward, if it gets to parity, then farmers and ranchers are at risk, because it would be the same price, and I want them to be at a little bit lower, so that their businesses are always strong.”
He adds: “And if you’re going to ask a meat company to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in plants and facilities, they better make a little bit more money.”
But where does that leave the consumer? Tripician points out that between 6-23% of the dairy, produce, egg and bakery industries are made of premium-priced items. “These are 100-billion-dollar industries just in the US. If those can be that penetrated, then you would think the same premium on meat would be equally effective.”
He puts it in the same bracket as organic meat, which can be 70-75% higher than commodity meat. “It’s more, but it’s an amount people pay for,” he feels, forecasting such prices for cultivated meat in the next two to three years. “After that, it will come down more, a slow glide down.”
Targeting a Series C raise in the $30M ballpark
Courtesy: GFI
To date, Meatable has raised $95M from investors, and that’s excluding grants like the €7.6M pumped in by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency under its Innovation Credit programme last month. But the company is now working on a “modest” Series C raise, which would close at around the $350 mark (similar to its Series B round last year).
It’s part of the startup’s asset-light approach – it’s not building a plant, and it’s not competing with the rest of the industry in terms of production, distribution, sales, and the like. Lately, investors have cooled on cultivated meat – as they have on the wider food tech sector – though the downward spiral may be ending.
“They hate the asset-heavy thing,” Tripician says of venture capitalists. “They’ve lost a lot of money, or think they’re going to lose a lot of money in that. Because it’ll be very, very difficult for a pilot plant in cultivated meat to ever make money… We’re not pursuing that.
Meatable has enough runway for around 18 months, but the Series C would buy the company more time. “We’re fine, but I want to have more than fine, and I think that’s smart to say to an investor,” its CEO says.
“Look, if you believe we’re on the right path and the science and the IP and all that’s there, and our business model is going to be successful, can you invest an amount that will get us through this time?” he says when asked what his pitch to investors would be. “I know the meat companies will be buying licenses from us, building plants, and entering the marketplace over the next five years.”
He reveals that the business is doing a “soft launch” for existing investors, who might satisfy the capital requirements. But the round would be open from January 2025, with the aim of closing it by the end of spring.
Meatable expects regulatory approval in multiple countries next year
Courtesy: Meatable
Each of Meatable’s seven business hubs services the countries around it. For example, its Asian base is in Singapore, the first country to approve cultivated meat, and one that is currently evaluating Meatable’s application too.
“We’ve got meat companies there that know there’s regulatory approval, or there will be, within 12 to 18 months,” says Tripician. “That’s where it’s going to gain traction, and then we’ll follow.”
He adds: “I flew out and sat with the Singapore Food Agency. Their thinking – this is an American saying this – far exceeds ours as far as coordination between ministries of government, the Economic Development Board… and the private industry [goes]… Now, they also have a different background. We are not food insecure – they are. The US doesn’t have that pressure, and [Singapore] is a small country, but the coordination was truly impressive.
“They’re helping with staff. They’re helping open doors, and that’s the model. If countries go: ‘Our water is a problem, our soil is a problem’ – maybe it’s not food insecurity, you have other issues – then you should be facilitating solutions, not rejecting.”
Tripician reveals that Meatable is currently filing dossiers in six countries. “The Singapore regulatory approval process is largely welcomed. Several other countries out in Asia look to Singapore and say: ‘Well, we pretty much follow that.’ It’s not 100%, it’s not guaranteed, but it’s very alike,” he says.
“So we’re perfecting it with Singapore, and then we’re just taking it and saying to the other countries: ‘Here’s what we have. What do you need to see that’s a little different?’” he adds. “Some of them are saying nothing. Others are going: ‘Well, we could use a little more data here or a little more information there,’ and we go: ‘Absolutely.’”
Once the Singapore approval comes through – which Tripician expects by Q1 2025 (“we’re just a little short on the explanation, not the science” – Meatable will use that to get authorisation in a host of other countries. The UK’s Food Standards Agency has announced its intention to use a framework for international cooperation for novel food approvals too, a partnership likely to include Singapore.
“I see us moving with pretty good speed through 2025,” predicts Tripician. “At the end, I would be very disappointed in our team if we don’t have approval in five, six countries by this time or the end of next year.”
The EU is ‘leading with science, not a fear of change’
Courtesy: Meatable
What about things closer to home? So far, the EU has only received one application – from France’s Gourmey – thanks to the make-up of its existing novel food regulation. The complexity and timelines have led homegrown startups (like Meatable) to look internationally for launch plans.
“Countries and areas have their own hurdles, the things they care about, and it’s up to companies to navigate that. It’s not up to [EU members] to change their mind,” says Tripician. “We’ve been working with them in a way that we’re leading with science, not the fear of change.”
He believes the EU is taking a “very methodical” approach to the regulation of cultivated meat and other novel foods, and is now questioning the barriers it previously put up.
“If the product is safe, and you have bigger problems – climate change, feeding your people, soil, use of land – do you really want to use all of that land to raise feed? Or do you want to convert it to feeding people?,” asks Tripician. “Those are internal conversations, but they’ve been very supportive.”
Cultivated meat bans ‘anger’ Meatable CEO
Courtesy: Ron DeSantis/Twitter
As for Tripician’s own home country, a wave of states have been attempting to restrict this industry – Florida and Alabama have already banned cultivated meat”, with the former currently facing a lawsuit for the decision. “As an American, it angers me,” Tripician says.
“They don’t have a better idea, but they’re going to shut this down,” he adds. State politicians are suggesting that cultivated meat could be bad for farmers and ranchers. “That’s just un-American. We’re supposed to pick what we want, as long as it’s safe, not supposed to have someone tell us what to do.”
He appeals to state governors, calling them “smart people” who are “trying to do the right thing”. “I would ask them the same question we started with: if you don’t like cultivated meat for whatever reason – probably political, because farmers and ranchers vote – what’s your answer for five, 10, 15, 20, 25 years from now?” he wonders.
“We already have 10% of the global population going to bed hungry every single night. What’s that number going to be? Is it going to be your kids, your grandkids, your nephews, your nieces, your neighbours? What’s your answer?”
He adds: “I think if you’re not part of the solution, my god, please don’t be part of the problem. Just get out of the way. Let the FDA and USDA do their job. They’re really good at it. If it’s a problem, they’ll stop it.”
Drawing on his experience as a “meat guy”, he believes that farmers won’t be hurt by the success of cultivated meat as an industry. “Farmers and ranchers are the best stewards of the land. Nobody cares more about the quality of the land than them and the livestock they treat with respect. They don’t want to do anything bad to them, but if they’re running out of meat, then everyone’s going to push them for more,” he says.
Cultivated meat can take some of that pressure off. The livestock farmers and producers wouldn’t be impacted negatively if cultivated meat grew at a reasonable rate – one that they decide, based on how much they want to include in their formulations.
“The meat companies then could say: ‘Now I have enough meat, I can feed the people, and that meat doesn’t destroy soil, water or air. It doesn’t do the harm,’” says Tripician. “How does that puzzle not fit together?”
(@plantxmarket)
