Los Angeles startup Omeat, which launched in June after four years in stealth mode, has launched and already completed the first commercial sales of Plenty, its ethical and affordable alternative to fetal bovine serum (FBS). The product is available to buy for cultivated meat companies, presenting a slaughter-free substitute for the controversial growth medium and signals the launch of Omeat’s B2B arm.
Omeat claims it’s among the first revenue-generating cultivated meat companies, having created a cell culture supplement that can dramatically cut costs and be scaled up to meet the global demand for cultivated protein – a market that could reach $25B by 2030 if consumer acceptance grows. A 2021 poll conducted by Israeli cultured meat producer Aleph Farms showed that 87-89% of Gen Zers, 84-85% of millennials, 76-77% of Gen Xers, and 70-74% of boomers were at least somewhat open to trying cultivated meat.
The problem with FBS
Courtesy: Omeat
FBS originally paved the way for cultivated meat production, but it’s a problematic substance. Harvesting it entails taking cells from the fetuses of pregnant cows during their mutual slaughter. The resulting meat is thus not animal-free, and this has raised a lot of ethical concerns, particularly amongst animal activists.
Moreover, it’s an exorbitantly expensive process. When Dutch cultivated meat pioneer Mosa Meat introduced the first cell-based burger 10 years ago, it cost $300,000 for two beef patties. While tech advancements have naturally helped such processes scale up and cut costs, removing FBS played a major role in that.
Now, industry think tank the Good Food Institute predicts that cultivated meat could reach price parity with its traditional counterparts by as early as 2030, with further analysis by industry supplier Ark Biotech highlighting how cost-competitive cultivated meat could become a reality.
In 2019, Mosa Meat itself became the first company to ditch the serum, and in a remarkable move, published the formulation for developing serum-free growth media for cultivated meat last year. Now, more and more companies are looking to move away from FBS, and Omeat says Plenty is a humane, affordable, scalable, and highly effective option for cell culture growth.
Japanese startup IntegriCulture also developed cultivated chicken and duck liver cells using a serum-free medium, and South Korea’s CellMEAT created a serum-free cell culture medium to drive down production costs and provide an ethical cell-cultured meat option. But Omeat claims other FBS alternatives on the market fall short of efficacy and consistency when compared to Plenty.
The Plenty difference
Plenty is created using regenerative plasma drawn humanely from cows that graze freely on Omeat’s carbon-negative farm. Collected weekly, the process to extract the plasma is similar to human plasma donation. Unlike blood, plasma regenerates quickly, so the cows do not feel depleted.
“With one cow providing plasma weekly, we can create many cows’ worth of meat annually,” explained Omeat founder and CEO Ali Khademhosseini during its June debut. The company can produce 20 times more meat per cow than if it was slaughtered. “This means we can feed the planet with only a fraction of the current number of animals used in beef production.”
“We’re perfecting a sustainable operation that existing farms and ranches can implement, generating the same volume of product but with a fraction of the overhead,” said Khademhosseini. “It’s way more efficient, and we don’t have to sacrifice the cow.”
While Plenty does not require animal slaughter, it does still necessitate cows and this could be an ethically grey area, given that for most animal welfare activists, the goal is to remove animals (and the use of animals) from food production entirely.
Omeat, which raised $40M in an oversubscribed Series A round last year, sees itself as a meat company, with the goal to “be a bridge to the future of the meat industry”. It employs full-time veterinary and animal welfare staff, and has developed procedures for plasma collection that rely on positive reinforcement and prioritise the comfort and overall well-being of the cows.
A bridge to the meat industry’s future
Courtesy: Omeat
A cultivated meat company with a focus on generating revenues
Crucially, Plenty does not require FDA or USDA approval as it is not a food, allowing Omeat to start generating revenue right out of the gate. Other cultivated meat companies can now buy the serum for their own usage in a US market that is buzzing of late, thanks to historic regulatory milestones made in June this year- it is now only the second country to grant regulatory approval for the sale of cell-cultured meat. Singapore was the first to do so in 2020. Elsewhere, Israel’s Aleph Farms became the first company to file for approval in Europe in, with applications in Switzerland (though notably, not in Brussels) and the UK this July.
Plenty is not limited to the cultivated meat industry. Omeat says its solution will appeal to businesses focused on regenerative medicine and vaccine production, or employing cell-culture technology. “We’re looking forward to scaling and helping other companies that are changing the world, allowing them to achieve their goals with a product they can feel good about using,” says Khademhosseini in a statement.
“When it comes to growth media supplementation, FBS is considered the gold standard. However, FBS has downsides, including high costs, limited and unpredictable supply, and ethical concerns about the FBS harvesting process,” he adds.
“Synthetic serum substitutes, defined media, and serum-free media have been developed before as alternatives, but they’ve come with limitations that have hindered their viability as a replacement to FBS. That’s why we developed Plenty: an affordable, effective, and slaughter-free cell culture supplement product.”
While cultivated meat startups such as GOOD Meat and Upside Foods have completed initial consumer sales of their cultivated chicken products, with the former doing so since December 2020 in Singapore, these have been fairly limited in quantity due to production capacity constraints. Plenty could enable Omeat to be one of the first companies in the space to reach significant revenues within a fairly short time horizon.
MeliBio co-founder and CEO Darko Mandich tells Green Queen about the company’s pivot from precision-fermented to plant-based honey, its European launch, and an upcoming Series A funding round this autumn.
The startup burst onto the scene in 2020 promising a precision-fermented, molecularly identical honey, but pivoted to a plant-based product with its launch of Mellody, which contains a blend of vegan ingredients that is said to taste and perform just like honey. “Mellody is a result of our successful plant science commercialisation efforts,” Mandich tells Green Queen. “Most of what makes honey great comes from the kingdom of plants, and we figured that part perfectly.”
He adds that research and development on its original precision fermentation process is still ongoing, and going well. “It will empower us to go beyond the type of product we have right now, and set us [up] for success in launching many new products under the vision of creating the world where humans and bees thrive,” he says.
Asked about the shift from precision fermentation to plant-based ingredients for its first product, Mandich says it happened by accident. “We realised that our investors’ samples are becoming more sophisticated, to the point where chefs begged us to launch our plant-based honey,” he recalls. “We heard our customers loud and clear, and that’s how our pivot happened. It shortens our initial five to seven years’ timeline for product launch down to three years, which is great success.”
Mellody’s health credentials
Courtesy: MeliBio
In 2021, Green Queen writer Alessandra Franco found MeliBio’s flagship precision-fermented sweetener to “tastes, drips and spreads 100% like honey made from bees”, calling the product “revolutionary”. Mellody promises much of the same, with floral, bright and sweet tasting notes that are reminiscent of clover honey.
But how does it compare in terms of ingredients? Mellody’s plant-based honey contains fructose and glucose, complemented by a series of plant extracts (sumac, Fava d’anta, Indian trumpet flower, green coffee bean, chamomile, seaberry), gluconic acid and some natural flavours to replicate bee-derived honey.
It’s the first two that can often ring alarm bells for consumers. But Mandich allays those fears, saying: “Real honey made by bees is mostly fructose and glucose, and Mellody is matching that… And there are many upsides, and one of them is that Mellody is certified glyphosate-free.” Glyphosate is amongst the most widely used agricultural fertilisers, and traces can be collected by honey bees when they’re collecting nectar from flowers. This can pass into commercial honey.
He adds that Mellody contains powerful plant compounds that ensure there are no compromises from switching from bee-made honey to vegan honey.
Europe launch and Series A fundraise
Courtesy: MeliBio
MeliBio – named one of Time’s 100 Best Inventions in 2021 – announced last November that it’s gearing up for a European launch, having partnered with organic food producer Narayan Foods. The latter’s Better Foodie brand uses MeliBio’s tech to create a vegan honey product that will roll out in 75,000 stores in Germany and UK this autumn.
Around the same time, Mandich reveals to Green Queen that MeliBio will open a Series A funding round, with “substantial runway” to support its growth. “Our lean approach and CapEx-free strategy helped us avoid the need for gigantic capital influxes,” he says, adding: “No CapEx investments are planned from Series A funds, only growth and expansion.”
“We as a company take market testing and customer feedback as the most important drivers of our expansion strategy,” says Mandich. “We are currently omnichannel and collecting many insights that will empower us to pursue our specific channel that will scale post-Series A. As we are speaking, our paying customers are mid-sized B2B food companies and restaurants.”
Speaking of scaling up, MeliBio – which has raised $9.4M in total funding so far – has upped its production to 10,000 lbs per day. This is considered medium-scale in the honey industry – a major achievement for a three-year-old plant-based startup.
Currently, its products come with a slight premium price tag – a 360g jar of Mellody honey sets you back $45. But, while not inexpensive, it’s also certainly nowhere near the markup some ultra-premium honey varieties carry. And there’s good news for vegan honey fans: Mandich says 2024 will bring price parity with European and American honey types.
Next year, it also plans to onboard new consumers and continue its European rollout. Mandich says MeliBio’s focus is on Europe, the UK and the US in the short term, but doesn’t rule out an Asia expansion in the future. “Asia is [an] important market, and we are evaluating how to approach it,” he says.
The global Halal food market is estimated to reach US$1.67 trillion by 2025, growing to meet the demands of a rapidly increasing Muslim population that will comprise 30% of the world’s population by mid-century. At the same time, meat intake is rising globally, with Muslim-majority countries no exception to this trend. This is especially true in India, a Hindu-majority country, that is nonetheless estimated to be home to the planet’s largest Muslim community by 2030 in absolute terms, with 250 million adherents. The South Asian country is expected to see a 17% rise in national demand for meat by 2030 (see figure 1, below).
Figure 1: Projected Change in Meat Intake in the Most Populous Muslim Countries by 2030, courtesy of the authors
Alternative proteins, including plant-based, fermentation-based, hybrid and cultivated products, are currently being developed and positioned as one possible solution to reduce the environmental impact of meat. Yet, little is currently known about the Halal status of many of these products, particularly hybrid and cultivated sub-types, nor the extent to which they may appeal to Muslim consumers. This is despite research showing that Muslim consumers want to see such Halal certification, particularly from their own country’s authorities, to be confident in consuming these novel products.
Alternative protein can help with food security
As well as benefitting the environment, alt proteins are being touted as a potential fix for food insecurity in some Muslim-majority countries. For example, in 2020, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) highlighted a substantial imbalance in Halal food trade, at around US$ 67 billion, indicating an overreliance on imports. The greatest volume of this trade currently comes from non-Muslim majority producer countries in Brazil, India, the US, and Russia. This represents a potential risk to food availability in an increasingly unstable world. Taking the Gulf as an example, local climate and terrain mean the region has a very limited capacity for livestock farming and field agriculture to meet regional dietary demand. This has resulted in over 85% of the total food supply being now imported as of today, including approximately 62% of its total meat supply.
Is cultivated meat halal?
If alt protein is to achieve its potential globally, companies producing and selling these products must also succeed in attracting a share of the global Muslim meat market. One fundamental question that still needs answering is whether all types of alt protein can even be classified as Halal. To date, no clear guidance has been issued by any Halal certification body regarding cultivated and hybrid products that contain cells derived directly from animals, leaving many consumers in the dark about their Halal status. A ‘Halal’ diet refers to the consumption of food and drink that is consistent with Islamic dietary laws, which state that animals must be slaughtered in a prescribed way, and certain types of meat and by-products – including pork and blood products – eschewed.
Islamic scholars have considered the question of whether cultivated and hybrid products can be seen as Halal from various perspectives, with some arguing that cultivated meat contravenes Islam’s ‘Natural Law’, as production can be seen as ‘playing God’, while others suggest that cultivated meat may be permissible if the parent animal, from which cells are harvested, was first slaughtered according to Islamic laws. Another potential obstacle is the use of cell culture media, such as fetal bovine serum, which contravenes Halal guidance because it is taken from the blood of unborn calves. Blood is considered unclean according to Islamic scriptures, a point which has now been clearly highlighted in the updated Malaysian Halal standard (MS 1500/2019). Wholly plant-based media is, however, now being developed, helping to allay the concerns of Halal consumers, as well as addressing the requirements of other ethical vegans, vegetarians and other religious groups.
In addition, further research is needed to better understand how Muslim consumers’ belief systems and religion-specific concerns will influence alt protein adoption. Some factors may play in their favour, for example, the fact that plant-based, hybrid, and cultivated products can all be produced in highly controlled environments, thereby limiting the potential for contamination with non-Halal animal ingredients during production, and helping overcome fears regarding impurity. Alt protein can also circumvent the issue of whether meat should be stunned prior to slaughter, which is generally considered more humane, but some believe is inconsistent with Halal laws.
The potential benefits of Halal alt proteins
Alt protein has additional potential benefits for the Halal economy, both in terms of creating new jobs for Halal meat scientists, as well as supporting the growth of Muslim-owned food businesses. We note that the Chief Rabbi in Israel ruled for the first time in January 2023 that cultivated steak could be considered a Kosher product. This represents the first steps towards such products receiving widespread Kosher certification and is a pivotal move for Israel, a country already home to 57 alt protein start-ups and that has declared food technology a national research priority. The extent to which similar conclusions will be arrived at by Islamic religious leaders remains to be determined. In 2022, the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America deemed cultivated meat provisionally permissible by default, provided Halal criteria are met. This is a timely initial decision given that investment in alt protein technologies is also a priority for Muslim competitive markets in the Gulf, particularly the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia.
Lastly, the adoption of alt proteins is viewed by some Islamic jurists and Muslim consumers as a step towards Khilafa (guardianship of nature)[Quran 10:14], an important principle in Islam related to environmental sustainability.
Beyond alt protein, other well-known Islamic teachings have relevance for health and diet and may further help to catalyse a movement away from excess meat consumption in Muslim populations and towards more sustainable diets. Academic research has demonstrated that religiosity can play an essential role in promoting behaviour change, including pro-environmental actions; for example, a recent study found that Muslim diners were keen to avoid wasting food in order to adhere to teachings within the Quran – a particularly pertinent finding given recent data that shows food waste is extremely high, up to almost 200kg per per per year, in some Muslim majority countries. As such, influential Muslims, including Islamic religious leaders, have an influential role to play in encouraging sustainable and healthy behaviour change and should be included as key stakeholders in the sustainable diets movement in any Muslim-majority country where this is a priority agenda.
Prof. Cother Hajat is a Public Health doctor and professor whose career is focused on promoting healthy lifestyles and preventing chronic illness. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (UK) and a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health (UK). Her advisory company, Real World Health, provides support to numerous entities including governments, non-governmental organisations, academia and the private sector. Cother is a mother of two boys and has followed a plant-based diet for two decades.
Dr. Sophie Attwood is a Behavioral Scientist who works to help consumers switch to more sustainable plant-rich diets and reduce their food waste. Sophie is a Chartered Health Psychologist and doctor in Behavioral Science from the University of Cambridge. She has researched and published extensively on the science of behavior change for health and sustainability, covering the areas of diet, physical activity, wellbeing, smoking cessation, and alcohol reduction, with her work featured in a range of international media outlets including Reuters, Forbes, The Guardian, World Economic Forum and others.
Scottish-Dutch food tech company Enough has raised €40M in Series C funding to accelerate the production of its mycoprotein product, Abunda, which is used in plant-based alternatives like chicken breast, mince and dairy. The brand aims to scale up to produce enough protein to replace five million cows or one billion chickens by 2032.
Founded in 2015, Enough’s mycoprotein product, Abunda, is made from the same fungi as Quorn’s via biomass fermentation. The fungi are fermented using sugars from sustainably sourced grains as renewable feedstocks, supplied by a Cargill starch plant located next to Enough’s recently opened alt-protein facility in Sas van Gent, Netherlands.
The grains are fermented in a similar process to wine and beer production, Enough claims its signature mycoprotein is high in protein and fibre, contains all nine essential amino acids, and boasts a neutral flavour and meat-like texture to create plant-based meat, fish and dairy alternatives. It adds that Abunda is 15 times more efficient than beef thanks to its zero-waste, circular production process, which uses 93% less water, 97% less feed and has 97% fewer carbon emissions than beef. This also makes the alt-protein more affordable to produce.
Enough’s manufacturing facility will initially produce 10,000 metric tonnes of Abunda a year, and plans to scale up to 60,000 metric tonnes annually by 2027, which will be the equivalent of one cow’s worth of protein every two minutes. By 2032, the brand aims to up production to one million metric tonnes per year, which equates to replacing five million cows or over a billion chickens.
Launching into a fluctuating market
Courtesy: Enough
Enough says it is the leading player to produce sustainable protein at such a large scale, enabling it to partner with brands and white-label manufacturers serving retail, foodservice and fast-food companies expanding their plant-based offerings. In 2021, it partnered with Belgium’s Peace of Meat to launch hybrid meat products made with cultivated fats. The brand adds that European poultry processor Plukon Food Group, which is developing alt-chicken and -meat products to complement its conventional range, is “very enthusiastic about getting started” with Enough’s mycoprotein raw material.
According to AgFunderNews, the company is already in conversations with brands to use its alt-protein in plant-based meats, with over 30 customers sampling its products. Enough aims to see Abunda-derived offerings hit shelves by the end of the year. The ingredient will be tested by Unilever in its The Vegetarian Butcher line, as well as brands supplying to UK supermarket M&S.
Enough will be entering an overcrowded alt-meat market that has been hit by a fall in sales and fluctuating consumer demand. This has led to instances like plant-based meat giant Beyond Meat reporting a 30% drop in sales last quarter after months of continuous decline, and vegan chicken nugget startup Nowadays ceasing operations.
But there have been signs of a recovery. Despite the annual sales drop, Beyond’s quarterly revenue was up by 11% and is projecting a year-on-year topline growth in the last two quarters of 2023. And crucially, cost is an important factor, with a 2023 Kantar report suggests that while plant-based food brands have seen a 10% drop in sales, private-label supermarket offerings have grown by 14% in the last year.
Enough’s latest financing, which brings its total capital raised to €95M, will help it scale its mycoprotein production and reach price parity more quickly. “ENOUGH has made great strides in the past few years to launch our new factory in the Netherlands and scale up to work with customers across the UK and Europe. With this new funding, we will accelerate that growth,” said Enough co-founder and CEO Jim Laird.
Craig Douglas, founding partner at World Fund, said: “[Enough] is tackling crucial bottlenecks in the creation of sustainable protein, whilst using fewer resources and maintaining a zero-waste process, which is enabling Enough to have a lower carbon footprint compared to other plant-based protein sources, whilst producing at scale and providing supply security to a growing market.’
Countries in Southeast Asia and Asia-Pacific must increase their alt-protein production by 2030 to help mitigate the climate crisis, as animal protein and its associated emissions must peak by the end of the decade, says a new report. By 2060, alt-proteins will need to make up 50% of the region’s total protein production if it is to decarbonise.
The report was published by Singapore-based firm Asia Research Engagement, which says alt-proteins are key to tackling the climate crisis in the world’s largest and most populous continent. Spotlighting China, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, India and Pakistan, it calculated their projected emissions from protein production and found that none of these 10 countries are on track to keep their protein emissions targets in check.
According to the research, Asia supplies more than half of the world’s animal proteins, including land animals and seafood. It warns that without a shift to alternative proteins, it will be impossible to meet the 1.5°C warming goal set by the 2015 Paris Agreement. This is in line with a previous report that suggested high-methane food consumption must drop to meet this target. By 2060, alternative protein production will need to grow between 30-90% in these countries to curb carbon emissions.
Reducing livestock farming holds the key
Courtesy: CellX
The researchers suggest that livestock production has a bigger environmental footprint than all edible crops combined, because it’s more resource-intensive, and uses more land, water, animals and antibiotics. Livestock farming contributes to 14.5% of all carbon emissions, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, and a report by the Nature Food journal this year found that vegan diets can cut emissions by 70% compared to meat- and dairy-heavy ones.
While some countries are witnessing a drop in population numbers, nations like India (which surpassed China to become the world’s most populous country earlier this year) and Pakistan have growing populations. These neighbouring nations need to have the highest increase in alt-protein production, with 85% and 90% of protein coming from alternative and traditional plant sources (like beans, tofu, tempeh, etc.), respectively.
Asia-Pacific is home to some of the largest meat consumers in the world, including Hong Kong, Australia and China. The latter is the world’s largest producer of pork, fish and eggs, and its animal consumption is expected to increase by 2030 despite falling population numbers. The report suggests that 50% of all protein consumption must be from alternative sources by 2060 for China.
Asia Research Engagement says intensive livestock farming is also the main culprit of deforestation and biodiversity loss. It advises these countries to eliminate their contribution to deforestation by 2030 – tropical deforestation accounts for about 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions annually.
Indonesia and Malaysia face large-scale deforestation as land is cleared for pasture and palm oil plantations. In fact, 90% of the world’s palm oil trees are located in the rainforests in these countries, and they have been directly linked to deforestation here. In August 2019, Indonesian forests were engulfed by wildfires caused directly by palm plantation trees – a signpost of potential climatic catastrophes if measures aren’t taken to reduce deforestation.
Running out of time
Courtesy: Good Meat
Speaking to Green Queen, Mirte Gosker, managing director of alt-protein think tank the Good Food Institute APAC, alluded to research showing a significant awareness gap remains in Asian countries, with about one-third of consumers unfamiliar with plant-based meat or seafood products. “This presents both a challenge and an opportunity for the industry as it seeks to compellingly introduce itself to a wide swathe of potential customers,” she said.
“On the manufacturing side, many key infrastructural gaps remain, including a lack of adequate cold-chain infrastructure in various Southeast Asian countries,” she added. “There is also a substantial need to further build out the local technical talent pipeline, to ensure that the infrastructural machinery and laboratory spaces needed to perfect alternative proteins are fully staffed by highly skilled local workers.”
With the Asia Research Engagement report presenting a short timeline for an alt-protein turnaround, Gosker said that time is not on our side: “Amid skyrocketing demand and increased climate instability, reimagining Asia’s protein supply is now akin to making a U-turn in a freighter ship: it’s achievable, but requires that nations collaborate to further expand regional alternative protein manufacturing infrastructure and rapidly harmonise regulatory frameworks”
She continued: “Failure to do so will mean that the compounding pressures of ecological and supply chain instability will grow, resulting in a food system that falls woefully short of satisfying rising demand.
Asian alt-protein on the rise
Courtesy: Meatiply
While this all can sound fairly gloomy, there is hope. Gosker told Green Queen that numerous studies have shown that Asian consumers are open-minded when it comes to eating alternative proteins – as long as products match or exceed the taste, nutrition, ‘freshness’ and affordability people associate with conventional meat and seafood.
GFi says that Asia-Pacific is one of the fastest-growing regions for alt-protein in the world. This is helped by the fact that Singapore is an alt-protein torchbearer, becoming the first country in the world to grant regulatory approval for the sale of cultivated meat, and attracting a host of cell-cultured protein companies in the process.
Green Queen’s own APAC Alternative Protein Industry Report for 2022 found the region home to the biggest Series A investments ever for both plant-based and cultivated meat. This is complemented by GFI data that showed a 43% increase in financing for alt-protein startups in Asia-Pacific.
GFI also found that investments in fermentation-based and cultivated protein companies increased by 67% and 96% year-on-year from 2021 to 2022, respectively. In fact, interest in these sectors was so strong that these numbers didn’t just surpass the year prior – they surpassed the all-time totals in each segment’s history in Asia-Pacific.
Taking inspiration from the past
Courtesy: WEF
Gosker said there are policy examples to take inspiration from, pointing to massive investments by China and other nations into clean energy sources like wind and solar power two decades ago, in response to growing demand. Building infrastructure for renewables helped resist power-grid shortages and set up “an economic boom of historic proportions”.
Asia now boasts nearly half of the world’s wind energy capacity and produces over 80% of all solar panels. As the world deals with the climate crisis and tight energy transition deadlines, this continent “makes and sells what the rest of the world urgently needs”. And this is true for meat too – Asia is the world’s largest meat producer, responsible for between 40-45% of total production.
Touching upon this, Gosker says: “We now have a short window to turn another looming crisis into an opportunity, in perhaps the only sector more fundamental than electricity: our food supply. By leveraging every public and private investment tool at our disposal, we can rapidly ramp up a smarter way of making protein and reap the rewards throughout the rest of the Asian Century.”
Asia Research Engagement’s research states the benefits of reducing the region’s meat consumption. It could lead to lower land, water, animal and antibiotic use, less pollution, avoid deforestation and biodiversity loss, and present less risk of diseases linked to industrial production systems and overconsumption of meat.
“We see a great need for this sort of research, providing solution pathways for 10 major Asian market towards climate safety,” said Andy Jarvis, director of future food at the Bezos Earth Fund. “As novel work for the Asia region, transitional pathways from business as usual are critical for discussions with policy makers, companies and banks to demonstrate needs and opportunities for them to align and support a food system that helps us achieve [the] Paris climate goals.”
Ahead of a Series A round next year, UK biotech firm Clean Food Group has raised £2.3M in funding to accelerate the commercialisation of its fermentation-based fat, which it describes as a sustainable replacement for palm oil. The investment will also help advance regulatory and commercial approvals for the yeast-derived palm oil alternative.
The funding round included parties like Döhler, Alianza Team and Agronomics (which has made several investments in cultivated meat companies). The latter previously invested £900,500 in Clean Food Group last June and contributed £700,000 in this round. Agronomics executive director and Clean Food Group co-chair Jim Mellon also participated with a £50,000 investment. It brought the firm’s total funding to £10M.
The capital raised will help Clean Food Group to scale up its tech platform and advance through the regulatory and commercial ladders. The food tech company is planning to complete a Series A round next year, which will help finance a commercial-scale manufacturing plant. Before the series A, the firm expects its yeast-based palm oil alternative will be ready for commercialisation, with a “clear line of sight to near-term revenue generation”.
A 10-year research journey
Courtesy: Laurie Lapworth/University of Bath
Built on over £7.5 million of UK government funding, Clean Food Group’s tech platform follows 10 years of research led by its technical lead, University of Bath Professor Chris Chuck. The proprietary tech uses proven, scalable oleaginous yeast strains and fermentation processes, and feeds it with food waste to create sustainable alternatives to traditional oil and fat ingredients.
The sidestream valorisation means it’s part of a circular economy, with the added bonus of 90% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than terrestrial oils. The fats are created using a non-GMO and vegan-friendly process run on renewable energy.
Clean Food Group plans to make product batches for regulatory approval in cosmetics and food applications by the end of 2023, and hopes to launch its product in the coming years given the regulatory path for non-GMO processes in the UK and EU is less stringent than for those with genetically modified ingredients.
“The successful conclusion of this current funding round validates the important strides our business is taking in solving critical sustainability and supply chain challenges facing our food and cosmetic manufacturer customers,” said Clean Food Group co-founder and CEO Alex Neves.
He added: “We are now in a great position to validate our technology at a commercial scale, advance our regulatory pathways and develop our growing list of commercial partners in advance of our Series A next year.”
The planet’s palm oil problem
Creating an alternative to a climate-harming fat is a major win. Palm oil is present in half of all supermarket items – across every product category. But it’s a major driver of deforestation, with rainforests cleared and various species killed to make way for palm oil plantations. Production of the oil has increased tenfold since 1980, and is set to increase by another 50% by 2050.
This kind of demand pushes producers to burn down more forests, a form of mass deforestation that emits greenhouse gases and eliminates trees that help absorb these very emissions. A 2020 study found that the drainage of young palm oil leads to a 50% increase in carbon emissions.
It’s also a critical threat to wildlife including orangutans – 50% of whom are found outside national parks due to deforestation – and rhinos. The industry is also linked with human rights violations, with Indigenous communities losing their lands and villages, and workers exploited with poor working conditions and pay.
Other companies are also innovating with sustainable palm oil alternatives. New York-based climate tech startup C16 Biosciences has created a Palmless Torula oil, using microbes grown in bioreactors. Chemically and functionally identical to palm oil, the fat was used in a soap bar by British material science firm Pangaia and skincare label Haeckels.
Israeli alt-dairy maker Imagindairy has obtained self-affirmed GRAS (generally recognised as safe) status in the US, becoming only the third precision fermentation company to do so. Now, with its new headquarters, it aims to accelerate production in its journey towards commercialisation.
Following in the footsteps of California-based Perfect Day and fellow Israeli brand Remilk, Imagindairy’s animal-free whey protein has met the FDA’s safety requirements. The GRAS status means the ingredient is safe to be used in food and beverage products and provides a regulatory ‘green light’ for manufacturers to partner with Imagindairy.
New headquarters to accelerate production
Courtesy: Imagindairy
The startup also announced the opening of its new custom-designed headquarters near Haifa, Israel to support its next phase of growth. It features state-of-the-art laboratories for research and development, a culinary and ingredient applications testing kitchen, and a fully operational pilot line that allows for testing in conditions similar to those in large-scale fermentation processes.
Imagindairy says its novel ingredient underwent “significant internal and external review and safety testing”, and confirms that the FDA has been notified of the ingredient’s self-affirmed GRAS status. The company is now free to partner with food brands to create precision fermented alternatives of conventional dairy products like milk, cream cheese and yoghurt with its whey across the US. Perfect Day has already seen its animal-free whey protein used in alt-dairy products by many companies, including Nestlé, Mars, Oodaalolly, Coolhaus and Modern Kitchen.
Launched in 2021, Imagindairy uses a microflora-based production method that it describes as “inspired by nature” and feeds microorganisms that are 20 times more efficient than cows at converting feed into proteins. It says that this proprietary tech leverages artificial intelligence, which integrates both advanced computational biology and molecular biology technologies. This will enable large-scale production at costs that are in line with conventional dairy.
Increased investment in precision fermented dairy
Courtesy: Imagindairy
In May, French dairy giant Danone purchased a minority stake in Imagindairy, which has raised $28M in total seed funding since its launch. The startup says its manufacturing process can be integrated into existing dairy processing facilities, which shortens the time to market and enables high production yields.
The news comes amidst multiple strides by the burgeoning precision fermentation sector. There are about 30 companies working in this segment globally, with total investment nearing $4B. US company New Culture just announced that it has successfully scaled up its casein production process to manufacturing levels.
And in March, a survey found that 77% of Americans are willing to try precision fermentation products once they understand its benefits. Similarly, a landmark study in May revealed that 79% of British dairy consumers are seeking cheese produced from microbes.
Imagindairy is a founding member of the Precision Fermentation Alliance, which was established in February by nine leaders in the space to champion microbial fermentation as a solution for a sustainable food system. The company is also part of Food Federation Europe, a coalition that aims to advance regulatory approval for precision fermentation companies.
Singaporean vegan egg startup Hegg – a subsidiary of Howw Foods – has entered into a distributorship agreement with the nation’s largest egg distributor, Dasoon. The move is designed to expand the presence of Hegg’s Eggless Egg in local supermarkets, and open more offline channels for the brand’s other plant-based egg products.
The collaboration has led to the debut of Hegg’s vegan Eggless Egg in cold-storage outlets across Singapore. The powder – which is made from canola protein, edible gum and potato fibre – has 6.4g protein per 10g serving and can be used in baking, steaming and frying, apart from regular egg applications.
Consumers can buy it at S$4.50 for a 50g pack (equivalent to five servings) in the egg section of supermarkets,as well as on online channels like Lazada, Shopee and Hegg’s own website (where a 500g pack is also available).
Plant-based eggs in Singapore
Courtesy: Hegg Foods
Hegg was launched in 2021 by food tech startup Howw Foods, which uses a proprietary artificial intelligence platform called RE-GENESYS to develop its plant-based products. The company secured S$3M in a pre-Series A round to advance its R&D capabilities and commercialise Hegg in 2021. Hegg also released an Eggless Kaya – a type of southeast Asian coconut jam – in partnership with local coffee chain Killiney Kopitiam in 2022, and added a third product, an Eggless Mayo, to its lineup last month.
Hegg isn’t the first plant-based egg company in Singapore. Float Foods has been retailing its vegan whole egg substitute OnlyEg since 2020. It received a development grant in 2021 to help further commercialise the product and has also filed a patent for the egg alternative. Last year, it launched Asia’s first vegan tamagoyaki and partnered with meal kit brand DayDayCook in Hong Kong. The startup, which closed a $1.6M oversubscribed seed funding round in 2021, also collaborated with many restaurants in Singapore this Veganuary to push OnlyEg into foodservice.
Singapore’s 30 by 30 Initiative
Courtesy: Hegg Foods
Both brands are part of a growing list of companies supporting Singapore’s 30 by 30 initiative, which aims to locally produce 30% of all food consumed by 2030 to reduce the island nation’s reliance on imports and boost its food security. Launches like Dynamic Foodco’s Dynameat brand, TiNDLE’s new vegan chicken pieces, and HerbYvore’s plant-based cheese support this initiative.
Vegan egg substitutes can be much better for the environment. While there are no specific numbers for Heggs’ products just yet, similar products have fared much better than traditional eggs in climate-related criteria. For example, UK-based aquafaba brand Oggs, which is marketed as an alternative to egg whites, has 72% fewer emissions than chicken eggs. And US producer Just Egg claims its liquid egg alternative uses 98% less water, 83% less land and has 93% fewer carbon emissions than conventional eggs.
Meanwhile, about two-thirds of Singapore’s eggs are imported, which means a shift to locally produced, more climate-friendly alternatives is imperative for the 2030 target. And products like Hegg’s Eggless Eggs are building a planet- and people-friendly food system.
US animal-free cheese producer New Culture has announced that it has successfully scale-up its precision fermentation process to manufacturing levels, claiming it can now produce 25,000 pizzas’ worth of cheese per batch. The San Francisco startup claims it’s the world’s first animal-free casein and the first to be produced at this scale using precision fermentation.
The company’s announcement marks a milestone in the precision fermentation sector – no other company that we have reported on has been able to achieve this scale of production for animal-free casein. New Culture says this will reduce manufacturing costs by 80% and production capacity to reach price parity with conventional mozzarella in three years when it predicts its annual casein volumes to reach more than 14 million pizzas’ worth of cheese.
When asked about exact production figures such as how many kgs of casein the company had produced to date and how much casein was in every kilogram of its mozzarella, New Culture Marketing Director Priya Kumar said via email: “We’re not ready to share details about exact casein quantities or yields, but scaling animal-free casein production capacity to hundreds and thousands of kilograms comes with a number of technical challenges and our team has proven to be the first to do it.”
Pressed on the size and number of fermenters New Culture is running – and whether this was a co-manufacturing facility – Kumar reiterated the aforementioned 25,000 figure and confirmed the brand worked with an external partner to make the jump from pilot level to manufacturing. Dry powder yields per liter of fermentation were not disclosed either.
Green Queen also asked about what other ingredients make up the company’s mozzarella, in addition to the casein powder. According to Kumar, “To make our cheese, we take our animal-free casein protein and add water, fat, a touch of sugar, vitamins, and minerals to match the profile of animal-based mozzarella as closely as possible.”
In terms of the chemical composition, she added: “The nutritional profile of our cheese is very similar to conventional, animal-based cheese. However, unlike conventional cheese, ours is free from cholesterol, lactose, and trace hormones and antibiotics because we don’t use any animal-derived ingredients.”
New Culture’s precision fermented mozzarella launched at Pizza Mozza earlier this year | Courtesy: New Culture
New Culture, which secured a $25M oversubscribed Series A funding round in 2021, launched its animal-free mozzarella at Nancy Silverton’s iconic Los Angeles restaurant, Pizzeria Mozza, in May. This marked its first foray into food service, with Silverton praising the ‘integrity’ of the product.
Dairy developments in precision fermentation
There are approximately 30 precision fermentation companies working on dairy worldwide, and most, such as Perfect Day and Remilk, are focused on producing whey protein. Only a handful are working on casein, which is much more challenging to produce but a crucial part of what makes cheese stretch and melt. As New Culture co-founder Matt Gibson told FoodNavigator in 2021, whey “only makes limited cheeses” like ricotta and cream cheese, while casein allows you to make any kind of cheese with traditional cheesemaking processes. Further, Gibson said that scaling up casein production via precision fermentation is more difficult than whey protein manufacturing.
Commenting on the news, Irina Gerry, CMO of Change Foods and vice-chair of the Precision Fermentation Alliance, whose startup is focused on making casein, told Green Queen: “It’s an exciting proof point for the category. Animal-free casein is very challenging to produce and New Culture appears to be making great progress toward commercialisation. Of course, challenges remain. Driving down costs, securing reliable scaled manufacturing capacity, securing distribution and gaining consumer acceptance are among them. This is, however, a significant milestone for the company, and the industry as a whole.”
Last year, Change announced an agreement to build a first-of-its-kind commercial manufacturing plant in the UAE, which could have the capacity to replace the output of more than 10,000 dairy cows.
New Culture’s animal-free mozzarella cheese | Courtesy: New Culture
Austrian startup Fermify, India’s Zero Cow Factory, and Paris-based Standing Ovation have all received investment in the last year or so to develop their precision-fermented casein protein. Meanwhile, US startup Nobell Foods, which makes soy-derived casein protein using molecular farming, is gearing up to launch its first product.
With almost $4B in total investments, fermentation is a burgeoning category with positive consumer interest. In March, a survey by Perfect Day, Cargill and the Hartman Group found that 77% of US adults are willing to try precision fermentation products once they understand its benefits. Similarly, Formo teamed up with the University of Saskatchewan in May for a landmark study, which revealed that 79% of UK dairy consumers are seeking cheese produced from microbes.
“Our world-class team at New Culture has solved a string of incredibly complex technical challenges in order to produce our animal-free casein at this scale,” said New Culture co-founder and chief scientific officer Inja Radman. “We are redefining the boundaries of what’s possible in dairy in a way that isn’t being done anywhere else.”
In what is a burgeoning plant-based category, vegan seafood undergoes a whole-food twist with Canadian startup Seed to Surf, which uses vegetables as its primary ingredient. Founded in 2020, the brand makes tinned snow crab and smoked whitefish from mushrooms and celeriac root in a clean-label formulation responding to consumer trends.
A global consumer survey by Ingredion last year revealed that more than half of consumers find it important for products to have a short ingredient list, with 71% willing to pay more for brands people are willing to pay more for brands reformulating to cleaner labels and natural claims. Further research showed that nearly half (46%) would pay 20-30% more for such products.
The value of clean-label food is higher than ever. And it’s that mindset that Seed to Sturf aims to tap into with its whole-vegetable alt-seafood. The company’s snow crab is made from enoki mushrooms and smoked whitefish from celeriac root, with the aim to “celebrate vegetables for what they are”. It eschews high-moisture extrusion and shear cell tech – commonly used in alt-meat processing – and instead works with plants in their natural setting to create its whole-food plant-based products.
Championing vegetables for vegan ‘seafood with roots’
Courtesy: Seed to Surf
The brand has worked with food scientists to develop its products’ seafood flavours, and the vegetables are said to be cooked using retort technology, a process that uses heat and pressure to extend shelf life, during the canning process. The products only contain six or fewer ingredients – the vegetables are paired with sunflower oil, sea salt, seaweed (kombu and kelp) and natural flavourings, while the celeriac root whitefish also has lactic acid. It means the products are also gluten-free and allergen-friendly, which is a big win for a plant-based meat alternative.
The snow crab is described as tender, savoury and sweet, while the smoked whitefish is said to be smoky, flaky and packed with umami. The company says preserving and preparing whole vegetables “can offer intriguing new takes on the premium tinned seafood you’d find at top restaurants and high-end grocers”, while the inning aids a shelf-stable, low-energy storage option and recyclable packaging to boot.
“We found that these two vegetables really took on and enhanced that seafood experience that people might know well,” Seed to Surf co-founder Alexandra Bergquist told FoodNavigator. “Our mushroom crab is amazing in a crab dip, while the smoked whitefish is great on a bagel. [Consumers] should try these products in the best way possible. [It’s] setting them up for success.”
A rapidly evolving alt-seafood sector
Courtesy: Seed to Surf
Industry think tank the Good Food Institute reported a 40% year-on-year increase in pound sales for plant-based seafood in 2022. And as of 2021, there were over 120 companies in the alternative seafood space (which includes vegan, fermentation-based and cultivated seafood).
Surf and Seed is joined by a host of other brands making vegan alternatives to seafood, which is an industry rife with environmental and human rights issues. The growing demand for seafood has led to overfishing, which, in turn, means higher greenhouse gas emissions, while the heavy fuel use by ocean fishery vessels also contributes to the climate crisis. The 2021 documentary Seaspiracy details the endemic issues attached to this sector.
“The average consumer is becoming more aware of animal welfare and sustainability,” Maarten Garaets, alt-protein managing director of seafood giant Thai Union, told Green Queen in May. “And this is becoming a more important part of the selection criteria when they are buying food, but this is still a very small group.”
He added: “Alternative seafood is a new category, with limited awareness, whereas meat is more established. However, seafood is bound to catch up soon. Health is less of a concern for seafood, whereas sustainability will be more of a lever.”
Dutch business-to-business ingredients company Vivici has successfully closed its seed funding round to bring its animal-free precision fermented dairy proteins to market. Backed by founding investors DSM-Firminech Venturing and Fonterra, the brand leverages decades of experience in developing and scaling bioprocesses and holds world-leading knowledge in the isolation and application of dairy proteins.
The startup is headquartered at the Biotech Campus Delft, and has a dairy protein application lab in the Food Valley at NIZO food research, utilising the scaling-up facilities and investment climate the Netherlands offers.
Launched as a joint venture last year, Vivici was conceived as a brand that will enable the acceleration and commercialisation of fermentation-derived dairy ingredients, using intellectual property created by years of collaboration between DSM and Fonterra (who have filed patents for the same).
DSM’s proprietary technology reduces methane – a greenhouse gas that traps more heat than carbon – and the partnership also sees Fonterra reduce its on-farm emissions across its New Zealand pastures. The latter is New Zealand’s largest company and produces 30% of the world’s dairy exports, so for it to enter the precision fermentation category is strong signalabout the industry’s future.
“With fermentation-produced proteins having a wide array of potential applications for customers and consumers, this partnership aligns well with the Co-op’s strategy to be a leader in dairy innovation and science,” Komal Mistry-Mehta, Fonterra’s chief innovation and brand officer, said at Vivici’s launch last year.
Vivici is headquartered at the Biotech Campus Delft | Courtesy: Vivici
The future of animal-free dairy
“Dairy nutrition will always be our core strength, now and into the future, and there will continue to be strong demand for our sustainable, pasture-based dairy,” Jonathan Boswell, programme leader for complementary nutrition at Fonterra, said at the time. “At the same time, we are conscious that the preferences of some consumers are evolving, and we believe proteins produced with emerging technologies can work alongside our dairy products.”
According to industry think tank the Good Food Institute, the precision fermentation sector has seen an influx of nearly $4B to date, with at least 136 companies working on alt-proteins made in this manner by the end of 2022. Another report by Precedence Research predicts the industry to grow by 41.9% year-on-year to reach $63.85B by 2032. Despite this potential, some food tech experts say the category is underfunded and overlooked by climate investors.
Vivici was incorporated last December, after being granted approval from the EU Commission. And leaders in the European precision fermentation sector formed a coalition this year to accelerate the regulatory approval of such animal-free dairy alternatives.
In April, Remilk became the first precision fermented dairy company to gain regulatory approval in Israel, which followed its approval in Singapore. It also received a ‘no questions letter’ from the US Department of Agriculture, the second company to do so, after industry pioneer Perfect Day.
Perfect Day is also part of the Precision Fermentation Alliance, which seeks to promote the practice to build a more resilient and sustainable food system. And it conducted a survey in partnership with the Hartman Group and Cargill in March, which found that 77% of US adults who said they were familiar with precision fermentation would likely purchase products from this category – highlighting the market demand and growth potential for ventures like Vivici.
Mycoprotein – essentially mycelium created from microscopic fungi – has already been on plant-based radars for decades, with Quorn being the world’s first producer of meat alternatives made from the ingredient. Now, a host of startups are taking the concept of mycelium further.
The global mycoprotein segment is set to reach $976M in 2032, according to Future Market Insights. Alt-meats made from mycelium, the substrate root of certain types of fungi, offer similar – and often superior – protein content, and are considered a complete food. They’re also better for the environment – as the harmful impact of livestock farming on climate change, while severely underreported, has been thoroughly researched.
Here are the most exciting mycelium meat brands on the market:
Meati
Courtesy: Meati Foods
Founded in 2015, Boulder-based company Meati is a mycelium pioneer. Its patented tech used mushroom roots to make plant-based whole-cut meat, with the current product portfolio comprising vegan steaks (in classic and Carne Asada varieties) and plant-based chicken breasts (in classic and crispy options) – which sold out in under 24 hours after being made available for pre-order in February 2022.
Mycelium constitutes 95% of the classic chicken cutlet and whole-cut steak, supplemented by natural flavourings, juices for colour acacia gum, oat fibre and chickpea flour. The other varieties only have a spice blend and breading mix added to them.
In January, it opened a large-scale, “infinitely scalable” production facility to rival the output of conventional animal farms, while it collaborated with AI company Pipa in July to better and faster understand the health benefits of its products. The startup, which has raised a total of $250M in various funding rounds – including an investment by Chipotle – also has a working collaboration with American chefs David Chang and Rachael Ray.
Prime Roots
Courtesy: Prime Roots
Prime Roots launched in 2017, creating a koji-based mycelium protein that it claims successfully replicates the texture and flavour of conventional deli meat. And its offerings go a step further: these aren’t deli slices, they’re whole joints.
Its current lineup includes deli meats, charcuterie and bacon. The whole cuts include turkey (cracked pepper and smoked) and ham (smoked, black forest and sugar shack maple). The charcuterie range features salami, pepperoni, pizza-style pepperoni, apple-sage and black truffle patês, and foie gras torchon, while the bacon is hickory-smoked.
In 2021, Prime Roots also debuted a line of plant-based ravioli, which included what the company claimed was the world’s first vegan lobster ravioli. Earlier this year, it received a minor investment from mycoprotein giant Quorn to expand both brands’ reach and product range. Prime Roots closed a $30M Series B funding round in May, bringing its total financing to $50M.
MyForest Foods
Courtesy: MyForest Foods
Formerly known as Atlas Food Co in 2020, MyForest Foods is an offshoot of mycelium pioneer Ecovative Design. The brand makes a whole-cut bacon alternative from mycelium, called MyBacon.
There aren’t too many ingredients apart from the mycelium in this vegan bacon – salt, coconut oil, sugar, natural flavours and beet juice for colour. The Robert Downey Jr-backed brand’s mycelium is grown with a particular blend of woodchips and is ready for harvest in 12 days. The startup has so far raised $30M in funding, after closing a $15M Series A round in June.
Libre Foods
Courtesy: Libre Foods
Catalan brand Libre Foods is another mycelium startup that has launched bacon as its first product. Launched in 2020, it uses precision fermentation to develop fibres resembling animal muscle fibres.
Green Queen reported in December 2021 that Libre was hoping to be the world’s first company to unveil mycelium-based whole-cut steak. While bacon is its first product, it aims to create an entire range of whole cuts, including poultry and seafood. It closed a $2.5M funding round in April 2022, announcing its plans to launch across Europe.
The Better Meat Co
Courtesy: The Better Meat Co
Founded in 2018, The Better Meat Co. leverages the power of mycelium to make Rhiza mycoprotein, its base ingredient for its plant-based meat. The fermentation-based ingredient can be grown 365 days a year and harvested within just hours, and has a neutral flavour and a meatier texture than extrusion plant protein isolates.
The Better Meat Co. claims Rhiza contains more protein than eggs, more iron than beef, more fibre than oats, and is free from all the main allergens and GMOs. The B2B company also says it sells its ingredient for cheaper than the price of beef, and it aims to be cost-competitive with chicken too.
Rhiza forms part of Perdue Farms’ hybrid product Chicken Plus, and has partnered with meat corporation Hormel Foods to develop mycoprotein-based alternatives. The company, which has also conducted limited-edition tastings of its product worldwide, has infamously been in a legal battle with Meati over a proprietary mycelium harvesting technique since 2021.
Mushlabs
German biotech startup Mushlabs uses mushroom mycelium to create raw ingredients for meat alternatives, leveraging the natural umami flavour of mushrooms to replicate the taste of meat. It was part of the ProVeg Incubator and, in 2020, raised $10M in a Series A round.
Mushlabs feeds the mushroom cells with the sidestreams of the agricultural and food industries, making its process highly circular and sustainable. The brand says it aims to develop sausages, meatballs, spreads and burger patties, among others – but adds that its products aren’t yet vegan.
Bosque Foods
Courtesy: Bosque Foods
Fellow German brand Bosque Foods creates whole-cut chicken and pork filets and bacon from mycelium using solid-state fermentation. And just like Mushlabs, it also upcycles agricultural sidestreams by using them as feed in a 10-day harvesting process.
Last year, Bosque closed a $3M seed funding round to expedite product development and commercialisation and establish it with chefs and restaurants. It showcased its chicken cutlet – which contains 85% mycelium – at the Vegan Women Summit in New York City this May.
Adamo Foods
Courtesy: Adamo Foods
UK-based Adamo Foods just secured £1.5M in fresh funding for its whole-cut mycelium steak in June. The startup claims it has discovered a technique to grow mycelium into long, dense fibres that form a texture analogous to the “grain” of a steak or chicken fillet.
Adamo wants to fight climate change, improve global health and boost food security. It aims to keep its products price-competitive with conventional meat, and says its steak and fillets will be available later this year.
In the US, 95% of foodservice operators expect increased or stable sales of vegan food and beverages in the next year, with 76% aiming to continue or increase the number of plant-based meat options, according to a new report by industry body the Plant Based Foods Association (PBFA). It’s in line with consumer sentiment, who have upped their plant-based intake and reduced their meat consumption.
The PBFA’s State of the Marketplace Foodservice Report states that nearly half (48.4%) of all restaurants in the US currently offer plant-based options on their menus, with a 62% increase in plant-based menu items over the past decade. The shift has stemmed from a growing acceptance of vegan food among consumers, with a greater awareness of their health, environmental and animal welfare benefits.
It follows another report by the PBFA earlier this year, which found that the US plant-based market grew by 6.6% from 2021 to 2022, reaching $8B. “The plant-based foods industry’s momentum and resilience – built on robust consumer demand – is evident across 2022 retail and e-commerce sales and foodservice performance,” Julie Emmett, VP of marketplace development at the PBFA, said at the time.
Consumer trends on plant-based eating
Courtesy: Plant Based Foods Association
The report revealed that more than four times as many Americans increased instead of decreased their plant-based consumption, while a third say they’ll eat more vegan foods over the upcoming year. Overall, a third of consumers in the US use plant-based dairy alternatives at least once a week, followed closely by alt-meat.
When it comes to setting, around a quarter of home meals are entirely plant-based, compared to 19% of those eaten outside. And consumers are twice more likely to try plant-based foods in retail settings than foodservice ones, due to factors including convenience, cost and perceived health benefits. This follows the 27% year-on-year growth in plant-based retail sales in the US in 2021.
Meanwhile, 43% of consumers agree that the availability of plant-based food and beverages enhances the restaurant experience – a sentiment that was most prevalent among Gen Z and millennial consumers. The former demographic has a higher proportion of vegans, vegetarians and pescatarians, with 35% falling into the category of ‘meat limiters’.
Courtesy: Plant Based Foods Association
This is highlighted by recent product launches. Taco Bell introduced a vegan Crunchwrap in June, Chipotle added two plant-based options to its Lifestyle bowls as part of its ESG goals for 2023, while Charley’s Steak House collaborated with Chunk Foods to offer the latter’s plant-based whole cut on its Orlando menu.
Plant-based menu options at restaurants
Courtesy: Plant Based Foods Association
Four times as many foodservice operators plan to add plant-based meat to their menus than those who say they’ll remove it, while 8% who currently offer none plan to add vegan alternatives. The reluctance to add a plant-based meat substitute to menus is based on many considerations, including a lack of demand (53%), higher costs (46%), a higher difficulty in predicting demand and purchasing needs (33%), and vegan food not fitting the brand’s image (20%) – as well as factors like food waste and labour requirements.
But within the operators who do incorporate plant-based food into their menus, the fast-casual segment – which often caters to younger generations and those seeking healthy meals on the go – leads the way with nearly 70% menu penetration, followed by mid-scale and casual dining restaurants. Fast-casual chains Fine dining restaurants, meanwhile, are at the bottom of the list.
Courtesy: Plant Based Foods Association
In terms of food types, plant-based seafood and egg options have increasingly been featured on foodservice menus, seeing a 57% and 52% year-on-year growth, respectively. In February, Israeli startup Yo Egg debuted its vegan poached eggs at six Los Angeles eateries, before launching into Veggie Grill stores nationwide. And California’s Impact Food debuted its raw sushi-grade plant-based tuna at Bay Area restaurant Onigilly.
Meanwhile, coconut milk is the leading dairy alternative used owing to its versatility, followed by almond milk. But menu presence of alt-milk is still low, given that more than half of Americans will visit or pay more at establishments that feature specific plant-based dairy alternatives.
Courtesy: Plant Based Foods Association
The report also found that plant-based promotions and limited-time offerings receive higher uniqueness ratings from consumers compared to animal-based counterparts. There is precedent here with McDonald’s, which trialled the McPlant for a limited time before introducing it to the permanent menu, and Shake Shack, which launched its limited-edition Vegan ShackBurger in London in 2020, and debuted its vegan burger in permanent menus in the US earlier this year. Meanwhile, Impact Food struck a deal with Pokeworks for a limited-edition poke bowl in June.
The importance of inclusivity
“The focus of foodservice operators has shifted from simply offering a separate ‘vegan menu’ to creating inclusive dining experiences that highlight the abundance of plant-based choices available,” says Hannah Lopez, director of marketplace development, foodservice at PBFA.
Across all age demographics, the PBFA says there’s a stronger preference for the terms ‘plant-based’ and ‘dairy-free’ compared to ‘vegan’ and ‘vegetarian’. The clear labelling and intentional placement of plant-based food menu options at restaurants is essential for consumer awareness and inclusivity. It echoes a report by food awareness organisation ProVeg International last week, which expressed a preference for ‘plant-based’ over ‘vegan’ on menus.
According to the PBFA, this trend suggests that consumers are open to limiting their animal product consumption without completely eliminating it. It says nearly three-quarters of Americans are interested in blended animal- and plant-based proteins, like pasta dishes with plant-based proteins and dairy cheese. While only about 20% of operators currently offer such dishes, 30% show interest in exploring this idea. This concept has already penetrated the retail sector globally, with brands like Momentum Foods, Mush Foods and Nanka all offering hybrid plant- and animal-based meats.
Courtesy: Plant Based Foods Association
The report notes that inclusive menus are paramount: “As foodservice operators lean into menu innovation and expansion, having plant-based foods as staple menu options and ingredients will allow for more inclusive and wide-ranging customer bases, and a greater feeling among guests that their values, interests, and tastes are being served.”
In a January webinar, the PBFA presented data showing that 60% of US restaurants see plant-based as a long-term trend. This sentiment is mirrored by Jennifer DiFrancesco, director of culinary innovation at Sodexo Campus, which has committed to making its catering menu 50% plant-based by 2025. “Having plant-based foods isn’t a buzz or a trend, it’s a need and a demand that we deliver with creativity and flavour,” she says, adding: “Inclusive options are key – having the 1:1 animal to plant entrée makes it approachable, relatable, and tempting to try.”
The PBFA says it’s clear that the foodservice industry offers stability and reliability as a platform for plant-based food companies seeking long-term success in a rapidly evolving sector: “Key opportunities exist for companies and operators alike to forge meaningful, mutually beneficial partnerships to give consumers what they want: delicious, affordable, healthier, and more sustainable plant-based options.”
It isn’t your everyday sugar alternative – it’s real sugar, just made from fibres. It’s not just wholewheat pasta, it’s one made from the whole wheat plant. It’s food made from food waste, and it’s better for you and the planet. That’s what The Supplant Company is all about – what more could you want?
Tom Simmons spent four years as a postdoctoral research scientist and biochemistry fellow exploring plant sugars and fibres at the University of Cambridge before he realised the true potential of alternative sugar. The $18B industry has seen many a brand attempt to convince consumers that their sweetener is it. But the one that Simmons came up with might actually be.
His startup, The Supplant Company, quickly went from a lab idea to Michelin-starred collaborations thanks to the environmental and nutritional virtue of its first product, an alternative sugar (but not quite alternative). Not only was it better for you than the sweet stuff humans have been itching to replace for decades, it was also made from ingredients that would have otherwise been discarded. The two-fold appeal – much like the product it sought to replace – was irresistible.
Supplant’s plant fibre sugar
Supplant collaborated with Michelin-starred chef Thomas Keller to create a range of chocolates with its alternative sugar | Courtesy: The Supplant Company
Supplant’s Sugars from Fibre is made using agricultural sidestreams like the straw, stalks and cobs of corn, wheat and rice, as well as the hulls leftover from oat milk production. Essentially, it uses the fibre-rich structural parts of crops that don’t otherwise enter the food system and are often discarded. “We work with the current existing supply chain, the cheapest stuff out there,” Simmons told Bloomberg.
What makes Supplant’s ingredient stand out is the fact that instead of using additives that elevate the sweetness of sugars, it uses real sugars found naturally in plant fibre. The startup describes it as the “most abundant source of sugars in the natural world”, and insists that the alternative isn’t an alternative.
In a chat with TechCrunch, he explained the difference between Supplant and other sugar substitute startups: “The core difference is [other companies are] working with cane sugar. Our pitch is we make sugars from fibre, so you don’t need to use cane sugar.”
He added: “It’s about texture, bulking, caramelisation and crystallisation… We have a technology that’s going to give you the same sweetness gram for gram.” Its fibre-derived nature also means it’s lower in calories, has a lower glycemic index, and is prebiotic.
Supplant’s Sugars from Fibre caramelises, bakes and cooks like traditional sugar, and helps baked goods and desserts hold structure and texture the same way. And to demonstrate that, it roped in seven-Michelin-starred American chef Thomas Keller, who teamed up with the London-based brand to develop an ice cream using the alt-sugar – debuting it at Keller’s famed eateries The French Laundry and Per Se in 2021.
Keller has also created a range of packaged shortbread cookies – available at Keller’s Bouchon Bakery in California – and chocolate bars that are available for purchase from Supplant’s website. “Nutrition is always at the forefront of what we do; being able to add nutritional impact to our foods, and therefore to our bodies,” Keller said when launching his Supplant-sweetened gelato. “Supplant Sugars from Fibre is yet another prime example that prioritises this, as well as emphasises sustainability, innovation and health.”
A truly whole-wheat pasta
Courtesy: The Supplant Company
First came sugar, then a new kind of flour. It’s a similar concept – upcycling ready-to-be-wasted ingredients – but tackles the market’s savoury tastebuds too. The Grain & Stalk Flour is exactly what it sounds like – flour made from the typically used grain and the typically discarded stalk of the wheat plant.
This underutilised part of the plant is usually left to decompose or is set ablaze – a greenhouse-gas-intensive process called stubble burning. However, using the stalk means more food per acreage (hence less land use), and less use of pesticides and other pollutants (hence fewer emissions).
And apart from its food-waste- and climate-related benefits, the wheat stalk also boasts health advantages. Made mainly of fibre, the Grain & Stalk Flour has – like its predecessor – lower calories and six times more digestive fibre than conventional varieties.
But unlike Supplant’s sugar, this whole-wheat-plant flour doesn’t behave like classic starch, which offers sticky and stretchy properties, and acts as a binder – all key components in foods like bread. “Cooking is all about equations,” Keller told Fast Company, noting that it will need more trial and error to get the right balance of ingredients. “And when you get to things like this bread, the equation becomes much more important. You can’t make too many mistakes.”
Despite that, the flour works well in many other applications – demonstrated again by Keller in a tasting menu at Per Se. This included crackers, ramen and different kinds of pasta (including spaghetti and ravioli), and the acclaimed chef hopes to switch from refined to Grain & Stalk Flour for pastas across all his restaurants.
Coinciding with this was the release of a pasta made by Supplant’s flour earlier this year, which has subsequently sold out. “By bringing underutilised plant material back into the food system, Supplant Grain & Stalk Flour furthers our mission to create a food system that is fit for the future – one that is more sustainable, more food-secure and more nutritious for all,” said Simmons after the launch.
Towards a sustainable food system
Courtesy: Bouchon Bakery
The food system is a massive strain on the environment – a 2021 Nature Food study found it responsible for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, a third of food produced across the globe goes to waste, amounting to $1T in losses. These are huge problems for an increasingly populated, increasingly poorer world.
Companies like Supplant – using sidestream valorisation to produce better alternatives to food staples – offer a viable solution to this mess. Californian food tech brand Oobli, which uses microbial-fermented sweet protein to make chocolate, is another leader in the sugar substitute space. And when it comes to flour, Renewal Mill uses residue from plant-based milk production, and turns it into flours, baking mixes and cookies.
Many brands are also upcycling ingredients to make alt-meat. South Korea’s Unlimeat produces beef, pork and tuna alternatives, while Swiss startup Luya Foods upcycles okara (the residue from tofu production) to develop vegan chunks and burger patties. Hawaiian brand Cajú Love uses cashew fruit from the cashew nut and juice industry to make its plant-based meat alternative.
The Supplant Company says it is “addressing the interconnected problems of nutrition, sustainability and food security while creating ingredients that behave functionally like their traditional counterparts”. And I’m inclined to agree.
Months after Switch Foods inaugurated the UAE’s first plant-based meat manufacturing facility in Abu Dhabi, consumers can now find its vegan kebabs, minced meat and burgers at retailers across the capital. It comes in the UAE’s Year of Sustainability, where it pledged to promote plant-based foods, and is hosting the UN climate summit COP28, which is confirmed to serve mostly vegan food.
In April, Switch opened a 20,000 sq ft facility in Abu Dhabi’s Khalifa Industrial Zone – the first to make vegan meat alternatives in the country. Now, it’s launching the nation’s first locally produced vegan products into the retail market.
Switch’s lineup includes kebabs, koftas, soujouks, minced meat and burger patties in varying sizes, with all products being GMO-, soy- and gluten-free. The range is allergen-friendly and halal-certified, and can be found at retailers including Carrefour, Organic Food Café, Grandiose, Geant, Union Coop, Sharjah Coop, Al Maya, Abella and Spinneys in Abu Dhabi. Switch’s products are also available on online platforms like Talabat, Careem, Kibsons and Noon.
A 250g pack of minced meat costs 14 AED ($3.81), while a 240g pack of the soujouk is priced at 19 AED ($5.17). Meanwhile, a four-pack of burger patties is 34 AED ($9.26), and 240g of kebab meat comes to 20 AED ($5.45). These prices, while not super cheap, are still affordable when compared to imported plant-based meat.
Switch founder and CEO Edward Hamod said: “It has been a true pleasure to witness the excitement and willingness of the leadership and management of prominent retailers and online platforms across the UAE to support locally produced and sustainable foods like the ones we produce at Switch Foods.”
Courtesy: Switch Foods
Plant-based boom in the UAE
2023 is also the UAE’s Year of Sustainability, part of which is a push to promote plant-based eating in the country. Later this year, the UAE will also host COP28, and it has famously announced that this year’s conference will serve predominantly plant-based food.
The company’s launch, along with COP28’s decision, is in line with consumer sentiment in the UAE – 44% of its residents are open to substituting meat and dairy with vegan alternatives.
The country has already seen multiple overseas plant-based producers enter the market in recent years. In 2021, US giant Impossible Foods made its Middle East debut at Dubai World Expo, while Singapore-based TiNDLE also launched in this region for the first time at 20 UAE restaurants.
Neighboring nation Saudi Arabia has also been actively promoting more plant-based foods – officials from the Saudi Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture are co-developing alt-protein products with locally sourced plants.
Sparked by a simple question by his daughter during a pizza-making bonding session, Pleese Foods co-founder Kobi Regev input the words ‘cheese farm’ in an artificial intelligence (AI) art app. The result was a series of whimsical images depicting cheese as a flourishing crop and being grown on trees. The maker of Pleese Cheese, the allergen-free vegan alternative, Pleese Foods blends future-facing tech with culinary innovation.
Regev was inspired by a McDonald’s ad that featured a playful garden with French fry bushes and Big Mac trees, after his daughter asked: “How can cheese be made from plants?” Pleese Foods wants to redefine the art of storytelling through the lens of AI – and bringing a cheese farm to life through AI visualisations is a pretty good way of doing it.
Courtesy: Pleese Foods
An AI-powered vegan cheese farm
Regev imagined an entire cheese farm where it grew alongside other traditional crops, with the generated images showcasing trees sprouting cheese, fields bedecked with massive cheese wheels, cheese crops being picked by a crop harvester, and farmers processing the harvested cheese. One visual showcase a plantation of cheese adjacent to a lush green landscape of traditional crops – in a striking metaphor mirroring how plant-based cheese can exist and help farmers thrive.
“My daughter’s question opened a gateway to blend AI technology with creative curiosity,” said Regev. “The AI-generated visuals of cheese growing on a farm encapsulate the spirit that drives Pleese Foods.” The company says it wants to cultivate a multisensory approach through its products, and wants to emphasise its commitment to inclusivity and accessibility.
Pleese Cheese, which is said to melt and stretch like dairy cheese, is free from nuts, seeds, soy and gluten, instead leveraging a proprietary blend of fava beans and potato protein. It helps make the plant-based cheese allergen-friendly, ensuring people suffering from food allergies or health concerns can still enjoy their share of cheese.
Courtesy: Pleese Foods
How vegan brands are tapping into AI
In an age of wacky, innovative marketing – like Impossible Foods’ latest campaign and Nobell Foods’ semi-hypothetical Pizza Futures magazine – Pleese Foods’ AI-powered promotional drive is another shift from stereotype. And as the tech grows more popular and becomes mainstream, this could be a marker for many future vegan and alt-protein commercials.
“I’m someone with an abundance of imagination but no artistic prowess,” noted Regev. “In the past, realising my creative visions visually would have entailed significant costs and weeks of revisions. AI transformed this, enabling me to bring my imagination to life within hours.”
But the use of AI isn’t just restricted to marketing – it can actually extend to product development, and that’s what really highlights its true potential. While Pleese Cheese has creatively implemented AI to imagine a world thriving on vegan cheese, many plant-based brands are using AI as their central product development driver.
Courtesy: Pleese Foods
Most famous is Latin American food tech brand NotCo, which uses AI and machine learning to find the best plant-based alternatives for animal products. The patented AI tech has a name, Giuseppe, and is the brains behind the company’s alt-milks, mayo and burgers. Similarly, Singapore’s Howw Foods uses AI to make Hegg, its vegan powdered egg product.
Many producers have also collaborated with AI firms to develop plant-based products. Bel Foods – the French cheese giant behind the ultra-popular Babybel – has partnered with California’s Climax Foods to make vegan foods, while industry giant Danone is working with Californian AI firm Brightseed to discover hidden nutrients and compounds in plant crops. Similarly, mycelium meat producer Meati teamed up with AI company PIPA to accelerate and expand its understanding of the health and nutrition benefits of its nutrient-rich products.
The potential of AI may be beyond imagination, but Pleese Foods’ own imagination has its own marketing potential.
The world’s leading fast-food chains – McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway, Pizza Hut and KFC – are offering an increasing number of plant-based options, according to a nine-country report by food awareness organisation ProVeg International. Burger King tops the list with the most vegan-friendly main dishes, with Subway a close second. Meanwhile, the UK is Europe’s leading plant-based market, followed by Germany.
The report ranks these ‘Big Five’ fast-food chains on metrics including plant-based options, menu presentation, and labeling conventions. Food options traversed mains, sides and desserts, and the nine countries surveyed were Belgium, Czechia, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, Spain, the UK, and the US. (Spain and the Netherlands, where Pizza Hut has a low market share and doesn’t operate, respectively, featured analysis on Domino’s).
Across countries, 43 menus were analysed, out of which only 22 offered at least one vegan option. And just under 6% (85) of all main dishes (1,473) listed across those menus were plant-based. Similarly, vegan desserts accounted for 4.6% of all sweet options, while sides represented 27% of the total. Burger King and Subway were followed by McDonald’s and Pizza Hut, with KFC performing the worst.
Plant-based fare by fast-food chains
Subway ranks second on the fast-food vegan main dishes list | Courtesy
Vegan menu options represent 12% of Burger King’s overall offering, with 30 main dishes out of 307 across all countries – a 9.8% share. The fast-food chain also trialled its first all-vegan location at its Leicester Square flagship in London last year, and implemented a plant-based-by-default ordering model at a store in Austria.
Like Burger King, Subway also has vegan options that make up 12% of its overall menu, but trails marginally in the share of mains at 9.1%. But it performed the best when it came to the presentation of its menus, which consistently integrate vegan items with their conventional counterparts. ProVeg also lauded Subway’s naming convention (Rockin’ Morrocan and TLC Teriyaki are two examples), which hones in on the culinary theme of the dish.
At McDonald’s, the world’s largest food chain, 9% of the food is vegan. But plant-based main dishes only comprise 3% of the total options, and are only available in the UK, Germany and South Africa among the countries analysed. But the report notes that McDonald’s can make their nearly vegan options – some have dairy cheese and a ‘plant-based’ patty has animal products – plant-based by default.
Plant-based menu items represent 8% of Pizza Hut’s overall range, but out of the mains, only 5.2% are vegan. But ProVeg notes that the chain is making an effort to offer plant-based options, and integrating them into the general menu will likely appeal to a wider range of customers, including flexitarians and omnivores.
The reading is more bleak at KFC, where less than 1% of dishes are plant-based, and a minuscule 0.3% of mains are vegan. Out of all the 325 dishes evaluated, only one is listed as plant-based. But KFC has a huge opportunity to make its menus more appealing to plant-based diners. It already has several vegetarian options, and ProVeg says incorporating even a single plant-based nugget or burger option would significantly aid the chain.
Country-wise vegan fast-food availability
KFC has only one vegan main option out of 325 menu items: the Vegan Chicken Burger in the UK | Courtesy: KFC
In Belgium (Pizza Hut), Poland and the US (both Subway), only one chain offers a plant-based main on online menus. Similarly, Czechia (Subway and Burger King) and South Africa (Burger King and McDonald’s) have only two of the Big Five offering vegan mains.
Meanwhile, Subway, Domino’s and Burger King all offer plant-based mains in the Netherlands and Spain. And in Germany, vegan main dishes are available at four of the Big Five: Burger King, Subway, McDonald’s and Pizza Hut.
The UK is the only country in the report that has vegan options for main dishes in all of the five leading fast-food chains. The aforementioned single plant-based main at KFC is the Vegan Burger in the UK. One reason for this is the strong emergence of meat-free attitudes in the UK. The report mentions figures revealing that 9% of Brits are vegan or vegetarian, making up the largest share of plant-forward eaters in Europe after Germany.
Best-practice recommendations for fast-food chains
Courtesy: McDonald’s
A new report has found that vegan diets can cut carbon emissions by 75% compared to a meat-rich diet. “It is vitally important that fast-food chains play their role in helping society transition to more climate-friendly diets by providing and promoting plant-based foods,” said ProVeg global CEO Jasmijn de Boo. “All five major chains are making strides in the right direction, but there is still room for improvement.”
ProVeg recommends a number of best practices that can help these fast-food chains attract more plant-based consumers – crucial for their climate commitments:
ProVeg’s recommendations include:
More menu options should plant-based by default, which is a “very effective way of increasing plant-based purchasing among mainstream consumers”. It’s also crucial for chains in many countries to introduce vegan sauces and cheeses.
Replace animal-based options with plant-based alternatives, instead of just adding the latter. ProVeg argues this helps normalise plant-based eating and increase vegan purchases among the mainstream.
Integrate plant-based options with similar items and list them first, while repeating them in a separately labeled plant-based section. This will nudge consumers to choose more plant-based options while making it easier to navigate the menu.
Instead of using the product name as the label, use subtle, easily identifiable labels (like pictograms) to “minimise the deterrent effect that vegan-identifying denominations can have on mainstream consumers”.
When naming menu items, choose words that focus on the culinary theme, sensory experience or the brand of plant-based meat used in the food. The report suggests minimising the use of terms like ‘veggie’ or ‘plant-based’, and completely avoiding words like ‘vegan’, ‘vegetarian’ or ‘meatless’.
Use enticing language in product descriptions to highlight the taste experience and cooking technique, as well as frame the plant-based items as equivalent to their conventional counterparts.
Plant-based newcomer Recreate Foods has appointed Michael Salem, creator of Burger King’s Impossible Whopper, as its president. Previously the curator of Kevin Hart-owned restaurant Hart House‘s menu, he joins a vegan chicken brand that faces stiff competition in an increasingly populated category – and he’s betting on taste and texture.
Founded earlier this year, Arizona-based Recreate Foods’ vegan chicken range – which includes filets, tenders, nuggets and grounds made from pea protein – is crafted by chefs to prioritise high quality.
A premium brand in an overpopulated category
The US plant-based chicken sector is over-congested and highly competitive – there are around 20 brands making vegan nuggets alone. Just last week, Californian alt-nugget startup Nowadays announced it is ceasing operations amid a continued decline in plant-based meat sales in the US.
But Salem believes Recreate Foods’ positioning as a high-end company separates it from the crowd. “What clearly differentiates Recreate from others in the category is it’s simply a delicious chicken-based analogue,” he told trade publication Food Dive. “And we’re not a value-oriented brand, we’re a premium brand.”
He doubled down on this aspect by explaining the producer focuses on flavour and texture – two key components of concern about plant-based meat for consumers. “A lot of these big companies have a ton of resources, they have a lot of passion, they have a ton of exposure and media, but they don’t really necessarily have a great product,” said Salem.
“The ethos that we operate under as a company is that we’re not a science-based company. We’re not in the business of creating formulas. We’re in the business of creating delicious recipes.”
Photo: Recreate Foods/Instagram
From Burger King to Recreate Foods
Salem was the head of culinary development at Burger King for four years, and found his love for the plant-based category after launching the vegan Impossible Whopper burger exactly four years ago (8 August 2019). He called the unique impact of product launches one of the industry’s main attractions: “Not to trash the product launch of McCafé – it was a great launch – but it didn’t really change the world.”
He added that some brands prioritise virtue over quality: “We start to see companies position themselves as ‘It’s the right thing to do’ or really leaning in on vegans to kind of shame you into doing the right thing.”
However, he was also quoted as saying: “In the plant-based category, a product can be profitable, creative, incremental, and make perfect business sense. But more importantly, and more impactful for me, is it can have a tremendous impact on the pressure that we’re putting on livestock.”
During the launch of Hart House, he had a similar response: “I’ve seen too many animals die. I’ve been too guilty about the food I’ve been serving the community, making people really unhealthy for a long time, and I just don’t think it’s necessary. I think this is really the future of fast food, so that’s why I took the gig. I just thought it was an incredible chance to really make a difference and leave a legacy on food service and an industry that’s been so good to me.”
Whether it’s virtue- or flavour-first, the jury’s out on how a premium player will perform in an oversaturated and sales-hit category, but Salem is up for the challenge.
Prolonging what CEO Ethan Brown called “the most difficult period” for the plant-based giant, year-on-year sales at Beyond Meat fell by 30.5% to $102M, with a $53.5M net loss. The company has now reduced its full-year revenue forecast and walked back its earlier goal of becoming cashflow-positive in the second half of 2023. Brown ascribed the grim Q2 results to diminishing demand and problematic health perceptions of Beyond’s products.
After entering this year on an optimistic financial note – with its Q1 2023 earnings (while down year-on-year) exceeding Wall Street projections – Beyond had expected sharper revenue growth in the second half of 2023. But it has now reduced its full-year forecast from $375-415M (predicted in Q1) to $360-380M, giving up hope of achieving positive cashflow in the second half.
Beyond cites “greater-than-expected consumer and category headwinds and their anticipated impact on net revenues” as the reason for this. However, the company added it remained “firmly focused on achieving cash flow positive operations, including increased cost containment, and expects meaningfully reduced cash consumption for the balance of the year”.
The alt-meat giant – which laid off 19% of its staff last year – said gross profit was $2.3M in Q2, which meant a gross margin of 2.2%. This is an improvement from the previous year – a $6.2M loss and a negative gross margin of -4.2% – which Beyond attributes to lower materials costs, lower inventory reserves and lower logistics costs per pound. This was partially offset by higher manufacturing costs and lower net revenue per pound, and it represents a decline from the Q1 gross margin of 6.7%.
Beyond hit by fall in consumer demand for plant-based meat
Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown called it “the most difficult period for the business” | Courtesy: Beyond Meat
Beyond’s Q2 results come amid a growing decline in demand for plant-based meat alternatives. A new Mintel survey of 1,400 US consumers suggests that only 20% followed a meat-reduced diet this year, with inflation causing 53% of consumers to try fewer new foods like plant-based substitutes. Participants cited taste (48%), nutrition (35%), cost (34%), texture (24%) and processing (21%) as their primary concerns against alt-meat.
It suggests that the category suffers from negative perceptions – reflecting Beyond CEO Brown’s comments on an earnings call to investors, against whom Beyond is facing a class-action lawsuit. “There is a considerable gap between the strong health credentials of our products and a broader counternarrative that is now afoot, and this gap appears to have widened,” he said, as reported by AgFunderNews.
“As was the case during the ascent of plant-based milk, this change in perception is not without encouragement from interest groups, who have succeeded in seeding doubt and fear around the ingredients and processes we use to create our and other plant-based meats,” he added. “Nor is it without contribution from well-meaning yet misguided comparisons of our products to kale salads, versus the animal-based meats they are intended to replace.”
He pointed to the company’s new There’s Goodness Here ad campaign, which subtly responds to years of targeted ads by meat industry interest groups against plant-based meat. The new ads highlight alt-meat’s positive impact on the environment, water and land use, energy footprint, as well as health and farmers. They also focus on a reduced ingredient list for the Beyond Steak, which is also the first meat product – animal- or plant-based – to be certified by the American Heart Association.
The aim is to alter consumer perceptions shaped by coordinated negative messaging against plant-based meat. It also keys into what people want: the Mintel report found that 30% of flexitarians avoid vegan meat alternatives because they are overproduced.
“If you look at Beyond Steak,” said Brown, “it’s absolutely delicious – you have such high levels of protein and a gram of saturated fat… Those things matter when the consumer is willing to come in. But if there’s a kind of cloud over the sector, those things matter less. So our number one goal is to lift that cloud.”
The Europe-US perception divide
With Beyond Steak, the company hopes to quell consumer concern about alt-meat’s health benefits and overprocessed ingredient lists | Courtesy: Beyond Meat
Beyond’s international retail revenue was down by 15.6% year-on-year, while foodservice sales saw a more modest decline of 0.9%. But in the US – its home market – retail sales fell by 38.5%, while foodservice saw an even larger drop of 45.4% in the same period. Brown alluded to the differences in consumer perception between the US and Europe: “Consumers are very concerned about climate and the environment in Europe, government is concerned about it, and institutions are concerned about it.”
But in the US, plant-based food consumption is “more driven by health”, and there’s been a decline in the health perception of this sector. He cited a Food Marketing Institute study that found 50% of Americans believed plant-based meats were healthy in 2020, compared to just 38% in 2022. This echoes a 2023 Newsweek poll that showed 40% of Americans don’t believe eating less would help lower carbon emissions, which is in contrast to research that shows a vegan diet can cut emissions by 75% compared to a meat-heavy diet. “We now have to do the heavy work as an industry to fix that.”
He pointed to the “clear nutritional advantages” of Beyond Steak and other products compared to conventional meat. These include “no cholesterol, lower levels of saturated fats, the absence of antibiotics, hormones, and other veterinary drugs, the absence of carcinogenic compounds such as heterocyclic amines, and the absence of precursors to TMAO, a compound that researchers have associated with heart disease and certain cancers”.
Ethan noted that “while older people aren’t necessarily wrapping their minds” around their food’s impact on the climate, younger Americans are. He referenced how 44% of US foodservice provider Aramark’s residential dining menus at 250+ colleges and universities will be plant-based, while Sodexo’s commitment to make 50% of its college campus menus plant-based by 2025. “So the trend really is here.”
And it’s what keeps Brown optimistic. Despite Beyond Meat’s decline in year-on-year sales, quarterly revenue actually increased by 11%, ending a five-quarter streak of continuous revenue decline. Referring to the cut in its full-year revenue forecast, the CEO said: “We nevertheless expect a modest return to year-over-year top-line growth in the third and fourth quarters of 2023, and – relative to the first half of 2023 – a meaningful reduction in cash consumption and an increase in gross margin.”
While the plant-based industry has faced a slump, cost plays a big part. Like many branded products, Beyond’s alternatives are relatively expensive. A 2023 Kantar report suggests that while plant-based food brands have seen a 10% drop in sales, private-label supermarket offerings have grown by 14% in the last year. And reaching price parity with the conventional products Beyond Meat replaces is one of its top priorities in the coming months.
Joining other food businesses in contributing to Singapore’s 30 by 30 food security initiative, Agrocorp International’s HerbYvore brand has launched the country’s first locally produced vegan cheese range. The HerbY-Cheese products are nut- and soy-free, with pea protein making the plant-based cheese more allergen-friendly.
Agrocorp received support from the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) and Enterprise Singapore to develop vegan alternatives to mozzarella, Cheddar and parmesan, which are said to grate and melt like their conventional counterparts. HerbYvore launched in 2021 with its pea-based paneer, which was also developed in collaboration with SIT.
Local vegan cheese production
HerbYvore’s new cheeses grate and melt like conventional counterparts | Courtesy: HerbYvore
Each of HerbYvore’s new cheeses clock in between 5-7g of protein per 100g, and is priced at S$8.80. The blocks are positioned as clean-label, minimally processed vegan cheeses. They contain a maximum of 10 ingredients, including water, coconut oil, starches, pea protein, natural flavourings and colours, and vegan cultures.
They were produced at SIT subsidiary FoodPlant – jointly established with Enterprise Singapore and JTC Corporation – to carry out small-batch production for pilot testing in local markets, before scaling up its manufacturing. The plant-based cheeses are available at HerbYvore’s website, Green Butchery, The Green Collective SG, and Everyday Vegan Grocer.
The launch puts HerbYvore’s products into a rapidly growing market. The 2022 State of the Industry Report by industry think tank the Good Food Institute reported a 43% year-on-year increase in sales of plant-based cheese in Asia-Pacific.
Supporting Singapore’s 30 by 30 food security initiative
Courtesy: HerbYvore
“Alternative proteins today are more affordable, tastier, healthier, and also a more sustainable food source,” Alvin Tan, Singapore’s minister of state for culture, community and youth, and trade and industry, said on the release day. “The green economy is brimming with opportunity and potential,” he added, calling it a key aspect to meet the country’s 30 by 30 goal in a “fast, sustainable manner”.
HerbYvore’s cheese is among a growing number of products that hope to contribute to the country’s food security project. Part of its Green Plan 2030, the 30 by 30 campaign aims to reduce Singapore’s reliance on imports and locally produce 30% of all food consumed by the end of the decade.
More recent launches, like Dynamic Foodco’s Dynameat brand and TiNDLE’s new vegan chicken pieces, support this initiative. By offering alternatives to climate-harming animal products – a vegan diet can cut emissions by 75% compared to a meat-rich one – these companies are helping build a food system that’s sustainable in more ways than one: both in terms of the environment and food security.
Shanghai food tech brand Haofood, known for its plant-based chicken made from peanuts, has launched soup dumplings filled with peanut-based pork mince. The first plant-based meat brand to use peanut protein as the base ingredient, this marks the company’s second type of vegan meat.
Xiaolongbaos (or soup dumplings) traditionally contain a minced pork filling, but Haofood’s vegan version swaps them for a peanut-based alternative that mimics the original’s taste and texture. The soup itself is a black truffle flavour, and the dumplings are packed with protein and dietary fibre, and free of trans fats.
Launched in 2020, Haofood co-founder Astrid Prajogo exhibited the peanut mince dumplings at the Berlin headquarters of ProVeg Incubator – the brand had participated in the 12-week accelerator programme in 2020. The new product comes on the heels of a report that puts China at the top of the list of countries with the greatest market potential for alt-meat.
Haofood co-founder Astrid Prajogo exhibited the new peanut-based pork dumplings in Berlin | Courtesy: Haofood/LinkedIn
Haofood’s peanut-powered journey
“We started with the aspiration of helping foodies reduce their meat consumption without losing the pleasure of eating the familiar dishes that they love,” Prajogo told ProVeg in 2020. “That’s why we are developing a plant-based chicken that is specifically designed to be cooked as Asian fried chicken.”
Now, the brand has three products in its portfolio: vegan pulled chicken in naked, black pepper and Xinjiang-spiced flavours; crispy chicken patties in original and spicy variants; and a plant-based chicken chop.
In 2021, Haofood partnered with five Shanghai restaurants to add its peanut-based chicken to their menu offerings, like mini-burgers, wraps and bowls. It also struck a distribution deal with Chinese convenience store giant Lawson last year to stock its plant-based chicken in 2,300 retail stores nationwide. This came a month after it announced a $3.5M seed funding round, which included the likes of ProVeg, Monde Nissin CEO Henry Soesanto, and Big Idea Ventures, among others.
Plant-based dumplings on the rise
Courtesy: OmniPork
Haofood’s latest offering joins a host of other companies in the budding vegan dumpling category in Asia. While its xiaolongbaos are the first of their kind to launch to market, brands like OmniPork and Plant Sifu (both Hong Kong-based brands) have debuted various ready-to-eat dumpling ranges in recent years in retail and in foodservice. Omni famously partnered with Wanchai Ferry, Hong Kong’s dumpling-famous frozen meal brand, on two OmniPork-filled SKUs in 2020.
Plant Sifu, meanwhile, uses a proprietary fat technology to create a juicy and fragrant pork alternative ideal for dumpling fillings. The brand claims its product is cholesterol- and MSG-free, and contains less salt and fewer calories than conventional pork.
Vegan dumplings are equally popular around the world including the US: seaweed startup Triton Algae Foods has teamed up with Too Good to Be Foods to launch vegan pork dumplings and San Francisco brand Sobo Foods has soft-launched its plant-based dumplings at select retailers in the Bay area.
US molecular farming pioneer Nobell Foods has launched an ad campaign imagining the impact of climate change on the future of pizza. The Bill Gates-backed brand, which is developing animal-free cheese from soy-derived casein protein and has raised $100M in funding since its 2017 launch, has created a print magazine alongside audio, digital and social ads.
To build buzz ahead of its first product launch, Nobell’s Pizza Futures initiative highlights how our relationship with pizza will change with the climate crisis. The awareness campaign features 30 scenarios exploring what pizza could look like in the future, with some tackling the effects of climate change, and others that don’t.
This includes solutions like regenerative pizza vending machines, in-home aeroponic pizza gardens, automated luxury pizza communes and pneumatic margherita dispensers. But they are juxtaposed with issues like forest fires, widespread crop failures, food shortages and price hikes, making pizza a more expensive luxury food.
“Envisioning a range of climate futures isn’t just speculation – it’s a potent creative exercise that stretches the imagination and fosters proactive thinking. It makes the abstract more tangible, especially when rooted in something as universal as a hot and melty pizza pie,” the magazine reads.
“It prompts us to ask: ‘What kind of world do we want to build?’ and ‘Do I really want a future where pizza is a luxury item, or worse yet, hard as a rock and sprinkled with dried-up clumps of Swiss Chard?’”
There are 250 hard copies of the magazine, available in four bookshops across New York City, Los Angeles and Lisbon. People can also download a PDF version through Nobell’s website, and view its digital campaign across social media. One accompanying ad spot envisions sunken pizzerias that are submerged underwater due to rising sea levels, promoting dive tours for people to go and eat pizza.
A molecular farming pioneer
Nobell Foods, which made Fast Company’s 2023 World Changing Ideas Awards list, is one of the flagbearers of molecular farming. Unlike cellular agriculture or precision fermentation, the process involves modifying plants so their cells replicate animal proteins, and can then be harvested from leaves or other plant tissues. It’s seen when microorganisms infect plants, transferring some genes in the process. Scientists use similar methods to give plants new instructions to create proteins.
It’s a sustainable and viable solution for producing alternatives to carbon-intensive animal products, and a host of companies are harnessing this tech. Nobell, backed by the likes of Bill Gates and Robert Downey Jr, was among the first ones in this space. It recreates the genetic code for casein in soybean seeds, which evolve into plants that have casein identical to the one found in animal-based dairy.
This casein is extracted to make cheeses like mozzarella and Cheddar. And because of their chemical composition, the company claims its products “taste, smell, melt, stretch and age like traditional cheese”. Nobell says its mozzarella has the gooey texture that makes it produce the stretch pizza lovers crave.
“What’s interesting about the way that they’re talking about it – they called it ‘plant-grown milk proteins,’ talking about being farm fresh and the power of plants – it’s not language that you do hear a lot with imitation dairy or imitation meats,” Sadie Dyer, CPG marketing expert at global brand experience firm Siegel+Gale, told Adweek. “It’s hard for them to achieve because it does take a lot of processing.”
Highlighting climate change’s effects on pizza ingredients
So instead of marketing its product to vegans, it positions its product as an animal-free offering for people who just love cheese – and are also conscious about the climate crisis. The Pizza Futures campaign is effective because not only does it highlight the impact of climate change on cheese, but it also sheds light on how wheat and tomato crops will be affected. In fact, the UK has already experienced a tomato shortage this year, while India has seen prices for the weather-ravaged fruit crop rise by 400%.
“Wheat, tomatoes, and cheese. All critical to the creation of a hot and melty pizza pie, and all under threat in their own unique ways due to escalating climate change,” says the Pizza Futures magazine. “Recognizing this dire existential threat to the world’s most beloved cheese-based dish, Nobell Foods brought together a team of futurists, food writers, artists, and designers. Our goal? To knead out a vision of what pizza looks like in a future where we meet the challenge of climate change, and what it looks like if we don’t. Pizza Futures is this vision served up piping hot.”
While no launch date has been announced for Nobell’s cheese, other non-plant-based cheese alternatives are starting to make their debut. Earlier this year, San Francisco-based food tech startup New Culture announced a partnership with chef Nancy Silverton’s iconic Los Angeles restaurant, Pizzeria Mozza, to launch its precision-fermented casein-based cheese at the eatery.
Can the momentum built by the Future Pizza campaign help Nobell Foods infiltrate this market? We’ll know soon enough.
On August 5, 2013, a team of Dutch scientists from Maastricht University, led by Dr Mark Post, showcased the world’s first burger made from cultivated meat at a tasting in London. It was the result of decades of research and trials, with food critics describing this first prototype “close to meat, but not that juicy”, and Post calling it a “good start”.
Now, 10 years on, the progress made by this industry has accelerated, with more companies and funding than ever before, as well as increased government and regulatory support, and steps towards price parity with conventional meat. Here are 10 highlights defining the meteoric rise of cultivated meat.
Launch of the world’s first cultured meat hamburger (August 5, 2013)
1) There are now over 150 companies working on cultivated meat around the world
According to industry think tank the Good Food Institute’s 2023 State of the Industry Report, the total number of cultivated meat companies is at least 156 – up from 107 in 2021. These producers are based in 26 different regions internationally, and at least 70 additional brands have joined the industry via partnerships or product and service offerings.
This total number of companies, however, is likely an underestimate, as it’s common practice for startups to begin in ‘stealth mode’ and announce their arrival after hitting their first milestone (such as a successful funding round or product prototype), but given that a decade ago, there wasn’t one incorporated company working on this technology, we’ve come a long way!
2) There are now dozens of types of cultivated animal flesh from quail to fish to foie gras
While that first burger tasting was for a beef burger, there are numerous kinds of cultivated meat being developed. Where Dr Mark Post’s Mosa Meat and Israeli startup Aleph Farms are focused on the cow, companies like GOOD Meat, ClearMeat, SuperMeat and Upside Foods are working on chicken (the latter has also debuted duck and beef products). Pork is another popular alternative, with brands like Meatable, Joes Future Food and Ivy Farm Technologies tackling Asia’s favorite meat.
There’s also cell-cultured seafood, from fish fillets to raw salmon to crustaceans such as prawn and crab. Singapore’s Umami Meats and Shiok Meats, and California’s Finless Foods and Wildtype Foods are all pioneering this sector.
Apart from these, Orbillion Bio produces Wagyu beef, in addition to working on elk, lamb and bison alternatives. French startup Gourmey is making cultivated foie gras, and Australia’s Vow want to use this tech to develop kangaroo, zebra, tortoise and yak meat – and it’s already showcased Japanese quail dumplings.
Courtesu: Orbillion Bio
3) Nomenclature continues to be an issue
Cultivated meat, which is the industry’s preferred term, is has many alternative names from cultured meat to clean meat to synthetic meat to the industry’s least preferred term: lab-grown.
Research published in Nature Portfolio found ‘lab-grown’ to be the least favourable term among consumers (alongside ‘artificial meat’) too, while ‘cell-cultured’ and ‘cell-cultivated’ were the most popular. This is echoed by a 2021 GFI survey of 44 industry CEOs, 75% of whom preferred ‘cultivated’ meat. And in 2022, APAC stakeholders signed a memorandum of understanding declaring ‘cultivated’ as the preferred English-language term for these alternatives.
Mainstream media reporters continue to use the term lab-grown despite repeated requests from industry to stop doing so. One main reason journalists should rethink the term? It’s inaccurate. In fact, cultivated meat at commercial scale is not produced (or grown) in a lab environment. Rather, like most foods in our supermarkets, it is made in a food factory.
In 2021, Upside Foods strongly discouraged the use of terms like ‘lab-grown’ or ‘lab-based’, ‘synthetic’ and ‘fake’. It argued that ‘lab-grown’ suggests cultivated meat would always be made in a lab – but once it scales up, it could likely be made in a food-production-like environment. “The labelling of cultivated meat and poultry products will be a crucial component of how our industry conveys the basic nature, essential characteristics, and value of these products to consumers,” the company said.
4) Removing FBS from production is key to the industry’s long-term sustainability
One of the biggest controversies surrounding cultivated meat is the use of fetal bovine serum, a growth medium derived from cows. The use of this serum meant cell-cultured meat produced with it wasn’t animal-free – since it relied upon genetically altering animal cells – and Mosa Meat called the ingredient “not sustainable, reliable or scalable”.
The Dutch company ditched the serum in 2019, and last year published its formulation for developing a serum-free way to produce cultivated meat. “Using a method called RNA sequencing, we can study the changes in gene expression that the cells undergo when they differentiate into muscle,” the company said. It paved the way for companies across this sector to develop serum-free offerings.
Japanese startup IntegriCulture also developed cultivated chicken and duck liver cells using a serum-free medium, and South Korea’s CellMEAT created a serum-free cell culture medium to drive down production costs and provide an ethical cell-cultured meat option.
In fact, many of the more established cultivated meat companies are either phasing out or no longer using FBS in their production but the controversy remains, especially for industry detractors.
Courtesy: CellMEAT
5) Total funding to date for cultivated meat startups is close to $3B
In its latest report, GFI report states that cultivated meat startups have raised a total of $2.78 billion in venture funding since 2016. In 2022, the sector reeled in $896 million – and while this was a 33% year-on-year drop, the amount still outperformed the overall global VC funding decline of 35% year-on-year.
Europe saw higher investments in cell-cultured meat last year than in 2021, while Asia Pacific companies raised more capital in 2022 than any other year. It was also the year that saw the largest single deals for both a cultivated meat (Upside Foods) and seafood company (Wildtype Foods), while the number of unique investors also grew year-on-year by 19% to 679.
Courtesy: Upside Foods
6) Governments around the world are (slowly) starting to fund cultivated meat
Amidst a worsening climate crisis and more frequent food supply disruptions, governments around the world are increasingly looking to future food technologies as potential solutions as part of national food security strategies.
In 2022, Europe led the world in financing cultured meat research and development. The Netherlands announced a €60M investment – a world record – towards building a cellular agriculture ecosystem, while Norway pledged €10M for a five-year programme to develop cellular agriculture and solve cost and scalability issues. In Spain, a €750,000 grant was given to a biotech company to study cultivated meat industrialisation.
Horizon Europe, the EU’s core innovation and research funding programme, also mentioned cultivated meat and seafood as one of its three core pillars, with around €7M set aside for this sector. Meanwhile, the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council poured £20M into research and development for alt-proteins, which include cell-cultured meat.
Across the Atlantic, the US Department of Agriculture awarded a $10M grant in 2021 to Tufts University to build the National Institute for Cellular Agriculture, which was the first-ever government-funded research project. And in September last year, the Biden administration introduced a biotech programme that includes finances for “foods made with cultured animal cells”. Meanwhile, California allocated $5M for alt-protein research in its state budget, becoming the first US state to invest in research for cultivated meat.
In the Middle East, Israel leads the alt-protein wave. In 2021, it invested $18M to fund the world’s largest cultivated meat consortium, while government funding has contributed $13M to early-stage startups and infrastructure.
Asia also saw an increase in government investments in cultivated meat. South Korea awarded a $15M million grant to cell-based meat startup Space F, while Japan provided a ¥240M ($2.2M) grant to build the country’s first bioreactor for cultured meat production. Meanwhile, Singapore and Israel collaborated to award a joint grant to Steakholder Foods and Umami Meats to develop 3D-printed cultivated grouper fish. Notably, the Singaporean government has made alternative proteins and cultivated meat a key part of its 30 by 2030 food security plan.
7) Only 2 Countries Allow For The Commercial Sale of Cultivated Meat
As of today, only 2 countries have given cultivated meat the regulatory green light.
In 2020, Singapore famously became the first country in the world to approve the sale of cultivated meat after granting regulatory approval to Eat Just, the parent company of GOOD Meat. Since then, a host of companies have flocked to the island nation to pass through its regulatory process and enter the market. Earlier this year, Singapore also became the first country to grant regulatory approval for the use of serum-free media in cultivated meat (also awarded to GOOD Meat).
In June, the US became just the second country on the list to greenlight the sale of cell-cultured meat, as GOOD Meat and Upside Foods passed the premarket regulatory review process for cultivated chicken.
Many countries have regulatory systems in place for alt-proteins, but they are yet to grant approval to companies for sale. The Netherlands has, however, approved cultivated meat and seafood tastings. And in July, Aleph Farms submitted the first regulatory application for cell-cultured meat in Europe, filing for approval in Switzerland. Days later, it also applied for clearance in the UK. But so far, no cultured meat company has filed for regulatory approval in the EU. Israel is another locus of activity with more cultivated meat companies per capita than almost anywhere, and pundits have predicted it could be next for regulatory approval, but so far, the jury is still out.
Courtesy: Good Meat
8) Only a small handful of restaurants in the world have served diners cultivated meat
Currently, only a handful of restaurants across the globe are selling cultivated meat, with Singapore’s regulatory approval paving the way for eateries to debut these alternatives. In 2020, after the approval was granted, 1880 became the world’s first restaurant to serve cultivated meat, namely GOOD Meat’s chicken. This was followed by JW Marriot’s Madame Fan restaurant, which replaced all chicken items on its menu with GOOD Meat’s product in 2021, and Huber’s Butchery and Bistro, which also introduced the company’s cultivated chicken on its menu in 2022 where it remains on the menu today.
And in July, San Francisco’s Bar Crenn, owned by chef Dominique Crenn, became the first US restaurant to serve cultivated meat in the US – with Upside Foods’ chicken – followed a week later by chef José Andrés’s Washington DC eatery China Chilcano, also serving GOOD Meat’s cell-cultured chicken.
9) From cultivated meat to cell-base coffee, chocolate and fur: how the industry’s tech inspired alternatives beyond food
While the technology for cultivated meat was originally developed to make a slaughter-free alternative to animal flesh, the industry inspired entrepreneurs and scientists from all kinds of other sectors to use the science to find cell-based alternatives to other high-emission products. Several companies are producing an animal-free alternative to dairy Indo-American startup Brown Foods, Canada’s Opalia, and Israel’s Wilk, which makes yoghurt from cultivated milk fat. Meanwhile, startups like Australia’s Me& and US-based Biomilq are pioneering cultivated breast milk.
There’s also cultivated chocolate, with startups like Israel’s Celleste Bio and California Cultured leading the pack. The latter is now also working on cell-based coffee, something researchers from Finland’s VTT Technical Research Centre say they developed in 2021 with French startup Stem working on the beanless coffee alternative too.
10) Cultivated meat and price parity: an ongoing battle
Alongside regulatory approval, the cost of these products is the biggest obstacle for the cultivated meat industry to overcome. But there have been major steps forward in this area. 10 years after Dr Post and his team’s showcased the first beef burger tasting in what reportedly cost over $300,000 for two patties, the cost is now closer to approximately $100 per pound (some companies have suggested a few hundred per pound, others have quoted under $100, so this is an average) thanks to continuous R&D and production scaling.
While at Bar Crenn, Upside Foods’ chicken is part of a six-course $150 prix fixe tasting menu – on par with (or cheaper than) many fine-dining tasting menus, the company is likely losing money per serve (hence the very limited availability of the menu), and we are still a while away from cultivated meat being able to compete with conventional meat or even plant-based meat
While GFI predicts that cultivated meat could reach cost parity with its traditional counterparts by as early as 2030 and further analysis by industry supplier Ark Biotech highlighted how cost-competitive cultivated meat could be a reality, many industry insiders are more cautious. Startups want to scale, but a lack of bioreactor facilities, a need for more funding, and the high cost of media (including FBS-free serum) mean the industry is unlikely to compete with supermarket beef chuck anytime soon.
Beyond Meat’s first new ad campaign after a difficult year sees the plant-based meat brand go back to its roots – literally. Titled There’s Goodness Here, Beyond tackles misinformation about plant-based meat in a subtle response to the meat industry’s targeted ads over the years. Crucially, the campaign puts an oft-overlooked member of the agri-food system at the centre of the action: the farmer.
The new ad highlights Steven, a fifth-generation fava bean farmer from North Dakota. (Fava beans are one of Beyond Meat’s key ingredients.) It is set in a rural field, where Steven takes the viewer through his rows of crops, while a voiceover explains how Beyond turns plants into meat and extols the environmental and health virtues of its products.
“From these crops,” the narrator says, “we get protein and run it through a simple and clean process of heating, cooling, and pressure to form plant-based meats that are better for you.”
The meat industry’s campaign against the plant-based industry
The ad marks Beyond’s first response to years of coordinated ads by meat industry interest groups, run by the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) since 2019. The smear campaign involved print ads, newspaper op-eds, video features and target websites like Clean Food Facts. The CCF took a shot at the processed nature of plant-based meats, and their long, complex ingredient lists.
One ad pit vegan meat against dog food, with a side-by-side comparison of the ingredient lists asking consumers to guess which is which. Meanwhile, a video campaign used a clip from Beyond CEO Ethan Brown’s interview with CBS, where he talked about reproducing amino acids and fats from plant-based sources to replicate meat. CCF proceeded to list a partial ingredient list from Beyond to show it takes more than just those two elements to “make fake meat”, adding that “not all ingredients these are good for you”, without explaining why.
But perhaps the CCF’s biggest attack on plant-based meat came during the 2020 Super Bowl – an ad that featured Spelling Bee participants struggling with words like methylcellulose and propylene glycol (which it claimed were “chemicals” used for “synthetic meats”). “If you can’t spell it or pronounce it,” concluded the ad, “maybe you shouldn’t be eating it.”
Where Beyond focuses on farm and ingredients, Impossible fights back against CCF and meat industry tactics
Where Beyond takes a more muted approach, the response from its closest competitor Impossible Foods is more direct, explicitly calling out the meat industry.
For example, the company parodied the CCF’s spelling bee ad, where a child is confused after being asked to spell “poop”. The judge goes on to explain how there’s “lots of poop in the places where pigs and chickens are chopped to pieces to make meat”, and a voiceover highlights research that found 300 samples of ground beef to contain “fecal bacteria”. In response to the CCF’s last line, Impossible’s ad says: “Just because a kid can spell ‘poop’, doesn’t mean you or your kids should be eating it.”
Impossible’s newest Making Meat History campaign is a more direct retaliation than Beyond’s latest commercial. The former’s The Summer of Impossible ad – released in June – takes the form of a musical, discussing the differences and similarities between plant- and animal-based meat.
Beyond’s ad puts the focus on its ingredient label. Its Beyond Steak, which debuted last year and which the company described as having a ‘cleaner’ and simpler ingredient list – wheat gluten, fava beans, pomegranate concentrate, spices and flavourings, sunflower lecithin, and fruit and vegetable juice colour, became the first meat product – vegan or conventional – to be certified by the American Heart Association this past May.
Beyond uses this win to address the “unclean” and “unhealthy” rhetoric the CCF ads pursue, labelling its new product as “heart-healthy steak from the Heartland” in the ad campaign.
After a turbulent year, Beyond readies for an uptick
It’s no secret that the last year or so has been tough going for Beyond Meat. Retail sales for plant-based meat have seen a continuous decline, and Beyond has been hit hard. It failed to meet targets in 2022, with revenue dropping for five consecutive quarters ending April 1 this year. In May, its stock tumbled to a new low of $10.02 – far from its highs of over $239 following its July 2019 IPO.
The meat giant was forced to lay off 19% of its staff – around 200 employees – last year, and is now facing a class-action lawsuit over claims it misled its investors about its production and growth plans. It has also entered an equity distribution agreement with Goldman Sachs to sell shares worth up to $200M.
With its new ad campaign, Beyond goes back to its roots, spotlighting the very people who form the bedrock of any food business: farmers. The tagline for its new There’s Goodness Here campaign is ‘Back to the Farm’, putting the producer at the heart of its messaging. Highlighting the story of Steven, a farmer who decided to grow fava beans for products like Beyond Meat, is a laudable step towards Beyond’s commitment to transparency and giving back.
“Our story begins with sun, soil, water, and a seed,” the voiceover says at the beginning of the ad. “It begins in fields.” It continues by explaining the soil-positive effects of these crops, but stresses the fact that farmers also benefit: “It helps farmers keep their fields and soil healthy, naturally.”
Keying in on the importance of farmers is crucial, especially since a common criticism of the plant-based meat industry is that it puts meat farmers out of business. In a world that is becoming more ethical and hoping to be more sustainable every day, positioning its products as planet-, health- and people-friendly could be just what Beyond needs.
Dutch startup Meatable has raised $35M in funding to scale the production and accelerate the commercial launch of its cultivated pork. Bringing the total funding received by the company to $95M, the announcement comes a month after it worked with Mosa Meat, HollandBIO and the Dutch government to create a ‘code of practice’ facilitating cultivated meat tastings in the country.
The Series B investment round was led by Agronomics, and so Invest-NL join as a new investor, contributing $17M. Meatable aims to use the funds to scale its processes and speed up the commercial launch of its cultivated pork. The scaling and optimisation of its manufacturing processes will also help it become cost-competitive with conventional meat.
“Our pursuit for appropriate protein alternatives that further a sustainable and circular society remains ceaseless,” said Bastiaan Gielink, senior investment manager at Invest-NL. “The breakthroughs achieved by Meatable have convinced us that they possess the know-how and team to make this potential a reality.”
Meatable eyes 2024 Singapore launch
Courtesy: Meatable
In October 2022, Meatable partnered with Singapore’s ESCO Aster, the only regulator-approved contracted cultivated meat manufacturing facility in the world, in its bid towards achieving approval from the Singapore Food Agency. And in May, it hosted its first cultivated meat tasting event in the city-state, with the goal of launching its pork sausages and dumplings in select restaurants and retailers in 2024.
Meatable co-founder and CEO Krijn de Nood confirmed to Green Queen that the company will be looking to expand to the US after the Singapore launch, before exploring other markets, depending on the regulatory processes. The US became just the second country to approve the sale of cultivated meat products in June, granting regulatory clearance to Upside Foods and Good Meat.
“In order to gain regulatory approval in the US, we’re working with the relevant US experts and authorities on this matter – including the US Food and Drug Administration and the United States Department of Agriculture,” said de Noord. “Our application in Singapore gives us useful points of reference as well.”
“To create Meatable’s cultivated meat, our team first isolates a single animal cell, taken harmlessly from an animal. While immortalised cell lines are more commonly found in the industry, they require an alteration of the cells to allow them to multiply indefinitely,” explained de Nood.
The company’s patented tech instead uses pluripotent stem cells (PSCs), which “have the natural ability to keep on multiplying and to do so rapidly” – and these double in just 24 hours. “The difficulty with using PSCs is that it can be more challenging to change them from stem cells into more specialised cells, such as muscle or fat,” said de Nood. “However, by using these cells in combination with patented opti-o technology, we’re able to produce real muscle and fat cells that are fully differentiated in just [eight] days.” That’s about 30 times faster than it takes to rear a pig for pork on the farm.
“This is coupled with a perfusion process that allows the team to work in a continuous cycle to generate very high cell densities,” he added. “This means we can grow a lot of cells in our bioreactors, and harvest cultured meat from the reactors continuously. This is a great step forward as it increases productivity and makes the process easy to scale.
“Altogether, this means that when it comes to making real cultivated meat, we have the tools to make the process extremely efficient and one that can scale to serve customers around the world.”
Asked about consumer perception of cultured meat – people who are vegetarian or vegan may be uneasy about the idea of eating meat grown from an animal cell – de Nood stresses that cultivated meat isn’t “like meat” – it is meat.
“Cultivated meat addresses some of the concerns people might have about eating traditional meat. For example, there is no harm done to animals and it will in time be much more environmentally friendly to produce than industrially farmed options. In the end, cultivated meat will be a dietary choice, just like any other. We are aiming to make that choice as self-explanatory as possible.”
A 2021 poll conducted by Israeli cultured meat producer Aleph Farms – which applied for regulatory approval in Switzerland and the UK last month – showed that 87-89% of Gen Zers, 84-85% of millennials, 76-77% of Gen Xers, and 70-74% of Boomers were at least somewhat open to trying cultivated meat.
“These numbers are growing every day,” said de Nood. “We know that education is essential. The more people know about cultivated meat, the more they are open to it and willing to try.”
Israeli-cultivated meat startup Aleph Farms has filed for regulatory approval to put its cell-based steak on restaurant menus in the UK, reports Bloomberg. The alt-protein producer made the application on July 21, days after applying for approval in Switzerland, which was the first such filing in Europe.
Aleph Farms, which makes cell-based whole-cut meat, is the first cultivated meat company to apply for regulatory clearance with the UK’s Food Standards Agency. It plans to start production in the UK in the next few years and is in talks with potential commercial partners.
“The strategy is to file in the UK and Switzerland which are interesting markets,” Aleph Farms CEO Didier Toubia said. “We believe the UK will take a couple of years, but the potential is huge.”
Aleph Farms steak.
The regulatory race
Post-Brexit, the UK is reviewing novel food regulation changes that could speed up cell-based and precision fermentation approvals. However, it still relies on the European regulatory framework. No cell-based meat company has yet filed for regulatory approval in the EU, where the process can be seen as opaque and complicated.
“The EU must develop a coherent strategy to support the sustainable protein sector and ensure regulatory processes are clear, in order to reap the benefits of cultivated meat,” Seth Roberts, policy manager at GFI Europe, told Bloomberg.
Cultivated meat is grown via animal cells in bioreactors, and is seen as a cruelty-free and more sustainable alternative to meat. Cell-based chicken has been available in Singapore – a hotbed for cultivated meat – since December 2020, when Eat Just gained the world’s first such regulatory approval. And in June, the US too issued its first approval to Upside Foods and Eat Just’s Good Meat.
Israeli startup Chunk Foods‘ plant-based whole-cut meat is now on the menu at Charley’s Steak House in Orlando – the first time a steakhouse chain is offering a vegan alternative. Backed by Robert Downey Jr’s VC firm FootPrint Coalition, Chunk Foods’ biomass-fermented filet mignon is priced at $69.
Chunk Foods uses solid-state fermentation and combines plant-based ingredients with food-grade organisms to create its whole-cut beef alternative. Whole cuts have often been described as the “holy grail” of alt-meat, and this collaboration follows the appearance of Redefine Meat’s 3D-printed alternative on restaurant menus in Europe and Israel.
Chunk Foods’ journey
Chunk Foods makes vegan whole-cut steak | Courtesy: Chunk Foods
Founded in 2020 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chunk Foods raised $15m in seed funding last year – which founder Amos Golan called the biggest seed round ever for an Israeli company. Using solid-state fermentation allows the product to be “highly tunable”, and makes it cheaper than high-moisture extrusion or submerged fermentation, which calls for expensive steel vessels and downstream processing tech.
While its vegan whole-cut beef uses cultured soy and wheat, the company says it is working on products without these ingredients for diners with allergies. After beef, it plans to develop vegan pork, lamb and poultry alternatives. As reported by TechCrunch, this will be aided by the opening of a new factory in Israel, described by Golan as “one of the largest plant-based whole-cuts factories in the world”.
Chunk Foods’ vegan steak has already appeared on the menus of several New York City restaurants, including Coletta, Anixi and The Butcher’s Daughter. And while other plant-based whole cuts – like the aforementioned Redefine Meat and Meati‘s mycelium-based alternatives – have made it to eatery menus, Chunk Foods’ collaboration with Charley’s Steak House marks the first time a steakhouse is offering a vegan option.
Charley’s Steak House’s inclusivity bid
Charley’s Steak House is now serving plant-based whole-cut meat | Courtesy: Chunk Foods
Part of the Talk of the Town Restaurant Group, Charley’s Steak House has been around since 1984. This move marks a milestone moment for the eatery and reflects its commitment to more inclusive dining.
“At our core, we serve the finest steaks and seafood, and we have been searching for over 15 years for a plant-based option for our guests that meets our standards,” said Talk of the Town VP and COO, Seth Miller. “We are excited to introduce our customers to Chunk steak; this partnership provides a solution that is in line with our quality expectations that we place on every item we serve. If it’s not the best, we won’t serve it.”
Chunk Foods says its steaks are “extremely versatile” when it comes to the cooking method – they can be “pan-seared, basted, grilled, smoked, stewed, braised, BBQ, and baked, the same way beef is prepared”. This affords a greater level of creativity and eschews the need for intensive chef training.
“At Chunk, we’re passionate about pushing boundaries,” said Golan. “Together [with Charley’s Steak House], we’re ensuring that all guests, regardless of dietary preference, can enjoy an exceptional steakhouse experience.”
More and more companies are successfully debuting their vegan whole cuts to the North American market, with New School Foods‘ salmon filet and Tender Food‘s beef steaks, pulled pork and chicken breasts being prime examples as plant-forward consumers look for texture and format variety beyond mince-based burgers, sausages and nuggets.
The link between coffee and climate change is well-documented. The industry has been hit with low harvests, uneven yields and uncertainty due to extreme temperatures and changing weather conditions. Coffee is among the foods with the highest greenhouse gas emissions, and increased demand is now leading to deforestation and human rights violations. One touted solution is beanless coffee.
Just like plant-based milk and cell-based meat, molecular, beanless coffee is a drink comprised of alternative ingredients, made to resemble your conventional cup of joe. With climate change a real threat to coffee – 60% of all coffee species face the threat of extinction, and 50% of all coffee-growing land may not be arable by 2100 – it makes for an intriguing innovation.
Here are seven businesses selling beanless coffee:
Atomo
Courtesy: Atomo Coffee
Probably the brand most ubiquitous with molecular coffee, Seattle-based Atomo was founded in 2019 by Andy Kleitsch and Jarret Stopforth. The startup began making its ‘lab-grown’ coffee with upcycled ingredients like watermelon seeds and sunflower seed husks and stems. Now, the focus has shifted to upcycled date pits, which are blended with grapes, chicory root and tea-derived caffeine to form a coffee-like drink.
Atomo’s current lineup contains three molecular cold brew cans: Classic Black, Ultra Smooth, and Oat Milk Latte. The first two have an identical ingredient list, but different roast profiles, while the latter resulted from a collaboration with London-based oat milk brand Minor Figures. The startup claims its lab-grown coffee uses 94% less water and emits 93% fewer carbon emissions than conventional cold brew.
Its website lists a medium roast and its decaf counterpart that can be sold as espresso grounds. The brand is also developing a hot-brewed ground coffee alternative that can be made the same way as regular coffee.
Atomo also addresses concerns about the livelihoods of coffee farmers over a switch to beanless coffee. “A transition of that scale is very unlikely, considering the global consumption of coffee is two billion cups a day,” the website reads. “Our goal is not to displace global coffee farmers… Coffee consumption worldwide is growing at a rapid pace forcing coffee farmers to increase production. To increase production along with changing climate conditions is forcing them to expand their growing areas which leads to deforestation and increased water consumption.”
Minus’ beanless cold brew comprises seven principal upcycled ingredients: date seeds, chicory, sunflower seeds, carob, lentils, grape seeds and millet malt. All these are first roasted, and then fermented to create an extract that boasts “bold, orange peel acidity and an undercurrent of sweet cherry and dark chocolate”. The natural caffeine content is extracted from tea leaves.
The finished cold brew has tasting notes of cacao nibs, cherry and brown sugar, with each ingredient creating a complex flavour layer. Each 250ml can retails for $5, using 94% less water and producing 91% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than regular cold brew.
On the subject of farmers, Minus says: “We are partnering with an organisation in Central America that is helping coffee farmers transition to agroforestry systems and crops that are more climate-resilient and revenue-generating for them.”
Northern Wonder
Moving away from cold brew, Dutch food tech brand Northern Wonder – founded in 2021 by David Klingen, Bas Franse, Andreas Giel and Onno Franse – makes Coffee-Free Coffee capsules and filter blends.
Its medium-roast ground filter blend can be prepared like traditional filter coffee, while its beanless coffee pods are Nespresso-compatible. Both are available in caffeinated and decaf versions. The brand is also developing espresso-style grounds, cold brew and – what is likely to create a huge buzz – whole beans.
The filter blend contains a roasted blend of lupin beans, barley, rye, chickpeas and chicory, while the capsules contain roasted lupin, barley, rye, fig, chickpea and chicory. Both are complemented with blackcurrant and a synthetic caffeine source (the pods also have carob). The capsules are made from plant-based composites.
The company conducted its first Life Cycle Assessment this year, which found a 76% reduction in carbon emissions, as well as the use of 95% less water and 66% less land.
Northern Wonder also alludes to the demand potential for beanless coffee when it comes to displacing farmers: “There is such good demand for coffee that existing coffee growers will be able to continue their work. We only try to combat deforestation by limiting (a bit) the need of further expansion of land used for coffee growing. Less demand for coffee limits the role coffee will play as a driver of deforestation.”
Prefer
Founded in 2022 by neuroscientist Jake Berber and chemist-turned-food scientist Tan Ding Jie, Singapore-based Prefer makes bean-free ground coffee. It uses a novel fermentation process that converts food byproducts from beer, bread and tofu manufacturing into key coffee aroma molecules.
The brand says that although it has started with coffee, its fermentation technology has the potential to create more affordable and sustainable flavours. This process is also said to be carbon-neutral, and the end goal is to create alternatives to threatened natural flavours like cacao, vanilla
Voyage Foods
Courtesy: Voyage Foods
Californian food tech startup Voyage Foods makes ethical pantry staples like nut-free nut butters and cacao-less chocolate spread. It has received $41.7M in funding to date, and is now working on a beanless coffee offering.
The details are currently under wraps, but going by the popularity of its other alternatives, it seems like this product will have a bright future. Voyage Foods says the eventual coffee can be drunk as is, or with milk.
Zero Coffee
Courtesy: Cult Food Science
Marketing its product as ‘cell-based coffee’, Canadian food tech pioneerCult Food Science – the parent company of Minus Coffee – will soon launch Zero Coffee, a bean-free sparkling beverage.
The brand says its canned coffee eliminates the unsustainable land use and deforestation associated with conventional coffee farming. It is also launching Free Candy, a performance gummy with cell-based collagen.
“The products that bring us so much joy — an afternoon coffee or sweet snack — so often rely on environmentally harmful ingredients,” said Joshua Errett, Cult Food’s VP of product development. “Cult Foods is providing a sustainable alternative with its Zero Coffee and Free Candy products, making the joy of coffee or candy truly guilt-free.”
Stem
Staying on the theme of cell-based coffee, scientists at Finland’s VTT Technical Research Centre have created coffee from a batch of coffee stem cells produced via cellular agriculture. These enable the researchers to cultivate coffee beans in a bioreactor, which is filled with a nutrient-rich medium, where the plant cells proliferate and grow biomass, which is then roasted.
The research centre said in 2021 that it will take at least four years to make cell-based coffee viable for retail. On this path is Parisian food tech firm Stem, which claims to be the world’s first startup developing mass-produced cell-cultured coffee. It uses coffee byproducts like used grounds and upcycled cherry pulp (cascara), putting them under a harmonious upcycling loop.
“We begin the journey with undifferentiated coffee cell materials from selected varieties, propagate them in a liquid suspension using a plant growth media before proceeding to upscale the culture in a bioreactor through a fermentation process,” explains its website. This results in a green coffee powder that is dried and roasted, resulting in a product ready to be extracted via regular brewing methods.
The governments of Taiwan and Saudi Arabia have joined a growing list of countries backing the vegan industry, announcing startups and funding, respectively, to create plant-based meat.
Taiwan plans to produce whole cuts via a spin-off startup, while Saudi Arabia has signed two agreements with companies to produce vegan alternatives to meat and dairy. In a year where COP28 has confirmed it will serve mostly vegan food, these are two steps that further link the plant-based industry with governments and lawmakers. But how do these initiatives line up with these nations’ net-zero ambitions and consumption?
Taiwan MOEA’s plant-forward push
Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) announced a special pavilion for the Technology Division at this year’s Bio Asia Taiwan exhibition (July 26-30). Among the two highlighted achievements of the pavilion was the creation of a novel texturisation technology to make whole-cut plant-based meat.
The MOEA will launch a startup by the end of 2023 to produce this alt-meat. It argues that current options on the market are much different from conventional meat, as they are made up of ingredients that are dismantled, emulsified and recombined. The technology developed by the Department of Industrial Technology introduces a multidirectional fibre structure that can emulate the muscle structures of beef, pork, chicken and fish.
The MOEA suggests the alt-meat is healthier than its counterparts given its simple processing. Using wheat and soy proteins eschews the need for additives and emulsifiers, while providing all the essential amino acids and a high protein content. The nutritionally complete nature of the food is what sets it apart from traditionally tenderised meat substitutes.
The MOEA’s alt-meat was exhibited at Bio Asia Taiwan 2023 | Courtesy: Bio Asia Taiwan
The product has been tested at scale, and is said to be eco-friendly and in line with a low-carbon economy, with samples showcased at Bio Asia Taiwan. The new startup will further develop the technology to add to Taiwan’s product portfolio as it competes in the global vegan market.
According to Dupont, demand for plant-based meat will surge by 25% across Asia-Pacific between 2020 and 2025. Taiwan already exports 80% of all vegan meat produced in the country, and has launched initiatives promoting a plant-forward diet. Its Meat Free Monday organisation secured over 100 pledges from political candidates participating in the 2022 elections to support a Veg-Friendly campaign.
In January, Taiwan approved a landmark climate bill mandating the government to promote low-carbon, plant-based diets. And in the country’s 2050 Net-Zero Transition plan, a low-carbon diet lands top of the pyramid of promotion strategies. This includes the consumption of “low-carbon cultivated agricultural food products”, as well as a push for zero-waste and low-carbon-diet literacy, and food agriculture education.
However, while the climate bill earned praise for highlighting food’s role in tackling climate change – food systems are responsible for a third of all global greenhouse gas emissions – others called for a more blatant approach against animal-based meat.
“As the world comes to grips with the importance of food systems in addressing climate change, we are delighted to see an emphasis on low-carbon diets in Taiwan’s climate legislation,” said Wu Hung, CEO of the Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan. “In light of this development, we call on the Executive Yuan to revisit its 2050 Net Zero Emissions Pathway and Strategy and take steps to address excessive meat consumption,”
The government body aims to encourage a healthy food culture among citizens via high-quality vegetarian substitutes and tap into advanced technology to produce these dairy and meat alternatives. The signing ceremony was accompanied by an exhibition where visitors could sample these vegan products.
Saudi Arabia has among the world’s highest meat consumption per capita ! Courtesy: Mishaal Zahed/Unsplash
Saudi Arabia has also committed to a net-zero target, with an aim to reach the goal by 2060. But it has the biggest net-zero-busting plans for oil and gas expansion in the world, according to the Guardian. Its government also launched a sustainable agriculture challenge this year, which calls for climate-smart farming solutions to improve food production and address food security. But the country has among the highest meat consumption per capita in the world, which exacerbates the need for more programmes like these.
Global governments go green
With these moves, Taiwan and Saudi Arabia are the latest countries whose governments are boosting the development of the alt-protein industry. According to the Good Food Institute, plant-based meat will capture 6% of the global meat and seafood markets. It also reports that Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland have committed over $150M in research and development for plant proteins. Meanwhile, the US Congress allocated $6M to the Department of Agriculture and California promised $5M to three universities for alt-protein research and development.
A host of other countries have been endorsing vegan foods around the world. As part of its Eat Right India campaign, the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare released a poster promoting plant-based food. And in January, Germany announced it was finalising its National Nutritional Strategy, which spotlighted a shift to plant-based diets. Likewise, Scottish capital Edinburgh banned meat in all public schools, hospitals and nursing homes as part of its plant-based pact.
Expanding from plant-based meat, even cultivated protein is seeing a massive amount of interest. The Dutch government has invested €60M into its cellular agriculture industry, while Australian-American startup Change Foods has received two government grants for its animal-free cheese. And in Israel, the world’s largest cultivated meat consortium was approved in April 2022, with $18m in funding.
Following heavy backlash for its meat-intensive menus in previous years, the UN has confirmed it will serve mostly vegan food at the upcoming Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai. The landmark decision is a first for the intergovernmental body and comes after years of campaigning by vegan activists. Coinciding with the UAE’s Year of Sustainability, the move is a firm acknowledgment of the impact of the animal agriculture industry on climate change.
Last year, the annual summit (held in Egypt) hosted its first-ever pavilions dedicated to food system changes, while Glasgow’s COP26 saw the UN introduce climate labels to the meat-heavy food menu, but fail to add food and livestock farming to the agenda. However, in a response to a letter from activists demanding at least three-quarters of this year’s menu be vegan, UAE’s COP28 President-Designate Dr Sultan Al Jaber confirmed the conference’s decision to go plant-forward.
Sent in April, the letter was co-signed by the Youth and Children Constituency of the UNFCCC (YOUNGO) and over 140 youth and civil society organisations, who teamed up with advocacy group ProVeg International. Apart from demanding a predominantly vegan menu, the letter also called for it to be regionally sourced (where possible) and culturally inclusive.
“Progress on climate-friendly catering has already been made at previous COPs and major climate events in Bonn, Glasgow, and Stockholm,” the letter read. “Yet, despite persistent demands from attendees, especially youth, the food on offer at these events has been out of step with the climate emergency.”
In his response, Al Jaber said: “The COP28 Presidency has a firm focus on transformational action on food systems within the wider global climate change agenda. As part of this, we intend to demonstrate sustainable food systems in action at COP28 itself. My team has been working to ensure the availability of plant-based food options that are affordable, nutritious, and locally and regionally sourced, with clear emissions labelling.”
Leaked document reveals sensitive issues for UAE
Dr Sultan Al Jaber is the Presidency-Designate of COP28, and CEO of the UAE’s national oil company | Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons/CC
Following this decision, a document leaked to the Guardian revealed a list of “sensitive and touchy issues” facing the UAE’s presidency of COP28. While the first three pages, filled with “COP28 UAE key messages” and “narrative points”, nod to renewable energy and hydrogen, they fail to mention fossil fuels, oil or gas.
Despite its presidency, the UAE has the world’s third-largest net-zero-busting plans for oil and gas expansion, according to the Guardian. Meanwhile, new fossil fuel developments are incompatible with the 2050 net-zero goals, and experts say slashing the burning of fossil fuels is the biggest and most urgent action needed to curb global heating.
“We need to reduce emissions in the systems we depend on today” is another key message, but former UN climate leader Christiana Figueres called an emissions-only focus, rather than a spotlight on burning fossil fuels, “dangerous” in May.
Additionally, Al Jaber is also the CEO of Adnoc, the UAE national oil company, which the document reveals hasn’t disclosed its emissions or published a sustainability report since 2016. (It adds that Adnoc is “currently conducting necessary studies”.) “Climate ambition” is another issue listed, with the UAE increasing its pledges’ ambition recently. But even then, its pledge would allow the country’s carbon emissions to increase until 2030. Global organisation Climate Action Tracker rates the UAE’s environmental plans as “insufficient”.
Veganism and climate change
Courtesy: Markus Spiske/Unsplash
Despite the controversy, COP28’s decision has been welcomed by environmental activists and vegan advocacy groups. And it’s in line with consumer sentiment in the UAE – 44% of its residents are open to substituting meat and dairy with vegan alternatives.
It comes after a pivotal study in Nature Food last month outlined the significant impact of animal agriculture on climate change. It found that vegan diets can cut planet-heating emissions, land use and water pollution by 75% when compared to meat-heavy diets. Similarly, a 2021 report in the same journal revealed that global greenhouse gas emissions from animal-based food are twice as high as those from plant-based food.
This also follows the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s third assessment report last year, which suggested that shifting to plant-based diets (alongside other alt-protein) could result in a “substantial reduction in direct greenhouse gas emissions from food production”. And it didn’t need to be a fully vegan lifestyle, as the report said adopting a healthy Mediterranean-style diet (rich in grains, vegetables, nuts and moderate amounts of fish and poultry) could be nearly as effective. This outlines the importance of COP28 (November 30 to December 12) going “mostly vegan”, as there is tons of scope for progress.
However, in a leaked draft of the original sixth report, the authors initially recommended a shift towards plant-based diets – before the wording was softened in the final version.
ProVeg will also host the Food4Climate pavilion at this year’s event. “The pavilion will serve as a space to host events, as well as [provide] a showcase for expert discussions and facilitating engagement with a diverse group of COP stakeholders on topics such as agricultural climate mitigation and adaptation solutions.”
It remains to be seen whether this change is a one-off, or if future UN climate conferences continue to adopt predominantly plant-based menus.
