Australia’s first cell-based milk startup, Me&, says it is developing cell-based breast milk just like a human mother would.
Me&’s cellular and molecular technology captures the inbuilt program in breast tissue cells allowing it to control the cell-based milk development and modify its composition to offer superior nutrition. The company recently closed an oversubscribed $2.5 million seed round led by Horizons Ventures and CSIRO Fund Main Sequence.
It’s the latest company to bring novel tech to the infant formula category. Israel-based Wilk and U.S.-based Biomilq are using cell tech to develop human breast milk, and U.S.-based Helaina is using precision fermentation to ‘brew’ breast milk in microbes.
Breast milk from cells
“I’ve had two babies born prematurely and spent their first weeks of life in the NICU,” Esha Saxena, Me& co-founder. She developed the product alongside Dr. Luis Malaver. Combined, they bring together more than 30 years of experience in product development, bioengineering, and cell biology.
Saxena saw the dire need for change when her children were in the NICU, but her motivation also comes from decades of wanting to change the planet for the better. “I was born in India and at a very young age, about 3 [years old], I made a deliberate choice to stop eating meat, almost overnight,” she said.
The Me& team including co-founders Esha Saxena (left) and Luis Malaver (centre).
“It was a big surprise to my family, none of whom were vegetarian at the time, there was nothing I was exposed to that introduced me to the idea, and my mum took me to many pediatricians to have me tested for intolerances, food aversions, all of whom concluded it came down to nothing but, a choice I had made a lot earlier than expected.”
Saxena says there is a global lack of supply and a critical need for human milk “to ensure adequate development of preterm and newborn babies,” she said. “My inspiration for this business is to fill this much-needed gap, and reduce the reliance on cows’ milk that we know is not good for babies, the environment or the animals.”
Bill Bartee, General Partner at Main Sequence says the product is an example of science changing the world for the better.
“We are in the midst of an exciting time in history,” he said. “Advances in science have provided us with the tools to deliver bio-based engineering solutions and build new ways of doing things. The technology has come together to enable us to build biological factories to make new things — and do it very efficiently. The Me& team have harnessed this expertise and paired it with a market need to create a world-first innovation—cell-based fortified human milk.”
Replicating the infant nutrition response of breast milk
The company is based at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne. The institute is a world leader in medical research on infant and child health and development.
“Being based at the Hudson allows us to be part of the translational research ecosystem contributing to critical initiatives in infant health,” Malaver says. “We are fortunate to be next door to world-leading neonatologists and an extensive NICU hospital to stay connected with our customers and tiniest little consumers.”
Photo by Rainier Ridao on Unsplash
According to the founders, there is a very broad spectrum in infant nutrition, and what’s available now is not ideal, they say. Infant formula, most of which is cow’s milk-based, covers the nutritive and non-bioactive factors. Some formulas are including prebiotics, which are critical for gut health development. But these formulas pale in comparison to traditional mother’s milk.
Me& says there are scientific theories that mammary gland receptors interpret the saliva from the baby sucking for bacteria and viruses and the mother’s body can alter the milk’s immunological composition in response. Breast milk is also dynamic in other ways, changing the composition depending on the weather‚ such as offering more hydration on a warm day. Breast milk has more melatonin at night to promote sleep, for example.
Like other cell-based products, Me&’s breast milk delivers near-identical nutrition benefits but at a lower impact than dairy milk—the go-to substitute for human breast milk. Animal agriculture is resource intensive and a leading cause of climate change and deforestation.
“I have fallen in love with the potential of deep biotechnology to solve the problems we are facing today,” Malaver says. “Cell-based human milk represents a huge opportunity to make an impact in both helping vulnerable kids and contributing to ethical and sustainable food production.”
MeliBio’s novel vegan honey will launch in Europe next year through organic food producer Narayan Foods.
Melibio’s honey will see its retail launch in European stores next year; Narayan’s products are available in more than 75,000 stores across Europe. The product launch marks the first time vegan honey of its kind will enter the European market.
California-based Melibio uses plant-based ingredients and novel tech to produce its bee-free honey that looks, tastes, and functions like conventional honey. It even includes plant pollen, but without the impact to bees.
Bee-free honey
While bees play a critical role in our food system, pollinating plants that make up 35 percent of global crop production, honey removal is taxing on hives and can often be deadly. Bee populations face a number of other threats including colony collapse disorder, which has decimated hives around the world. Conventional agricultural pesticides and herbicides have been linked to their decline, leading the European Union to ban the neonicotinoid class of pesticides.
Melibio co-founders Aaron Schaller and Darko Mandich.
The European announcement comes just a year after Melibio debuted its first prototype for the honey.
Melibio has raised $7.2 million since it launched in 2020; it closed a $5.7 million seed round earlier this year. The company’s goal is to produce honey that doesn’t contribute to biodiversity loss. The company earned a spot on TIME Magazine’s 100 best innovations of 2021 list.
Simplifying honey production
“We know that science can produce delicious and nutritious honey, which is molecularly identical to traditional honey, at no cost to our precious bees,” Darko Mandich, MeliBio co-founder and CEO said in a statement earlier this year.
Melbio’s honey
“At MeliBio, we are here to introduce certainty in the supply chain and help companies simplify their honey sourcing, while making their honey-based formulations sustainable and delicious. Together with our clients, we can make the future of honey better, for both humans and for bees” said Mandich who worked in the honey industry prior to launching Melibio.
“Being part of the honey industry for eight years helped me to understand all the challenges ranging from the broken global supply chain to issues of adulteration and most importantly large scale die-offs that threaten 20,000 bee species,” Darko Mandich, the co-founder and CEO of Berkeley, California-based MeliBio, told Green Queen in 2021.
“If we don’t bring sustainability through innovation into this industry, it could seriously harm bees and humans. So I decided to move from Europe to California and join the emerging community that is working on producing animal products just without the animals.”
Following its investment in Standing Ovation earlier this year, the Bel Group says it has entered into an exclusive partnership with the dairy producer to bring precision fermentation into its catalog of products.
The Bel Group, whose brands include Babybel, Laughing Cow, and Boursin, recently launched vegan versions of several of its cheese offerings. And it looks to be that more is on the way with the new partnership. The announcement follows Standing Ovation’s recent €12 million Series A funding round, which closed in September.
Microbial fermentation cheese
France-based Standing Ovation produces dairy cases through microbial fermentation, eliminating the need for dairy cows. The process delivers dairy casein with the same taste and texture but with a significantly lower carbon footprint.
“We have developed a unique process to produce non-animal caseins,” Frédéric Pâques and Romain Chayot, respectively President and Scientific Director, co-founders of Standing Ovation, said in a joint statement.
“Our ambition today is to see the first products arrive on the market quickly, with a very wide distribution. We are proud to partner with Bel Group to accelerate the deployment of these alternative proteins, whose market is growing exponentially, and where we want to play a key role. We look forward to working with a Group with proven cheese expertise, iconic brands and a collaboration model that is ideal for start-ups.”
Imagining tomorrow’s cheese recipes
The companies are expected to work together on the development of new products featuring Standing Ovation’s casein. Bel Group’s R&D center is located in Vendôme, France, and Standing Ovation’s facility is in Paris. The groups say Standing Ovation’s ability to produce casein by fermentation and Bel’s unique cheese-making expertise allow for easy integration and innovation of products and processes.
“Caseins are essential to the quality of cheeses—they are nutritious and provide firmness, texture, and the capacity to melt,” Anne Pitkowski, Bel Group Research and Application Director, said in a statement.
Standing Ovation dairy | Courtesy
“Standing Ovation’s technology combined with our knowledge of the links between structure and function will enable all these features—and more—to be developed. Our unique cheese-making expertise will put these advances into practice. This partnership opens many possibilities for imagining tomorrow’s cheese recipes and products, combining nutritional quality, accessibility, and responsibility.”
Precision fermentation is making its way to the French cheese market; newcomer Nutropy recently raised €2 million in a pre-seed funding round for its fermentation-based cheese.
Following the first-ever dairy-free festival in Jakarta, Indonesia-based Green Rebel Foods has launched into the plant-based dairy category.
Green Rebel is a leading producer of plant-based protein across Southeast Asia. Its new category launch, dubbed Creamy Crew, which includes cheese, sauces, and dressings, builds on its continuing innovation in the plant-based sector.
The new range is available now through the company’s website and select partners, and the company says it will begin shipping across other Asian markets early next year. The inaugural products in the dairy-free range include egg-free mayonnaise, a caesar-style dressing, and cheddar-style block cheese.
Plant-based alternatives for Asian communities
“While dairy and dairy products are not a traditional part of Asian cuisine, it is not uncommon for these products to be found and eaten in many Asian households due to globalisation and global trade,” Max Mandias, Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Green Rebel Foods, said in a statement. “We at Green Rebel Foods have a vision of creating plant-based alternatives that suit Asian communities around the world, and this category, Creamy Crew, is a continuation of that promise.”
Green Rebel co-founders Max Mandias and Helga Angelina
The demand for dairy-free options in Asia is increasing as the prevalence of lactose intolerance is extremely high; more than 90 percent of Asian populations can’t tolerate dairy. A recent survey from Rakuten Insight found that plant-based milk is the leading plant-based category in Indonesia.
Dairy 2.0
Unlike other parts of the world where younger generations are embracing the alternatives, Indonesia’s largest demographic is the 40-54-year-old segment, driven in large part by concerns over diabetes as well as lactose intolerance.
Green Rebel debuts cheddar-style blocks | Courtesy
Like meat, conventional dairy is also a key contributor to climate change, with livestock responsible for about 60 percent of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.
Green Rebel says its new dairy-free products contain less fat than the conventional and lower in calories.
“Through Creamy Crew, we continue to innovate to introduce plant-based products that are healthy and delicious,” Mandias said, helping consumers to enjoy their favorite variety of dishes even without milk and eggs.”
Asian alternative meat maker OmniFoods has debuted a new patented technology, dubbed OmniNano Vegan Fat, that will provide the juiciness that consumers expect from animal meat and power a new line of vegan beef, chicken and pork products.
OmniFoods, part of the Green Monday group, was the first plant-based meat company to launch a mince pork meat alternative back in 2018. The company then debuted a plant-based luncheon meat and plant-based pork strips in 2020, followed by a complete line of plant-based seafood including tuna, fish fillet and crab cakes in 2021. Omni also sells dozens of OmniEat products including meal kits, dumplings and other Asian-inspired ready-to-eat dishes.
The food tech, which is headquartered in Hong Kong with a R&D arm in Canada, has launched its award-winning product ranges in over 20 markets globally including in 2,000 Walmart stores in the United States, the United Kingdom, mainland China and various Asian countries
“OmniNano Vegan Fat will bring the sensory experience and the taste of OMNI products to the next level,” said OmniFoods founder and CEO David Yeung in a statement. “The new Plant-based Beef Cut that applies Vegan Fat can make a huge difference in juiciness and texture, while we don’t have to worry about the health implications of animal fat and cholesterol.
OmniFoods’s Plant-Based Chicken Wings
The importance of fat in meat
Animal meat is high in saturated fat and cholesterol, two ingredients that consumers are often looking to minimize in their diet.
However, fat is a vital component of meat, helping to make it tender and provide the juiciness and taste that so many people love. OmniNano Vegan Fat is a patented technology that helps to lock in flavor as well as improve the taste and texture of plant-based meat products. The technology will be applied to a new line of products that the company is planning to launch in 2023, including Plant-Based Beef Cut and Tips, Plant-Based Chicken Wings and Plant-Based Pork Cutlet.
Asian consumers in particular consume the animal version of these meat cuts in large quantities, and there are very few plant-based alternative options available across the region. “Our goal is to continue to innovate and differentiate with our focus on high consumption meat in Asia and global, namely Pork Cutlet and Chicken Wings, as we see this as a major opportunity because we see the demand of these products are not being fulfilled in the market,” says Yeung.
OmniPork Plant-Based Pork Cutlet
Alternative fats on the rise
Fat is having a moment, with alternative fat startups announcing major raises, product debuts and hybrid cultivated meat announcements. In the same October week, microbial fat startup Nourish shared it has raised a $28.6 million Series A, while cultivated fat maker Hoxton Farms landed a $22 million Series A. Earlier this week, Thrilling Foods patented its fat-streaker vegan bacon and over the summer, Lypid celebrated Taiwan’s largest coffee chain showcasing six menu items featuring the startup’s proprietary vegan PhytoFat.
Alternative protein has a naming problem. As a burgeoning global population gets hungrier and hungrier for meat, do we need to reframe the industry’s identity?
I’ve been covering the alternative protein industry for over 6 years. At this point, I have read over 1,000 press releases detailing the mission of umpteen food tech startups, and I have attended hundreds of conferences where I have listened to unending hours of panels (and spoken on my fair share). I have met visionary founder after visionary founder. I have edited and published countless articles about their companies. The details of their mission may vary, but the basic storyline is always the same; no matter what country they hail from or what vertical they are disrupting, and it goes something like this:
‘The global food system is broken. We can’t feed 8/9/10 billion people with our existing food industrial complex. It’s not sustainable (too many GHG emissions), it’s not ethical (too many animals slaughtered), it’s not safe (too many antibiotics causing superbug resistance)…’
This week saw a major demographic marker crossed globally. In the midst of the COP27 hullabaloo, where food was given a pavilion for the first time ever despite the fact that the food system accounts for over a third of all global GHG emissions (yes, it’s true, and yes, it’s ridiculous), the global population finally crossed the eight billion mark.
NB: it’s actually a major event in name only because we don’t actually know exactly how many people there are on the planet at any given time. The counter is based on models managed by the United Nations using the best data available from national population censuses and, as such, the final tallies are our best approximations. So, technically, we could have passed 8 billion people two years ago, or we could pass 8 billion people two years from now. But we are nothing without our models and, so, officially speaking, we are celebrating the big 8 billion as of this week. November 15th, to be exact. But I digress.
So here we are, 8 billion people. Finally. What does that mean for the alternative protein industry?
Well, for starters, we might want to rebrand. One of our biggest mistakes as an industry may have been to group the many technologies that will help bolster our food system against the consequences of a growing global population amidst a worsening climate crisis under the moniker alternative protein. Who wants an ‘alternative’? Not your average consumer. The mere idea of calling something an alternative is reductive. It pits said alternative as a lesser option next to the superior original. By calling it ‘alternative’, we are signaling a compromise. And I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that no one wants to compromise.
But the nomenclature problem goes beyond the inherently negative branding around the term alternative. It’s actually a definition problem because the reality of the situation is that there is nothing ‘alternative’ about alternative protein. A better description would be ‘additional’ protein, or ‘supplementary’ protein.
What am I talking about, exactly? As countries get richer, more people develop a taste for animal protein, particularly beef. There are many reasons for this, but the gist of it is that, for most of human history, beef was 1) scarce, 2) the most nutritious food in terms of calories per gram, and 3) expensive. To be fair, there’s also 4) it’s delicious (vegans may disagree but billions of humans do enjoy the taste of animal foods). As a marker of status, it’s hard to find a better mascot than beef.
Americans consume the most beef per capita than any other nationality on earth, approximately 25.6kg per person per year. For comparison, the average Chinese citizen consumes 5.8kg per year, and the average Indian eats 5.5kg per year.
India and China are currently the two most populous countries in the world. In both nations, there are still hundreds of millions of people that still need to be lifted out of poverty. When those folks attain a middle-class life that matches that of the average American, they will want animal protein in similar quantities as the average American, as these extrapolated consumption curves illustrate.
We simply can’t meet this increase in demand. We would need at least a whole other planet to do so (some estimates say up to five). We do not have enough water or land to do so, never mind what this increase in demand will do to us in terms of GHG emissions, antibiotic resistance, deforestation, and the many other unfortunate consequences of livestock agriculture.
This isn’t an opinion statement. This is a fact. Our industrial animal agriculture system survives on the premise that there are huge amounts of land that can be used to grow the 1.2 billion metric tons of feed needed to nourish the tens of billions of livestock creatures, not to mention unlimited amounts of water to support this production.
So, to overstate my point, there’s nothing alternative about alternative protein. We need more solutions for protein production because the harsh reality is that, due to the growing demand for high-status animal protein from a burgeoning world population in regions where hundreds of millions are middle-class ascendant, we will need existing industrial animal protein production PLUS the food tech-powered alternatives.
Dubbing them alternatives is missing the entire point of why these so-called alternatives need to exist.
I say we rebrand. Not only would a different term be far more accurate (see arguments above), it would also mean that we don’t start every conversation on a compromised footing.
Instead of saying to your average consumer: ‘Hey, I’m here to replace your bad-for-the-planet-meat with this imitation alternative’, we could try: ‘Hey, you are going to run out of that meat you love. And holy cow, have I got the solution for you.’
Just a thought.
On that note, does anyone have any naming suggestions in mind? In India, the Good Food Institute refers to the industry as smart protein, which I like. But I’m open to any and all submissions.
Lead image: cultivated beef steak, courtesy of Aleph Farms.
Environmentalist and writer George Monbiot joins climate activists on a new manifesto that lays out a sustainable future where all of the world’s food can be grown in an area the size of London.
According to the United Nations, the global population just surpassed eight billion—eleven years after hitting the seven billion mark. And while global food security has been a concern since the population was half its current size, climate change has exacerbated the issue. The climate group Reboot Food may have some answers.
The group has released a manifesto, penned by Joel Scott-Halkes, former coordinator of Extinction Rebellion U.K., along with environmentalist Mark Lynas, scientist Iida Ruishalme, and environmentalist and writer George Monbiot.
The Reboot Food Manifesto
The manifesto outlines four key principles for “rebooting” the food system: a focus on plant-based; brewed proteins, such as precision fermentation; use as little land and ocean as possible and rewild everything else; and open source “everything” to guarantee a just transition.
According to their calculations, 75 percent of global farmland should be restored to wild lands in order to help fight climate change and protect biodiversity. The group says an area smaller than the size of London, which is just over 600 square miles, could produce enough food to feed the world—all eight billion and growing.
Photo by Joachim Süß on Unsplash
“The mainstream environmental movement’s agricultural policies are making things worse not better,” Lynas said, pointing to organic and ‘regenerative’ farming methods that encourage “agricultural sprawl” and what he says have become smokescreens for the livestock industry. “It’s time for sensible environmentalists to unite behind food production techniques that use less land, not more.”
Animal agriculture is a key driver of climate change, accounting for more than 60 percent of all agricultural emissions. Recent warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called for urgent and drastic emissions reductions, specifically methane. Livestock production is one of the largest emitters of methane—a gas that traps more heat than CO2.
The Reboot Food campaign launched at COP27, currently underway in Egypt. The group says governments need to end subsidies for animal agriculture and put those funds toward the development of plant-based food instead. They also call for investing 2.5 percent of GDP over the course of a decade into food tech innovation, banning advertisements for carbon-intensive meat, and limiting patents on new food tech.
They’re also calling for more support for tech including gene-editing and precision fermentation. The tech is already being used by companies including Perfect Day, which makes dairy-identical cheese from genetically altered microbes. The group says this type of tech can be produced at large scale in smaller spaces than conventional agriculture and use renewable power sources such as solar and wind, helping move the food system to a more sustainable version of itself without sacrificing the taste and texture of popular animal foods.
The future of protein
According to the group, precision fermentation is more than 40,000 times more land efficient than conventional beef production, which is where the London example comes in. With that type of protein production efficiency, producing enough food for the global population would be easier than ever before. Other recent research looked at the potential from similar algal productions across the global south that could produce enough nutrient-dense food to feed the world.
“We believe that these measures, when combined, will make the food revolution unstoppable and make nutritious and affordable diets accessible to all the world’s people, while at the same time allowing an unprecedented regeneration of natural ecosystems on spared land. It is the single biggest thing we can do to stop and reverse the sixth mass extinction of biodiversity. And it is essential if we are to respect the Paris targets for tackling the climate emergency,” the group wrote.
Photo by Markus Distelrath via Pexels
“We have an opportunity to grow food that is highly nutritious, fast-growing, and we can do it in environments where we’re not competing for other uses,” said Charles Greene, professor emeritus of earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell and the paper’s senior author. “And because we’re growing it in relatively enclosed and controlled facilities, we don’t have the same kind of environmental impacts.
Writing recently about the climate crisis, Monbiot said the elephant in the room at COP27 “is the cow.”
“But thankfully this time, there really is a recipe for success,” he wrote. “By rebooting our food systems with precision fermentation we can phase out animal agriculture while greatly increasing the amount of protein available for human consumption.”
Notes From the Frontlines of the Sustainable Food Movement – a new opinion column by Irina Gerry
Images of happy cows on pasture hide the ugly truth the dairy industry doesn’t want you to know: dairy production can never be sustainable.
Many of us grew up believing a glass of milk is wholesome and nutritious, and cheese is a delicious natural product that makes just about any dish tastier. We were shown images of happy cows on pastures and told that “milk does a body good”. And yet, there is a darker side to dairy that is hiding behind the marketing veneer.
Did you know that producing 1 liter of milk emits 3.2kg of CO2e. For cheese, that number is 23.9kg of CO2e, which is about equivalent to emissions from burning 10kgs of coal. And that’s just emissions. Dairy production is incredibly water intensive as well. From hay and feed crop irrigation to the water cows drink, to dairy farm operations, an average liter of milk requires 628 liters of water. 1 kg of cheese takes a whopping 5,605 liters to produce. Then, there is a significant amount of land needed for pasture and growing feed for cows.
So, can dairy ever be sustainable?
I don’t believe so, and let me show you why. The core of the issue lies in how milk is made. Cows are mammals, and thus must give birth in order to produce milk. Cows are artificially impregnated as soon as they reach maturity. Once the calf is born it is removed from the mother to be raised separately for slaughter as veal or beef, or to become a “replacement” heifer. The mother cow then goes into “milk production” mode, cycling between feeding stalls and milking stations at the farm 2-3 times daily for 10 months or so, until her milk production begins to wane. Then, a cow may get a 2-month rest period before giving birth to the next calf, and the cycle repeats. A commercial dairy cow is considered “spent” after 4-5 pregnancy cycles and sent to slaughter for meat, marking an end to a rather short and torturous life for the animal.
Milking time at an industrial dairy farm – Source: The Humane League.
It is not difficult to empathize with the pain of separating mothers from newborn calves, or the unusual cruelty of using mothers as milk production machines, or with keeping animals in factory farms for the greater part of their short lives as cogs in our food system. This is not natural. This is not kind. This is not necessary.
But, let’s set that aside for a minute and just talk about sustainability.
Feeling the heat from the climate movement, the dairy industry is attempting to improve its sustainability image by investing in “climate-smart” agricultural practices – using crop rotations and reducing tilling on feed cropland, optimizing watering and fertilizer use, investing in seaweed extracts that promise to reduce methane emissions, and installing biogas digesters to help siphon off some of the methane gas from manure lagoons and selling it off as a source of renewable energy.
Could these improvements make dairy sustainable? Let’s look at them one by one.
Feed and Land:
Cows have to be fed. Dairy cows require about 45kg of feed each day. Given the logistics of frequent milking, dairy cows spend the bulk of their lives indoors. A dairy cow may spend a few weeks on pasture between milking cycles, and a few lucky USDA Organic Certified milk cows are required to get 120 days on pasture each year. That’s still only 30%.
Since dairy cows don’t spend much time on pasture, most of the feed is grown offsite. This requires a lot of land, water and fertilizer. In fact, alfalfa hay, a common cow feed crop, is one of the world’s top GMO Roundup-ready crops, sprayed with glyphosate, which causes air and water contamination at an immense scale. Other feed crops, like corn and soy, occupy some of our most productive agricultural lands. Most of them are also of the GMO/Roundup-ready variety, grown on vast mono-crop fields, sprayed with fossil-fuel-based fertilizer, and processed with massive gas-powered combines, ratcheting up emissions associated with milk production and contributing to eutrophication (waterways and ocean pollution).
Overall, it takes about 100 calories of feed to get 17 calories worth of milk, which is highly inefficient, considering that productive croplands could also be used to grow crops for human consumption, as in the case of oat or soy, which can then be used to make plant-based milk. Yes, there are some exclusively grass-fed operations out there, but we should not confuse them with cows on pasture. Even grass-fed cows spend the majority of their time indoors.
Further, the overall resource need for grass-fed cows is actually higher per liter of milk, requiring more land and resources, which reduces the overall effect of carbon offsets provided by grassland. The recently completed life cycle assessment by Organic Valley coop in the U.S. found that they only reduced the net farm emissions by an average of 15% compared to conventional dairy. Not bad, but it is far from being carbon neutral.
The US dairy industry recently received millions in federal funding under the Climate-Smart Commodities program. Many of the projects focus on incremental emissions reduction associated with feed crop production, such as crop rotations, lower tilling and minimizing fertilizer. However, these improvements are not likely to reduce emissions to zero or be able to compensate for the massive tradeoffs in land use. With re-wilding and re-forestation efforts this land could instead serve as a carbon sink instead.
Water:
Dairy farming requires a lot of water. In addition to the water cows drink, which is about 30-50 gallons per day, there is built-in water demand for growing feed. Alfalfa is a top feed crop for cattle. It also happens to be one of the most water-intensive crops worldwide. In the Western United States, we use 32% of our dwindling freshwater supply just to grow grass and alfalfa for cattle, while only 6% is used for 115 million residents. In fact, 20% of all US dairy is produced in California, which is currently in the grips of a megadrought. California cows alone, require about 20% of California’s water supply, draining aquifers and dams. Filtering our water through grass and animals is an incredibly inefficient way to use this scarce resource.
Filtering our water through grass and animals is an incredibly inefficient way to use this scarce resource.
Irina Gerry
Total dairy water use is typically lower in wetter parts of the world where growing hay may not require irrigation. Limiting production to those areas could create a better water footprint for dairy farming. However, a significant industry scale-down would be required to allow for that limitation. Even with that, dairy production will never bring its demand for water to zero. Oats, soy and many other alternative milks offer a superior water footprint compared to dairy.
The use of seaweed additives in cattle feed to reduce methane emissions is touted in the media as the next big thing to allow us to have our meat and dairy and save the planet, too. Upon closer examination, many studies are based on short-term experiments of just a handful of cows, in factory farm conditions. While the short-term reductions appear promising, touting up to 80-90% reduction, especially for dairy cows, which spend most of their lives in confinement, the overall emissions picture is not that rosy. Feed additives do not address the full scope of emissions associated with dairy farming, such as growing feed crops and other farm or manufacturing operations. DSM’s Bovaer seaweed additive only reduces emissions by 30%, for example. Not bad, but still far from sustainable for a high-emissions industry.
While all of these sustainability improvement initiatives appear promising, they are ultimately incremental improvements to an unsustainable system.
Irina Gerry
Cow manure is also a source of both methane and nitrous oxide, which is another extremely powerful greenhouse gas. The problem with dairy operations is that manure is not naturally spread on pasture, where grasslands can offset some of the emissions. Since cows spend most of their lives on factory farms, all the manure is washed off the floors into massive manure lagoons, serving as a massive open-air emissions source. Combine that with methane from burps and it is no wonder livestock is responsible for more methane emissions than the oil and gas sector.
Image credit: UC Davis, Manure Lagoon Management
As a way of addressing manure emissions, the dairy industry has also received millions in federal and state funding for Biogas Digester installations. Biogas Digesters break down organic waste using bacteria that produce methane. The resulting methane can be collected and combusted to generate electricity. Biogas garnered a lot of positive PR, but overall emissions reductions achieved by this practice represent only a small fraction of the total, and the electricity generated actually costs more to produce than conventional methods.
Classifying biogas as a renewable source of energy, allows industrialized animal agriculture to receive renewable energy incentives, while simultaneously avoiding emissions regulations. Critics came out strongly against using biogas digesters as inefficient, lose-lose propositions for both climate and animals. So far in the US, Biogas Digesters reduced emissions by 6 MMT of CO2e out of 245 MMT of CO2e from livestock. This is hardly impressive.
While all of these sustainability improvement initiatives appear promising, they are ultimately incremental improvements to an unsustainable system. There is no evidence to suggest that even when fully implemented and combined with one another they have any chance of erasing the massive climate footprint of milk production. From the latest UN IPCC report,all livestock emissions reduction technologies combined could reduce emissions by 3-34%, leaving the vast majority unabated.
Putting together emissions, high water and land use, deforestation, biodiversity loss and waterways pollution, it becomes impossible to imagine a path to real sustainability for dairy.
The Verdict
This leads me to conclude that sustainable dairy at scale is not impossible. Given the fact that we have so many delicious plant-based alternatives to dairy, and animal-free options coming soon, it is time to turn the conversation away from attempting to implement incremental fixes to the unsustainable industry and instead focus on building new ways to satisfy consumer demand for delicious and nutritious dairy foods made entirely without the use of animals.
Whether it’s fried, roasted, boiled, or barbecued, in many countries around the world, chicken is a big deal. It’s the most-loved meat in the US, where, on average, Americans eat more than 200 pounds of it every year. In European Union countries, poultry meat consumption hit 11.9 million tons in 2020.
Chicken meat is popular because it’s usually more affordable than other options, it’s also incredibly versatile and generally easy to prepare. But it also comes with some major problems. Most chicken meat is a product of intensive poultry farming. This method of production is a disease risk, a threat to the environment, and raises some serious welfare concerns. But for the world’s chicken lovers, there is an alternative.
Vegan chicken has the same taste, texture, and versatility as regular chicken meat, only it’s better for the planet and, in many ways, human health. And because of that, it’s becoming more popular than ever.
The last few years have seen a boom in vegan chicken production, as plant-based brands rush to satisfy consumers who love the real thing. In fact, one report claims that this rising demand for vegan chicken products is playing a significant role in the overall growth of the global plant-based meat market, which is predicted to hit more than $15 billion by 2027.
We’ve gathered a few of the best vegan chicken brands on the market. But first, let’s take a deeper dive into the issues with conventional chicken, and examine everything you need to know about its more sustainable vegan counterpart.
What’s wrong with chicken?
At the beginning of the 21st century, there were 14.3 billion chickens in the world. In 2020, this had more than doubled, with estimates stating there were roughly 33 billion. Most of the chickens alive today—who are farmed all over the world, but mostly in Europe, the US, and China—are either egg-laying hens or broiler birds (raised for meat).
Compassion In World Farming estimates that 70 percent of the world’s broiler chickens are raised in intensive poultry farms, which are mostly cramped, barren, and filthy. In the US, and more recently the UK, so-called “mega-farms” have been known to pack in more than one million birds to maximize profit. Each chicken often has less space to move around than the size of one sheet of A4 paper.
These conditions are not only detrimental to chicken welfare—many are bred to grow so fast their legs buckle underneath them, or they become so stressed they start pecking each other’s feathers out—but also human health. In order to prevent disease in these conditions, farmers often resort to antibiotic use.
Chickens on factory farms have very little space to move around | Courtesy of cottonbro via Pexels
Antiobiotics and disease
In 2017, one investigation found that 281 tonnes of ionophores, a type of antibiotics, were sold to UK poultry farmers to prevent coccidiosis. The disease impacts birds when they consume their own droppings, which is all but inevitable on factory farms.
Overuse of antibiotics contributes to the growing threat of resistance. When drugs are used too much, germs start to mutate so they can’t defeat them anymore. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, antibiotic resistance is already causing around 23,000 human deaths in the US.
Unfortunately, it gets worse. Industrial farming conditions are not only contributing to antibiotic resistance but also, potentially, the next pandemic. This year has seen some of the worst outbreaks of bird flu on record, with birds kept inside for months on end (to the point where their eggs could no longer be legally labeled “free range”), and even culled in their thousands.
These outbreaks of influenza could have serious consequences. Last year, Dr. Michael Greger, a plant-based diet advocate, medical doctor, and author, told the Guardian: “In evolutionary terms, rearing poultry, cattle, and pigs in high-intensity, crowded, confined, entirely unnatural conditions may be the most profound alteration of the human-animal relationship in 10,000 years.”
He added: “We are seeing an unprecedented explosion in outbreaks of new bird flu viruses, which historically have presented the greatest pandemic risk and certainly have the potential to be worse than Covid.”
Is chicken healthy?
Antibiotic resistance and disease risk aside, chicken—which is high in protein but low in fat—is often regarded as healthy.
But consuming it doesn’t come without risks. Poultry can contain Salmonella bacteria, for example. If the meat is not cooked properly, this can cause salmonellosis, which can result in symptoms like fever or diarrhea.
Some research also suggests that chicken consumption may increase the risk of cancer. One study from the University of Oxford examined the eating habits of more than 475,000 adults aged between 37 and 73. They found that chicken was positively associated with some types of cancer, including prostate and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Many experts have claimed that the research is insufficient on its own, as it only shows an association. It doesn’t prove that chicken directly causes cancer. Cancer charities, including Lyphoma Action, have also stated there is not enough evidence to link chicken consumption and cancer.
That said, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit health organization with more than 12,000 physician members, maintains that “chicken is not a healthy choice.” It states that the meat raises cholesterol levels, contains a carcinogen called PhIP, and increases the risk of food-borne illnesses.
Animal agriculture is a leading driver of deforestation | Courtesy of Tom Fisk via Pexels
Chicken and the environment
When you think of the meat industry’s environmental impact, it’s likely the first animal that comes to mind is a cow. Without a doubt, the beef industry is terrible for the planet. Just one cow can belch 220 pounds of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, every year. And cattle farming is a leading cause of deforestation, as trees are often cleared to make way for new ranches.
But chicken farming also affects the environment in a big way. For example, their feed often includes soy, another key driver of deforestation. Around the world, most soy (around 80 percent) is cultivated for animal feed, not human consumption. According to one analysis, in the 11 years before 2019, more than 17,000 square kilometers of the Cerrado biome—a hotspot for biodiversity and South America’s largest savanna region—was cleared for soy plantations.
Another major environmental issue with chicken farming is water pollution. Intensive poultry farms produce ammonia gas, due to nitrogen in the animals’ manure. This not only poisons the chickens themselves but also areas around farms. In 2020, in Wales, intensive poultry farms were the suspected cause of algal blooms in the River Wye, the UK’s fourth-longest river.
At the time, James Byrne of Wildlife Trusts Wales told the Guardian: “The most likely cause of this is manure from livestock units which is spread onto land and then runs into rivers triggering eutrophication. This removes oxygen from the river, which then affects the entire river ecosystem, aquatic insects, and everything that feeds on them including birds, water shrews, fish, and otters.”
What is vegan chicken?
Unlike conventional chicken, vegan chicken offers a similar taste and texture, only without many of the health and environmental risks. It can be made from a number of plant-based ingredients, but soy and pea protein are some of the most popular with brands. (While soy can be linked with deforestation, again, the significant majority of this is linked to the livestock industry, and it is possible to source more sustainably grown versions.)
Other ingredients used to mimic the taste and feel of chicken include tofu, seitan, and mushrooms. In fact, one mushroom tastes so much like animal meat, it is even nicknamed “chicken of the woods.”
Vegan chicken nutrition
The nutritional value of vegan chicken depends on what type you’re eating, but pretty much all varieties are high in protein. Seitan, for example, contains a whopping 75 grams of protein per 100 grams. Tofu contains roughly eight grams per 100 grams, while mushrooms also offer a wealth of vitamins and minerals, including b vitamins and selenium.
Heura offers a range of vegan chicken products | Courtesy of Heura
Vegan chicken brands
1. Heura
Founded in 2017, Barcelona brand Heura is all about food activism, aka saving the planet and transforming people’s eating habits with tasty, nutritious vegan products. As well as plant-based beef and pork, the brand offers a range of plant-based chicken fillets, nuggets, chunks, and more, all of which are made with sustainably-sourced soy.
Heura’s products are available in stores and restaurants across Europe and can be ordered online from several places, including The Vegan Kind and Planet Organic in the UK and Green Common in Hong Kong.
2. Alpha Foods
California-based Alpha Foods has been around since 2015, and the brand prides itself on offering antibiotic-free, cholesterol-free, environmentally-friendly plant-based products. Its vegan chicken range includes Grilled Chik’n Strips, a Sizzlin’ Spicy Chik’n patty, a Chik’n Verde Tamale.
Alpha Foods is available to buy from retailers across the US and Canada, and Hong Kong customers can order its products from Green Common.
3. Gardein
Gardein, which has been in the plant-based meat game since 2003, is known for its extensive range of vegan meats. As well as fishless, beefless, and porkless products, it offers Plant-Based Chick’n Tenders, Crispy Chick’n Sliders, Seven Grain Crispy Tenders, Mandarin Orange Crispy Chick’n, and so much more.
Gardein’s products are sold in supermarkets in a number of countries, including the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Customers in Hong Kong can also order the brand’s products from Green Common.
Gardein’s vegan meat range includes Chick’n Wings | Courtesy of Gardein
4. Quorn
British brand Quorn uses mycoprotein, a fermented fungi, to make its ultra-meaty line of vegan and vegetarian meat products. It recently expanded its vegan chicken range with Crunchy Fillet Burgers, Unicorn Nuggets, and Buffalo Fillets, but one of its best-sellers is its Vegan Pieces, which can be subbed into curries, pasta, fajitas, and more.
Quorn is available in supermarkets and stores in 14 countries around the world, but customers can also order its products from Amazon and, in some places, directly from its website.
5. Daring
With just a handful of ingredients, including soy, spices, and oil, California-based Daring Foods has managed to make one of the most convincing-looking and realistic-tasting vegan chicken products on the market. Its three products, Original, Breaded, and Cajun, have the same texture and mouthfeel as regular chicken and can be added to stir-fries, curries, pasta, and more for that much-needed protein boost.
The brand is so good, it has even caught the attention of vegan connoisseur and musician Travis Barker and his wife, Poosh founder and reality TV star, Kourtney Kardashian Barker. Both starred in one of Daring’s advertising campaigns earlier this year.
Find Daring in stores, cafes, and restaurants across the US, including Monty’s Good Burger, Bluestone Lane, Whole Foods, Publix, and Walmart.
6. VFC
Forget KFC, VFC can deliver all the same crunch and moreish flavor, without using any animal products whatsoever. Instead, its signature ingredients are wheat protein and cornflakes (for the coating).
The brand’s products, which include Chick’n Fillets, Chick’n Bites, and Popcorn Chick’n, are currently available from the UK only, in select Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Asda supermarkets, as well as some wholesalers and vegan stores. But keep an eye out, because the brand just bagged itself more than $10 million in funding for international expansion.
VFC makes vegan chicken products to rival KFC | Courtesy of VFC
7. Impossible Foods
Impossible Foods is known for its meaty Impossible Burgers, which are available across the US and Canada, and even sold in US Burger King locations (in the Impossible Whopper). But the brand also makes Impossible ‘Chicken’ Patties and Nuggets, which are available in most “grocery stores in most states,” according to the brand. The Impossible Nuggets also recently launched in the UK and can be found in Hungry Horse pubs among other locations. Select Hong Kong grocery stores, including U Select and CitySuper, also stock the nuggets.
8. Beyond Meat
Similar to Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat is known for its “bleeding” realistic beef-like patties. But the California-based brand has branched out, and now its portfolio includes sausages, meatballs, and, you guessed it, chicken. You can find the brand’s crispy Beyond Tenders, Popcorn Chicken, and Nuggets in stores like Ralphs Grocery, CVS, Sprouts, and Whole Foods in the US.
9. TiNDLE
TiNDLE isn’t your average vegan brand. It was made by chefs, for chefs. Its tasty, versatile plant-based chicken is designed to be used in restaurant-quality dishes. Despite only launching last year, it can already be found on menus around the world, including Brewdog pubs in the UK, Big Birdy in Hong Kong, and Veggie Grill and Beyond Sushi in the US.
10. THIS
UK brand THIS knows how to make a vegan chicken product so convincing, you’ll have to check the packaging twice, and then once more. The realistic texture of its products has seen the brand soar in popularity, and recently, it even debuted a line of ready-to-eat sandwiches—including THIS Isn’t Chicken & Sweetcorn and THIS Isn’t Chicken & Stuffing—with popular British retailer (and airport favorite) WH Smith.
Elsewhere, the brand’s wide selection of chilled vegan chicken (and bacon, sausages, mince, and burgers) can be found in a number of UK supermarkets, including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, and Asda.
THIS partnered with WH Smith to make vegan chicken sandwiches to-go | Courtesy of THIS
11. Morningstar Farms
Whatever your vegan or vegetarian dinner desire is, Kelloggs-owned vegan brand Morningstar Farms can (probably) make it happen. The brand’s wide range of products includes Veggie Corn Dogs, Veggie Sausage Pizza Bites, and all sorts of vegan chicken varieties. Its Chik’n Nuggets come in various flavors, like BBQ, Zesty Ranch, and Sweet Mustard, and it also offers a range of vegan nuggets in its Incogmeato range. Plus, its signature Veggitizers have a few chicken-style options, including Veggie Chik’n & Cheeze Taquito Bites.
Morningstar Farms is sold in a number of locations across the US, including Target. You can also order its products online from Amazon or Instacart, and from Ubuy in Hong Kong.
12. Simulate
Unlike many vegan brands, Simulate (which used to be known as NUGGS) is proud of the fact that its vegan chicken is highly processed and pro-GMO. The Manhattan-based brand delivers on its name and gives customers a version of vegan chicken that is a perfect simulation of the real deal. While Simulate’s plant-based products are lab-made, they shouldn’t be confused with lab-grown meat (which features real animal cells and isn’t widely available yet).
Try the simulation for yourself and find the brand’s products in select Walmart, Whole Foods, and more in the US.
13. The Vegetarian Butcher
The Vegetarian Butcher started out in the Netherlands in the 1990s, when Jaap Korteweg, a farmer, decide to try something new: plant-based meat. He created his own line of products, and in 2010, opened the first-ever vegetarian butcher shop in The Hague. Fast forward to now, and The Vegetarian Butcher is one of the most popular plant-based brands in Europe.
Its products, which include a realistic chicken alternative called What The Cluck, are available in stores across Europe, as well as at Tesco and Sainsburys in the UK. The brand also has a major partnership with Burger King and has helped to create a number of plant-based menu options for the fast-food chain, including the chicken-style Vegan Royale.
Finally, cultivated chicken – is it vegan?
Plant-based meat isn’t the only chicken alternative available. Brands around the world are also working on cultivated meat—also known as cultured or lab-grown—which involves growing real meat from animal cells in a lab. Because it’s made with real animal cells, cultivated meat is not vegan, but it is slaughter-free.
To date, the only cultivated meat products available for the public to try have been chicken. So far, the only country to offer regulatory approval for the commercial sale of cultivated meat is Singapore. You can find cultivated chicken from US brand GOOD Meat (a subsidiary of California’s Eat Just) on the menu at Madame Fan in Singapore, and even at some of the country’s traditional hawker stalls and centers during special edition pop-ups, though availability is very limited so make sure to check ahead.
In Israel, some people have also managed to try cultivated chicken meat from the food tech brand SuperMeat. Israel hasn’t given cultivated meat regulatory approval yet, but the company was able to serve customers a taste for free in a test kitchen back in 2020. Another startup working on cultivated chicken is alt protein unicorn Upside Foods, also based in California, and the CEO has said he expects to receive regulatory approval sometime in 2022-23.
Portland-based Thrilling Foods says it has earned a patent for its ‘world’s first’ fat-streaked vegan ‘bakon’.
Patents are rare in the plant-based meat category, says Thrilling Foods, but the young company’s “protein-bound fat” streaks have satisfied the U.S. patent office, the company says. Thrilling says international patents are also on the way.
A breakthrough tech allows Thrilling to reproduce the flavor and texture of pork bacon with plants. Like conventional bacon, this one is marbled with fat from plant-based sources that provide texture and flavor.
The patent announcement comes after Thrilling was chosen as one of 17 companies to receive pre-seeding funding and mentorship from Big Idea Ventures’ food accelerator program last month.
Breakthrough tech for vegan bacon
The product, which is both low carb and high protein, was created by David Jones, a cook and culinary innovator. He says he developed the product during covid lockdown.
Thrilling’s vegan bacon is smoked and salt cured | Courtesy
Thrilling’s vegan bacon is the only dry salt and smoke-cured plant-based bacon on the market. “If it’s not cured, it’s not going to taste right,” Jones says.
The dispersion of fat and protein allows the vegan bacon to cook like conventional pork bacon. Thrilling says its protein structure holds the fat within the protein structure, releasing it only during cooking from the outside in, much like the way animal fats are released during cooking.
Despite its similarities to conventional bacon, Thrilling says its Bakon is healthy; conventional bacon along with other processed meats have been classified as carcinogenic by the World Health Organization.
In addition to its plant-based ingredients, Thrilling’s Bakon is made from non-GMO soy milk, and RSPO-certified palm oil, meaning that it’s free from oil linked to deforestation.
Vegan bacon demand
The patent comes as the company is aiming to meet the growing demand for plant-based bacon, and specifically, demand for Thrilling’s vegan Bakon.
Thrilling isn’t just offering an option for vegans; 66 percent of its repeat customers self-identify as omnivores, the company says.
Thrilling’s vegan bacon cooks like pork bacon | Courtesy
The company says its recent funding is allowing it to increase its production to 2,000 pounds per day, which will help accelerate its placement in more stores nationally.
Thrilling is only available in 200 U.S. locations at present, but the company says its vegan bacon is already the eighth-ranked vegan breakfast meat in high-end health food shops despite only being stocked in three percent of stores nationwide.
Vow says its Series A funding round comes as it expects approval from Singapore to begin selling its cultivated meat in restaurants later this year.
Australian cultivated meat producer Vow has closed a record-setting $49.2 million Series A funding round to help bring its cultivated quail meat to Singapore. Funding was led by Blackbird and Prosperity7 Ventures, an Aramco Ventures growth fund, with backing from Toyota Ventures, Square Peg Capital, Grok Ventures, Cavallo Ventures, Peakbridge, Tenacious Ventures, HostPlus Super, NGS Super, and Pavilion Capital. The new funding comes nearly two years after Vow raised $6 million in seed funding.
Vow says its first product, dubbed Morsel—a cell-based quail meat—will hit Singapore restaurants before the year’s end, joining California-based Eat Just’s Good Meat as the only other cultivated meat approved for commercial sale and distribution in the world.
Changing the way billions eat
“When Vow was founded, we knew to change the way billions eat we had to do more than recreate what we know,” says Vow CEO and co-founder George Peppou.
“We’re thrilled to be toe to toe with the best companies in this space, moving at speed to reach huge milestones with a fraction of the capital of other companies,” he said.
Vow’s kangaroo dumplings
“Our food diet is standardized, and neither healthy nor sustainable,” says Nadav Berger, general partner and co-founder of PeakBridge. “Much of our proteins come from limited animal-based sources which are harmful for both biodiversity and our health. Solutions and technologies that explore alternatives to conventional animal-based protein without compromising on taste, texture, nutrition and climate impact are here to stay.”
Vow is taking a unique approach to cultivated meat, replicating exotic meat including kangaroo and alpaca, along with quail, rabbit, and goat meat. The quail-based Morsel quail is expected to take meat in a new direction, Peppou said, with chefs using it in novel ways. The company says Morsel has a roasted umami flavor with seafood notes.
“By inventing new meats that are tastier, more nutritious, and serve functions traditional meats can’t, we can have an enormous impact,” Peppou said.
Fueling the cultivated meat category growth
The market approval and funding follow Vow bringing its first factory online in New South Wales last month. Dubbed Factory 1, the facility can produce approximately 30 tons of cultivated meat per year. The company says it’s also already working on Factory 2, which will be capable of producing meat at 100-fold the output of Factory 1.
Vow’s Factory 1
“With Factory 1 Vow has quietly become a world leader in cultured meat, we are now operating at world leading scales and have achieved all of this in just three and a half years, with a fraction of the capital,” Peppou said.
Morsel is expected to hit restaurants in Singapore later this year.
Juicy Marbles, the plant-based meat brand known for its whole-cut steak, says its newest product, a whole-cut loin, is the ‘biggest, most insulting piece of plant muscle ever conceived.’
The new Juicy Marbles loin was launched in anticipation of finding space on holiday tables this year.
“In a world so extremely serious, Juicy Marbles wanted to create a reason to celebrate food, the joy of eating, and the human experience,” the Slovenia-based company said in a statement. “You shouldn’t need to be a culinary genius to make delicious and satiating meals.”
Whole-cut loin
The new loin is soy and wheat-based and weighs in at more than 1.5 pounds, boasting 26 grams of protein per serving. Juicy Marbles say the loin-style cut enables both the novice cook and the experienced chef to experiment. It says the loin is the perfect cut for a beef-style Wellington.
Juicy Marbles first debuted its vegan steak last year, claiming to be first to market with a whole-cut plant-based filet mignon that featured unique marbling similar to a conventional steak.
Juicy Marbles’ filet mignon | Courtesy
The company, which has raised more than $4.5 million in Seed funding, credits a patent-pending technology that gives the steak the taste and texture of a filet. Its “reverse grinder” allows it to layer plant fibers together for the meaty texture of its steak and, now, its loin.
“The biggest challenge was getting the right fibre alignment and intramuscular fat structure–the marbling. The most expensive steaks in the world are known for their lush marbling. It takes a lot of energy and a rare breed of cow to attain that,” co-founder Luka Sincek said last year following its filet launch.
“With plant meat, we control it and, thus, over time, can scale up our steak production and bring down the price. Eventually, we’ll be able to make the most premium meats attainable for everyone.”
Expanding the whole-cut market
Juicy Marbles may soon have some options when it comes to fat; a number of companies are working to develop cell-based, microbial, and plant-based fats that better mimic the taste, texture, and mouthfeel of conventional fats—often a sticking point for getting meat-eaters to embrace plant-based food.
Courtesy Meati
The steak and whole-cut market has continued to expand since Juicy Marbles first launched. Beyond Meat recently released its steak in partnership with Taco Bell and a packaged version in select retail locations. Whole cuts are also coming from mushroom meat producers such as Meati, which just launched in Sweetgreen as the chain’s first alternative protein.
With backing from Big Idea Ventures, ProVeg International, and Realum.cloud, cultivated fat startup Cultimate has raised €700,000 in a pre-seed funding round.
The German-based Cultimate Foods is working to upgrade meat alternatives with cultivated fat that produces the taste and mouthfeel of conventional animal products. The new funding will allow the company to scale up its production processes and fully validate its cultivated fat product solution and prepares the technology for the pilot stage.
Animal fat for plant-based food
“Our ultimate goal is to deliver a game-changing ingredient for the plant-based meat industry. We are focused on developing the most important part of meat experience, fat. Cultimate will deliver all the properties of meat that are currently lacking in the available meat alternatives,” co-founder of Cultimate George Zheleznyi, said in a statement.
Could cultivated fat improve Impossible Burgers? | Courtesy Impossible Foods
The company has expanded its research and development team as well as launched its own laboratory in Göttingen, Germany.
“I believe science is the answer to many of the problems of the food industry and, by extension, to climate change. With our technology we can give consumers the meaty taste that they want while reducing animal farming and CO2 emissions,” said Eugenia Sagué, co-founder of Cultimate, who previously held several positions in the plant-based food industry.
Cultimate is the latest company focused on the hybrid market—bringing cultivated animal cell products to alternatives such as plant-based or fungi-based protein.
Sustainable food demand
Demand for sustainable and ethical protein continues to rise and so is meat consumption; global meat consumption could double by 2050. The world’s leading climate and health organizations routinely urge consumers to reduce meat consumption for their health and to slow the impact of climate change. Meat production is a key producer of greenhouse gases.
Cultimate says the hybrid market offers significant opportunities for the global food system, which could lower production costs as well as impact.
Hoxton Farms founders Max Jamilly (left) and Ed Steele (right) | Courtesy Hoxton Farms
The funding announcement follows several other funding rounds in the animal fat sector. Last month, Hoxton Farms and Nourish Ingredients both raised Series A rounds; Hoxton is using a similar cell-cultured approach and Nourish is working with microbial fermentation to replicate the texture and function of fat.
It’s not just animal fat getting the tech makeover; earlier this month, C16 Biosciences, the biotech company backed by Bill Gates, announced it will launch its first consumer-facing palm oil products next year.
With fungi showing promise as a vegan protein alternative, category leaders have joined forces.
Leaders in the fungi-based protein sector have formed their own trade group. The Fungi Protein Association has launched with eight founding brand members and three think tank partners: Quorn, Enough, Nature’s Fynd, Mycorena, MyForest Foods, Bosque Foods, Aqua Cultured Foods, The Better Meat Co., The Protein Brewery, Prime Roots, Mush Foods, ProVeg, the Good Food Institute, and the Alternative Proteins Association.
Fungi range from mushrooms most often used in their whole form in culinary applications, to microbial, which are being used to produce a number of meat and dairy replacements.
‘The world needs more protein’
Fungi-based food show potential in the fight against climate change and addressing global food insecurity. A 20 percent increase in microbial protein in place of beef could reduce global deforestation by 50 percent, according to recent data.
Aqua Cultured Foods Calamari fries | Courtesy
“The world needs more protein, and fungi fermentation offers a delicious, sustainable way to do just that,” Marco Bertacca, Chief Executive Officer at Quorn Foods, said in a statement. “We’re excited to partner with our fellow fungi enthusiasts to raise awareness and appreciation of the wonderful ways fungi can improve human health and the health of our planet.”
A trade body already exists for plant-based food—The Plant Based Foods Association—but fungi, while often lumped into the category, are not plants. The trade body aims to shed more light on what makes fungi unique and beneficial.
Fungi category growth is mushrooming
The category has seen explosive growth in recent months. Founding member Enough partnered with Peace of Meat in May—it’s an offshoot of Israeli cultured meat start-up MeaTech. They’re working to blend fungi mycoprotein with cultivated fat to better reproduce the mouthfeel of conventional meat.
Earlier this year Mycorena partnered with packaging giant Tetra Pak to develop a new production facility for fungi fermentation.
Aqua Cultured Foods is also gearing up for a big product launch later this year—calamari-style fungi fries made via microbial fermentation technology.
Meatiply’s cultivated duck meat | Courtesy
Then, there’s Quorn, the U.K.-based category leader. Quorn is the leading meat substitute brand in Western Europe with a market share of more than 16 percent. It’s pulled in celebrity support, with daytime talk show host Drew Barrymore signing on as its ‘Chief Mom Officer’—aimed primarily at expanding its U.S. presence.
Earlier this week fast-casual chain Sweetgreen announced its first vegan protein in a partnership with mushroom-based company Meati (not yet a member of the FPA). That announcement followed the launch of Meati’s Carne Asada—its fourth product launch and first foray into steak.
The Plant Based Seafood Company has partnered with foodservice giant Sysco for the distribution of its Mind Blown vegan crab cakes.
The Virginia-based Plant Based Seafood Company says its vegan crab cakes will soon be available across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, and Washington D.C. thanks to a distribution deal with Sysco and New York-based distributor Fancy Foods. Sysco serves more than 650,000 customers worldwide.
Vegan seafood comes to the table
“We’re thrilled that more people will have the option to choose a seafood alternative and see that anything seafood can do, Mind Blown can do just as well,” Mind Blown Co-Founder and CEO Monica Talbert said in a statement. “This is just the beginning of an aggressive food service channel push, which will give diners more options to enjoy a delicious seafood experience while at the same time relieving pressure off our precious oceans.”
The distribution push follows its national placement at Sprouts Farmers Market stores earlier this year and the launch of fried vegan oysters last year.
Mind Blown crab cakes | Courtesy
The Plant Based Seafood Company launched into the nascent vegan seafood market in 2020. It was awarded the “Most Disruptive Product of 2020” at Prepared Foods’ Spirit of Innovation Awards, “Best Plant-Based Seafood Product of the Year” at World Plant-Based Awards, “Best Plant Based Seafood Product of the Year” at Mindful Awards, and “Best New Frozen Product” at the New Hope Network 2022 Expo West NEXTY Awards, among other recognitions.
The company has also attracted celebrity investor partners including Chef Spike Mendelsohn and eight-time James Beard award recipient, Bravo TV star, Chef Tom Colicchio.
The vegan seafood category is small but growing, driven in large part by Good Catch, the Wicked Kitchen-owned brand that has raised more than $77 million, according to Crunchbase.
According to the Good Food Institute, investments in alternative seafood nearly doubled last year, with more than $175 million invested in plant-based, cultured, and fermented seafood alternatives.
Sysco doubles down on vegan options
Last week, the Modern Meat Plant Based Foods company struck a distribution deal for its Modern Crumble plant-based meat with Sysco and Gordon’s Food Service. It says it will strategically focus on larger restaurant chains and established producers looking for additional production capabilities within Canada as it increases its private label opportunities.
Modern Crumble | Courtesy
Sysco is also increasing its own plant-based dining options through its Sysco Simply Plant Based label. The distributor launched the range in 2019 to meet the demand for healthier, plant-based food and has added meatballs, burgers, oat meat, and dairy-free options, among other offerings.
“Sysco developed Sysco Simply to offer our customers more of what they need to be successful in a competitive marketplace,” Brian Todd, Sysco’s senior vice president, merchandising and marketing, said in 2020 when it launched its first Sysco Simply plant-based burger. “This launch, and the Sysco Simply brand, demonstrate our commitment to providing our customers with innovative, versatile and easy-to-use product solutions. Our customers can feature these delicious plant-based burgers to keep their menu offerings fresh and relevant with today’s consumers.”
A new survey from Israel-based food tech company SuperMeat, finds the vast majority of chefs, 86 percent, are interested in serving cultivated meat—an indicator of the potential for the category once countries grant regulatory approval.
The new SuperMeat survey interviewed 251 chefs and food service professionals earlier this year. The research was conducted in partnership with Censuswide, an independent market research consultancy.
Results of the survey were overwhelmingly in favor of cultivated meat—protein that’s grown from animal cell samples in bioreactors instead of on farms. The tech has thus far only received approval in Singapore, with the Bay Area company Eat Just the first, and currently, the only, company approved for sale and consumption.
The lack of regulatory approval has not slowed progress for the sector, though. Recent reports show record funding raises and a number of start-ups entering the category.
Cultivated meat demand and acceptance
But despite the interest from investors, consumer opinion on the tech has been mixed, with some critics lumping it in with genetic modification—a technology typically used to make plants more resistant to heavy applications of herbicides.
Still, consumers do want more ethical and sustainable choices. Sixty-five percent of chefs said they’ve seen increased demand in the last five years; 87 percent of Midwest restaurants and 82 percent of fast-food restaurants said they’ve seen increasing demand for meat alternatives.
Courtesy SuperMeat
Widespread acceptance of cultivated meat from the culinary world could help sway consumers on the fence about the tech. Eighty-four percent of the chefs surveyed said they would consider replacing conventional meat altogether on their menus with cultivated meat if cost-effective. Seventy-seven percent though said they would pay a premium, particularly for poultry; more than 66 percent of the chefs said they would pay as much as 11 to 15 percent more for cultivated meat.
The Midwest chefs were most willing to pay a premium for cultivated meat—87 percent said they’d opt for the higher ticket price in order to put the options on their menu. Western chefs said they’d be willing to pay higher premiums, with 16 percent saying they would pay as much as 16 to 20 percent more for cultivated meat. Chefs cooking Mediterranean were right behind, with 83 percent saying they’d be willing to pay 11 to 15 percent more for cultivated meat. Italian and Mexican chefs were willing to pay five to ten percent more.
Poultry was the top choice, with 51 percent of chefs saying they’d be interested in trying cultivated chicken and other poultry products; 38 percent said they’d be interested in beef, and 35 percent indicated seafood and pork. Tastes ranged regionally, the survey found. Chefs from the South favored beef and exotic meats; fine-dining chefs favored pork. Chicken was the top choice for fast-food and American cuisine. Italian cuisine favored seafood, and chefs across France, Japan, and Indian cuisines all favored exotic meats.
Regulatory approval
The chefs surveyed were overwhelmingly in favor of adding cultivated meat shortly after approved; more than half said they would add the products to their menus within two months of approval. Chefs in the Northeast and West said they would add it even sooner and chefs in the South were the most hesitant, wanting to wait as long as six months.
GOOD Meat cultivated chicken | courtesy Eat Just
“It is great to see the interest and positivity from the professional culinary community for cultivated meat. This demonstrates that chefs are more than intrigued by cultivated meat, understand the benefits, and are ready to see it served in mainstream dining,” Ido Savir, CEO of SuperMeat, said in a statement. “SuperMeat is thrilled to continue our work to commercialize cultivated meat products and be among the first to bring these options to menus across the U.S..”
U.S. regulatory approval is expected in the near future, but no date has been confirmed. Experts suggest it could be within the next year or as long as 18 to 24 months.
“But where do you get your protein?” is a familiar question for most people who follow a vegan or plant-focused diet. And it’s understandable. Around the world, many are taught from a young age that meat from animals is essential for protein.
But things are starting to change. More people than ever have chosen to reduce their animal product intake in the last few years.
In Hong Kong, for example, research suggests that nearly a quarter of the population is actively cutting down on meat. They’re doing so for a variety of reasons, but one key motivation is the planet. That’s because the meat industry contributes to a wide variety of environmental problems, like deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions.
The good news is, most people who follow a plant-based or flexitarian diet don’t have to worry about not getting enough protein. Vegan protein comes in all forms—from beans to tofu to vegan meat products. When it comes to the latter, we’ve rounded up some of the best options on the market.
But first, let’s take a look at what vegan protein is, how much we need, and take a deeper dive into the issues with animal protein.
What is vegan protein?
Like fat and carbohydrates, protein is a macronutrient, which means the body needs a large amount of it. That’s because protein is made up of amino acids, which the body breaks down and uses to build protein where it’s needed.
When we’re young, protein helps bones and muscles to grow. But throughout our lives, protein contributes to things like immune system function and healthy organs.
Animal products are one dietary source of protein. Like us, protein helps animal muscles to grow and function. So when they are slaughtered and consumed as meat, humans digest all of the protein stored in their bodies.
Tofu is a good vegan source of protein | Photo via Pexels
But vegan protein also exists. One block of tofu, for example, contains roughly 36 grams of protein. Plus, the soy-based ingredient is a “complete protein,” which means that, like eggs and meat, it contains all nine of the essential amino acids that the human body needs. (The nine essential amino acids are histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, and valine.)
How much protein do we need?
How much protein each person needs depends on a few variables, like age, occupation, and weight. But most nutritional organizations agree that mostly, we don’t actually need a huge amount.
According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, the Dietary Reference Intake is around 0.36 grams of protein per pound of body weight for the average adult.
Due to the physical challenges they put their bodies through, athletes may need more than this. Elderly people may also require more protein. This is because they are more susceptible to conditions like osteoporosis, which weakens bones and makes them more vulnerable to breakage.
It is important to get the right amount of protein for your individual needs. Deficiency is rare, but symptoms include a higher risk of bone damage and muscle wasting.
Too much protein can also cause problems, like a higher risk of kidney stones. However, Harvard Health notes that while too much protein from red meat may lead to a higher risk of heart disease or colon cancer, consuming a lot of plant-based protein is not associated with the same level of risk.
What’s wrong with animal protein?
As briefly outlined above, sources of animal protein, like red meat, can damage health. The UK’s National Health Service, for example,recommends that anyone who consumes more than 90 grams of red or processed meat a day reduce this to at least 70 grams to cut their risk of bowel cancer.
Eggs are another popular animal source of protein. But, because of their cholesterol content, eating too many has also been linked with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease.
There are also a number of animal welfare concerns associated with the factory farming system that produces meat. But, on top of that, many studies also confirm that animal agriculture is detrimental to the environment.
The meat industry contributes to deforestation | Photo via Pexels
According to the United Nations, livestock farming is responsible for 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. It’s also a major driver of deforestation.
The beef industry, in particular, is a key driver of destruction in the Amazon. This has contributed to the rainforest now emitting more carbon dioxide than it can absorb for the first time ever.
Soy production is also associated with deforestation, but this is also linked to animal agriculture; 80 percent of farmed soy is used to feed livestock.
Among the other environmental issues associated with animal farming are water pollution, biodiversity loss, and soil erosion.
Best vegan types of protein
There are many types of vegan protein available. Seitan, for example, is one of the best. It’s made from wheat gluten, and packs in around 25 grams of protein per 100 grams. Plus, it’s better for the planet than meat. In fact, last year, one study found that the carbon footprint of seitan is 130 times lower than that of beef.
Other popular types of vegan protein include tofu and tempeh, the latter contains 19 grams of protein per 100 grams. Seeds, legumes, pulses, and nuts are also good sources of protein.
All are better for the planet than animal products. Take peas, for example, which are a type of pulse. Eating one 80-gram serving every day for one year contributes six kilograms to your annual greenhouse gas emissions. Eating a handful of nuts for the same amount of time contributes five kilograms.
In contrast, eating two eggs per day contributes 202 kilograms of emissions. Eating two lamb chops just once or twice a week would contribute 339 kilograms.
Mycoprotein, used by the vegetarian meat brand Quorn, is another good, sustainable source of protein. One recent study found that replacing 20 percent of the world’s beef consumption with mycoprotein, which is made with fermented fungi, could cut deforestation in half within the next 30 years, as well as reduce methane emissions by 11 percent.
Quorn isn’t alone. There are plenty of vegan meat brands on the market that offer a nutritious, sustainable way to get your protein. Here are some of our top picks.
Best vegan protein brands
Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger has 19 grams of protein | Courtesy Beyond Meat
1. Beyond Meat
Founded back in 2009, California-based Beyond Meat is arguably one of the most well-known vegan meat brands in the world. Its products are available in supermarkets and restaurants in more than 50 countries.
One Beyond Meat burger, which is made with pea protein, contains 19 grams of protein. According to the brand, its Beyond Burgers require 99 percent less water, 93 percent less land, and emit 90 percent fewer greenhouse gasses than a traditional quarter pounder made with beef.
2. OmniPork
Created by Hong Kong-based Omnifoods, OmniPork, which is made with shiitake mushrooms, soy, peas, and rice, has risen in popularity in the last few years.
You can find the brand’s products, which include Pork Style Strips, Plant Based Minced Pork, and Plant Based Luncheon Meat, in restaurants, hotels, and supermarkets around the world. In Hong Kong, you can even order its vegan luncheon meat from the McDonald’s menu. According to the brand, one serving of OmniPork contains 12 grams of protein.
3. Impossible Foods
Like Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods is one of the most well-known players in the plant-based space. Based in California and founded in 2011, its burgers feature heme, a proprietary ingredient made from genetically engineered yeast. According to the brand, “it’s what makes some meat taste so meaty.”
Because its heme was a new ingredient, Impossible Foods struggled to get regulatory approval in some markets. But its products are currently available in several countries, including Hong Kong, China, the US, and just recently, the UK.
Like the Beyond Burger, one Impossible Burger contains around 19 grams of protein. Its Impossible Chicken Nuggets contain 13 grams per serving.
Quorn meat consists of mycoprotein, which is made with fermented fungi | Courtesy Quorn
4. Quorn
Founded back in the 1980s, Quorn was one of the first vegetarian meat brands in the UK. Now, its range of mycoprotein products is available in around 20 different countries. It’s available in many supermarkets and health food stores. It’s even served in some fast-food restaurants, like KFC in the UK.
As outlined above, Quorn’s vegan and vegetarian meat products are better for the planet than their traditional animal-derived counterparts. Plus, they’re packed with protein.
5. Heura
A relatively new vegan meat brand, Heura was founded in Barcelona in 2017. But despite this, it has experienced fast growth and its products are available in around 20 regions around the world. The brand also just raised €20 million to keep expanding.
Heura offers a wide range of chicken-inspired vegan meat products, including Chunks Mediterranean and Chunks Spiced, both of which boast around 19 grams of protein per 100-gram serving. The brand has also recently started offering Spanish Chorizo Sausages and Burgers.
6. Batata Greens
Named after sweet potato leaves (batata leaves), Batata Greens’ vegan and vegetarian products are available across Hong Kong and Macau, in supermarkets, independent stores, and online. Its wide range of plant-based meats includes vegan BBQ Beef, which packs in more than 19 grams of protein per 100 grams, and vegan Sweet and Sour Pork Tenderloin, which boasts more than 20 grams of protein per 100 grams.
7. Alpha Foods
Another California brand, Alpha Foods has been on the plant-based food scene since 2015. As well as nuggets, strips, and meatballs, the brand is known for its meaty vegan burritos. There’s the Bac’n Scramble, for example, which contains 16 grams of protein, and includes tofu as well as the brand’s own plant-based bacon. Its Protein Supreme option, which contains 17 grams of protein, features tofu, steakless strips, and plant-based bacon. Alpha also offers several vegan breakfast sandwiches, including a Chik’n & Maple Waffle.
8. Gardein
Another OG meat-free brand, Gardein started back in the early 2000s. Over the last two decades or so, it has developed a wide range of vegan meat products. One of its most popular options is its Mandarin Orange Crispy Chik’n, which boasts 13 grams of protein per serving. Its Vegan Turk’y Roast (with 19 grams of protein per serving) is another favorite, particularly around the holiday season.
Jackfruit is Karana Foods’ signature ingredient | Courtesy Karana Foods
9. Karana Foods
Based in Singapore, Karana Foods is a brand-new vegan meat brand. Jackfruit, a tree fruit grown across Asia, Africa, and South America, is its ingredient of choice.
While jackfruit has been eaten for centuries in many different cultures, recently it has risen in popularity for its meaty texture. And that’s why Karana has chosen it to create its vegan meat products, which include the Karana Potsticker and Karana Ground Jackfruit Meat.
Both are currently served in select restaurants in Hong Kong, and will soon be available to purchase online too.
The protein content isn’t quite as high as the other brands on this list (the Potsticker has 7 grams per serving while the Ground Jackfruit Meat has 8 grams) but they will still contribute to your daily intake.
10. Tindle
Next Gen Foods, the makers of the Tindle vegan chicken brand, is one of the hottest new companies in the plant-based food space. Founded in 2021, it has already broken records. In February 2022, it raised a whopping $100 million in Series A funding.
Currently available in 500 restaurants in 8 countries, including the US, the UK, Singapore, and Hong Kong, Tindle has received high praise for its realistic-tasting, soy-based vegan chicken, which it developed specifically for chefs. It’s also a great protein source: each serving of Tindle chicken contains more than 15 grams of protein.
Right now, Tindle is only available in the food service industry, but the brand has expressed interest in venturing into other channels in the future.
Cell-cultured chicken meat will make its debut at the COP27 climate conference being held in Egypt this month.
Good Meat, the cultivated meat division of the Bay Area food tech company Eat Just, is bringing its lab-grown chicken to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, the site city for the U.N. climate event.
Eat Just is currently the only company to have received regulatory approval for the sale and distribution of cultured meat; its chicken received approval from the Singapore government nearly two years ago. The chicken will be showcased as part of COP27’s Singapore Pavillion for the first time outside of the city-state.
An ABEC bioreactor that produces Good Meat | Courtesy
“We hope our guests at COP27 find their cultivated chicken meals both delicious and thought-provoking and they leave the summit with a new appreciation for the role food innovation can play in combatting the global climate crisis,” Josh Tetrick, co-founder and CEO of Eat Just, said in a statement. “There is no better place to launch our next version than right here at the world’s most consequential climate change gathering.”
The chicken will be served this coming weekend, from Saturday, Nov. 12 through Monday, Nov. 14 at invitation-only events, Eat Just said.
COP26 food criticism
Last year’s COP26 came under fire for serving animal products throughout the two-week conference. Critics compared it to serving cigarettes at a lung cancer conference. Agriculture is a leading cause of climate change, producing more than 14 percent of all global emissions; animal products are responsible for at least 60 percent of the sector’s emissions, according to a study published last year in the journal Nature Food.
“To produce more meat you need to feed the animals more, which then generates more emissions,” Xiaoming Xu, University of Illinois researcher and the lead author of the paper said in a statement last year. “You need more biomass to feed animals in order to get the same amount of calories. It isn’t very efficient.”
Good Meat’s cultivated lab meat | Courtesy
The United Nations’ own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also recently called for drastic reductions to agricultural emissions including methane, which is produced by ruminants including cattle and sheep. Methane doesn’t linger in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, but while present it traps more heat, accelerating the impacts of climate change. A recent IPCC report called for at least a 30-percent drop in methane emissions before the end of the decade.
Cultivated meat in the fight against climate change
Cultivated meat is expected to play a key role in reducing the industry’s emissions footprint once more countries approve it for sale and consumption.
Cultivated meat, which is grown with real animal cells in bioreactors instead of requiring raising and culling livestock, reduces greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 96 percent compared to conventional meat, according to recent findings from Oxford.
Good Meat’s chicken | Courtesy
Good Meat is partnering with the Good Food Institute Asia Pacific (GFI APAC) and others in the Singapore Pavillion to showcase efforts underway across the region.
“Singapore was the first country to allow the sale of meat made without tearing down a single forest or displacing an animal’s habitat, and we look forward to other countries following in their footsteps,” Tetrick said.
COP27 runs from November 6 through November 18, 2022. More information can be found on the event website.
A sustainable alternative to palm oil can’t come soon enough. C16 Biosciences says it’s ready to make it happen with its first commercial product line launching next year.
C16 Biosciences, the Bill Gates-backed company producing oils and fats using biomanufacturing, is celebrating its first industrial-scale 50,000-liter fermentation with the launch of Palmless, its consumer brand platform.
“The launch of Palmless is a big step forward in making a palm oil alternative a reality. Consumer brands have been seeking a palm alternative for years, but have lacked a real solution – until now,” Shara Ticku, co-founder and CEO of C16 Biosciences said in a statement. “Brands using Palmless in their products demonstrate they are making every effort to reduce their impact on climate change, and that consumers are demanding it.”
The problems with palm oil
Palm oil is a contentious product. It’s widely used in about 50 percent of household products and food items. But it’s a leading cause of tropical deforestation across southeast Asia, displacing critically endangered species such as the orangutan. According to a 2020 study, laboratory analysis found drainage of young palm oil leads to a 50 percent increase in CO2 emissions.
Courtesy Zero Acre Farms
Demand for alternatives to palm oil across its many applications is on the rise, but few options exist aside from more ethical and responsible palm oil such as fair-trade or deforestation-free certified. Companies including Zero Acre Farms are working to develop cultured oils using fermentation. It raised $37 million in a Series A funding round earlier this year.
Despite global efforts to reduce palm use and spread awareness about its impact, U.S. imports of palm have increased by nearly 30 percent in the last eight years. According to data from Grandview Research, the global palm oil market size was valued at $63.7 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow at CAGR of 5.1 percent through 2030.
Bringing the alternative to market
“One of the reasons we invested in C16 was because we knew they had the potential to turn science into a commercial reality,” said Carmichael Roberts of Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures. The firm backed C16’s $20 million Series A in 2020. “Palmless becoming a challenger brand is an important next step as it will give consumers the power to choose products that do less harm.”
Lab grown palm oil | Courtesy C16 Biosciences
C16 says Palmless will be able to fill the gap across consumer packaged goods including food items. C16 is planning to launch its first Palmless beauty items in 2023.
“PalmlessTM is more than the start of commercial roll-out of C16 Biosciences’ technology. It’s also about holding manufacturers and brands to a higher standard: a better option is available,” Ticku said. “There are no more excuses.”
New research finds consumers are attracted to animal-free dairy when marketing emphasizes the environmental and ethical benefits, but not too much and not too little, either.
It’s a fine line for consumers weighing the benefits of animal-free dairy, (AFD) new research, published last month in the journal Frontiers in Nutrition found. According to the research, consumers are still sorting their opinions on animal-free dairy—products made via microbial fermentation that create proteins identical to dairy, not plant-based products such as oat milk. The research was conducted by Professor Garrett Broad of Rowan University, researchers from the animal rights group Mercy for Animals, and the animal-free dairy company, Formo.
The tech is used by a number of brands, chiefly the Bay Area-based Perfect Day, which uses microbial fermentation to create whey that’s used in a number of products from milk to cheese and ice cream. The tech is similar to producing beer or soy sauce, but in the case of producing dairy proteins, some consumers have found it offputting, preferring conventional dairy or conventional plant-based alternatives to the tech.
Animal-free dairy: are consumers ready?
“Significant questions remain about the potential future of AFD, including key questions about consumer understanding and interest. With that in mind, this study set out to use focus groups to explore basic consumer perceptions on the topic. Our initial research question sought to understand how respondents make sense of a basic technological description of the AFD process, interrogating the general valence of their reaction and the key questions that would arise in response,” the researchers noted.
Formo uses precision fermentation in its animal-free mozzarella
The researchers also looked at how consumers responded to negative and positive arguments about animal-free dairy as well as the conceptual and practical elements of the methodological approaches employed.
Consumers still have a hard time separating animal-free dairy from genetically modified organisms—the tech used most often to make seed crops immune to heavier applications of herbicides. The most common GMO crops include soy, corn, cotton, alfalfa, and rapeseed.
But while consumers were somewhat confused and concerned about the GMO link, the researchers also found they supported the use of tech to solve food system problems, such as creating a more sustainable and ethical milk product. But the biggest concerns were taste and value.
Is microbial fermentation the same as genetic modification?
According to the paper, following the June release of CO2COA, a joint chocolate venture from confectionery giant Mars and Perfect Day, The Non-GMO Project held a webinar challenging the safety of the product.
Entitled “How do you milk a microbe? How synbio is disrupting the dairy industry,” the webinar saw panelists challenge the tech, criticizing its lack of transparency, and suggesting there could be risks to human health and the environment. “These new GMOs are largely unregulated and unlabeled, and they’re flying under the radar of the natural products industry,” read the event’s marketing materials.
Mighty M.lkology uses precision fermentation
The researchers say the aim of the paper was to further explore consumer opinions around the category.
“Making great cheese means nothing if people don’t value it, or worse, are scared of it,” said Oscar Zollman Thomas, Formo’s lead researcher on the project. “We’re very proud to help push forward everyone’s understanding of precision fermentation and how it can change where we get our protein from.”
The results show a general consensus leading toward cautious openness surrounding animal-free dairy. “Outright opposition to the concept was rare, but so too was unabashed enthusiasm,” the researchers said.
“Instead, respondents had a number of questions about the nature of the technological process, its overall safety and regulatory standards, its potential contributions to individual health and climate change mitigation, as well as its organoleptic qualities and price to consumers. Through these conversations, they grappled with their own ambivalence about eating animal products, as well as their mixed feelings regarding the role of technology in food. They pushed back against what they felt were overly hyperbolic claims, both in favor of and against AFD, and called for transparent communication from all parties,” the researchers noted.
Changing perceptions about the food system
“Participants tended to understand that much of the food we eat today has changed over time, and saw challenges to small-scale food producers as long-standing, subject to global trends, and often due to competition with industrial food producers, not alternative protein products,” the researchers said. But they note that most participants doubted that AFD would become a dominant part of the dairy market in the years ahead, but could see it finding some consumer base, if it tasted good enough and its claimed benefits could be verified.
Brave Robot is made from Perfect Day’s animal-free whey
“Lingering concerns about the role and impacts of genetic modification were present as well, and while analogies to beer brewing and other traditional forms of fermentation were seen as assuring for many, some still had their reservations, and could see how any mention of ‘genes’ might be a deal breaker for other people in their social orbit.”
For the industry, this research shows the need for “thoughtful and inclusive discourse.”
“In this way, companies should understand their role not merely as contributors to already packed grocery aisles, but also as participants in a discussion about our relationship with the food we eat and the future of food system reform. Specifically, the importance of transparency and clarity was apparent throughout the process,” the researchers noted.
“Although focus group participants did see a significant role for regulators and retailers in helping them gauge the safety of novel food products like AFD, companies would be wise to proactively engage with consumers to explain the nature of precision fermentation and the principles of synthetic biology underlying it, as well as advocate for robust and trustworthy official regulatory processes.”
A new report suggests limiting meat consumption to no more than two times per week to help reduce methane emissions and slow the impact of climate change. But despite multiple calls for reducing methane emissions, countries are falling short on commitments.
The new State of Climate Action 2022 report looked at progress across 40 indicators vital for reducing emissions by half by the end of the decade.
The report says limiting meat consumption to two burgers a week is critical for staving off a climate catastrophe. It also called for expanding public transport to six times the current rates and pointed to the need to drastically slow rates of deforestation, phase out coal, and speed other industries, such as electric vehicles, and cement and steel production, to further their emissions reductions.
“The world has seen the devastation wrought by just 1.1C of warming. Every fraction of a degree matters in the fight to protect people and the planet. We are seeing important advances in the fight against climate change but we are still not winning in any sector,” Ani Dasgupta, the chief executive of the World Resources Institute, one of the organizations behind the report, said of the findings.
Methane targets falling off track
While progress is happening, it’s not happening fast enough; more than half of the indicators were off track and five were losing ground, the report found.
The E.U., which pledged to reduce methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030 will not likely meet that target, another recent report found. Methane emissions are second to CO2 in causing global warming, producing about 20 percent of all global emissions. But methane traps more heat than CO2, and accelerates global warming’s impact; methane is at least 27 times more damaging than CO2 over the course of a century.
Last year saw methane emissions at their highest levels on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Observatory. Animal farming in Europe is producing the methane equivalent of the heating from 160 coal power plants over 20 years.
Photo by Markus Distelrath via Pexels
“It’s a big deal,” said Tim Searchinger, a senior research scholar at Princeton University and senior fellow at the World Resources Institute. “Enteric methane emissions [from cow burps and farts] alone would add at least 25 percent more to agricultural emissions by 2050, compared to 2010.”
Energy production and animal agriculture are the leading producers of methane emissions. In Europe, the majority of methane comes from agriculture, but according to the report by the Changing Markets Foundation, the E.U. has avoided directly tackling the issue through policy.
“We’re in a climate emergency and cutting methane is the best short-term measure to slow the temperature increase,” Nusa Urbancic, campaigns director for the Changing Markets Foundation, told the Guardian. “That is why we need urgent policy action to transform our food production systems. Our leaders must start listening to scientists instead of lobbyists, otherwise the E.U. won’t be able to meet the global methane pledge.”
Methane emissions targets
Just reducing methane emissions could have a significant impact on slowing climate change; researchers say cuts to methane could reduce global warming by 50 percent between 2030 and 2050. But the E.U.’s drop is likely to fall well below that—less than 20 percent by 2030.
Australia recently joined pledges by the E.U., U.K., and U.S. to reduce methane emissions by at least 30 percent by 2030, earmarking $3 billion (AUD) toward low-emissions technology and $8 million (AUD) toward supporting seaweed as a low-emissions livestock feed, but the country said it wouldn’t put financial pressure, such as taxes, on the agricultural industry to ensure cuts.
Photo by Annie Spratt via Unsplash
NSW Farmers, Australia’s largest agricultural advocacy agency, insisted the government promise not to tax farmers for their methane emissions. Peter Arkle, CEO of NSW Farmers, put the onus on “research and development” saying the country needs “better innovation” to meet emissions targets.
That position mirrors industry pressures in the E.U.; according to the Changing Markets Foundation’s report, reducing livestock emissions is critical to get closer to the 2030 30 percent target. But the report cites “undue influence” from agri-industry lobbyists, which had three times more face time with officials than non-industry groups. It says the lobbyists have had such strong influences on efforts and legislation that livestock emissions are not likely going to be reduced enough to make significant strides toward targets.
Notes From the Frontlines of the Sustainable Food Movement – an opinion column by Irina Gerry
If cows were a country, they would compete with the United States for the title of the world’s second-highest emitter. Cows alone produce 5 gigatons of CO2e. The United States emits 5.2 gigatons of CO2e, including its massive oil and gas sector.
Yet, we keep seeing Low Carbon Beef, Sustainable Beef, Carbon Neutral and even Carbon Positive Milk claims popping up. How is this possible? Can beef and dairy really be sustainable?
Here is the truth. At the current scale, global meat and dairy production is not sustainable. Livestock is responsible for 14.5% of global GHG emissions, with cows carrying the majority share. Raising and feeding livestock occupies one-third of all ice-free land on Earth. It is the leading cause of biodiversity loss, deforestation and waterways pollution.
Raising cows for food is inherently inefficient. Cows are large mammals that require a lot of food and water just to survive, let alone to grow or produce milk, requiring several times more inputs than they produce as outputs. It takes 100 calories of feed to get just 3 calories worth of meat or 17 calories worth of milk. Cows also naturally produce methane, a greenhouse gas 86 times more powerful at warming the planet than CO2.
With climate change events unfolding all around us, animal agriculture is feeling the heat as a large contributor to the problem. While attempts are being made by the industry to increase livestock farming efficiency, reduce methane emissions through feed additives, and improve manure management practices, by best estimates all of the efforts combined are not likely to reduce total emissions by more than 30%, leaving 70% unabated. Given this, researchers, scientists and even the UN have issued calls for us to reduce global meat consumption.
So, what does the industry do? Instead of admitting the physical impossibility of farming 1.5 billion cows without the negative climate impact and creating a plan to reduce production (gasp! That would NEVER be acceptable), it is deploying classic dirty industry PR tactics in an attempt to prop up its image and prevent a slump in consumer demand or risk regulatory action.
Here are the top 6 industry greenwashing tactics to make it easier for you to spot:
1) Deny the Science: Just Say It Ain’t So, Joe
Despite a great degree of scientific consensus around cattle contribution to global agricultural emissions, the media is awash with disinformation about the impact of beef and dairy on climate. Anything from “cows are the climate solution” to “cows don’t produce emissions” has been published in blogs, presented at conferences and posted on social media. The most recent NYC Climate Week featured a sponsored presentation by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association titled “Choosing a climatarian diet: the case for including beef”. Wait, what? Given that beef has the highest emissions of all foods, it is bewildering to see it presented as a climate solution. And yet, some of this positioning works on the general public because it seems to layer on the pre-existing false narratives in our minds. How can an idyllic image of a happy cow on a green pasture possibly be bad?
2) Deflect the Conversation: Point to Anecdotal Evidence of ‘Regenerative Grazing’
Photos of green pastures, happy cows and cowboys evoke patriotic feelings of Americana and all-things-wholesome. Grounded in the real issue of soil degradation, most of which is caused by overgrazing and the use of agrochemicals, many of which are used to grow cattle feed, the purported solution somehow involves grazing more cattle to restore the damaged soils. While some regenerative grazing could be beneficial at a limited scale, the overall narrative has been hijacked by the beef lobby to deflect the conversation away from the massive climate footprint of cattle farming by implying that we can just let the cowboys worry about grazing cattle “better” without reducing beef consumption.
“It’s not the cow, it’s the how”, the jingle goes, and yet, the data shows us that it is, indeed, the cow, and the real crux of the matter lies in the “how many”. Regenerative grazing sounds nice, however, after decades of experimentation, there aren’t specific standards or definitions as to what it actually means, leaving the idea vulnerable to be used as a greenwashing plot. Further, there is little evidence to support grazing cattle as a scalable solution outside of specific degraded cropland restoration case studies.
3) Misappropriate Fractional or Unproven Solutions
Over the past couple of years, media hype has been touting seaweed feed additive’s ability to drastically reduce cow’s methane emissions by 80-90%. How great! Now we can keep eating beef and save the planet, too. Never mind the omission of the fact that these claims come from small-scale experiments, typically of just a handful of cows observed over a few weeks on feedlots.
For example, LOME (Low on Methane) beef sold out in Swedish supermarkets within a week of launch signaling consumers’ interest in low-carbon options. Digging just a bit further into the company’s study behind the claim reveals that this “methane killing magic” does not apply to pastured cattle (chasing cows down pasture with seaweed additive daily seems impractical), does not address all emissions associated with meat production (growing feed crops, fossil-based fertilizers, farm operations, processing, packaging, refrigeration etc.), or address emissions from manure, leaving the best estimate at a total product lifecycle emissions reduction closer to 10-15%, rather than the exciting 90%. As I’ve written before, there is no such thing as low-carbon beef.
Source: Volta Greentech.
4) Use Vague Sustainability Language
There is so much talk about soil health, regenerative agriculture, sustainable grazing practices, climate-smart agriculture, improving biodiversity, and cycling nutrients that it’s hard to keep up. A good way to spot greenwash is to ask, what does it actually mean? Is the claim substantiated by third-party verifications or standards? Does it include the full scope of emissions, land or water use? How is this measured? Who is accountable for the results? If you can’t clearly articulate an answer, you know you are likely being swindled.
5) Buy Carbon Offsets
Proudly claim your product to be Carbon Neutral or even Carbon Positive simply by buying carbon offsets. For example, Neutral milk website talks about “radical carbon reduction” and describes all the wonderful sustainability initiatives the company hopes to implement at the farm, which combined with the bold claim “This milk fights climate change” makes it look like a climate winner, while the product continues to produce emissions in the real world.
If you don’t believe your trans-continental flight to be emissions-free just because you paid extra $5 to buy carbon offsets at checkout, why would you believe the milk carton to do any better, now that you understand the inherent impossibility of making it a reality? Same here, a careful look at the company’s own emissions analysis buried behind the marketing hype reveals that the vast majority of emissions reductions are achieved by purchasing offsets, not by emissions reductions on the farm.
Source: Neutral.
6) Make Net Zero Pledges
Net Zero pledges are a fan favorite of the fossil fuel and animal agriculture industry. Announce the Net Zero pledge far enough into the future and let someone else worry about delivering on it down the road. You’ll be retired or dead by 2050, so who cares. The website looks great!
Hope this was helpful. Happy #greenwash spotting, everyone.
Lead image courtesy Irina Gerry & Green Queen Media.
The vegan shift is in full swing Down Under as Domino’s adds Impossible Beef to 700 menus across Australia and New Zealand.
All pizzas on the Domino’s Australia menu can now add Impossible Beef, the chain announced last week. It comes standard on pies including the Impossible Supreme, Impossible Godfather, Impossible Firebreather, and Impossible Cheeseburger.
Impossible x Domino’s
“We know that people are actively seeking more sustainable food options, but it is also critical that these alternatives deliver on taste and a great pizza experience,” Domino’s Chief Marketing Officer Adam Ballesty said in a statement.
“The Impossible Beef pizza topping does exactly that. It has all the flavour and texture of juicy, authentic minced beef, but with far less environmental impact.”
Courtesy Impossible Foods
“Whether you’re looking to reduce your traditional meat consumption or mix up your menu with flexitarian choices, Domino’s new Impossible Pizzas provide all our customers a meaningful option without compromising on taste, for the perfect Impossible Pizza Night.”
Impossible reported strong growth this year despite lagging U.S. sales for plant-based meat. It entered the Australian restaurant market late last year, and became available in 1,000 supermarkets last March, including leading chain, Woolworths.
“Our launch in Australia and New Zealand last November was a success because of our excellent restaurant partners who brought Impossible’s products to life,” Nick Halla, senior vice president of international at Impossible Foods said in a statement in March.
Sustainability commitments at Domino’s
The expansion with Domino’s builds on years of successful vegan pizza option launches across the country. Both Pizza Hut and Domino’s have brought on vegan options including meatless pepperoni and dairy-free cheese. Domino’s partnered with U.S. vegan cheesemaker Follow Your Heart in 2018 to much success. It’s also explored other meatless offerings.
Last January in the U.K. for Veganuary, Domino’s added its first vegan pepperoni in Europe. “After much experimenting in the Domino’s kitchens, with taste tests a plenty, we can’t wait to bring Vegan PepperoNAY to the masses,” Melanie Howe, Domino’s food and digital communications manager, said in a statement.
Courtesy Domino’s
“These smoky PepperoNAY slices are going to go down a treat. With deals to suit every budget, there is no excuse to not try something new this January!”
The new pizzas in Australia buil on its commitment to experimenting and offering consumers more sustainable options.
“Domino’s has built a fun, engaging brand with a loyal following,” said Jordan Sadowsky, Director of International at Impossible Foods. “We’ve really enjoyed collaborating with them to bring the new Impossible Beef topping to their entire lineup of pizzas, day or night. Whether it’s Impossible Pizza Night with your family or just a midday or late night snack, we think fans across Australia will love that these pizzas are both delicious and good for the planet.”
The partnership will also see Domino’s make efforts to reduce its carbon footprint off the menu, too, by partnering with Wavemaker to offset its carbon for its digital media buying.
“We acknowledge this is a small step in a larger sustainability journey for Domino’s and look forward to growing this partnership to reduce the environmental impact of our campaigns across Australia,” Ballesty said.
Backed by NBA player Ricky Rubio and footballers Sergi Busquets and Sergi Roberto, Barcelona-based Heura says it’s gearing up for what will be one of the biggest Series B funding rounds for the vegan meat sector in 2023.
Heura is offering convertible notes as part of its next fundraising round, a symbolic commitment it says to the 21st-century food transformation. The investment includes backing from NBA star Ricky Rubio, football players Sergi Busquets and Sergi Roberto, comedian David Broncano, and Unovis Capital.
Unconventional funding
Heura kicked off the funding round earlier this year through crowdfunding. It says it raised more than €4 million in just 12 hours through that effort with more than 5,000 people participating. It says that Equity for Good Rebels campaign broke “traditional investor norms” with approximately half of the investors falling in the 18- to 35-year-old age range, and 42 percent identifying as women.
Heura founders Bernat Ananos (l), Marc Coloma (r) | Courtesy
Already the leader in Spain’s plant-based meat sector, Heura owns approximately 80 percent of the category growth and a 30 percent market share. That momentum is carrying the brand across borders throughout Europe as it sets its sights on greater expansion. The new funding will help to accelerate its expansion goals.
“Having mission-driven investors on board who dare to take bold action to accelerate the plant-based protein transition gives us the resources to continue driving category growth across Europe,” Heura co-founder, CEO, and self-proclaimed “food activist,” Marc Coloma said in a statement. “We have a clear vision, and this new funding will help us transition from a successful Spanish plant-based company, to a net positive food-tech startup that’s leading the protein transition across Europe. This growth path is designed to bring us into 2023 in position to close the largest Series B rounds in the industry, and usher in a future that’s better for the people, planet and animals.”
Purpose-driven company
Coloma and Bernat Añaños founded Heura in 2017 as a purpose-driven company. And that commitment remains today, the founders say. Heura says it’s “immensely proud” of its positive impact, and pledges to continue to build on it by making food that’s beneficial to both the environment and animal welfare. It measures its success not just in fiscal returns but also in its resource and emissions reductions as well as animals’ lives. In the first half of 2022, compared to conventional protein, Heura estimates it reduced the need for water by approximately 55.9 million liters, decreased CO2 emissions by 3.6 million kg, and spared the lives of 509,000 chickens, pigs, and cows.
Heura sausages | Courtesy
That commitment is translating to sales; Heura saw more than 100 percent year-on-year growth last year. It says the new funding will support expansion across existing markets in France, Italy, and U.K., while also opening new markets in countries including Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. The latter just saw the Dutch government make a big €60 million investment in cellular agriculture to support the country’s growing shift away from conventional meat and dairy.
The funding will also support the company’s first patent and expansion into new foods that Heura says are “nature-positive, nutrient-dense, and achieve culinary excellence.”
Heura has seen a productive first half of 2022, reaching €14.7 million in turnover, up from €7.6 million in the first half of 2021. Much of that success can be credited to placement in leading European retailers including Ocado in the U.K., Migros in Switzerland, Carrefour in Italy, E.Leclerc, Intermarché, and Super U in France, among others. Heura says new European retail partnerships will be announced this year.
Last year was a banner year for agrifood tech companies across Asia Pacific. And 2022 is following with notable achievements, with more than 360 investment deals in the first half of the year totaling more than $5 billion, according to the latest AgFunder report, produced in partnership with Thai Wah, Omnivore, and AgriFutures Australia.
While investments were down in the first half of 2022 by 47 percent in line with the slowing of venture capital, Asia Pacific is still driving the global shift to a more sustainable food system, with investments into the sector totaling more than $15 billion last year, bringing the region’s ten-year investment total to more than $55 billion. This accounts for 30 percent of all global food tech and ag tech investments.
Investing in APAC food tech
India is leading the APAC region with 225 deals, followed by 104 in China, 63 in Singapore, 57 in Indonesia, and 55 in Australia. All totaled, Japan, South Korea, Pakistan, and Bangladesh saw 105 deals. Deals across food innovations, farm tech, and agribusiness marketplaces led the funding, with bioenergy and biomaterials, farm robotics, and mechanization tech rounding out the top categories.
Last year’s investments were up 67 percent over 2020 numbers. Almost half of that went to China. And declining investments this year point back to China, the report says, with Chinese startups raising less than $1 billion in the first half of 2022 compared to $5 billion during the same time period last year.
Courtesy Starfield Foods
But despite China’s decline, the rest of the region is on the upswing this year, raising $3.9 billion in the first half of 2022, a 15 percent increase over 2021. Some APAC countries like India could see record-setting years, AgFunder reports. India has already seen nearly $3 billion in investments in the first half of the year.
The report also notes that even without China’s large funding numbers last year, the region broke investment records, totaling $8.1 billion, which was more than double 2020’s numbers.
“Early on we saw the potential of the region, with its booming population growth and emerging centres of technology innovation, as a destination for agrifoodtech venture investment,” Michael Dean, AgFunder founding partner and Asia-Pacific head said in a statement accompanying the report.
“We established our GROW Accelerator and Singapore-based venture impact funds to assist institutional and corporate investors in the region to access the disruptive technologies that have the potential to drive efficiencies, profitability and sustainability for decades to come,” he said.
Spread’s indoor vertical farm, courtesy
Median deal sizes increased last year, hinting at inflated valuations for early-stage companies. “The median decrease at late and growth stages in H1-2022 is indicative of the expected decline in funding for the year, particularly from China,” AgFunder says.
The report notes China’s market is cooling, particularly following the $3 billion raise for Xingsheng Youxuan, a food delivery startup. The country is seeing investments in a standout category that may prove to have longer legs than food delivery: farmtech. China closed $605 million in farm tech deals in 2021, a 60 percent jump over 2020. Ag Biotech, supply chain tech, and robotics are particular strengths, the report notes.
India is leading the sector
But the category leader is India, AgFunder says. “India is by far the most advanced farm tech ecosystem in AsiaPacific with startups operating in every farm tech category.”
According to the report, funding for farm tech in the region reached $2.2 billion in 2021, double 2020 levels, with a 17.5 percent increase in the total number of deals.
Courtesy Shaka Harry
India is also the leader in farm management software with startups dating back to the beginning of agtech globally, reads the report. The country also closed the most deals (25) in this category in 2021.
AgFunder’s report comes on the heels of the Good Food Institute India’s 2022 Summit focused on bringing smart protein and tech to the country. India will surpass China as the most populous country in the world next year, and climb to more than 1.5 billion by 2030 and 1.66 billion by 2050. Its agricultural sector is buoyed by smallholder farms, which make up the bulk of the sector. There are an estimated 90 million to 150 million farmers across India.
“The challenges we face before us, in terms of food safety and security are growing,” Varun Deshpande, President, GFI Asia, said during the event. “We think that smart protein—meat, eggs, and dairy made from plants, cells, and microorganisms—is one of our best bets for a more sustainable, secure, and just food supply.”
For the first time, three leading cultivated food industry associations are hosting a first-of-its-kind meeting this week in Singapore to formalize the launch of a global alliance to advance cultivated foods on the global stage.
The alliance is made up of the U.S.-based Alliance for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation (AMPS Innovation), the APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture (APAC-SCA), and Cellular Agriculture Europe (CAE) and represents 31 of the leading cultivated meat, seafood, and dairy companies. According to alternative protein think tank the Good Food Institute’s database, there are currently more than 120 startups working on cultivated food globally, and collectively they have raised over $2 billion in funding to recreate animal protein at a fraction of the emissions, water and land cost of industrial agriculture.
In an email statement, Mirte Gosker, Managing Director of GFI APAC,told Green Queen that “global challenges require global solutions. By bringing together regional industry coalitions from Europe, the US, and Asia Pacific, this timely, new worldwide alliance has the potential to be a game-changer.”
Historic Meeting at SIAW
At a meeting held during Singapore International Agri-Food Week (SIAW), the leaders and management committees of each organization, including Sandhya Sriram Ph.D., APAC-SCA (Shiok Meats), Robert E. Jones, Cellular Agriculture Europe (Mosa Meat) and David Tonucci Ph.D., AMPS Innovation (SCiFi Foods), will discuss how to better leverage the new tripartite alliance to push forward regional synergies, better advocate for regulatory frameworks and communicate more effectively about the benefits of cellular agriculture.
SIAW, a week-long series of food and agriculture industry events where regulators, investors, startups, MNCs, and other stakeholders are gathering from all over the world to showcase the latest developments and products, offers the perfect backdrop and timing for this historic meeting.
Currently, Singapore remains the only country in the world that allows for the sale of cultivated meat. Californian company Eat Just was granted regulatory approval for its cell-based chicken back in December 2020 by the nation-state’s government and since then, there has been little progress in other geographies.
“Unfortunately, current regulations for alternative proteins lag behind consumer demand and few standardized best practices or technical recommendations have so far been implemented,” says Gosker.
“Establishing consistent, efficient, and science-based global regulatory frameworks for cultivated foods is critical to maximizing the sector’s potential to mitigate environmental degradation, strengthen food security, and alleviate global poverty.”
Ira Van Eelen, co-founder of KindEarth.Tech and a key figure in the world of cultivated meat, agrees that a cohesive global alliance is necessary for further progress. “This is a smart move and another sign of the maturing of the cultivated meat industry. As regulations are developed around the world, their [the industry’s] voices will be more powerful together and there is a lot that they can learn from each other in building the regional ecosystems it will take to scale up and support a thriving industry,” she told Green Queen via email.
Van Eelen is the daughter of Willem Van Eelen, the Dutch scientist who pioneered cell-based meat technology. The rights to his work were later acquired via patent by Eat Just.
A New, United Voice To Advocate For Novel Foods
The new alliance hopes to have a united voice at the upcoming COP27 event and engage more strategically with the likes of Codex Alimentarius (Food Code), a joint effort between the UN Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) designed to create international food standards.
In March 2022, the Codex Alimentarius Commission issued a call for comments after recognizing the need for the development and production of foods like cultivated meat and said it plans to use the feedback to conduct an “assessment of the range and suitability of Codex tools that could be used to progress work on safety, quality, labeling, nutrition and/or fair trade practices” for such novel foods.
Cellular agriculture is one of the pillars of the alternative protein industry, which also includes plant-based analogues and fermentation-enabled technologies and counts over 1,000 startups and companies working to reduce the ill effects of industrial animal agriculture. As the global food system faces unprecedented challenges from an energy crisis to water shortages to supply chain woes and the worsening effects of climate change, new means of food production are essential for future food security. As the global population nears 8 billion this November and experts predict 9.7 billion by 2050, alternative proteins provide a sustainable, ethical and healthy solution to the growing demand for animal protein.
Lead image courtesy of Higher Steaks and Tailored Brands.
With its world-class innovation centre, a Scale It Up Innovation Challenge, and pioneering protein aeration technology, leading machinery maker Bühler is helping global meat substitute startups supercharge their production and scaling journey.
LAUNCH – Singapore as the Launchpad for Your Vegan Brand
Singapore has built up one of the most exciting food tech industries in the world- some call it the world’s food tech capital. This moniker was all but solidified back in December 2020, when the tiny island nation became the first country in the world to give regulatory approval for the sale of cultivated meat- that is animal meat grown in a bioreactor from live animal cell cultures. A short few years later, founders from all four corners of the globe are leaving their home countries to establish a base in the Lion City state to pursue alternative protein dreams. As of 2022, 36 food tech startups are headquartered in Singapore, and collectively they have collectively raised over $214 million.
Early-stage food tech entrepreneurs need the ability to conduct research, run pilots, and test manufacturing above all else. Spurred on by the Singaporean government’s 30 by 2030 plan, which supports local food production technology, the little red dot has built up one of the most dynamic B2B plant-based protein ecosystems around, with infrastructure on all levels from world-class science & research talent to pilot production facilities to co-manufacturers and local ingredient sourcing, making it the ideal launchpad for a new vegan meat entrepreneur.
Companies building supply chains and doing R&D in Singapore include Swedish oat milk pioneer OATLY, Californian precision fermentation leader Perfect Day as well as homegrown brands like Next Gen Foods, maker of TiNDLE plant-based chicken, and plant-based nutrition company Growthwell Foods.
Plant-based chicken wrap by SaladStop featuring SGProtein – Courtesy Bühler.
TEST – Get a Market Ready Product in Mere Days with Bühler
Possibly the most expensive part of a food tech startup’s Capex budget is a factory build-out.
Building out your own facility takes years, and millions in funding and comes with huge regulatory and legal headaches. All the while, you are not able to test or iterate your product, which is the most important part of the first few. But what if the machinery you buy is not a fit? And what about factory running costs? Not to mention rising labor charges.
Your job as a founder in those early days is to build, test and improve, ideally without wasting time or capital. Buhler’s Protein Innovation Centre empowers you to do all that and more (get inputs from industry experts and know-how from veteran food players) at a fraction of the cost and stress of investing in your own.
The Protein Innovation Centre, a collaboration between leading food equipment manufacturer Bühler and flavoring specialist Givaudan offers food tech founders and their teams a one-stop shop to innovate novel plant-based meat foods working with dry and wet extrusion techniques. The two Swiss giants’ combined expertise means that product development challenges can be avoided and shorten new product lead times. Startups can trial, test, and taste products in less than a week. To a young company, this kind of opportunity is life-changing.
Food for the Future Featured Film: Bühler.
“It was exactly what we were looking for, in terms of scale, in terms of availability and capability. For a pilot scale extruder that has the latest technologies attached at that particular scale..there is very few available in the region. It’s the best facility I have seen in the region, and it’s quite cost competitive, so it was a no-brainer!”
Professor Roman Buckow, CTO, All G Foods
From Bean to Burger – infographic created by Bühler.
INNOVATE – Protein Aeration Technology: The Next Generation of Meat Substitutes
Beyond nutrition, accessibility, and price, a plant-based meat alternative needs to deliver on texture and taste. In fact, consumers often cite poor mouthfeel or lack of deliciousness as pivotal reasons they may not make repeat purchases of animal-free replacements.
Decades of machinery expertise means Buhler can leapfrog over available technology in the market and offer plant-based meat startups a crucial differentiation when creating high moisture extruded products: Protein Aeration Technology, the company’s latest equipment innovation dubbed by in-house researchers as the future of plant-based meat technology. The aeration process involves gas being injected into the product during the extrusion process to create micro “pocket” structures that result in increased flavor absorption, more authentic color, and biting properties that mimic meat and fish. The aeration technology even reduces raw material costs and offers higher nutritional content.
“Bühler made it possible for us to scale up to an industrial level.”
Eric Stirnemann, Planted co-founder
Bühler representatives at the Protein Innovation Centre in Singapore – Courtesy Bühler.
deal Imagery: Photo of Buhler reps with clients and other partners (show people) and Innovation centre
GROWTH – Scale It Up: The Key To Changing How The World Eats
Bühler and partners Givaudan and Cargill have joined forces to support food tech startups beyond just providing manufacturing expertise. The Scale It Up Innovation Challenge is a niche program designed for entrepreneurs solving moonshot food system problems. Are you creating new plant-based meat with a unique taste profile? Or dreaming up novel protein sources for food ingredient companies that offer new opportunities along the food value chain? Do you have an animal-free product that is working to offer a high-fidelity experience for meat and dairy consumers?
Where most food accelerator and incubator programs are limited to theoretical learning and digital resources, the Scale It Up Challenge is practical, iterative, and functional. It’s a chance to upskill yourself and your team in key production areas such as extrusion, and formulation.
The program also provides support in marketing, operations, and sourcing. Startups can acquire training around all these verticals and be supported by mentorship and feedback from the organizers, build out a network of b2b service providers, refine their proof of concept at Bühler and Givaudan world-class facility, the Protein Innovation Centre, and scale to commercial readiness within a few short months. It’s hard to imagine a better opportunity for an emerging food tech founder.
With backing led by Hong Kong-based billionaire Li Ka Shing’s VC Horizon Ventures, Australian food tech startup, Nourish Ingredients, has raised more than AUD$45 million (USD$28.6 million) in a Series A.
The microbial fermentation-focused Nourish also received funding from Main Sequence Ventures and Hostplus to further its development of fats and oils for the alternative protein sector. The raise is an important milestone, says CEO James Petrie, that will help the company to fast-track and scale production and product development” of its animal-free fats. The new funding follows a $14 million Seed round last year.
Nourish is working to scale its production in partnership with several universities and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), an Australian Government agency responsible for scientific research. Nourish founders Dr. James Petrie and Dr Ben Leita are both former CSIRO scientists.
Nourish co-founders Dr. James Petrie and Dr. Ben Leita | Courtesy Nourish
The company is differentiating itself from the sea of alternative meat producers by focusing on fats made with precision fermentation. That decision, according to the founders, came about as certain animal-based fats can’t be replicated with plants. To recreate the taste and performance of these fats, Nourish turned to microbes in a technique similar to how Perfect Day produces its animal-free dairy-identical whey.
Fat is a key component to recreating animal products. Category leaders including Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have relied on coconut oil.
“The first generation of alternative proteins made waves, mostly with vegans and vegetarians,” Petrie said in a statement.
“By overlooking fats, the market has missed the most essential element to the taste experience. That’s where Nourish comes in. We’re not just mimicking meat — we’re creating animal ingredients but from an animal-free source.”
Impossible Foods uses coconut oil to create a fatty taste and texture in its burgers | Courtesy Impossible
Petrie says feedback from the company’s alt-protein food partners has been very positive. “Nourish’s products have a transformative impact on their products — they haven’t tasted anything like it before. Our main challenge is to scale fast enough to meet their expectations but we are also deeply invested in pushing the boundaries of alt-protein taste and experience into new spaces,” Petrie said.
Following the company’s Seed round last year, Petrie told TechCrunch that the company exists to help improve the growing roster of meat alternatives. Until they do improve, you really cannot see market ignition,” he said. “You’re reaching through, not only to the vegans and vegetarians, but also reaching through to the carnivores and getting them to keep coming back to the foods. That’s our mission.”
Nourish is anticipating 2023 launches for its fat in alternative protein products in Australia and other parts of the world.
“We are still doing R&D and have a pipeline of products,” he said. “We also need to accelerate the conversion of our MVP to the point of which we have realistic quantities that people can actually do something meaningful with.”
The Good Food Institute India, in partnership with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, held its first in-person Summit in New Delhi last week since the pandemic, taking a look at the smart protein industry and how India is positioning itself as a leader in the category.
Participants from across India and around the world gathered alongside educational institutions, investors, and companies including Licious, Shaka Harry, and Blue Tribe Foods for the Smart Protein Summit in India. The event brought together industry stakeholders committed to transforming the global protein supply through cultivating smart protein and technology. The 2022 Summit spanned two days, with more than 80 speakers, 13 panel discussions, 8 curated roundtables, a plant-based tasting tour, and more events.
Smart protein for the future
“The challenges we face before us, in terms of food safety and security are growing,” Varun Deshpande, President, GFI Asia, said during the event. “We think that smart protein—meat, eggs, and dairy made from plants, cells, and microorganisms—is one of our best bets for a more sustainable, secure, and just food supply.”
India is particularly vulnerable to food scarcity as a result of the changing climate. Earlier this year, Mumbai, India’s economic center and home to 19 million residents said it was aiming to achieve net zero ahead of the rest of the country as it faces imminent threats from warming temperatures.
Shaka Harry products.
Developing the nation’s market for smart protein also supports India’s farming community—the country has between 90 million and 150 million farmers, many of them small family farms. “There’s an enormous opportunity for the smart protein sector to create linkages with Indian farmers and ensure that the protein supply comes from local producers,” Siraj Hussain, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) Advisor and former Secretary, MoFPI & Agriculture, Government of India, said during the event.
Developing India’s smart protein sector will also bring jobs to the country, which is expected to become the most populous country in the world next year, climbing to more than 1.5 billion by 2030 and 1.66 billion by 2050, according to recent data from the U.N.
“India has crop diversity, a globally competitive talent pool, and hundreds of people working on this opportunity—which can create immense job opportunities across the value chain, and GFI India and Deloitte India’s modeling shows that the total number of jobs created by smart protein industry in 2030 ranges from 1,51,025 in a low growth scenario to 4, 27,985 jobs in a high growth scenario,” Deshpande said.
India’s smart protein sector
The plant-based and smart protein sector is responding to the challenge, with new products launching every few months, according to GFI India. It says there are more than 50 startups in the space and an ecosystem of more than 80 companies supporting the category growth.
“But there’s a lot that remains to be seen and the market size of the smart protein sector in India hasn’t been comprehensively mapped before,” GFI India says.
Licious products
“India is one of the most sought-after countries in terms of manufacturing capabilities,” said GS Krishnan, President, Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises during the Innovators Showcase. “[W]e need to understand how to capture this opportunity to grow the bioeconomy to its full potential. We project that India’s bioeconomy can grow from the 80 billion dollars it is valued at today to 300 billion dollars by 2030.”
GFI India’s own research alongside Deloitte India projects that smart protein’s total economic opportunity by 2030, for both domestic and exports, could reach $4.2 billion.
Beginning early next year, Swees Plant Based Foods Co., a Thai-based dairy-free cheese startup, will begin production in the country’s first vegan cheese factory.
Expecting to be fully operational in its new facility by 2023, Swees says along with the launch of the factory, it’s gearing up for a Seed crowdfunding round launching on November 1st. It says the crowdfunding gives the public the opportunity to be “a part of the revolutionary movement taking the Thai food industry by storm.”
Thailand’s dairy-free market
Founded in 2018 by Nicolas Frauenfelder who went plant-based after moving to Thailand from Switzerland, the company has quickly gained ground in the nascent dairy-free market in Thailand.
While Swees is initially focused on the Thai market, the company says it will also be exporting products to countries throughout Asia Pacific.
Courtesy Swees
Asian populations are particularly prone to lactose intolerance and allergies, with as many as 90 percent of Asians unable to digest dairy. Demand for dairy-free options has skyrocketed in recent years; the global dairy-free market is expected to surpass $113 billion by 2027. Around eight percent of the Thai population doesn’t eat meat largely for religious reasons, but dairy is still widely consumed even despite the genetic predisposition to lactose intolerance.
Thailand in particular is ripe for dairy-free products; according to a 2021 survey by Rakuten Insights, around 88.5 percent of the respondents in Thailand claimed that they have tried plant-based milk alternatives. The second-most consumed plant-based food products amongst the survey participants were non-dairy products.
Swees founder Nicolas Frauenfelder
The market is responding to the shift; in 2020, Starbucks rolled out several dairy-free options across Asia including an Oatmilk Cocoa Macchiato made with Oatly, and Almond Milk Hazelnut Latte
The announcement follows the first dairy-free festival held in Asia last month. The Generasi Dairy-Free Festival took place in Jakarta, offering thousands of attendees a chance to sample dairy-free products from across Asia. It also featured a barista competition using only dairy-free milk.
Sustainable dairy
The new Swees factory is not only the first dairy-free cheese factory in Thailand, but it’s also designed with sustainability in mind, the company says.
Courtesy Swees
While the building is designed to reduce energy use and resources, dairy-free cheese in and of itself is better for the planet.
According to Swees, vegan cheese produces 80 percent fewer CO2 emissions compared to conventional dairy-based cheese. Traditional dairy is a leading cause of global warming as animal agriculture produces about 15 percent of all global emissions, including methane, which traps more heat than C02.
Vegan Fat, that will provide the juiciness that consumers expect from animal meat and power a new line of vegan beef, chicken and pork products.
