This week was a big one when it came to incubating the next generation of future food.
Not only did GFI Israel and Technion announce a new Sustainable Protein Research Center (SPRC), but the city of New York also announced it would build a “bioinnovation hub” with $20 million in new funding earmarked from NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ administration.
The SPRC, which Technion and GFI Israel claim is the first of its kind in the world, “will coordinate the collaborative activities of dozens of researchers from more than ten different academic departments at the Technion and with additional universities and companies to address the world’s most pressing challenges of sustainability and human health.”
The new facility will have a 5-year budget of $20 million and will facilitate the recruitment of new faculty members in the field and support “the construction of a building for the Carasso FoodTech Innovation Center.” The new center will purchase and maintain capital equipment and recruit professional technicians and ” fund collaborative seed research and train graduate students and post-docs in related fields.”
Closer to home, the new Center for Planetary Health (C4PH) will be built next to Brooklyn’s Navy Shipyard as part of Newlab, a cross-industry innovation coworking center, and venture studio. The new C4PH will be funded by $20 million allocated as part of the LifeSci NYC initiative, a broad new push that is part of NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ “Working People Agenda.”
Adams commented on the new investment as part of the state of the city address.
“We’re also investing in the jobs of the future,” said Adam. “Last year, Governor Hochul and I announced a new life sciences hub in Kips Bay, which will create 10,000 jobs and $25 billion in economic impact. And this year, the city will kickstart a new effort to become the global center of sustainable biotech.
We will start by opening a first-in-the-nation incubator at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where biotech startups will transform the way we eat, build, and protect our environment. And as we work to create more jobs, we will also help New Yorkers train for the jobs that are in high demand right now — jobs in tech, renewable energy, and nursing.”
At last week’s Tufts Cellular Agriculture Innovation Summit, several speakers pointed to the need for increased government investment in biotechnology innovation and production infrastructure to help fund the next wave of breakthroughs that will help the future food industry leap forward. While the NYC investment may not do anything to solve the need for the billions of funding needed in production capacity capex the alt-meat industry will need in the future, it’s a sign – much like California’s $5 million allocation last year – that local governments are beginning to understand that investment in the alternative protein industry could make their states more competitive – and create more jobs – when these industries begin high-yield production down the road.
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