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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Investment in Alternative Seafood Startups Totaled $175 Million in 2021, Up 92% From Previous Year

According to a new report published by the Good Food Institute, investment in alternative seafood companies totaled $175 million in 2021. The total represented a 92% jump over 2020.

GFI’s new report, which looks at the entire alternative seafood category across plant-based, cell-cultured, and fermentation-based products, said 2021 investment brought the total invested in the category to $313 million from 2013 through 2021. Cultivated seafood startups commanded two-thirds of all investment in alt-seafood last year at $115 million, compared with $58 million invested in plant-based seafood startups and $2 million in fermentation-based seafood.

A few large investments dominated investment in alternative seafood startups, including a $60 million convertible note for Blue Nalu, which the company used to invest in their commercial production facility. Another $34 million was raised by Finless Foods, a startup developing plant-based and cultivated seafood products.

While a near-doubling of capital raised is impressive, the total for alt-seafood is just a fraction of the total amount for cell-cultivated meat investments. According to GFI, the total cultivated meat investment in 2021 was $1.38 billion, nearly 8x the total for the entire alt-seafood category and 12 times the size of the cultivated seafood. It’s worth noting, however, that a large chunk of that $1.38 billion was capital raised by a small handful of companies raising late-stage growth capital, including $467 million in Series F funding raised by plant-based/cultivated meat pioneer Eat Just.

Total deals were up 20% in 2021, jumping from 20 in 2020 to 24 in 2021. While nine investors were active in the category with two or more investments in alt-seafood, one investor – Big Idea Ventures – stood out with six investments in the alt-seafood space. Big Idea invested across all three categories, plant-based, cultivated, and fermentation. Aqua Cultured, a fermentation-based seafood startup that raised a $2.1 million pre-seed round from BIG and others, was the lone fermentation-based startup that raised funding in 2021 according to GFI.

David Welch on GMO Controversy and Its Lessons for the Cell-Cultured Meat Industry

The introduction of GMO crops in the 1990s was a moment of opportunity for international agriculture—yet communications with consumers went wrong.

GMO crops have been called frankenfoods, mutants, and carcinogens. According to the Pew Research Center, roughly half of U.S. adults believe that GMO foods are less healthy than GMO-free foods. The Non-GMO Project reports that its butterfly graphic is “the fastest-growing label in the natural products industry.”

Now Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder at Synthesis Capital, an investment management firm focused on food system transformation, David Welch has a researcher’s outlook on the rollout of GMO crops. He spent his undergraduate years studying plant biology at UC Berkeley. In his later experience as a research assistant, some of his work focused on genetically modified crops like barley and maize.

Last week, I got on Zoom with Welch to unpack the parallels between the launch of GMO crops and the advent of cell-cultured meats today.

Avoiding a communication breakdown

Around the time when GM crops were first introduced to the public, the scientific community was still debating the safety implications of modified foods. Welch believes that some of that early discourse sowed the seeds of public uncertainty about the safety of GMO foods. Even once the scientific community had reached a consensus, it was difficult to clear up the confusion that had already been created.

“I’m not suggesting that you should stop negative discussions from taking place, and I think it’s fine to have some dissenting views,” says Welch. Yet the lack of clear communication regarding the underlying science of GMOs likely had an impact on public acceptance, an important lesson for the cell-cultured meat industry: “There’s an opportunity for the industry to work closely together to make sure that the science is communicated in a non-confusing way.”

Welch hopes to see companies, governments, and academics work together to develop a common language for describing cell cultivation concepts. That language could help to smooth out issues in the regulation and labeling arena, which has already proven to be a contentious zone for plant-based products.

Importantly, that common language would also help to standardize communications with the public—“so that you don’t have 20 companies talking about the science in 20 different ways, which then creates confusion,” says Welch.

Regulation and mistrust

Even in the U.S., where some GM ingredients have been widely adopted, the regulation of modified crops is notoriously arduous.

“It’s a very expensive and multi-year process to get a GMO crop approved in basically any country,” says Welch. “And I think there’s some evidence through consumer research that that leads to distrust in the technology. People think, if they have to regulate this so stringently, then it must be dangerous.”

Here, he says, lies a potential parallel between GM and cell-cultured meat technologies. In the U.S. and most other countries, the alternative meat industry is still awaiting a regulatory framework. That framework could ultimately affect consumers’ views of cell-cultured meats.

“I’m not suggesting that we should have no regulation,” says Welch. “I think that the regulatory authorities and the companies need to work together to create a regulatory pathway that is safe, but not so onerous that the public perceives the technology as very risky because there’s so much regulation attached to it.”

The future of food work

“One of the other tensions that existed with GM crops was how they were rolled out into the market and the impact that had on some farming communities,” says Welch. From the beginning, seeds for GMO commodity crops were controlled by a few large companies, a trend that has only intensified since the technology was first introduced. “Those companies ended up with a lot of control over the farmers, and I think that’s had negative effects on some farmers.”

There’s another lesson there for cell-cultured meat companies: Many consumers’ perceptions of alternative meat products could well be affected by the industry’s impact on their own communities.

“I think it’s important for the entire food industry to start talking about this,” says Welch. “I believe there’s going to be a future where there are far more alternative meats than conventional meats on the market. And we need to think about what that means for all of the people who are employed through the conventional meat and seafood industries, and what the future looks like for them in terms of new jobs.”

As cell-cultured meat makes its first forays into the U.S. market, producers are sure to face communications challenges. However, Welch notes that there are also opportunities to build trust with consumers by being transparent about the cell cultivation process.

“The way we currently produce meat and seafood, there’s that hidden step between the field—if the animal ever lived on a field—and the point where it gets to your plate,” he says. “I think it’s really exciting that consumers will be able to see how their meat is being made much more openly in the future.”

A Mid-Year Assessment for Alternative Protein

More companies, more investments, and many more scientific breakthroughs. Those are just a few predictions for the future of alternative protein the Good Food Institute (GFI) sets out in its latest State of Industry reports. Three different papers — one each on plant-based protein, fermentation, and cultivated protein — go in-depth into the trends that drove alternative protein in 2020 and what we can expect for the rest of 2021.

As we’ve written before, investment in alternative protein topped $3.1 billion in 2020, which is more than three times the amount raised by the sector in 2019. Driving those investments are, says GFI, numerous developments across the commercial landscape, investments, scientific and technological developments, and regulatory and government activity.

The State of Industry reports cover the obvious developments, such as the world’s first sale of cultivated meat and plant-based meat’s $7 billion in retail sales. But more interesting now is what we can expect in the future — that is, for the remainder of 2021 and on into the next few years. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of some of those developments:

Expect lots more pilot production environments for cultivated meat. Reaching pilot scale could be seen as the step that bridges a company’s proof-of-concept phase with its commercial phase. GFI notes that at this stage, companies would be producing “hundreds or thousands” of metric tons of cultured meat. (Millions would be required for a company to scale to an industrial level.) Reaching pilot scale would mean being able to supply “a limited number of high-end restaurants in the coming one to three years.” (Read more on why restaurants are critical to cultivated meat’s growth.)

As GFI points out, multiple companies are now transitioning into this pilot-scale phase, including BlueNalu, MosaMeat, and SuperMeat. The latter even turned its pilot production site (pictured above) into a restaurant where consumers can taste the company’s cultured chicken in exchange for leaving detailed feedback. Elsewhere, Aleph Farms and MeaTech 3D plan to have facilities running by 2022 and Avant Meats recently announced a pilot production facility for Singapore. UPSIDE Foods, formerly Memphis Meats, has also just broken ground on a facility.

Cellular agriculture will become its own field of study. One PhD candidate at Tufts University noted that we can expect cell ag to get its own degree program at universities, and have a “separate and distinct curriculum.”

Fermentation production will increase. “If we believe in the projection of 25%-30% CAGR, then for fermentation to even maintain its share of the market, there is a need for a 10x+ increase in capacity by 2030,” Jim Laird of 3F Bio states in GFI’s fermentation report. Of course, needing to increase and actually doing it are two different things, but one of the advantages of fermentation is that it is already seen as a ost-competitive, scalable, and validated process. Many, including the GFI, have begun calling it the “third pillar of alt protein.”

Meanwhile, a number of companies, including Solar Biotech, MycoTechnology, and Nature’s Fynd are developing technologies and processes that will make fermentation even more cost-effective, which could in turn increase companies’ ability to produce.

Fermentation could “revolutionize” the entire alt-protein landscape. It has the potential to influence other areas of alternative protein. As GFI’s report notes, “Fermentation can enable a new generation of proteins, fats, and other functional ingredients that combine with plant-based and cultivated components to create biomimicking whole-cut meats, egg replacements, animal-free dairy proteins, seafood products, and more.” 

Along those lines, the next few years could see hybrid blends of meat, where fermentation-derived protein could also include plant and animal cell components. Fermentation is also already part of a number of other “alt” products besides meat, including cheese and bee honey.

More restaurants will go plant-based. We’ve been mulling the future of the plant-based restaurant for a while. Now that the world is beginning to come out of its various stages of lockdown and people are returning to dining rooms, there’s an enormous opportunity for plant-based foods to take center stage at restaurants. More restaurants will move to full plant-based menus, such as those seen from Canada-based Copper Branch and, most recently, Eleven Madison Park in NYC.

Plant-based chicken will be a big part of this shift. Right now there’s a distinct lack of choices, both in restaurants and grocery stores, when it comes to poultry. Expect this to change rapidly, starting with restaurants. 

This is by no means an exhaustive list. It is also important to keep in mind the many challenges the alt-protein sector still has to face, from improving the taste and texture of plant-based meat to bringing down the cost of cell-culture media. There are also heaps of regulatory approvals to be obtained before many of these companies and solutions can actually reach consumers.

Some of these challenges will be solved in 2021; others are years away from solutions. But if there’s one overarching takeaway we can glean from GFI’s report trio, it’s that everything — from number of companies to production levels to investment dollars — is going to increase astronomically this year for alternative protein.

More Headlines

MeaTech 3D Will Produce Cultivated Fat, Whole Steaks at Its Forthcoming Pilot Facility – The Israeli bioprinting startup this week announced a pilot production facility where the company will scale up production of its cultivated fat and continue work on whole cuts of cultivated steak.

Memphis Meats Rebrands as UPSIDE Foods, Announces Cultured Chicken Product – The company rebranded and also announced that its first consumer product, cultured chicken, will be available to customers this year, pending regulatory approval.

Solar Biotech Raises $2M for Its Fermentation Tech – The Raleigh, North Carolina-based startup will use the $2 million in a debt-financing round to scale up its renewable-energy-powered fermentation technology, which it licenses to other companies.

GFI: Plant-Based Retail Sales Reach $7B in the U.S.

Retail sales of plant-based foods in the U.S. reached $7 billion in 2020, according to new data released this week by the Good Food Institute and the Plant-Based Foods Association (PBFA). Sales grew 27 percent in total, which is nearly twice as fast as total U.S. food retail sales. The $7 billion figure includes plant-based meats, eggs, and dairy products.

Plant-based milk is still the largest category of the bunch, and grew at 20 percent over the last year to reach $2.5 billion in sales. Almond milk remains the top seller, though oat milk is catching up, according tot he report. 

Plant-based meat analogues nabbed second place in terms of retail sales, which grew to $1.4 billion in 2020. GFI called plant-based grounds — or plant-based versions of ground beef — the “breakout” product format. “Plant-based ground sales more than doubled in size over the course of 2020, in part due to the introduction and increased distribution of those products in retail.”

Findings for other plant-based categories in the report include:

  • Eggs, once a tiny category, grew 168 percent — a 706 percent increase over the past two years.
  • Ice cream grew 20 percent, to $435 million.
  • Yogurt grew 20 percent, to $343 million.
  • Butter and cheese grew 36 percent and 42 percent, respectively.

Obviously the reason for the increase in sales is that consumers are more interested than ever in eating these products, particularly as traditional meat comes under fire for both environmental and ethical reasons. GFI’s report noted a 3.4 percent jump in U.S. households purchasing plant-based foods in 2020, reaching 56.8 percent of consumers.

The new data comes on the heels of a March report from GFI that found $2.1 billion had been invested in plant-based foods in 2020, including the $700 million raised by Impossible, LIVEKINDLY’s $335 million, and Oatly’s $200 million in private equity financing.

As far as who is actually buying these products, GFI found, in this week’s report, that the demographic tends to be “from higher income brackets.” However, we can expect that to change, according to the Institute: “As plant-based food prices drop over time and begin to reach price parity with animal-based products, we can expect consumers from lower income brackets to increase their purchasing of plant-based products as well.” 

GFI: $3.1 Billion Invested in Alternative Proteins in 2020, Tripling the Money Raised in 2019

While 2020 was a tumultuous year we’d all rather forget, it was actually a banner year for investment in alternative protein. According to new data released today by The Good Food Institute (GFI), there was $3.1 billion in disclosed investments in the alternative protein space in 2020. That figure is more than three times the amount raised by the sector in 2019.

GFI used PitchBook‘s data, and includes investments in startups working on plant-based meat, egg and dairy; cell-cultured meat; and fermented protein. Alternative protein is relatively new in the food-tech world, and investment in the space is definitely a steep hockey stick shape. The $3.1 billion raised in 2020 is more than half of the $6 billion alt protein companies raised between 2010 and 2020.

GFI broke down the data further, finding:

  • Plant-based meat, egg and dairy companies received $2.1 billion in investments in 2020, up from $667 million raised in 2019. The $2.1 billion in 2020 included the $700 million figure Impossible Foods raised, as well as LIVEKINDLY‘s $335 million in VC financing and Oatly‘s $200 million private equity financing.
  • Cultivated (a.k.a. cell-based) protein companies raised more than $360 million in 2020. This included the sector’s first two Series B rounds: Memphis Meat‘s $186 million raise and Mosa Meat‘s $75 million. GFI also included cell-based dairy companies such as Turtle Tree Labs and BIOMILQ.
  • Fermentation, the third pillar of alternative protein, pulled in $590 million in funding in 2020. This included Perfect Day‘s $300 million raise and Nature’s Fynd‘s $45 million debt round.

That the alt protein space was able to raise so much money in 2020 isn’t that surprising. First, there are just a ton of startups working in the space, so there is more opportunity for investment. And in areas like cultivated and fermented protein in particular, that technology is maturing, achieving more yield at lower costs.

GFI also noted that larger, existential factors helped drive investment in alternative protein. The pandemic highlighted issues with zoonotic disease transmission as well as ethical complications surrounding the production of animal-based meat. These pandemic-related issues along with problems with the animal meat supply chain helped drive a surge in plant-based food sales in 2020.

While 2020’s investment figures were impressive, I’m actually curious how this year will turn out. As we noted in our Future Food newsletter this week, there has been a raft of investment just in the cultured meat space since January. Will 2021 be another record breaking year for the alt protein space? Check back in next March to find out.

Good Food Institute: Plant-Based Food Consumers Spend 61% More in Food Retail

We’ve known for a while now that the current spikes and surges in demand for plant-based protein are in large part because of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on our food system. Now there are some new numbers that back those claims up and give insights into just how big plant-based products have gotten in the food retail sector, thanks to the Good Food Institute (GFI). 

GFI’s new report, “Plant-Based Strategies for Retail: An overview of leading plant-based assortment, merchandising, and marketing tactics at top U.S. retailers,” lays out some of the growth statistics of the plant-based meat sector, and examines the forces driving such a rapid adoption in the retail space. 

For context, the report notes that U.S. retail sales of plant-based food were worth $5 billion in 2019. While we don’t yet have the full sales numbers for 2020, GFI notes in its report that “plant-based sales are growing 14 times faster than total food sales” and that consumers who buy plant-based food products tend to spend more: 61 percent of plant-based food shoppers are considered “valuable,” and spend 61 percent more than the average shopper. 

All of those numbers are pre-pandemic, which means this time next year, figures will likely be even higher. It’s an understatement to say the pandemic has had a major impact on plant-based meats. According to GFI’s report, nearly one quarter of consumers surveyed report eating more plant-based meals because of COVID-19, with Millennials and Gen Z being the largest age group in this percentage. Both groups (41 percent for Gen Z and 37 percent for Millennials) reported they “will be less likely to buy [traditional] meat” because of COVID-19 fears, compared to 25 percent for all age groups. The report cites health concerns (physical and mental), an intent to buy more health-related items, and general fears around the spread of COVID-19 as plausible reasons for this uptick.

Meat alternatives, in particular, saw positive increases. GFI’s report outlines some figures from some of the major plant-based meat companies: 

  • Beyond’s retail sales increased 194.4 percent over the second quarter of 2020; the company currently has products in roughly 25,000 retail stores across the U.S.
  • Impossible saw a 500 percent increase in grocery stores selling the Impossible Burger during the pandemic months, and the company’s products are available in 9,200 stores nationwide.
  • Morning Star farms saw a 66 percent increase in March sales.
  • Gardein sales increased by 65 percent from March 13 to April 19, 2020.
  • Tofurky sales increased 40 percent from February through April of 2020. 

It’s likely the plant-based foods sector would have seen these high numbers even without the pandemic — only over a much longer timeframe. For example, Impossible would probably have reached that 500 percent increase in grocery retailers eventually, but it likely would not have happened in a matter of a few short months had there been no pandemic.

Exactly how long it would have taken sans pandemic we’ll never know, but regardless, sales of plant-based foods aren’t going to subside once COVID-19 does. As GFI’s report notes, this demand for plant-based foods “is a consumer shift, not a fad.”

That in turn means we’ll see more food retailers (and restaurants) selling these products, more alt-protein companies setting up direct-to-consumer e-commerce stores like those of Beyond and Impossible, more food tech accelerators dedicated to alt-protein, and, of course, far more investment in the coming months.

Good Food Institute Awards $4M to Scientists Forging the Future of Alt-Meat

The Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit trying to promote the evolution of alternative protein, announced today that it had awarded $4 million to 21 research projects to advance the study of plant-based and cultured meat. The money came from GFI’s donor-supported Competitive Research Grant Program, which thus far has donated over $7 million since it was founded last year.

The selected projects hail from nine different countries. Eight are tackling cultured (which GFI called ‘cultivated‘) meat and Here’s a quick list of some of the cool projects the 2020 grantees are leading:

  • Faster, cheaper cultured meat production. Dr. Marianne Ellis of the University of Bath, UK is developing a smaller, more cost-efficient production system for cell-based meat. She hopes that this will make cellular agriculture more accessible, including for those in remote locations and developing countries.
  • Turning waste into plant protein. Dr. Marieke Bruins of Wageningen University in the Netherlands is using plant-based proteins upcycled from agricultural waste streams to make super sustainable meat alternatives.
  • 3D printed cultured meat. Dr. Sara Oliveira of INL in Portugal is working on a bioprinted model for cultured meat design. Called M3atD, the model will help her team explore how 3D printing can help accelerate cell-based meat production.

You can see the full list of grantees from 2020 and 2019 here, if you’re interested. But overall, it seems that the most recent crop of grantees are trying to improve four key areas for plant- and cell-based meat: cost, taste, texture, and scaling. As consumers continue to hunger for plant-based meat, and cell-based meat keeps trekking towards the market, these improvements will be necessary to keep flexitarians satisfied, attract new diners, and reduce the environmental footprint of alt-proteins.

Admittedly, alternative meat is probably not the issue at the forefront of everyone’s mind right now. But in a time when your newsfeed is full of articles about pandemics, social distancing and scary outlooks, it’s nice to be reminded that positive progress is still going on to help the planet, and help us eat better too.

Plant-Based Food Market Grew 11.4 Percent Last Year, Now Worth $5 Billion

Plant-based foods are hotter than a sizzling heme burger. According to data commissioned from the Plant Based Food Association (PBFA) and the Good Food Institute (GFI) released yesterday, the market for plant-based foods is now worth $5 billion in the U.S. (h/t Supermarket News)

The data, which was commissioned from wellness-focused data company SPINS, found that sales of plant-based foods grew 11.4 percent in 2019, and have grown 29 percent over the past two years.

Categories leading this sales growth include plant-based milks, which grew 5 percent last year and now make up 14 percent of the entire milk category; and plant-based meat, which grew 18 percent in 2019, accounts for two percent of retail packaged meat sales, and is worth more than $939 million on its own.

We should, of course, take these numbers with a grain of salt. The Plant Based Food Association obviously has a plant-based horse in the race when it comes to the success of the category. But even with that caveat, this type of growth in the plant-based market is entirely believable.

One way we know this is that all the big traditional players are getting into the plant-based game. Cargill and JBS are rolling out their own plant-based burgers, and chicken king Tyson launched its own Raised and Rooted line of plant-based chicken.

Elsewhere, traditional milk sales have plummeted over the past decade, resulting in the bankruptcies of dairy giants like Dean Foods and Borden. To help stem the tide, we’ve seen dairy producers like Live Real Farms launch a blend of traditional and plant-based milks.

The boom in plant-based foods is also coming at a time when plant-based foods are just… better tasting, and also more widely available. Both Beyond and Impossible continue to improve their “meat” recipes and gain distribution in new restaurants and venues. For its part, Impossible just cut the price of its product for distributors as part of its quest to usurp meat entirely.

And it’s not just relegated to meat. Last month JUST launched a plant-based pre-cooked omelette for use in things like breakfast sandwiches. Oat milk, with its creamy texture and sweet flavor, is a hit with the latte set. And there are a bunch of startups like Perfect Day, which is creating damn good ice cream by genetically modifying microflora.

In short, we’re in the salad days for the plant-based biz, and with better products in the pipeline, chances are good it will be worth a lot more than $5 billion in the coming years.

UPDATE: This post has been updated to clarify data sources.

Good Food Institute Announces Winners of $3M Grant to Revolutionize Meat Alternatives

Back in September, GFI called for applicants for a $3 million grant to fund research into plant- and cell-based meat. Yesterday, the company named the 14 winning scientists, each of whom will receive up to $250,000 over the next two years to fund their investigations.

The chosen projects are pretty evenly divided between cell-based meat (six companies) and plant-based meat (eight companies). Some topics were broad, like how to scale up cell-based meat production, how to improve texture in plant-based meats. Others were quite specific, like a project exploring the potential of red seaweed as a meat substitute, or a Norwegian research center building out a “farmyard” of animal tissue for cell-based meat.

The most interesting part of the grant awards, however, is the purpose behind the grant itself. According to an email from GFI to The Spoon, the grant was created in order to establish “a base of scientific inquiry” in the meat alternative space. The email goes on to say that the science of plant-based and cell-based meat “skipped a step,” leaping immediately from idea to product in development by private companies. That means that there’s no scientific basis for the technology, so meat alternative companies end up doing duplicating a lot of scientific legwork.

Which is actually true. Many cell-based and plant-based companies are very protective of their technologies (the exception being Shojinmeat’s open source clean meat initiative), so any new company in the space basically has to start from scratch. That means a lot of trial and error, a lot of wasted money, and a slower route towards the end goal: making a product that tastes as good as — and costs less than — traditional meat.

But if the GFI’s chosen scientists can help establish some base framework for the technology used to create plant-based and cell-based meats, alterna-meat companies new and old could use it as a resource to optimize R&D and eventual product scaling. And with $250,000 in their coffers, hopefully the winning scientists will be able to do just that.

USDA and FDA Will Tag Team Regulation of Cell-Based Meat

Last Friday, we got one step closer to figuring out the regulatory future of cell-based meat.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released a statement stating that they would work together with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to oversee production of what they called “cell-cultured food products derived from livestock and poultry.” The statement comes almost a month after the two organizations led a joint meeting to focus on regulation and labeling of the new technology.

We knew from the get-go that the two organizations would work together on the regulation of this new technology, so that part isn’t exactly news. But the statement also outlines exactly which roles each organization will take on. From the USDA (bolding our own):

Agencies are today announcing agreement on a joint regulatory framework wherein FDA oversees cell collection, cell banks, and cell growth and differentiation. A transition from FDA to USDA oversight will occur during the cell harvest stage. USDA will then oversee the production and labeling of food products derived from the cells of livestock and poultry. 

So the FDA will oversee everything from gathering the tissue to cultivating it (growing it into enough muscle fibers to eat). Once the meat is complete, the USDA will take over and oversee the process of labeling. This division “leverage[s] both the FDA’s experience regulating cell-culture technology and living biosystems and the USDA’s expertise in regulating livestock and poultry products for human consumption.”

True enough, the USDA typically oversees meat at the point of slaughter. Since there’s no slaughter when meat is cultured outside the animal, it makes sense that the closest equivalent would be the point of “harvest” in which the cells are done reproducing and ready to be processed and eaten.

Dr. Mark Post with the world’s first burger made of cells grown in a lab.

Sentiment seems to be positive about the new division of power. Initially, cell-based meat companies advocated for the FDA to be the primary regulatory body involved, but they seem to be okay with this arrangement. Jessica Almy, the Director of Policy of the Good Food Institute, a non-profit which supports meat and dairy alternatives, issued a statement writing that “This announcement is an exciting indication that FDA and USDA are clearing the way for a transparent and predictable regulatory path forward.”

Big Beef is also pleased(ish) with the division. In a statement emailed to Food Dive, The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association wrote: “This announcement that USDA would have primary jurisdiction over the most important facets of lab-produced fake meat is a step in the right direction.”

In the end, it seems that the USDA will have the trickier job of the two. Labeling is one of the most contentious issues surrounding cell-based meat: In the last few years alone, it has been called in-vitro, lab-grown, cultured, clean, and, most recently, cell-based meat. Traditional meat companies are pushing back on calling it meat at all (see “fake meat” reference above). The fact that USDA has the power in the labeling department could mean an uphill battle for cell-based companies who want to use the term “meat”.

But the USDA’s timeline to deciding on a name for the stuff is ticking down. JUST, Inc. is still planning to bring a cell-based poultry product to market by the end of 2018, provided it gains regulatory approval. With just over a month remaining, it seems ambitious that they will indeed be able to get the regulatory thumbs-up to meet their goal.

Progress may be slow, but all involved — traditional and cell-based meat companies — seem pleased that the government is taking steps to address this new technology. However, there’s still a lot to work out. It remains to be seen what information the two organizations will share, how and to what extent they’ll collaborate, and, of course, what we’re going to call the stuff.

The public comment period of last month’s meeting has been extended will be open until December 26th. Speak now, or forever hold your peace (of steak).

Good Food Institute Launches $3M Grant for Meat Alternatives

Today the Good Food Institute (GFI) announced a $3 million grant program to support plant- and cell-based meat research.

GFI is a nonprofit working to shift the food system away from industrial animal agriculture and towards both cell- and plant-based meat alternatives. According to their press release, less than 0.3 percent of the world’s universities are currently working on research in the meat alternatives sphere. With this grant, GFI is hoping to change that and jumpstart more projects in the field.

They even called out 24 universities, from Cornell to the University of Tokyo, which they identified as having the greatest potential for advancement due to their “relevant technical expertise, research capabilities, and private-sector partnerships.”

GFI’s strategy of targeting universities is a smart move. There are already quite a few startups popping up in the plant- and cell-based meat fields, and Big Food has been making investments in the space as well. Universities are an under-tapped resource of young, eager scientists looking to make a positive change in the world, and GFI is hoping its $3 million in grants can help tempt them to focus their work on meat alternatives.

This announcement comes on the heels of the inaugural Good Food Conference, a two-day event put on by the GFI meant to unite leaders in the meat alternative space. If you want to apply for a research grant from GFI, submit a proposal by November 21st, 2018.