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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

good food institute

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.