Currently browsing posts about: Meat substitutes

The big news in the plant-based food world last week was Beyond Meat’s retrenchment and legal hassles.   Here’s how these issues are being covered by the food business press.

• Beyond Meat lays off 200 employees and slashes its revenue outlook: The plant-based meat company, which is eliminating about a fifth of its workforce after cutting staff in August, said the latest job reductions can drive more sustainable growth.
• Beyond Meat to lay off 200 staff, shake up exec team, as it targets cash flow positive operations in late 2023:  Loss-making plant-based meat co Beyond Meat – which is currently squaring up to former co-packer Don Lee Farms in a trial in L.A. – has unveiled plans to lay off approximately 200 employees (19% of its global workforce) in a bid to cut costs and achieve cash flow positive operations within the second half of 2023…. Read more
• 64-strong witness list unveiled as Beyond Meat squares off with former co-packer Don Lee Farms in LA court: Former executive chairman Seth Goldman, CEO Ethan Brown, Mattson CEO Justin Shimek and a cluster of senior Beyond Meat executives, past and present, are listed among 64 potential witnesses in the plant-based meat co’s trial with former co-packer Don Lee Farms starting today (Oct 11) in Los Angeles…. Read more
• Beyond Meat’s corporate shakeup sees 3 exec departures, including suspended COO:  Doug Ramsey, who was arrested on assault charges last month, officially lost his job, and the CPG eliminated the position of chief global growth officer. Its CFO also announced his departure.
• Big Meat retrenches as meat alternatives lose their luster: The nation’s leading meat companies all got in on the action on meat alternatives, with investments in plant-based and cell-cultured meat startups and their own dedicated consumer brands. But with category sales weakening in recent months amid surging inflation, where do they stand today?… Read mor
• After billions in investment, plant-based meat is a branding catastrophe: There is zero differentiation or branding in the space; all the players are stuck in Motorola Land, going no further than saying “We are plant-based,” writes Adam Hanft.Read More  
• Plant-based products are globally growing but do they cater to all?  Plant-based foods such as meat and dairy alternatives have been around for many years, but they’re becoming more popular and of higher quality than ever…. Read more

Right now, this sector looks bleak, but who knows how this will play out.  Not me, for sure.

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I subscribe to the British-based newsletter, Food Navigator.  It occasionally publishes roundups of articles on specific topics.  Here’s a sample of articles about current happenings in the meat industry.

• Tyson VP Exclusive Part I: Strong APAC flexitarian consumer base makes alternative protein products ‘very complementary’ Tyson’s plant-based innovations are complementary and not competitors to its existing traditional meat products, claims its Vice President Commercial for APAC in the first part of our exclusive interview…. Read more
• Study linking deaths to red meat ‘appears implausible’ and ‘lacks transparency’: The World Cancer Research Fund International is accusing the GBD 2019 study of ignoring the nutritional value of red meat and lacking rationale. … Read more
• Plant-based brands accused of creating ‘a category failure, maybe one of the biggest in food industry history’: There’s a lot of buzz about plant-based innovation. But according to Julian Mellentin, of consultancy New Nutrition Business, much of this noise comes down to the ‘echo chamber’ created by media, consultants and the investment community. Is plant-based really resonating with consumers? And if not, why?… Read more
• ‘Highly’ marbled cell-based beef bites developed with 3D printing tech Steakholder Foods has coined the ‘first-of-its kind’ and ‘richly marbled’ structured meat product Omakase Beef Morsels…. Read more
• What’s meat’s beef with vegan burgers? The case against ‘meaty’ names for plant-based substitutes For the most part, the meat industry is against the use of ‘meaty’ denominations for plant-based alternatives. What’s the sector’s beef with ‘vegan burgers’ and ‘plant-based sausages’? FoodNavigator investigates…. Read more
• Walmart acquires minority stake in Sustainable Beef:  In a bid to provide its customers with more “high-quality, affordable” beef, Walmart has acquired a minority stake in Nebraska-based Sustainable Beef…. Read more
• Can monkeypox virus be transmitted via food? Experts aren’t ruling it out… Risk of contracting monkeypox through food cannot be completely ruled out, according to experts at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and French food agency ANSES…. Read more

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Coming soon!  My memoir, October 4.

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If you want to understand why it’s so difficult to change meat consumption patterns, try the Environmental Working Group’s latest analysis: USDA has spent nearly $50 billion on livestock subsidies since 1995.

From 1995 to 2021, USDA spent

• $11 billion on livestock disaster assistance
• $14.2 billion on livestock commodity purchases
• ~$5 billion in dairy subsidies
• $15 billion in payments to offset the effects of the pandemic

In addition, USDA paid $160 billion during those years to producers of the corn and soybeans used to feed those animals.

In contrast, USDA spent less than $30 million to promote plant-based proteins since 2018.

The numbers say it all.

Policy change, anyone?

Larissa Zimberoff, the author of Technically Food (which I blurbed and reviewed), forwarded  this press release from the University of California Berkeley:  Global elimination of meat production could save the planet.  

A new study of the climate impacts of raising animals for food concludes that phasing out all animal agriculture has the potential to substantially alter the trajectory of global warming.  The work is a collaboration between Michael Eisen, professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Patrick Brown, professor emeritus of biochemistry at Stanford University and the CEO of Impossible Foods Inc., a company that sells plant-based meat substitutes.

The study: Rapid global phaseout of animal agriculture has the potential to stabilize greenhouse gas levels for 30 years and offset 68 percent of CO₂ emissions this century.  Michael B. Eisen, Patrick O. Brown.   PLoS Climate. 2022;1(2).  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000010 

Method: The authors modeled the combined, long-term effects of emission reductions and biomass recovery that would be unlocked by a phaseout of animal agriculture.

Findings:  A phaseout of livestock production would provide half of the net emission reductions necessary to limit warming to 2°C

Conclusion: The magnitude and rapidity of these potential effects should place the reduction or elimination of animal agriculture at the forefront of strategies for averting disastrous climate change.

Funding:  There was no formal funding of this work. Michael Eisen is an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute which funds all work in his lab. Patrick Brown is CEO of Impossible Foods, Inc.

I dealt with cell-based alternatives to animal foods yesterday; those are not on the market yet and are unlikely to be on the market soon at any reasonable scale.  In the meantime, we have lots of plant-based products to deal with.  These too require critical discussion.

• It’s official: plant-based diets make us gassier… so what’s worse for the planet – cow or human farts?  We all know plant-based foods increase our wind. But with the take up of this kind of diet seen as one of the best ways for individuals to combat climate change, could these gasses potentially bode badly for the atmosphere?… Read more

Pea protein is a basic ingredient of plant-based meat alternatives.  Take a look at what’s happening to pea prices.

While sorting all this out, the quest for profitable products is relentless.

• • Impossible Chicken Nuggets launch in restaurants: The plant-based powerhouse’s latest offering is on a handful of menus now and will be at more than 10,000 grocery stores by the end of the year, the company says.
  • Plant protein that behaves like animal protein? Lemna-fueled Plantible Foods raises $21.5m, gears up for 2022 launch:  Plantible Foods – a startup producing protein from lemna, a fast-growing aquatic plant that can be harvested all year round, has raised $21.5m in a series A round* led by Astanor Ventures, as it gears up for a commercial launch in 2022…. Read more
  • Quorn USA president: ‘We want to be the kings of [meat-free] chicken’:  While investors and journalists are pretty excited about a new wave of startups growing food in fermentation tanks, it’s easy to forget that we’ve been eating a filamentous fungus grown in big metal vats (a.k.a. ‘mycoprotein’) since the 1980s, says the US president of Quorn, who says we’re going to be hearing a lot more from the original ‘alt protein’ brand later this year…. Read more
  • Meatless Farm, Equinom tie-up on high-protein yellow pea: ‘Food companies have merely scratched the surface when it comes to yellow peas’:  Israeli seed developer Equinom and plant-based business Meatless Farm have announced a tie up to leverage Equinom’s high-protein yellow pea varieties…. Read more  
  • Hershey tests plant-based chocolate bar:  The Pennsylvania snack maker and confectioner is selling Oat Made bars in select markets as it continues its push into better-for-you products.
  • Fermenting yeast into ‘cream’: Start-up ads richness and texture to plant-based dairyCultivated Biosciences is addressing textural challenges in plant-based dairy with a fat ingredient developed from oleaginous yeast. Co-founder and CEO Tomas Turner explains how…. Read more

I’m seeing considerable confusion about the difference between cell-based and plant-based meat alternatives.

Cell-based products are not yet on the market, except in Singapore.  Plant-based products are everywhere, and I will deal with them separately tomorrow.

For an example of the confusion, Phil Howard’s op-ed in Civil Eats was first titled Giant Meat and Dairy Companies Are Dominating the Plant-Based Protein Market, but his informative diagram refers to cell-cultured meat and fish alternatives, those that start with cells of animal origin.  Civil Eats, ever careful, fixed the headline so it now reads, Op-Ed: Giant Meat and Dairy Companies Are Dominating the Plant-Based and Cellular Meat Market.  

Today, lets stick to cell-based, beginning with Joe Fassler‘s thoughtful analysis in The Counter: “Lab-grown meat is supposed to be inevitable. The science tells a different story.”

That science tells us:

• Manufacturers consistently miss targets for product release.
• Production costs are astronomical.
• Even if costs can be reduced, production volume can never match real meat.
• Producing cell-based meat to scale means keeping it free of contaminants (difficult, if not impossible)
• Fetal blood serum, a necessary ingredient, requires animals to be slaughtered.
• Cell culture facilities are resource-intensive.

In the meantime, here are some of the latest developments in regulation, image, and celebrity investment.

• USDA seeks comments on labeling cell-based meat: The notice, available in the Federal Register online, is a step toward establishing a regulatory framework for these products.
• Cell-based disruption: How many factories, and at what capacity, are required to supply 10% of the meat market?  If the cultivated meat industry were to set the ambitious target of supplying 10% of the global meat market, how much product would be required? How many factories, containing how many bioreactors, would need to be built? And where?… Read more
• Cell-based or cell-cultured: What’s the best name for next-gen seafood made from fish cells?
• With terminology ranging from cell-based to cell-cultured, cultivated, clean, and in vitro, how can consumer research help industry settle on one single term for next-gen seafood made from fish cells?… Read more
• Ad: How Aqua Cultured Foods plans to own the whole cut seafood analog space: Today Aqua Cultured Foods, a Chicago female-founded startup, announced their use of fermentation technology to create seafood alternatives with an incredibly realistic taste, texture, and nutritional profile…The company has developed whole-muscle cuts using biomass fermentation and a specific strain of fungi to deliver a high protein content comparable to cod, plus fiber and Omega-3s, without fat or cholesterol.
• Eat Just Raises $97 Million More to Fund Cultured Meat Production: The investment, which was part of a round announced in May that raised $170 million, came from new groups including Resilience Reserve, a venture capital fund, and existing backers like hedge fund UBS O’Connor and Graphene Ventures. This brings the round to $267 million, making it the largest ever for cultivated meat, which backers say will help to meet the world’s rising demand for animal products in a more humane and environmentally friendly way. Eat Just is also adding Dan Glickman, a former U.S. agriculture secretary, to its advisory board, and Jim Borel, a former executive at DuPont, to its board of directors.
• Leonardo DiCaprio invests in cultivated meat firms Mosa Meat and Aleph Farms:  Cultured meat innovators Mosa Meat and Aleph Farms have secured the backing of high-profile investor Leonardo DiCaprio, known for his Academy Award winning roles as well as his environmental activism…. Read more

And here’s a summary of the latest research on concentration and power in cell-based agriculure.

• Democratizing ownership and participation in the 4th Industrial Revolution: challenges and opportunities in cellular agriculture:  In this paper, we have sought to engage the nascent feld of cellular agriculture in conversation with the political economy of agriculture scholarship, namely, on the inescapable question of whether or not this emerging technology will further concentrate wealth and power in the global food system. Innovation without meaningful inclusion has led to inequality, distrust, environmental crises, and social disintegration, and the world’s biggest tech companies are well positioned to continue disrupting and absorbing traditional industries in the coming decades…Critically important and valuable innovation, including agroecological approaches to food production, also continues to come from non-industrial contexts.

The marketplace for plant-based meat and dairy substitutes is booming, and attracting tons of venture capital.

It also is attracting controversy.

• Mintel: Is the ‘plant-based’ claim losing credibility with consumers?  Just as the term “all-natural” has lost much of its healthy-image luster over the years, the claim of “plant-based” also may be at risk of losing some of its better-for-you significance with consumers, according to Mintel research…. Read more
• Opinion: Are vegan meat alternatives really saving animals? Michele Simon takes a closer look.
• Want People to Eat Less Meat? Fake Burgers Probably Won’t Cut It.  “Alt protein” companies think they can curb America’s carnivorous appetite. Charlie Mitchell says some experts are doubtful (I’m quoted).
• Plant-based nutritional pitfalls: Why novel products don’t necessarily improve diet quality – Study.  Diets with novel plant-based products tend to fall below the daily requirements for calcium, potassium, magnesium, zinc and vitamin B12, while often exceeding saturated fat, sodium and sugar levels, according to a new study…. Read more

Here are some of the new products and those in the works.

• Ice cream: The scoop on plant-based ice cream: ‘Countless exciting and significant growth prospects’.  Plant-based ice cream is a growing category gaining ground as a permissible treat. What is getting consumers excited about the fixture?… Read more
• Candy: Making the switch from gelatin to pectin to create plant-based gummies. Gummy sales doubled from 2014 to 2018 but further growth is threatened by consumer avoidance of the animal product gelatin. Pectin is a plant-based alternative…. Read more
• Fermented drinks: Making progress in developing probiotic beverages without animal protein.  A team at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) in Quebec, Canada is working on a plant-based fermented drink high in protein and probiotics…. Read more
• Pepperoni:  Beyond Meat teams up with Pizza Hut to trial Beyond Pepperoni Pizza in nearly 70 US locations.  Pizza Hut and Beyond Meat are trialing Beyond Pepperoni Pizza, a plant-based version of Pizza Hut’s #1 selling pizza topping, in nearly 70 locations across five US markets for a limited time…. Read more
• Sausage:  Impossible Sausage debuts in grocery stores.  The plant-based pork product, which first launched in foodservice in 2020, will be available in Savory and Spicy varieties at several retail locations nationwide.
• Greek yogurt: ‘No brand to date has really nailed Greek in plant-based yogurt, until now….’ Danone unveils Silk Greek-style.  Danone is hoping to make a splash in the small but rapidly growing plant-based yogurt segment with a Greek-style product under its Silk brand boasting 10g of protein from peas and a thick, creamy texture from coconut cream it claims will be a game changer for the category…. Read more
• In summary:  Plant-based new product development round-up.  From meat-free chicken burgers to air-dried ingredients, ‘World first’ confectionery launches to vegan friendly brioche buns, we cover the latest in plant-based new product development from food manufacturers…. Read more

And the latest business news.

• Beyond Meat files for trademark on Beyond Milk name:  The document filed with the U.S. government said the patent would cover “making milk shakes; coffee or tea beverages with milk or milk substitutes.”
• Beyond Milk, Beyond Eggs, Beyond Tuna… trademark applications highlight broad scope of Beyond Meat’s innovation pipeline.  Beyond Meat’s filings with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) reveal the broad scope of the company’s innovation pipeline, with trademark applications over the past couple of years spanning everything from Beyond Milk and Beyond Eggs to Beyond Crab, Beyond Jerky, and Beyond Tuna…. Read more

Eating less meat is good advice for the health of people and the planet.  How to do that?  The makers of cell-based meat substitutes say they are the solution to this problem.  But are they?  They aren’t on the market yet, except in Singapore, so the jury is still out.

Public interest

• A taste for lab-grown meat: In an online poll, 19 percent of American adults responded “Yes, I am eager to try” cell-cultured meat when it becomes available, while 78 percent of meat eaters said they would prefer “real meat” in the long run. (Piplsay)

The rationale

• The film: Meat Me Halfway is a just-released documentary from the Reducitarian perspective, which argues that any reduction in meat intake is a help, any way it happens.  One way is to substitute cell-based meat.  Take a look.  I found the film interesting and compelling, and not just because I’m one of the talking heads in it.

The forthcoming products

• Bacon:  Sales of Vegan Bacon Are On the Rise as More Brands Hit the Market.  Plant-based producers are attracting notable funding for a market not yet taken over by Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat.
• Milk: Tech fantasy or a liquid goldmine? BioMilk goes public:  Visitors to BioMilk’s website are asked a simple question: ‘What is milk?’ a question that – until relatively recently – had a pretty obvious answer: the white stuff lactating mammals produce. Today, however, there’s plant-based milk; there are products containing selected components of mammalian milk produced via microbes in fermentation tanks; and now the final frontier: cell-cultured milk…. Read more
• Chicken: Memphis Meats Re-Brands as UPSIDE Foods, Announces Cultured Chicken as its First Product.  Press release.
• Caviar: the mass-market health food star of the future? A British company is developing the world’s first lab-grown ‘compassionate’ caviar to allow more people to experience the delicacy’s unique taste and nutritional benefits…. Read more
• Foie Gras: Gourmey, a start-up based in Paris, received an additional $10 million in seed funding this week. The company hopes to find a market in the United States amid growing concerns about animal cruelty.

The business (follow the money)

• Cultivated meat to reach ‘price parity with conventional meat by 2030’ but will it win the green argument?  No cell-based meat product has yet to apply for a Novel Foods Application in Europe. But supporters of this nascent but quickly growing sector are bullish on its prospects… Read
• ‘World’s biggest’ piece of cell-based whole cut analogue developed: ‘Meatballs, burgers and nuggets have already been done’:  Spanish start-up Novameat has developed what it claims to be the biggest cell-based meat prototype in the world. FoodNavigator catches up with founder and CEO Giuseppe Scionti to talk R&D, investment, and collaborating with Michelin-starred Disfrutar… Read
• Cultured meat future: Why government buy-in is crucial for sector to hit production cost parity by 2030:  Government buy-in will be crucial for cultured meat firms looking to hit cost parity for their products by 2030, with experts claiming that it will be an uphill battle go head-to-head with traditional meat products in terms of price by the end of this decade…. Read more
• BRF, Cargill invest in Israeli cultured meat ventureAleph Farms secured more than $105 million series B funding for large scale global commercialization of cultivated beef steaks. .Read more  
• Do Africans have an appetite for cultivated meat? In South Africa, a country with strong traditions of conventional meat production and consumption, which population segment will be the first to embrace cultivated meat? … Read more
• Africa’s first cultivated meat company targets food security, land use, and subsistence farmers’ livelihoods South Africa’s Mzansi Meat Co. is on a mission to improve food security, all while bringing subsistence farmers’ into the formal economy, through its production of cultivated local delicacies. … Read more