New opportunities for plant based, cultivated products

BOSTON — Despite headwinds in the plant-based and cultivated meat categories, industry executives remain optimistic about the potential for both categories.

Speakers at the Future of Food Innovation Day, formerly Cellular Agriculture Innovation Day, hosted by Tufts University, noted the progress that has been made within the segments as a sign of continued growth. Bruce Friedrich, president of the Good Food Institute, pointed to the increased government focus and investments into these technologies over the last year, including countries like India, Israel, Brazil, South Korea, Japan, China and Germany, as one such sign.

“We can talk a little bit more about some of the headwinds for the startups, but I would say that overall, we are much further along than I think anybody would have had a right to hope just 10 years ago,” Friedrich said.

He said government attention on the sectors may relate to growing issues of food insecurity and the role that plant-based and cultured alternatives could play in alleviating supply chain pressures.

“All of those governments are funding science and they’re not doing it for climate or biodiversity or global health or hunger and malnutrition,” he said. “They’re all doing it for food self-sufficiency, food security, food systems resilience, just the fragility of the food system or the amount of food that they have to import. Governments care a lot about economics and their GDP, and governments care a lot about making sure that their citizens are fed.

“Our pitch to governments is, this is a multi-trillion dollar opportunity that can help you if you’re not food self-sufficient … If you are food self-sufficient, it is still a shockingly fragile supply chain. If you have to grow all of these crops and ship them to a feed mill and operate a feed mill and ship the feed to a farm and operate the farm and ship the animals to the slaughterhouse and operate the slaughterhouse, that is just incredibly inefficient.”

Previously, much of the focus for plant-based and cellular technologies had been to create meat alternatives that were highly comparable to beef, pork and chicken. Following significant difficulties with input costs, material availability and achieving similar taste and texture at conventional meat price points, some companies are re-evaluating where the opportunity for such technologies may lie.

“The first wave was the big companies trying to be a complete food company, and it’s a really hard thing for a startup to do with the resources you can raise, and particularly in the kind of climate we’re in, with scarce financial support,” said David Kaplan, PhD, director of the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture. “We’re kind of now in that second wave where the new companies … they’re really focused on doing one thing really, really well, and then trying to partner with others.”

Much of the focus for plant-based and cellular technologies has been to create meat alternatives that were highly comparable to beef, pork and chicken.

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For instance, Wildtype is a startup producing cultivated seafood products from fish cells. The company initially was exploring sushi applications with its Saku salmon, but texture issues and new technological developments led Wildtype to pivot toward a cell cultured smoked salmon product. Aryé Elfenbein, co-founder of Wildtype, noted that the company set its sights on fish applications for a myriad of reasons, including the size of the fish product market and the ability to tap into the growing sentiment surrounding food safety concerns.

“Why fish? First of all, if we were to think about fish as one species, it’s the most consumed by humans and in the world,” Elfenbein said. “Another aspect of it is in the United States, specifically, about 80% to 85% of our seafood is imported. So, when we hear about things like the bans that we might talk about, for example, this is made in America seafood. This is something that also is a unique opportunity to just not have to deal with all these pervasive contaminants that we accept, all of the heavy metals and antibiotics and parasites and microplastics, and so for those reasons in particular, we were drawn to it.”

Lasso, a producer of plant-based meat products under its Tender Foods brand, also began to explore applications beyond shredded meat alternatives last year, including opportunities in the snacking, candy and pet food categories. The company is utilizing its patented SpinTech technology to weave food fibers using centrifugal force into dense, nutritious offerings, said Mike Messersmith, chief executive officer of Lasso.

“Do we build a machine that is a plant-based meat machine, or do we build a machine that is a high protein, high fiber, texture machine,” Messersmith explained when discussing the company’s internal decision-making process. “And if that’s the case, can we look at what other categories in snacking, in other applications across the grocery store that maybe have different dynamics, growth, size, consumer acceptability, that allow us to take underlying magic of what we and try to turn it into something else?

“One of the real reasons you have to do a pivot like that is there was no money for me to continue raising on a sub small scale, plant-based meat company in the year 2025 like that. That path is over a pure play plant-based meat company, and there are companies that are way bigger and way more far along the path.”