What’s the Bottleneck in the Novel Food Evolution?
TSG follows an expert-led approach to analyzing innovation value chains. Ahead of the semi-annual rebalancing of the Singularity Index™, we consult our expert Think Tank to delve deeply into emerging and applied technologies. In conversation with Singularity Think Tank experts and novel food entrepreneurs Sandhya Sriram and HonMun Yip, we explore some of the key innovations in cultivated protein and the industry’s main technological and societal barriers. What are the current technological developments driving the transition to alternative protein sources, and ultimately, a more sustainable food system?
Imagine you come home from work, craving a delicious steak. Instead of reaching for the fridge, however, you head over to the mini bio-reactor on your kitchen top and grab your freshly cultured filet mignon. Technically, it’s the real deal, but unlike the meat from your butcher, no animal was slaughtered for your dinner. While this scenario may seem far-fetched, companies around the world are making huge strides in making this idea a reality by growing meat and other food ‘in the lab’.
This emerging source of protein involves cellular agriculture or in-vitro meat production from animal cells rather than from whole plants or animals. Cell-based food encompasses products based on stem cells derived from red meat, poultry, pork, seafood, and other animal sources. This emerging field combines scientific methods from biotechnology, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine to grow animal cells in a controlled environment, providing them with the nutrients they need to grow and proliferate. The resulting product is a ‘meat’ that is chemically and structurally similar to traditional meat.
“I truly believe that in 20 years time, we are not going to have access to the meat that we’re eating today anymore because we can’t keep going on with what we’re doing. It has to stop at some point,” says Sriram, co-founder and CEO of Singapore based Shiok Meats–the world’s first company to produce crustaceans like shrimps, crabs, lobsters using cellular agriculture technology. “Customers in 20 years will have no comparison to the steak of today. Meat will be different, something else. So why are we aiming for something that is predominant today when we engineer for the future?”
Indeed, modern day’s industrial meat production is increasingly deplored for its negative environmental and ethical impact. Intensive animal farming is a primary contributor to environmental hazards including increasing rates of methane and CO2, overuse of land resources and water, waste, and degradation of water and air quality. Moreover, our industrial meat production system has historically been designed to prioritize costs and output over the wellbeing of animals. Economic growth, urbanization, and an increase in world population stand to add further pressure to an already strained food supply system. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation estimates a near doubling of our demand for protein to an estimated 455 million metric tons a year by 2050. Fortunately, recent years have also seen a much needed boost in public interest in more fair, sustainable, and nutritious food sources. Sizeable supermarket sections filled with plant-based meat and dairy equaling those for real meat, fish, and dairy have become a common sight.
These alternative protein products can be largely grouped into the three different sources: plant-based, fermentation, and animal cell cultures. Plant-based protein from soybeans, lentils, and peas but also rice, potatoes, and beans, make up a large part of our nutritional needs and constitute the main source of protein in meat replacement products. Another important source concerns proteins derived from microbial cells from bacteria, yeast, and fungi. A well-known example is Monde Nissin’s Quorn, which is made by growing mycoprotein–a form of single-cell protein also known as fungal protein. Mycoprotein is grown in a fermentation process similar to the way that beer and yogurt are produced, by feeding the fungus with a mix of glucose and fixed nitrogen. Finally, a quickly emerging group of natural protein replacers involves cultivated or cell-based food.
Hurdles in Scaling Cultivated Meat: Capacity Ramp Up versus Tech Challenges
Despite its promise, emerging novel food producers face a struggle in scaling up, explains Sriram: “We have got the taste and nutritional aspects right, but what we don’t have is the right texture at scale.” While producers are attempting to grow their production in the coming two years, the cell-based food segment still lacks the technological infrastructure to reach mass scale.
Into the value chain. To mimic the natural growth of animal meat, cell-based meat cells are cultivated in very sensitive conditions. The bioreactors in which these conditions are created require high automation, expensive software, and extremely sensitive sensors to maintain the right PH level, temperature and pressure, as well as a very accurate nutrient mix. Such bioreactors form the main bottleneck in scaling up the production chain. The few large European bioreactor suppliers that dominate the global market — including Sartorius (SRT DE, Singularity Score: 100), GEA Group (G1A DE, Singularity Score: 79), Bioengineering, and Eppendorf — were initially gearing up to supply the growing cultivated meat industry. The advent of COVID-19 changed this course dramatically, Sriram observes.
“The same bioreactors we use to cultivate meat are used for vaccine production as well. During the pandemic, bioreactor producers went into vaccine production. So, we found ourselves competing head-to-head with the pharmaceutical industry to make meat.”
Mass scale achievable within five years. With specialized engineering talent in short supply, building new bioreactors is challenging. While Sriram is optimistic that the industry will reach mass scale within five to ten years, she notes that “we need to democratize the production of bioreactors to achieve this.”HonMun Yip, climate investor and Executive Vice President of alternative dairy producer TurtleTree, observes:
“We need Big Food to become involved in the transformation to bring cost down. We also need to redesign bioreactors that are optimized for food rather than those available now, which are designed for small-batch applications in the production of pharmaceuticals.”
Automation can boost speed. Another major technological challenge and cost driver in bringing cell-based food production to scale involves finding the right culture media to grow the cell — a factor that accounts to up to 95% of marginal costs. Such media need to be free of animal-derived material, yet be cost-efficient and suitable for efficient growth and differentiation of specific cell types. “Robotics and automation can play a major role here,” observes Yip. “Cell strains and media need to be aligned for the cell to grow. Technologies such as High Throughput Screening can help to increase the process and R&D efficiency of strain screening and selection.”
Customer Adoption and Regulation
Since the creation of the first in vitro burger in 2014, companies across the world have been working to develop and commercialize cellular agriculture products. In large part, their success has been dependent on government support and regulation. Such support comes easier in countries and regions where food security is a key concern. In December 2020, Singapore became the first nation to approve the sale of cultured meat, with Eat Just’s cultivated chicken bites. New products have been approved rapidly in the following year.
Israel emerged as another leading player in the cell-based protein race, with 2021 being a record year for investments and start-ups and regulatory approval being in the works. The country’s commitment to novel food became apparent when its government pledged USD 18M in funding to establish the world’s largest cultivated meat consortium led by Good Food Institute Israel (GFI) and the Tnuva Group, Israel’s largest food manufacturer.
Yet the global adoption of cell-based protein still faces significant obstacles, with many governments lagging with the standardization and regulatory approval that the industry requires to secure investments and scale up. Given Asia’s long history of meat and dairy free diet and more liberal approach to Genetically Modified Organisms, the region is likely to be home to the fastest growth. Indeed, China’s national 5-year strategy already includes a goal to increase alternative protein production.
Lessons from Plant-Based Meat
In developing their playbook, cell-based food producers can learn important lessons from developments in plant-based alternative proteins, which have been around in the form of tofu, seitan, and Quorn for decades, but have experienced a major spike in consumer appetite for new offerings in alternative proteins. Newcomers in the plant-based protein space such as Beyond, Impossible, Next Gen Foods, and Maple Leaf Foods, as well as food giants such as Tyson Foods, Nestlé, and Unilever, have made headlines by introducing a new category of products that more closely resemble the texture and taste of animal-based meat.
While plant-based meat replacers have been able to scale successfully, producers have been facing a backlash of their own. Sriram explains: “The first versions of these products were fine because they tasted well and looked like the real thing. But now consumers are questioning how these products are produced. To make a meat replacer feel, look, and taste like real meat, you need to do a lot of processing and use many additives, which removes the nutrition from the source.”
Manufacturers of alternative proteins thus require innovative solutions to enhance the nutrition, texture, and flavor of their products and advance the growth of this segment. In so doing, meat replacement producers rely on food additives and ingredient innovators such as International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF US, Singularity Score, 74), Givaudan (GIVN SW, Singularity Score: 54), and Kerry Group (KRYAY ID, Singularity Score: 84) to pioneer food technologies that enhance alternative proteins. These include specialty soy and pea proteins with value-added formulations, cultures for plant-based foods, flavors that enhance the taste and texture of plant-based meat, and enzymes that help improve food freshness and preservation.
Hybrid meat as a transitory solution. Similar to the consumer acceptance challenge in the plant-based meat segment, achieving large scaling production, access to quality cell-likes and getting the taste profile right in cell-based meat, dairy and other products will be critical for bringing down costs, winning the hearts and minds of the consumers and making novel food offerings serious contenders in the protein race.
HonMun Yip sees societal and educational obstacles as the major impediment to consumer acceptance. “People are interested in alternatives but it takes time for them to be fully convinced. It is human nature that they questioned the health, taste and artificiality of cultivated meat,” he notes.
“That’s somewhat ironic in the sense that consumers have no problem with the way beer or insulin are produced, nor with eating lots of things that are well-known to be unhealthy and over-processed. It takes patience and time and it takes both the government and the industry to work hand-in-hand in an open and transparent manner to win the consumers over. Hybrid meats, mixes of real meat and cell- or plant-based meats can play an important role in the transition. We’ll have to work hard to educate society about its many benefits.”
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