Towards an Animal-Free Food System: 7 Tech Innovation Areas and 100+ Startups

41 min readApr 16, 2019

Are you a mission-driven founder leveraging technology to remove animals from the global food system? Apply for funding here! We are Purple Orange Ventures, an early stage impact fund based in Berlin.

In previous posts, I explained the main challenges facing the Food System today, the potential AI & tech solutions to these and why we decided to first focus on technologies removing animals from the global food system. Below is a summary.

The global population is growing and incomes across the developing world are rising. As a result, the overall demand for food is expected to increase by 50% by 2050 and the demand for animal-based foods by 70% [1]. Why is that important? Can’t we just produce more food? Here is the problem: the environmental damage caused by our current food production system is already huge. If we want to meet the climate goals, we need to meet this additional food demand without clearing more land for agriculture but also reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). This great report from WRI explains this in more detail.

So how can we feed 2 billion more people without destroying the planet? Livestock production is currently estimated to contribute to 15% of GHG emissions, 33% of the global land use, and 27% of the global water footprint [2]. Removing animals from the global food system therefore seems to be a good place to start. Additionally, many other issues are associated with animal-based food products such as public health concerns and animal cruelty. Today, over 150 million land animals are killed for food around the world every day and this number goes up to 3 billion if you include wild caught and farmed fish [3].

Do humans actually need animal foods and why did they start eating these? At the time of the original Homo Sapiens, hunting animals was taking much less time than gathering berries or mushrooms and provided more energy. In fact, most animal foods are rich in proteins, contain all nine essential amino acids and other vital nutrients that our bodies need. It is definitely possible to get the same nutritional value from a plant-based diet but it often requires a mix of these as most plant proteins are incomplete. As we evolved, most of us continued to trust the nutritional value of meat and other animal foods while enjoying their taste, increasing affordability and convenience. At the same time, eating animal foods became a central piece in most cultural and religious traditions but also a symbol of power, wealth and high social status.

So why don’t we just educate people on how to get all the nutrients they need from plant-based foods and explain to them why consuming animal foods is not sustainable? This has been done for decades by many advocacy groups but it seems to be a slow path. As an example, plant-based meat still only accounts for just under 1% of all retail meat dollar sales in the US [4]. So why haven’t more consumers switched to plant based diets? Are most people just malevolent and willing to ruin our planet? No, most of us (including me) just have a hard time to compromise on taste, price and convenience for a problem that is somewhat not tightly connected to our daily life.

So how do we accelerate the transition to an animal-free food system if changing behaviours is too slow? Our thesis is that we need to come up with replacements of animal products that feel like an improvement and do not require compromises on the key purchase drivers. Let’s face it, we won’t convince most people to only eat tofu or convince food manufacturers to pay twice as much for animal-free ingredients just because it is more sustainable. This just does not feel like the path to real progress.

We firmly believe technology has a key role to play for this to happen. In this post, we are going to explore 7 promising tech and scientific innovation areas that could support the transition to an animal-free food system. For each of these, we will share a definition, some historical background, the main opportunities and challenges, and explore the current startup ecosystem.

Preliminary note

A detailed description of what startups and categories we decided to include or exclude from the landscape, as well as the approach and data set behind it are detailed in the last section of this post. The exclusion and inclusion criteria are tightly related to our current investment thesis. These are therefore quite subjective and may change as we learn more. Feel free to get in touch if you think that we are wrong or missed important categories, we love to get challenged and share thoughts on the topic!

This landscape is a starting point and is far from being exhaustive. If you spot startups that are missing or miscategorised, feel free to contact me. If your startup is not on the landscape, please fill this form and we’ll add you if you fit the inclusion criteria.

#1 Clean meat/seafood

What is it and how is it produced?

Clean or cell-based meat/seafood is made from cells grown outside of the animals. The initial cells can be taken from an animal either from using a biopsy procedure or from an embryo. These cells then proliferate and mature into the desired final cell types (muscle fibers, fat cells, etc.) and are bundled together in the form of the targeted end product (e.g. steak). The whole process happens in closed containment (bioreactor), requires nutrients and growth factors to feed the cell (cell culture media) and a physical support structure where cells can actually grow on and form a tissue-structure (scaffold).

History

The first research projects on cultured tissues for food production date back from the early 2000s. In 2005, the Dutch government funded the first years of another research project. Based on this work and with the additional financial support from Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Professor Mark Post and now founder of Mosa Meat produced the world’s first cultured beef burger in August 2013 [5].

In 2016, a US startup called Memphis Meats produced the first clean meatball. Since then, more than 30 other startups have formed to commercialize clean meat/seafood.

Opportunities and challenges

Impact: opportunities

Food security — As clean meat/seafood is happening in a closed and controlled environment, contamination risks are lower and less food waste is happening throughout the supply chain. Also, the land used to grow crops for animal feed could be used for human food instead. Finally, as clean meat is not reliant on climate and land quality, it could enable a consistent access to meat and protein for more people [5].
Environment — A study that compared cultured meat to conventionally produced beef, sheep, pork and poultry found it involves approximately 78–96% less greenhouse gas emissions, 99% less land use, 82–96% less water use, and 7–45% less energy use, depending upon what meat product it is compared to [5].
Public health — As clean meat/seafood can be produced without antibiotics, lower bacterial antibiotic resistance is expected. Also, zoonotic disease outbreaks such as Ebola virus disease and salmonellosis are often traced to animal farms and would likely be much lower. Today, it is estimated that nearly 80% of meat in U.S. supermarkets contains antibiotic-resistant bacteria [6]. Ultimately, if clean meat/seafood completely replace animal agriculture, these risks would disappear.
Animal cruelty — Clean meat/seafood does not require billions of feeling animals to be slaughtered and endure terrible suffering. Chickens, cows, and other livestock often spend their entire lives in extreme confinement, live in their own waste and frequently get mutilated while fishes usually die of asphyxia.
For more, check this list of 90 prospective benefits cellular agriculture may offer upon global-scale introduction this century.

Impact: challenges

Environment — Clean meat/seafood still requires a lot of energy. A recent study published by researchers from the University of Oxford’s LEAP project even presented a scenario where cultured meat has a bigger climate impact than all the cattle systems considered on the timescale of 1000 years. This comes from the fact that cultured meat emissions are CO2 mainly while beef systems tend to cause immediate, significant warming from CH4, but after a few decades for CH4 and a few centuries for N2O, the atmospheric concentration of these gases reaches an equilibrium, resulting in slower further warming [7]. The problem with such studies is that it is modeling systems that do not exist yet and usually have many limitations such as not considering the potential use of renewable energy or [8] or any innovation that could significantly reduce energy requirements below those assumed in these studies [5]. Also, many people argue that considering a 1000 year timeframe does not really make sense when considering human timescales.
Ethical Concerns — Most clean meat/seafood companies currently still use fetal bovine serum as growth serum which is harvested from unborn cow fetuses. However, most companies are already actively researching synthetic or plant-based substitutes and some already claim to have developed viable alternatives.
Time to market — Many of the startups in the space expect their first product to arrive on the market in 3 to 5 years. Most of these products will probably not be very advanced but still introduced at a premium price. This will limit the initial target market and therefore the impact in the short term. For more info, this article compiles estimates related to cost-competitive cultured animal product timelines.

Market: opportunities

Market size — The potential market opportunity is huge. The global meat, poultry & seafood market is expected to reach USD 7.3 trillion by 2025 [9].
Product/market fit — Clean meat/seafood products have the potential to exactly replicate the taste, texture, nutritional value of meat/seafood. Clean meat/seafood also allows a great degree of precision and control which will enable producers to develop differentiated products that could be much healthier, tastier and nutritious compared to traditional meat/seafood products (e.g. replacing saturated fatty acids with omega-3 fatty acids and adding vitamins).

Market: challenges

Market size & Product/market fit — As mentioned before, it will take some time and heavy R&D for clean meat/seafood to reach price parity with meat products but we believe that the industry can get there. The cost of the first lab-grown burger created by Mark Post in 2013 was €250,000. In December 2018, Aleph Farms created a small thin strip of steak at a cost of $50 [10]. An interesting strategy in the space is to target a premium product at first such as bluefin tuna.
Consumer acceptance — Clean meat may be considered as unnatural and trigger some consumer acceptance challenges. The willingness to consume such product varies between 11- 65.3% across different populations [11]. A recent study shows that 30% of U.S. consumers, 59% of Chinese consumers, and 49% of Indian consumers were “very or extremely likely to purchase clean meat regularly” [12]. In the US, most people who are interested in clean meat have a high attachment to meat while the main driver for Chinese consumers is the potential higher nutritional value of clean meat and ethics is key for Indian consumers [12]. In every country, the more comfortable people were of new foods and the more familiar they were with clean meat, the higher their acceptance [12]. We therefore believe adoption will be quite high once more products will be on the market.
Regulation — The regulatory risk in the US is still quite important as there is no well-defined legal framework yet. In November 2018, the FDA and USDA proposed a joint regulatory framework for the regulation of cell cultured meat and formalised it early March. This has been well received by the industry as this makes the roadmap to regulate these products much clearer but the exact regulatory process has not been defined yet [13]. The regulatory pathway is much clearer in Europe with the European Food Safety Authority’s regulation on novel foods, which specifically includes cultured meat and establishes a process of around 18 months in which a company has to prove the product is safe [14]. However, this regulation excludes genetically-modified foods, which could be an issue for some of the clean meat companies genetically modifying the cells for better efficiency.

Technology: opportunities

Previous research — Many technologies already developed in the biomedical industry can be applied for clean meat/seafood and there are many opportunities for synergistic product development (e.g. tissue engineering of organs for patients requiring organ transplantation). This paper explains this in more detail.
Lower requirements vs biomedical applications — Cells cultured for clean meat/seafood do not need to meet the sophistication of working as an organ in someone’s body.

Technology: challenges

Fetal bovine serum (FBS) alternative — Current alternatives to FBS are very expensive. Developing lower-cost formulations and media recycling capabilities is critical for the commercial feasibility of clean meat/seafood as the cost of the media will be the main cost driver of the final product. It is expected to be a relatively straightforward scaling issue as such growth serum was only produced and used in small quantities for bench and clinical applications so far [15].
Initial cells — The optimal cells to start with are not well defined yet. The main considerations include the capacity to proliferate indefinitely, the speed of proliferation and the differentiation efficiency. As a result, different initial cells are used by different companies today.
Structure — Most clean meat/seafood products shown publicly so far have been mimicking relatively non complex structures like minced meat, sausage and nuggets. Structured products such as steaks and chicken breasts are much more difficult to produce and will require further innovation in scaffolding or 3D printing. Aleph Farms recently released a prototype steak showing some promising developments around that.
Scale — No production-scale or pilot-scale facilities yet exist for clean meat. Moving from lab scale to industrial scale in a fast and economical manner is key to reduce the cost of clean meat and bring it to market and represents many additional technical challenges. Different approaches to scale are envisioned: some startups plan to set up massive centralised manufacturing facilities while some startups like Future Meat Technologies talk about a distributive manufacturing model whereby small businesses produce small quantities of meat locally in their own bioreactors [16].

Current startup ecosystem

We listed 35 startups working on clean meat or clean seafood as of April 2019. As a reminder, this is a selected list based on a set of inclusion/exclusion criteria detailed in the last section of this post. Here are some observations:

The majority of startups in the space are focusing on meat and only 9 startups are working on seafood. This is probably due to the lack of scientific literature and established protocols for clean seafood compared to clean meat. However, clean seafood presents several advantages in terms of production costs including lower temperatures requirements for the cell culture, higher yield expectations, easier immortalization of cell lines and easier structures to replicate [17]. In addition, seafood products are usually also high value products and clean seafood will probably reach price parity with traditional seafood faster than clean meat. Clean seafood products would also particularly benefit from an aseptic production environment as they often cause foodborne illness. The most advanced clean seafood startups include Finless Foods, Wild Type and Blue Nalu.
More than half of all startups (20) were founded in 2018 , 6 startups were founded in 2017, 4 in 2016 and 4 in 2015. Just was founded in 2011 but was initially working on plant-based products only and publicly announced working on clean meat as well in 2018.
The geographies with more than 1 clean meat/seafood startups are the US (13 startups), Israel (4 startups), Canada (4 startups), the Netherlands (2 startups), China (2 startups) and Spain (2 startups).
The most well funded companies in the space are Just (raised $310M), Memphis Meat (raised $20.1M) and Mosa Meat (raised $7.5M). Most of the other startups have not raised any money yet or raised less than $5M. It is worth noting that Just primarily raised money for their plant-based products up to now.

#2 Enabling tech for clean meat/clean seafood

Four main key innovation areas for the development of the clean meat/seafood industry have emerged so far:

Cell lines — Generating a cell line means isolating a population of cells that is stable and immortalized, meaning that they behave in a consistent way and develop the ability to reproduce indefinitely [18]. Cell lines can be formed in 2 ways: by selecting spontaneous mutations where the cell expresses immortality or via induction which can program the cells to proliferate indefinitely (genetic engineering or chemical)[5] . Stable and immortalized cell lines can decrease the need to continuously isolate new cells from new tissue samples and increase the speed of proliferation and differentiation[5]. This is a complicated and expensive procedure but is key to meet future commercial needs of clean meat/seafood. Create a commercial cell bank that stores the original cell lines, ensure consistency, develop appropriate storage and ship the cells to their customers might therefore be an interesting opportunity [18].
Cell culture media — The cell culture media is the product that supplies cells with nutrients and stimulating growth factors that cells may need to replicate or differentiate into another cell type. As mentioned before, finding economical alternatives to fetal bovine serum (FBS) is critical for the commercial feasibility of clean meat/seafood but also to limit its reliance on animals, avoid inconsistency from batch to batch and limit risks of pathogen contamination [19]. Animal-free media formulations have already been developed for medically relevant cell types like human stem cells but have not been optimized yet for cell types used in clean meat/seafood (e.g. chicken muscle cells) [19]. Develop animal-free media formulations for clean meat/seafood therefore involves a complete novel set of requirements for growth and replication and are subject to very different cost constraints [19].
Scaffolding and structuring — The scaffold material provides a physical support structure to cells as they differentiate and mature into the desired cell types (muscle, fat, etc.) in order to form a tissue-structured piece of meat/seafood [20]. The scaffold materials also influences the way cells differentiate and behave. One approach to scaffolding is to create custom-made scaffolds “from scratch,” using tools either from chemical and bioengineering to build nano-structures from synthetic polymers such as PLGA, or from naturally occurring materials like collagen and cellulose, carrageenan, zein (a corn protein), silk, and alginate [21]. Plant-based or fungal mycelium scaffolds represent another approach by providing potential ready-made scaffolds [21]. Several production methods, including 3D printing allow fine-tuning of pore size and microstructures within the scaffold [18].
Bioreactors — Bioreactors are the machines housing the entire process in closed containment from start (inoculation of the seed culture) to finish (harvesting an intact piece of meat)[20]. Bioreactor design and control are already well developed in other industries like pharma but are still at an early stage of development for clean meat/seafood. To date, the bioreactors used for clean meat/seafood production have been of a lab scale using culture flasks and small scale bioreactors up to 10L. To ensure cost efficiency, bioreactors will need to work on a continuous model (vs batch production model currently used in the lab), while maintaining optimal conditions and allowing growth media recycling [22]. Bioprocess parameters that must be understood to design appropriate bioreactors include “reaction kinetics (how quickly muscle cells will grow, divide, and mature), transport phenomena (how nutrients will enter the cells, how waste products exit) and mass transfer limitations (the efficient flow of media over cells) metabolic stoichiometric requirements (what the inputs (food) and outputs (waste products) of cultured meat production will be)” [23].

Current startup ecosystem

As of today (April 2019) We listed 12 startups working on one of the 4 building blocks mentioned in the previous section. As a reminder, this is a selected list based on a set of inclusion/exclusion criteria detailed in the last section of this post. Here are some observations:

Half of these were founded in or after 2017.
It seems that there are less startups working on becoming cell banks. This is probably because this is the first thing most clean meat/seafood startups started to work on.
The leading geographies are the US and Germany (3 startups each).
The only startup that raised more than couple 100ks so far is Ecovative. This is a bit of an edge case however as the company was founded in 2007 and started to work on scaffolding for clean meat end of 2018. The limited funding in the space is not surprising as enabling technologies/platforms for such an immature topic as cellular agriculture is a challenging investment case for most investors. Robert Yaman recently published a great blogpost explaining why it’s hard to start a horizontal company in the cell-based and plant-based space right now.

#3 Acellular Animal products

What is it and how is it produced?

New Harvest defines acellular animal products as animal products made without animals by using a microbe like yeast or bacteria [24].

The production process involves the use of a microbe as a production factory. The first step is to genetically modify a fast-growing and efficient microbe by inserting the gene carrying the blueprints of the targeted product into the microbe (recombinant DNA technology). The gene is either taken from a donor organism (e.g. cow) or via DNA synthesis. The microbe is then grown in fermenters under controlled conditions where it expresses the targeted product by reading its modified genetic code (e.g. casein, a milk protein). The proteins are either secreted directly into the culture medium or obtained by harvesting and breaking the cells. The proteins can then be separated from the cells and purified (downstream processing). The products harvested from this process are identical to the animal product they intend to replicate both in terms of nutritional profile and functional properties.

History

The technology behind these products has been used to produce food enzymes and biomedical products for decades already.

Insulin was the first acellular animal product to be commercialised. Insulin was originally extracted from the pancreatic glands of pigs and human insulin produced in recombinant bacteria was first released in 1982 [24]. Today, the vast majority of insulin is made via fermentation.

In the 90s, the first FDA-approved food enzyme made via recombinant DNA was released. This was chymosin or vegetarian rennet used in cheese production to curdle milk. Before that, the stomach of calves were scrapped to obtain these proteins. Today, 80% of the rennet used worldwide to make cheese is produced by fermentation [25]. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. It is estimated that 5bn consumers used or consumed a product made with enzymes using the same production process at least once a week in 2016 [25].

In the context of cellular agriculture, scientists use the same technology but for lower-value, higher-volume products. Instead of producing enzymatic proteins (proteins responsible for some chemical reactions), the idea is to make structural proteins (primary function is to give structural properties (e.g. spider silk) or storage proteins (primary function is to store nutrients (e.g. egg white). As of today (April 2019), we listed 11 startups working on this topic for food applications.

Opportunities and challenges

Impact: opportunities

Food security, environment, public health, animal cruelty — Most of the positive impact achieved with clean meat/seafood will also be achieved with acellular products (see above #1 clean meat/seafood). In terms of environmental impact, a research estimated that Perfect Day’s milk products will produce 84% fewer greenhouse gas emissions, use 98% less water, take up 91% less land and require 65% less energy to produce compared to dairy milk found in supermarkets today [26].
Time to market — As acellular animal products will be cultured through a similar process to the one that has been used for decades to culture insulin and rennet, the expected timeline for cost-competitive acellular animal products are expected to be shorter than clean meat and therefore have a quicker impact on the food system. As an example, Perfect Day plans to sell its dairy-free casein and whey protein to food manufacturers beginning later this year [27].

Impact: challenges

Environment — As for clean meat/seafood, acellular products have high energy requirements.

Market: opportunities

Market size — The global dairy market was USD $413.8 billion in 2017 [28] and the total size of the egg market as a whole is estimated to be $10 billion annually in the U.S alone [29].
Product/market fit — Acellular animal products have the potential to exactly replicate the key proteins constituting the animal products/ingredients they aim to replace. As for clean meat/seafood, this production process also gives the ability to producers to better customise their products which will enable them to differentiate from animal products and offer for example, milk without lactose, or eggs without cholesterol.
Regulation — In the US, some acellular animal products could skip the FDA’s regulatory safety assessment by showing that their products use procedures and ingredients that have already been generally recognized as safe (GRAS) and using pre-approved GRAS host strains [30].

Market: challenges

Market size & Product/market fit — As with clean meat/seafood, some more R&D is needed to reach cost parity with animal products and a common strategy in the space is to launch specialised proteins (e.g. food preservative) at a high price point to then later go after mass market products/ingredients.
Regulation — As for clean meat/seafood, the novel food regulation applies in Europe. This regulation excludes genetically-modified foods and this could be an issue for acellular animal products.

Technology: opportunities

Previous research — Decades of research have already been conducted to make the recombinant protein production process efficient (strain development, genetic tools, fermentation and protein purification).
Inert properties — Unlike enzymatic proteins, structural and storage proteins are likely to remain inert which allows the host to tolerate higher levels of production [25]. This can also reduce the complexity in food formulation.

Technology: challenges

Purification — The purification process to extract the desired protein from the host cell may be challenging. In fact, many proteins targeted by cellular agriculture accumulate within the host rather than being secreted in the culture media [25]. Choosing a host organism that could contribute favorably to the final product could be a way to avoid a high degree of purification, which is a significant cost driver [25].
Protein complexity — Structural and storage proteins are usually more complex than enzymatic proteins and it might be challenging to develop a host capable of expressing these [25].
Concentration level — As the proteins targeted by cellular agriculture are the primary components of the final products, the concentration level required is much higher than enzymatic proteins, i.e. enzymatic are typically below 1% or 0.1% of the final product where egg white would need to contain 10% recombinant proteins [25]. To lower the cost of production, one might only select key proteins using recombinant DNA technology rather than all proteins in the final product and combine these with plant proteins [25].
Formulation — Additional R&D is needed in terms of product formulation to fully replicate animal products as these products contain other nutrients besides proteins like fats and carbohydrates.

Current startup ecosystem

We listed 12 startups working on acellular animal products as of April 2019. As a reminder, this is a selected list based on a set of inclusion/exclusion criteria detailed in the last section of this post. Here are some observations:

The most popular category for acellular animal products is dairy. Most startups working on producing dairy proteins recombinantly look at developing cheese. This might be due to the current lack of affordable plant-based alternatives that can really replicate the texture and mouthfeel of cheese. Plant-based milk already account for 13% of the fluid milk category in the US but this is not particularly due to the great taste/texture or nutritional value of plant-based milk. In fact, it is mostly attributed to the growing number of people avoiding animal milk for health reasons. That’s also why there is probably still room for products that can replicate the full sensory experience of milk. The second most popular category is eggs. This might be because no plant-based products have been able to fully replicate eggs and provide their many functionalities (foaming, binding, mouthfeel, protein content, etc.). In terms of go-to-market, acellular cheese, milk and egg products have pros & cons. There is a large selection of cheese so it might be harder to target a large number of customers with the same end product compared to a commodity market like the egg or milk category. However, many cheese products are high value and it might be easier to enter with a product at a premium price compared to the egg market.
Food byproducts are somehow supporting our mission in a more indirect manner and may require some additional explanation here. We believe that reducing the demand for animal byproducts could reduce the number of animals slaughtered by affecting the business of the factory farms who often have very low profits. As an example, hides and other byproducts of cattle account for about 44% of the slaughtered animal’s weight and 10% of its value [31]. Also, if we are successful with our mission, alternatives to all animal byproducts will be required to sustain a post-animal economy. We decided to stick to the food system for now and only included startup with potential applications in food. As an example, Geltor is a company producing animal-free gelatin and collagen, a material that is typically made from the bones, skin, and tissues of cows and pigs. Like other acellular startups, Geltor started with a product for cosmetic applications as it can be sold at a higher price point than gelatin for food applications.
Half of acellular startups were founded in or after 2018 and the other half were founded in or before 2015.
Most acellular startups are located in the US (8 startups).
The most well funded companies in the space are Motif Ingredients (raised $90M), Perfect Day (raised $40M), Geltor (raised $23M) and Triton Algae Innovations (raised $10M). Motif ingredients is a bit of a special case as it spun out of Ginkgo Bioworks.

#4 Single Cell Proteins

What is it and how is it produced?

Single cell protein (SCP) is referred to as dried microbiological cell mass or total extracted protein content from pure culture of microbiological cells [32] such as microalgae, fungi (filamentous fungi and yeast) and bacteria. These are intended to be used as a substitute for protein rich foods for humans or animals.

The production of single cell protein takes place in a fermentation process. The production steps generally include the selection of suitable strains of microorganisms, the preparation of a suitable nutrient media i.e. the biomass they grow on, the cultivation where cells are multiplied with a technical cultivation process directed to the growth of the culture, the separation and concentration of SCP and the final processing of SCP into ingredients and products [33,34].

History

The research on SCP already started a century ago when Max Delbrück and his colleagues found out the high value of surplus brewer’s yeast as a feeding supplement for animals [35].

SCP initially gained importance in human nutrition during times of war to cope with food shortages. During World War I, Germany used yeast-SCP in place of half of the imported sources of proteins [32]. In the post war period, SCP again became of interest because of concern about meeting the protein demands of the world’s ever increasing population. By the mid 60’s, almost a quarter of a million tons of food yeast were being produced in different parts of the world and the Soviet Union alone produced some 900,000 tons by 1970 of food and fodder yeast [35] .

Pruteen was the first commercial SCP and was used as animal feed. Pruteen was produced from bacteria, cultured on methanol and had 72 % protein content. It was discontinued at the end of the 1970s as it could not compete with cheaper animal feeds that were available mainly due to methanol prices at the time [36].

Quorn, the first meat analog product from fungi, was launched in 1985 by Marlow Foods and was acquired by Monde Nissin Corp for 550 million pounds in 2015.

Today, as we look for new solutions to sustainably meet the growing demand for protein, interest in SCP is rising again, especially in countries with large populations and malnutrition problems.

Opportunities and challenges

Impact: opportunities

Food security, environment — High growth rates or the ability to use unique substrates (e.g. agricultural waste or CO2) result in a potential process with high efficiency and sustainability [34].
Time to market — Quite some research about SCP has been done already and cost competitive SCP products are expected to have a shorter timeline to market and quicker impact on the food system than clean meat/seafood and acellular products.

Impact: challenges

Food security, environment — The use of sustainable substrates is still relatively limited as it poses unique challenges in terms of safety requirements, especially for human food. In fact, any human food product produced from waste streams would need to provide an equivalent safety record before finding approval in Europe or North America [34].

Market: opportunities

Market size — SCP can be suitable for many applications with large markets. To support our mission, we feel it either has to have the potential to replace animal ingredients or significantly improve animal-free end products without any big compromise on the key purchase drivers (e.g. SCP from bacteria as a cheaper replacement of fishmeal or fungi used in meat analogues to replicate the texture of meat). The global fishmeal market accounted for $6.26 billion in 2017 and is expected to reach $11.96 billion by 2026 [37]. The Quorn acquisition for 550 million pounds in 2015 also proves the market opportunity for the use of SCP for meat analogues.
Product/market fit — SCP has the potential to be a great source of proteins in animal-free products/diets with a nutritive value and cost similar to animal proteins. The use of GMO opens the door to tailor made protein products with for example, an optimised amino acid composition, a higher content of some vitamins or fatty acids [34].

Market: challenges

Market size & Product/market fit — Even if SCP products have the potential to be nutritionally equal or superior to most animal products, they do not exactly mimic the taste and functionality of these in their primary form. It will therefore require more work in terms of product formulation and processing to convince customers to consume SCP. This is, however, not so much the case for animal feed. Also, most SCP products still have relatively high cost of production as they have not reached industrial scale yet. Common strategies include the production of SCP as a co-product of another biorefinery process or first target smaller specialized markets less sensitive to price and more concerned about quality and the environment.
Regulation — A fairly limited number of SCPs have been approved for feed or food and the path to regulatory acceptance for some of the new SCP products is still unclear.
Consumer acceptance — The public perception about food derived from waste and microbes might cause some consumer acceptance issues, especially for less common microbes like bacteria or substrates like CO2. .

Technology: opportunities

Previous research — SCP has been proven at scale for certain microbe species and substrates for both animal feed and human food. A review of recent advances in the patent landscape (2001–2016) and a list of industrial players in the SCP field can be found here.

Technology: challenges

Efficient microbe, cheap substrate, downstream processing — SCP has been so far mostly seen as a potential co-product that can strengthen the economic potential of an other biorefinery process. In order to make SCP products with a potential to replace animal products economically viable, new species of microbes and their fermentation process need to be further researched. A key challenge is the ability to find cheap and sustainable substrates that make the biological process efficient, as this is the largest single cost factor in SCP production [33]. Another difficulty for human food and certain animal feed products is the ability to cheaply process the raw biomass in a safe product while keeping the quality of the product intact. This involves the destruction of indigestible cell walls and the reduction of nucleic acid.

Current startup ecosystem

As mentioned earlier, the 4 main microorganisms suitable for SCP production are microalgae, filamentous fungi, yeast and bacteria. We will look at the startup ecosystem separately for each of these. As a reminder, the startups selected here are based on a set of inclusion/exclusion criteria detailed in the last section of this post.

Bacteria

We listed 10 SCP startups working with bacteria supporting our mission as of April 2019.
The main advantages of bacteria over other organisms are the rapid growth rate and high protein content (50–80% protein) [34]. The main disadvantages are the high nucleic acid content and low familiarity that makes it less suitable for human food applications at this stage [33]. As a result, most of the SCP startups working with bacteria are looking at producing an alternative to fishmeal for animal feed.
The most well funded companies in this category are Calysta (raised $88M), Knip Bio (raised $4.9M) and NovoNutrients.
Most startups were founded before 2014 (6 startups) and 4 after 2016.
The leading geographies are the US (3 startups) and UK (2 startups)

Filamentous Fungi

We listed 10 SCP startups working with filamentous fungi supporting our mission as of April 2019.
The main advantage of fungi over other organisms is its fibrous texture similar to meat. The main disadvantages are lower growth rates, lower protein content (30–70% protein) and the long path to regulatory acceptance for new species due to the risk of mycotoxins [33,34, 38]. As a result, most of the SCP startups working with fungi are working on developing a product that resembles meat versus being a B2B ingredient company only. This may be about replicating the Quorn model that has been proven already.
The most well funded companies in this category are Sustainable Bioproducts (raised $33M), Wild Earth and Prime Roots (raised $4.5M).
Half of startups were founded in or after 2018.
The leading geography is the US (6 startups).

Yeast

We only listed 1 SCP startup working with yeast supporting our mission as of April 2019. This is probably because many well established companies are active in the space already like Lesaffre (turnover of Euro 1.5 billion in 2014) [39].
The main advantage of yeast over other organisms is its lower nucleic content and familiarity/acceptability because of its long history of use in traditional fermentations [33]. The main disadvantages are lower protein content (45–65%), strong flavor and lack of texture.
Arbiom produces a high quality fish feed ingredient from wood with an enhanced strain of torula yeast (Candida utilis). Arbiom received €10.9M EU in funding from the European Union BBI-JU [40].

Microalgae

We believe that most microalgae startups active in animal feed do not support our mission and we decided to exclude them from the landscapes at this stage. In fact, microalgae is currently mostly used as food/feed supplements providing omega-3 fatty acids, carotenoids and vitamins and we have some doubts it will ever become a viable replacement to fishmeal or fish oil due to various technical reasons. We believe bacterial SCP and genetically oilseed crops show better promises to achieve competitive pricing respectively with fishmeal and fish oil. As for the ones active in human food, we listed 3 startups that seem to fit our mission by potentially significantly improving animal-free end products taste/texture or nutritional value while keeping the end product affordable: Triton Algae Innovation (raised $10M), Algama (raised EUR 3.5M) and Noblegen (raised $9.5M).
The main advantages of microalgae over other organisms are high protein content (60–70%), additional healthy nutrients and good public perception [34]. Microalgae main disadvantage is that they often have a poor protein digestibility in their raw form hence requiring expensive protein extraction methods [33]. Additionally, microalgae has a strong flavour and green color making it more challenging to use as an ingredient for human food applications without additional processing/novel formulations. Lastly, they can contain heavy metals [19].

#5 Enabling tech for fermentation

Many enabling technologies are leveraged to manufacture food products by fermentation using microbes. The main key innovation areas for the development of food products by fermentation using microbes are:

Gene/genome synthesis and sequencing: companies reading and writing DNA
Bio-CAD: computer aided design and/or manufacturing (CAD / CAM) software to design applications and plan how they will be built [41].
Cloud Labs/Automation: hardware that automate processes described by the Bio CAD/CAM software such as liquid handling robots and cloud labs [41].
Organisms engineering platforms: platforms with highly automated approaches to make thousands of genetically engineered organisms in parallel with DNA that has been precisely designed by the companies’ scientists and their computer models [42].

These are all synthetic biology tools. Synbiobeta defines synthetic biology as an engineering approach to biology with the creation and use of tools to design and build functions in cells [43]. More simply, Kevin Costa from Synbiobeta said “synthetic biology tries to make biology easier to engineer” [44].

We recently took this online course from Synbiobeta and strongly recommend it if you want to learn more about the basics of synthetic biology. Synthetic biology can be used for many other applications than food and is often referred to be the fifth industrial revolution.

Current startup ecosystem

We only included startups with customers supporting our mission or that developed specific features for them on the landscape. This is obviously very hard to know from publicly available information and without deep scientific expertise and that’s why there are probably many companies missing here.

As of April 2019, we only came across 2 of these: Ginkgo Bioworks (US, founded in 2009, raised $429.1M) and Culture Biosciences (US, founded in 2016, raised $5.6M). Interestingly, both Ginkgo Bioworks and Culture Biosciences are Y combinator alumni.

#6 Next generation plant-based animal products analogues

What is it and how is it produced?

We define next generation plant based animal products analogues as products that leverage deep science and tech to almost perfectly replicate the taste, texture, appearance, functionality and nutritional value of animal products with the use of novel plant-based ingredients and processes. These products should also have a clear path to price parity with animal products.

Our thesis is that the largest number of customers that did not convert to plant-based alternatives yet are consumers that are less open to compromise on taste, price, convenience or health/nutritional value. The north star should therefore be to work towards a one-to-one replacement of animal products without any compromise and even outperforming them on these key criteria. This seems to be the most practical approach to rapidly convince a significant number of consumers to switch from animal products to plant-based alternatives.

We believe that plant-based products that do not necessarily try to imitate animal products also have the potential to attract a large number of consumers but it is harder to predict which of these products will have a real significant impact and how much consumer education will be needed.

History

Plant-based alternatives to animal products have been produced and consumed by humans since hundreds of years. For example, the earliest recorded use of plant-based meat, tofu, is found in 965 AD in a Chinese text promoting the consumption of imitation lamb for frugality and Horchata, a plant-based milk, dates back to the 8th century [45,46]. It is worth noting that the consumption of plant-based products was originally mostly related to religious practices and was only driven by health and sustainability concerns later on.

Until the 2010s, the majority of plant-based alternatives launched were mostly targeted at consumers actively looking for foods not sourced from animals and ready to compromise on taste, texture, cost or another factor. Due to this, the focus was not so much about directly competing with animal products and perfectly mimicking them.

In 2009, Beyond Meat was founded and often recognized as the first plant-based company aiming to compete directly with meat, targeting meat eaters that are cutting down on meat with a product indistinguishable from real meat. Its first product the Beast Burger was launched in 2014 and many other companies trying to do the same popped up since then.

Opportunities and challenges

Impact: opportunities

Food security, Environment — Production of animal proteins requires much more water and land than what’s needed to produce an equal amount of plant proteins [47]. GHG emissions caused by animal proteins are also much higher mostly due to their conversion inefficiency of resources and the resulting higher land-use change needs compared to plant proteins. In some cases, less than 15% of the plant proteins from feed crops are turned into animal proteins for human consumption and 85% are wasted [47].
Time to market — Some next generation plant-based products are already on the market today. As an example, Burger King just introduced a version of its Whopper sandwich filled with a vegetarian patty from Impossible Foods.

Impact: challenges

Food security, Environment — Plant-based alternatives still require significant land and water relatively to cellular agriculture or fermentation products. Also, most plant-based alternatives aiming to mimic animal products require many processing steps that are energy-intensive.

Market: opportunities

Market size — Next generation plant-based analogues could potentially target all large animal food markets and not only the vegan/vegetarian niche.
Product-market fit — Plant-based analogues do not contain cholesterol and can therefore be seen as a healthier alternative.
Regulation — The regulation risk is much lower for plant-based products than all other alternatives mentioned so far.

Market: challenges

Product-market fit — Even if plant-based alternatives made huge progress to replicate the taste and texture of animal product, there is no plant-based product today that exactly replicates the sensory experience of animal products aimed to be replaced. Also, many plant-based alternatives aiming to mimic animal products require additional ingredients or processing that may result in a product which is not very healthy, high in calories or not perceived as “natural”.
Consumer acceptance — Many people view eating animal products and especially meat as an important part of their community or social identity and the behavioural change required to make people switch from meat to plant-based alternatives might be harder than to make them switch to cellular agriculture products.
Labeling— Some countries/states passed regulations banning plant-based foods from using terms that have traditionally described animal foods such as milk, cream, butter, steak, sausage, hamburger, escalope. This poses additional marketing challenges for plant-based products.

Technology: opportunities

Existing technologies — Many existing food technologies and ingredients can be leveraged for creating the next generation of plant-based products.

Technology: challenges

Uncertainty — The path to get to products that perfectly replicate or exceed the taste, texture, appearance, functionality qualities and nutritional value of the animal products is much more uncertain than for clean meat/seafood and acellular products. In fact, next generation plant-based animal products analogues relies on the finetuning of many parameters (ingredients, processes, flavor compound etc.) rather than making a molecularly indistinguishable version of animal products.

Current startup ecosystem

As the plant-based space is quite crowded, we excluded startups that did not fit any of these 2 criteria: (i) have a product or prototype that we could taste or other people we trust could taste that comes very close to the animal products they aim to replicate with a similar nutritional value and clear path to cost parity (ii) have a clear tech/scientific approach and methodology that will allow them to reach a taste and texture significantly closer to the animal products they aim to replicate than existing products on the market with a similar nutritional value and a clear path to cost parity.
As for April 2019, we only came across 6 startups that fit our definition of next generation plant-based animal products analogues: Beyond Meat (US, raised $122M, founded in 2009) and Impossible Foods (US, raised $387.5M, founded in 2011) working on meat products, PlantLX (Germany, founded in 2017) and Climax Foods (US, founded in 2019) working on dairy products and Just (US, raised $222M, founded in 2011) and The Not Company (Chile, raised $30M, founded in 2015) working on multiple categories.
It is worth noting that startups aren’t the only ones getting into next generation plant-based animal products analogues. Big food corporations are also joining the race like Nestlé with the Incredible Burger and Maple Leaf Foods with the Lightlife Burger.

#7 Enabling tech for next generation plant-based products analogues

We identified 3 key innovation areas for the development of next generation plant-based animal product analogues:

Novel/optimized plant-based protein sources and high value ingredients

There are two main options to develop novel plant-based proteins for animal product analogues:

(i) The first option is to explore and identify new plant protein species suitable to develop next generation plant-based analogues. Today, the commercially available plant-based protein ingredients comes from only 2% of the 150 plant species used in agriculture today [48] and this number appears even smaller when taking into account the 250,000 additional plant species not cultivated yet [48]. In the case of plant-based meat products, 60% of products use soy proteins and the rest mostly use wheat or pea proteins [49]. This shows that the plant kingdom potential is still untapped. An interesting approach to explore new plant protein species for next generation plant-based animal product analogues is to use machine learning to find plant molecules that are the closest to their corollaries in animals. The idea is to predict the human perception of taste and texture based on different features like the molecular properties of plants. There are two main challenges however to introduce novel plant based proteins to the market leveraging the existing food value chain: (a) convince farmers to grow it, requiring novel plant protein crops to show yield and disease resistance similar to other crops that have been optimised through years of breeding research [48] (b) convince ingredient suppliers to invest in novel isolation, functionalization and texturisation processes and sales for these new protein sources [49]. Produce some of these proteins recombinantly could avoid these challenges.

(ii) The second option is to optimise crops already used for plant-based alternatives applications, for example, crop engineering/breeding to develop strains with a higher protein content, better texturising capabilities or flavor profile.

High value ingredients are novel ingredients significantly improving next generation plant-based animal products analogues, for example, heme-containing protein from the roots of soy plants produced recombinantly by Impossible Foods.

Novel plant proteins isolation & functionalization methods

Plant-based animal products analogues products typically rely on plant-protein concentrates or isolates as raw materials [48]. The development of cost efficient isolation and concentration methods are necessary for making the use of novel or existing plant-based proteins commercially viable. Further functionalization methods (biological, chemical or physical) can also be used to improve the functional traits of a protein used in plant-based animal products analogues [48].

Novel processing/manufacturing technologies

After the formulation has been finalised, further processing is required in order to shape the plant-based mixture in forms and textures that resemble the animal products aimed to be replicated. Currently plant-based manufacturers usually either purchase powdered protein concentrates or isolates and use high-moisture extrusion to create fiber structures or they purchase pre-extruded textured proteins. Extruders are expensive and can only create tissue of a limited thickness while pre-extruded proteins can only be used to create limited varieties of products (e.g. ground meat). Developing alternative manufacturing methods or exploring novel mechanical and non-mechanical processes is therefore important to lower the cost and increase the fibrousness quality of plant-based products. Novel manufacturing methods include shear cell technology and 3d printing for plant-based meat analogues.

Current startup ecosystem

We listed 10 startups working on one of the 3 building blocks mentioned in the previous section as of April 2019. As a reminder, this is a selected list based on a set of inclusion/exclusion criteria detailed in the last section of this post.
Most startups founded in the last 3 years are startups are novel processing/manufacturing technologies.
The leading geographies are Israel (4 startups) and the US (4 startups).
The 3 most well funded startups are Benson Hill Biosystems (founded in 2012, raised $94.7M) Mycotechnology (founded in 2013, raised $82.6M) Equinom (founded in 2012, raised $9.3M).
Benson Hill Biosystem is crop genomics platform that recently acquired eMerge Genetics that developed high-yielding, high-protein non-GMO soybean varieties [50]. Equinom uses computational biology to breed crops with improved characteristics without any genetic manipulation and currently focus on improving the protein content of legume crops such as peas [51].

Many thanks to Gary Lin for reviewing this post and valuable input!

Landscapes Data Set and Methodology FAQ

1) Which startups are included in the landscapes ?

Topic

We included startups that we believe can significantly contribute to shift the global food system from its dependence on animals towards more sustainable alternatives. The opportunities we identified can be divided into 3 main categories:

Clean meat/seafood products and enabling technologies. Clean meat/seafood products are made of living or once-living animal cells cultivated in vitro. Cultured meat/clean seafood, in vitro meat, lab-grown meat are other common terms to describe these products. In the article, we mostly use “clean meat/clean seafood” as it has been recognised to be the best of the proposed terms for gaining consumer acceptance [52].
Fermentation products and enabling technologies. Fermentation products are manufactured by fermentation using microbes. It includes acellular animal products such as casein (or fermentation based-cellular agriculture products) and single cell proteins (SCP) such as mycoprotein.
Next generation plant-based animal products analogues and enabling technologies. Next generation plant-based animal products analogues leverage deep science and tech to almost perfectly replicate the taste, texture, appearance, functionality and nutritional value of the animal products they aim to replicate with the use of novel ingredients and processes

Cellular agriculture is a term often used in relation to some of these topics and can be defined as a set of technologies to manufacture products typically obtained from livestock farming, using culturing techniques to manufacture the individual product [3]. There is still some debate as to which products exactly fit under this definition but there is some agreement within the community that cellular agriculture includes both clean meat/clean seafood and acellular animal products. Acellular animal products could therefore theoretically be placed both under fermentation or cellular agriculture. We chose to keep acellular animal products under fermentation as we believe it better reflects the tech leveraged for these.

Stage

Startups founded in or after 2010 as most 10+ years old companies are usually not considered as “Startups”
Companies founded between 2008 and 2010 with more than 100 employees to include interesting high-growth companies

2) Which startups are excluded from the landscapes ?

Topic

B2B ingredient startups that do not meet at least one of the following criteria:

(i) aim to replace animal ingredients by showing a similar functionality and nutritional value and a clear path to lower cost (1on1 replacement of animal ingredient and switch incentivized by lower cost e.g. SCP from bacteria as replacement of fishmeal)

(ii) aim to replace animal ingredients by showing a much better functionality and/or nutritional value than animal ingredients aimed to be replaced at an acceptable cost (switch from animal ingredient to more expensive ingredient with better functionality/nutritional value incentivized by the potential to create a more premium product sold at a higher price e.g. use of low cholesterol egg white manufactured recombinantly instead of regular egg white)

(iii) aim to significantly improve animal-free end products taste/texture or nutritional value while keeping the end product affordable (switch from animal end products to animal-free alternatives incentivized by tastier or more nutritious products e.g. heme produced recombinantly used in Impossible Foods burger to replicate meat bleeding, microalgae used in mayonnaise to replicate egg mouthfeel, fungi used in meat analogs to replicate texture)

Startups using single cell proteins or acellular animal products as an ingredient and sourcing it from a third party provider are excluded from the “acellular animal products” and “single cell proteins” sub-sections
Startups with plant-based products that do not necessarily try to imitate animal products.
Startups with plant-based products that do not fit any of these 2 criteria:

(i) have a product or prototype that we could taste or other people we trust could taste that comes very close to the animal products they aim to replicate with a similar nutritional value and clear path to cost parity

(ii) have a clear tech/scientific approach and methodology that will allow them to reach the taste, texture and nutritional value significantly closer to the animal products they aim to replicate than existing products on the market with a similar nutritional value and a clear path to cost parity.

Startups using insect protein. We decided to exclude the entire insect space for the following main reasons:

(i) we decided to stay strict regarding our mission and only look for animal-free alternatives

(ii) we have continuous doubts about the potential of insects for human food applications relative to other alternative proteins

(iii) we are not so convinced that insects will have a bigger impact vs single cell proteins in animal feed as (a) we have a hard time to see its production cost getting lower than some of the microbial proteins showing a similar nutritional profile (less biologically efficient, scalability challenges, etc.) and (b) product differentiation may become hard as new players enter the market

Non food byproducts of animal farming like leather. We decided to only look at the food system for now as we believe that focusing on one system will allow us to make better investments and therefore have a bigger impact.
Distribution and consumption startups such as food delivery, ecommerce, and restaurant tech and other startups providing a more indirect support to our mission.
Enabling tech startups with no existing customers supporting our mission or that did not develop specific features for them.

Stage

Startups founded before 2010
Companies founded between 2008 and 2010 with less than 100 employees
Startups that got acquired
Public companies

3) How did you build this list?

I sourced most of the companies by

looking at our own deal flow and leveraging our network
monitoring the news and relevant media channels
checking existing landscapes and lists including theses landscapes published by Olivia Fox, this list published by Robert Yaman and this list published by GFI

4) Where can I see the list and its data?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1w5tGwWcGO83Bl90Rh66879Nc6dSptlonPdL6QYlZTxA/edit?usp=sharing

5) Can you tell me a little more about the data available for each startup?

Company name
URL
Category 1: Cellular agriculture/Fermentation/Plant-based
Category and Category 2: Subcategory
Founded: founding date of the company checked on Crunchbase and Linkedin
Raised: the amount of money raised up to date mentioned on Crunchbase (last update 1/04/2019)

Sources