The research gaps holding back alternative proteins from mass adoption | Seren Kell (2023)

The Case for Alternative Proteins

• Animal agriculture is identified as a leading driver of animal welfare issues, climate change, environmental degradation, food insecurity, and public health threats (including antimicrobial resistance and zoonotic diseases).
• Eliminating fossil fuels overnight would still fail to meet Paris Agreement targets if animal agriculture emissions are not addressed globally.
• Consumer behavior regarding food choices is primarily driven by taste, price, and accessibility; health and climate concerns are secondary factors that only influence decisions if the primary three metrics are met.
• Alternative proteins aim to displace animal agriculture entirely rather than improving the efficiency of factory farming, offering a more scalable solution to the root causes of harm.

The Fermentation Sector

• History and Discovery: The Fusarium fungal strain used by the company Quorn was originally discovered in 1970s in a researcher's garden shed; it remains the base strain used today after decades of improvement.
• Types of Fermentation:
  • Traditional Fermentation: Uses microorganisms to process ingredients (e.g., bacteria turning milk sugar into yogurt acids); used to improve plant-based taste profiles (e.g., reducing "beany" flavors in fava beans).
  • Biomass Fermentation: Consumes the microorganism itself as the protein source (e.g., Quorn, Solar Foods); Solar Foods uses electricity, air, and CO2 to produce protein powder.
  • Precision Fermentation: Uses microorganisms as cell factories to produce specific ingredients (e.g., heme in Impossible Burgers, whey/casein for dairy-free ice cream) without eating the organism.
• Environmental Impact: Quorn's mycoprotein has a carbon footprint 70% lower than chicken; precision-fermented whey protein causes 97% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than cow-milk whey.
• Feedstock Innovation: Research is exploring the use of waste side-streams as inputs, such as spent beer grain (Mush Labs), corn husks, and wood pulp, to create circular economy food systems.
• Scientific Challenges:
  • Target Selection: Determining which of the near-infinite potential compounds to produce efficiently, often requiring computational biology and high-throughput screening.
  • Strain Discovery: Current reliance on a small number of "workhorse" strains; there is an untapped potential in discovering millions of new microbial strains with superior traits.

Cultivated Meat Progress

• Cost Trajectory: The world's first cultivated meat burger (2013) cost $330,000 to produce; a decade later, it received regulatory approval for commercial sale in the US and Singapore.
• Current Pricing: Commercial availability in Singapore currently lists at approximately $20 per serving, though this is due to limited production volumes and high operational losses.
• Future Cost Projections: A techno-economic assessment by CE Delft projects that with public investment and technical breakthroughs, production costs could reach approximately €4.68 ($5) per kilogram by 2030.
• Primary Bottleneck: Cell culture media (the nutrient solution for cells) currently costs $300–$400 per liter, whereas it must drop to roughly $1 per liter to be commercially viable.
• Key Research Areas:
  • Developing affordable, animal-component-free media (e.g., using plant hydrolysates like chickpea extracts).
  • Engineering cells to require fewer growth factors or grow in higher densities.
  • Optimizing scaffolding and bioreactor technology for 3D tissue structure and efficient waste removal.

Ecosystem and Investment Landscape

• Funding Gap: Global alternative proteins face an annual unmet funding need of approximately $40 billion, a figure significantly smaller than R&D budgets for established technologies like solar or wind.
• Public Investment Trends: The Dutch government recently invested €60 million in a cultivated meat consortium; the US and Singapore have moved faster on regulatory approval compared to the EU.
• Consumer Acceptance: Surveys indicate 66% to 80% of consumers in the US, UK, and Southern Europe are willing to try cultivated meat, with actual sales data from Singapore showing high demand when available.
• GFI Europe's Role: The Good Food Institute Europe focuses on building an open-access research ecosystem, coordinating between scientists, funding agencies, and businesses to prevent duplication and prioritize high-impact R&D challenges.

Career and Strategic Implications

• Interdisciplinary Needs: The sector requires diverse expertise ranging from plant/animal sciences, chemistry, and computational biology to policy, finance, and food safety.
• Field-Building Strategy: Effective career entry involves utilizing GFI resources (jobs boards, talent databases) and targeting specific research gaps where academic translation to industry is needed.
• Scalability Potential: Unlike animal agriculture, which faces biological limits (e.g., chickens convert calories with a 9:1 loss), alternative proteins offer a pathway to consume plants directly, bypassing the inefficiency of feeding crops to animals.