By Tobias Bolli, Junior Project Manager Academic Relations
Let’s be honest, many of us have a hard time resisting meat. In Switzerland an average person eats around 52 kg of meat per year, not including fish. In China per capita meat consumption hovers around 50 kg per year as well, a tenfold increase compared to 1960. None of these countries come close to the US, however, where the average annual meat consumption amounts to 100 kg - or roughly double that of a Swiss or Chinese person.
Unfortunately, meat production comes with serious drawbacks, among them excessive land use (around a third of the planet´s ice-free surface), water waste as well as contribution to climate change (as much as the global transport system). In our webinar on “The Future of Meat: Meat Alternatives on the Rise” we put the spotlight on more sustainable options: plant-based meat and meat grown from stem cells. Both are predicted to have a bright future ahead of them. AT Kearny projects meat alternatives to overtake traditional meat in 2040. According to the survey (which is based on interviews with industry experts), plant-based meat will occupy 25% of the total market share with cell-based meat seizing a stunning 35%.
Our first speaker Pascal Bieri co-founded Planted Foods, an ETH spin-off dedicated to making “meat” entirely from plants. Opting for imitating chicken rather than beef, Planted chose a different route compared to most competitors. Since chicken are among the most used animals in meat production, Pascal hopes to make a big impact in terms of animal welfare. Another goal is to curb antibiotic-resistant pathogens which tend to proliferate in chicken farms. Pascal stressed the need for Planted´s products to have as many natural ingredients as possible. He contrasted that approach to some of his competitors which resort to artificial coloring to make their products resemble real meat. The same effect, Pascal insisted, can be achieved by using superior raw materials and processing.
A slide out of Pascal’s presentation illustrating Planted’s processes.
Planted Foods, which began research in 2017 and launched its first product in late spring of 2019, has already achieved remarkable success. They started out by making a decision to exclusively cater towards a few select restaurants. Listening to the feedback they were receiving, Planted refined the mouth-feel, taste and color of their product. Fast forward to today: not only does Planted cater to about 150 restaurants (which, after a corona-hiatus, opened their doors again last Monday), but their “chicken” products can also be bought in more than 550 Coop shops, Coop being the biggest retailer in Switzerland. To top things off, Planted now has a webshop where customers can order products directly online.
During the Q&A session Pascal underscored how important it is to offer a high-quality product to customers. Having tried out subpar meat alternatives, people tend to lose hope in the product category and go back to regular meat consumption. To ensure high standards, Planted draws on a large “library” of plant-protein raw materials, cherry-picking the ones with the best properties. They then use structuring tools to process the proteins and apply post-processing to highlight the fibers in the product. Asked about the future of the industry, Pascal opined that there is still significant growth potential in the plant-based meat market. He went on to reveal that Planted has recently founded a European daughter company to eventually expand across Europe. First they want to establish themselves in Switzerland however, and build a strong base in their home market. Naturally, the all-important question of price came up as well: Planted chicken are priced just below organic chicken for customers buying them at Coop.
From top left to bottom center: Carrie Chan from Avant Meats, Tobias Bolli from swissnex China and Pascal Bieri from Planted Foods.
Carrie, who is the business executive and co-founder at Avant Meats, started her presentation by highlighting the energy inefficiency of traditional animal farming. According to her, an input of 100 energy units only leads to an output of between 9 units (in the case of beef) and 12 units (in the case of fish). After all, animals use a lot of energy just to keep their metabolism going, they aren’t designed for the purpose of giving us food. Moreover, not all animal parts can be used in food production, which leads to a considerable waste of resources. Carrie explained that it is the mission of her company to get rid of the animal as an intermediary and grow meat right away (or fish in her case).
In order to achieve that goal Avant Meats removes a small sample of stem cells from a fish, selects a cell line with a high degree of self-replication and then stimulates growth by putting it in a nutrient-rich environment. In essence, Avant Meats is applying the principle pioneered by the Dutch pharmacologist Mark Post, who showcased a proof of concept hamburger in 2013 (which cost around a quarter of a million dollars back then). Carrie mentioned that the medium used to stimulate cell-growth is not yet animal component free and very costly on top of it. Thus Avant Meat is working hard to find a more affordable and animal-free alternative.
Some people might consider cell-based meat to be “unnatural”, a product coming right out of the lab and thus hard to trust and even kind of scary. To counter that perception, Carrie stressed that the process leading to cell-based meat is not entirely new. Natural yoghurt is produced in a similar manner with a mix of denatured milk proteins and bacterial culture undergoing fermentation – a process not unlike stem cell-growth in a bioreactor. Carrie also mentioned beer which gets produced by a similar bio process and is - nevertheless - perceived as a completely natural product by most people.
A diagram from Carrie’s presentation highlighting the prominent role of China in global seafood consumption.
While still being at the very early stages, Avant Meats already managed to create a fish maw prototype which was presented to the public in October 2019. Fish maw was relatively straightforward to produce since it features a simple texture with only one cell type. Next in the pipeline is a filet prototype which should see the light of day by the end of this year. Going for fish is perhaps unexpected but very understandable considering fish consumption in China and in Hong Kong (where Avant Meats is headquartered). As Carrie pointed out, a third of all fish products are consumed in China, with Chinese people eating more than twice as much fish per annum and capita than the worlds’s average. In other words, Avant Meats is tapping into a huge market and has the potential to really move the needle when it comes to more sustainable fish alternatives.
Towards the end our speakers discussed whether plant- and cell-based meat can peacefully coexist or whether there will be competition between the two products. While both agreed that there might indeed be some competition, Carrie commented that we don´t live in a binary world and that there will be enough demand to support both plant- and cell-based meat. Pascal even mentioned the possibility of some collaboration in the future. Asked about the consumer acceptance of her novel product, Carrie pointed to a study which examined the acceptance of meat alternatives in the world’s three biggest countries: China, India and the US. The study concluded that more than half of potential Chinese customers are willing to spend their own money on cell-based meat, which makes for a huge potential customer base (the numbers are similarly encouraging for plant-based meat). Carrie explained these findings by the many safety concerns Chinese people might associate with meat consumption – concerns which lead some of them to look for alternatives.
To conclude, we want to thank our two speakers Carrie Chan and Pascal Bieri who revealed some fascinating details about the inner-workings of their companies and about the meat alternative industry in general. Last but not least, we want to thank our audience who asked an impressive 35 questions during the webinar!
Please find a link to the slides and webinar recording below:
