You are what you eat eats, is the famous quote by Michael Pollan, food author and activist. While many of us are probably put off by the idea of eating insect meal as protein, a new startup has gone down the food-chain to make a sustainable source of protein feed for the creatures we still do like to eat, namely fish and birds such as chicken. These omnivores do require a high-protein feed, and the end-quality of what you eat will only be as good as what the animal you eat, eats.

A new startup has developed a process to cultivate and ship black soldier flies so they can shipped and activated for growth to where they are needed.

To reiterate, FreezeM is not producing insects for people to eat directly (like crunchy cricket snacks) you might see at alt.protein events, but their focus is on using insects as a protein source for animal feed (and indirectly, food security).

They developed a technology to “pause” the life cycle of black soldier fly (BSF) larvae which ensures that costly grow labs aren’t needed where the feed is needed, but instead allows them to ship dormant larvae worldwide, which can then be “woken up” on-site and fed with local organic waste. Let’s hope the focus stays on organic.

The larvae, onnce unpacked, quickly grow and can be processed into high-protein feed for fish (aquaculture), poultry, and livestock, as well as insect oil and fertilizer byproducts. The byproducts part sounds not clear, but according to the company they address problems at once: A, an organic waste management – converting food waste and agricultural byproducts into something useful. We can get behind this. And, B, a stainable protein supply – reducing reliance on soy imports or overfished ocean resources for feed.

So FreezeM’s insects are the intermediate step: turning waste into animal feed (and eventually into meat, fish, or eggs for people). When I had my startup in agriculture, developing brains and controllers for greenhouses, this was a common need expressed by farmers: systems not only to feed people fresh food, but hydroponic systems that can create fresh feed for animals. Soy and corn products can play a role, but not be the only diet livestock should be eating.

According to Family Friendly Farms, it is not healthy for livestock to eat only corn and soy, and “meat from animals fed predominantly on corn and soy may lack essential nutrients, leading to potential nutrient deficiencies in humans who consume such meat.

FreezeM was founded in 2018 as a spin-off from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel by three researchers: Yuval Gilad (CEO), Idan Alyagor (CTO), and Yoav Politi (VP R&D). The founders were graduates of Weizmann and had expertise in molecular genetics / developmental biology (especially using fly embryos) and entomology.

The core technology (PauseM®) is based on inducing a “paused” or “suspended animation” state in Black Soldier Fly (BSF) neonates so that they can survive transportation with extended shelf life before being revived, fed and grown for animal feed. They also have a partnership with Hermetia Baruth GmbH (Germany) for joint production / distribution of PauseM in Europe.

In February 2024, FreezeM closed a Series A round of USD 14.2 million with that round was led by industrial investors and the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund (along with existing investors / partners) to expand breeding hubs and commercialize PauseM. Prior to that FreezeM had raised €6.3 million in EIC funding. Their flagship product is PauseM®: essentially “paused” BSF neonates with a ~14-day guaranteed shelf life and survival of greater than 90%, with the economical idea of decoupling the breeding part of insect protein production from the rearing / growing part.

Farms that just want to feed larvae / grow / process don’t need to maintain their own breeding colony; they can order PauseM from FreezeM, feed the colony and feed it straight to the livestock.

This is a more palatable solution that other alt protein companies we’ve written about.

Curious to sink your teeth into alt. protein made from bugs? Jump in below.

• Flying Spark (Israel) – fruit fly larvae protein
• Hargol FoodTech (Israel) – locust protein
• Aspire Food Group (Canada/US) – cricket farming & ingredients
• Ÿnsect (France) – mealworm protein & fertilizer co-products
• Innovafeed (France/US) – black soldier fly (BSF) for feed
• Protix (Netherlands) – BSF ingredients for pet, aqua & livestock
• Entocycle (UK) – BSF tech & breeding systems
• Beta Hatch (USA) – mealworm farming at scale
• Hexafly (Ireland) – BSF oils, proteins & chitin
• Entobel (Vietnam) – BSF feed ingredients in Southeast Asia
• Insectta (Singapore) – BSF with biotech co-products
• AgriProtein (South Africa) – early BSF pioneer
• MealFood Europe (Spain) – mealworm ingredients
• Packaged Feeds (UK/EU) – integrating BSF breeding inputs
• IKEA x Space10 (global) – concept foods featuring insect protein

The post Startup FreezeM turns food waste into insect protein for fish and chicken appeared first on Green Prophet.

Israel has an uneven contribution to the cultivated meat market. This means growing real meat with live cells, but circumventing animal suffering. It’s meat in a lab, if you will. Impossible Burgers is “meat” made from pea protein that just tastes like a whole lot of coconut oil. Cultivated meat is the real thing but made in a lab. No animals need to be slaughtered for lab meat. In Israel think Aleph Farms, Steakholder Foods,Super Meat, Believer Meats, and now BioBetter.

BioBetter just sent Green Prophet an announcement that it has opened its food-grade pilot facility to grow raw materials for the expanding cultivated meat market. The company has pioneered a unique protein manufacturing platform using tobacco plants as self-sustained, animal-free bioreactors.

They tell Green Prophet: “BioBetter is going to market raw materials, the growth factors, ingredients that are needed in the cultivated meat production process. We are not making bioreactors. Also, we are not making actual meat, we produce growth factors in tobacco plants that function like bioreactors for the cultivated meat industry.”

Currently cultivated meat production processes are relatively expensive, making it a challenge to scale up and reach price parity with animal-based counterparts: “Cultivated meat is still very expensive in comparison to conventional meat and the key is to reduce the growth medium costs to a minimum,” explains Amit Yaari, the CEO of BioBetter.

Companies like Israel’s Aleph Farms have introduced small steaks but the cost is hundreds to thousands of dollars to produce meat in a lab. BioBetter could help Aleph Farms make steaks faster and at less cost.

BioBetter makes raw materials for the cultivated meat market“Our target is to reduce the production cost of growth factors, including insulin, a key part of the growth
medium, to $1 per gram which is a 100-fold less than the going rate today,” notes Yaari.

BioBetter has achieved five impressive milestones in just the past year:

1. Production scale-up/building pilot plan
2. Commercial scale cultivation of insulin- and FGF-expressing tobacco plants
3. Reaching GF expression levels that enable a significant reduction of production costs
4. Significant regulatory progresses and advances with the Israel Ministry of Health
5. Collaboration with leading cultivated meat companies

BioBetter’s technology is a new purpose for the traditionally shunned tobacco plants, transforming them
into bioreactors for the production of growth factors for meat. Tobacco plants are typically used to make vaccines.

Growth factors for cell growth play a key role in the proliferation and differentiation of cultured meat cells, allowing for the formation of authentic and well-structured muscle tissue. Designed for both environmental safety and efficiency, these bioreactors will be grown in a large- scale, net house cultivation system. The plants are carefully engineered to prevent the escape of any transgenic material.

They are induced to express growth factors only when chemically triggered, and the company exclusively uses non-food, non-feed tobacco plants to eliminate any risk of inadvertent consumption or cross-contamination of food crops.

Sustainability at the core?

While the science talk may inspire the common sense sustainability folk to just return to actual farming or hunting, “Our commitment to sustainability shines through in every facet of our operations,” says Yaari. “We plan to use recycled and low-quality water for irrigation, minimize nitrogen fertilizer use, and reduce emissions and environmental impact.

The newly established pilot plant has the capacity to process 100kg of tobacco plant-derived GFs
daily. Constructed in adherence to the highest quality standards, the facility meets all regulatory
requirements for production of food-grade growth factors, including FGF2 and insulin. It currently is
progressing through essential stages of securing approval from the Ministry of Health for food
manufacturing licensing. The company is committed to scalability, adhering to ISO2200 and HACCP
standards.

BioBetter also made breakthroughs in the cultivation of bovine insulin-expressing plants. Several
thousand square meters of FGF2-expressing tobacco plants are already thriving in northern Israel.

It’s the first time growth factor sources have been successfully planted in large net-houses, in four
locations, and with a fruitful harvest obtained in its first season.

Plans are underway to cultivate more FGF2 and insulin-expressing plants, with commercial roll-out projected for 2024.

The 250 million USD global cultivated meat sector is poised for substantial growth, yet its realization hinges upon a significant supply of growth factors. The most significant challenge of the cultivated meat industry is to produce and scale up at the right cost,” notes Aviv Oren, Director of Business Engagement and Innovation, the Good Food
Institute, Israel. “BioBetter’s technology, which is based on molecular farming of food-grade growth
factors in the required quantities and costs for industrial production, is a pivotal addition that has
the potential to accelerate this industry.”

In 2022, BioBetter secured 10 million USD in an A-round investment led by Jerusalem Venture
Partners (JVP). The company also is an active member of the Israeli Cultivated Meat Consortium,
which unites academic institutions, large companies, and start-ups to collaboratively advance the
field of cultivated meat.

Interested in this market? We have created an overview on molecular farming in Israel.

The post BioBetter accelerates molecular farming in tobacco plants appeared first on Green Prophet.

Le Petit Robert, the popular single-volume French dictionary, has added the word “labné”, also pronounced as “labneh” or “labaneh” to its latest 2023 edition. A civil war in Lebanon in 1975 drove hundreds of thousands of french-speaking Arab Lebanese to France, and of course they brought their delicious food and cheese traditions with them. Like Indians have great yoghurt, the Arab world has amazing labaneh. Rolled into a Druize pita with za’atar and olive oil. You have yourself a vegetarian meal.

You pronounce labane as LA-BA-NEH and in Hebrew the word “laban” means white.

Le Robert’s:

Fromage frais égoutté préparé traditionnellement avec du lait de chèvre ou de brebis (spécialité moyen-orientale).

Labneh is traditionally made with goat’s milk, but it can easily be made using a 1/2 a gallon of cow’s or sheep’s milk. Maybe even camel milk too. As we mentioned above, we love it on a fresh pita with olive oil and za’atar.

Labaneh is popular in the Middle East. It’s a fresh cheese that doesn’t spoil easily in the heat and you can make at home with yoghurt or with milk and lemon (see our recipe here).

Labane tastes awkwardly sour at first like something is wrong with it. The flavor tingles in your mouth a bit. After the first few tastes, you will grow to love its tangy flavor. We promise.

You might find it sold in a small tub or rolled into balls and stored with olive oil. Either way is delicious.

Vegan version of labne

Notre Dame University-Louaize’s Christelle Bou Mitri, with Christelle Saleme and Christy Raad have developed a plant-based alternative to the Lebanese Labneh. The researchers at the private Catholic university in Zouk Mosbeh, Lebanon, are following the alt-protein, alt-milk craze and have found a way to make the tangy cheese using peas, lupin, and beans in response to the increasing need for vegan food in Lebanon. 

According to the university’s press, vegan products in Lebanon are hard to access, especially in terms of affordability, which limits one’s options in adopting a vegan lifestyle, particularly for the sake of health risks.

You can now find Labaneh in major cities around the world like in Toronto, New York, London or Paris but it’s just as easy to make if you can’t find it. If you’re expert level at Arab cheese, we challenge you to make smen.

The post Labne/Labaneh added to official French dictionary appeared first on Green Prophet.

Mush Foods, an Israeli foodtech startup which pioneered a way to cultivate mycelium mushrooms, a sustainable protein for food, has teamed up with several fungi fermentation companies from abroad to form a new international trade association: The Fungi Protein Association (FPA).  

The FPA will represent the interests of its member companies, including advocating for fungi protein in  public policy in the US, Israel and the world, conducting consumer research, and more.

While mushrooms have been used for centuries as meat replacements and natural medicine, various methods of fungi fermentation are creating a new crop of high-protein, high-fiber, meat alternatives. As such, fermented fungi are taking the alternative protein market by storm. Alongside plant and cell-based protein, it now represents one of the three mainstays of the burgeoning  meat alternative sector.  

Founded in 2021, the Israeli startup joins this brand-new collaboration alongside major British, American, and European companies including ENOUGH, Quorn, Nature’s Fynd, Bosque Foods, The Better Meat Co., The Protein Brewery, Prime Roots, Mycotechnology, Aqua Cultured Foods, and Mycorena, plus NGOs ProVeg and The Good Food Institute.

A 2022 study in Nature found that replacing just 20 percent of beef with microbial protein – the products FPA members are pioneering – could cut global deforestation by a whopping 50 percent. 

“Israel is on the cutting edge, innovating foodtech solutions addressing major global challenges including  the climate crisis, food security, and nutrition.The ‘Startup Nation’ is also situated in a region considered  particularly vulnerable to climate change, with the Middle East heating up twice as fast as the global  average,” noted Shalom Daniel, co-founder and CEO of Mush Foods. 

Co-founded by Professors Dan Levanon and Dr. Idan Pereman of the Migal Galilee Research Institute, Mush Foods grows mycelium, the delicate and highly  nutritious underground network of threads which constitutes more than 90 percent of the fungi’s biomass.

Fungi for protein!

Mush Foods piloted in Manhattan last week, reflecting consumer demand  for this kind of protein alternative. Twenty percent of 6000 employees at major financial institutions in New York chose to purchase Mush Foods’ 50CUT hybrid beef and mycelium burger over some 10 other main dish options. 

The Global Alternative Protein Market is expected to reach $36.61 billion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of  12.4 percent during the forecast period of 2022 to 2029, according to Research & Markets. A recent Good Food Institute Israel report found that by the end of June, Israeli alternative protein startups and  companies this year raised $320 million, placing the tiny Middle Eastern state second only to the United States ($857 million) terms of alternative protein investments.  

“The world needs more protein, and fungi fermentation offers a delicious, sustainable way to do just that,”  said Marco Bertacca of Quorn Foods, the British company which took the lead on the new international  initiative. “We’re excited to partner with our fellow fungi enthusiasts to raise awareness and appreciation  of the wonderful ways fungi can improve human health and the health of our planet.” 

In May 2022, Dutch mycoprotein company ENOUGH also announced its partnership with Peace of Meat, the Belgian subsidiary of Israeli cultured meat start-up MeaTech, to combine cultivated fat biomass and fermented fungi mycoprotein to add a meaty mouthfeel to ENOUGH’s mushroom-based products. That’s a lot of mushroom business going around.

The post Mushroom trade group unites Quorn and fungi protein companies appeared first on Green Prophet.

Sustainability has moved past industry buzzword status to command a stronghold in business and customer communities. When your business embraces sustainable practices, has mindful customers, or both, it’s important to make sure your actions reflect your priorities.

Your organization has the opportunity to make an impact through its sourcing choices as well as its own sustainability goals. But finding, choosing, and monitoring business partners can often seem overwhelming. Fortunately, there are ways to help you sort through slick marketing to reveal potential partners with a true commitment to sustainability.

Consider Their Products’ Impact on the Environment

When you’re thinking of partnering with a company, you may first be focusing on the quality of their products. While product quality is paramount, pause to research its impact on the environment.

Review its manufacturing process, ingredients, and packaging as you consider whether the partnership is a match. Companies that source their ingredients locally could be a more environmentally friendly choice given the reduction in miles traveled. Plant-based ingredients often have a lower carbon footprint while growing and when they’re processed or manufactured into other goods.

If you operate a grocery store or restaurant, you can reduce your carbon footprint by offering products made with plant-based protein. Such products have experienced significant growth and customer adoption thanks to their great flavor and sustainable status. Add other similarly attractive products like locally roasted coffee, produce grown nearby, and honeys and jams from small, sustainable producers.

Examine Their Company Culture

Brands are built by their actions, so review potential partners’ company culture alongside their products’ quality. Employees are often one of the best sources to determine if a company is truly living their values. 

Check the company’s website and required reporting for commitments, data, and analysis. If the company you’re considering has quarterly reports, those can be full of valuable details. Many sustainable companies carry over their commitment to sustainable products to their offices. Find out whether their building is LEED certified and/or uses water recapture methods and energy-efficient lighting and equipment. 

Review how they support their employees and the community where they work. If they offer benefits for bike or hybrid commuters, that can be a good sign. Likewise, how they contribute to the community where they produce products can be very telling. Look for companies that give back and offset their environmental impact on their community. Those that do so quietly and genuinely can often be great partners whose values match your company’.  

Review Green Labeling With Care

The impulse behind green labeling like “certified organic” and “B-Corp” certification has genuine roots. But when there are marketing opportunities and market share to compete for, less ethical companies take advantage.

Review potential partners’ sustainable labeling with care, investigating whether their actions match their labels. Certified B-Corp businesses commit to providing a material positive benefit to either society or the environment. However, some certified businesses’ practices don’t always line up with the specifications of the designation. 

Complete a thorough review and request documentation, proof, and data from potential partners. Your partnership with their organization reflects on you as much as it does on them. Essentially, your working with them gives your customers the impression that they, too, are ‘good people.’ You’ve worked to build your reputation as a sustainable business over years of hard work and mindful decisions. Protect what you’ve earned by ensuring your partners help lift your brand and enhance your business. 

Check That Their Commitment to Full-Scale Sustainability Extends Beyond Headlines

Everyone loves a good PR campaign, especially when there’s great news to share. But does your potential partner do the right thing even when no one is looking? Be wary of publicity stunts that look great above the fold but don’t deliver on their promises. 

Scour search engines for both company-led news and reporter-generated stories about your potential partners. This research may yield whistleblower news, critical reports, or, ideally, more great news about their practices. While your goal isn’t to find a wealth of incriminating material, think like a competitor. If someone not invested in your business’s success were to research you and your partners, what would they find?

Learn how potential partners dispose of waste, manage nonrenewable energy, offset carbon impact, and source raw materials. Companies that offset their impact through actions like recycling, reuse, and donation may indicate a greater commitment to sustainability. Those that offset by donating money to fixing what they’ve damaged likely aren’t invested like you are. Examine what they do when monitors aren’t watching and seek to find the “why” behind their practices. If they’re doing good for the sake of reputation, there may be other more sustainable businesses to partner with. 

Establish Shared Values With Your Partners

Sustainability is more than just a business commitment — it’s a promise to protect the environment and the people you serve. When you partner with producers and other companies, aim to establish shared values. 

Include language in your partnership or purchasing agreement that specifies expectations to ensure you are in alignment. If putting it in writing isn’t your style, share your company values with potential partners, extending those expectations to them. When you and your partners are in sync on sustainability, you, your customers, and the environment reap the rewards. 

The post How to Choose Sustainable Business Partners appeared first on Green Prophet.

Radar entomology: The first insect radar installed in Israel near the Hula Valley. 

Despite your hatred for mosquitos, or the Fall Armyworm that’s eating lawns and football fields, insects are an important part in the web of life. The bodies of insects contain 10% nitrogen and 1% phosphorus and they are full of protein. Some startups like Flying Spark are even marketing insects for human consumption as part of the Alt Protein movement. Insects, of course, and their larvae, are already a nutritious food source in countries in Africa and East Asia. 

But beyond how insects can feed us humans directly, they are excellent fertilizer for plants and crops, they make nutritious meals for birds, bats, and amphibians like frogs and salamanders. Frogs and salamanders are indicator species, helping us know they health of ecosystems. Insects pollinate the food we eat.

If insects go, amphibians go. And if anyone reading this has noticed how much fewer insects stick to your windshield when driving in the country, you can maybe surmise – we have a problem.

Reasons for fewer insects? Pesticides, human development, invasive pests taking over, forestry, industrial pollution.  

To help understand insect populations, a new insect radar, the first for Israel, has been installed near the Hula Valley nature reserve. The area is a major rest stop for millions of migratory birds moving between Africa and Europe each year. 

The insect radar offers a chance to gauge the quantity of insects in Israel’s skies and was installed by the University of Haifa. The insect radar, like the bird radar installed by Prof. Yossi Leshem a couple of decades ago, will allow researchers to estimate the density, direction and speed of migration, elevation, and body size of the insects, and to assess factors influencing the insects that fly in this area.

“We will be able to identify pollinating insets that are of great importance for wild plants and agriculture, as well as other insects that cause damage to agriculture, such as various species of moths,” said Prof. Nir Sapir at the University of Haifa.

Insects mass migration larger than birds

In a previous study in which Prof. Sapir was also involved, and which was published in the journal Science, it was found that insect migration is the largest migration in terrestrial environments.

In Britain alone, some 3.5 trillion insects migrate every year, creating a biomass almost eight times greater than that of migrating birds.

Prof. Sapir anticipates that insect migration in Israel will be on an even larger scale: “In northern areas such as England, there is no insect activity in winter. In our region there are large insect populations throughout the year, including in winter. The conditions for the development of large populations are much more favorable here.

“Thanks to the radar, we will be able to calculate the quantities of insects of each given size and group that cross Israel – something that was impossible with the previous tools. We will be able to understand if between environmental temperature and other conditions, such as wind, affect the number of insects. We will be able to gauge the impact of global warming on the number of insect.

“This is importance, because insects constitute a major part in vital ecological interactions in many ecosystems,” Prof. Sapir concluded.

Monitoring invasive insects

One of the first studies undertaken by the researchers with the help of the insect radar seeks to monitor the fall armyworm, an invasive species of moth that arrived in Israel recently from South America. It was also detected in Egypt in 2021 so its spread could be rapid and devastating for countries in the Middle East already on the brink of starvation. Prof. Sapir explains that this species is one of the most harmful in the world and is known to cause damage to more than 350 species of plants.

“The crop that is worst affected by the fall armyworm larvae is maize…we have begun to use the radar in order to understand the movement of these moths, as a first step toward controlling their spread,” Prof. Sapir added.

Using such variables as size, flight speed, wing movement pattern, and body shape obtained from the radar, the researchers plan to apply a classification tool based on “teaching” the machine to identify groups of insects and later on specific species, such as the fall armyworm, with the help of the radar.

Could it works as an early warning system against locusts and new invaders? Let’s hope countries nearby, such as Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and Syria, will also invest in insect radars so that science can help draw links in a regional, rather than a local scale. 

CABI, an England-based agriculture NGO I used to do with research with as a graduate student in Switzerland, published a book some 20 years ago – Radar Entomology – indicating how radar can be used for insect pest management. The book deals with the applications of radar findings in the management and forecasting of both pest and beneficial insects, and is an important reference for those working in agricultural entomology and pest management.

The post Insect radar monitors the web of life appeared first on Green Prophet.

Are you still eating commercially caught fish or are trying Alt Protein made to taste like fish? You might think about changing your dietary habits even if you are eating the 7 fish that are totally okay to eat. After taking a deep dive in the fishing industry, dolphin bycatch is being ignored and not reported.

That means with every fish you eat that’s caught from the sea, chances are other wildlife paid the price for your palette. And not just dolphins, but seals, sea turtles, sharks and sting rays are also getting trapped and killed by fishing nets. 

An international team of researchers from the United Arab Emirates and the UK have developed a method to assess sustainable levels of human-caused wildlife mortality, which when applied to a trawl fishery shows that dolphin capture is not sustainable. (But is dolphin marriage? Remember the story about the woman from the UK who married a dolphin in Israel? The dolphin died in 2021)

The new study, led by scientists at the University of Bristol and United Arab Emirates University was published in the journal Conservation Biology.

Human activities like commercial fishing can result in the accidental death of non-targeted wildlife, threatening protected and endangered species. “Bycatch and discarding of marine wildlife in commercial fisheries are major challenges for biodiversity conservation and fisheries management the world over”, said Simon Allen of Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences, who studies dolphin behaviour and interactions with fisheries.

Bycatch Reduction Devices were placed in Western Australian trawl nets in 2006, but no quantitative assessment of the impact was carried out.

“We set out to model different levels of dolphin capture, including those reported in skippers’ logbooks and those by independent observers. Unfortunately, our results show clearly that even the lowest reported annual dolphin capture rates are not sustainable”, Allen said.

How to solve the dolphin bycatch problem?

The study’s lead author Oliver Manlik, Assistant Professor at the United Arab Emirates University explained how the researchers introduced a novel approach to assessing human-caused mortality to wildlife that can be applied to fisheries bycatch, hunting, lethal control measures or wind turbine collisions.

“And when we incorporate stochastic factors, random events, we show that previous methods of assessing wildlife mortality were not conservative enough,” says Manlik: “This raises concerns for the dolphin population and highlights a problem with other assessments that do not account for random events, like heatwaves, because these environmental fluctuations are becoming more frequent and intense with climate change.”

With only voluntary or low levels of fisheries monitoring and no quantitative conservation objectives, Allen notes that the UK and EU are also failing to address the bycatch problem.

Greater transparency and the application of more rigorous methods would improve the scientific basis for decision-making around the impacts of fisheries on non-target species like dolphins, whales, seals and seabirds.

While the authors suggest ways for better reporting the problem the only solution seems to be up to you – just don’t buy fish? Seems like a drastic solution but it impacted the tuna industry at some level. Although if the reporting standards are low anyway chances are the tuna industry, even the so-called sustainably caught tunas, are probably greenwashing our conscience. 

Read more on large marine wildlife:

Dubai Marine Life At Risk After Devastating Shark Catch

Kuwaiti Sharks, Ecosystems and Exxon

25 Shark Species In Persian Gulf Need Urgent Protection

The post Dolphin bycatch not sustainable appeared first on Green Prophet.

The world’s biggest chemicals and food companies, owned by a dozen multinationals, are diving deeper into the protein alternative movement as more people turn to veganism. DuPont, the chemical company that makes teflon, lycra, polyester, and lucite, will now be making artificial salmon, using spirulina, a type of algae. They have partnered with an Israeli company to harvest and isolate the reddish-orange components from the algae to give the taste and texture to the cultivated salmon.

I just finished a green veggie shake made with spirulina this morning. Known for its rich in a range of vitamins and minerals essential for maintaining a healthy immune system, like vitamins E, C, and B6, some research finds that spirulina also boosts the production of white blood cells and antibodies that fight viruses and bacteria in your body.

But fish-in-a-lab from spirulina? Why not just eat it as it is? This is one of the growing problems with the food industry today: making fake meat and fish and marketing them to consumers who might be better off just eating the same vegetable based products in their original form. Read here how the Slow Food movement is rallying against fake meat. 

But the news is in, DuPont, now known as IFF-DuPont is joining up with an Israeli foodTech start-up called SimpliiGood to develop the first commercial smoked salmon analog made entirely from a single ingredient: fresh spirulina. The company is growing its spirulina in the Israeli desert under ample sunshine. 

Mercury free fish?

The plant-based salmon-like cut is uniquely crafted to take on the appearance, color, texture, and flavor of smoked salmon, reports the companies in a joint press statement, yet without the ocean pollutants that living fish are commonly exposed to. These include compounds such as mercury, fossil fuels, and industrial waste. The final product contains 40% protein. 

In the new partnership SimpliiGood provides the raw material and texture and color qualities of fake salmon, while IFF-DuPont contributes the flavor and smells. The product is expected to hit the market by the end of 2023. In 2020, the global sales value of salmon amounted to approximately 15 billion USD.

SimpliiGood specializes in cultivating and harvesting fresh blue-green algae, as well as producing of a range of spirulina-centered food products.. Its current portfolio encompasses a range of meat substitutes, including hamburgers and chicken nuggets, as well as popsicles, ice cream, crackers, and beverages where spirulina serves either as the base ingredient or as nutritional enrichment.

“Our spirulina can act as a complete replacement for animal-based protein or be easily integrated into existing food products as an added-value ingredient, as it has a neutral flavor and maintains its full nutritional value,” says Lior Shalev, CEO and Co-founder of Algaecorem the parent company of SimpliiGood.

Spirulina is heralded as one of the most nutrient-dense plant-based forms of protein on the planet, being a naturally rich source of whole protein, plus antioxidants, chlorophyll, vitamins, (including B12), and minerals, especially iron.

The spirulina market is relatively young and is dominated by dried and powdered forms of the ingredient which is easy to use when making shakes, baking breads or sauces. An orange, salmon-like hue has been expressed through identifying and isolating the native beta carotene pigment naturally present in spirulina. 

Who else is making lab fish?

Plenty of companies from around the world are looking to print salmon and other kinds of fish to stop over fishing and over consumption of fish in the wild. The Israeli startup Plantish showed a prototype of whole-cut vegan salmon filets earlier this year. The “meat” offers a flakey texture, it’s buttery in the mouth and created to duplicate the sensation of salmon. 

One other startup working to reel in the big fake fish is Good Catch Meals which offers an American-made salmon burger. The “salmon” burger is made from six plants: peas, soy, chickpeas, faba beans, lentils, and navy beans. They also offer a vegan tuna and different seafood appetizers and entrées to offer customers a fish substitute.

Hong Kong-based OmniFoods known for its plant-based pork products launched OmniSeafood. They are looking to replace fish with vegan options and products include alternate options to canned tuna, breaded fish, and filets and its first vegan crab muffins launched on the menu of Starbucks Hong Kong. This month, its plant-based fish made it onto the menu at McDonald’s in Hong Kong. 

From greenhouse-to-fork?

Like all the hydroponics farms touting “sustainability”, the makers of animal alternative protein are doing the same though there is yet little justification for it, except for animal suffering. Critics of alternative meat companies (links to the NY Times which needs a subscription) say that the extensive process of making these products cannot yet claim to be good for the environment, though it’s a feel-good proposition that wins favor with the public. The term for that is “green-washing”.

I’d rather see a world where people eat real food and real meat products, unprocessed in a lab, including real meat and real fish, products that are trapped, hunted from healthy forests and fish caught from unpolluted seas. We’d rather, as a species, be better informed about consuming animal products and if we choose to eat them, do it much, much less, while focusing on quality over quantity.

We need to focus on reducing our need for ready-made packaged products. Make our own real food, plant our gardens or buy from locals who have made farming a better way of life for them and their community. 

Strauss shows the stressors of globalization

Strauss, a food company from Israel, which has heralded the support of alternative protein companies through its investment arm The Kitchen (also supported by the Israeli government using grants from the Office of the Chief Scientist), has invested in Flying Sparks (makes protein from insects), Aleph Farms (meat in a lab), and Wanda Fish, a company that makes alternative fish proteins. Last week Strauss suffered from a massive financial blow after its food products were recalled due to a salmonella outbreak.

It is one of the largest food recalls in Israel’s history and its impact will be global. Friend and fellow environmentalist (and Eco Bible author) Yonathan Neril noted: “There are likely millions of food items included in this recall. Once the products are returned from the stores, Strauss destroys them. This is food waste on a tremendous scale.

“We live in a strange world. In Yemen, 2,000 km southeast of Israel, about 25 million lack enough food, with many experiencing severe malnutrition. Ditto for 25 million Afghanis, a few thousand km to the east.

“Food contamination is a dark underbelly of industrial food production. If modern society produced food on a smaller scale, if would not have to discuss obscene amounts of food when salmonella or e-coli bacteria are food in the production process.

“How many of the 800 million people on this planet would be happy to take the tiny risk of eating these chocolate bars, wafers, cookies, and cakes, in order to experience the satiation of eating a normal amount of calories for one day? Can food recalls involve distributing the food to people facing severe malnutrition, and just include a warning label– there’s a tiny chance that this food is contaminated with salmonella– eat at your own risk?” Neril asks.

Or for now eat from food made by your own hands that don’t come in so much packaging and your risks and expenses will be much less? 

In March, Ferrero, the makers of Nutella and other products faced a global recall. The World Health Organization said a salmonella outbreak reported in the UK on March 27 was linked to chocolate produced by the Ferrero Corporate plant in Arlon, Belgium, which has been distributed to at least 113 countries.

A global alert was released by the International Food Safety Authorities Network, initiating a global product recall of Kinder products marketed to young children. So far, a total of 151 genetically related cases suspected to be linked to the consumption of the relevant chocolate products have been reported from 11 countries.

The affected countries are Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the US.

Is the Ferrero contamination linked to Israel where some of Ferrero’s raw materials might have been used? We’ll know more soon, I am sure. 

But back to the fake meat, fake fish, fake food: I was excited about Impossible Foods and the ISO Group and the Beyond Burger for a while and I chose to pay 4 times the price of real meat to consume no animal protein but after a dozen or so burgers couldn’t get over the coconut oil flavor that permeates everything — and the hard to digest pea protein that is prone to give digestion problems. In that I mean stomach upset and extreme gas. So don’t eat one before a first date or working at the office.  

There is no verdict here. You have to look deeper and decide for yourself. After living in Israel for more than 20 years I can see how real, fresh food goes a long way to satisfy the tastebuds and soul. Let’s ditch all the business models, marketing and greenwashing and just go back back to basics. Regenerative farming anyone? Or on the flipside, our collective climb into technology and food might bring us eventually to the right place, one hundred or one thousand years into the future.

Last thought: a new new study finds that the fishing industry is making the habitats of dolphins unsustainable. An ethical reason to stop eating fish?

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Leonardo DiCaprio, known in his movie roles for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Titanic –– and for dating Bar Refaeli – has invested in not one but two alternative meat companies, Aleph Farms, based in Israel, and Mosa Meat from the Netherlands. Unlike the Impossible Burger and the OSI Group which creates alternative protein from peas, which is tasty, but hard to digest, Aleph and Mosa create meat in a lab using original cells from a real animal.

The idea is to create real meat that tastes like meat, not a plant-based substitute. But lab meat is exactly like meat, removing the suffering and methane gas production, oh and antibiotic use, so the argument goes. 

“One of the most impactful ways to combat the climate crisis is to transform our food system. Mosa Meat and Aleph Farms offer new ways to satisfy the world’s demand for beef, while solving some of the most pressing issues of current industrial beef production. I’m very pleased to join them as an advisor and investor, as they prepare to introduce cultivated beef to consumers,” said DiCaprio.

It’s common for celebrities to invest in startups, especially Israeli ones. Leonardo is in the footsteps of other Hollywood actors like Ashton Kutcher. 

Both Mosa and Aleph have demonstrated the ability to grow beef directly from animal cells, with the unveiling of the first cultivated hamburger by Mosa Meat in 2013 and the first cultivated steak and ribeye by Aleph Farms in 2018 and 2021 respectively. The meat made still costs a mini fortune but new investments will help the companies scale production and cut back costs.

Some of us have turned vegan or vegeaware or at least participate in Meatless Mondays. Eating meat –– until we find a better solution to satisfy meat eaters –– is here to stay. New innovations might help alleviate climate problems, as well as a growing interest to return back to the land, hunt one’s own meat, and eat less or whole animal meat eating. 

The post Leonardo DiCaprio invests in cruelty-free meatballs appeared first on Green Prophet.

It’s a sign of the times: a vegan cheesemaking company in Israel is considering listing on the TASE – or Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Two meat or animal product substitute companies already list there and now Vgarden, which makes vegan cheese is looking to raise capital. A report in the local paper Haaretz says the kibbutz-based company plans to list next year at a valuation of $102 million. 

Israel has more vegans per capita than anywhere in the world. And the company already has dozens of companies looking to offer a plant-based alternative to meat or animal based products. 

Yofix in Israel already sells its soy-free yogurt alternative made from oats, legumes and seeds. The fermented, cultured products contain protein, fiber, calcium and iron, have no added sugar or preservatives, and are pre- and probiotic.

Vgarden produces sliced cheese, cream cheese, ricotta, and feta –– all without milk of any kind. And it’s marketed under the brand Mashu Mashu, which means “wow, that’s something” in Hebrew. I have tried the sliced cheese and it’s a satisfying and convincing alternative. It’s firm and tasty and has a cheesy smell and flavor likely from yeast – which the African Israelites have been using as a seasoning for decades. They are an all-vegan village in Beersheva. 

The transition to complete veganism hasn’t been difficult for mainstream Israelis because as part of the Jewish lifestyle and dietary laws it is already known if a food product contains traces of animal products as it’s not allowed to eat meat and milk together, for those who observe the customs and traditions known as kashrut.

They are similar to the Muslim dietary laws called halal but are more restrictive – except for one – Jews are allowed to drink alcohol, Muslims are not. 

Israelis taking bite out of meat substitute markets

MeaTech in Israel 3-D prints meat alternatives and its shares have risen 120% on the TASE over the last year according to the Marker, an Israeli financial paper. SavorEat is developing a plant-based meat alternative using 3D printing and plant cellulose. 

Impossible Burgers have been on the Israeli grocery shelves for a couple of years already. But they cost about $8 a piece, which is more than double the price of a burger bought at a butcher. McDonalds in some locations in Israel is selling vegan burgers and for those observing dietary laws can for the first time order a cheeseburger from the famed fast-food chain. 

Redefine Meat from Israel says it is making the world’s first plant-based steak created using 3D printing technology. The Rehovot-based company said it will start testing the beef, which it calls Alt-Steak, at select high-end restaurants in Israel later this year.

Israelis are thrilled with the rollout of Beyond Meat and are clearly trying to take a bite out of this enviable market. Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2019-2026, “the global meat substitute market size was valued at $4.1 billion in 2017, and is expected to reach $8.1 billion by 2026.”

RilBite is ambitiously positioning itself as the basis for “The burger that saves the world.”

Founded by Barak Melamed and incubated in The Kitchen FoodTech Hub of the Strauss Group in Ashdod, RilBite is developing a “minced plant” product using only six ingredients: onions, tomatoes, textured vegetable protein (TVP) from soy, lentils, rice and spices.

There is Kinoko Tech developing a vegan protein with a meat-like texture and slight umami flavor. The secret ingredient is an edible mushroom tissue called mycelium.

FFW is creating a yeast-based meat alternative. Founder Leonardo Marcovitz says that yeast contains 50% protein and has all the essential amino acids. It’s cheap and easily available. But until now, no one has been able to create a textured product out of yeast or temper its strong umami flavor.

“For the past year, our food technologists have been working on solving those two challenges,” he says. “We’re deciding whether our first product will be in the form of pulled chicken, chicken nuggets or Bolognese.”

Taking on the humble chickpea, a staple of the Middle East diet: InnovoPro and ChickP have developed proprietary technologies for extracting neutral-tasting protein from chickpeas for use in the food industry. Although hummus everywhere unless it’s organic contains high amounts of cancer-causing Roundup. 

Sometimes, unless it’s my daughter begging to try a vegan bacon one day, I just have to hope: maybe we should just stop trying to create substitutes? The next generation of vegans won’t hunger for milk, cheese or anything that resembles meat if we educate them properly. Food grown simply from a garden and made into a homemade spread without a printer or complicated enzymes in a lab is really the healthiest and more sustainable way we can consumer our food. These foodtech companies may both help and hinder a meat-free transition. What do you think?

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