Alt-protein or plant-based meat has recently seen a decline in its market shares with flagship companies like Beyond Meat struggling to stay afloat. However, this article argues that this is simply a symptom of hype cycles - as the initial hype following an innovation wanes novel products and technologies commonly experience a “trough of disillusionment”. Those products and technologies that survive this “trough” tend to achieve mainstream acceptance, which this article suggests will be the case for the alt-protein industry.

The Italian Agriculture and Food Sovereignty Minister, Francesco Lollobrigida, recently proposed a bill that would result in a national ban on the production and marketing of cultivated meat, stating that so-called “synthetic” foods threaten small food producers, the environment, Italian food culture, and even human health. Despite the potential inaccuracy of many of these claims, there are fears that, if passed, the new law would limit the economic potential, scientific progress, and climate mitigation efforts associated with the emerging field of cultivated meat.

Israel’s chief Rabbi David Lau recently ruled that lab-grown beef produced by the company Aleph Farms could be considered kosher. Due to the way this beef is produced (the meat is cultivated from stem cells) he concluded that it would be classed as pareve - that is a food that is neither meat nor dairy. However, this ruling came with the caveat that this would only be the case if the lab-grown meat was advertised as a meat alternative rather than real meat.

Yasmin Tayag of The Atlantic discusses her experience tasting plant-based bacon made with ‘lab-grown’ or ‘cultivated’ fat produced by San Francisco start-up Mission Barns. It is hoped that cultivated fat may encourage more people to eat less meat (which would have environmental benefits and address concerns around animal suffering) by providing a plant-based meat alternative that tastes as good as the real thing.

This article by The Good Food Institute explores global trends in investment in alternative proteins during 2022. Alternative protein companies raised $2.9 billion globally in 2022 - a 42% decrease compared to 2021, which followed several years of increasing global investment in alternative proteins. The article attributes 2022’s lower investment to broader market conditions, as economy-wide private venture funding also declined 35% in 2022. The article also sets out the results of an investor survey showing that 99% of respondents remain optimistic about the alternative protein sector in the long term.

In this piece, the Good Food Institute describes government regulation of alternative proteins (including plant-based, cultivated and fermentation-derived foods) in several countries around the world (including China, Singapore, Australia, Japan, Korea, India, Saudi Arabia, Canada, the United States and the European Union).

Hannah Ritchie, Head of Research at Our World in Data, has launched a new email newsletter called Sustainability by numbers, which discusses the numbers and data that are important for building a sustainable world. TABLE readers may be particularly interested in the issues Eating local is still not a good way to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet and Are meat substitutes really better for the environment than meat?

This blog post from The Good Food Institute addresses the question of whether cultivated meat (and other lab-grown foods) can reduce the risk of antibiotic resistance compared to livestock production. Antibiotics are often added to cell culture media in laboratories to prevent infection, but over a dozen cultivated food companies claim to have antibiotic-free processes.

A group of campaigners known as Reboot Food has published a manifesto calling for open-source precision fermentation technology to be used widely to transform the food system away from reliance on animal agriculture and free up land for nature restoration. Precision fermentation technology, which is already used to produce insulin and rennet as well as some new food products, could in theory produce all of the world’s protein on an area of land smaller than Greater London, says the manifesto.