The Good Food Institute has published a series of four reports giving the latest industry and investment updates about alternative proteins, including plant-based foods, fermentation, cellular agriculture, and alternative seafood.

This report by IPES-Food (the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems) scrutinises eight key claims about the future of protein (including livestock and alternative proteins), identifies five ways in which these claims result in oversimplified discussions, and sets out three recommendations to reframe discussions and reduce polarisation.

MILK, the inaugural issue of Feminist Food Journal, a new quarterly online magazine focused on the intersections of food systems and feminism, explores feminist perspectives on the contested liquid. Through diverse global perspectives, it considers what a feminist milk paradigm could look like and contemplates how we could get there.

This post from Our World in Data sets out the environmental impacts (land use, greenhouse gas emissions, freshwater use and eutrophication) of dairy milk and several alternatives (oat, soy, almond and rice milk). It concludes that dairy milk has higher environmental impacts than all of the alternatives across all categories considered, and that there is no clear winner between the dairy alternatives.

This blog post by Saloni Shah and Dan Blaustein-Rejto of US-based think-tank The Breakthrough Institute argues that decreases in the price of plant-based meat alternatives by 10% will likely only have a small impact on cattle production (a 0.15% decrease in the US) and emissions from global cattle production (equivalent to a decrease of 1.4% in US beef production). They conclude that while continuing to improve plant-based meat alternatives is important in order for them to gain a larger market share, it is also important to work on methods and technologies to reduce the environmental impacts of livestock production.

The fourth edition of the Coller FAIRR Protein Producer Index assesses 60 of the world’s largest protein producers, covering beef, pork, poultry and eggs, dairy and aquaculture, against several environmental, social and governance factors, including climate, biodiversity, water use, antibiotics, working conditions and alternatives to animal protein.

This paper examines trends in the consumption of plant-based alternative foods (PBAF) in the UK between 2008 and 2019. It defines PBAF as products made from plant or fungal ingredients that aim to mimic animal-based equivalents such as meat or milk. It finds that the proportion of people reporting any consumption of PBAF has nearly doubled to 13.1%.

This report from UK NGO Eating Better offers guidance for local authorities on how to source and serve healthier, more sustainable meals, for example in schools. It focuses on meat and dairy and proposes a 25% reduction in the amount of meat (of all types) and dairy served by local authorities, as well as sourcing 25% of meat and dairy served from “better” production systems. “Better” in this case means farming that uses lower levels of antibiotics, emphasises local feed sources and promotes animal welfare. The higher costs of “better” meat and dairy can be offset by increased use of vegetables and plant protein.

This article in The Counter argues that, contrary to previous predictions, meat grown via cellular agriculture is unlikely to become economically viable as a mainstream source of food. Citing a competing technical analysis, the article argues that the cost of the equipment needed to grow cells and keep them from contamination is likely to remain prohibitive, as is the cost of animal-ingredient-free versions of the liquid used to feed cells.