Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Special corn dishes are a reminder that forests are being deforested. A vegetable seaweed salad with fish soup suggests that sea levels are rising. At the end of the main course is chicken pieces with maple leaf waffles, at this time, the guests put down their glasses, carefully cut the chicken into small pieces and taste it carefully. The price of this chicken main course is far higher than that of standard chicken fast food. But none of the chickens died as a result of the dish-because the chicken was made from stem cells made by a food unicorn company.

▲ hosts an invitation-based food tasting every Thursday night at the Marriott Hotel in Singapore. During the event, the invited people enjoyed a gourmet dinner while watching a film about the earth's environmental crisis.

At present, this artificial chicken is only available in Singapore. Singapore is the only country in the world that approves the commercial sale of artificial chicken. The name of this food unicorn company is Eat Just, from Silicon Valley in the United States.

The food tasting event at Marriott Hotel every Thursday can be seen as the beginning of a revolution in food technology. The sponsors say the food technology revolution is enough to cope with the rapid population growth in Asia, curb the damage caused by the modern food industry to the earth's ecology, and will push the cost of meat products in the future to be lower than the current price of traditional meat.

Laboratories, new sites for meat production. "in theory, everything about plants or animals can be produced through cells," says one cellular agriculture expert. "in the future, vanilla does not need to be planted in the rainforest, egg yolks do not have to be produced together with egg yolks, and foie gras can be obtained without the current cruel way," he said. Silk and leather do not need to come from cocoons and animal skin. "

Last year, more than 1.1 billion people in Asia faced food shortages. Food inflation is also hovering at an all-time high, which is difficult to ease in the short term. It is estimated that the population of Asia will increase by another 700 million in the next 30 years. Widening income disparities, frequent supply chain disruptions and extreme weather have led to soaring food prices and accelerated the long-standing food security crisis.

In the coming decades, there may be a revolution in food technology that feeds more people with fewer resources. People need to rethink how to feed the expanding global population in the future. At present, this food science and technology change is still in the initial research stage, and Asia is the birthplace of this change. In this regard, technological innovations such as laboratory-grown meat and 3D printed food are leading the trend of the food industry revolution.

At present, the population of Asia is 4.6 billion. An additional 250 million are expected to be added by 2030. According to a joint report released by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the OECD, meat consumption in Asia will grow by 18% by 2030, while agricultural production will increase by up to 2%. According to a joint study by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Temasek and Rabobank, 65% of the world's middle class will live in Asia by 2030. By then, total spending on food in Asia will double to $8 trillion.

The above food prospects mean good investment opportunities for well-funded investors. Temasek has said that traditional food production programs "can no longer meet the needs of the world". Since 2013, Temasek has invested more than $8 billion in food technology.

Eat Just got some of the money from Temasek. In addition, the company has also received funding from investors such as Mitsui products, Kosla Ventures, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang and Salesforce co-founder Marc Benioff.

Eat Just is currently valued at $1 billion and has raised more than $800m so far. As food prices soared, the company received more attention from investors. Josh Tetrick, co-founder of Eat Just, told the media that the company had received more contacts in the past three months than ever before.

Last fall, vendor owner Lu Jiaqi (Loo Kia Chee) received a call from Eat Just at a famous food center in Singapore's Central Ballu district. It turned out that Eat Just wanted to cooperate with him to provide him with artificial chicken grown in the laboratory for the production of Chicken Curry pieces. "I was surprised because I was the first partner in Asia, or the first partner in the world to be selected by Eat Just," Lu recalled. "before that, I knew nothing about artificial meat."

After the news came out, people flocked to his stall to taste Hainan curry rice made from artificial chicken. According to Boss Lu, artificial chicken tastes "very much like ordinary chicken." the similarity between artificial chicken and traditional chicken is about 98%. When asked whether he would use artificial meat as his signature dish one day, Boss Lu expressed a certain degree of approval. "if the price of artificial meat can be reduced to the level of traditional meat, I will use it," he said. "

Boss Lu, a Singaporean vendor, is trying Chicken Curry's rice made from Eat Just's artificial chicken.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, animal husbandry in the Asia-Pacific region contributes 14.5% of global warming, which is greater than that of transport. In addition, animal husbandry consumes a large part of the land and water resources in the region. Globally, more than 70 billion land animals and 1 trillion fish are killed every year, eventually becoming a delicacy on the human table.

Proponents of new food technologies believe that these technologies can play a key role in alleviating environmental, food, nutrition and other problems. "New food technology has the potential to reduce agricultural demand for land, reduce water consumption, increase food production to meet human needs and increase the nutritional content of products without resource constraints," said one investor. "

Eat Just is one of these pioneering companies to develop new food technologies. Its artificial chicken is grown from cells collected from biopsies, eggs and even feathers. When these cells propagate in a stainless steel bioreactor, the chicken grows. The cells are fed on a medium containing nutrients such as carbohydrates, amino acids, minerals, fats and vitamins.

"We only produce meat from animals, not whole animals," Eat Just said in a statement. "this means we can produce the meat we need in a few weeks with fewer resources, rather than months or years as it used to be. Chefs have access to a variety of meat products, from crispy chicken nuggets to chicken sausages to shredded chicken and breast meat."

In addition to chicken nuggets, Eat Just currently provides consumers with meat ingredients for satay barbecue or chicken kebabs. The industry is still in its early stages of development. Even foodies living in Singapore have to wait several years before they can easily buy Eat Just meat products. However, the company's meat samples can be obtained through invited events, tasting tables, restricted food distribution and so on.

A reporter invited to attend the Singapore Marriott Food Competition said that the artificial chicken nuggets bred in the laboratory are only different from traditional chicken in that the meat is "unnaturally smooth" and softer and less chewy. But he also said that the satay barbecue, which made its debut in May this year, looks and tastes closer to traditional chicken than previous artificial chicken nuggets.

"our company has a very specific goal of establishing a meat breeding system in its lifetime," said Tetrick, co-founder of Eat Just. "through this system, most meat production can be achieved without killing animals and deforestation." Tetrick himself is famous for turning protein-rich mung beans into liquid "egg" products.

Eat Just is also trying to grow beef in the laboratory. According to data from a forest conservation organization, the area of deforestation caused by traditional red meat production is more than twice that caused by soybean cultivation and palm oil / wood production, thus being the primary driver of forest extinction.

The shift of meat production from slaughterhouses to laboratories has begun. Eat Just currently produces less than a ton of artificial chicken a year. The company is planning to build a new plant in Singapore to expand production to dozens of tons a year. The company also hopes to achieve the same or even cheaper cost of production as traditional meat within a decade.

Any new food technology funded and developed in Singapore will be able to expand production to help solve food problems in other parts of Asia. At present, with soaring food prices and a fast-growing population, hunger and malnutrition rates are on the rise in Asia. Last year, more than 489 million people in Asia faced severe food shortages. This is an increase of 112.3 million over the figure of three years ago. Food prices are expected to continue to rise not only in Singapore but throughout Asia, and food self-sufficiency is becoming the latest buzzword.

Can substitute protein really "replace" traditional meat? It is no accident that Singapore was one of the first countries to accept artificial meat. The country has long been famous for its delicious food, but agricultural land is extremely scarce, and more than 90% of grain is imported. The small island nation is now experiencing its worst food inflation since 2012. The country plans to achieve 30% self-sufficiency in nutritional needs by 2030. Since only 1% of the land is available for traditional agriculture, Singapore has decided to invest heavily in technology-based food production methods.

Alternative proteins, including laboratory-grown artificial meat, now account for 2% of the global meat market. But according to a joint report by Boston consulting group and blue horizon (Blue Horizon), the conservative estimate is expected to reach 11%, or $290 billion, in 2035. It is a daunting task for alternative proteins to be equivalent to animal proteins in terms of taste, texture and the most important price, but the joint report says this is expected to be achieved within the next decade. However, some industry groups believe that these forecasts are a bit too optimistic because people are still used to eating traditional meat and the artificial meat technology is not yet mature.

"this emerging sector still requires a lot of capital investment, but it also requires investors to understand the risks," said Mr Tetrick, co-founder of Eat Just. "in addition, investors need to recognise that it makes sense to focus on the pressing issues facing mankind while having the opportunity to achieve extremely high returns."

Investors are also weighing and acting accordingly. The food technology sector received a record $12.8 billion in venture capital last year, twice as much as the year before, from growing meat in the laboratory to indoor urban farms, according to Crunchbase. Nearly half of the money goes to companies that produce traditional meat / seafood / dairy alternatives.

RethinkX, an independent think tank, made the following conclusion on the change in food science and technology: "since the first domestication of animals and plants 10, 000 years ago, mankind is now in the process of another profound, fastest and most important change in food / agricultural production."

Advocates of change in food technology stress that the changes in diet that humans need to make are neither as radical nor offensive as critics claim. For example, we can still eat dairy products, but we don't have to get them directly from animals. In other words, we can still continue to eat the butter cake we are used to, as we did in the past, without thinking about its origin.

Biotech startup TurtleTree uses cells to make milk ingredients. Like Eat Just, it has operations in California and Singapore, a popular operating arrangement that allows food technology companies to secure both capital from Silicon Valley and regulatory support from Asian cities.

TurtleTree uses cells to produce milk ingredients in a bioreactor. The company hopes to eventually be able to make a variety of dairy products, such as cream, cheese and butter. Through the precise regulation and programming of the fermentation process, people can use microbial cells to produce a variety of complex milk organic molecules. Compared with the $800 billion traditional dairy industry, cell-based milk is more efficient and environmentally friendly, thus rapidly attracting interest from the private and public investment sectors.

Since its establishment in 2019, TurtleTree has raised nearly $40 million and plans to commercialize its cell-based milk production technology in the near future. The company is currently working to reduce the production cost of lactoferrin. Lactoferrin is a protein that is beneficial to intestinal health and immune system. Lactoferrin from cows is expensive, with market prices ranging from a few hundred dollars to $2000 per kilogram. This means that the protein is generally only used in special occasions such as infant nutrition, but it has not been widely used in daily food and adult nutrition.

"our goal is to produce this functional protein sustainably and ultimately to be cost-effective," said Lin Fengru, co-founder and chief executive of TurtleTree. "this will enable everyone to get lactoferrin through their diet and enjoy the benefits. In the future, these [dairy] bioreactors will appear anywhere in the world where there is a nutritional crisis or food demand."

Investors are also excited about the prospect. Good Venture Capital (Good Startup) has bought shares in TurtleTree and Eat Just. Godhwani, the company's managing partner, predicts that increasing competition among food technology companies will further accelerate innovation in this area. "with the advent of precision fermentation and growing meat, the industry will be able to produce truly mixed foods using multiple technologies at the same time, in which plants bring nutrients, fermentation provides protein, and growing meat provides taste and taste," he said. "

At the TurtleTree California Lab, a scientist is analyzing the purity of recombinant protein samples.

RethinkX, an independent think-tank, said in a report: "once new food technology can produce proteins in milk-which account for only 3.3 per cent of milk content-it will upend the entire milk industry."

But experts are divided on whether new food technology can weaken the traditional meat market. Some experts said: "if you choose between a McDonald's hamburger and an artificial meat burger, 99% of people will choose a McDonald's hamburger. It is still difficult to predict how much impact new food technology will have on the traditional meat market." But others are optimistic, taking into account the impact of demographic changes. By 2050, the next generation of Generation Z will become the main consumer group. They are environmentally conscious, so consumption trends may be very different from what they are now.

Research shows that by 2050, the food technology industry will grow into a $2 trillion market, when meat substitutes are likely to account for the largest share. But for now, high production costs are indeed a bottleneck. How to provide safe and high-quality food while reducing costs will be the key to the development of this industry.

In addition to TurtleTree and Eat Just, another food technology company that stands out is Shiok Meats. The company is headquartered in Singapore and its co-founders are Sandhya Sriram and Ka Yi Ling. The two are currently developing laboratory seafood cultivation technology. According to their plan, the seafood will be on the market in 2023.

Shiok Meats co-founders Sandhya Sriram and Ka Yi Ling

"A lot of people think that Ka Yi and I are crazy to give up high-paying jobs to do this," Sriram told reporters at a conference in Tokyo.

Still, in the six months since its establishment in 2018, Shiok Meats has raised $5 million and launched prototype seafood: eight shrimp dumpling, which cost as much as $5000 to make. Since then, Shiok Meats has raised more than $30 million, with investors including Japanese packaging manufacturer Toyo can Co., Ltd., South Korean food delivery app operator Woowa Brothers and Vietnamese seafood exporter Yonghuan Group of Vietnam.

Today, the price of shrimp produced by Shiok Meats is $50 per kilogram, much cheaper than it was four years ago, but still much higher than the market price of traditional frozen shrimp in Singapore ($11 per kilogram).

In 2013, she said, she developed laboratory seafood production technology in Asia, inspired by hamburger pie produced by the world's first laboratory. Seafood has always been the most popular protein food in Southeast Asia. Sriram also said that production costs still need to be further reduced, but more time is needed to achieve this goal.

Last year, the alternative protein company bought a 90 per cent stake in Gaia Foods. Gaia Food uses stem cell technology to produce red meat in the laboratory. This allows Shiok Meats to add cell-based pork, beef and mutton products to its original shrimp, lobster and crab portfolio.

Shiok Meats's market targets include Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea and China, but are still awaiting regulatory approval. Sriram said she hoped Singapore would give inspiration to India's food technology policy.

Plant-based food, meat, fresh fruit. Experiments with technologies such as 3D printing the pioneers of this technological revolution in food are also experimenting with 3D printing of everything from desserts to steaks. 3D printing is a process of adding materials layer by layer in a controlled and continuous manner to build complex geometric objects. Printed materials are usually placed in food-grade syringes and then deposited and printed through nozzles. Ingredients can be tailored according to taste, material, color, weight, nutrition, calories and digestibility. For example, a vending machine in a gym can make personalized nutrition bars based on people's exercise data.

CellX, an agricultural start-up based in Shanghai, China, is using advanced 3D printing technology to make meat ingredients in the laboratory. China has a large population and has a huge consumer demand for pork, with great potential in this regard. CellX makes laboratory-grown pork by collecting cells from local black pigs and is also studying laboratory cultivation of artificial beef / poultry. The company has raised $15 million since its inception in 2020. Yang Ziliang, co-founder and chief executive of CellX, said: "Cell agriculture uses significantly less resources and less carbon emissions."

Alt Farm, a food technology company based in Hong Kong, China, is developing plant-based A5-level and cattle-based 3D printing prototypes. A5 is the highest rating for Japan and cattle. The cattle grade is evaluated on the basis of color, marbling, brightness, compactness, meat quality and fat quality. In 2019, Joanna Hui and Kenny Fung, two founders of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, jointly developed a patented nozzle that produces the necessary fiber texture for plant-based meat products.

"We make plant-based products, and this nozzle technology allows us to adjust the taste of 3D printed plant-based foods, from chewy to crunchy," Fung said. "the plant-based food market is our primary goal, which is growing very fast and has the market size and technological innovation to support the company's growth."

Alt Farm plans to use peas, soybeans and algae protein to make artificial "and cattle". These plant proteins will be mixed with fats and seasonings to artificially produce one of the most expensive meat in the world. Coconuts, shea butter and cocoa butter will be used to recreate the famous marbling of cattle. The prototype meat plan for the artificial "Harmony cattle" will be launched in 2023.

At present, food printers are only used commercially in some gourmet restaurants and bakeries. But some experts say 3D food printing and cell agriculture can ease the pressure on existing industrial agriculture and have broad prospects in meeting global food needs. At present, these emerging industries are still in the proof-of-concept stage, and many of them are only used for specific purposes such as food texture enhancement.

New food technology allows for high levels of food customization, paving the way for personalized nutrition in industries such as hospitals, geriatric care and hospice care. Scientists at Nanyang University of Technology in Singapore are working on 3D printing of soft foods to help people who find it difficult to digest solid foods. The soft food printed in 3D is actually meat (cooked chicken sauce), which contains fiber that can improve the digestive tract.

Another dimension of the food technological revolution is the fight against food waste. In general, people object to food waste, mainly because they think that it will lead to a shortage of food in the future, so it must be stopped. But in addition, food waste will also hurt the interests of food producers. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, about 1/3 of food is discarded before consumption due to deficiencies in production, distribution and storage. If food producers cannot sell their food products quickly, they will not be able to survive in this low-profit, high-turnover system. It also means that grain producers need to raise prices to make up for their unsold stocks.

The preservation of fresh fruit / seafood in long-term storage and long-distance transportation is a thorny problem. In the process of freezing, ice crystals will be formed, and the volume of ice crystals will expand more than liquid water, resulting in cell wall rupture, thus affecting the fresh quality of food materials. A Japanese company, DayBreak, uses advanced rapid freezing technology to minimize ice crystal formation. The freezer it produces can completely freeze fish ingredients within an hour, thus storing them at the best quality for two months. Under normal circumstances, completely frozen fish takes seven hours and can only be preserved for two to three weeks. In addition, this freezer can store fruit at the best quality for up to three years. The company's customers use this special freezer to store everything from fish to fruit.

The food technological revolution is practical and urgent, which is lacking in other new technological ideas such as the colonization of Mars. If successful, it could profoundly change human food culture-as profoundly as the shift from hunting to agricultural settlement.

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