The use of space-time technology to make “meat” out of nowhere is science, not fiction.
A new entrant to the edible protein scene, the Berkeley-based startup Air Protein is creating a meat alternative using NASA-inspired fermentation technology to convert CO2 – which we exhale into the air – into a complete edible protein.
While other well-known meat alternative companies such as Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat make plant-based proteins from soy and peas, Air Protein is the first to make “air-based” proteins by growing carbon from the air with microbes. The company’s recent $ 32 million round of financing, closed in January and led by investors ADM Ventures, Barclays and GV (formerly Google Ventures), secures its place in the fast-growing meatless field in the new wave of alternatives. protein technology – fermentation.
Founder and CEO, dr. Lisa Dyson, an award-winning research physicist and strategy consultant, hopes that Air Protein’s technology ‘will create the most sustainable meat available and significantly reduce the burden on our planet’s resources caused by our current meat production processes. She said by e-mail.
In a 2016 TED talk, Dyson asked the audience, ‘Imagine being part of a crew of astronauts traveling to Mars or a distant planet. How would you lead the crew of astronauts with limited resources in the closed system of a spaceship? ‘This is the question NASA scientists asked in the 1960s, which led to the discovery that microbes could convert CO2 into food for astronauts.
Dyson and her colleague Dr. John Reed came across this research while exploring ways to capture and recycle carbon to help the climate crisis. They realized that they could use these microbes in a similar way to make food for humans down here on the spaceship Earth.
“I began to focus on the effects of climate-driven disasters while working to rebuild New Orleans” – where her mother’s family lives “after Hurricane Katrina,” Dyson said in the email. While Dyson has explored ways in which it can contribute to reducing or reversing climate change, food production, from farming to processing to distribution, is one of the biggest contributors. The latest estimates show that the global food system accounts for more than a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition, clearing land for farming is one of the biggest drivers of deforestation around the world. In the Amazon rainforest, livestock farming is the cause of 80% of current deforestation.
“As a scientist and a businesswoman, I relied on my background and knowledge to find a way to make food more sustainable,” Dyson wrote. “I focused on meat, because meat production is the biggest burden on food production on our planet.”
Using fermentation tanks, which Dyson calls’ vertical protein farms’, in a process similar to making yoghurt or wine, Air Protein ‘combines elements from the air we breathe – carbon dioxide, oxygen and nitrogen (with) water and mineral nutrients . , ”Says the company. Renewable energy drives their own probiotic production process, whereby microbes convert CO2 into amino acids. The final product is a protein-rich flour that can be used just like soy or pea flour. This protein meal can then be made into an abundance of delicious and nutritious meatless meat products.
In conventional farming, plants absorb inputs such as carbon dioxide from the air, nutrients from the soil and energy from the sun. It can take months and a large amount of land from seed to harvest. Air Protein’s approach “uses exponentially less arable land, natural resources and causes fewer greenhouse gas emissions,” Dyson wrote. Air Protein farms are geographically less limited because they can expand vertically. In addition, Dyson said, “The time it takes to make our meat is days versus the years it takes to make meat from a cow.”
The pursuit of sustainability is a big part of Air Protein’s vision and a major attraction for the company’s investors. “Air Protein is a compelling solution to the growing challenges of sustainably feeding the world’s population while tackling climate change and biodiversity loss,” Andrew Challis, co-head of Principal Investments at Barclays, said in a written statement.
Although Air Protein is the first company to produce proteins from air, it is not the only alternative protein company that relies on fermentation. Impossible Foods, for example, uses fermentation to make their special ingredient home that gives their meatless meat its meaty flavor.
Fermentation technology enables a new wave of alt-protein products – meat, eggs and dairy products – that are tasty and more sustainably and efficiently produced than their counterparts. And the record levels of investment make the technology possible.
In the first seven months of 2020 alone, $ 1.5 billion was invested in companies producing alternative proteins, according to a report by the Good Food Institute (GFI) – and $ 435 million of that was for those using fermentation. GFI, which sees the gradual and rapid emergence of innovative fermentation technology and protein products, calls fermentation the next pillar of alternative proteins.
“Fermentation drives a new wave of alternative protein products with great potential to improve taste, sustainability and production efficiency,” said Dr. Liz Specht, co-director of science and technology, said. “Investors and innovators recognize this market potential, leading to an increase in activity in fermentation as a possible platform for the alternative protein industry as a whole.”