Missed carbon neutrality, don't miss artificial meat again

The story goes back to more than two months ago, we were invited to participate in a charity event with the theme of "artificial meat".

In the final question and answer session, a young student who looked like a student asked a "soul question":

He said he was an environmentalist and a vegetarian, and would consciously buy artificial meat products.

But objectively, an "artificial meat burger" is more expensive than an "ordinary beef burger." So apart from feelings, how can we persuade more people to accept artificial meat?

Picture: The organizer has prepared a variety of artificial meat and plant milk products

This is a good question, and it is also a question in many people's minds.

In fact, most of the time, ordinary people are insensitive to the perception of "technological progress."

Just like the first time we saw Cook talking with Siri and using face recognition to unlock the screen at the Apple conference for the first time, at that moment we would exclaim the power of technology, but we had no knowledge of the existence of these technologies before.

The same situation is happening in today's artificial meat field.

Therefore, in this article, we will try to answer this student's question.

Before entering the main text, I will share 4 preliminary conclusions:

"Alternative protein" is a trillion-level huge market. Compared with animal meat, artificial meat has irreplaceable advantages in terms of food safety, public health, energy conservation and environmental protection, and represents the future of human sustainable development. In our view, "artificial meat instead of animal meat" is the general trend. No matter whether it can be accepted in the short term, this will be the next stop of human civilization.
Today we are at a turning point in the technological revolution of "artificial meat", and more cost-effective technical solutions are moving from "science fiction" to reality. It is estimated that within five to ten years, the cost of artificial meat can be reduced to the same as animal meat, and it will become cheaper and cheaper-just like the previous new energy batteries.
To achieve the goal of carbon neutrality while ensuring food security for 1.4 billion people, China is likely to support its own artificial meat technology companies in the same way that it supports "new energy" and "semiconductors." Under this determined goal, China has a high probability of giving birth to a "world-class" artificial meat giant.
At present, artificial meat is mainly divided into two major technological paths, "plant meat" and "cell meat". Among them, the commercialization of plant meat is earlier, and many well-known technology companies such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have been born, and they are therefore more public. Understand. However, with the progress of "synthetic biology" in recent years, "cell meat" with higher threshold and more advanced technology is "surpassing" with a rapid momentum. In overseas markets, dozens of technology companies have focused on the cell meat field, and high-quality start-up teams such as CellX have also been born in China. The entire industry is increasingly being paid attention to by the capital market.

1. When we are eating meat, what are we eating?

Why do people need to eat meat?

An important reason is: the need for protein.

Before farming civilization, meat was almost the only way for us to obtain protein from nature. In a sense, the history of the development of the entire human civilization is a history of struggle to continuously transform nature and obtain protein.

For example, if we add up the total amount of carbon contained in all animals in the world today, then among terrestrial mammals, cattle rank first, with a carbon content of approximately 61 million tons; they rank second. The first is domestic pigs, about 21 million tons.

Coupled with chickens, ducks, sheep and horses, the total weight of all "livestock" is about 100 million tons of biocarbon.

In contrast, all the remaining 6000 species of wild mammals together, the total amount of carbon is only 70 million tons.

We must know that such a "strange" ecosystem was formed only in the past 10,000 years; and the main purpose of its existence is to "ensure that humans can obtain enough protein."

Figure: Humans (purple) and poultry and livestock (pink) constitute the main body of the biomass of mammals and birds on earth today; data source: Resilience.org, CAT League CFCA

In order to be able to eat meat, behind the long industrial chain of "livestock" has brought huge resource consumption and waste.

For example, all chickens and pigs in the world eat about 75% of the world's processed feed, and these foods could have been eaten by humans. However, after the digestion and absorption of the upper-level poultry and livestock, the intermediate loss is very large. An average of 5 to 6 kilograms of feed can be converted into 1 kilogram of live chickens or pigs.

In contrast, cattle and sheep do not compete with humans for food, but their problems are "land occupation" and "greenhouse gas emissions."

Cattle and sheep are ruminants and emit large amounts of methane through burps and farts. Therefore, animal husbandry contributes 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than the combined emissions of all cars, planes, trains and ships.

In addition, grazing requires vast pasture space, so animal husbandry also consumes more than half of the world's agricultural land-also to feed one person, the land use efficiency of pasture is only less than one-tenth of that of cultivated land.

So, can people not eat meat?

Yes, but it is difficult.

First of all, humans have been eating meat for at least 300,000 years. The so-called "no meat is not happy", the preference for meat has been deeply embedded in our genes, and it can hardly be changed in the short term.

Second, the nutritional value of meat is difficult to be completely replaced. Among the dozens of amino acids that sustain life activities, 9 of them cannot be synthesized by the human body and can only be ingested from outside. Historically, the main source of these 9 amino acids was animal protein.

Of course, plant proteins represented by soybeans can partially replace these amino acids-this is why people in East Asia consume less meat than in Europe and the United States.

However, there is a quality difference between protein and protein.

The ratio of amino acids in protein contained in various natural foods is different from the needs of the human body to varying degrees: anything close to the ratio required by the human body has a higher utilization rate; on the contrary, the utilization rate is lower-while meat Classes have inherent advantages in this regard.

In other words, for the human body, the "bioavailability" of meat food is actually higher.

Regarding the nutritional value of meat, you can refer to the relationship between it and height.

For example, in the 30 years from 1985 to 2019, China's per capita meat consumption increased from 13 kg to 54 kg, and the corresponding result was that the average height of Chinese men increased by 8 cm and women increased by 6 cm during the same period.

2. "Replacement protein" is the general trend

Objectively speaking, every country that has entered a developed stage will have a period of rapid rise in per capita meat intake before reaching a stable value.

This value is roughly equivalent to a person's own weight.

If we take 70 kilograms of meat per capita as the standard, the United States crossed this threshold in 1850, Western Europe in 1900, and the former Soviet Union in 1970. China has not yet crossed this threshold.

In other words, with the continuous improvement of national strength and people's living standards in the future, China's consumption of meat will continue to grow-this is almost a certain fact.

From 1950 to 2018, global meat production increased from 5,000 tons to 340 million tons, an increase of nearly 7 times in 70 years; if you include China’s new demand, plus Africa, India, and Bangladesh, you should not consider In the case of population growth, if all countries are to cross the 70 kg threshold, global meat consumption will have to at least double.

In reality, animal husbandry has already accounted for more than 40% of global food production (mainly processed into feed), about half of the agricultural land on the surface and about 10% of global energy consumption.

If we consider the environmental protection and public health costs caused by "environmental pollution", "greenhouse gases" and "antibiotic abuse", it will be an "impossible task to allow 7 billion people in the world to "eat meat for everyone" in the future. ", even if the resources of the entire planet are exhausted, it cannot be achieved.

Therefore, just like clean energy will eventually replace fossil energy-in our opinion, "artificial meat instead of animal meat" is the general trend. No matter whether it can be accepted in the short term, this will be the next stop of human civilization. Technology tree.

3. The "1965 Moment" of Cell Flesh

At present, artificial meat is mainly divided into two major technological paths.

One is "plant meat", which uses plant proteins such as grains and beans as the main raw material; the other is "cell meat", which extracts and separates muscle stem cells from the animal body, and then multiplies them in a bioreactor to produce muscle tissue.

To put it simply, "plant meat" has to solve "how to make vegetarian meat taste more like animal meat". The core technology is the deodorization and silk drawing process of vegetable protein, and the path is closer to "food technology". The earliest start and the most mature industrialization. On this track, many well-known technology companies such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have been born.

However, "cell meat" has to solve "how to make cells grow into a piece of meat", which is more inclined to "biotechnology", so it starts later and the technical path is more difficult.

At present, the world's first piece of cellular meat was born in 2013, and it was completed by Dutch physiologist Dr. Post in two years and cost 330,000 US dollars.

Picture: The first piece of sky-high-priced cellular meat; Picture source: popsci

The reason why so much money is spent is because the "medium" is too expensive.

Matter is conserved. Two prerequisites are required for cells to divide continuously and eventually become a piece of meat:

One is to simulate the growth environment similar to that in animals, and the other is to have a "medium" to continuously provide nutrients for cell growth.

The main components of the "medium" are glucose, amino acids, vitamins, inorganic salts, water and growth factors. The first five are common industrial products, and the price is not high.

Only the "growth factor" needs to be extracted from the "Fetal Bovine Serum" (FBS) of pregnant cows, which is extremely expensive.

For example, two commonly used growth factors, FGF-2 and TGF-β, sell for up to US$2 million and US$8 million per gram, which are 25,000 times and 100,000 times the equivalent of gold.

It is this little bit of serum and growth factors that account for most of the cost of cell meat production.

Therefore, the "cell meat" at that time was also regarded as a "low cost-effective" technological path. Many ordinary consumers did not even know its existence, and would directly classify "plant meat" and "artificial meat" as equals. No.

However, as long as a technological path is proven to be feasible, there will always be new adventurers joining it, a large number of edge innovations will follow, and the cost will continue to decline-this law has been repeatedly verified in the fields of computers and new energy.

In recent years, with the continuous influx of venture capital, "Cell Meat" is rapidly dropping prices at an "exponential" rate.

In 2013, the first cell culture beef burger, cost about 330,000 US dollars.
In 2018, the cost of cell culture chicken produced by Memphis Meat was reduced to $220 per 100 grams.
At the beginning of 2019, Aleph Farm announced that the cost of its cell culture beef patties was reduced to 100 US dollars a pound, which is equivalent to 22.05 US dollars per 100 grams.
In 2019, Mosa Meat (founded by Dr. Post, the “father of cell meat” mentioned above) further reduced the cost of cell culture beef to $11.20 per 100 grams.
In early 2021, the Israeli cell meat company FMT (Future Meat Technologies) announced that it had reduced the production cost of an artificial chicken breast (a POP, about 1/4 pound) to US$7.50, which is equivalent to US$6.64 per 100 grams.
As of July 2021, according to the latest data on the official website, the price of FMT chicken has been reduced to 3.9 US dollars, or 3.45 US dollars per 100 grams.

Picture: FMT's artificial chicken has dropped to 3.9 US dollars per serving; Picture source: FMT official website

The rapid cost reduction is mainly due to two technologies:

One is that the expensive "fetal bovine serum" is being completely replaced.

For example, Mosa Meat announced that it has developed a "serum-free medium" that does not require fetal bovine serum. After large-scale production, the price of each burger will only be $10 in the future.

The second is that "growth factors" can be directly manufactured through "synthetic biology technology", and the cost has become increasingly cheaper.

This process is very similar to the mass production path of "insulin".

In the early days, insulin could only be extracted from animals, with high cost and low yield, and could not be applied on a large scale. It was not until 1965 that China developed synthetic bovine insulin technology, which shocked the global scientific community and unveiled the introduction of insulin from laboratories. The prelude to marketization.

To this day, industrialized mass production has made insulin very cheap, saving the lives of millions of diabetic patients.

From this example, we can also see a clear development thread in biological science: discovery of effective substances-extraction of effective substances-artificial synthesis-industrialized mass production.

At present, human research and development of "growth factors" is like insulin in 1965. It has passed the third step of artificial synthesis. Major technology companies in the industry have begun attempts to industrialize mass production.

Just in July 2021, FMT just announced that its plant in Rehovot has been completed, becoming the first company to achieve large-scale mass production through media filtration and regeneration technology.

Picture: FMT's world's first cellular meat factory; Picture source: BitsxBitesVC

The completion and commissioning of the new factory marks a big step forward for cell meat from the laboratory to the commercialization, and the continuous expansion of production capacity also means that the cost will be further reduced. FMT predicts that within 12-18 months, they will be able to reduce the cost per serving of chicken from US$3.9 to less than US$2.

The Beyond Meat vegetable beef patties currently sold on Amazon cost $78.90 for 4 pounds, which is $4.93 per serving (1/4 pound).

Figure: Price of Beyond Meat plant meat; Source: Amazon's official website

Calculated at 100% gross profit margin, assuming that the retail price of each FMT product in the future is $3, then it is also cell meat, FMT is about 40% cheaper than Beyond Meat.

Of course, the price of ordinary chicken is cheaper than beef, but in the field of cellular meat, the composition of the "medium" between the two is actually not much different, which also determines that the production costs of cellular chicken and cellular beef are roughly the same.

Although it takes a period of exploration to switch between different meat technology routes, the difficulty is far less than the difference between the chicken industry and the cattle industry.

Therefore, "cell meat", which has a higher threshold and more advanced technology, is "coming from behind" with a rapid momentum, and is attracting more and more attention from the capital market.

According to data from GFIC (good food institute), as of the end of 2019, global cell meat startups have received more than US$163.6 million in venture capital, more than half of which occurred in 2019. From a trend point of view, the amount of financing in this field in 2019 is 63% higher than in 2018, which is more than twice the total amount of funds raised in 2016 and 2017.

As of the end of 2019, 8 foreign cell meat companies, including Aleph Farms, BlueNalu, Finless Foods, FMT, Memphis Meats, Mosa Meat, Wild Earth, and Wild Type, have all completed a new round of financing, with a single investment of US$8.74 million to Between 20 million US dollars.

Picture: Cell Meat Startups' Financing Amount Continues to Increase; Data Source: GFIC

In addition to capital, Cell Meat has also made a series of gratifying progress in terms of legal supervision.

After all, the public is more worried about the safety of cellular meat than plant meat.

Also in 2021, Eat Just, another cellular chicken company from Silicon Valley, received approval from the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) to sell cellular meat products locally.

This means that Singapore has become the first country in the world to approve the sale of cellular meat products, and Eat Just has also become the first company to receive such approval.

You should know that Singapore’s government departments have always been known for their strict and efficient supervision. This time the "green light" on cellular meat products has obviously gone through adequate food safety review and research.

This caused quite a stir in the industry, and was regarded by many as a "new milestone in the history of cellular meat." Taking this as a starting point, other governments in the future will follow the example of Singapore and continue to formulate their own cellular meat regulations.

4. Why does "alternative protein" need Chinese entrepreneurs?

Although the global "cell meat" track is getting hotter and hotter, there are currently only two start-up companies in this field in China.

The reason why there are so few is because the barriers to entry in this industry are really high-practitioners are generally top talents with interdisciplinary research backgrounds in the industry.

Moreover, a top scientist is not enough.

Cell meat spans five cutting-edge fields of biological sciences, tissue engineering, materials science, mechanical engineering and food science. To cover the entire industry's scientific research team, at least scientists with the five subject backgrounds are required to participate in research and development.

And such a great person has a lot of good career choices. Therefore, those who chose to enter the cellular meat industry in the end were all a group of "value-oriented" scientists.

They often feel from the bottom of their hearts that their work is valuable and can solve animal welfare, human health, etc., before they give up a stable high salary and choose to start a business.

Among the companies invested by Xianfeng, there is a Chinese technology company called "CellX" that is experimenting in this direction.

This is a group of young people who have returned from overseas. Among the four founders, there are Ph.D. Purdue who has research experience in the interdisciplinary field of food science and tissue engineering, and Ph.D. Tsinghua who is engaged in basic research of cell biology and cell medicine application research and development. They are also from BCG. And Stanford’s business talent.

Just last month, they just participated in the "Next Generation Protein Technology" competition organized by the Middle East Abu Dhabi Sovereign Fund and XPRIZE.

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