FOOD
The Better Meat Co .’ s plant protein formulas can be blended with animal meats such as ground beef and sausage up to 50 percent to create a variety of food . PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BETTER MEAT CO .
ties to solve technological hurdles in the alternative-protein space for The Good Food Institute , a Washington , D . C . -based think tank advancing alternative proteins .
Plant-based products , like those produced by The Better Meat Co . and NuCicer , are expected to dominate the alternative-protein space , followed by cultivated meat technology , known as cellular agriculture , which produces meat from animal cells instead of raising and slaughtering animals . The most technologically advanced form of alternative protein , cultivated meat is projected to be commercially available worldwide in 20-30 years .
In September , UC Davis was awarded the first federal funding given to a university to research cultivated meat — a $ 3.55 million grant from the National Science Foundation Growing Convergence Research program — positioning the Capital Region to serve as a hub of the advancing technology .
Blending plants and meat
Shortly after it launched , The Better Meat Co . partnered with Perdue Foods , a division of Perdue Farms ($ 7.3 billion in revenue last year , according to Forbes ) to launch Perdue ’ s first line of Chicken Plus products for children — tenders , nuggets and patties — blended with The Better Meat Co .’ s plant-based protein formulas .
That partnership positioned The Better Meat Co . as a viable competitor in the plant-based protein space early on and led the company to surpass its
2019 financial goals . While revenue remains proprietary , cofounder and CEO Paul Shapiro says product sales are “ tangibly making a dent in the number of chickens who are needed .” In the U . S . alone , more than 9 billion chickens were raised and slaughtered for human consumption in 2017 , according to the North American Meat Institute .
Since its early partnership with Perdue , The Better Meat Co . has expanded its footprint with customized formulations to blend with beef , pork , crab and whitefish , says Kehlet , and it ’ s working with companies at various phases of development in each of those markets as demand for blended products increases . Several other large meat companies — such as Maple Leaf Foods , Tyson Foods and Hormel Foods — are
38 comstocksmag . com | December 2020