How does it work?

1) Selection
-


Microorganisms such as yeast, fungi or bacteria, are selected based on the type of molecule we want to produce (flavouring agents, vitamins, pigments, proteins, fats...)

2) Cultivation
-


The microorganisms are then cultivated in big fermentation tanks filled with a nutrient.

3) Growth
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As the microorganisms feed they replicate fast and excrete the target molecule

4) Purification
-


When enough is produced, the target molecule is separated and purified from the rest of the medium.

5) Enjoy!
-


The molecule can then be used to make milk, cheese, ice cream, protein powders, animal fats, and more.

Is it safe?

We’ve been consuming fermentation products for millennia, think of beer, yoghurt, kimchi, bread and sauerkraut. Precision fermentation is nothing more than an extension of a safe and common technology which has already been used safely in our food systems for decades.

Examples:

What are the benefits?


Annually we raise and slaughter around 100 billion land animals and between 2 and 3 trillion marine animals. This has a big impact on our planet and environment:

Precision fermentation produces the same products at a fraction of the impact and soon at a fraction of the cost:

Up to 94%
less water
Up to 76%
less GHG
Up to 80%
less land
100%
less antibiotics, hormones and animal suffering

Products already for sale


Articles

We Need to Talk About Precision Fermentation

WeBeGreen

The technology stands to transform food and agriculture by the end of the decade with incredible progress already well underway. Precision Fermentation has been around for a while. In 1978, Genentech engineered a bacterium to produce human insulin. Up until then insulin was obtained by harvesting the pancreas of pigs and cows: around 50,000 for a single kilogram of insulin. Thankfully this is no longer the case. 99% of global insulin is now produced by microbes, and yet, very few of us are even aware of this groundbreaking technology. One that could produce almost anything, and in much the same way we make beer. Read more

Amara's Law and Cultivated Meat: A Case of Tech Evolution, Not Failure

WeBeGreen

As the media dismisses cultivated meat as dead we ask whether this dip in excitement and investment isn’t part of a normal trajectory for all new technologies. Read more

What past disruptions tell us about Cellular Agriculture and Alternative Proteins

WeBeGreen

Incumbent industries are almost always too slow to adapt to new technologies which leads to their downfall. This doesn"t have to be the case with our food system. Read more

Cultivate your palate for a new type of food

WeBeGreen

In London, 2013, at a live packed press conference, Dutch scientist Mark Post unveiled the first lab-grown meat burger. The patty, prepared by a chef, was presented to food critics and an excited audience, all of whom were suitably impressed. Read more

Precision Fermentation: The Future of Food

WeBeGreen

It"s no secret that animal agriculture is one of the leading causes of climate change and environmental degradation. We can"t raise and slaughter 86 billion land animals and wrest 2–3 trillion marine animals out of the seas every year without suffering some consequences. Read more

Would you like to help accelerate this change to a better food system?

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Future Food Revolution

Future Food is how we sustainably feed our global population without compromising our environment, ethical values, and health. Our current food system is fundamentally flawed—marked by destructiveness, cruelty, injustice, and adverse health impacts. A number of incredibly exciting and vastly more efficient technologies mean that we can and must transition to an alternative system that addresses and rectifies these pressing issues.

Precision Fermentation

Using microorganisms in an age-long process to produce specific proteins

Cultivated Meat

Identical to the meat we’re used to but grown without the animal.

Biomass Fermentation

Making food out of naturally occurring, protein-dense, fast-growing organisms like algae of fungi

Air Protein

Producing proteins with nothing but microbes, CO2, nitrogen and oxygen.