Dror Bin – CEO-Israel Innovation Authority
As part of the Israel national operational plan led by the Israel Innovation Authority, to maintain and expand the strength of its developmental ecosystem in the field of alternative proteins, the Authority has announced a new RFP for the establishment of infrastructures for precision fermentation of microorganisms to develop alternative proteins.
This is all part of how Israelis are taking the lead in the development of alternative foods. This is important because it will allow for an end to the massive industries where animals like cows are bred for meat and dairy. These industries use a tremendous amount of energy and other resources while leaving behind a great deal of waste and pollutants. So, alternative foodtech will help to fight the problems of climate change while also dealing with problems of food shortages.
In Israel, there are a number of firms that are making headway in this field. For example, Believer Meats (formerly Future Meat) boasts that it advances a distributive manufacturing platform for the cost-efficient, non-GMO production of meat directly from animal cells, without the need to raise or harvest animals. Believer Meats Technologies focuses on developing a new generation of manufacturing technology that enables the cost-efficient production of fat and muscle cells, the core building blocks of meat.
Will you offer us a hand? Every gift, regardless of size, fuels our future.
Your critical contribution enables us to maintain our independence from shareholders or wealthy owners, allowing us to keep up reporting without bias. It means we can continue to make Jewish Business News available to everyone.
You can support us for as little as $1 via PayPal at [email protected].
Thank you.
Yo! Egg is an Israeli foodtech startup that offers a plant-based egg alternative. Yo! Egg boasts that it plans to transform the egg industry, sans chickens. The company sees a huge opportunity for positive change by offering a new generation of plant-based eggs that fully deliver from a sensory perspective.
And Remilk, an Israeli animal-free dairy firm, recreates milk proteins by introducing the genes encoding them into a single-cell bacterium, which they genetically modified to express the protein in an efficient and scalable manner. After that, the substance is dried to a powder.
Fermentation technology in general, and precision fermentation specifically, are an important building block in this field, both as a means to manufacture proteins and other nutrients for the food industry, as the main method for manufacturing dedicated and vital nutrients for cultured proteins and as components to enrich plant-based meat and dairy alternatives.
In 2021 alone, worldwide investment in fermentation technologies amounted to $1.69 billion, a 285 percent increase over 2020. For comparison, between 2013 and 2021, the total invested in this field amounted to $2.81 billion. Fermentation technology is an important building block in alternative proteins field, both on its own for manufacturing proteins and other nutrients for the food industry, and as the main method for manufacturing designated and vital nutrients in the field of cultured proteins and components to enrich plant-based meat and dairy alternatives.
Fermentation infrastructures will allow upscaling in volume along with technical economic viability experiments for the first time in Israel, and creation of larger batches to allow testing of products among potential customers. Creating R&D infrastructures of this type in Israel will allow many projects to continue the necessary research and development here, and in the future, to establish local manufacturing plants. It will also assist in obtaining regulatory food certifications for the nutrients manufactured using fermentation technologies.
Dror Bin, CEO of the Israel Innovation Authority: “Israel has marked the foodtech industry, which could yield 55,000 high-paying jobs to the economy by the year 2030, as an R&D priority. The Innovation Authority has supported the foodtech industry over the past decade with over NIS 230 million in grants, over 140 million of which has been in the field of alternative proteins. Notably, approximately 90 percent of this support has been allocated since the beginning of 2020 – further testimony to the growth of this ecosystem in Israel. We hope that this infrastructure for precision fermentation of microorganisms for food purposes will help maintain the strength of the Israeli ecosystem and accelerate development of startups and companies working toward scale-up solutions in this field.”
