Why Alternative Protein?
What we eat affects everything.
Conventional meat, eggs, and dairy production are unsustainable and inefficient. It drives climate change, environmental degradation, and antibiotic-resistant disease.
Environmental Degradation
United Nations scientists state that raising animals for food is “one of the major causes of the world's most pressing environmental problems, including global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.
Human Health
According to the World Health Organization, the high volume of antibiotics in food-producing animals contributes to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and superbugs that cannot be killed by standard antibiotics. Moreover, zoonotic viruses such as Covid-19 almost always leap to humans directly from our livestock or from wildlife.
Global Poverty
Growing crops to feed them to farm animals is vastly inefficient, driving up the price of grains and legumes, and entrenching global poverty; to produce enough food for 9 billion people by 2050, we will need a more efficient system.
Animal Welfare
The current production of animal products subjects tens of billions of thinking, feeling animals to lives of extreme confinement, emotional trauma, painful mutilations, and inhumane slaughter.
Focusing on Solutions
Instead of asking consumers to give up the foods they love, GFI is accelerating the transition to alternative proteins by helping companies make products that are delicious, affordable and accessible.
Accelerated Technologies
Plant-Based
Plant-based meat, eggs, and dairy are produced directly from plants. Like animal products, they are comprised of protein, fat, vitamins, minerals, and water. Next-gen plant-based options look, taste, and cook like conventional choices.
Cultivated Meat
Meat produced directly from animal cells. Meat cultivation facilitates the same biological process that happens inside an animal by providing warmth and the basic elements needed to build muscle and fat.
Fermentation
Microorganisms are a promising source for alternative protein products. Fermentation can be used to produce edible biomass or to produce specific animal ingredients in an animal-free host system.