America's seemingly insatiable demand for protein is putting a renewed focus on precision fermentation, a technology that's been around for decades but is now being viewed as a potential solution to scale production of high-value ingredients.
Precision fermentation essentially turns microorganisms, such as yeast, into mini factories, programming them to produce ingredients like palm oil and proteins. In the cheese industry, for example, the technology is widely used to produce rennet, a key ingredient found in the stomach of young calves.
In recent years, the capabilities of precision fermentation have expanded, and some startups are touting the technology as a way to manufacture natural food dyes. As climate change and other challenges drive up the cost of ingredients, the technology offers a promising and less environmentally intensive solution to affordably scale food production.
Cargill, which has been involved in precision fermentation for more than 30 years, operates a fermentation network that includes more than $2 billion that has been invested across infrastructure and partnerships. In a conversation with Food Dive, Florian Schattenmann, Cargill's chief technology officer and vice president of innovation and R&D, talks about what precision fermentation is and how it can redefine the future of food innovation.
This conversation has been edited for clarity.
FOOD DIVE: What is precision fermentation? Is it similar to cultivated or lab-grown meat, or is it something different?
Florian Schattenmann: I've heard it a lot in terms of connection with cultivated meat, too, but it's actually not a really precise term for cultivated meat. Cultivated meat is basically doing what the body does — just not inside of a body and inside of a tank. So what I mean is that you feed those cells, the cells part, and they grow, and you get more cells. And you do that in a controlled environment.
Precision fermentation is a little different. What you have there is organisms. It could be bacterial. It could be fungal. It could be a yeast. And these organisms, they take a substrate, something that they "eat," and then they digest that and spit something out.
So it's really a digestive process inside of the cell. You can use each of these little yeast cells, for instance, to digest your incoming glucose, typical sugar, into whatever target molecule you want.
There's a few categories where this works really well. The first is the sweetness side, where we're the leading force. The next is proteins, which is sort of the next big wave. And then the third element, that is probably the furthest out, is how to make specific specialty oils with it.
I come from Bavaria. We have done fermentation for thousands of years in making beer. The yeast that's originally in there is filtered away when you drink your beer. So in principle, precision fermentation is not that different. It's just a more specific process, and therefore more precise.
Tell me more about the benefits of precision fermentation. How is it set to disrupt food innovation?
There's a couple of really big benefits with it, because if you can train that yeast, to be very specific, you can get this in a relatively high yield.
Number two, you can do this in an environment where you don't use a lot of water or energy compared to the alternative. We actually did the comparison to get to the same target molecule. Doing it with precision fermentation, you can save over 90% in water and energy compared to growing it somewhere, extracting it and doing all the other stuff that you would have to do.
But there's also a food security element to it, just because you can make whatever you want, right there. There's also price stability with that.
And then the last one, that's maybe a little unusual, is that as you train these organisms more. You can actually make it a little bit more specific. So, for instance, if you have a dairy protein and there's an allergen concern, you can sort of make sure that it makes the main part that you want in high yield. So there's a little bit of that control over the final piece.
As more companies reformulate to add protein or other ingredients, how do you think precision fermentation will come into play?
The consumer wants more choices. We all have different needs. We see a trend to personalization more and more. It's more like an increased fragmentation of the consumer base, which means that we also have to supply more and more different types of solutions to them.
The way I view it is that you will use precision fermentation to make specific ingredients, like a sweetener, like a protein, like a fat. But then there will be a separate step around formulating to different needs.
So you can take that ingredient, maybe that protein that you mentioned, and you can put it into a fitness bar, into a cookie, into a soup. And these proteins that may have slightly different functionality that aligns with a better mouth feel or other qualities.
Consumers have remained skeptical of food technologies, such as GMOs. Could that limit the adoption of precision fermentation?
I think the one thing we have all learned with the various sorts of fads and trends is there are a lot of different technologies and a lot of different food types that will coexist together.There will be tons of sweetness from a different source. There will be proteins from a different source. There will be fats from a different source.
But it will not replace other food sources. I think it's more it's going to be an additional arrow in the quiver.
