What should we target when biomanufacturing food at scale?

Drafted in response to a prompt by Amir Barin on this LinkedIn post:

What's your take on the infrastructure bottleneck versus the technical optimization challenge?

I know it is easier to spot and state a problem than to figure out winning solutions. In my defense, such solutions usually follow a clear problem statement. So please bear with me :-) 

 A few years ago, I landed on "solve the demand problem and supply will follow." Absent waiting for an intrinsically fragile/unsustainable system to threaten supply of its incumbent products, the next most urgent need is to demonstrate compelling product(s).  Silicon Valley backed the idea that technology can deliver product breakthroughs in food that match expectations calibrated on iphone-level market disruption. If so, then robust - and really large! - demand would resolve investment and supply concerns. Capital would flow to meet demand and grow the investments. (This sets aside the very real concerns about lead time of course).  However, at 15+ years since founding Impossible, Beyond, JUST and others, that demand level doesn't exist.  If it did, money to enable “steel in the ground” would already flow and be gaining momentum to claim a proven market of this size. 

Therefore, consider the possibility that it is not possible to create products that are more compelling than those currently produced from animal tissues or secretions. In contrast to the framing of audacious Valley investors and innovators, what if there is no such thing as "better than beef?" As a hopeful technologist trained to think critically, I am sad to ask whether my long-sought goal of creating "the Doritos of beef" will always end up as some version of Hamburger Helper.  Despite what they’ll enter into a survey - and given expert blends of salt/fat/sweet/savory - maybe the number of consumers we require to adopt new alternatives most often just shrug and ... go with what they know instead.

If we assume that current products are about as good as they are going to be, or can be, then innovations in product and positioning will only get us so far. What we need isn’t “better” if that perception and preference can’t exist for consumers already imprinted on traditional animal product offerings. What we need is “cheaper and just as good” or at least a new and acceptable standard for newer generations. In other words, to be blunt, set the stage for a to sustainable futures: 1) herds and flocks their producers succumb to environmental consequences; 2) unreachable consumers are replaced by those raised on newer food products. 

This reasoning now leads back to the original question. In both cases, what we need is cheap and comparable. Here I am just guessing, but to me this means that we address the following technical problems, which are in some instances interconnected: gas and nutrient transfer, ideally without introducing additional shear; inexpensive and effective control of contaminating bioburden*; complete flavor neutrality of producer organism(s); relatedly, products that abrogate off-flavor classes in existing feeds (“maskers”); process robustness to off-flavor evolution; intrinsic limits on growth rates and, relatedly, cheaper feeds**. 

 

* This, in combination with improvements in gas/nutrient transfer, may enable access to far cheaper commercial fermentation systems. I get that this is a big lift. 

 

** Especially true for “cultivated” or cell culture approaches to creating food at realistic costs and scales.