Over the past month, there have been several exciting announcements from the alt-protein sector. Among others, the Good Food Institute (GFI) announced it would be partnering with the World Sustainability Organization (WSO) to create a certification program for plant-based seafood. This is significant because it marks the first time that plant-based alternatives have been officially recognised as seafood.
The collaboration will take place as part of the WSO’s Friend of the Sea project and the GFI’s Sustainable Seafood Initiative. There will be an equivalent certification for plant-based meat, based on the WSO’s Friend of the Earth standards. The announcement was initially made following GFI India’s Smart Protein Summit, along with some other exciting news.
The Friend of the Sea Golden Standard for plant-based seafood will assure consumers that products have been made by adopting sustainable practices without harming the environment, said Dr. Paolo Bray, Founder & Director of the World Sustainability Organization.
Also this month, the GFI awarded a grant to Dr. Reza Ovissipour, an assistant professor at Virginia Tech University. The grant will allow him to develop an open-source media formulation optimized for growing fish cells. The GFI hopes that this work will help cultivated seafood companies to scale production, allowing them to compete with conventional seafood companies on price.
Finally, the US government’s National Science Foundation has awarded $3.55M to researchers at UC Davis for open-access cultivated meat research. It is the largest sum ever invested in this type of research, and marks the first time the US government has awarded a cultivated meat grant to a university rather than a company. The funding will be dispensed over a period of five years.
The societal need is to feed 9 billion people, said principal investigator David Block. I hope we can do for the cultivated meat industry what the Department of Viticulture and Enology has been able to do for the California wine industry.
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