The University of California Davis is the lead agency for the Integrative Center for Alternative Meat and Protein, a new effort designed to sustainably feed the world into the future.
The center will coordinate efforts of several research universities, the Culinary Institute of America and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, among others, said center director David Block, a professor of chemical engineering.
“We have people who have been working on plant-based meat products for years,” Block said. “We probably have more plant scientists on this campus than any other campus in the world.”
Block himself has been working on cultivated meat research for more than five years, and those efforts on campus have 50 people working on cultivated meat, including researchers, faculty and undergrads.
The center will split its focus between cultivated meat, plant-based meat and fungal-sourced protein, Block said. What will likely happen is that future products will use components of cultivated meat along with plant and fungal sources to create products that have palate-pleasing flavors and textures.
“It is ‘food tech,’ but the key word there is ‘food,’” Block said, adding that it doesn’t matter if researchers can create a technically great product if nobody wants to eat it.
The Greater Sacramento Economic Council is a supporter of the new center, which dovetails with GSEC’s own efforts to build up local food technology and life science companies.
The region already has a deep expertise in food science because of UC Davis, and it makes sense to expand those entrepreneurial efforts, said Lucy Lu Roberts, director of business development for GSEC.
The region also already has some companies working in food and ag science.
West Sacramento meat substitute company The Better Meat Co. uses products like pea protein and mycelium, the root-like structure of fungus, to create meat substitutes and meat extenders.
“We have a number of both employees and interns who came to us from Davis,” said Paul Shapiro, CEO of The Better Meat Co.
The opening reception for the Integrative Center for Alternative Meat and Protein, or iCAMP, at the UC Davis Robert Mondavi Center for Wine and Food Science, will be serving samples of Better Meat’s mycoprotein, Shapiro said.
There are also local companies developing cell-cultured chocolate, lab-made caviar and other products, Roberts said.
One of the key components of iCAMP is also workforce development of scientists to make these products, Block said. "A large part of this industry is in California."
Plant-based food company Impossible Foods Inc. is based in Redwood City. Beyond Meat Inc. (Nasdaq: BYND) is based in El Segundo.
In 2022, the state Legislature provided $5 million for research into alternative proteins at three campuses of the University of California system, including UC Davis, the University of California Berkeley and the University of California Los Angeles. In addition to that funding, the effort has gotten $3 million in National Science Foundation funding and iCAMP will also be seeking sponsors, funders and industry to get involved.
Block said research done at iCAMP will also likely suggest colocation of these kinds of facilities making products, as byproducts of some foods might be useful in making other foods. "The raw materials for all these products are going to be similar," he said.
Another aspect of research will be to find what drives consumer preference and acceptance, and that is where chefs and the Culinary Institute of America come into play, he said.
The work of iCAMP will be virtual, with a conglomeration of faculty and researchers working together at multiple institutions, said UC Davis spokeswoman Amy Quinton. The center, at this point, doesn’t actually have a physical center, but that’s not unusual for multiple centers and institutes at the university.
