This article is part of a series addressing environmental sustainability opportunities and challenges in the Sacramento region.
A whaling harpoon mounted on a wall at the entrance of The Better Meat Co.'s offices is meant to symbolize progress in industry.
“We used to harvest whales for their oil for indoor lighting, until that was replaced with kerosene and eventually electricity. We used to whip horses for transportation. We don’t do that anymore. We still raise and kill animals for food, and we don’t need to do that anymore,” said Better Meat CEO Paul Shapiro.
Better Meat is a 2018 startup that's developed methods to turn vegetable and fungi products into meat substitutes or meat enhancement products.
The company’s extender products are made of pea protein, and its meat replacement products are made at its West Sacramento headquarters from mycelium, which is the root structure of fungus.
“Mycelium is the future,” said Shapiro, who has been interested in meat alternatives for years. That has included watching as the industry evolved from wheat and soy products to pea and fava proteins and the development of lab-grown meat.
At its pilot plant, Better Meat makes its mycelium product, called Rhiza, which is a neutral-tasting, allergen-free, shelf-stable dry product that has the texture of animal meat. Rhiza has more protein than eggs, more fiber than oats, more potassium than bananas and more iron than beef.
“They make a very nutritious, edible protein with a very much lower ecological footprint than animal products like beef or chicken,” said John Selep, the president of the AgTech Innovation Alliance, which is the sponsor of Lab@AgStart, a wet-lab space in Woodland for startup companies in food and ag.
“Their product is tasty, and it has the right texture and mouthfeel to replace animal meat,” Selep said. “They have developed an elegant and efficient process that can produce its end product in days.”
To the naked eye, dried Rhiza looks like packing material. Under the microscope, Rhiza has layers and layers of structure, which is what gives it the texture of meat.
It sells all the Rhiza it can produce, and its Rhiza sales have increased steadily for five years, Shapiro said. The company is meeting more demand by making its processes faster and more efficient, and the company wants to expand production.
The desire to expand, however, is running into declining investment interest in alternative meat companies.
Some publicly traded alternative meat companies have not done well in the stock market or the retail market in recent years. Some products that had previously sold as premium items are appearing in bargain bins.
The El Segundo-based Beyond Meat Co., which makes plant-based meat substitutes, has seen declining revenue and losses for three years in a row.
Plant-based food company Impossible Foods Inc. of Redwood City had been considering an initial public offering, but at the end of 2022 it cut about 100 employees. In April, the company’s CEO told Reuters that Impossible Foods was considering an IPO or sale.
Despite the headwinds, Better Meat recently prevailed in a three-year legal dispute with another maker of alternative meat products: Boulder, Colorado-based Meati Foods.
In 2021, when Better Meat was trying to raise growth capital, Meati allegedly sent letters to potential Better Meat investors saying that Better Meat was in an intellectual property dispute. That dispute as of June is officially over, according both to Better Meat and Meati.
With its pea protein, Better Meat is a business-to-business supplier to branded product makers, including Hormel Foods Corp. and Perdue Farms. The Better Meat Co.’s vegetable blend is the "Plus" in Perdue's Chicken Plus formulations for tots, tenders and nuggets.
Better Meat sells its Rhiza products to other companies and supplies some restaurants itself.
Better Meat now has 22 full-time employees, all of whom work in West Sacramento. Shapiro declined to disclose Better Meat's revenue.
