The Better Meat Co. reduces its mycelium production costs by 30 percent

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Dive Brief:

• The Better Meat Co., an ingredients company providing mycoprotein formulations through its Rhiza product, announced it has dramatically reduced its cost of production. 
• The company said it could slash its feedstock costs while producing a higher quantity of mycelium, enabling a total at-scale reduction of over 30%. This will allow Rhiza to compete at a commodity price with beef, the company said. 
• The Better Meat Co’s R&D team has been working on the cost reduction measures for over a year. CEO Paul Shapiro told Food Dive the company implemented “advanced fermentation methods that dramatically improved our conversion of carbon to mycelial biomass, and our feedstock has now been fine-tuned to the specific requirements of our production strains.”

Dive Insight:

These latest advancements mean that, at scale, even with no further R&D advancements, Rhiza mycoprotein is projected to compete on cost with commodity beef, according to CEO Shapiro.

Rhiza mycoprotein is an all-natural whole food ingredient that’s also allergen-free, the company said. 

According to Better Meat Co., the ingredient has more protein than eggs, more iron and zinc than beef, more fiber than oats, and more potassium than bananas. It also has a recognizable meat-like texture, the company said. 

Unlike animal-based meat, Rhiza mycoprotein has no cholesterol, no saturated fat, and no trans fats.

“To feed humanity without destroying the planet, rather than going big with animal farming, we must go small with microbial farming, and we’ve proven we can cost-effectively do just that,” said Shapiro in a statement. 

Shapiro said in a statement to Food Dive that through the company’s pilot plant in Sacramento, it has the ability to produce enough mycoprotein to supply Northern California restaurants with the product, which it currently does. The company also has multiple signed letters of intent “with major CPG brands and foodservice companies,” which currently represent demand for 33 tons of dry mycoprotein per month (99 meat-equivalent tons per month when hydrated), according to Shapiro. 

Some of the company’s active customers include Buddha Belly Burger in Sacramento, but The Better Meat Co. is aiming to scale up and supply more major food companies. 

“We’ve been sampling Rhiza mycoprotein as a single-ingredient animal-free protein option and find that it’s in a league of its own when it comes to taste, texture, and nutrition. When this ingredient is commercially available at a larger scale, we hope to put it on our menus,” said Monty Staggs, CEO of SFE, a U.S. food service provider, in a statement to Food Dive.

To successfully advance its production methods, the company screened hundreds of food-grade mycelial strains to identify the fastest-growing, most meat-like, and best-tasting products.

“We identified key traits that give rise to better mycoprotein and developed methods to quantify them in mycelium. This opened the door to implementing an advanced natural breeding program to further optimize our mycelium for our production processes,” said Shapiro.