Business Bites: Plant-based beverages linked to deaths in Canada

I was planning to cover Tales of the Cocktail this week, but after two flights were cancelled, I decided to cut my losses and get back to work.

In Canada, a listeria outbreak has been linked to Silk and Great Value plant-based milks, resulting in multiple illnesses and prompting a thorough investigation and recall, plus lingering concerns about the safety of plant-based products.

In the realm of cultivated meat, Mission Barns has created a new bioreactor designed to support the natural growth patterns of muscle and fat cells. Meanwhile, Juicy Marbles is appealing to the health-conscious market by launching Baby Ribs, a new plant-based meat product that features edible soy protein bones — so, not bones from real babies. Phew.

All that and more in this week’s Business Bites.

Two deaths linked to Silk, Great Value plant-based milk

Per the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Silk and Great Value plant-based beverages have been recalled across Canada due to contamination with listeria monocytogenes. The products, manufactured by a third party in Ontario and distributed by Danone Canada, have been linked to 12 cases of illness, nine of which required hospitalization, and two deaths. Danone Canada halted production at and shipments from the involved facility to investigate the outbreak.

This incident shines a light on food safety concerns for plant-based products, which sometimes require less stringent sanitization and preservation techniques than animal products.

“While all food companies face similar challenges, the plant-based products like pulses and cereal grains that we handle have the advantage of not requiring refrigeration. This simplifies some aspects of handling and storage,” Lionel Kambeitz, co-founder and CEO of Canada-based Above Food, said. “This outbreak highlights the importance of transparency and the need for food safety to be a core component of consumer communications ... The food value chain is often opaque, and increased consumer pressure can motivate more brands to be open about how their products are made and what they do to ensure food safety.”

Mission Barns launches novel bioreactor for cultivated meat production

Last week, Bianca Lê, Ph.D., and Saam Shahrokhi of Mission Barns, a cell-cultivated meat company, took to LinkedIn to explain the limitations of traditional bioreactor technology. In summary, existing systems are ill-equipped for cultivating non-genetically modified muscle and fat tissue because most were developed to produce biopharmaceuticals, not meat.

To make the process more practical and sustainable, Mission Barns has developed a novel, scalable adherent bioreactor tailored for cells' natural growth patterns. This supports mass transfer and dense cell packing for high-volume production without the need for genetic modification. So, they modified the system, not the cells. Anti-GMO advocates should be thrilled.

This new bioreactor design allows for the effective scaling of meat production while aiming to address the environmental and economic impacts of traditional animal agriculture, which can be significant compared to cell cultivation technology.

Plant-based ribs now come with edible bones

Alt-meat company Juicy Marbles, which is not a combination of words I ever expected to read, is launching a new product called Baby Ribs. The game-changing part is that these ribs contain edible bones made from soy protein, which are supposedly suitable for various culinary uses, such as making soup stocks. Baby Ribs boasts a clean-label recipe without thickeners or binders, hoping to appeal to anyone who wants health-conscious meat alternatives, not just vegans.

New tech reduces fat in dairy ingredients

Swiss food giant Nestlé has developed a new proprietary technology to reduce the fat in milk powder by up to 60% while maintaining quality, taste and texture, using larger protein clusters to mimic fat droplets without imparting a “sandy” texture. The company is reportedly working to enhance its products’ nutritional value as consumer demand for healthier options grows — and, I’m assuming, as demand for sand in milk drops like a billion tiny rocks.

Meanwhile, the company has revised its organic sales growth forecast from 4% to 3% for the year due to faster-than-expected price drops, despite solid progress in European and emerging markets and good performance in the coffee and pet care sectors.

Onego Bio secures financing to commercialize animal-free egg protein

Who wants some precision-fermented eggs? Onego Bio has secured the equivalent of more than $15 million in funding from the European Union and Series A investors for North American commercialization of its animal-free egg protein, Bioalbumen. This ovalbumin, the main protein found in egg whites, is produced using trichoderma reesei, a bioidentical fungus with a more sustainable footprint than traditional eggs.

The company claims that Bioalbumen can be added seamlessly to existing food products without altering recipes or equipment and even surpasses the functional properties of egg proteins in applications like baked goods and sauces. And it doesn’t need to pass through a chicken’s birth canal before you eat it, which is a major plus for some people.