Genomics and the Global Bioeconomy

Genomics and the Global Bioeconomy, a new volume in the Translational and Applied Genomics series, empowers researchers, administrators, and sustainability leaders to apply genomics and novel omics technologies to advance the global bioeconomy and sustainability. Here, more than 15 international experts illustrate—with concrete examples across various industries and areas of global need—how genomics is addressing some of the most pressing global challenges of our time. Chapters offer an in-depth, case-based treatment of various topics, from genomics technologies supporting sustainability development goals to novel synthetic biology advancements improving biofuel production, conservation, sustainable food production, bioremediation, and genomic monitoring.

Editors Catalina Lopez-Correa and Adrian Suarez-Gonzalez skillfully bring clarity to this diverse and increasingly impactful research, uniting various perspectives to inspire fresh innovation in driving the global bioeconomy.

• Presents concrete examples and detailed discussions that illustrate how to use genomics and omics technologies to drive the global bioeconomy
• Examines how genomics is addressing the most pressing environmental, agricultural, economic, and natural resources challenges of our time
• Features chapter contributions from international experts who are applying genomic technologies across various fields, from agriculture to biofuel production, bioremediation, biodiversity monitoring, and conservation

• Language: English
• Publisher: Academic Press
• Release date: Sep 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9780323916028

Book preview

Introduction

Catalina Lopez-Correa

Chief Scientific Officer at Genome Canada, Executive Director of the Canadian COVID19 Genomics Network (CanCOGeN), Canada

Adriana Suarez-Gonzalez

10x Genomics, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Is genomics ready to deliver solutions to solve the world’s biggest challenges? The list of challenges related to the bioeconomy is long. The energy transition from fossil fuels to sustainable alternatives needs to happen soon, and some argue it is doable fast. Ensuring that everyone will have something to eat is also a growing challenge as the demand for food quality and diversity will only grow louder. The need for action and innovation to address the growing impact of climate change is urgent. A circular bioeconomy,a with genomics as a key driver, offers a way forward to tackle many of these urgent issues we face today.

We are fortunate to live in a time of great progress in genomics and computing. After 20 years of investment on research and innovation, genomics, coupled with advances in computing and artificial intelligence, is now ready to start delivering concrete solutions to help us solve these global challenges. From high-throughput sequencing of whole genomes to measuring gene expression and epigenetic marks at the genome-wide scale and even at the single-cell and spatial level, genomic technologies are advancing and evolving faster than ever making their applications toward a more sustainable and green bioeconomy increasingly tangible. This book highlights a fascinating collection of examples illustrating the concrete applications and impact that these new genomics technologies hold for the next phase of the global bioeconomy.

A key component of the global bioeconomy is the rapid advancement of genomics, which has led to its application in an increasing number of areas, including agriculture, energy, livestock, environmental remediation, and healthcare, among others. Emerging technologies such as CRISPR, stem cells, and single-cell genomics have been instrumental in gaining a deeper understanding of the complexities of different biological systems. Great advances in fast and cost-effective DNA sequencing technologies, genomic editing techniques, and synthetic biology are allowing us to discover new life-building blocks. This groundbreaking work is creating the foundational knowledge needed to generate important contributions with concrete socioeconomic impact.

The chapters in this book cover a wide range of applications of genomics and its impact in the context of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). The SDGs are a collection of 17 global goals set by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015 for the year 2030. They are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all by addressing some of the global challenges we face, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate, environmental degradation, and prosperity. The topics covered here provide the tools needed to take action on many SDGs from producing more sustainable foods and productive crops to contributing to a zero-emissions future. Framed on the SDG, the chapters cover different applications of genomics, from sequencing, synthetic biology, and gene editing to genomic surveillance with tools like environmental DNA. The topics also span global geographies as well as the regulatory and policy landscapes with examples from Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and Latin America.

We start this book with one of the most hyped research topics in this century, synthetic biology. Newman et al. provide an overview of protein production using cellular agriculture, a technique that is rapidly nearing commercial scales. This chapter describes genomics and synthetic biology technologies currently being used for protein production, including cell culture-derived proteins and fermentation-derived proteins. Using cell lines with specialized growth media, companies like Finless Foods (California, United States) and Mosa Meats (Maastricht, Netherlands) are producing cultured fish meat and cultured beef meat, respectively. Future Fields (Edmonton, Canada) goes upstream of the process and is using genetically modified fruit flies to produce custom growth factors, which have the potential to address the high cost of humane growth material for cultured meat. The authors also surfaced the potential for these technologies to lead progress toward the SDGs as well as the need for regulation and policy to help ensure widespread environmental and social benefits.

Fernandez-Nino et al. showcase another application of synthetic biology, BioBricks. BioBricks are open-source catalogs of over thousands of standardized DNA components being assembled by engineers and biologists. New and more complex BioBricks are constantly being built and strung together interchangeably to create and modify living cells while expanding and testing our knowledge of cellular function. In their chapter, Fernandez-Nino et al. discussed the most relevant approaches to assembly and design of microbial biofactories relevant for the biotechnology industry. Today, many biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and agriculture companies rely on these synthetic biology tools to develop products. For example, Zymergen (United States) commercializes hyaline, a thin film for electronics made from bio-sourced monomers. These monomers are produced by engineered organisms optimized using artificial intelligence. Similar foundries are emerging globally at an accelerating pace to genetically reprogram cells that are able to make new materials by design like vaccines, medicine, food, and even fuel.

The NEDO Smart Cell Project in Japan demonstrated the use of synthetic biology to enable the shift from fossil fuels to microbial-derived products. Aburatani et al. share the discovery of new microbial genes that control enzyme and oil production using an innovative modeling software able to overcome the limitations of traditional methods that have failed to identify these key gene networks. To improve the productivity of microorganisms, they developed a new network modeling technique called ASENET. ASENET generates a graphical representation of the microbial production systems of interest and enables the artificial design of new microbial hosts. The group has several projects in the pipeline, including the modification of the fungus Trichoderma reesei, a well-known industrial cellulase producer and candidate for biomass production. Japanese breeding techniques have successfully developed T. reesei strains with high cellulase production capacity. However, these strains produce many cellulases, and a fine-tuned balance between them is a critical factor for biomass production at scale. Although Aburatani et al.’s inferred network revealed how challenging it would be to increase or decrease any single enzyme by itself, they were able to identify good candidate genes in the intricately intertwined gene network. The authors envision a future where Smart Cells are used as sustainable factories for a wide range of materials globally.

The future of the bioeconomy is being propelled by a generation of scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers immersed in a new world of unprecedented biological innovation. Today, there are increasing opportunities for students to apply textbook knowledge to cutting-edge research. A great example is the MIT-founded International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Foundation, which runs an annual synthetic biology research competition and includes 350 + student research teams around the world. Chen et al., a group of students from the University of British Columbia’s iGEM team, showcased in their chapter three projects that highlight the move from ideation to proof-of-concept, early prototyping, all the way to market validation within 10–12 months. The examples include Paralyte, a whole-cell biosensor for shellfish toxin, Probeeotics, an engineered metabolic pathway for bee microbiota, and VPRE, a machine learning model to predict the evolution of SARS-CoV-2.

After an overview of the contributions of synthetic biology, this book moves into a different type of application that is now revolutionizing our understanding of biodiversity: genomic monitoring. Acharya-Patel et al. start this section of this book with an overview of environmental DNA (eDNA) and its potential for monitoring a wide range of organisms and ecosystems. eDNA is the genetic material shed by organisms, micro or macro, into their environment, which can be measured with powerful and cost-effective genomic tools. Today, eDNA sampling is being integrated into large-scale biomonitoring programs and will be useful for informing policy and management decisions in the near future. From tracking invading species like the American bullfrog invading Belgium, to detecting pathogens like SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater for pandemic monitoring, eDNA has been recognized and applied around the world. To fully embrace the potential of eDNA, the authors highlight several opportunities in the field, such as relating eDNA to more conventional methods and standardizing protocols and reporting.

Hubert et al. describe the role of microbial surveys using genomics in de-risking offshore oil exploration and their potential impact on insurance companies. With sea ice melting accelerating at a record pace in recent years, maritime and industrial activity is mounting in the Arctic Ocean. This translates into an ancillary increase in the risk of offshore oil spills, which are likely to result in challenging and expensive remediation efforts in such an unforgiven cold and remote environment. This is where genomic data on baseline microbial communities can play a huge role. Genomic surveys can help predict the potential for biodegradation by identifying the presence of marine bacteria that can eat compounds from oil. This genomic mining work could help inform risk modeling and determinants of insurance premiums for marine shipping but also help understand ecosystem impacts to inform clean-up costs in the event of a marine oil spill.

Genomic surveillance can also be taken to the forests to help predict and prevent pest outbreaks, where invasive species are often not known. Forests are vital for the bioeconomy as they support entire communities by providing building material, food, and energy. Arguably, the most important contribution of our forests is their ability to capture and store carbon, which mitigates climate change. However, forests are constantly challenged by invasions and being pushed beyond thresholds of sustainability. Hamelin shows how a comprehensive genomic biosurveillance approach can help ensure that these thresholds are not crossed. For example, genomics revealed the causal agents of sudden oak death and the ash dieback, two deadly pathogens that were previously unknown to science. Hamelin provides an overview of the different techniques currently being used to identify forest threads from PCR to next-generation sequencing. He also shares an outlook for the future of forest health monitoring as increasing demand will likely result in more access to powerful and cost-effective genomic tools being developed.

Genomic tools are also being used to survey other life-limiting ecosystems highly impacted by climate change, such as the African tropical glaciers, where cold-adapted prokaryotes are potential sources of cryoprotectants for food and pharmaceutical industries. Kuja et al. used a technique called 16S rRNA to survey microorganisms in Lewis Glacier, the largest glacier found in Mount Kenya and one of the best-studied equatorial glaciers. The high abundance of microbial species in the glacier surface and the drastic shift in the foreland soils suggest well-adapted resilient mechanisms to this unique environment. This information can be a game-changer for emerging economies where natural resources could be harnessed for sustainable development. However, climate change is affecting these local microbial reservoirs at an accelerated pace. Kuja and collaborators’ work also revealed seed banks of inactive organisms, a reservoir of dormant microorganisms with the potential to reactivate when the environmental conditions change, and key indicators of the impact climate change is having on equatorial glaciers. The authors make a call to all African countries to embrace genomic applications to monitor and leverage bioresources from neglected ecosystems by decentralizing genomic platforms across the continent. This chapter illustrates the use and impact of genomics technologies in Africa and its potential application to advance the bioeconomy in emerging economies.

Another area where genomics has played an important role in driving the bioeconomy is agriculture. Whether it is food or fiber, today’s crops have been selected or modified using a wide range of ancient methods but also the most modern genomic techniques. Gilchrist et al. focus on a plant grabbing the headlines. Cannabis cultivation spans millennia but despite its long-standing use, scientific research on the crop has been limited. The recent flux of restrictive legislation across the globe is changing this and has opened up new avenues for genomic research in cannabis. Besides a genome sequence published in 2011, a number of more recent publicly available databases have improved cannabis genomic resources. An interesting discovery has been the lack of a genetic basis for the commonly used designations indica and sativa. Although these terms are well accepted in the cannabis industry and even used for medical prescriptions, genomic research has shown that these groups lack conserved genetic profiles as there are significant genetic differences within samples of the same strain. These differences could be exciting for recreational users but might have more serious implications for medical use and patients relying on strain-specific effects. The rapid growth of genomic tools is also supporting the improvement of the cannabis crop to produce and regulate the array of cannabinoids and terpenes in cannabis.

Plant secondary metabolites (PSMs), such as cannabinoids, are key for the bioeconomy as they not only shape plants’ odor, color, and taste but also help plants adapt to changes in the environments and resist attacks from pathogens. As if that wasn’t enough, PSMs are also very valuable outside the plant world, and are produced by pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and food industries for a wide range of purposes. Li et al. provide a look under the hood of the sophisticated process for PMS production, where traditional genomic tools just fall short. To really understand and leverage these important metabolites, a more holistic view is needed. Multi-omics provides this type of approach where multiple layers of information (i.e., molecules) are quantified, including genomics, transcriptomics (also called gene expression), proteomics, and metabolomics. A case in point is the role of multiomics to uncover the role of flavonoids, which have remained elusive. Rather than relying solely on genomics, researchers integrated metabolic profiles from different types of plants. This metabolomics–genomics-integrated approach was a great first step to enable the discovery of specific genetic markers that improve UV protection, which have been used to generate UV-B resistance of transgenic rice plants.

We close this book with an overview of why regulation and policy matters. To fully deliver on the promise of genomics and the bioeconomy, regulatory authorities across the globe are building policies and strategies to address questions about how to regulate products derived from genome editing and synthetic biology. Marden et al. discuss the flux in regulatory oversight around these products and how fast-paced developments in food science and agricultural production are challenging United States, Canadian, and European Union regulators. Until now, the United States and Canada have taken a product-based approach, largely focused on the end-product, while the EU regulates upstream explicitly on the process of production. However, a key challenge across the board is modernizing legislation at a pace that reflects emerging developments in biotechnology. In the United States for example, products like genome-edited plants can be subject to multiple and sometimes overlapping authorities like the USDA and FDA. On top of that, the lack of a shared set of definitions between agencies referring to biotechnology products can be confusing. United States recently updated USDA regulations relating to permit and food labeling requirements but the FDA’s approach to genome editing and synthetic biology in foods remains a work in progress. To address some of these challenges, Health Canada is proposing to update its guidance to clarify the definition of novel food, which will only include products where the genetic modification derives from the insertion of foreign DNA or when there are other specified changes in the end-product. In the EU, changes are anticipated as the current legislation falls short to regulate products resulting from genome editing but they are unlikely to be rapidly implemented. Marden et al. call on researchers and developers to stay up to date on regulatory developments and to be aware that requirements may differ among jurisdictions.

Uscátegui and Montaguth provide an overview of the regulatory landscape and public perception of biotechnology products in Latin America where the status is far from harmonized and highly debated. While Brazil and Argentina have one of the biggest biotech crop areas in the world, Ecuador declared itself a GMO-free territory in 2008 and Peru released a moratorium against genetically modified organisms in 2011. In countries such as Colombia, Bolivia, and Mexico, the debate is still heated as the efforts to ban transgenic seeds are still on the political agenda. Despite this political turmoil and public opinion polarization, biotechnology holds a big promise for the region. The world’s first transgenic wheat tolerant to drought and ammonium glufosinate herbicide was created and approved in Argentina. Recently, Brazil developed and approved a genetically modified (GM) bean variety with resistance to bean golden mosaic virus, a disease with devastating effects for farmers. In Colombia, an alliance between academia and a private union generated an off-patent GM maize variety. To fully realize the impact on the bioeconomy to help farmers and scientists alike, the region needs to tackle misinformation around biotechnology by demonstrating that commercially available GM crops are safe for both humans and the environment.

Policy is fundamental to accelerate the deployment of a sustainable bioeconomy. In 2009, the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) published a policy agenda for developing a bioeconomy, and since then, interest has been growing. In 2012, the United States published its own bioeconomy blueprint, and the EU developed a similar strategy. Today, almost 50 countries incorporate bioeconomy development in their strategies. The global nature of the bioeconomy also stresses the particularly important role to be played by developing countries, not just as a source for problems to be solved, but as a source of opportunities to be offered in terms of research and innovation. Philip closes this book with a focus on the downstream economic phenomenon of genomics in the bioeconomy, aimed at generating economic activity. He offers a guide through a myriad of policy challenges from supply-side policy measures, such as building infrastructures, to demand-side measures that help to make a market. By looking beyond genomics R&D, it can be possible to realize the holistic approach of the bioeconomy with policymaking grounded in genomics and biotechnology.

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a The OECD (2009) described the bioeconomy as the set of economic activities in which biotechnology contributes centrally to primary production and industry, especially where the advanced life sciences are applied to the conversion of biomass into materials, chemicals and fuels.

Part I

Synthetic biology as a pillar of the bioeconomy

Chapter 1: Cellular agriculture and the sustainable development goals

Lenore Newmana; Evan Fraserb; Robert Newella,c; Evan Bownessa; Kat Newmana; Alesandros Glarosa,b    a University of the Fraser Valley, Abbotsford, BC, Canada

b University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada

c Royal Roads University, Victoria, BC, Canada

Abstract

Cellular agriculture refers to a broad set of emerging technologies that draw upon research in genomics and synthetic biology to produce biological compounds. Much of the interest in cellular agriculture stems from its potential as a way of producing high-quality proteins and other nutrients with reduced environmental impact. Cellular agriculture techniques are rapidly nearing commercial scales of production, in part due to the application of knowledge and techniques produced through genomics research related to gene expression, editing, and genome-scale data analytics. However, much remains unknown and there is little rigorous evidence to test these assertions. This chapter applies the UN Sustainable Development Goals as a lens through which to examine protein production using cellular agriculture, to understand how it may contribute to the development of more sustainable and resilient food system. We examine two emerging approaches to cellular agriculture—cultured meat and fermentation-derived dairy—and explore both the complexity and knowledge gaps that need to be filled to ensure these tools are deployed to help create a more sustainable future for all. This chapter concludes by proposing an agenda for future research and policy development.

Keywords

Cellular agriculture; Sustainability; UN Sustainable Development Goals; Protein; Cell culture; Fermentation

Introduction

One of the most effective ways individual consumers can reduce their direct impact on the environment is through their dietary choices (Machovina et al., 2015; Willett et al., 2019). In particular, plant-forward diets (defined as diets that focus on consuming plants and minimizing animal products) and flexitarianism (diets that intentionally reduce animal products) have emerged in public and academic debates as important strategies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, conserve habitat and biodiversity, and decrease agricultural water consumption and fertilizer usage. Accordingly, the advent of alternative protein (Tuomisto, 2019) products is positioned as a way of helping reduce humanity’s impact on the environment (Mattick, 2018). Such promising protein production techniques include cellular agriculture, which involves growing animal-analogue proteins in industrial or laboratory settings using cell cultures and tissue-engineering or fermentation-based techniques.

Although there are reasons to be optimistic about the potential contributions of cellular agriculture to developing more sustainable food systems, tremendous complexity and uncertainty remain. Many scholars and practitioners, for instance, point out that animals are an important component of a sustainable agroecosystem, providing valuable ecosystem services on many farms such as nutrient cycling (Parker, 2020). Second, given the technologies around cellular agriculture are extremely nascent and have not yet been taken to scale, it has been impossible to conduct a full life cycle assessment of these technologies (Lynch and Pierrehumbert, 2019; Newman et al., 2021). Third, animal agriculture is a vital source of livelihoods for hundreds of millions of small-scale farmers, many of whom live in the developing world where they have limited access to markets or high-quality protein (Rota and Urbani, 2021). How might a widespread shift to cellular agriculture affect the livelihoods of the households who currently depend on raising animals?

The optimism around cellular agriculture as a tool to reduce humanity’s environmental impact and the complex issues these technologies surface present a need to examine and better understand cellular agriculture’s potential role in transitions to sustainable food systems. This chapter will provide a preliminary review of the current evidence on how cellular agriculture may be utilized to promote a broad sustainable development agenda. We employ the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a lens and use the scientific literature to answer the following research question: how might the widespread adoption of cellular agriculture affect progress toward achieving the SDGs?

This chapter begins with a high-level introduction to the SDGs, discussing their relevance to sustainable diets and alternative proteins. It then discusses cellular agriculture, focusing on two specific set of techniques with strong genomic elements: (1) the use of cell cultures and (2) advanced fermentation, both of which are proposed to grow proteins analogous to what livestock currently produces. The following section explores the potential of both cell culture and advanced fermentation to advancing the SDGs. In the final section, we present a brief research and policy agenda geared at helping enable a successful transition toward more sustainable diets.

Background literature: The sustainable development goals, sustainable diets, and the potential of alternative protein

Humanity has exceeded what is sometimes referred to as a planetary boundary, particularly in terms of climate change, biodiversity loss, disruptions to nutrient cycles, and land systems change (Rockstrom et al., 2009). The emerging field of planetary health (Myers, 2017) argues that global society has exceeded its safe operating space (Rockstrom et al., 2009; Steffen et al., 2015) and that the social and economic systems that have evolved since the Industrial Revolution are eroding the ecosystems on which we all depend for life. There is widespread consensus that we must remake these systems if they are to become environmentally sustainable. At the same time, addressing poverty and inequality is equally urgent priority. Action is needed at all levels of government, from local to global, to address these concurrent socioeconomic and environmental imperatives (Biermann et al., 2012; Steffen et al., 2015).

In 2015, the United Nations established the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In 2016, this agenda was linked with 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), designed to create a framework for monitoring progress and exploring unintended trade-offs. While not legally binding, UN member nations agreed to adopt the 2030 Agenda and to develop policies designed to advance the SDGs, as well as to regularly report on their progress toward achieving their targets. Together, the SDGs elaborate a wide range of social, economic, and environmental objectives. Critically, each goal is paired with specific indicators and quantifiable targets.

Many of the SDGs directly or indirectly relate to food systems. Agriculture and food production are among the primary sources of greenhouse gas emissions, most notably methane and nitrous oxide (Willett et al., 2019), and a leading driver of anthropogenic climate change. Agriculture is the primary cause of land systems change, biodiversity loss, and the destruction of natural habitat. The sector is also the largest consumer of freshwater resources, while also being a major source of water contamination. Consequently, anything that may change farming practices is likely to have a direct impact on the SDGs for clean water and sanitation, responsible consumption and production, climate action, life below water, and life on land.

Despite the clear need to reduce the environmental impact of agriculture, it is imperative to also increase food production to feed a growing global population and to achieve the goal of zero hunger, as well as to advance SDGs relating to nutrition and health. Ensuring that high-quality food is both affordable and universally accessible is a necessary step toward addressing inequality and reducing poverty, as well as supporting maternal health and childhood development. However, any policies, technologies, or programs that affect the food system will likely have far-reaching impacts, including possible unintended consequences for people involved in all areas of the food system. It is important to note that many of the world’s poorest people are small-scale farmers, and the poorest small-scale farmers typically are female-headed households. Considering the food system holistically is important to ensuring environmental sustainability, achieving zero hunger, reducing poverty and inequality, and advancing gender equality.

At the same time as debates over the SDGs were taking place, another group of scholars were casting a critical eye on the food system (Fraser et al., 2016). Over the past 20 years, a consensus has emerged that many of the world’s most pressing social and economic issues intersect with the systems we all depend on for sustenance. Five of the key publications in this regard include a United Nations report entitled Livestock’s Long Shadow that explores animal agriculture’s impact on the environment (Steinfeld et al., 2006), two special issues that explore a wide range of issues and show how food systems and human systems intersect in scholarly journals Science (Godfray et al., 2010) and The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (Godfray and Garnett, 2014), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s special report on Climate Change and Land (Shukla et al., 2019), and the Eat-Lancet Report (Willett et al., 2019) that proposes the components of a nutritionally balanced diet that can be produced sustainably.

While providing a thorough review of this large and ambitious body of literature is beyond the scope of the current chapter, at least two high-level conclusions emerge from this outpouring of scholarship. The first is that one of the most effective ways individual consumers can reduce their direct impact on the planet is through dietary choices, specifically by focusing their buying habits on consuming only products that can be produced with a minimal environmental footprint. A second high-level conclusion is that, in general, reducing livestock consumption and eating a diet high in plant matter should provide a net sustainability benefit. This is because producing livestock requires a quantity of resources disproportionate to either its nutritional or caloric contribution to the global food system.

Despite disproportionate public messaging and media attention surrounding the environmental impacts of consumer choices, simply exhorting people to eat less meat is no substitute for good policy. This focus on individual dietary decision-making shifts the locus of responsibility away from government and onto consumers (Clapp and Cohen, 2009). Similarly, equating livestock consumption with negative environmental outcomes has caused many to point out that there are ways to increase the overall sustainability of livestock-based food systems (Varijakshapanicker et al., 2019). There are extremely unsustainable ways of producing fruits and vegetables. Nevertheless, there remains a scientific consensus that diets high in livestock products have a much larger environmental footprint than more plant-based diets and that there would be substantial benefit to the planet if consumers ate less meat and dairy (Eisler et al., 2014).

It is against a background of this concern over livestock-based diets and general agreement around the need to work toward the SDGs that scholars have begun examining the potential role of alternative protein sources and production techniques in transitioning toward more sustainable food systems (Wu et al., 2014). Such work has been accelerated by the extraordinary explosion of innovative consumer products available today. For example, the new generation of meatless burgers is high in protein but without animal products, and the introduction of these products into consumer markets has intersected with the rising discourse around sustainable diets. Activity in this field has accelerated notably over the past decade. Public interest was piqued in 2013 when researchers in the Netherlands successfully used laboratory techniques to craft a beef patty from stem cells (Suthar, 2020). This initial prototype reputedly costs US$300,000, but costs have plummeted since then. Today, the same type of burger can be produced for about $12 (Mosa, 2019). Private and public investment in cellular agriculture has both ballooned, suggesting that a whole new sector of the food economy is currently being developed.

Interest in alternative proteins has been amplified by claims over the potential contributions of these products to sustainable food systems. Companies such as GOOD, Perfect Day, Beyond Meat, and Impossible Foods all position their products as more sustainable alternatives to animal products, offering high-quality analogues that have lower environmental footprints yet do not require consumers to sacrifice taste. Most of these companies’ websites explicitly refer to the way their products improve sustainability and some even provide high-level statistics to validate such claims. Impossible Foods’ webpage suggests that every time you eat impossible burger (instead of beef from a cow), consumers use 96% less land, consume 87% less water, and produce 89% fewer GHGs (Impossible Foods, 2021). However, the livestock industry has started to push back with arguments about the important role animal agriculture plays in pasture management. A nonpeer-reviewed exploration of some of these issues published by the University of Oxford points out that many of these emerging alternative protein systems depend on large industrial supply chains that are extremely capital-intensive (Cusworth, 2021). Accordingly, the authors speculate that alternative protein systems may ultimately hurt the prospects of small-scale farmers, suggesting that promoting alternative protein might lead to trade-offs between the SDGs relating to equity and poverty reduction and those that focus on environmental health and ecosystem