By Paulo Teixeira, Product Manager at Melt&Marble

Introduction
The pressure to innovate in the global food system is omnipresent across sectors. However, the extent to which we need such innovation is often understated. Although the environmental and climate impacts of industrialised animal agriculture and the need to shift away from it are well understood, relatively little meaningful action has been taken. Companies producing meat and fat alternatives often struggle to scale production while keeping costs low enough for consumers, while also dealing with a widespread consumer perception that their products are inferior in taste and mouthfeel.

Fermentation technologies provide a tool to help food producers overcome this conundrum. Precision fermentation allows the production of fats with virtually any characteristic existing in food (animal- or plant-derived). They also enable a highly resource-efficient production, using a variety of different feedstocks. Additionally, this allows the production of specific ingredients that is not dependent on geographic location of resources.

But this technology is struggling to find its place in today’s competitive food landscape, which demands low prices, low margins and high volumes. Why is this?

This article explores the potential of precision fermentation to solve fats and oils supply issues. It also looks at several key factors, including finance and lowering production costs, regulations and how they can be used effectively, as well as consumer acceptance.

Background

Precision fermentation is one of a long history of innovations in how we produce food. Since the dawn of agriculture, we have selectively bred for traits we want: better fruits, faster growth, or whole new varieties of fruits and vegetables from cross breeding. More recently, biotechnology has allowed us to do this in a more targeted way: instead of endlessly breeding until we get what we want, we can precisely select the genes responsible for desired properties and introduce them in the plants or microbes where they are needed. Crops modified in this way can be made more resilient and efficient or given new traits entirely, such as rice fortified with vitamins (International Rice Research Institute, 2018). The same techniques can be applied to processes similar to brewing, modifying the yeast cells to produce molecules of interest rather than alcohol, introducing more advanced fermentation conditions and following it with a separation process to isolate such molecules. This is what we call precision fermentation.

Precision fermentation

One application of this technology is the production of food fats and oils, where we can modify a yeast cell to accumulate particular fats as they grow in a bioreactor. The modifications are done at a genetic level, altering the metabolic pathways that the cell uses and directing its energy towards producing particular lipid species that give fats the properties we are looking for. Cells modified in this way are grown in a controlled process to maximise fat yield and efficiency. At the end of the fermentation, a process very similar to established processes for extracting oils from seeds and fruits, enables us to separate these fats from the remainder of the yeast cell.

The process is safe and controlled. However, the safety of such novel food products is regulated differently in different regions. In the EU, precision-fermentation fats need to be approved through the European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA) Novel Foods framework. This is conditional on the product not containing DNA or viable cells from a genetically modified organism; in such cases it would have to go through a lengthy and extremely strict process of GMO foods approval. In the US, approval to commercialise is regulated at two levels. First, the Self-Affirmed GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) process, where a company affirms that its product is safe based on the conclusion of a scientific expert panel. Second the FDA-Notified GRAS, which involves submitting a safety dossier to the FDA and petitioning for GRAS status through a “No Questions Letter”.

Why the urgency in bringing these technologies to market?

The need for alternatives to reduce consumption of animal products cannot be stressed enough. Current industrial mass production of meat and dairy is both an unethical practice and a major contributor to climate change and irreversible environmental damage. “Many studies have demonstrated that replacement of animal-based products with plant-based and fermentation-based products could lower emissions, water use, and agricultural land use by up to 75% or more, depending on the specific foods and context” (Scarborough et al, 2023). However, consumers are reluctant to adopt plant-based alternatives due to lack of satisfactory sensorial properties of these products, particularly when they are not price competitive. Consumers used to regular consumption of animal products often cite flavour, texture and mouthfeel as the key attributes that are lacking from plant-based alternatives.

Since fat is a key determiner of flavour and mouthfeel, the need to find plant-based fats that are as close as possible to animal-derived fats has driven the food industry to look for solid fats like coconut oil and palm oil, often sourced from distant locations. Other fats that are abundantly used in the food industry, such as cocoa butter, are also sourced from these regions.

An additional complication is that increasing temperatures and changing climate conditions are already impacting food yields worldwide. Some of us are already feeling these effects in minor ways such as increasing prices of chocolate and coffee. However, this is only an early warning sign. It is estimated that if emissions are not reduced by 42% in the next five years, we will be unable to keep within the 1.5 °C climate targets (UNEP 2023), with severe consequences for agricultural yields. At current projections, this target will not be met. If we try to create alternatives to animal products by replacing them with fat and protein sourced from distant regions while crop production is reduced in favour of intensive animal agriculture, we
risk creating a negative feedback loop and consequent food system implosion. So, unless there is rapid public acceptance of meat alternatives, we will urgently need solutions to produce fats that can deliver properties beyond what’s available from plants alone. This is where precision fermentation comes in.

Precision fermentation opens new possibilities with food products

So far, precision fermentation is perceived mostly as a technology to create ingredient replacements. This is partly true, since we are able to create exactly the same molecular structures and properties that animal fats are able to deliver. However, this is only a part of the story. The technology opens the question: If we could choose anything, what properties would we like to have that are not found in nature today? Theoretically, we could create superior sensorial experiences compared to those in existing products; juicier, creamier, snappier. But is the food industry looking for this? The answer is complicated. If chocolate producers are asked what their dream fat looks like, they will answer: “exactly like cocoa butter”. People enjoy food they have learned to enjoy. Familiarity often defines what consumers characterise as “good”, making it an extremely subjective matter.

Precision fermentation enables the creation of an endless range of completely new products and categories beyond animal product imitations. But sadly, we have scant evidence to suggest that consumers are willing to change their habits to take in new food categories or novel food products.

Hope therefore lies in the efforts to change consumers’ perceptions of food, and promote the consumption of non-animal and non-destructive food products in ways compatible with people’s culture, habits and personal finances.

Why are there so few precision-fermentation products on the market?

If we are currently technically capable of delivering fermentation-derived one-to-one replacements of animal-derived ingredients, why are we not seeing them widely implemented?

One reason is that the final products themselves are not quite there yet in terms of texture and mouthfeel to deliver complete replacements to meat. Another more consequential factor is cost. If the industry today could produce meat alternative ingredients at a competitive price, it could deliver a product that would successfully challenge any meat-eating habit.

Thus, we can conclude that the main obstacles that must be overcome before a new food product can be brought to market are the price and availability of key ingredients, which at a macro level boil down to two key factors: production costs and regulatory frameworks.

Prohibitive production costs

Any proposed alternative fat or protein solution currently faces the same response from industry players when talking about pricing: it is costlier than the current alternatives and consumers are not willing to pay the difference. And really, consumers are not the ones to blame here. Consumers are used to paying low prices for meat made possible through government subsidies. Financial stimuli aside, the costs of precision fermentation technology are largely driven by the significant capital expenditure (CAPEX) needs of setting up production facilities. Large bioreactors with well-controlled capabilities need to be built with fidelity and rigorous hygiene standards, with downstream processing that can be adapted to a particular proprietary process owned by the technology provider. Most of this technology is only a few decades old, making it a radical departure from traditional agriculture and particularly costly to set up. On top of this, most of the companies exploring this technology are small startups who have dared to take the leap  of faith into innovation, but often lack the resources for scaled production.

Low production costs rely on economies of scale and the lack of available CAPEX funds leads companies to use contract manufacturers, which in turn makes production costs per kilogramme much higher than the industry standard.

Lengthy regulatory timelines

Bringing a new food ingredient to customers requires extensive testing and validation to guarantee its safety. This process must be strict, as new ingredients may pose a danger to human health. There can be no compromises here. The issue today is the lengthy reviewing timeline of regulatory bodies upon submission of these dossiers. The EU’s EFSA Novel Foods approval timeline can take up to 48 months. The FDA-notified GRAS status, usually a much shorter process, is also currently facing backlogs of 18 months for review of new ingredients.

These long timelines pose considerable obstacles to market entry for pre-revenue startups developing new products. The product needs to be fully developed, and the process established, before some of these regulatory review processes can be initiated. This can result in a waiting period of several years from having a product to its actual market entry, which in turn requires a need for investors to fund this pre-revenue gap.

The challenges of high production costs and long regulatory timelines can be mitigated by governments. If they can create hubs or geographical areas where there’s both a faster regulatory route for first launches, and also combine that with attractive and viable funding mechanisms for scaling production and lowering costs, then we could see competitive advantages in those areas for attracting key players in alternative fats and proteins. Redirection of funds currently earmarked for inefficient and outdated food production systems to novel ways of making food could show significant returns in the long run.

The future

Scalable production of ingredients through precision and biomass fermentation technologies offers significant advantages for a sustainable food system and can be a key aspect of building competitive economies going forward. This technology de-couples ingredients from geographic regions, allowing instead a much wider range of possibilities to be produced in a decentralised way all over the world using local produce as feedstocks.

However, implementation of these at scale requires coordinated efforts between the private sector, funding sources and governments. More resources must be effectively directed to the scaling of infrastructure, with production costs subsidised similarly to what is already in place for other food products (or reallocation of these subsidies). There should also be a realistic re-evaluation of regulatory bodies and their approval processes for new ingredients. If the infrastructure is built in time, precision fermentation can help stave off food insecurity in those countries and regions which are most threatened. For this reason, the development, commercialisation and normalisation of precision fermentation is imperative now while the global food situation remains relatively stable.

About Melt&Marble

Melt&Marble leverages precision fermentation to engineer the metabolism of yeast to create designer fats with precisely controlled composition and properties. Building on recent successes, including securing €2.76m in EU grants in 2024, Melt&Marble’s successful scale-up puts the company in a strong position for its next steps. The company will continue to further develop its designer fat products, with applications in alt-meat, cheese, butter, confectionary, and bakery products, aiming to bring these sustainable alternatives to market in the coming years.

Citations

1. International Rice Research Institute. Golden Rice FAQs [Internet]. International Rice Research Institute. International Rice Research Institute; 2018 [cited 2025 May 20]. Available from: https://www.irri.org/golden-rice-faqs
2. Scarborough P, Clark M, Cobiac L, Papier K, Knuppel A, Lynch J, et al. Vegans, vegetarians, fish-eaters and meat-eaters in the UK show discrepant environmental impacts. Nature Food [Internet]. 2023 Jul 1;4(7):565–74. Available from: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-023-00795-w2 .
3. UNEP. Emissions Gap Report 2023 [Internet]. Emissions Gap Report 2023. Nairobi: UN Environment Programme; 2023 [cited 2025 May 20]. Available from: https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/43922/EGR2023.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y