Alternative protein research
Developing plant-based, cultivated, and fermentation-derived alternative proteins
This profile is tailored towards students studying agricultural sciences, basic medicine, biological sciences, business, chemical sciences, computer science, economics, engineering, law, maths and physics, however we expect there to be valuable open research questions that could be pursued by students in other disciplines.
Why is this a pressing problem?
Each year, the production of animal products subjects hundreds of billions of land and aquatic animals to lives of extreme confinement, painful mutilations, and inhumane slaughter. The Sentience Institute estimates that in 2019, 99% of land animals in the US were factory farmed, with a similar percentage of farmed fish in comparable conditions. These animals are particularly likely to experience welfare issues such as untreated injuries, chronic infections, separation from their offspring and other severe constraints on their natural behaviours.
Animal agriculture also poses risks to humans. Poor conditions lead to a higher prevalence of disease among animals, which in turn increases the likelihood of pathogens passing from animals to humans and causing pandemics. Unhealthy animals require more antibiotics, potentially contributing to rising antimicrobial resistance in humans (although more research is needed to establish the size of this effect).
The animal agricultural sector is responsible for about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Growing crops to feed them to farm animals rather than growing crops directly for human consumption is also vastly inefficient. By 2050, there will be nearly 10 billion people in the world to feed, and demand for animal products is expected to rise significantly. To produce enough food by 2050, we will need a more efficient system.
Cultivated and plant-based alternatives to animal products might be able to mitigate all these problems. Although previous forecasts of when cultivated meat might become widely available have been over-optimistic and newer forecasts suggest it is not likely to be available in the next few decades, speeding up its availability could avert a huge amount of suffering. However, innovations in many parts of the production process are necessary to bring its widespread availability forward. Academic research is particularly helpful for moving the field forward as the research results are available for everyone to learn from, whereas research done in private companies is often confidential.
See Bruce Friedrich’s introduction to the importance of this research below.
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Contributors: This profile was last updated 31/12/2022. Thanks to Michelle Hauser and Marie Krátká for first creating this profile. Thanks to Simone Costa, Jeffray Behr, Amy Huang and Seren Kell for helpful feedback on this profile. All errors remain our own. Learn more about how we create our profiles.
