Is plant-based fish and cell-based chicken the future of food?

Inside the International Centre for Culinary Arts in Abu Dhabi, taste-testing is under way with judges trying and assessing different types of cell-based chicken, fermentation-derived chicken and plant-based fish for a competition that seeks to revolutionise food production and consumption.

The XPrize Feed the Next Billion competition, involving teams from China, Argentina, South Korea, Canada, Austria and Estonia was launched four years ago, and will crown a winner in October with a $15 million prize.

In 2020, XPrize, a US-based non-profit that seeks to encourage the altruistic development of technology, teamed up with Aspire, the programme management and business development arm of Abu Dhabi's Advanced Technology Research Council announced the competition with hopes of trying to transform the way food is produced and in turn, help combat hunger.

What started as more than 350 teams vying for the $15 million prize has been whittled down to six.

Besides taste, the various food offerings from participating teams are judged on structure, preparation and cookability, in addition to aroma and overall similarity to their animal-origin equivalents.

“The call that we put out was that we wanted any company, any team, anywhere in the world to develop a chicken breast or a fish fillet in its full structure that we're used to without reliance or animals,” said Caroline Kolta, programme director for XPrize Feed the Next Billion.

“These alternatives need to hit specific targets, other than being similar in structure and muscle, they had to be nutritionally equivalent to the chicken breast or fish fillet, they had to cost the same at scale and they had to be safe and eliminate the use of antibiotics, and most importantly, they had to be delicious,” she added.

The competition has been taking place amid a backdrop of concern of a growing world population at a time of climate change.

According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), meat and dairy account for approximately 14.5 per cent of global greenhouse gasses.

Finding a protein alternatives could make a significant impact by lessening the world's reliance on environmentally taxing animal agriculture methods, while also making it easier to feed a growing population which is expected by some estimates to reach 10 billion by 2050.

Alternative proteins, while not necessarily new to the overall food marketplace, do have several shortcomings in terms of nutritional value and cost barriers. They also tend to skew towards beef and pork alternatives.

“XPrize shifted the focus,” said Veena Hausen, programme manager for Aspire. “There was nobody really looking at chicken breast or fish fillet.”

Prize organisers said that while beef offers the highest margin of profit for food companies, that margin caused a gap in the market where fish and chicken are often overlooked in terms of protein alternatives.

A potential added bonus is that chicken and fish are more widely consumed, proving that there is market demand for more protein alternatives.

“In the US, burgers are a staple and in high-end restaurants you go and have a steak, but when you really think of mass consumption and a global consumer, chicken and fish are a priority,” said Ms Kolta of XPrize. “Chicken or fish might not be immediately as lucrative, but that's what we think about when we design the competition, we want to make it incentivised for innovators when it's not obvious.”

The $15 million prize, according to organisers, is part of the overall plan to provide that incentive to spark innovation for chicken and fish protein alternatives, potentially providing winners with capital to scale their products.

In addition to the taste-testing, food scientists, culinary chefs, environmental life-cycle assessment scientists and business experts make up the judging panels which will help to select a winning team.

Of the six finalists contending for the top prize, one of the teams from China is focusing on cell-based chicken, which involves the extraction of stem cells from animals and placing them in a bio-reactor to help grow the cells into something resembling a chicken breast.

Four of the other teams from South Korea, Canada, Austria and Estonia, are focusing on plant-based protein, in this case, plant-based fish, which is derived from plants such as soy, rice, potatoes, peas and grains in a way that resembles the texture fish.

One team, from Argentina, is working on fermentation-derived chicken, which involves the growth of micro organisms in a controlled environment.

The environmental footprint of all three methods, according to prize organisers, is also being taken into consideration throughout the judging process.

The competition is also supported by The Tony Robbins Foundation, a US-based non-profit which seeks to provide millions of meals around the world each year and award grants to health and human services organisations.