Sustainable proteins in the United Kingdom

Public investment fills a very different role than private sector investment. Unlike companies, which have an incentive to protect their research and innovation and seek individual return on investments, public funds can be invested into long-term, forward-looking R&D questions that can accelerate entire industries. As has already happened in the field of renewable energy, governments can play a unique role by prioritising open-access R&D funding that ensures the benefits can be democratised, further catalysing innovation across the whole sector.

At the highest level, the UK Government should pursue a three-pronged approach of:

1. Earmarking at least £225 million in funds for investment into sustainable proteins between now and 2027.
2. Ensuring a significant proportion of these funds are directed into the open-access research needs for sustainable proteins
3. Channelling more funding than is currently available into the food system transition.

Concretely, the Government should take the following immediate steps:

• Earmark at least£100 millionto fund academic research. These funds should be used to:

• Fund BBSRC, EPSRC, and Innovate UK callsdedicated to sustainable protein research.
• Establishing sustainable protein departments in high potential universities, allocating funds for new grant programmes and to modernising university labs.
• Annual funding for scientific community building, such as grants for funding research networks and conferences.
• Earmark at least £125 millionfor R&D for commercial development and infrastructure scale-up. Specifically these funds should be used to:

1. Establish anInnovation Cluster dedicated to accelerating the R&D development and commercial applicability of sustainable proteins.The centre should act as an accelerator between the public and private sectors, bringing together researchers, universities and companies, while maintaining a global perspective. This should be backed by at least £50 million in funding.
2. Allocate £75 million in grants to start-ups, as recommended by theNational Food Strategy.

• Leverage the Agri-Tech Centresto drive forward progress by developing specific calls on plant-based and cultivated proteins and bringing discussion on sustainable protein crops into the work of the Agri-EPI Centre, CIEL, and CHAP.

For a more detailed breakdown of our R&D recommendations for the UK, please see ourbriefing.

For plant-based and cultivated meat to fulfil their potential to create a more secure, sustainable and just food system, consumers need to be confident in the food they eat. Currently in the UK, many sustainable protein products will fall under specific regulatory frameworks for the approval of novel foods and – in some cases – GM foods.

Given the early stage of development of the sustainable protein sector, the UK Government should prioritise ensuring a clear and efficient regulatory approval process for innovative plant-based, fermentation-made and cultivated proteins to come to market. This is critical to ensure that regulation enables sector innovation in the UK while at the same time ensuring that sustainable proteins fulfil the highest food safety standards.

The process for obtaining any required premarket approvals, as well as the requirements of ongoing regulation (safety testing, inspections), should be science-based and include specified timelines for review. As a general principle, the safety of the final product as consumed should be the primary consideration.

植物和栽培肉类产业BOB体育投注网址scale up in the UK, sufficient access to capital is essential for companies to be able to make the investments needed in manufacturing facilities, equipment and operating expenses. Today, the shortage of processing and production capacity is one of the most limiting factors holding back the growth of the industry.

Although venture capital has fuelled the industry to date, this model is not suited for capital-intensive fixed assets like processing and production facilities, which have longer payback periods and lower annual expected returns. It will therefore become increasingly critical to generate investment from sources that have the ability to deploy significant amounts of capital and are willing to provide opportunities to utilise non-traditional financial instruments.

The UK Government should:

• Provide loan guaranteesto mitigate risks for lenders, an approach that has successfully been used in other sectors like clean energy. This would enable the sustainable protein industry to receive debt financing from banks and other institutional investors that normally do not make loans to higher-risk entities.

• Provide funding for the establishment of sustainable protein production facilities, potentially by providing incentives to repurpose from other industries and/or from offline manufacturing.

• Increase availability of grant funding for sustainable protein startupsto provide non-dilutive funding options.

• Establishgrant programmes or prize incentivesto develop supply chain solutions to address projected future bottlenecks (for which there is otherwise no current economic incentive to begin that R&D).

• Create a fund to offer leasing and financing of the equipment and facilities植物肉公关所必需的oduction, such as extruders. Enabling manufacturers to lease needed production equipment would allow them to replace high-cost, episodic capital expenditures with lower-cost, predictable operating expenses.