Modern commercial food production faces some fundamental challenges, including a shaky supply chain and a changing environment. One potential solution to both of those issues, and perhaps more, has been emerging in recent years: precision fermentation.
Traditional fermentation – the biological process in which microbes break down some substrate to produce other cells or molecules – is widely understood. Think beer, cheese and soy sauce, all of which rely on fermentation. Precision fermentation is based on the same concept, except it taps biotechnology to create specific, desirable molecules not naturally produced by fermentation.
“Precision fermentation uses microorganisms as mini factories to produce specific molecules of interest,” explains Céline Schiff-Deb, chief science officer of food innovation platform Mista.
“A few of these new specialty ingredients have been gaining regulatory approvals and are commercialized, ranging from milk proteins to sweet proteins,” she says. “As the technology scales and costs go down, we can expect more large CPG companies, foodservices and retailers to incorporate them into their products.”
Precision fermentation offers solutions to several issues facing commercial food production. A key one is sustainability – theoretically, precision fermentation can produce proteins with less resources than traditional agriculture. Another is supply chain reliability, since these proteins can be consistently created in a controlled environment. And finally, food quality, since the process can be crafted to create precisely the attributes desired.
“Precision fermentation is an important method to produce specialty proteins used to improve texture, flavor or nutrition,” says Bryan Quoc Le, a food scientist and industry consultant. “I believe its primary virtue is being able to produce components with outsized impact on the alternative protein food product.”
Case studies: Onego Bio and Nourish
Onego Bio and Nourish Ingredients are examples of companies producing food products with precision fermentation.
Onego Bio, which plans to bring a precision fermentation-created egg white alternative to market this year, is a spin-off of VTT Technical Research Centre in Finland. Chris Lewandowski, Onego Bio’s chief technology officer, spent 15 years at that facility developing protein production platforms.
“Chris and the VTT team discovered that ovalbumin, the hero protein found in eggs, could be developed with precision fermentation,” says Maija Itkonen, CEO and co-founder of Onego Bio. “In 2022, Onego Bio spun out of VTT with a goal of commercializing that specific protein production capability.”
The company trained the microorganism Trichoderma reessei – a fungus – to produce ovalbumin. They feed the microorganism glucose and essential nutrients and minerals, which creates an environment in which the fungus can produce ovalbumin at scale. After fermentation, the protein is separated from the biomass and dried, resulting in a protein powder they call Bioalbumen, which has an amino acid sequence identical to the natural protein found in egg whites.
“This translates to a dramatic 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and 95% decrease in land use compared to egg white protein from laying hens,” Itkonen says.
“The microorganism is special also in that it can utilize may types of carbohydrate sources as its feed, making it possible to utilize alternative feedstocks in the future, for example food industry side streams such as pea starch or wheat bran, to minimize environmental impact even further by eliminating reliance on corn sugar.”
Itkonen says Bioalbumin has the same functional properties as traditional egg whites, including foaming, gelling, binding and emulsifying, and food manufacturers should be able to incorporate into existing recipes without significant adjustments. She envisions applications in baked goods, confectionaries, pasta and ready-made meals.
The company hopes to offer Bioalbumin at a “competitive price point” to regular eggs, Itkonen says, but they see value beyond dollars and cents: “Bioalbumen enhances supply chain resiliency, ensures price stability, improves food safety and helps customers meet their ESG targets by reducing land use, water use and climate impact.”
Nourish Ingredients has developed two lipid products using precision fermentation – Tastilux and Creamilux – and expects to enter both into the market in 2025.
“Through molecular dissection, we identified the most potent natural fats responsible for real cooking reactions,” explains James Petrie, the company’s founder and CEO. “Then we went about recreating these fats. We discovered specific lipid molecules in nature, particularly in fungal strains, that could be optimized through precision fermentation to create the same highly potent, flavor-contributing fats.”
Tastilux and Creamilux are not one-to-one replacements of lipids. Rather, they are additives that increase the value and yield of the other ingredients. A key characteristic is that they behave like traditional animal fats during the cooking process, helping plant-based alternatives seem more “animalistic.”
Tastilux, which contains long-chain omega-6 phospholipids encapsulated within fungal cells, goes through the natural Maillard reaction during the cooking process, which creates the meaty aroma and taste consumers expect from meat.
Similarly, Creamilux creates the mouthfeel, taste and function of real dairy when added to alternative dairy products. Creamilux even has applications in traditional dairy products, Petrie says, by helping maintain the taste of cheese, cream and butter.
“Creamilux provides a genuine creamy texture and excellent emulsification properties that replicate the mouth-coating sensation of full cream,” Petrie says.
These products can help food manufacturers reduce the complexity of their formulas, he asserts.
“One of the key advantages of our products is their potency – they achieve high performance at very low inclusion rates,” he says. “For example, Tastilux has been effective at just 0.5% inclusion. This high potency means manufacturers can actually simplify their ingredient lists, moving away from complex methods like hydrogenation or chemical additives and artificial flavors and moving toward a more natural ingredient list.”
There are existing products
While those two products are in the 2025 pipeline, there are a number of products made with precision fermentation that already are on the market.
For example, Oobli produces chocolate products made with sweet proteins – primarily brazzein -- made with precision fermentation. These proteins naturally occur in some fruits and berries found in West Africa. With precision fermentation, Oobli creates the same proteins without harvesting those plants. Oobli’s products include a variety of dark and milk chocolate bars.
TurtleTree has created lactoferrin, a milk protein, with precision fermentation. Lactoferrin, which helps with iron regulation, immune support and gut health, exists in small amounts in natural milk, but TurtleTree’s process allows for higher volume production with no animal involvement.
The company calls its product LF+. TurtleTree has partnered with Cadence Cold Brew to make an espresso shot for endurance athletes that includes LF+.
In fact, there are enough companies now pursuing precision fermentation-derived products that nine of them formed the Precision Fermentation Alliance in 2023. A press release announcing the formation of the alliance stated that it will help ensure that regulators practice science-based decision-making with regard to regulating precision fermentation.
“As we look to extend the use of this technology to produce an ever-expanding list of food ingredients, such as proteins and fats, we will be able to produce a wide variety of our most beloved foods animal-free, and with a much lower environmental footprint,” said Irina Gerry, CMO of Change Foods and vice chair of the alliance.
“Ushering in this new era in food requires clear communication, thoughtful policy, consistent regulation and stakeholder engagement, which this alliance is positioned to do,” she adds.
There are limitations
Precision fermentation holds a lot of promise, but it is not without challenges.
When precision fermentation is used to create a potent additive, as in the case of Tastilux and Creamilux, the process can be scaled up to meet demand. But when it used to create an ingredient required in great quantity, such as bulk alternative proteins, scaling up is a challenge.
Precision fermentation requires a lot of equipment at multiple stages. A system includes upstream processing equipment – such as heat exchangers and mixers -- that ensures that all the components arrive at the fermenter free of contaminants; the fermentation tank, which is a complex piece of technology that needs to be controlled to create optimal conditions for growing the particular microbe; and the downstream equipment, such as filtration and separation equipment.
Scaling all of that up to high-volume levels while maintaining quality throughout is a tall order.
“There remain challenges to applying precision fermentation to high-volume food production,” says Quoc Le. “Cost remains relatively high because the energy requirement for growing precision fermentation is quite high, primarily from aeration and agitation. It remains less economical to produce bulk alternative proteins using precision fermentation than from conventional agriculture or using plant-based or fungal-based bulk materials.”
If an ingredient manufacturer is able to use agricultural side streams – material that otherwise may go to waste – as the feedstock input in a precision fermentation process, the cost may be lower than if virgin feedstock is used. Quoc Le co-authored a paper that evaluated the potential of using agricultural side streams in precision fermentation.
“The two that show the most promise are soy meal and canola meal, which are side streams of the production of soybean oil and canola oil,” he says. “Both side streams contain a significant amount of amino acids that show promise as a nitrogen feedstock for precision fermentation.”
Another limitation to the ramp up of precision fermentation is that the microorganisms doing the work struggle in the presence of contaminants, so the feedstock must be refined and processed, adding cost.
Precision fermentation also can be limited by the natural evolution of rapidly reproducing organisms, Quoc Le says. “The microorganisms used in precision fermentation have a tendency to genetically drift, losing yield and efficiency over time.”
And on top of those challenges, products created with precision fermentation typically require some kind of regulatory approval, such as “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) certification.
Despite these challenges, the promise of food created by precision fermentation is great, asserts Schiff-Deb.
“In my opinion, in the near term, the most successful precision fermentation-derived ingredients will be highly functional specialty ingredients that offer a clear value proposition to the end product, while remaining cost-competitive in use,” she says. “As the technology matures and prices come down, drop-in replacements for bulk animal proteins – such as milk, eggs and meat – will become increasingly attractive.”
