Don’t know what Air Protein is? Dr. Lisa Dyson joins me on The Plantbased Business Hour to discuss just that and how protein made from CO2 could help to swiftly shift the global food supply system.
Specifically, we discuss
- What is Air Protein and Air Protein Flour?
- What is the Closed Carbon Cycle? It sounds so darn efficient, why haven’t we seen this more in the mainstream?
- Does Air Protein make meat or the flour from which others will make microbial meat? What is the taste/texture of same?
- What is the role for Air Protein beyond space and how does it compare to cellular and fermented proteins which have many of the same benefits of reduced land, water, hormones, antibiotics, etc.?
- What are the risks of microbes, specifically hydrogentrophs, if any?
- What is the time frame for Air Protein to be mainstream?
- What is the profile of an Air Protein investor? Those interested in science and space or those interested in a shifting food supply system?
Here is a transcript and highlight clip from our conversation.
Elysabeth: There is a lot going on in the food innovation space with microbes as they offer the benefits of not needing a lot of land, water, hormones, antibiotics; many of the downfalls of factory farming. Then there’s also cultivated meat, of course, which is not a fermented process but again saving on land, water, time, hormones, antibiotics, etc. So how do you see Air Protein fitting into that landscape of novel proteins as we shift to a new global food supply system?
Dr. Lisa Dyson: All those are necessary, as you said, as we shift to a new way of making food and in particular, a new way of making meat. Those are instrumental to solving this challenge. I mean, the meat industry itself is a 1.4 trillion dollar industry. So, it’s humongous. There’s a lot of people buying a lot of meat out there and what’s different about us and what’s unique is that we have this carbon negative process; carbon negative fermentation as it were.
If you put a box around our system, CO2 comes in and the protein comes out so that when we make our meat, you compare that meat on a plate as if it were a piece of meat that came from a cow. You’re going to get a huge carbon footprint versus a carbon negative process that made [our meat]. And because of the carbon nature, the fact that we’re doing a kind of reverse fermentation you can call it or air-based fermentation, the fact that we’re doing that and we don’t require any arable land for our protein and we don’t require sugar or any of those other kinds of inputs, means that we use significantly less land versus the alternatives. Of course, along with that comes significantly less water. And so, in essence, what we have is the most sustainable way to make protein and then that allows us to make ultra sustainable meat. And we’re focused not just on sustainability, although that’s why we built the company, but we’re also focused on nutrition and delivering nutrients to consumers, as well.
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