Food production is accelerating the climate crisis, but AI and other emerging technologies could turn things around

• Many common consumer food products are derived from fossil fuels.
• Some companies are looking at ways to produce these products through other means.
• AI and computational biology are helping manufacturers produce alternatives, like cultivated animal-fat cells.
• This story is part of "How Emerging Tech Is Changing Everything," a series exploring the transformative impact of tech innovations across industries.

Multinational consumer food brands, including the fast-food giants McDonald's and Burger King, are under increasing pressure to decarbonize their supply chains and meet global net-zero and ESG goals. Many common ingredients used in consumer products are derived from fossil fuels or produced through unsustainable farming methods. To slow the climate crisis, the transition to more sustainable production methods is necessary, but the methods in use now can be resource-intensive and costly. 

In pursuit of a more sustainable and environmentally friendly future, some companies are beginning to use artificial intelligence and bioengineering to develop new food ingredients that may one day replace environmentally harmful substances. 

The UK-based bioengineering firm Twig, for example, is using AI and robotics to create sustainable alternatives to ingredients derived from fossil fuels or intensive farming. These include ingredients like acetone, isoprene, and palmitic acid, which are found in everyday items such as margarines, paint strippers, cosmetics, soap, detergents, and more. Twig is working on replacements for these chemicals that would be created using bio-fermented bacteria cells.

"Our AI tells us how to make sustainable, bioidentical replacements using bio-fermented bacteria cells, reducing our impact on the planet and bringing supply chain security," Russ Tucker, the founder of Twig, told Insider. 

Accelerating progress with AI

Using traditional bioengineering processes, it can take four to 10 years to develop a potential ingredient strain, which is often costly and there's no guarantee of success. Twig employs a software-driven approach, using a design-build-test cycle. 

Twig's robotic platform automates the screening of tens of thousands of bacteria cells, generating large datasets in record time. This data is then analyzed to determine the most optimal and sustainable way to produce ingredients. 

"We believe we can be 10 times faster and 10 times cheaper than current commercial bioengineering approaches," Tucker told Insider.

Toward sustainable alternatives

The meat industry is a major contributor to pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions. To address these environmental issues, sustainable alternatives are essential. Today, most alternative protein products rely on plant-based oils, which lack the taste and cooking properties of traditional animal fats. Additionally, the production of palm oil, a common source of plant-based fats, presents its own sustainability challenges such as deforestation.

Hoxton Farms, a London-based biotech company, is working on creating cultivated fat as a sustainable alternative to traditional animal fats. The company aims to make meat alternatives taste like the real thing by growing cruelty-free, sustainable animal fats, which would be combined with plant-based proteins. 

"We collect just a small sample of fat cells from a pig before growing them in a process called cell culturing," said Ed Steele, the company's cofounder. "Over a few weeks, those cells multiply, grow, and we harvest juicy, cultivated fat cells."

Tech is essential in making cultivated meat commercially viable. Hoxton Farms' interdisciplinary approach combines computational biology, mathematical modeling, and machine learning to optimize the production process and customize taste and nutrition profiles. And the company says its approach allows it to achieve cost parity with plant oils at a commercial scale. 

Regulatory challenges and the path forward

While the potential for sustainable and alternative food products is promising, regulatory challenges exist. 

Before a new ingredient is approved in the UK, manufacturers must navigate the Food Standards Agency's novel foods process, which can be long and bureaucratic, Steele said. "After Brexit, we retained EU law governing novel foods and inherited a process that is not fit for purpose." Meanwhile, the regulatory process in the US is not streamlined: The Department of Agriculture regulates animal meat, and the Food and Drug Administration regulates plant-based meat alternatives. Cell-based meats are jointly regulated by the FDA and the USDA. 

Bringing this new tech to market could also face pushback from the food industry, which can complicate the approval and labeling process for alternative producers. 

"The traditional protein industry is going a bit fake-news on alternative proteins," said Shivin Kohli, a senior manager at Access Partnership, a tech-policy advisory board. "There have been challenges recently on calling alternative milks 'milks.' This is because the dairy industry doesn't think they are, strictly speaking, milk."

Kohli said that argument "severely jeopardizes the consumer attractiveness of alternatives. If alternative proteins are having issues with consumer acceptance already, can you imagine how bad it would be if Impossible couldn't call itself 'meat'? Policy needs to be very clear about guardrailing this kind of pushback."

Government administrations need to ensure a level playing field, Kohli said. "No one is saying don't regulate novel proteins and ingredients, but don't expect there to be more onerous requirements than traditional proteins to just appease the big players such as for labeling, safety, and inspection."