Food industry treading carefully over the use of precision fermentation as a substitute for traditional production

The New Zealand food industry retains a level of scepticism about precision fermentation, even as it explores it further to spread its risk.  

This is despite the technology’s offer of equivalent food done more cheaply. 

Industry experts say precision fermentation will consume far more raw ingredients than is commonly supposed and will not necessarily be a short cut to low-cost, high-volume food production as its supporters suggest. But hardly anyone is ruling it out. 

 Precision fermentation uses genetically modified microorganisms to produce specific proteins, enzymes, and other compounds. It's more controlled than traditional forms of fermentation such as wine making. It does not produce the same unneeded by-products such as sediment and makes products such as proteins rather than alcohol.

The latest push for precision fermentation comes from the regional promotional organisation, Thriving Southland. A report was written for it by the consultancy Lodestone NZ, and was paid for by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE). 

From the start, this paper hedges its bets, saying it aims to “spark debate”, and warning that large scale commercial use of precision fermentation “remains challenging.”

But it also presses the case for more research, saying business as usual is not an option. Its argument follows a long tradition of thought that producing protein via a cow is more costly than doing it in a laboratory. And it says work is underway in New Zealand as well as many other countries including the United States, France, Germany, Israel, South Africa and Australia. It adds laboratory-initiated food is even more important in import-dependent states like Singapore.

Precision fermentation uses genetically engineered microorganisms, grown in a controlled environment, working on a sugar-based feedstock. It can make enzymes, fats, flavouring agents and vitamins, as well as proteins, and does so by using a host organism to recognise the DNA sequence of organic compounds without having to be exposed to the original animal or plant species.

Much of the Thriving Southland report focuses on New Zealand’s export giant, the dairy sector, which earns more than a third of all revenue derived from exporting goods. It says precision fermentation is already used for dairy ingredients for processed foods without most customers being aware of the fact. 

“Milk’s homogeneity makes it easier to replicate its constituent components (e.g. proteins) using alternative protein technologies,” the report says.

“Precision fermentation has the potential to disrupt the dairy ingredients market. This is an important distinction because most of New Zealand’s dairy exports are sold as dairy ingredients across a range of market segments.”

However, DairyNZ has a different and more sceptical view. It starts by saying even well-established dairy substitutes like oat milk rarely have the same level of the protein content as bovine milk. It adds people would have to increase their consumption of alternatives by 13% to achieve the same protein intake as milk. 

“There is no comparable study for precision-fermented milks but, in theory, it is possible to match the nutritional profile of milk proteins and some of the other components with this method,” DairyNZ says.

“However, this is complex and, therefore, costly.”

DairyNZ adds that the carbon footprint of its industry in New Zealand is low, and the methane output from dairying is short lived compared with carbon dioxide from the energy systems needed for laboratories. And DairyNZ makes another argument:  that precision fermentation has a narrow focus, producing a single protein from one operation, while milk produced by a cow has six main proteins which occur naturally.    

This point is taken up by Jacqueline Rowarth. She’s a director of Dairy NZ. But speaking as a dairy farmer and adjunct professor at Lincoln University, she says bovine milk has the advantage of being a whole product, not a single protein made from precision fermentation. 

And she says large scale use of the technology would need a lot of sugar as feedstock, and that would need to be grown somewhere.

“The thing about livestock is that most of the places that are suitable for grazing in New Zealand are places where you cannot grow crops, because of topography and climate, and sugar is a crop,” she says.

“New Zealand has this wonderful ability to grow pastoral grass and clover. We should be concentrating on that and getting even better at it rather than importing sugar and making precision proteins which are not a whole product, just ingredients.”

These reservations have not deterred Fonterra from looking into precision fermentation. It has joined forces with a Dutch nutritional company DSM to form the company Vivici, which launched a whey protein product earlier this year.

Artificial food has come along way since the famous US$330,000 hamburger unveiled in 2013. But it still faces big obstacles, and even the Thriving Southland report says; “commercial scale up of new precision fermentation products remains challenging. It takes time, requires deep expertise and ongoing investment of significant sums of capital.”

It also suggests current laws on gene technology would be a problem. 

But it says if regulations change, then New Zealand’s expertise and engineering facilities could be applied to precision fermentation.

“Opportunities may arise if we look hard enough.”