Most vegans know the best way to order pizza at any chain restaurant: ask if the sauce and crust are vegan, add further veggie toppings, and maintain the cheese. However what if these chains provided a gooey, stretchy, dairy-identical mozzarella however made with out harming any animals or the atmosphere? Recreation-changer, proper?
This actuality may come as quickly as subsequent yr due to Korean conglomerate CJ CheilJedang. In 2019, it acquired Schwan’s Firm—the second largest frozen meals firm within the US—which owns frozen pizza model Pink Baron. General, the Korean firm is value $23 billion and holds a 25-percent stake in america frozen pizza market.
New Tradition
CJ CheilJedang’s newest funding is in New Tradition, a California-based food-technology firm that makes dairy-identical vegan cheese by harnessing the facility of precision fermentation.
As an organization, CJ CheilJedang has 60 years of expertise in areas similar to fermentation expertise, flavoring improvement, and plant-based protein elements. Its funding in New Tradition is synergetic with its personal mission of supporting animal-free innovation.
“Our partnership with New Tradition reinforces CJ CheilJedang’s different protein funding technique, and underscores the overwhelming demand for animal-free elements throughout the business,” Yunil Hwang, CEO of the BIO Enterprise Unit at CJ CheilJedang, mentioned in an announcement. “New Tradition’s animal-free mozzarella will usher in a brand new period of bio-based improvements within the dairy class.”
Vegan cheese made higher with microbial fermentation
New Tradition’s founder, New Zealand-born Matt Gibson, was impressed to develop a viable vegan answer to cheese after witnessing the destruction that conventional dairy manufacturing continues to have on his homeland.
To provide conventional dairy, feminine cows are impregnated en masse, then separated from their calves (who’re usually despatched to slaughter for veal), after which milked in the course of their brief lives earlier than being despatched to slaughter themselves.
New Tradition
Gibson discovered a greater method to make dairy protein by turning his consideration to microbes which can be utilized to precise casein—the protein answerable for a lot of the traits tied to dairy cheese similar to mouthfeel, stretchiness, soften, and extra.
New Tradition makes use of precision fermentation to coach microbes to provide the essential protein, which is grown inside fermentation tanks and harvested to create a powder that serves as the bottom of its animal-free (and cholesterol-free) cheese.
Gibson says that casein is the lacking ingredient in different cheese alternatives, which depend on plant elements to ship tacky flavors however lack the performance of the essential proteins in dairy.
“At New Tradition, we’re main the change to an animal-free dairy future, beginning with our melty, stretchy mozzarella,” Gison tells VegNews.
Whereas the corporate could make each sort of cheese utilizing this course of, Gibson selected vegan mozzarella as New Tradition’s debut product to deal with a key phase of America’s cheese business, which produces 6.2 metric tons of dairy cheese yearly.
New Tradition
Creating dairy-identical cheese on this manner, versus conventional animal agriculture, comes with many advantages, together with a serious lower in greenhouse gasoline emissions, decrease water and land utilization, and, after all, no animal exploitation.
New Tradition’s on a vegan pizza mission
The newest funding from CJ CheilJedang follows New Tradition’s $25 million collection A funding spherical in 2021. This yr, the corporate additionally introduced a serious partnership with agri-business big ADM which is able to assist New Tradition commercialize its vegan cheese.
Armed with all of those sources, New Tradition goals to place its revolutionary animal-free cheese on menus at pizzerias nationwide in 2023—which may fully remodel the way in which Individuals eat pizza for good.
New Tradition
“This funding from CJ is validation of New Tradition’s achievements and ambitions from one of many world’s main meals, biotech, and fermentation gamers,” Gibson says.
“We’re thrilled to have CJ on board and are trying ahead to working with them as New Tradition continues to make nice progress on our journey towards commercialization subsequent yr,” Gibson says.
Lately, two out of the highest three pizza chains within the nation, specifically Pizza Hut, Domino’s, and Little Caesars have toyed with plant-based meat choices (Past Meat at Pizza Hut and Discipline Roast at Little Caesars). And whereas these chains delved deep into vegan choices abroad, none have launched dairy-free cheese domestically.
Maybe dairy-identical cheese made with microbial fermentation, supported by a $23 billion Korean conglomerate and agri-business big ADM, will help these chains lastly put vegan cheese on the menu?
For the most recent vegan information, learn:
Anna Starostinetskaya is the Senior Information Editor at VegNews and is at all times keeping track of all issues vegan in her house metropolis of San Francisco, CA and all over the place else.
