Assembly Select Committee on Alternative Protein Innovation

Well, good morning everyone. Thank you for your patience and welcome to our first informational hearing for the Select Committee on Alternative Protein Innovation on the State of Alternative Protein Innovation. As many of you know, California is home to a growing and leading alternative protein sector; from research to innovative companies across the state.

Alternative proteins are meat, dairy and eggs made from plants, fermentation and cell cultivation to give the same sensory experience as your everyday burger, steak or your ordinary cup of milk or eggs. The state has made great strides in advancing this innovation.

In 2022, the State of California, on a request that I made, supported by our colleagues, including Assemblymember Aguilar-Curry, invested $5 million in the University of California to support and expand research and development efforts of alternative proteins.

Our state was the very first to make a public investment in the research of alternative proteins and it really has paid dividends. Additionally, our state is home to many plant-based companies, cultivated meat companies and fermentation food companies in the nation. Most in the nation, really and really in the world.

Despite these successes, the alternative protein sector still faces many challenges. And for our first hearing we will get an overview of alternative proteins, how they are part of the sustainable food supplies and climate solutions here from alternative protein companies located here in California and get a snapshot of the cutting-edge research being done in this space.

Our state is really well positioned to continue to be a leader in this sector. We have three panels of speakers leading in the innovative work of alternative protein. The first will be the potential of alternative proteins, talking about climate, environment and security benefits, then sealing the future inside the alternative protein industry and driving innovation.

California leading research ecosystems for future innovation There will be an opportunity at the end of panel presentations for public comments for those members, the public wishing to share some comments and of course colleagues will have the opportunity after each panel to ask questions as well.

This information hearing is being live streamed on the Assembly's website and will be uploaded for the public to view. This is really important, especially for those of you that may not be here in the Capitol very often. You'll see us get up in and out, but please don't take that as us have not having interest.

I also have to present this morning in the Senate Labor Committee. We have a lot of things happening at the same time. That's why we live stream it, that's why we archive it, and that's why our staffs are sitting at their desk watching it, including the many members that are part of the Select Committee.

And I'll note that this is the first of its kind I don't know if any other state that has a Select Committee like this and is actually having formal hearings of this nature. And so, it is a really important moment.

But as we move forward with this Committee, we plan on going out on the ground, going to Southern California, going to Ag country, going to the Bay Area, visiting some of these companies, and really learning more about what the state can do to help SPUR and better support this incredible industry.

And so, with that, I have a couple colleagues here if you would like to say a few comments.

First of all, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much. I, unfortunately, I'm one of those that have to run to a meeting and I'm glad you have it live streamed so we can look at it again. But thank you for being here.

Thank you for taking the time and this is an interesting and innovative time and I'm glad to be a part of it. Thank you.

I'll just echo those comments. Good morning and say good morning.

Well, thank you all very much. And we'll go ahead and start with the first panel on the potential of alternative proteins. And we have with us one person live, one person virtual.

So, we have Shayna Fertig, the Senior Advisor to the President at the Good Food Institute, as well as Zane Swanson, Deputy Director and Fellow of Global Food and Water Security Program, the Center for Strategic International Studies.

And each panel will have up to 20 minutes and there'll be opportunities for members to ask questions at appropriate times as well. And so, Ms. Fertig, whenever you're ready.

Great, thank you.

And put the microphone a little closer.

Is this better?

Okay.

Well, thank you Assemblymember Kalra, for organizing this hearing and thank you Assemblymembers for being here today. My name is Shayna Fertig, and I am the Senior Advisor to the President at the Good Food Institute. I live in San Francisco, and I'm really honored to be here today. Not sure if that works.

I can just say, next slide. Is that better? Okay. All right. So today I'll be providing some background information on why alternative proteins are a necessary investment, how they can help support California's climate and environmental goals, and how California can maintain its leadership in this sector. Next slide.

First, I'll provide a quick overview of the Good Food Institute, or GFI. We are a nonprofit, science driven think tank that is fully funded by philanthropy. We are helping to build a more sustainable, secure and just food system.

And we work across the scientific, industry, and policy landscapes to ensure that alternative proteins are part of the toolkit to address environmental global health and food security challenges. Next slide. The key question that we are working to address is how are we going to feed nearly 10 billion people by the year 2050?

Our current food system relies on industrial animal agriculture, and global demand for meat is expected to rise nearly 50% by the year 2050. Meeting this demand with conventional meat alone will not be sustainable, efficient, or safe. Animal agriculture is responsible for nearly 15% of all global greenhouse gas emissions.

It uses 75% of agricultural land, even as it produces just a third of the global protein supply. And importantly, industrial animal agriculture is the number one user of medically important antibiotics, which when overused, contribute to antimicrobial resistance, which is expected to result in the death of 10 million people annually by 2050. Next slide.

So, one approach to solve these daunting issues is to ask people or persuade people to eat less meat. But we know that meat tastes good and people want to be eating it. Even here in the US where we've been eating meat for a long time, the per capita meat consumption shows no signs of slowing down.

There is another option that we think is much more tractable to make the meat, egg, and dairy products that people love in a more sustainable and efficient way: alternative proteins.

Meat made from plants, cultivated from animal cells, or produced via fermentation are designed to taste the same or better and cost the same or less than the conventional animal products that they're replacing.

We think that this analogizes well to electric vehicles and renewable energy, similar to how we do not expect consumers to be driving less or necessarily consuming less energy, but we're providing them with an option to do so in a more sustainable way.

We think the same can be true with meat, where alternative proteins can be that more sustainable and efficient way to consume meat. The term alternative proteins encompasses plant-based fermentation derived and cultivated meat.

Plant based meat is meat produced directly from plants, composed of proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals and water, and looks, cooks and tastes just like conventional meat. Fermentation derived products use microorganisms to produce functional protein ingredients or protein biomass.

And finally, cultivated meat is meat produced directly from animal cells that are fed nutrients to enable the same biological processes that happen in an animal to make meat. Next slide. So, we'll now shift into talking about some of the environmental aspects of these products. We'll start with plant based meat.

Plant based meat emits up to 90% fewer greenhouse gas emissions and uses up to 99% less land and water than conventional meat. And here you can see on the slide some of the life cycle analysis Results from some of the more popular products on the market today. Next slide.

Cultivated meat, when produced with renewable energy, emits up to 92% fewer greenhouse gas emissions and uses up to 90% less land, with significant benefits for water use and air pollution as well. Next slide, please. How does this fit into our environmental goals here in California? We'll start with climate.

California has a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 448% by 2030 and reaching carbon neutrality by 2045. Agriculture accounts for about 8% of California's total greenhouse gas emissions, with the majority of agricultural emissions stemming from livestock operations. So, if we aim to meet carbon neutrality, we will need to diversify our protein production in California.

When we think of climate solutions, we likely think about solutions in the energy, electricity and transportation sectors. That makes sense because this is the sector that produces a large chunk of our carbon dioxide emissions.

However, when we consider methane, which is a greenhouse gas more than 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide, we see that agriculture is a huge contributor, contributing nearly 50% of all methane globally. And the largest component of this methane is enteric fermentation from livestock. So, these are the cow burps that you may have heard about.

Alternative proteins eliminate this source of methane yet have received just a minuscule fraction of the investment that a solution like renewable energy has. Next slide. So, moving from climate to conservation and biodiversity, we know that California is considered a biodiversity hotspot with more species and plants - sorry, with more species of plants and animals than any other state in the country. But that said, 292 species in California are currently listed under the Endangered Species Act as being at risk.

And with 40% of California's land used for agriculture, meeting land conservation goals like the 30 by 30 goal and protecting endangered species will require the state to produce more food on less land. Next slide. Alternative proteins offer a path to doing so. Agriculture is the dominant driver of habitat loss, driving over 75% of deforestation.

And alternative proteins use between 64 and 98% less land than conventional animal meat. Transitioning to alternative protein production can reduce pressure on our lands and restore biodiversity. And now, finally moving to water. Agriculture accounts for approximately 40% of our water use.

As a state with ongoing drought conditions, which will only be exacerbated by climate change, it's crucial for California to use our water resources as efficiently as possible and prevent water pollution. Next slide. Without investing in alternative forms of meat production, we're unlikely to accomplish this goal. Animal agriculture comprises nearly 30% of the average global consumer's water footprint.

At the same time, it leads to pollution of our water supplies. Livestock contribute 13 times as much waste as the entire US population. And their waste is stored in open air lagoons that can overflow during storms and flood local communities water supplies.

Alternative proteins have a significantly reduced water footprint and eliminate this issue of water contamination via waste. So, I've talked about the environmental issues inherent to animal agriculture and how alternative proteins can offer a solution. But why is it important for California specifically to invest in alternative proteins?

Well, we have the agricultural expertise already a leader in growing some of the main input crops for alternative proteins.

We're also already the epicenter of the alternative protein industry here in the US and we have the world class research institutions right here in our state that can drive the research breakthroughs needed for alternative proteins to reach taste and price parity with conventional products. California - next slide please.

California is home to nearly one third of all alternative protein consumer brands, manufacturers and ingredient suppliers in the country. Next slide. Spanning all three types of alternative protein innovation: plant-based fermentation, and cultivated meat.

Other states are starting to prioritize this sector and ramping up support, rivaling California's historic investment of $5 million in 2022 to support research and development at UC campuses. In 2024, Illinois matched California's level of R&D investment to leverage a $51 million federal investment. And Massachusetts recently invested $10 million to support the industry.

Support is needed both in industry led research as well as grants, loans and incentives for companies in the state to grow. California's alternative protein sector, like many novel technology industries, requires sustained public investment to succeed at scale. I hope that California can meet the moment and that brings my presentation to a close.

I look forward to answering any questions that you may have. Thank you so much.

Thank you. And if we can go ahead and hear from Zane and then after that, if there are any questions for either of you, we can move to that. So, Zane, I know is going to be presenting virtually.

Can everybody hear me all right?

Yes. Great. Yeah, we can see you in here. You just fine.

Perfect. Dear Chairman, Kalra, members of the Select Committee, thank you for granting me the opportunity to speak today on the intersection of alternative protein production and security. My sincere apologies for not being able to be there in person for this important hearing and thank you and your staff for accommodating my virtual participation.

Before I start my remarks, I'm the Deputy Director and Fellow with the Global Food and Water Security Program at CSIS, which is a nonprofit think tank operating in national security.

Our program specifically looking at concerns of domestic and global food and water security, my remarks today will be framed by two distinct but overlapping themes: how alternative proteins might mitigate global risks and how they might reinforce domestic security for the risks. As we've heard, the global population will reach about 10 billion people by 2050.

On average, that population will be wealthier, more urbanized, and consequently hungrier for meat and high protein foods. Relative to 2010, food demand, as we also heard, is expected to increase by about 56% by 2050, with meat consumption growing at least that pace.

While food security is a cornerstone of human development, economic development, and national security around the world, the pursuit of food security can, as a consequence of certain modes of production, confer and exacerbate global risks, including competition for scarce resources, pandemic emergence, climate change, and ecological degradation. Agriculture, and more broadly, the global food system has substantial environmental impacts.

Among these, the production of conventional animal foods has an outsized footprint. We've heard and will continue to hear about the many climate benefits of alternative protein production relative to the production of conventional animal foods.

As I speak to you in an air-conditioned room in Washington, D.C., where the current heat index outside and I just checked this is about 113 degrees. It can be difficult to look past animal agriculture's effect on climate alone, but there are other threats that alternative proteins can also help address.

The risking global food systems in combination with more substantial sustainable methods of food production is central to global health and well-being. Among the challenges of animal protein production is the vulnerability of those supply chains to disease emergence and transmission.

Transboundary animal diseases like the H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak that has affected 175 million birds and resulted in record high US egg prices, are hugely disruptive to food security of consumers and the economic security of farmers. When these diseases become zoonotic, spilling over into human populations, they can result in domestic and global health crises.

The growing demand of animal protein and increasing intensification of modern animal agriculture are two major anthropogenic drivers of zoonotic disease emergence. We heard a little bit already about antimicrobial resistance, or AMR, which compounds the concerns of zoonotic disease associated with animal agriculture.

AMR is among the most serious threats to global public health and development, contributing to the deaths of millions annually. The all-too-common misuse and overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture are significant contributors to the emergence of resistant pathogens. Alternative proteins have the potential to mitigate these threats.

The efficacy of this mitigation depends on the pace and extent of alternative protein development and production. However, should alternative proteins lead to reductions in livestock intensification in the expansion of grazing lands, it could decrease the risk of infectious disease transmission between wild animals and livestock and between livestock and humans.

Likewise, reducing the intensification of animal agriculture could reduce unintentional exposures to antibiotics and antimicrobial resistant pathogens by farm workers and consumers. It's important to note that without reductions in costs that would facilitate an increase in alternative protein consumption in developing countries, the degree of global benefit will be diminished onto resilience.

Economic instability related to climate, conflict, and disease all pose significant threats to global food systems. In the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic, increases in meat prices constituted half of the overall food price rise across the country.

Today, the spread of H5N1 bird flu to Brazil has resulted in China banning the import of Brazilian poultry disruption valued at more than $1 billion so far. At the same time, the degree of consolidation across the US Food supply makes it particularly vulnerable to agricultural bioterrorism.

Absent viable alternative protein supplies, disruption to animal protein supply chains, whether intentional or accidental, has the potential for a significant effect on the US Economy. In a more diversified market, alternative protein production can be more nimble, more efficient, and less vulnerable to the than conventional meat production.

Considering growing global challenges, economic competitiveness is also critical to domestic security across all agricultural sectors. Technological advancements in food production and improvements to supply chains will affect the position of US Producers on the global stage.

Domestic agricultural strategies, especially those that apply to rising protein demand, will be central to establishing a competitive economic advantage across all future global food markets.

In the coming decades, as global food systems are tested by internal and external stressors, the identification and development of food production solutions that bolster food security, enhance economic potential, and reduce ecological harm will likely be key to an effective US security strategy. In this context, investing in alternative proteins provides strategic advantage for the United States.

The development and prioritization of domestic policy that enhances economic competitiveness already exists for other strategic technologies, including AI, which is another huge demand on water resources. Investments in food biotechnology generally and alternative protein innovation specifically would benefit from similar treatment.

While alternative protein - while alternative proteins are not a silver bullet for addressing the myriad challenges threatening global hunger, the rewards of investment in alternative protein research, and development are clear. Realizing a diverse, resilient food system with increased capacity to provide adequate nutrition for all while mitigating global threats and enhancing US Strategic competitiveness.

Thank you again and I look forward to questions.

Thank you, Dr. Swanson, and we do have a few minutes for questions? Are there any questions from the colleagues? One question I have, just based upon both Ms. Furtig and Dr. Swanson. You both talked about pharmaceuticals, I don't think that gets mentioned.

People don't, I don't think, talk about it or think about that as much when it comes to our food systems in order to reduce risk of disease and what have you. But Dr. Swanson, we were talking about, because I talk a lot about this industry and kind of in terms of climate and sustainability, but not always in terms of national security.

On the pharmaceutical piece, looking at both nationally and internationally, if we don't move further away from our current system, what are the risks to the global kind of pharmaceutical supply chain and the impacts in terms of ineffectiveness of some of the pharmaceuticals that are currently entering into the system?

Thanks for that question. It's incredibly important we can think about pandemic preparedness from a few different directions. And I'll take the side of looking at AMR from the pharmaceutical standpoint. Antimicrobial resistance is already leading to the deaths of individuals, of millions of individuals around the world and contributing to deaths.

So even if they're not directly contributing or directly causing those deaths, they're contributing to them. With that, we can have pandemics like the COVID-19 pandemic, which was viral, in which AMR is a significant contributor to excess mortality.

In this circumstance, we can think about how bacterial pneumonias, which may be resistant to antimicrobials, exacerbated deaths related to the viral pandemic of COVID-19. And so, we can think of AMR as a threat multiplier that the pharmaceutical industry will have to catch up with. And it's very, very difficult to outpace evolution.

And it costs a lot of money, and it unfortunately costs a lot of lives.

And just as a kind of a basic, as a kind of a basic foundational question, why is it necessary to use so much pharmaceuticals for animals?

I wouldn't frame it as necessarily necessary, but as you intensify animal agriculture, you are increasing the risk of pathogenic exposure and transmission, especially in regions of the world where that intensification is matched with grazing expansion that pushes livestock closer to wild animals with which they can interact and then be affected by, by novel pathogens.

So, once you have this intensification, which puts animals in conditions where they can pass pathogens to each other more easily and also get it from the environment more easily, you then get into a situation where you need to be applying more antibiotics or antimicrobials to fend off those threats.

The misuse and overuse of those antibiotics could then not only leach into the ecosystem, but produce within those animals microbial resistance, which makes it harder, which means you have to increase the amount of antimicrobial antimicrobials you use.

In addition to that, antimicrobials or antibiotics specifically are often used to stimulate growth and ruminants, which can be an additional burden.

Thank you. And Ms. Fertig, the framing of, part of the framing of this committee as we move forward is to challenge the critique at times that sometimes frames alternative proteins as competing directly against, quote, traditional farming. I really want to dispel that. I think that there's a huge opportunity we have, especially in California.

But how do you see alternative proteins fitting into California's existing economy landscape as a complementary rather than competitive option for farmers, for consumers and what have you?

Right, yeah. Thank you for bringing this up. As I mentioned, demand for meat is expected to rise 50% at least by 2050. So really the question is how are we going to meet that incremental demand? Right. And we simply don't have enough land on earth to meet 50% increase in meat consumption.

So that's where alternative proteins can play a role and help farmers actually meet that demand. So, I see here in California a number of opportunities for farmers to play a role. There's crops that we're already growing, nuts for example, that are used as inputs in a lot of plant based dairy products.

Also, commodity crops like tomatoes, whose side streams can be used as inputs in alternative protein products like feedstocks for fermentation and for cultivated meat. And then there's new products as well that farmers can either transition to or add onto their existing crops in order to help boost incomes as well.

One of the statistics I oftentimes cite is that 40% of US land, at least in the 48, the upper, the contiguous states, 40% of US land is used for raising livestock or animal production. Not 40% of AG land. 40% of land and clearly not sustainable in that sense.

But you know, as you know, I've, I had legislation that was going to try to see how we can help small family farms transition from dairy and meat to plant.

And there was some resistance from some of the traditional livestock, but it wasn't really done as like, "Hey, we don't want you to do, you know, livestock or dairy", but that these farmers are falling underwater because of the contracts they have with these mass manufacturing corporations and they can't get out of those contracts.

So it's more about, "Hey, let the state help you find a crop that works for you," and majority of the time that's going to be a plant-based crop. Even most plant based, many plant based crops are used to feed livestock as well which you know, folks don't always talk about with alfalfa, soy, what have you.

But no, I really appreciate your feedback and there's no other questions. We can go ahead and move to the next panel and if you're going to stick around maybe there's questions later. We can certainly ask you to come back up.

Thank you. And thank you Dr. Swanson.

All right. Thank you.

Thanks very much.

And up next we have a panel on sealing or scaling the future inside the alternative protein industry. First witness Ethan Brown, the founder and CEO and President of Beyond Meat as well as Myra Pasek, General Counsel for Upside Foods and Aryeh Elfenbein, Co-founder of Wild Type.

And so y' all feel free. Feel free to go in that order if you like with Ethan, Myra, Arya.

Thank you. Appreciate you having me. It's great to be here. My prepared remarks will center on health, climate, agricultural, natural resource benefits of plant based protein and specifically around Beyond Meat. Beyond Meat is the leading and largest plant based meat company in the world. We're headquartered in Los Angeles.

We have production facilities in Missouri, Pennsylvania and the Netherlands. And I founded Beyond Meat in 2009. The idea behind Beyond Meats is simple.

Instead of feeding plants to animals to convert into meat, we take protein directly from plants and use cooling, heating and pressure on the same equipment that has long been used to make pasta to build meat directly from plants. This basic idea and its execution propelled Beyond Meat into a compelling business and Great Heights.

By 2019 we were generating 30% margins, producing positive EBITDA and expanding rapidly across the globe. I thought we might just cross the chasm early or sidestep the Gartner hype cycle. Whichever disruption literature you prefer. I was wrong.

The merchants of doubt that the specific direction of Members of the meats and pharmaceutical businesses swung into action, spending across newspaper ads, TV spots, op eds, blogs and paid influencers to elicit fear and confusion over plant based meat, while lobbyists lobbied to restrict the use of the word meat for our products, betting that those elected to uphold the public trust would instead dutifully carry the water of their industry petitioners.

Fake meat, real chemicals and ultra processed food became the rallying cry. It worked. In 202050% or more of Americans thought the plant based meat was healthy. By 2022 that percentage had declined to 38%. The incumbent industry played a major role in this change and the success is due to these two factors. 1.

They used a tried and true playbook, the same strategy, the same orchestrators used against anti tobacco legislation. 2. We live in an age where misinformation spreads at laser speed across Instagram X and other social platforms. Yet the truth is altogether different.

Inspiring, exciting and full of hope for the American consumer, American farmer and our vast and great ecosystems and the rest of life we share it with.

Let's consider the health benefits available through plant Based meat using earlier versions of our products, research at Stanford School of Medicine put Beyond Meat to a test in a clinical trial published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. In this study called Swap Meat, researchers placed participants on contrasting diets across eight week intervals.

In only eight weeks of Beyond Meat consumption, the researchers identified three important outcomes. 1. LDL or bad cholesterol dropped by statistically significant levels. Two TMAO levels also dropped. TMAO is a compound that forms in the gut and is believed to be closely associated with heart disease.

Three participants lost a significant or a modest amount of weight in only eight weeks. They saw three positive outcomes. Despite these benefits, we never stopped innovating for health. We expanded our network of doctors, nutritionists, registered dietitians and health organizations, integrating with our researchers as they develop our next generation.

Platform Beyond 4 Beyond 4 represents a significant advancement across a continuum from relative to absolute health benefits, with a team blending proteins from fava beans, brown rice, yellow peas and red lentils together with fats from avocado in a way that delivers superior nutrition not only, of course, to animal protein to Beyond3, the platform it replaced.

These benefits include high levels of plant protein 21 grams, specifically with just 2 grams of saturated fat, which is 75% less than a typical 80:20 animal beef Patty.

Importantly, the nutritional benefits beyond four earned recognition from the American Heart Association's Heart Check recipe Certification Program, the American Diabetes Association Better Choices for Life Program, the Clean Label Project, and the Good Housekeeping Nutrition Seal of Approval. Recently we put these and other new products to a test in a program designed by Dr.

Matthew Lederman, Co author of Forks Over Knives Plan and the Whole Foods Diet. And in just 30 days participants saw real positive changes to their health while enjoying a plant based diet that included beyond meat. Benefits included lower total cholesterol, lower LDL cholesterol, weight loss, better sleep, higher energy and lower inflammation, all without caloric restriction.

It is not just consumers who are benefiting. You see across the Midwest there are now farmers who are making more money per acre growing our crops than they would growing crops for animal feed. Soil is being restored by nitrogen fixing crops instead of being stripped of nutrients.

Young people are coming back to farming as our innovation is helping to create a brighter future. Turning now from health to climate the direct conversion of plants to meat provides a massive, unparalleled opportunity to address climate change.

Here's the how and why not all greenhouse gases are created equal, and when the variable time is considered, some play an outsized role of the big three carbon, methane and nitrous oxide. We know that methane and nitrous oxide are the most important.

Methane has a particularly short half life, around 10 years compared to carbon's half life of over 100 years.

Simply put, methane cycles through the atmosphere more quickly than carbon, which means we could see cooling benefits sooner if we curtail its emissions, exerting some immediate downward pressure on temperatures as we tackle carbon and because animal agriculture is the single largest source of methane release, reducing livestock numbers is key to the rapid reduction of methane reductions of methane concentrations in the atmosphere.

That is part one. The second part involves plant based meat. A 2023 life cycle analysis performed in the Beyond Burger found that it emits 90% fewer emissions, uses 97% less land and 97% less water than an equivalent animal beef burger.

Focus on a moment on that land statistic 97% less land as Matthew Hayek and others have pointed out, allowing native ecological systems to return to the roughly 30% of global lands currently devoted to livestock is a key carbon sequestration opportunity.

Specifically, a wholesale shift from livestock to plant based food production by 2050 and the corresponding reduction in livestock numbers, coupled with using lands previously devoted to livestock for carbon sequestration could allow the UN to meet its entire target for climate. It's a two part strategy. 1 Focus on bringing down methane quickly. 2.

Sequester carbon on lands freed up by the transition to a plant based food system. Start doing this now while working on everything else energy, transport, steel, cement, etc. Farmers, ranchers and those with relevant land should be paid for restoring ecosystems and sequestering carbon.

While this may sound like a budget busting notion, consider the magnitude of existing subsidies, many of which support the very practices we need to curtail. As the UN has reported, between 2013 and 201888 countries provided a total of $540 billion in subsidies to agriculture producers annually, with producers of sugar, beef and milk receiving the most.

Climate is by far the biggest challenge our society faces. And like we did during the world wars of the past, we can and should repurpose subsidies and pay those with relevant resources, in this case farmers and ranchers, to bring them into service in the fight against climate.

You'd be surprised at how practical this could be, albeit on an incremental basis and short of the sweeping transformation in the model I referenced. If of interest, I could expand on this during Q and A. In closing, we are at a pivotal moment in our industry's trajectory.

Over a long enough period of time, if our global society is to survive at its current scale, the transition away from animal agriculture is inevitable. The key question is whether this transition will occur in time. Governments play a key role in this answer. Three clear but very difficult political actions would be supportive. 1.

Lead the country in helping the consumer have access to real information through labeling, while helping put an end to the weaponization of the word process.

Instead, help the consumer focus on nutrient outcomes, levels of saturated fat, sodium and sugar, and the use or avoidance of veterinary drugs, heavy metals, antibiotics and hormones more generally through labeling help the consumer understand the relative impact of various proteins on their health.

The World Health Organization has done a good job of classifying various protein products in terms of cardiovascular and carcinogenic impact, and making such classifications more readily available to the consumer via labeling would be a good place to start. 2.

Do all you can to stop interference in the market through the use of subsidies and bailouts that provide enormous advantage to corporate factory farming and instead either encourage the return of these dollars to taxpayers or invest them in agricultural activities to support health, climate and the family farmer. 3.

Do all you can to influence the foods provided at our state institutions, including most importantly our educational institutions, so we don't miss the opportunity to make healthier choices easier and ultimately the norm. Thank you.

Thank you Mr. Brown for that clarion call and very clear direction to all of us, especially those of us in elected office. Ms. Pasak with Upside Foods.

Yes, hello. Really thrilled to be here. My name is Myra Pasak. I am the general counsel of Upside Foods. I have had about 18 years in startups, mostly startups that have a climate impact. Started out my in house career at Tesla in the early days. I also was General counsel of Impossible Foods, another plant based company.

So I echo the sentiments of Mr. Brown next to me. And now as General counsel of Upside Foods I'm at a cultivated meat company. So what I'd like to do in my talk is have you take away three points. The first thing I'd like to do is just demystify cultivated meat.

I know we all kind of have heard what it is, but I'm not a scientist and when I started at Upside Foods I got a tour of the factory and the guy that gave me the tour gave me a really nice way to think about it and it's a true way to think about it.

There's nothing scary about it. It's a very natural thing and it can get over scienced and people can be afraid of it and there's absolutely nothing to be afraid of. So I'd like to demystify the product. I'd like to just have you get to know a little bit more about Upside Foods.

I can tell you when to move. I'd like to tell you a little bit more about Upside Foods and then I'd also like to make sure that the panel understands that cultivated meat isn't a science experiment. This technology can scale and it can make a real impact. You can go ahead and change the slide.

Upside was founded in 2015 by Dr. Uma Valetti. He's a Mayo Clinic cardiologist. He realized when people were having heart attacks and he could grow heart muscle with stem cells, that someone could make meat from cells as well. So he moved to California.

Great place to start an innovative company, an innovative biotech company and got investors involved, most notably, you've got a list there of some of our biggest investors. But Cargill and Tyson are both investors in our company. And you know, the reason for that is a, they want to hedge their bets, obviously.

But I think they also recognize the problems that other panelists have made clear that the demand is just growing so fast that the current system can't keep up. We have built a State of the art food production facility, we call it epic in Emeryville, California.

And given that we were the first world's first cultivated meat company, we were instrumental in creating the regulatory framework for cultivated meat so it could be served in the United States legally. We're the first company that got regulatory approval and we're proud to employ over 160 Californians and we'd love to continue to grow and employ more.

So you can move to the next slide. So I think that the most important thing I can make clear here is that this technology is scaling rapidly. In Silicon Valley. There's this kind of trope that people say all the time, which is scale or fail.

If you have a really great idea that has the potential for climate impact, if you can't make a lot of it and you don't get the market to adopt a lot of it, you're just not going to make an impact on climate. You also aren't going to have a successful business. So it all goes hand in hand.

And I think that people can't. Every new technology is expensive at first, but I'm really impressed with the progress that Upside has made in scaling cultivated meat. We have our production facility at Epic. We're able now at this point to make millions of pounds a year at Epic, and we're looking to make even more.

So if we switch to the next slide, we're looking to even build a larger production facility than Epic, which would be probably like 10 times the output of Epic.

We have a facility that's completely empty at this point, has not been built out in Illinois, but we're still actively looking to build more commercial facilities to make more cultivated meat. So the challenge obviously is funding.

We are going to be doubling down and trying to get our investors to double down on investing in us to build these facilities. And obviously we would love some help from the State of California. Grants are great, low interest loans are great. And even some kind of revenue generating program would be awesome.

Like if we could participate in the cap and trade program that already exists and monetize our, our greenhouse gas and other environmental benefits as a revenue stream, that would be fantastic. I think I skipped over demystifying and I'd like to just hit that really quickly now.

We've all heard that cultivated meat takes animal cells, puts them in a cultivator, grows them, takes them out, makes the meat for people to eat.

But the thing that's really interesting about it as a non scientist for me, and the thing that really made me, made the light bulb go off on the top of my head is that the process really is exactly. It's intended to exactly mimic an animal growing. So upside makes chicken.

So if you think about a chick, the way it grows is its cells divide and multiply and grows into an adult chicken. The way that it grows is it breathes and it eats. So it has oxygen coming in to nourish the cells, it has nutrients coming in to nourish the ce, it's carried around by blood.

We do the same thing in our food production facility, which is not a lab, it's a food production facility. It's not scary. And so we take cells, we try to pick the cells that like to divide and that like to grow. We take those winter cells, we stick them in a cultivator, which basically is a big tank.

And what we do is we mimic the blood by feeding the cells oxygen just like a breathing animal, and nutrients just like an animal that's eating something in very, very, very clean water. Those cells hopefully happily grow and multiply. And then we take those cells out of the cultivator and make meat for people to eat.

The closer we can mimic nature, the better product we're going to have and the more production we're going to have because. Because the happier the cells are, the healthier the cells are, the better. So I think that thinking about that.

And I'm assuming you don't have to pump these cells full of pharmaceuticals.

Not at all. And there's like virtually we can guarantee that there's virtually no pathogens, there's no E. Coli, there's no viral contamination.

And I venture to say that if no dis intended to the meat industry, but if you walked into a slaughterhouse and you walked into our food production facility, you'd probably feel a lot more comfortable eating the food out of our food production facility than you might out of the slaughterhouse.

So going to the last slide, I just want to also make clear that while we can make it, there is a demand for this product. I know that a lot of companies have not yet gone to market and Aryeh, next to me, is lucky to have received just received his approval to sell.

So I'm excited for his company to get going and get into some restaurants. Upside also has an approved product. The approved product that we have is not really scalable. So we're currently in queue to get approval for our second cell line, which will be a far, far, far more scalable cell line. So with that I conclude.

No, and I want to thank you and certainly thank Uma Valeti.

I had a chance to go out to Upside and I believe it was after one of the approvals Fda, maybe you're waiting for USDA still at that time, first time I'd eaten actual chicken in many, many years because it crossed checked all the boxes for me personally. But it's extraordinary.

And to your point, when I visited and I've been to breweries, it was like going to a brewery because that's the same. They're the big steel vats. And I think the person overseeing it used to be a master brewer, from what I understand.

So it really does demystify when you actually and see it, because a lot of people, that's something they can connect with. zero, I've been to a brewery, I've seen, I've been to a winery. They can connect it to kind of General, what they consider to be General, regular, safe food production.

And it doesn't, it doesn't create this sense of mystery or of wacky science, but quite to the contrary, it's science that's been used for many thousands of years.

Yes.

So, you know, I really appreciate your work on that demystification aspect of it that Mr. Brown also talked about in terms of a lot of forces that are trying to intentionally create fear. That's right. That's right. Thank you. And then, Mr. Elfenbein, thanks so much for having me. Are you able to get the slides up?

Great. So, I moved to California about 10 years ago after finishing my training as a cardiologist. It's kind of an interesting coincidence about cardiologists in this field. And I couldn't resist the opportunity to talk about scaling without turning it into the pun about fish. And so, we're going to talk about seafood.

And Wild Type specifically is a company that creates cultivated seafood, so using the same technologies that Maya was describing, but to create cuts of fish. So, the next slide, I think, is just kind of interesting one to think about when cultivated foods generally versus seafood pretty specifically and what that means for California.

So just a few things that I want to describe in terms of why seafood and cultivated seafood today is so particularly relevant. So, the next slide shows some of the challenges that we have for production. So, what you see on the left there is a tanker.

There are 17 of these that have been purchased by Mowi, which is the largest seafood producer in the world, in Norway. And these are the kinds of ideas that now are being put into action to just produce enough seafood today to catch up with supply.

I think we're all pretty familiar with the news also about this is the third successive year where commercial salmon fishing has been closing in California. And the graph here, I think, is actually the most compelling bit of evidence for me.

And so, what we did was just look at the consumer price index, so just look at inflation and look at the cost, the price of salmon over time. And so, when you see that dip in the late 80s and 90s, that was when aquaculture fish farms started to really hit their stride.

And since then, you can just see how much all of the sort of inputs that we have, land, labor, water, feed and so forth, have played out in the market naturally without the government subsidies that have been described here.

And what that means is that some of the healthiest proteins that we have are becoming more and more inaccessible. The next slide shows that this is actually especially an issue now because 80% of our seafood in the US is imported. About 80%.

And so many things to say here, but I think just having more seafood that's made in America on its own is a pretty compelling proposition.

And then a lot of what was described about toxins in this next slide, I just wanted to sort of quantify, because if you look at the data for some of these things, there are just a lot of these pervasive contaminants that we've come to expect in our seafood supply.

Pediatricians will tell parents, feed your children fish, but not more than a fistful per week because of these things; pregnant women are advised to reduce their intake of sushi, for example.

And so, when people use fear mongering tactics to talk about what's good for you and what's one thing that is just incontrovertible is that these heavy metals, these microplastics and so forth, are absolutely not good for us. And so, eliminating that from our supply.

Whether you want to make America healthy again or just be healthy on your own is also a compelling proposition here. The next slide also shows just one issue that I think is more problematic in seafood than others, which is traceability.

I don't know why so many of these studies focus on Southern California sushi restaurants, but the issues of mislabeling are ones that are also pervasive.

Part of the reason is that in places like Washington State, about half of the seafood that's produced in Washington State actually goes offshore, typically to Asia for processing before coming back to the US and so it makes sense in a system like that why traceability is such an issue.

And so that's another problem that's solved by a method like what we're describing. Could we go to the next slide? I won't focus on the carbon footprint. The only thing I'll say is that we never thought about fishing as something that was particularly carbon intensive.

But even just one mode of commercial fishing, which is deep sea trawling, emits more carbon than all the airplanes in the world combined. So, the next slide sort of describes where we are. And so, we could not have started the company in anywhere other than California when we did in 2016.

Truly, I worked overnight in the ICU to be able to pay for a small little research space that just didn't exist in any other city that sort of. The whole ecosystem around it didn't exist to enable this idea, which was just considered too wild and crazy at the time to then become a viable company.

Wait, were you like an incubator or a space that allowed you.

Yeah, it was an incubator. And so, this was something that was so specific and actually could not have occurred here. And I think looking around the many of the other companies would say the same thing, that it could not have been started anywhere except California.

And as Myra is describing as well, some of the issues are - as we start to scale up, a lot of the companies won't stay here. I won't focus on that. We can get into it in the Q&A in terms of the incentives and disincentives and so forth, but it's an important Point.

If we go to the next slide, I just want to describe; his is our brewery. So, it was the old Magnolia brewery in St. Francisco that sadly didn't make it through the pandemic. We actually still use some of their same tanks. That bar there was their old sports bar.

We've turned it now into more of a sushi bar. And we'll have events here. The next slide shows what it actually looks like inside. This is more to, as Myra was saying, to really demystify it.

And, you know, when we take students through here, when we take visitors, it's actually just such an illuminating process for people to see exactly how it's created.

Go to the next slide. And just say that when it comes to the conventional fishing industries, there was a moment where I was down in San Diego actually wanting to get bluefin tuna for some of the stuff that we were working on and spoke with some of the fishermen there and described what it is that we do.

And I thought, I was on a boat, and I thought that they'd want to throw me off the boat. And instead, what they said just really stirred me. And it's something that stays with me, which is just this amount of hope that actually something could exist to take the pressure off the oceans.

And the stories that they told were of their childhood, when so many fish would come back every year, and now there are almost none. And some of these boats go halfway from San Diego to Hawaii to catch the fish that we consider fresh today. This is a photo of Bristol Bay, Alaska.

Some of our efforts were actually to raise money to shut down the pebble mine and enable the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world to exist and not get completely decimated by the mine. So, conservation is actually just a huge part of our mission as well.

And I just wanted to say it's often fascinating where you find the allies in something that seems so controversial like this. And it's often been in the conventional industries. And so, I'll just end there.

Yeah. And speaking of that, you're 100% right. Earlier, Ms. Fertig was talking about the 30 by 30. I had to author the original AB 3030 to protect 30% of our land and water by 2030. Well, talking about interesting allies, I got an award from Trout Incorporated that focuses on trout fishing. So as a vegan getting that award...

But the reality is that it's preserved land for people to do recreational activities of all kinds. And so, I think there's so many benefits. And I also now it's pretty commonly at least the story is about microplastics being in every single piece of fish, every seafood that's available.

But also, I wanted to talk to you, I talk a little bit with Dr. Swanson about it. What are these fish commercial fisheries like in terms of the disease and the kind of the cramped quarters? Even if it's, I think that people sometimes think, "Oh, it's big open water and they just had them swimming around."

But what are the conditions that exist in these commercial fisheries for the seafood that's being put in? Some put in the grocery store, at a restaurant eventually.

Yeah. You know, I don't want to speak for the fishing industry. I'll say that the pressures that they're facing are pretty profound and that what that's led to is more intensive farming. And for the same reason that we were discussing antibiotic usage, that's one of the issues. Another really, really pervasive issue is sea lice.

And that's something that just occurs with, with greater concentration of fishing. It's something that different approaches have been taken to try to alleviate that. One of the biggest issues is that aquaculture was basically started to, you know, to alleviate some of the issues of contamination and so forth.

But still a huge percent of the feed for these fish still comes from the ocean and so actually doesn't solve that problem. As more and more coastal sites become unavailable for farming, what's considered the future is actually these on land facilities.

And so this is so energy intensive, the cooling that fish swim around for about two years or so and then at the end of that, about 40% of a fish is not even used because it's the guts and fins and tails and so forth that we don't really consume.

And so these are some of the challenges that they're facing.

Thank you. And a question, Ms. Pasek, talking about scaling and there are, and even Mr. Brown talked about there's, there's so many competing subsidies for this industry, that industry, and yet those that are in the alternative protein space are kind of just trying to survive and don't really get that much - don't get those kinds of credits and what have you.

What, and it's good timing because we are obviously talking about cap and trade and renewing it, but what for a facility like yours, a food facility like yours, and I imagine some of the similar kinds of benefits could exist for either the companies represented here: what specifically would be helpful like manufacturing tax credits or what are the things that come to mind when you first think about, "Hey, what could the government do to help ease some of our financial strain."

Well, the company is, you know, I mean, I think that any form of subsidy is going to be helpful. Upside's looking obviously to get their investors to double down, to bring in new investors, hopefully to help us scale and build our larger facilities. But, you know, I've spoken with my CFO.

I'm not the CFO, but you know, obviously we would love any form of grant, a revenue. You know, revenue is really amazing. It helps us get investment from private investors if we have revenue. So, if we were part of the cap-and-trade program, that would be very helpful.

I don't know whether the scale of a grant that the state could make would make a meaningful dent in building a very large commercial facility, but certainly a low interest or no interest loan would be terrific of some sort. So, you know, I'm not a policy expert.

I'm sure you all are way better policy experts than I am sometimes. But any form of support is fantastic. And we're very proud to be in California. No one's mentioned so far, but China has cultivated meat as one of the main technologies that it wants to develop.

So, if we don't do it here, we're going to be importing it because we just can't keep up with the demand for meat in the conventional way.

And one of the things that just generally speaking that we've been doing, we have an alternative protein working group in the legislature and a few weeks ago we had a whole spread set up for lunch.

There were, you know, Beyond meatballs there and it was the first time I hadn't eaten seafood in many years and had the wild type, and it was phenomenal. And, and part of it is really just to educate our colleagues and our colleagues' staff. And I have my staff, Eric Casauza, sorry, here, who's instrumental in putting this together.

But you know, we get advised by our staff as well. So, I want them to try the foods. I want them to again, demystify it as we talk about what the industry is that we're trying to support. And so, you know, part of that, Mr. Brown, part of that you talked about, some of the ingredients are in your food. I just made Beyond burgers on Saturday with for me and my dad. The newest version: they were delicious, and healthier.

I mean, because my father has a lot of health issues. I got to look at the labels very carefully before I make anything for him or put it on his plate.

To that end, in terms of the ingredients, but also ingredients that are sourced from farms you mentioned, lentils, peas, what are some of the products that we can go to the California, the biggest ag community in the country and say, "Hey, these are the crops that we're going to need from you if we can grow this industry here?"

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, it is a tremendous opportunity for innovation and ag. And I have a farm myself and I can tell you it's in a part of the country that has undergone such economic devastation and they're looking for innovation.

And you know, there's a very well-known transition occurred when they retired all the horses in agriculture for tractors. They freed up 88 million acres of land for productive use because they were no longer having to feed these horses. Right.

So, there's this incredible opportunity to unleash economies of scale at the farm where they're using much less land to grow a particular pound of protein. So, whether it's a red lentil, brown rice, you know, fava beans, yellow peas, finding varieties that will grow in this part of the country is important. But also, the avocado oil we use.

Right. All of these things are important. And the cap-and-trade program you mentioned, I think is anything can be done to stimulate demand from our perspective is the right thing for us. I think for, for this industry, which I fully support, and we desperately need.

You know, it's probably more about the manufacturing credits, but for us it's really how do you stimulate the demand to get the sector back on track? Right. So that's, it's really around labeling, help consumers understand the little program we talked about, we took six people, the drop in LDL cholesterol was 27%. Right. So that's amazing.

On 30 days, that's the same as a medium statin. Right. And so how do we work with big insurance companies to help them understand that and help lower the premiums? And so, there's so much goodness here, I think on the, on the carbon side, my prepared comments, I talked about methane and nitrous oxide being more potent.

I said, I think I said important, but more potent was the point. The ability to leverage a cap-and-trade system for carbon to benefit our industry is enormous. So, we should try to do that as well. But it's these things about getting the consumer the information that they can accurately make decisions around is really important.

And then also recognizing the climate impact we have is really important. It doesn't require a lot of subsidies. It just requires information and the government taking a stance. Last piece is schools. Right. We should be in every school, right.

Yeah. And, and we have done some work in recent years. We now require plant-based options at hospitals and prisons. We are, we also started a grant program to greatly incentivize its schools. A little bit more bureaucracy there for us to compel it.

Sure.

But you know, we, we are working on kind of like the, the slow food movement. Right. We're trying. We have some of the best agriculture in the world. We want the schools not to bring in processed foods, whether it's meat or anything else from other part, other parts of the country or world.

Go to your local farm, bring those foods, put, put it in your salad bar, bring other healthy products. And I think this is part of that solution of ensuring that we just give healthier options after decades of just poisoning our populace.

And one thing that talking about kind of also bringing it back home that was mentioned, Dr. Swanson and Dr. Elfenbein, in terms of food security as well. Right. It's a national security issue, but it's a national security for every nation. Every nation has to kind of look inward because of supply chain issues, because of raising fish or poultry and sending it to China for processing. Bring it back.

Given the pandemics we've been through and everything else, it doesn't seem like that's a path that's healthy or sustainable or good for our national interest. As you can tell, I'm very engaged in this because it's exciting to me to hear the perspectives.

And so, we, we will move on to the next panel, but I hope you all will stick around and hear from our final couple panelists who are professors. Thank you. And like I said, also we are taking the committee show on the road.

So, both, you know, all three of these companies here, as well as other companies, we look forward to, to coming out and bringing legislators there, bringing staff members there to learn more again about the process that you go through to create the food. But also, what the state, what more the state can be doing.

You can do that anytime. Yeah. Thank you. And our final panel, driving scientific innovation, California's leading research. As I had mentioned my opening comments, being able to secure some funding from the state for the first time ever, to be able to go towards research has been one critical step.

But now is an opportunity for us to actually hear from some of those that are in these research institutions. We have Dr. Amy Rowat, a professor in research from UCLA, and Dr. Galena Hale, Professor of Economics at UC Santa Cruz. Dr. Rowat, thank you.

Well, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you Assemblymember Kalra for organizing this initiative and this session.

I'm Professor Amy Roway, I'm the Marcy Rothman Presidential Chair of Food Studies at UCLA, the Faculty Director of the Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies and also serve as the Co-director for the Integrative Center for Alternative Meat and Protein, which spans UC Davis and many other partners as well.

Disclaimer I'm here speaking on my own behalf today and I'm excited to share with you some of the updates in the research and workforce development advances that have been happening at UCLA. And we'll also be highlighting how the infusion of state funds has accelerated these efforts. So next slide.

So, to scale alternative proteins that will complement protein sources into the future, future foods. This is a really complex challenge, and we need to solve both technical bottlenecks, for example, by accelerating production of cells and the growth of cells that are building blocks of cultivated products and can also be added to plant based products.

And we also need them to taste good and to be nutritious. And this all needs to be done using processes that are sustainable and affordable. Food safety is of course, another key criteria, and the launch of novel foods will necessitate new regulatory frameworks like we've heard about.

Finally, these foods will only have impact if people demand them and want to eat them. And so, to be able to scale for impact, we need to address all of these facets of future foods.

And the UCs are really uniquely positioned to do this because we have world leading experts in all of these different domains and also, we're training the future workforce. So, at UCLA in particular, we work with colleagues in food law and policy to life sciences engineering.

And why, you might ask, is the research at a university important in this domain? We've heard about the tremendous advances happening at companies in the space. At universities we can do foundational research that really can support the growth of an industry.

Our discoveries generate intellectual property that can seed new startups and companies and developments in existing companies and economic growth. Our findings are also open and accessible so they're available for the entire field and industry to access. And this knowledge drives these advances in economic growth. And importantly, we do this research by training our students.

And at the UC specifically, we have over 60,000 graduate students across the whole UC system. These are the people that are contributing to, for example, this research in this realm. The UCs also graduate over 60,000 bachelor's degree recipients every year and 70% of them go on to work in California after graduating.

So, so this is a huge effort in workforce development. So specifically at UCLA, our future food team is thriving. Next slide, please. We've generated over 50 publications, five patent applications in the last years.

And thanks to the infusion of state support, we now have over 50 faculty and trainees who are contributing to these projects that span over 10 departments and four schools at UCLA, from behavioral sciences to engineering to food lawn policy. Next slide, please.

Now, I wanted to give you a flavor of just one research advance which focuses on the example of how we cultivate fat. Fat's really important for the meat flavor, texture, nutrition in the protein space. So, it could be important for cultivated meats, but also for plant-based meats as an additive to enhance.

Now, a major challenge is how we grow these animal tissues at scale. This is a big bottleneck in the field, and one of the reasons is that animal cells - next slide, please, will naturally attach to surrounding scaffolds inside of animals, as pictured here. And this is what makes a steak intact when you eat it.

And so how can we then grow these cells that naturally like to attach to things in these large vessels where they have to float around? One discovery that I'll tell you about today is how we've developed small beads that are edible that you can eat very much like boba pearls, like tapioca pearls from boba tea and -

Next slide, please. We can make these in a scalable way, very much like how you'd make an oil in and vinegar emulsion as a salad dressing. Next slide, please. And we create these tiny gel beads that cells can attach to. Next slide, please. And these can now be cultured in suspension in this vessel specifically for fat.

We're interested in growing cells that can accumulate fats inside of them that we think are important for the flavor and nutrition of the fat tissue that we make. Finally, next slides. This fat can be harvested and then integrated into a meat product. One challenge is figuring out how can we make these processes go faster.

This is very expensive to do at large scale. These are animal cells. They need to be grown at body temperature. One discovery is that we were able to tweak the size and texture of these beads, these little boba pearls that we made. Next slide, please.

And we can try to measure how much fat is inside these boba pearls. So, on the left, you'll see some fat cells. The yellow is kind of a paint we use to label the fats inside of the cells. So, all of those little yellow blobs are multiple little droplets inside of individual fat cells.

And on the right, you'll see one of our discoveries of how we can, we discovered a new way, a new kind of ingredient that we can or way of making these boba pearls that accelerate how much fat these cells can accumulate.

And this is just one example of a discovery of the types of pathways that can regulate and inform how cells and how cells can accumulate fats and importantly accelerate the growth of these important tissues for both nutritious and delicious alternative proteins. So, this finding and others are in preparation.

We have more than a dozen papers now in the pipeline. And I should note that this is still small scale. One of those images, you could fit maybe five or 10 hairs from your head across the width of that image. So, it's very small scale.

But thanks to the infusion of state funds, we've invested in equipment that will enable us to grow this fat and test these processes at a larger scale, which is important to bridge the gap between the translation from academia into industry. We're also investing heavily in generating publicly available data sets.

So, thanks again to state funds; we're currently undertaking a massive effort to produce molecular maps of cells that are used in cultivated meat. This will give us more information about how we can tap into these pathways and circuitry inside of cells to coax them to be most nutritious and flavorful for alternative meats.

And this data will be publicly available for everyone in the field. So next slide please. Of course, to scale for impact, we need to have this robust collaboration across fields, across sectors.

And so, with state support, we also designed and launched the Future Food Fellows program which brings together graduate trainees across science and engineering, food, law and policy. So, we developed this program in partnership with companies, surveying the industry needs so we can best target the workforce needs.

The fund supported five graduate students, two postdocs, which served as their mentors across disciplines. They also were supporting; we were also supporting four undergraduate scholars working with these graduate students to keep that pipeline growing. Next slide please.

We also worked on career development, bringing thought leaders and policy experts to campus for the fellows to network with and expose them to potential careers in the field.

And we also importantly, provided science communication training so that they could best distill their ideas and research topics to a wide range of experts, which is going to be critical for us to communicate with policymakers and lawmakers into the future.

So last but not least, I'd like to highlight how these funds can also support have also supported thought leadership and global presence of UCLA in future foods. Our team has been invited to give dozens of talks on future foods in over 10 countries in the past few years. Next slide, please.

We're also nationally and globally recognized as leaders and - next slide, please. We're frequently consulted by or featured in the media. And as a further example of our thought leadership in future foods, together with colleagues - next slide, please.

I recently established the first Gordon Research Conference, which is arguably one of the best high quality research conferences in the world that you can have. We were successfully chosen to launch this conference that's going to bring experts and trainees from around the world to California next January in Pomona. So very excited for that as well.

Next slide, please. So, to finish, I'd just like to say that I think UCs are a really crucial partner for future foods research advances both for, for the intellectual property and basic discovery and also workforce development.

And given all we've heard here today, the urgent needs to flesh out our scope of future foods and alternative protein sources, that now is the time that we can keep building this pipeline. So, thank you.

You know, but before I move on to Dr. Hill, I mean the part of the but made me and I think a lot of folks excited that we were able to get resources that went to UCs is just what you highlighted in the past couple of slides with the students.

You know, we're, you know, at least I can speak for myself. I feel like I'm starting or we're part of this nascent industry we're really trying to promote. But it's those students, they're the ones that are going to take it to a whole another level. So, what - and I've had a chance to meet some students at ICAMP at Davis who are just phenomenal. And at Berkeley, it was a great event there at the Berkeley Business School. And what is your sense of how excited students are when they see this new industry that they could be part of?

Thank you Assemblymember Kalra for that question, because this is an extremely important point. There is so much student enthusiasm for this field. I've never seen anything like it before. Students from around the country, around the world will write to me and ask, "I'm really interested in this field. I want to do graduate studies in this topic."

There's not a lot of options for that to happen. And so, there is tremendous interest on campus. The enthusiasm, I think, is palpable. The students have themselves started their own alternative protein chapter. And this is part of a network globally. But at UCLA campus there working to raise funds to hold events to do networking events.

We hosted another networking opportunity last fall, really led, driven by the students, to bring industry experts to campus and they're already getting started for the next one this coming fall, so lots of excitement for the students.

That's great to hear. Dr. Hale.

Thank you so much, Chairman Kalra, for the opportunity to share my thoughts on the importance of the state support of the alternative protein development in the State of California. Today I'm wearing two hats.

I'm a Professor of Economics and also Associate Director and a week from now Director for the Institute of Social Transformation at the UC Santa Cruz. I'm also a Co-founder and a Chief Research Officer at Food System Innovations, which is a nonprofit and a funder focusing on food system sustainability. I'll focus my remarks on two points.

First, in the world where climate change effects are contained at levels below catastrophic, while nutritional needs of the global population are satisfied, alternative proteins have to play an important role. That's just a mathematical fact.

Second, the State of California is currently one of the leaders in the alternative protein industry and the support of the state government is needed to maintain this global leadership while helping farmers build climate resilience.

Greenhouse gas emissions from global food system are currently as high or higher than those from transport, industry or energy use in buildings, but are largely neglected in policymaking, philanthropy, research or private investments. Most of the food system emissions come from animal sourced products. Next slide please.

Because their production is associated with much higher per calorie emissions than the production of plants, even the least emitting animal source products have higher emissions per calorie than the highest emitting plants and it's almost true if we do it per 100 grams of protein.

These emissions in particular are projected to grow as the global population grows and the diets shift towards more western like diets globally while rising with rising per capita income. Can we have a next slide please?

To prevent this growth in emissions which is not consistent with global climate goals, the additional demand for proteins can be satisfied with plant based fermented or cultivated alternatives and California can be a global leader in developing those alternatives for the world, not just for the State of California.

So, what is the current state of the alternative protein industry? There is a variety of plant-based products, some with fermented components that are available in both food service and retail globally, but their market penetration remains limited. I want to highlight two of the reasons for the relative stagnation of the plant-based sector.

Some of those were mentioned before. Many products are not yet at par with animal sourced products on price and consumer attributes. And second, a number of companies have exhausted their venture funding before being able to reach the viable scale. Next slide, please.

So recently, and Assemblyman Kara was there, Food System Innovation's Nectar program conducted blind testing by a consumer panel of the large number of plant-based products along with their animal analogs in a variety of categories, with a goal of determining which, if any, products are perceived by consumers to be at least as tasty as their animal source analogs.

A subset of the results you see on the slide, and you can see that in some categories there are products already matching their animal source analogs in terms of consumer perception, and three of those companies that are highlighted with their location are headquartered in California.

You see beyond me there, you've heard from Ethan Brown about the health benefits of beyond, and what's impressive is that that clean health profile of their products is achieved without compromising the consumer perception of the taste. Most of these products, however, remain more expensive to both food system buyers and retail than animal sourced products.

And moreover, given the love for variety feature of demand for food, we need a larger set of products in each category to allow for the alternative protein industry as a whole to have a scalable market share, to have a sizable market share.

Even the companies that make the best products are still in need of financial support to be able to scale and unfortunately in the industry. In some prior tests we had the brands that have received the awards but were not able to survive due to the lack of funding.

Other technologies such as fermentation and cultivated products are not yet in the mainstream market for a variety of reasons, and while some technologies are ready to scale, the majority lack funding to allow for such scaling. Next slide please.

In food production there are substantial scale economies, meaning that in order to reach parity with animal source products on price, the production has to grow substantially in volume, which requires capital investment, one of the areas in which the state government can support the nascent industry.

California's technological leadership in the alternative protein industry must not be taken for granted. First, if the business climate is not supportive, companies may choose to relocate to jurisdictions in other states and outside of the U.S.

Second, a number of foreign governments are already actively supporting alternative protein industry from research to supply chain to market through research and development grants, direct government procurement, streamlined approval processes and public private partnerships.

One of the biggest competitors to California, I think, is China, where the government is supporting alternative protein R&D research hubs in collaboration with leading universities. And China's 2020-2025 Five Year Plan formally included the development of alternative protein technologies.

The state government's approach to supporting California's global technological leadership in the alternative protein industry has to be systemic, addressing the entire supply chain's need and all relevant stakeholders. This slide shows a subset of possible actions.

As an example, in addition to supporting existing firms financially through the Valley of Death, bridging the gap between venture funding and traditional debt finance through grants, subsidized loans and loan guarantees, the government can facilitate their scaling efforts through direct government procurement contracts.

The scaling up effort includes, in addition to demand for product and capital investment, the availability of agricultural inputs. Those can potentially be produced within the state with a benefit of much needed crop diversification.

For many farms facing falling yields due to climate change, water shortage and other challenges, a unique asset in the State of California is the UC system. The development of new scalable technologies can be sped up by funding alternative protein research centers such as one at UCLA that already have researchers working on those technologies.

These will help the entire industry by allowing foundational research to be available in open access as opposed to current siloed approach that is predominant in the industry.

Moreover, the UC system through UC Agricultural Natural Resource Extension, already has established relationship with the farming communities and can help provide technical assistance for any farmers who may benefit from diversifying their production towards the ingredients needed by the alternative protein industry.

Importantly, many potential inputs include sustainable drought resistant orphan crops very suitable to California, such as neglected varieties of grains and legumes and I'll stop here.

Thank you. Well, thank you. And I was at that Nectar Awards. It was incredible. And I think that to your point, especially when you look at just the reality of it, you can talk about environmental impact, you can talk about supply chain, all that.

People aren't going to buy the food if they don't like the taste of it. That's what was really great about that event. But all the panelists that are here representing the food companies is that their focus, yes, on, you know, being able to scale what have you. But their focus is also on the taste.

If it doesn't taste good, it does - nothing else matters because you're not going to get people to eat it or buy it or invest in it. So I really appreciate that.

And are the slides, and I guess I'll apply this to everyone available, if we can make them available and we'll kind of get a portal where we can keep them all together.

I have to leave in a moment to go present in a Senate Committee, but I just want to thank all the amazing speakers that are here that have set the stage for this committee and its work over the next year or two.

Not just here, but more importantly out in the state, throughout the state and so we will be on a roadshow. We will be having hearings, particularly looking at the interim.

When we're done with our legislative session, we hope to hold either more informational hearings, tours, meeting with students, just different opportunities so that the legislators can have a better sense of the industry. But more importantly, we can figure out what budget or legislative actions are necessary.

And to that end, on the budget side, we have a very difficult budget year. I did make additional requests for more funding for alternative protein research. It may be less likely this year than most for it to be granted, but we can't stop pushing for it.

And especially coming from our UCs, it's critically important that we are able to share the story of what the ripple effect of those relatively small investments are for the state and for the industry. So, I want to thank my colleagues that are on the committee. We have a number that are on the committee.

Again, some are out of town today, some couldn't make it. But they're very excited about joining the committee. And like I said, their staff and others will have access to all the information and the presentations.

And especially when we go out to their districts and their regions, I know they're going to be very excited to be part of it.

All of today's committee material is available on our Select Committee page on the assembly.ca.gov website and my capital office is available for any follow up on thank Erika Salazar on my team, not just for today and organizing today, but for the last few years of really getting our alternative protein working group together and getting this issue really on the forefront of so many in the capital community.

And so, thank you all for being part of this very first informational hearing for the select committee. And we are adjourned.