Assembly Select Committee on Alternative Protein Innovation

Well, good afternoon everyone, and welcome to our second informational hearing for the Select Committee on Alternative Protein Innovation. My name is Ash Kalra, the Chair of this Committee.

And I am joined up here by Kayla Rabinowitz, the Chief of Staff for Assembly Isaac Bryan, who is a Member of this Committee and shortly will be joined by Assembly Rick Zbur, who of course represents this area in Legislature and also has interest in this topic.

And as we know, California is home to a growing and leading alternative protein sector, from research to innovative companies, really across the state.

And so we had our first hearing in Sacramento, but as is oftentimes the case when we want to do deep dives on issues, it's better to get out and away from Sacramento and into the communities where the work is being done, whether it's on the research side, whether it's on the consumer side.

And the purpose of these committees is really to help inform us in the Legislature we're in the middle of the interim. So oftentimes the interim Members are traveling or they're spending time with their families.

But that's why these hearings are, as you can see with all the cameras, they're live streamed so that both Members as well as their staffs can not only watch them live, but they can also watch them as they prepare for the next legislative session.

And typically with these Select Committees, we, they do end up garnering ideas for either policy bills or budget items.

And we've had some success with both over the years, but this is the first year we've actually had a Select Committee on Alternative Protein Innovation, the first state to have any type of such Committee of its kind in the nation.

And alternative proteins encompass products from plant based fermentation and cell cultivation proteins that are aimed at giving the same nutritional and sensory profiles as animal based proteins as shared in the first hearing and as I just referred to kind of the budget components of the goals of these types of deeper dives.

In 2022, the State of California invested $5 million in the University of California to support and expand research and development in alternative proteins. We were the first state in the nation, and I believe still the only state in the nation that's invested public dollars in alternative protein research.

And because of that, we now have centers at UC Davis, UC Berkeley and here at UCLA.

This year, although a very tough budget year, we were able to invest an additional $1 million in research and development funding for the UC Davis Integrative Center for Alternative Meat and Protein Icamp, which is continuing to support the R and D efforts of alternative proteins.

I've had the opportunity, it's my first time here at UCLA and I'll have the privilege of being able to visit the center here after the hearing.

But I have had a chance to visit at Berkeley and at UC Davis and what I find to be the most striking aspect of investments obviously is the research and professors getting engaged and what have you.

But what I think is the most significant will be the most long lasting impact on the students that are being engaged both at the undergraduate and graduate level that they see a career in this innovative industry.

And they're the ones, as much as we've seen great innovations, they're the ones that will carry the torch and really carry this industry to where we need it to go in order to create a sustainable food system.

While California is home to alternative protein research and innovation, we know the sector still faces some challenges, especially in reaching and properly educating consumers.

Today we have three exciting panels of speakers which will speak on the following reducing the carbon footprint of institutional meals and increasing access to alternatives addressing market challenges to scaling alternative proteins and leading on future food research and innovation.

There will be an opportunity at the end of all the panel presentations for public comment for those Members of the public wishing to share some comments. Also for those that are legislative staff, I'll give an opportunity after each panel.

If they do have questions of the panelists, I'll allow legislative staff on behalf of their bosses to ask any follow up questions they might have. This informational hearing, as mentioned, is being live streamed on the Assembly's website and will be uploaded for the public to view also on the Assembly website.

There's today's agenda and a bio background each of our phenomenal speakers. Again, thank you all for being here today and we're excited to hear from our panel speakers about their work in the alternative protein sector.

And as is the norm, I would like to ask to see if my fellow representative, Representative's Representative has any comments before we start.

Thank you very much Chair Kalra. Just on behalf of Assemblymember Bryan, I just want to recognize your leadership on this and the way in which you're bringing this enormously important innovative industry in California front and center.

We can't make the kind of progress that we need to to addressing our greenhouse gas goals, our health goals, without a thoughtful and fulsome discussion discussion of this critical need for our state's health and for our climate emissions. So thank you very much sir.

Thank you. And so let's go ahead and open up with our first panel, reducing the carbon footprint of institutional meals and increasing access to alternatives. And we have Pete Angeles, associate Vice Chancellor of Housing and hospitality with UCLA.

And we have Dr. Michelle Wood, who's with the Division of Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. And if we can lead off actually with our virtual presenter, that might make things a little more smooth. Megan Jones, the senior policy advocate for school food policy with Friends of the Earth.

And so as we get Megan set up, I will make mention of the fact that, and many of you may know this, in recent years we have passed legislation requiring plant based alternatives in hospitals and in our Department of Corrections system. And we've added incentives to move our school K12 systems to more plant based options as well.

And so I'm interested in hearing from our panel now. So I don't know if we have Megan Jones set up on virtual. Okay, again, it's Megan Jones, senior policy advocate for school food policy with Friends of the Earth. And if there's a delay, we can always go to our live folks here too.

I am here. I'm not sure if you can hear me or see me.

We can hear you. We don't have the video up yet, but that's encouraging. Oh, there you are. We see you.

Great. And then I also prepared some slides for today.

Great. So you can go ahead and begin with your comments. And I think they're getting the slides up right now as well, so.

Sounds good.

Yeah.

Great. Well, I'd just like to start off. Chairman Kara Members of the Select Committee, thank you so much for granting me the opportunity to speak today on the State of plant based school food in California. Apologies for being able unable to attend in person, but thank you to you and your staff for accommodating my virtual participation.

As mentioned, my name is Megan Jones. I'm the senior policy advocate for school food policy at Friends of the Earth. And if we go to the next slide, I can explain a little bit more about who Friends of the Earth is.

So Friends of the Earth is a national nonprofit which works to fight for a more healthy and just world. Many of our campaigns focus on addressing root drivers of climate change and environmental destruction and degradation. My team, the Food and Agriculture Team, works to rapidly transition our food system to one that is sustainable, healthy, and just.

Our California Climate Friendly School Food program helps California's K through 12 schools make the shift toward healthy, delicious plant forward menus. And we also focus on increasing the availability of organic options as well. Next slide, please. So I wanted to share a little bit more about our Program and the progress that we've seen in California.

Friends of the Earth's California Climate Friendly School Food program started in 2017. We started off just working with five districts in the state and these first projects enable us to see the power of what just small shifts in plant based offerings could mean at the district level.

For example, Oakland Unified School District over two years reshaped its menu with fewer animal foods and more protein rich legumes and vegetables which demonstrated a quadruple win. They decreased their water footprint by 42 million gallons of water. They reduced their food related carbon footprint by 14% which is equivalent to about 1.5 million fewer miles driven.

They increased student meal satisfaction and because of their investments in scratch cooking, they were able to direct cost savings from fewer conventional animal proteins to higher quality meat and dairy and to more fresh, fresh produce. On top of all of these changes, they actually saw food costs reduced by $42,000.

So after seeing the progress that could be made by investments in plant based school food initiatives, we expanded our program. We now work with over 85 districts across the state providing plant based technical assistance, facilitating peer to peer learning networks and offering micro grants. Next slide please.

So what we've seen is that there's potential for profound impact from expanding plant based and plant forward meal offerings in the 540 million school lunches that California serves every year to nearly 6 million students. From an inclusion and equity perspective, we have universal free meals in California.

But if a student can't eat the meal served due to religious, ethical, allergen or other reasons, they may be forced to choose between going hungry or eating a meal that's either not aligned with their values or could make them very sick. So ensuring access to healthy plant based school meals also supports student health.

Leading public health recommendations, including the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, recommend increasing fiber which is only found in plants, diversifying proteins and replacing red and processed meats in particular with plant based proteins like beans, peas and lentils.

Expanding plant based options can also help school meal programs appeal to a wider variety of students which increases participation in the programs. Shifting to plant forward menus also presents an economic opportunity for California's growing plant based food industry.

And as this Committee knows well, shifting to plant rich diets is an indispensable climate mitigation strategy and school meals are a key point of leverage. Next slide please. So I wanted to share a bit more about the current State of school meals in California and also talk about some successes.

There has been a significant increase in plant based options beyond a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with plant based entrees actually seeing the largest increase amid all protein categories from 7 to 11% from 2019 to 2023.

High school and middle schools are serving plant based offerings more frequently, with more than half of the largest districts in the state about 56% featuring a plant based entree every day in 2023 compared to only nine out of 25 middle and high school menus in 36 offering about 36% of those options in 2018.

And while this progress is commendable, this still means that the vast majority of menus across the state are dominated by animal proteins and that in a quarter of schools plant based entree offerings are completely unavailable leaving students without choices. In another quarter of districts the only plant based option is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

We also see that processed meats like deli meats, sausage and hot dogs which are Group 1 carcinogens, continue to remain prevalent offerings making up about 14% of menu offerings across the state.

This statistic actually only includes processed meats as defined by the World Health Organization, so it therefore does not account for products like chicken nuggets which contain harmful additives like sodium phosphates.

Now there is an opportunity to address this and AB126 signed into law earlier this month to address ultra processed schools, our foods and school meals and we believe that it must address these process needs. Next slide please.

So here we can see a diverse array of culturally inclusive plant based offerings at a variety of districts across the state, from Sog Tofu to Cuban Street Tacos and Umami bowls. And I'll highlight a few specific successes made with the help of Friends of the Earth Micro Grants on the next slide.

So Tahoe Truckee Unified School District actually removed meat based breakfast sausage patties entirely from their meals and replaced them with plant based veggie patties from Morningstar as an indefinite staple to their breakfast menu.

They've also issued a two menu ordering option at Tahoe Elementary School which offers two menus, traditional and vegetarian, but which you can see here from which families can request vegetarian entrees for students ahead of time. The kitchen staff continues to push out new plant based recipes on their menus like Tofu Crumble tacos and Soba veggie noodle bowls.

After receiving the Friends of the Earth Micro Grant for Plant based foods, Banta USD was able to increase plant based participation from 20% to 40% in their schools, so doubling the number of students choosing that plant based option.

Palo Alto USD also worked hard to accommodate increasing student demand for plant based options and was able to experiment with new recipes as a result of the Friends of the Earth Micro grant.

The Director of Nutrition Services Alvis Fence shared with our team that when they make the plant based pho, she says, oh my gosh, I've never seen demand like that. Now we are wondering how to meet that demand.

Our micro grants program overall showed how small investments in Our case under $4,000 per district can realize large shifts making state funded grants or plant based purchasing incentives an extremely appealing taxpayer investment for students, schools and our planet. Next slide please.

So this success is attributable not only to the work of Friends of the Earth and our allies providing technical assistance on the ground, but also because of a suite of enabling policies, some of which Chairman Kalra mentioned earlier, in particular the School Food Best Practices Fund, including included in Governor Newsom's 2022 budget as an outgrowth of a Bill led by Assembly Members Nazarian and Callra to create a competitive grants program and meal reimbursement program for plant based entrees.

But this Fund unfortunately expired at the end of the last school year and still remains to be renewed. Next slide please. So this leads to our top policy recommendation which is for the state to provide funding to incentivize the expansion of plant based school food by renewing School Food Best Practices Fund.

We'd also like to see the KIT funds continue to be renewed to support kitchen infrastructure and culinary training, which is critical to shifting scratch cooking and reducing ultra processed foods. We were glad to see the KIT funds in the most recent budget, albeit at a lower funding level than what is needed.

This progress is also supplemented by other investments in school foods such as funding for farm to school procurement and school meals for all. So in conclusion, shifting toward plant based K12 menus at the scale necessary to help combat the intertwined crises of food insecurity, climate change and racial injustice requires multi pronged holistic strategies.

This includes policy change and technical support to schools to overcome barriers to shifting toward healthy climate friendly menus. And on my last slide I have my contact information and our website where you can learn a little bit more. Thank you to the Committee and all Members for your time. And that is all from me.

Thank you so much Megan for that thorough, rapid, yet thorough presentation. A lot of good work that Friends of the Earth is doing. We'll go to the other panelists and then we can open up to questions for the entire panel. Pete Angeles here again, Associate Vice Chancellor of Housing and Hospitality with UCLA.

Thank you. I'll give a brief presentation, an overview of our UCLA dining program and how we've incorporated sustainability, in particular alternative proteins, within our operations. Slides are turning. If someone has access to the slide deck, if you can, please forward it.

There we go. All right. For UCLA dining, we house 25,000 residents, but 15,000 of those undergraduates live in residence halls. 90% of them are in triple occupancies, which I'll talk to about the importance of that in a moment. We serve over 30,000 meals a day. Our program is rated number one in.

The nation by niche.com, that is votes given by students of each of the universities. Over 6,000 votes came in from our students from UCLA rating us number one. It's the seventh year in a row. And nine of the last 10 years.

It's a first class organization and you'll see that satisfaction has not been sacrificed in the effort of having a more sustainable program and incorporating alternative proteins. The organization also covers the Luskin Conference center, the banquet operations, the campus catering operations, and UCLA vending. But this is an important slide. Just to note, as I mentioned earlier.

We have 15,000 students living in a residence hall. The rooms don't always look this clean. I'll be honest, but 15,000 students living in these residence hall, and I often ask people what's missing in this room. And 90% of these rooms are tripled. And most of the time, almost always. People will mention there's no kitchen.

So these students are beholden to our dining operation. Provide them food on a daily basis. And we lean into that heavily. And I'll show you in a moment, we've been successful at doing this. The yellow bars here show the dorm inventory that we've had on campus since 2001.

The Blue Bar shows that we've been trying to grow our apartment inventory as quickly as possible. And the triple percentage, that light blue. Line that keeps rolling upwards, shows the. Demand for our residence halls is really astronomical. We're close to 90% this fall quarter. And I think the big reason for.

That is we invest strategically in four core areas. You'll see them here. Study space, health and wellness, well maintained living environments. But the most important investment we make in our program, and it's from student feedback, is dining. And we did two unique moves to. Really lean into the dining program.

One is that we prioritize the center of the plate and making sure we have the very highest quality ingredients, sustainable. Ingredients, even if they cost more. Focus that on the center of plate. And be more efficient. Drive the affordability through efficiency, not through the quality of the food, but through efficiency.

And the other thing we've done, which is kind of unique in the higher ed world, is that our dining venues are all concept driven. So instead of going into a food Court where you have a choice of very different cuisines in one food court.

Each of our dining venues, These are seating 7 to 900 students are completely theme or concept driven. So we have the most popular concept, which we'll get to in a moment, is our sustainable plant forward concept.

So on the first point I mentioned about, you know, how do we drive this and make sure it's affordable as we really lean into efficiency, we've invested. Heavily into artisanal bread bakery, an on campus dessert bakery and a campus commissary. These are just photos of the great work being done in these areas.

And these are when you're doing 30 plus thousand meals a day. We need this infrastructure to be able. To produce high volumes of unprocessed fresh. Food for our students and do it strategically, really focusing on cost controls and doing it at scale and at volume.

So these are all photos of of these back heart of house areas for kitchens and commissaries. And then I'm going to get to the concept. One concept I mentioned is our plant. Forward sustainable concept was our very first one. It opened 12 years ago this fall. 12 years ago. It's called brew and plate.

And this one is plant forward. Animal proteins are condiment, not center of the plate. Culinary training to really lean on making. Delicious, making vegetables and fruit as delicious as possible. And we'll show where we've used alternative proteins to incorporate into this concept. It's still our number one dining venue. You can see the. It's a nice venue.

We've incorporated through the design. A lot of light, natural light, plant materials, artwork that ties to sustainability. It has skylights in this venue. It seats almost 900. And we embrace the menus of change. University Research collaborative. There are 24 principles of healthy dining. And you'll see of these principles, red meat less often is one of them.

Move legumes and nuts to the center of the plate is a key one. But you'll see there's 26 principles. All of these principles are incorporated into our menu design for this concept. And here's some examples of where we've incorporated alternative proteins on this slide.

We have these not only in brew and plate, but across our dining operations, but in Brew and plate. They're featured every day. You should be able to get these alternative proteins provided in our menus. The impossible Korean burger is a huge hit. Any of these beyond and impossible items on those center columns are highly desired menu options.

The tempeh scrambled veggie bowl is a big hit, but you can see we've Many, many different choices for our students. And we found that in using the alternative proteins, really have to work with the culinary team to focus on flavor. And how does flavor work with it? How does texture work with it?

And we think we found quite a large number of menu options that our students are enjoying. And not only through the menu options. We've worked with a Master of Public. Health student a few years ago to see if we can nudge behavior through marketing.

And you can see a marketing piece here to try to steer students away from the beef burrito and going to a veggie burrito. And. And just by marketing, both through collateral material placed near the places where students.

Select food and through social media, she was able to increase the take rate of the veggie burrito versus the beef burrito by 54%. So it went up from 13.9% selection to 21.4. So it's an example of where menus of MCURC, the menus of Change University Research Collaborative. Where they really want to focus is.

Where can we use universities and dining. Programs and view universities as living labs to see where we can find an idea that nudge positive social behavior, positive sustainable behavior for students and see which methods work the best. So I'm going to go very briefly here. Come back to the living lab.

We've gotten to a new software for our dining program for purchasing menu design. It's called Yamix. And what's really good about this is. Now we'll be able to start a new tracking of consumption of animal proteins per ounce per swipe, which I think is going to be a fascinating metric for us to look over the years.

Are we going to be able to. Actually reduce the ounces of, of meat. Consumption by our students on a per swipe basis? Our dining program has also been recognized by the Humane Society for leadership in Humane Sourcing. They noted the abundance of alternative meat. Proteins that we offer, as well as. When we do offer a meat protein.

How it's done at a very small portion and not center of the plate. We also have aeroponic towers. Excuse me, aeroponic towers on the hill. Our hill is our resident, our undergraduate residence hall community. We have 50 aeroponic towers up there growing fresh produce that we incorporate into our menus.

And we redistribute unconsumed food to Bruins in need as well. And then we just finally have an AI venture that we're working on, working with Anderson UCLA Anderson to incorporate AI into tracking waste that comes from our dining operations. It does.

It through pattern recognition or visual recognition, automated logging, we have for recording the amount, the volumes of the food that is wasted and thrown out. And we have an analytics dashboard we'll have available. And we'll get operational insights that our culinary team can use to be even more efficient going forward.

We're piloting this at two locations here on campus. And lastly, this is where I want. To conclude, because I think this is. A very important point, that we have. An ideal living lab for research. We have 15,000 undergrads every year coming in. We just saw fall 15,000 once again come in.

And I think the Assemblyman mentioned earlier that how do we steal our behavior? Well, if you're. I've been here now for 20 years. That's 300,000 freshmen. I've seen come through our dining halls. And through our operations. And if we can nudge those behaviors by them year after year after year, we'll hit a million, we'll hit 2 million.

We can make an impact that way. And it's not only them, it's their families once they leave UCLA and how they incorporate what they've learned and what they've tasted. At UCLA, you know, vegetables are good. Vegetables, if done right, can be a. Fantastic core portion of your meal.

And another point about our living laboratory is 98% of our residents in our dining commons, we house 98% of our freshman class. That's a huge percentage of that class every year. And another unique feature is we're one. Of the rare universities that go by. Swipes instead of dollars or points.

And the reason that's important is that students are making choices in our dining halls not based on price or cost to them. It's based on what they want, what they want to eat. That's really unique. And our organization, our dining organization is a great lab because of that as well. And then we have the software.

We can really measure things, metric things, and see how certain nudges can change consumption behavior. And then lastly, I'll conclude with this. The dining team, of which I have. Al Farone, our senior Director of food and beverage, here with me today, our.

Dining team is dedicated to support our UCLA students, even if it's more work, more time, if it's an opportunity to learn and do something better, more sustainably. For our campus and for our planet. Our team is all in on that. So I'll conclude with that.

Thank you very much and great to see what's happening here at UCLA. Outstanding. And we'll finish the panel with Dr. Michelle Wood, Division of Chronic Disease and injury prevention with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

There's a slide deck.

Thank you so good afternoon. I want to thank Assemblymember Kalra and the Assembly Select Committee on Alternative Protein Innovation for today's informational hearing and for inviting the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health to participate today.

In 2024, the County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors took important steps to expand the County's existing healthy food procurement policies with the adoption of multiple board motions to encourage the purchase, serving, and sale of more plant based food options in county food venues and food assistance programs in our jurisdiction.

These actions were taken to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to improve the overall health of county employees, visitors, and individuals who access or depend on our county food services.

Our our Department recognizes the broader significance of these board actions as climate mitigation strategies and also as an opportunity where nutritious and tasty food options, including alternative proteins like plant based meat, could be offered to expand the diversity of foods to county clients.

There are multiple benefits to promoting plant based foods, both from an environmental and public health perspective. The production of animal based foods produces about twice the greenhouse gas emissions as plant based foods. Additionally, promoting more plant based foods may lower the risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, hypertension and diabetes.

In 2024 and 2025, the County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors adopted three board motions to promote more plant based food options in county food venues and food assistance programs in our jurisdiction.

These county efforts were intended to further advance values based food procurement in our agency, an approach that applies healthy food purchasing principles to support a healthier, more equitable and more sustainable food system. The first me the first motion was adopted in February of 2024. Reducing greenhouse gas Emissions through Food Procurement.

The motion asked the Department of Public Health to update its existing standards for prepared food, snacks and beverages to include institutional requirements to serve as and sell plant based food options in county food venues and food assistance programs.

A second motion was adopted by the Board of Supervisors in January 2025, just earlier this year, expanding county action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through food procurement.

A core directive of this motion required the development of a new protocol to integrate the Department of Public Health's updated food standards into county food service contracts and solicitations with external food operators as well as food suppliers. A third board motion just just a few months ago was adopted by the Board in June of 2025.

Joining the cool Food Pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from Los Angeles County Food Systems, this motion committed the County of Los Angeles to join the CO Food Pledge, a global initiative to reduce food based emissions by at least 25% by so what is public health doing?

The updated standards for prepared food, snacks and beverages set new standards that now encourage the purchase, sale and serving of plant based foods across county food venues and food assistance programs affecting our county's public hospital system, county jail and juvenile detention centers, home delivered and congregate meals for older adults, worksite cafeterias and food sold at entertainment places like our county museums as well as amphitheaters across the County of Los Angeles.

We are currently working to integrate these food standards into the County's food procurement and contracting processes. As referenced before, In June of 2025, the County Board of Supervisors committed the County of Los Angeles to join the World Resource Institute's Cool Food Pledge, a global initiative to reduce food based emissions by at least 25 by 2030.

This new partnership with the WRI's Cool Food team will support the annual collection and analysis of food purchasing data to track and monitor the County's purchasing of both animal and plant based foods and their carbon footprint. Our Department of Public Health recognizes the importance of building partnerships to move this initiative forward.

In addition to joining WRI's Cool Food Pledge, we have been working with multiple partners including including Mercy for Animals, Greener by Default and Humane World for Animals to provide resources, offer culinary training if needed and technical support to implement behavioral science strategies in participating county departments.

This initiative is a multisectoral collaboration in our jurisdiction and includes the County of Los Angeles own Chief Sustainability Office and Internal Services Department. As co leads on this work, I'd like to provide a spotlight on the Sheriff's Department as an early adopter and success story in our jurisdiction.

The Sheriff's Department serves about 14,000 incarcerated people with three meals a day in our county jail system. The Sheriff's Depart they recently introduced new plant based food products to their menu as part of their four week cycle menu. The products they introduced were very well received.

They included a plant based chicken Patty served in a sandwich product and hummus served with vegetables. As you can see, the County's initiative has created opportunities both presently and in the future for for more alternatives to animal based meat and more choices that are plant based.

On behalf of our Department of Public Health, I want to thank Assemblymember Kulra again and the Assembly Select Committee again for this opportunity to share our work. Thank you.

Thank you very much Dr. Wood. It's fantastic to see what LA I didn't know LA County was doing all these great things. I didn't presume they weren't. I just didn't know about it. I want to see if Senator Zbur has joined us. If you have any being in your district, any welcoming comments that you'd like to make.

No, I'd just like to thank for his leadership in this area. I'm proud that he selected UCLA to host the Select Committee's convening today. And I'm looking forward to learning a lot more.

Thank you. Thank you so much. And I'll start with a couple questions of the panelists and I'll kind of go in backwards order here. First of all, the Cool Food that initiative is that pledge that was put together by wri, Correct? Yeah. And so World Resources Institute. Correct.

And is that a pledge that government agencies take or is that, what does that mean, that pledge by itself?

Great question. Yeah. So it's all of the above. So they have membership globally. So we're joined by New York City, for example. I believe Washington, D.C. is a cool Food pledge Member. Large cities like London and Milan. And I think a large percentage of their membership is also hospital and healthcare sector.

And I believe they have representation from food suppliers and food manufacturers as well as. So it's, I think it's been around since 2015. The partnership has been amazing.

And one of the benefits of working with them is they will be tracking and monitoring and analyzing our food purchasing records to be able to basically build transparency about what the county's buying, specifically around animal and plant based foods, and then helping us basically reach our goals as far as reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Yeah, and I appreciate, especially coming from Santa Clara County, I think LA County has the largest public health system, the second largest Santa Clara County. The focus on the hospitals and the corrections system, but also in terms of food assistance programs, because oftentimes food assistance programs, they don't always offer traditionally the best quality of foods.

Are you working with food banks to source some of that food and fruits and vegetables? How is that guided?

So as far as when I reference food assistance programs, I'm referencing the programs that we offer in the County of Los Angeles. So an example would be the USDA has their summer food service program, an after school snack program, which is a program, it's like a stopgap in the summer when kids get out of school.

At lusd, they have a place where themselves and their families can get access to a free lunch in county parks. So we will be working. We've historically worked with the Parks and Recreation Department who oversees that Program. We've worked with them extensively on improving the nutritional quality.

So now we'll have a really wonderful opportunity to now implement this board motion with the USD Summer Food Service Service Program. So the Department of Parks and Rec. Excuse me, the Department of Parks and Recs oversees the USDA Summer Food Service Program.

Great. Well, it's fantastic what you all are doing, so thank you so much. And Mr. Angeles, first of all, the pictures of those large pots. I went to UC Santa Barbara. I used to work in the dining commons, scrubbing the pots and pans.

And it gave me some flashbacks of the pots I used to be able to fill. I had to put my whole body into to clean. But, you know, that's not my problem anymore. I'm sure the students are doing a great job at it. Question about this JMIX Sustainable Spend Tracking.

So I mean, I hadn't heard of something like that. It really tracks the ounces that you're having of meat or other products.

All of our dining accounting system will work through Yamix. It'll work through that. And versus the prior system we were using, we were not able to connect the volume of meat with what was actually purchased. And this is new for us.

Of course there's going to be a yield complication to that, but our team can work through that.

That's amazing. And then you see, I'd like to get. I'd like to get that system for legislative colleagues speaking all track how much, how well we're doing in that regard. But no, thank you. That was. That's really an interesting innovation that you're using along with the AI to look at the food waste and what have you.

So thank you for all the great work you're doing here. And I have a question for Ms. Jones.

The first of all, you had mentioned the salad bars because I remember in Santa Clara County at 1.0 many years ago, there was a program where there was fundraising done to get salad bars in middle schools and high schools and some elementary schools. Now it's expanded.

But then they started with like 100 schools and they found that these young students were eating, were choosing to eat the salad bars. Kind of like when the parents weren't watching, they were eating their vegetables because they saw their friends doing it.

And so the idea of just making that food accessible, which has been part of, as you mentioned, the grant program that we had, that's now expired.

The Oakland Unified School District program that you referred to, which looked like was been incredibly successful, was that using a Friends of the Earth micro grant or state funding grants that have now expired or a combination of sources or do you have.

Gosh, I. I would need to look. Into the funding because that actually predates my time at Friends of the Earth. I would assume that it was a combination of both. And I know that just like you're saying, I think doing that work to make to market the products in a way that kids are going to engage with.

We do a lot of taste tests on the ground at schools and get a lot of positive feedback when students are asked for their opinions and when they have a say in what recipes can be used and that they get to see see on the menus moving forward once they put in their vote for what they prefer.

Yeah. And I think the work by her colleague Summer Gabriel to kind of root out these ultra processed foods from our schools is a great step as well. That's going to offer more healthy alternatives. But thank you so much.

I want to see if anyone else, if Caleb or assemblymember or any of the staff Members, specifically the legislators, have any questions they want to ask the panel.

I had one. This is for Dr. Angeles. Just wondering sort of what the cost differences are that you're experiencing with the plant based foods versus the sort of more traditional options.

So we track our sustainable spend. The UC goal is 25% sustainable spend. The rules on that changed. So where we were at it before, we're now pushing back to 20 to get there. It is more expensive. Al. I think we've talked about it in. The past about 20% to go to lean in heavily on more sustainable options.

But again we can in our world, we try to cover that increased cost through efficiency and scale and volume. And it's been working so far. A swipe for all you care to eat at our dining venue is about $14.50. So if anyone's had a teenage kid. And tell them eat as much as.

You want and keep it within $15, I think that's pretty hard to do. But again, our scale allows us to be able to achieve that.

And I assume this cost would go down as the scale goes up. Right. So. Correct.

Correct. Thanks. I like the all you care to eat as opposed to all you can eat. That's a lot of pressure.

Incredibly interesting. The I think there's a student led advertising difference that drove student choices. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about that and you know, are student choices and student demand one of the drivers for these changes?

Yeah, I think what I did mention on that. So we worked with an MPA master of Public Health student to incorporate some nudges to steer behavior. And in that example I showed it was a significant increase of choosing the vegetable based burrito versus the meat.

And what we learned from that, which I didn't mention it was not just the marketing pitch of I would have thought maybe the humane side of it, less slaughter, less meat beef, it was the carbon footprint. So we learned that that was the driver to make that selection. Over to the increase of vegetarian option.

And I'll share another thing. I mentioned earlier that we have the UCLA vending. We received a study working with the Healthy Campus Initiative here. We saw a study that was done in Amsterdam to steer healthier choices out of the vending operation.

And what we learned there is from that study and we incorporated here is incorporating placement, pricing and product choice, we were able to steer 25%, close to 25% of the choices made by vending to the healthier option.

So I think there are lots of opportunities where we can do little nudges that have a dramatic impact when you scale up with the number of people either at a UCLA campus, the City of Los Angeles or State of California.

Well, thank you all so much. I don't know if there's any questions from any staff. If not, we will move on to the next panel. So thank you all so much. That was a great start. So the next panel is addressing market challenges to scaling alternative program proteins.

We have with us TK Pillin, senior advisor at Beyond Meat and former co founder of Veggie Grill. And I want to thank TK he had a couple of us legislators and staff Members at Beyond Meat this morning and it was really informative.

And I think it was also nice to be able to as a vegan, it's always nice to have lunch, not have to ask a lot of very specific questions. Just enjoy the food and the food was delicious.

We also have with us virtually Daniel Gertner, Danielle Gertner, lead economic and industry analyst with Good Food Institute, and Zach Weston, founder of Bioscale Consulting. And so why don't we go with the virtual first if we could, whoever might be ready to go.

I'm happy to start. This is Zak Weston.

Okay, so we have Zak Weston, founder of Bioscale Consulting and an industry analyst, or Zak Weston, founder of Bioscale Consulting. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Chairman Karra and Committee Members for hosting me today. I, as mentioned, am a consultant. I work with multiple different nonprofit initiatives to help scale alternative protein technologies, predominantly focused on technologies that are not currently on the market.

So I spent a lot of time with startups, including many of which were based in California, who are looking to bring new alternative protein ingredients production technologies and products to market. As we're well familiar with, alternative proteins offer a number of benefits to the world and specifically to California as an innovation leader in this category.

But there are also a number of challenges and headwinds that the industry faces that I'd like to talk briefly about today, as well as some of the potential policy solutions to these challenges. Food is a very cost sensitive industry and new food products and ingredients require low cost to be competitive.

This means that for any company that's trying to introduce a new food or food ingredient technology, many of them get stuck in a trap of being at small scale early on, meaning that they're producing at a higher cost and because they're only offered at a higher cost, having low demand, and that low demand doesn't translate into the higher volumes and scales that would lower cost.

Government policy is one of the ways that companies can break out of this trap by providing support in a variety of ways, including financial support.

One of the most important things, and what I would urge the Committee to consider as it's thinking about different policies, is in order to advance the alternative protein sector, we know that we need foods that can compete on cost and also foods that can compete on quality.

So the sensory, functionality and nutritional goals that the food industry and consumers have for their food products and for their ingredients, and that requires a robust and fit for purpose supply chain and highly scaled and optimized manufacturing ecosystem.

So when we think about alternative proteins, we often think about end products and brands and the foods that we eat, but everything that goes into making those products is incredibly important and affects the quality in terms of taste, texture, nutrition and functionality, as well as their cost.

So the specific areas where we in the industry would love to see more innovation and more support from a policy standpoint include better ingredients. This includes both proteins, whether that's plant proteins or proteins from biomass fermentation, better bulk fats and fat solutions, and more specialty ingredients that can improve flavor, improve texture, and lower cost.

We also wish to see innovation and advancement and scale up of better production technologies. Right now, a technology called extrusion is the primary way of structuring and texturizing plant based meat and alternative meat products. We wish to see innovations and scaling up of better forms of extrusion and alternatives such as high throughput, 3D printing and fiber spinning.

A lot of technology approaches that I'm sure other folks in the next panel will be talking about. There's also important manufacturing innovations that need to be developed and brought to scale.

Things like continuous production, so continuous fermentation or continuous cell culture, finding ways to lower the cost of bioreactors and the equipment that's required for manufacturing, and finding low cost feedstocks or the media inputs that go into making ingredients.

All of these things need to be done in order to create better products that compete on sensory functionality nutritional targets and are cheaper or fairly cost competitive with their animal protein, ingredient and product counterparts. There are specific policies that can help achieve an optimized and scaled supply chain.

I'll just briefly mention the ones that in my opinion are most powerful based on the work I've done looking at manufacturing financing at each different points of the alternate protein supply chain. The key reason that these policies matter is because we have a market failure that exists in the world of finance.

It's very, very difficult to find anyone who will Fund high capex large ticket size factories when you have novel products or novel ingredients being produced where the demand is uncertain and there are technological uncertainties as well. This is exactly where government support can be most catalytic.

And the specific policies that I've seen that are most helpful include transferable production and investment tax credits which function very similarly to grants, but are based on tax abatement loans and loan guarantees that enable the crowding in of private financing and private lending from the private sector procurement from government entities.

Some of the things that were alluded to on the previous panel I think are tremendously important and it would be excellent to see long lead contracts, particularly advanced procurement contracts that are focused on products that don't exist or for factories that are being built in order to provide that demand guarantee are tremendously powerful and I'm excited to see a lot of that work happening for existing plant based foods and ingredients.

It would be wonderful to also see that as well for new food products and ingredients, such as foods and ingredients produced not only with plants, but using fermentation and cell culture. Direct grants are also very powerful.

And finally, there are a number of traditional economic development incentives that can be used for manufacturers across the alternative protein supply chain who wish to locate in California.

This can include things like lower utility rates, workforce development funding, allowing for accelerated depreciation tax holidays and abatements, and public private partnerships on things like site preparation and site services such as wastewater treatment.

And I would again just urge the Committee to for any policy, make sure policy interventions that are feasible that it includes whole value chain thinking, thinking through the entire supply chain to ensure it's optimized and fit for producing cheap and effective products.

If we want a robust all protein sector, it requires a scaled and optimized supply chain manufacturing ecosystem. Thank you for the time today and looking forward to any questions during the Q and A portion.

Thank you Mr. Weston. Thank you for the extraordinary specificity in some of the things that could be advanced policy wise. That's always really, really helpful. Do we have our rep from Good Food Institute?

Yes, I am here. Can you hear me okay? Yes, excellent. And I've got some slides that I'm sure we'll get pulled up here. Perfect. Thank you Assemblymember Collierow for organizing this hearing and thank you to the Assembly Members serving on this Committee and others in attendance.

As was mentioned, my name is Daniel Gertner and I'm the lead economic and industry analyst at the Good Food Institute. Next slide please. Today I'll provide information on the current State of the alternative protein industry, some of the potential economic benefits of alternative proteins, and how California can continue to drive innovation and growth in the sector.

Next slide. For those of you not yet familiar, the Good Food Institute is a nonprofit science driven think tank helping to build a sustainable, secure and just food system by advancing alternative proteins. We work across the areas of science and technology, corporate engagement and policy. And we're funded entirely by philanthropy. Next slide please.

First, to set the stage, California sits at the center of the alternative protein industry. California's agricultural expertise, critical mass of alternative protein companies and world class research institutions position the state to be the leader in sustainable protein innovation. Next slide. California is home to nearly a third of all US alternative protein consumer brands, manufacturers and ingredient suppliers.

You can go to the next slide. And these companies span all three alternative protein production platforms which include plant based fermentation and cultivated. Next slide. I'll briefly walk through recent developments in each of those categories and we can keep on moving here. I promise some of these slides get a little bit longer. Perfect.

The plant based industry has experienced significant growth over the last decade. Plus, plant based meat sales in U.S. retail totaled $8.1 billion in 2024, more than double sales from just seven years ago, although down slightly from 2022.

Despite those slight sales declines, consumer research conducted in 2024 found that 71% of U.S. consumers aged 18 to 59 remain open to plant based meat and dairy, representing around 60 to $70 billion in potential retail spend if products can meet consumers taste and price expectations.

As the industry works to unlock this growth, California's strength in capital markets, manufacturing and research and development positions it to continue to lead in this market. Next slide in recent years, fermentation enabled foods have also scaled across the dairy, egg and meat categories, supported by a growing base of companies and facilities.

Over $4.8 billion has been raised by the sector since 2013 and those investments are leading to more efficient processes and improved functionality for California. The state's ecosystem of research and development and innovation hubs, pilot assets and companies enables end to end leadership from innovation to market launch.

Next slide and finally, cultivated meat, or meat grown directly from animal cells has also made meaningful progress in recent years and several products are now approved for sale in multiple global regions.

Over One third of U.S. cultivated meat companies are based in California and all companies with products currently approved for sale in the US Are headquartered in the state.

Production costs have come down and private investments since 2013 have topped $3 billion, but commercialization is still constrained by limited funding for research and scale up and I'll talk more about what California can do to fill this gap in a moment. Next slide so all of this leads us to the economic opportunity for alternative proteins.

Next slide Public investment in alternative proteins can lead to a positive cycle in which public research and development and pilot funding De risk new technologies, attracting private capital to build and retrofit facilities, and expanding supplier networks. Those economies of scale strengthen resilience, boost exports, and grow the tax base which fuels the next round of public investment.

Next slide In California, those benefits could translate into high value jobs while building localized supply chains that support resilience and boost exports. As global demand for protein continues to rise, California can capture outsized value by ensuring it serves as a hub for more than just startup activity.

Anchoring actual scale up here can turn today's innovation advantage into a more durable competitiveness in the bioeconomy. Next slide so what are some actions California can take to make this a reality? Next slide While researching current priorities, potential new policies, current policies, potential new policies, and business needs in California, GFI held an industry survey and virtual convening.

We spoke with several companies that were founded in the state but were considering leaving as they expanded manufacturing operations These companies noted that they chose California due to its startup friendly environment, availability of talent network effects and innovation friendly regulations. However, companies are leaving due to high production and labor costs.

By offsetting these costs via state grant and loan programs to finance capital expenditures, California can incentivize its impressive startup ecosystem to stay in the state as the sector matures. Next slide.

The following types of policies, many of which Zach just mentioned, could support California's growth in the sector and allow the state to continue to attract jobs and innovation. Grants and tax incentives can offset expenses associated with research and development and facility construction.

Shared pilot and scale up infrastructure allow multiple firms to develop, test and validate processes without full capital expenditures. Loans and loan guarantees for capex and working capital through programs like CalCap and Ibank can unlock private financing and allow companies to secure better terms.

Workforce development programs specifically focused on alternative protein manufacturing can ease talent bottlenecks and allowing and incentivizing alternative protein procurement in schools and other institutions can boost in state demand. Next slide please. So California already has several programs supporting innovation, but none of these programs are tailored specifically to the alternative protein industry.

I'd like to quickly highlight a few areas with significant potential to support the sector. The first is the Food Production Investment Program, which currently provides grants for equipment upgrades at existing facilities.

Adding eligibility for equipment in new facilities that use lower carbon processes would make the program accessible to the many alternative protein companies focused on building their first facilities. The Second is the 2022 Alternative Protein Research and Development grant to UC Davis.

This grant enabled open access research and multiple companies have cited it as an example of an impactful investment within the sector. Reinvesting a similar amount in 2026 would allow this research to continue benefiting companies in California and attracting innovation to the state.

And then finally, the current 5 $1.0 million cap for Ibank's small business loan Guarantee Program is too low to finance the majority of alternative protein pilot and production facilities. These field facilities can typically run from 15 to 20 $1.0 million for pilot scale facilities or 40 million to more than 250 $1.0 million for commercial scale facilities.

We recommend raising the cap to somewhere around $80 million to allow the program to benefit more projects. Taken together, these steps would help California convert its innovation leadership into more durable economic value for communities across the state. Next slide. And that brings my presentation to a close.

I look forward to answering any of your questions at the end of the panel and thank you all for your time.

Thank you so much and as always, thank you to the Good Food Institute for your leadership. Not Just in California, but nationally in really pushing the economic argument for us to continue to invest in alternative proteins.

And before we get to questions for the panel, we have TK Pillin, as mentioned, Senior Advisor at Beyond Meat and the former co-founder of Veggie Grow.

All right, I want to thank you, Chairman Kalra and the Committee for pushing this important discussion forward and for everybody here for being part of the discussion. So I'll quickly summarize my background just to give you my purview into this sector.

I originally was an MIT trained engineer and was a.com founder in the mid-90s and was lucky enough to have a partial exit in 1999 and then exited completely in 2004. I also got my MBA here at UCLA back in 1990. So good to be back on campus as I am a couple times a year.

So in 2005, I shifted my attention to the food system and how to try to improve it from a health and sustainability standpoint and concluded that one of the most impactful things I could do is to try to make plant based eating fun, friendly and approachable.

And that was the vision behind Veggie Grill, which we launched in 2006. And so we had a good run there and got up to 37 locations across the country. And then I stepped away into a board role and in 2015 launched power plant Ventures, an investment firm investing in emerging plant based food and beverage brands.

We invested in over 20 companies including Beyond Meat. We were an early investor in Beyond Meat and quite successful with that investment. And a few years ago I retired from both of those endeavors and joined the team at Beyond Meat as a senior advisor in 2024.

So from 2006 to 2016 we had a slow, steady growth in this sector. And in 2016 through 2021 we had a surge. And that surge created adoption across mainstream retail food service. Beyond Meat was one of the most successful IPOs in recent history. A lot of investment came into this sector.

A lot of companies innovated, created new products and we had a lot of growth. 2022 to 2025 have been contracting years in this category. So we are in that moment of headwinds. So why really there's I think four key pieces. There's a little bit of a health fad piece of plant based.

We see that in a lot of different categories from low CARB and from Atkins to, you know, any. Everybody thought anything plant based is healthy, right? It got overhyped and there was over expectations and not everything plant based is healthy.

So there Was that piece of it where consumers then were disappointed and some of the earlier products maybe weren't living up to the expectations. Now, the second piece was there was quite a bit of success in this category. As I mentioned, Beyond Meat had quite a run and it caught the meat industry's attention.

And the meat industry trade groups funded a multimillion dollar campaign, including super bowl ads hiring doctors, nutritionists, large social media campaigns popularizing the notion of ultra processed fake meat full of chemicals, not good for you. You know, meat, you know, it's actually not good for you, right?

And so that's a notion that has stuck and created confusion and doubt. And so that's number two. And then we have a few other factors, like we have a current situation or anything that challenges traditional. There's a little bit of a pushback there. And then we have that normal market correction, right?

And so that's, we've got three years of a backslide, but progress continues, right, where there's continued innovation around plant protein. You know, we're at Beyond Meat. Our innovation is a process that called extrusion, where we take plant protein and restructure it into the form of animal muscle.

And then we add in healthy fats and minerals and we have a product that gives you high protein satisfaction with healthier fats, lower saturated fat, no cholesterol. And we've continued to improve that process. We're using new ingredients like avocado oil, fava bean protein.

So we've continued to create better products that we've just launched over the last two years. So, so our latest set of products are all high in protein. We have new products that are 2728 grams of protein, 1 gram saturated fat or less, and 3 or 4 grams of fiber.

So when you look at the macro nutritionals and all the details, there's compelling health benefits. And there's also, you know, much simpler, cleaner ingredient decks because we worked a lot to say, okay, there's a perception out there that we need to consider and make sure our products can pass that notion of, hey, what's in these products?

Are they healthy? So our products, now if you look at them, they do pass that test in a compelling way. So what is the key lever to bring to demand and bringing growth back to this category? Because we had a lot of momentum and now we're in this headwind standpoint. Well, it's about demand, right?

And demand is taste, health, price. And the fourth is perception. And perception is the big challenge, right, because we think we've addressed taste and health Right. You had the products this morning. I think many people had the most recent set of products and I think we're, you know, we've addressed taste and health price.

Price will come with scale. Right. So if we can get demand back, we can get back to that positive loop of additional scale, more innovation, lower pricing. And that's, that's the loop we need to get back to.

You know, we are in an industry we, you know, Beyond Meat's a $300 million revenue company categories over, you know, $1.0 billion category here in the US or $2.0 billion category. So, but it's contracting right now. We need to get that growth back through demand. And so how do we do that? Right.

That would be what I think is the biggest lever from our viewpoint. Right. You know, certainly there's other technologies that can be funded and that's great. You know, they could probably address different problems, but we're in market addressing key problems.

There's a lot of great work being done here at UCLA and LA County and, and our products are part of that. Right. And we just, and we need to continue that work and amplify it. But that's going to be about how do we get more people to want to eat these products. Right.

And so what we're working hard on, and I'm actually working at Beyond Meat, but also with a group of nonprofit advocates that are also focused on improving our food system is new frame, which is to prioritize plant protein. Right. And that's just a shift of language. Right.

And what it does is it moves back past some of these tarnished terms like vegan and plant based. Like plant based I talked about is, you know, lost some of its positive halo because it encompasses a lot of products including candy and chips. Right.

And you can make plant based products with a lot of ingredients that maybe aren't good for you. Right. And then vegan has a woke, you know, fringe reputation. I'm a vegan. I've been a vegan for 20 years. So no offense, but, but you know, we need to bring in a much larger audience back into the category.

So I've been called woke for a lot of reasons. Vegans. Vegans is one of them.

I've been called fringe for a lot of reasons too. So I'm with you. But I'm marketing to the mainstream, so are you. So the great thing about plant protein is it gets us away from some of those terms that have been attacked and focuses on a larger positive category.

And it starts with beans and nuts and seeds and then up to structured plant proteins like beyond meat. And they're all under this halo of plant protein. And it does a couple of things. One, it counters this dietary myth of where do I get my protein? Right? Well, let's just talk about plant protein.

Let's, you know, let's not start with, zero, well, plant based, where am I going to get my protein? Right? So let's start with plant protein. And, and there's a lot of nutritional credibility already out there. Right. The, the recent Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee came out their report early this year recommending prioritizing plant protein.

You've got the Harvard School of Public Health, if you go to their website, they say prioritize plant protein. You know, American Heart Association, American Diabetes Association, they will talk about reducing processed and red meats and increasing plant proteins.

So we just, I think there's a real opportunity here that we can all get behind in amplifying the work everybody's already doing, but marketing it to consumers around prioritizing plant protein and all the benefits. So, you know, that's where I think the state can help. Right.

We already have these programs, but let's really, you know, one, let's make sure we continue to amplify these statewide plant procurement programs and mandates with clear targets. But let's, and let's make them defaults wherever possible. There's been a lot of success with the defaults.

So the other benefit of prioritizing plant protein is not telling people to give up meat. Hey, you know, that's, don't just prioritize plant protein. It's going to be good for everybody, right? And you know, it'll reduce your chance of heart disease, several forms of cancer, be good for the environment. And we're not telling you to be vegan.

We're just saying prioritize plant protein and let's make that default. Let's show people how enjoyable it can be. But let's, let's market it with simple, you know, there's facts, right? We can, you know, as, let's not do, you know, let's do it in a way that this is a public health opportunity, right? Prioritizing plant protein.

And I think the state and you know, all these different initiatives that, you know, UCLA talked about, great examples of marketing the benefits. Let's, let's do that and let's just bring the demand back.

Thank you. That was fantastic. Thank you so much. And I agree. I mean, the marketing has taken a big hit because of the intentional investment to attack plant based meats from the, and plant based Proteins from the meat industry, the traditional meat industry.

And it's not unlike what we've seen from the tobacco industry, fossil fuel industry, you name it. It's the same old tactics to protect their market share, regardless whether it's harming us health wise, harming the planet and what have you. And that's why we want to make sure we have the right information, information as decision makers, as policymakers.

And so all three of you presenting right now have made compelling arguments as to what we need to do, both in terms of marketing, but also very specific policy recommendations, which I've heard some before, including the loan, loan guarantee, accelerated depreciation, tax credits for equipment.

I know that we, when we try to broach some of these issues, we get the same resistance even inside we say inside the building in the Capitol. I know Dream is here from social compassion legislation. She can speak as well as represent the Good Food Institute.

A few years ago, just having the conversation about incentivizing small family farms from transitioning to meat and dairy to plant based, which would be a better profit Center for them, just trying to get them a bridge loan or from some grant program received furious opposition from cattle ranchers and some of those and the meat industry really more so from meat processing industry, more so than actual farmers.

But I think that goes to both the marketing challenges as well as the kind of the political challenges of being able to move this agenda in a positive direction.

But that's part of the reason why we have the Select Committee and part of the reason we have so many folks both in academia and industry that are working on this issue so valiantly. Are there any questions or comments that folks up here have?

Yeah, I had one and that was what kind of hidden subsidies are there for sort of meat that plant based protein is not receiving at either the federal or the state level?

I mean, are there sort of hidden subsidies that are sort of embedded in the way we just subsidize agriculture that gives sort of hidden benefits to meat versus plant based proteins?

You know, one piece of it is the subsidies for soy and corn, which majority of that goes to cattle feed. And so and then the guarantee some of those farmers get and bailouts get so just artificially keeps the price of meat lower.

So that, that's one of the challenges we also have is we, we don't, you know, our higher value crops don't get those subsidies. And so, you know, that's another opportunity, you know, to help us compete.

That's at the federal level though, primarily. Right.

I also, they have the Things, the programs like the methane digesters and things of that nature that just further sustain an industry and gives it a boost based upon kind of this junk science, in my opinion.

Daniel or Zach, do you have any further comment on subsidies that might be existent for the traditional meat industry that either doesn't exist or could potentially be beneficial to plant protein?

I would just add that globally there's about between it's a wide range, but 300 to 600 $1.0 billion spent on agricultural subsidies. So very significant. And a large portion of that is going into the animal agriculture industry.

Another example which I believe would also be at a federal level in the United States would be crop insurance, which is often geared towards, as TK mentioned, feed crops that are going into animal feed as opposed to human foods.

And so that type of assurance is benefiting the animal agriculture industry in a way that's not benefiting alternative proteins. But truly almost every agricultural subsidy is that way.

Whether you're thinking about extension programs that are training farmers on the best ways to improve yields and achieve the best crop rotations or what have you, almost all of that is done with a mindset towards feed crops first. And human foods often do not take priority in those programs.

So it's across the board, as far as I'm aware.

Thank you. And I had one question for Daniel regarding the I bank loan guarantee program that he referred to. I think it was Daniel that mentioned that the increasing the amount to 80 million for the I bank loan guarantee for manufacturing facilities, which is currently at 5 million right now.

That loan guarantee is at 5 million right now for small businesses. They can access a $5 million loan guarantee. And that just in the alternative protein ecosystem tends to not be enough to Fund any meaningful part of a manufacturing facility, whether it's a small scale or large scale facility.

And we've seen that. And so your suggestion is increase the cap.

There's actually a greater likelihood that you can actually get manufacturing here because I know that whether it's beyond or whether it's upside foods, you can name go down a list of a bunch of companies that are finding some success in innovation, but then are doing the manufacturing somewhere else. It's a common challenge in California.

How do we boost manufacturing across all sectors? But I guess that would be one particularly because we're not seeing as much manufacturing in this industry. We're seeing the maybe we're seeing the research innovation, we're seeing some of the advanced manufacturing, but not the manufacturing at scale.

Yeah, definitely.

And that kind of goes to what Zach spoke to in his presentation about the market failures that exist where it is very difficult for alternative protein companies, many of which are producing novel foods to receive affordable long term debt from commercial banks and other organizations without some third party like a government, you know, providing some guarantee for that funding to De risk it and crowd in private capital.

So yeah, the I Bank program would be one way to do that.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments?

Just one. Interested hear from I guess any of the panelists about the supply chain challenges that you, how you're navigating current supply chain challenges and how you are planning for more growth in the future.

Yeah, we have a full supply chain team. We've been doing in market for 10 years now. And so we, you know, the big challenge is just the price, right. That's why our products are priced higher. We Talked about the 25% to 50% premium you have to pay for our products.

And so ultimately if we can help improve the supply of those products, the cost of those products. But you know, we, you know, these are plant based products. These exist. That's like we do a lot of hard work, work in R and D to find, develop our products from ingredients that are sourced across North America.

So that part is there. It's just the cost of those products versus the subsidized costs of the animal inputs is the bigger challenge.

I know there are some challenges coming from the federal actions this year, tariffs and what have you. I imagine there's some strains that have been put strange.

But yes, we, yeah, we're navigating those and I think, you know, yeah, we, it's more of the bigger structural issues that we could really use help with to compete with the forces that are out there.

Any other questions from legislative staff? Okay.

Okay. Well thank you, thank you all three of you, very, very much. Great information and very direct direction to the Legislature and Administration on what we need to do moving forward. Thank you. And we, yes.

And our final panel leading on future food research and innovation if they can make their way up, Dr. Amy Rowat, Director and Professor of Science and food at UCLA. And it's been a, she's been a great partner in our work in Sacramento.

Corinne Smith, a future food fellow at UCLA and Dr. Janet Tomiyama, Professor at the Department of Psychology here at UCLA as well. Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, Chair Kalra, for your leadership again and your passion about this very important topic. Thank you also to the Select Committee Members as well. I'm Amy Rowat, Professor of Integrated Biology and Physiology.

I also serve as faculty Director for the Rothman Family Institute of Food Studies here at UCLA and also as co Director of the Integrative Center for Alternative Meat and Protein that is centered at UC Davis and has campuses such as UCLA in the membership as well.

So today I'm excited to update you on some of the advances in both research and workforce development in the alternative protein space here at UCLA and also tell you more specifically about our future Food Fellows program, which was developed specifically thanks to the infusion of state funds to the UC campuses, including UCLA, as one of, in addition to UC Davis and UC Berkeley in 2022.

So, next slide, please. So to really scale alternative proteins, or some may call them complementary proteins because they will be integrated into our food systems as we envision for societal impact, really requires a lot of coordination and collaboration across different fields of expertise. We've heard about many of those today.

We need to be able to scale the production of some of these products. And in the case of cultivated meat, you might need to scale the growth of cells for these animal proteins. But they also need to taste really, really good.

They need to be nutritious, they need to be something that people want to be able to eat, also be food safe and affordable and sustainable. So there's a lot of different criteria in here. And at UCLA, we have expertise across all of these different sectors that are necessary to scale for impact. So next slide, please.

So we now have, again, thanks to the momentum that the infusion of state funds has generated here we have over 50 faculty and trainees working across 10 departments and four schools, very busy making research discoveries and writing and disseminating our results and publications and also generating intellectual property around some of these discoveries as well. Next slide, please.

So just to give you a snapshot here, I spoke in the first informational hearing more about specific research happening. But I wanted to give you more of an overview of our activities here at UCLA in terms of the science engineering frontier.

You know, we're really focused on understanding at the molecular and cellular level how we can really develop cells that have traits that are important for production so they can be scaled and will also taste good and have great nutritional profile and be sustainable at the same time.

And so we're using our powerhouse of techniques in both life sciences and engineering to be able to create molecular maps of cells and understand how those translate to these more sensory properties that are going to be important for the product of the food. So we call it eatability. Next, please.

And of course, we've heard a lot of discussion around how it really matters what people think about these foods. And Professor my colleague Janet Chumeon will be talking more about that soon. Some of understanding how the factors that drive people's food choices. Next slide, please. zero, thank you. Wonderful.

Of course, food safety is really critical and also important for consumer trust. And so our colleagues in the Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy, Professor Michael Roberts and Diana Winters, are experts in the regulation of novel foods. And so they provide really great expertise and insights into this important aspect.

And finally, we've heard from our colleagues ABC Angelus and UC Late Dining, which is of course the number one college food in America, but also a really important collaborator in in our research projects, as you've heard, and has tremendous power with the number of meals that they're serving every day to be able to support research studies that Professor Tomiyama, for example, and others are engaged with.

So a central question here we think about a lot at UCLA. We're one of the very top public institutions in the nation. How do we train the next generation to be able to lead sustainable future food systems? And this is not trivial because we've heard that there's public health, there's engineering, there's science, there's consumer psychology involved.

And so, thanks to the support from the state funding, we took a very rigorous approach to really understand what we would need to make a successful training program. So we interviewed and did surveys with over 18 companies in the cellular agriculture space.

We also did interviews and studied in great detail successful programs, such as the one training program started by the nonprofit New Harvest organization that was supporting the very first cohort of graduate students in this field. And this is what we came up with.

I'm going to go through some of the three key components of the training program that we developed. One is the importance of training students to be leaders. We want to have students that have experience in mentorship and in leading projects, importantly across disciplines and across sectors.

We're here in academia, but we need to be working with community partners, with industry, and also instilling in our students the knowledge of how they can initiate change. And that's why our collaboration with you all and the informational hearing today is a really important step in also familiarizing students and how to interact with policy.

For example, another key component is communication, and this is really essential when we're trying to talk with each other across disciplines and also across sectors. So how do we also engage with General audiences? We've heard the importance also of how we communicate about the alternative proteins, and this will be critical moving forward into the future.

And so, as part of the Future Food Fellows training program, we embedded practice for communication to General audiences. And we brought in science communication experts, such as our colleague, Executive Director Jack Bobo of the Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies. And we trained our fellows in how to give accessible talks.

Pictured here on the right is future food Fellow Cece Cohen, giving a talk at a symposium that we held where we had representation from various sectors, from policy, government, and also the public and private sectors. And finally, building community is a really key component.

We know that for students to feel successful, successful and to want to continue in their education, feeling the sense of belonging is really important. And this was really exemplified by some of the model programs that we studied that they had really strong community.

This created spaces where students could ask questions across disciplines and also develop a cohort that they could use as a network as they moved into their future. And importantly, the community aspect is important also for building those bridges from academia to industry as well.

So we're thrilled, for example, that beyond me comes to some of our networking events and vice versa.

So taken together, these three components are what we feel is essential for being able to train effective transdisciplinary leaders that are really going to be able to address some of these very complex problems in sustainable food futures that span many different disciplines in many sectors. And. Right.

So this was the kind of theoretical background and in practice, this is what the fellows, this is where the fellows are. So we strategically were selecting fellows from across different disciplines, bioengineering, chemistry, law and policy.

Many of them are here today, including also Erica Laris Lopez, who will be, you can meet with later and you'll hear soon from Corinne Smith. We also embedded mentors into the program. So we had experts in biology and psychology as well, and the opportunity for them to also mentor undergraduate students. Okay.

We're also training from local to global scales. And this is an example of, of a prestigious international conference that will be held in Pomona in January 2026. And this is the first of its kind. Gordon research conference on sustainable food production, covering fermentation, plant based and cultivated meats. So thank you for your attention.

And I just want to emphasize that the University of California is really key player, I think, in advancing both the research and the workforce development for future foods. And yeah, we're excited to keep building on the momentum. Thank you.

Well, Dr. Rowat, thank you so much. In a relatively short period of time, I mean, the amount of work that's happened here is extraordinary, particularly in really kind of catalyzing the next generation of students. And speaking of that, I think now we will hear from Corinne Smith on her work.

Hi. Hello. My name is Corinne. I'm here speaking on my own behalf. I'm a bioengineering PhD student in Dr. Amy Rowat's lab. And my main project is working on developing cultivated meat. So I am a big lover of animals, as you can see.

I have this picture of me at a farm animal sanctuary giving a snack to this chicken. And I've always been passionate about finding ways that we can improve the lives of both people and animals through the foods we eat.

But it wasn't until my undergraduate studies in chemical engineering at University of Cincinnati, where I'm from, that that I learned about this field of alternative proteins and specifically the world of cultivated meat, which is where I found my calling as a scientist.

And when I was searching for where I wanted to do my PhD studies, I looked at labs all across the country. And I was really interested specifically in California and especially UCLA, because of the vibrant food sustainability community here.

So to give a quick background on my project, I'm leading this interdisciplinary effort, working with experts at UCLA across different disciplines, including food studies, biology, chemical engineering, bioengineering, and chemistry. And the main goal of our project is to find ways to engineer muscle cells to grow more quickly and efficiently for producing cultivated meat.

And we do this through engineering or through different engineering strategies when cultivating cells. So this could range from engineering the surface that cells grow on to the ingredients that we feed the cells. So just to highlight one of our recent exciting discoveries, here is a picture of some muscle cells that we've grown in the lab.

So the little blue dots that you're seeing are the DNA inside of the nuclei of the cells. And. And the red here that you're seeing is the actual muscle protein that's making up the muscle cells. And so we recently discovered a new ingredient that we could add to the broth that we're feeding the cells.

And as you can see, we found that when we added this novel ingredient, we saw a dramatic increase in the size of the muscle cells. So we went from having lots of smaller muscle cells to these big, long muscle fibers that could be used for producing meat.

So this is very exciting, and we're now using the engineering strategies that we've developed to be able to efficiently grow muscle tissue in a range of different cells and species, from mouse to quail, mussel to sheep, and even Wagyu beef. Mussel cells.

So beyond my research, my science research, I also had the opportunity as part of the Future Food Fellows program to build my science communication skills.

So myself and our interdisciplinary group, including chemists, law students and bioengineers, we got to work with RFI Director Jack Bobo, who's an expert in science communication, to improve our skills, talking about our research to General audiences.

And I got to apply some of the skills that I learned as part of this program by giving a TED style talk to General audiences at the Future Food Symposium 2025 at UCLA.

And in addition to building science communication skills, as a future food Fellow, I've also had the opportunity to mentor four lovely undergraduate students from a range of disciplines, including microbiology, chemical engineering and anthropology, and also food science and technology.

So these students had the opportunity to learn skills in the lab towards being part of the growing alternative proteins workforce here in California. And this was also a great opportunity for myself to be able to build my skills as a research mentor.

And in addition to our work in the lab, speaking more broadly about building the alternative proteins community here at UCLA. I'm proud to be the co founder and co President of the Alternative Proteins Project at UCLA. So we're part of a global student body that's supported by the Good Food Institute.

And the goal of our club is to turn universities into engines of alternative proteins. Education, research, research and innovation. And so our chapter has done this through hosting social events such as alternative protein food tastings, cooking classes.

We've also hosted professional development events such as alternative proteins and food sustainability career fairs, and as well as hosting our own educational programs such as bringing in experts from industry and academia to come talk to students about their work. And so, yeah, that's all I have to say. Thanks for listening.

Thank you, thank you very much. You're the brains, you have this. I'm just a good talker, but it's the science like we were at beyond earlier, talking about scientists from Caltech and UCLA and Berkeley and Harvard. It's the scientists that are the ones that are really going to lead us.

But I do appreciate the fact that the program really helps you to work on your communication skills as well, because a lot of it really is the marketing, right? We heard about marketing, you know, about how do we communicate what this industry is really about, especially when there's all this kind of counter efforts, right.

And so it's really great to see not just the scientific work being done, but trying to understand how do we communicate the work that's being done to the greater community. And so speaking of the psychology of it. Let's Turn over to Dr. Janet Tomiyama, a Professor of the Department of Psychology here at UCLA.

Thank you, Assemblymember Kalra, for having this really interesting hearing. And yes, it's a perfect segue into my work. So in our lab, the question that we're pursuing is how do we get consumers to accept and adopt these alternative proteins so that we can meet this incredible protein demand that we see?

And so when we talk about consumer issues, I think we're used to hearing about cost or taste or safety. But as human beings, we make over 200 food related decisions a day. And all those decision making processes go through the brain.

And so what we try to do is go beyond these kind of rudimentary targets of taste, cost, and safety. And we use all the tools and theories and knowledge in psychology to try and push the envelope and try and find new solutions for adoption.

So in the five minutes that I've been given, I'm going to highlight maybe just three key findings from our lab that could be helpful in terms of helping consumers adopt these alternative proteins. And so I want to start by talking about food Neophobia.

Anyone with children knows that not just children, but also adults are fearful of new food. Literally, neo, New Phobia, fear. And it's evolutionarily helpful. It keeps us from eating poison berries and whatnot. But an interesting thing about Neophobia is it elicits a human emotion of disgust.

And in our brains, there is this sort of superhighway between this emotion of disgust and moralization. So judgments of right and wrong. And so what we see, for example, in the area of alternative proteins is if someone thinks, ew, that's disgusting, it's very quick from there to go to. And that's just morally wrong.

And that's why we see sort of policy efforts to outlaw things like cultivated meat before anyone has ever even tasted them. It's because of this evolutionarily conserved pathway in our brains.

And so the way to combat disgust is to actually, let me just show you some proof that a lot of people are too disgusted by cultivated meat to try it. Vegetarians, obviously, they don't like meat to begin with or they don't want to eat it. But even 35% of meat eaters want to try it. They're too disgusted.

And so in our lab, we came up with a solution because we know that the counter, a counter strategy to disgust is to emphasize the naturalness of things. And so we tested this animal framing, this naturalness framing that really pushes how Cultured cells and cultivated cells, it's, it's like 100% animal flesh.

So eating a hamburger made from cultured beef is going to feel like eating something that came directly from a cow. Every single bit of cultured meat originates entirely from a real living animal. So people were randomly assigned to see this or just like a factual description of cultivated meat.

And what we find is, what I really want to draw your attention to is on the left side here, the people who were given the message that, you know, cultured meat is natural, their disgust levels were lower than people with the control message. And I think this is really important that we saw this change in meat eaters.

Vegetarians, I think, are not the market for cultivated meat, right? They're happy with their plants and their vegetables and their alternatives, but it's really more difficult to push around the carnivores because, okay, so there are also other demographic issues you want to consider. So in our very gendered society, it is manly to eat meat.

And so for men and not women, what we found in our lab is the more gender conforming you are, that's on the x axis here, meaning the more manly you feel or the more manly you want to appear, the more you eat beef.

So in a way, eating beef is a way to prove to the world that you're a real man. Notice that for women, it doesn't matter how feminine, traditionally cisgendered feminine you feel, doesn't really relate to how much beef you eat.

And so I think this is a real opportunity because we already know that women are more open to plant based diets, plant based, alternative proteins than men. We haven't yet really had a good target for how to push around men's behavior because of this whole thing about eating meat is manly.

And so cultivated meat, I think, holds real promise for this hard to reach demographic that, you know, real meat, cultivated meat is real meat. And, and that's how you show the world that you're a man, basically. Okay, so the last thing I want to talk about is terminology and language that we use.

So this was a recent article from the New York Times asking, is fake meat better for you than real meat? And this terminology was kind of concerning to those of us scientists in the consumer research area because these legacy media companies, the way that they talk about these new technologies, has the potential to really sway public opinion.

And so in a representative survey of over 1,200 adults, we tested a bunch of different terms. So we took this exact New York Times article and randomly swapped out one of These six terms for plant based proteins and we did the similar thing for cultivated meat.

These terms came from an expert panel of researchers and journalists and industry professionals and conference goers from a sustainable protein conference. And what we found were some clear winners and losers. So if you just look at the average level of, zero, okay, I'm now willing to try this product.

And also, zero, I'm willing to forego meat in order to, well, I'm willing to forego meat, I would say the clear winner. TK Are you happy about this? Plant proteins and also complementary proteins had the highest average acceptance of these kinds of proteins. And then there was a clear loser. zero, sorry, I won't talk about losers.

Yet still winners. Cultivated meat and cultured meat surprisingly had the top two average sort of acceptance.

And then in terms of the clear losers, fake meat statistically significantly was worse in terms of consumers acceptance than any of these other terms, which I think is really important because that is the terminology that New York Times used on the cultivated meat side.

Any of these cell prefixed terms were on the lower end in terms of acceptance. And so I think this really matters for how the media talks about these technologies, but also how policies refer to these things in laws, in labeling that is approved and things like that.

So I think this study, I think these data are hot off the presses, not yet published, but I think important implications for trying to get consumers to accept this going forward. And that's my information.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for that.

I think a study like this on what kind of language to use is going to be really important for all of us that really want to have honest conversations about how we help educate the masses, educate ourselves on what we can do in terms of boosting alternative protein innovation.

I know that that's part the battles are on many fronts and one is on language and terminology. We see it in the eu, we've seen it here in California. They don't want the words meat or cheese or hamburger. They try to stop alternative protein companies from using these words, claiming, quote, it's fake or fake meat.

And so they know the power of linguistics, they know the power of psychology already, clearly they spend many millions in combating what alternative protein companies are doing. And so to your point, I think it's really important for us to understand how much our words have power in this kind of battle for just honesty.

That's really, I think that's when you talk about alternative protein innovation and what I'm certainly trying to encourage, I think other folks just let's just have an honest conversation about why it's important for us as Californians to do what we can to boost this industry. So thank you so much for really highlighting that.

And I didn't do this earlier, I wanted to do this a few moments ago. If all the the fellows can raise their hand that are here. Are there any of the future food fellows, raise your hand. Thank you so much for being part of the future.

This is when I spoke earlier about the money that we got from the state to go to the UCs, UC Davis, UCLA and Berkeley. This was what at least I had in mind, I think others had in mind as well, is to really excite the next generation of scientists, of marketers, of attorneys.

The reality is these companies need all, everyone that's part of any successful industry to choose to go into these industries, marketing, every single one of those, no matter what major might exist on this campus.

There's going to be some place for you in the story that needs to be told and the innovation that needs to happen in these industries. So I really want to thank you for being here. And that's part of why we want to do this at UCLA.

We want to do this on college campuses to help further excite the next generation of the workforce that's going to take on the baton and be the legislators next so that I can retire and then one of you great minds can take over for me and continue to push the envelope on some of these important issues.

Kelly, do you want to have any questions or.

Yeah, I mean, just first off, thank you all. Thank you all for your work. You know, the UCs are such a fundamentally valuable part of California's investment in the future in research and innovation in education.

Obviously, you know, what are some of the ways that, you know, so that we can kind of double down on that, on those investments and, you know, making, taking the next step for supporting your work and sort of the innovative integrative approach to multidisciplinary boosting and support for your research and for this key industry, for health as well as for climate mitigation.

We can start. Thank you for your question. And I'm here speaking on my own behalf, but what I can say is that the infusion of state funds in 2022 made a huge impact on our education and workforce development training. So the Future Foods Fellows program was, you know, developed and supported. That was a one year pilot program.

So it ended. And so. But I think we have a really fantastic model for how we can train students both at graduate and undergraduate levels across Disciplines and also with mentorship and involving postdoctoral trainees as well. And that prepares them for sort of the workforce.

I think funding to support research advances both in the kind of science and technology development, behavioral sciences. Some of our research collaborations with also UCLA dining funding is always important for accelerating those efforts as well. So I'll leave it at that.

I also just want to make the point earlier. I think somebody said there's the science is important, but then also we need to look at the consumer stuff. But I think the recognition of consumer and behavioral stuff as science, you know, we do use the experimental method. It's very rigorous.

In some ways it's harder to capture these nebulous concepts like willingness to eat. And so I do think or traditional scientific funding should also be spent towards these really important consumer aspects, because unless they eat them, they're not going to be solving the world.

And just to build on that as well. I think infrastructure for all of this research. And we've talked about the importance of infrastructure for behavioral sciences research as well, that can really have sort of well defined environments for where you can carry out some of these studies.

Equipment infrastructure, of course, also to be able to understand, you know, cellular behaviors and determinants of texture and nutrition and the scalability for alternative protein. More technology development. Those are also important elements.

Yeah, the first panel was great to hear. I mean, you basically have a built in, you know, thousands of students here. So you have the volume of students to really be able to do just that, to be able to evaluate not just the food, but the attitudes towards the food and the behavioral changes.

And that's a great thing about being on a college campus and doing this work and especially having a dining program that's already well regarded by the students and already respected and enjoyed by the students that as you make these shifts and add more plant proteins into the mix, you can really get a feel of, okay, this is working and this is not.

And Caleb was put here to toss that softball to Dr. Woet to ask for more money. So we get it. We need to get you more money, get all the DC programs more money. We got a little bit for the I camp this year, even though we did try to get more.

And we're going to keep working on it because I think it is important for us to expand these programs at our UC campuses and beyond, including what we heard from the panel before in terms of manufacturing credits and what have you, so that some of the great innovations can leave the campus and actually be tested out in the market.

And the innovation can occur in the private sector as well. Are there any other questions, any legislative staff to have any questions for this panel? If not, I want to thank all three of you so much. And we're going to move to public comment in a moment.

I just want to make note that there will be a reception hosted by Social Compassion and Legislation at the Hershey hall south courtyard. There will be some beyond meat foods that beyond. Okay, there you go. See? So you want some burgers after this? There are going to be burgers.

I know the students want burgers because when I was a student I always wanted to have food. And so but for right now though, let's go on to any public comment.

And so anyone that wishes to make a public comment, we have a microphone set up here and just try to let me just give a minute or two of comments for anyone that would.

Like to hi everybody. I'm Judy Mancuso. I've been a pure Snow vegan for 35 years and I just want to thank Assemblymember Kalra for taking the lead on this at the state level. My group is called Social Compassion in Legislation.

We have sponsored over 80 bills at the State of California and as of this year we've gotten 30 signed into law and those include plant based mandates for hospitals and prisons and securing over $100 million for infrastructure at schools across California to get plan plant based meals and milks.

And so I want to thank everybody today because there was a lot of great ideas that came out of this for legislation and I would like everyone to come to our reception, have some wonderful plant protein food with us and give us your card information so that 2026 we can do even bigger and better for plants protein in California.

Thank you, thank you.

Thank you, thank you to Judy and Social Compassion Legislation for your incredible leadership over the years. Is there anyone else that would like to make public comment on anything you heard today? Anyone? Yeah, please.

Hi Chair, thank you so much for this is an amazing, really great panel and everybody had really great information. My name is Sam and I am from Plant Based Treaty. I'm a campaigner with Plant Based Treaty. Thank you.

And I just want to ask about if you know we talked a lot about the education and making marketing like TK from Beyond Meat, saying that working with a lot of nonprofit, I think you're talking about us as one of them.

So we really also need support from the state and also funding to bring that message to because we work with cities. So it'd be really great if you know, we get support from to help promote that message. We're all about public information campaign.

And just to let you know, we just got this coloring book that we developed with Switch for good and Food and Flash and we got a grant from Houston. Harris county gave us a grant to go to elementary schools to underserved communities to talk about eating veggies, fruits and plant protein to second graders.

So it would be great if we could get that type of support and be able to do this here in California. And so I want to thank everybody. We need your support. We want to help do promote this to young children and to the communities with cities.

So that's what plant based treaty does and I would love to be able to help spread that message. Thank you. Thank you, Sam. Thank you so much.

Yeah, there's a lot of different ways. Yeah, come on up. Anyone else wants to speak? A lot of different ways to do it.

I know when I was on City Council in San Jose we did the meet this Monday we did the same thing again when I got in the Legislature and we've been working on plant based treaty. Resolutions can be challenging at times because again the resistance that we get to it.

But your work is tremendously important on that education and, and that marketing side. So thank you so much.

Hi, my name is Lily. I'm with Food Solutions Action. We are an advocacy group for the protein innovation industry in the US we work both at the federal level and at the state level and just want to name this was a fantastic hearing.

So grateful to you Chair Min Kolra and to the Committee and to all the speakers and panelists and all the information that was presented. Really am so grateful. And I was particularly excited to hear about the work that that LA County is doing in prioritizing plant protein in their procurement.

And I just wanted to get a sense from you if you think that that is something that would be viable at the state level, if that's something that the State of California could replicate.

I mean we usually don't do question and answer during public comment, but I will give you an answer. I think we absolutely can. What I want, my first action is going to go back to my county, Santa Clara County to find out what they're doing. And they probably are doing some things I'm just not aware of.

And so I think that like a lot of the great work that happens in Sacramento, it starts at the local level. You get 234 of the largest counties to start moving on. It makes it a whole lot easier to do it at the state level. I've been working on procurement stuff for a few years.

I know some of our friends here are aware of that. When it comes to deforestation, free procurement, what have you. And it's very challenging.

And I think when it comes to something like kind of food sourcing and what have you and kind of nutrition and health, the more we can have success at the local level, especially These, I mean, LA County, call it the local level, but it's larger than most states.

So you get some of these big counties to move on. It makes it a whole lot easier for us to move at the state level.

But it also includes some of the education that I know we work with you and Good Food Institute, Social compassion legislation and others to do food demonstrations at the Capitol with my colleagues to have meals, to have an opportunity for not just legislators, but staff to try the foods.

And when they do that, the companies talk about how they're made. They bring it down to earth. So it's not like, zero, what's this kind of plant thing and fake meat.

They actually get a chance to talk to folks that can really sell the foods in a way that not only talk about how tasty they are, but how they're made. So again, it really speaks to the health of it. So the short answer is absolutely yes. I do want to do more at the state level on procurement.

And I think one of the things we have to do first, as Ms. Mincuso mentioned, it was also mentioned by one of our panelists, is reinstate the funding that was worked on by some of the Nazari and myself a few years back so we can get more of that money to schools again just to get them to get more plant based foods and keep those foods in their schools.

Because a lot of that money went to kind of the hardware in the kitchens. They didn't have a lot of that equipment. 203040 years of serving highly processed foods, highly processed meats. They had lost some of the tools to create fresh food.

And so you have to get that money in there to get these schools to kind of ramp up the ability to do plant protein and healthier foods in General. Kind of the slow food movement. We have the best agricultural industry in the world. Why are we bringing in foods from other states and other countries into our schools?

We have everything we need right here. I'm talking more than anyone else. Anyone else for public comment. Yes, please. I think I'm doing this wrong.

And thank you so much for the, for the Committee and for the work that you. Thank you for the doctors who are Speaking. I'm actually, I'm Will. I work in a different industry. I work in the fintech space. And look, alternative solutions are what we need.

So I just want to thank you all for the work you're doing. I'm not very familiar with this industry in this sector, but my former colleague Lily invited me. We used to work for SC24 for Ben Allen's office. So, you know, I'm really. I'm inspired by the work that all of you are doing, and it's really important.

You know, I'm wearing a shirt from a event called Healing Appalachia, which is about alternative methods for mental health and helping the crisis that we have as a country. I'm wearing pants that were upcycled, which is alternative fashion, and I work in alternative tech. And here we are doing alternative protein. Like, you know, it's. This is.

This is amazing. So I just wanted to thank you all. Thank you for the panel, the Committee, the work that you do, and let's keep it going, y'. All. We got a lot of problems. Just fix them together. I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Another reason why we like having these hearings on college campuses. You get folks to show up that don't know much about it. And now we have another champion along our side. Yes.

Hi, Select Committee, My name is Zoe. Thank you all again for hosting such a wonderful event and being able to allow us to have discourse on this topic. I'm one of the undergrads, actually, from Amy Rowat's lab, and I work under Karin. And I've also had the pleasure of now working with Professor Tomiyama.

And I would just love to stress the importance of the future food fellows and how much it's impacted me and my educational journey. It's inspired me to go into alt protein after graduating my undergrad. And so if in any way you can facilitate any innovation in the education sector, I know that I have benefited from it.

And it's something that has paved a path for me. And I don't think I would have been able to do that had it not been for the wonderful people that I work with and the programs that help Fund that. So thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you. That was another roundabout plug for money, and we're going to try to bring you more money because that will help get more fellows. Right, Anone else? Public comment. And we'll just. We'll wrap up public comment next 23 minutes. So, yeah, please.

Hi, my name is Narayan. I'm a PhD student in sustainability here at UCLA, and I really Care about all the issues that we're talking about. That's why I'm here. I was really moved by some of. The stories you mentioned on how some.

Kids, kids in some schools have to choose between going hungry and eating meat, which is honestly feels inhuman to me. And so I'm wondering if you can declare a human right at a state level to plant these foods, because we already have a state level human right to water. And so that way we could have.

Human right to healthy, safe, nutritious and plant based foods.

I love the idea that was kind of behind, that was kind of the principle, I guess behind, as was mentioned by Judy, getting plant based alternatives mandated them at prisons and hospitals. The challenge, a little bit challenge of school is the funding aspect of it and getting our schools up to speed on it.

But trust me, I understand the challenge. I just came back from Alabama and I did not eat a lot of food. It was hard to find food. And when you're vegan, that does happen.

So it's not just about offering alternatives to folks that have the opportunity to choose, but the reality is that people do have either medical or ethical or other reasons. And I do believe that everyone has a human right to food.

I think we need to start there because we have far too many people that go without food in our country, in our community, in our state. And on top of that, to make sure you have food that is appropriate for you, whether it's ethical, whether it's moral, whether it's medical.

And so I'm more than happy to, to continue to look into how we can do that. And that also goes to the plant based treaty and trying to promote that, promote that at the state level, promoting food as a human right, health care as a human right, and other things that I strongly believe in.

So thank you for your feedback. All right, any other. Any last comments before we close up?

Hi. Well, that young gentleman's provocative question inspired me to ask a provocative question. I'm sorry I'm late, but I've been covering the trial of Zoe Rosenberg, a 23 year old UC Berkeley undergrad who faces five years in prison for rescuing four chickens from a slaughterhouse in Sonoma County.

And this is day 22 of the trial and it's characterized by wildly differing interpretations of what's happening inside slaughterhouses and factory farms in California. With the activists saying they've tried to report criminal animal cruelty over and over again for years without a single investigation from law enforcement, with the company saying they have the highest animal welfare standards.

So my nonprofit Streaming network on chain TV just wrote an editorial the day before yesterday suggesting, let's solve these differing characterizations of the same thing by having cameras in all factory farms and slaughterhouses in California. And it's not as crazy as it sounds. In England, in Israel and in Spain, they already require surveillance cameras in all slaughterhouses.

So I feel like it has to be broadcast to the public, otherwise it wouldn't be effective. What do you think about the possibility of having cameras given that these trials keep happening here in California?

Yeah, I think it's shameful that folks, they're just trying to expose an industry that provides a ton of. I mean, this is the food that we eat, right? We're not talking about some tangential industry that's doing some niche kind of work. We're talking about an industry that provides a massive amount of food to the masses.

And so it's interesting that a couple of the places you can't film are in prisons and in slaughterhouses. I think that speaks a lot to both, right. Of the conditions of both. And so I personally support the ability for us to have more transparency.

I think that we've dramatically underfunded intentionally, especially at the federal level, food inspections and oversight. I think a lot of lobbying has a lot to do with that. And we would contend with a lot of lobbying here if we pushed for legislation that pushed for any kind of transparency, but especially cameras.

But it's definitely something that I'm certainly willing to look into, and I think it's something that would require a movement, because I think that it would require a lot of folks to be able to speak up on behalf of the animals beyond those that are already doing it by trying to expose these industries.

But you've seen sometimes even drone shots of just outside of facilities, these pig slaughterhouses and cattle, and just kind of the behavior and the conditions that they're under, let alone those that are brave enough to sneak cameras inside. And so I think this industry does need more.

Does need to be exposed, because there's a reason why they don't want us to see think about any other kind of aspect of our food industry. They don't hide it from us. They don't hide how they harvest the corn or the tomatoes. They don't hide how they make, you know, Ritz crackers or, you know, Oreo cookies. Right?

They don't need to hide that. Even if those foods may not be necessarily healthy for you, they're not. You know, they're still showing you how they make Coca Cola, whether it's healthy for you or not. So it's not a matter whether it's healthy for you, it's a matter of what's happening inside in the darkness.

And so whenever you can, you know, you just have Diwali, whenever you can bring light to the darkness, that's a good thing. And, and so I would support that.

So I want to thank everyone, the very engaged audience to the fantastic guest speakers, for sharing your expertise in our second Committee hearing here, how we as a state can meet the moment and solidify leadership and alternative protein innovation.

My hope is that we can hold more informational hearings, more tours, and in particular explore the intersection with alternative protein and the agricultural sector as we were just talking about. Right.

I do want to thank my colleagues and my staff, particularly Erica Salazar, who's worked, my lead staff on this, and Ryan Guillen, my Chief of Staff, who's here as well, and the staff of other some members, of course, and as well as Senator Allen, who was there earlier at the beginning the Beyond Me tour, and the staff of legislators that are here, including Kayla Rabinovitz with Senator o' Bryan's staff.

All today's Committee material is available in our Select Committee page on the assembly.ca.gov website. Erica Salazar in my office is available follow up. So at the reception you can say hi to her, my Chief of Staff, Ryan, if you want to get their contact information.

And you know, I'm very happy that we've been able to kind of move the Select Committee outside of Sacramento here in LA.

I would love to do more in the Bay Area, more in some of our agricultural communities to bring the message out there, because I do think there's a lot of folks of conscience that are out there that understand the importance of how we have to create a more sustainable food system.

So thank you all so much for being here. Again, reception hosted by Social Compassion Legislation at Hershey Hall South Courtyard, where there'll be food and beverages available for everyone here to enjoy. Thank you all so much for being here. And the slot Committee on Alternative Protein Innovation is adjourned. Thank you.