Assembly Select Committee on Alternative Protein Innovation

Well, good afternoon, everyone. It's wonderful to be here at UC Davis for our third informational hearing for the Select Committee on Alternative Protein Innovation. And before I begin, first of all, I'd like to thank UC Davis for hosting us.

And I'd like to invite our Chancellor, Gary S. May from the University of California, Davis to share some welcoming remarks.

Thank you, Assemblymember Kalra. And thank you for all for being here with us today. Just want to welcome our guests to UC Davis. You know, I guess our campus is really an ideal location for this meeting.

As you probably know, our roots stretch back more than a century when we started out as the University of California University Farm with a mission of agricultural research and training. But since then, UC Davis has really emerged nationally and indeed internationally as a real powerhouse of food and fermentation science, agriculture, and sustainability.

Finding solutions to feed a growing planet remains a core part of our mission. In fact, UC Davis is home to the only food science and technology program in the entire UC system. It's also the largest undergraduate food science and technology program in the country.

UC Davis is also ranked number one in the nation in agriculture and campus sustainability. Sustainability. That's been true for the last 10 years running, so we have some credibility there. Our campus is also home to the number one wine fermentation program in the world. You can even ask your French friends.

We're also tied closely to the region's political and agricultural landscape and located on one of the world's most robust agricultural regions. You know, California is the nation's largest food and beverage manufacturer. We provide a third of the nation's vegetable supply and 75% of its fruits and nuts. And the nuts aren't people, they're actually nuts.

The Davis campus is just minutes from Sacramento, the state capital that represents the fifth largest economy in the world. I think that's old. Maybe it's fourth now, right? That economy is powered by our strengths in agriculture and technology. California's economy is boosted by Biomanufacturing, which represents $396 billion with a B in economic output.

I'll also just note that UC Davis is home to one of only two biochemical programs that are accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, or abet. Further, the UC system is the largest academic intellectual program property holder in the U.S. with 17% of the annual intellectual property of the United States.

UC Davis leverages these many strengths to stand at the forefront of cultivated meats and alternative proteins. These efforts coalesce at the Integrative center for Alternative meat and protein ICAMP launched in January of 2024, this is the first comprehensive center of its kind in the world.

ICAMP is a shining example of how UC Davis is addressing the world's most pressing issues and creating a healthier, more sustainable tomorrow for us all. We're educating and training the next generations in biomanufacturing. We are eager to inspire innovation and entrepreneurship, all while supporting the global ecosystem for food security.

So you're going to hear more shortly about ICAMP from Director Carrie Leong, who is one of today's panelists. And the time is really now to move forward with research and alternative proteins. Our research finds that over the next 25 years, the global demand for meat is expected to grow 50 to 100%, so maybe double.

In the meantime, many issues need to be identified and addressed in a new food category like this one. Among those questions, what will it take to create large scale commercialization? How can we make the process as sustainable as possible? What are the research gaps? And how can we create consumer demand?

So once again, I thank you for being here with us at UC Davis and thank you for your dedication to this important sector of food science. This kind of dialogue is the key to moving research and commercialization forward, all while navigating the many hurdles that are involved.

So I wish you a productive day, a dialogue and visionary thinking, and thank you again for being here.

Thank you so much, Chancellor May, for that wonderful welcome and introduction to the conversation that we'll be having this afternoon. This is our third informational hearing for the Select Committee on Alternative Poaching Innovation.

Our last one is at ucla and it's exciting to be at these academic institutions to have these conversations, getting outside of Sacramento, coming into the communities and the academic institutions where the work is being done.

This hearing will dive into topics about how the alternative protein industry can support California's agriculture bioeconomy and cultivate a partnership with farmers across our state. California is home.

As we just heard from the Chancellor, it's one of the largest and leading agriculture producers not only in the nation, but in the world, and is known for its vast agriculture productions that contribute to our state's economy and food security.

In recent years, California has been a leader in the alternative protein sector, from research to innovative companies across the state. 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.

In 2022, I had led an effort for investment in this space and the State of California, thanks to the support of all of our colleagues and the Governor 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 to do such investment in alternative protein research.

And last 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 Protection Protein ICAMP here on this campus, which continues to support the R and D efforts of alternative proteins.

Today we have three exciting panels of speakers who will speak on the following items. First of all, bolstering sustainable solutions for agriculture in California to benefit the planet and farmers. Secondly, California agricultural research and development. And third, a spotlight on California companies and economic opportunities.

There will be an opportunity at the end of the informational hearing for public comment for those members of the public wishing to share their thoughts. This informational hearing is also 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 on each of our wonderful speakers. Again, thank you all for being here today. We are excited to hear from our panel of speakers about how their work in alternative protein can support California's agricultural industry.

And before I introduce the first panel, I first want to introduce to my left Erica Salazar on my staff, who's been leading the efforts on the legislation I've put forward in Sacramento, but also has been the staff lead on this select Committee as well as the Alternative Protein working group that we have in the capital.

So I want to thank Erica for her work. And to my right, of course, I have two wonderful colleagues who are Members of this select Committee. To my immediate right, Cecilia Aguilar-Curry from Winters.

So this is her neck of the woods and she's been a great advocate for the agricultural community as well as for UC Davis in Sacramento. And then to my far right is some of her Isaac Bryan from Los Angeles. Oh, by the way, agriculture is our majority leader in the Legislature and the Assembly.

And then Isaac Bryan from Los Angeles Angeles, who Chairs our Natural Resources Committee, which of course is a huge part of why we are doing what we do when it comes to pushing forward on research for alternative protein.

So I'd like to start by allowing my colleagues, if they would like, to say a few opening remarks as well.

Good. I'll make it quick because I really want to hear from the panelists. I'm Cecilia Aguilar Curry. This is my district, and I'm honored to be here. As we all know, UC Davis is the best agriculture college you're going to find in the world.

And I know so because I was raised only about 10 miles from here and I've seen the expanse of UC Davis. I'm honored. Quickly, I didn't know how many people were going to be here today. And this is really showing that people are interested in what we're doing with alternative protein innovation.

And so I want to commend the college and all of you that are here today as we look forward. You know, some of us are skeptics, and I'm not going to lie, I was a skeptic when I first learned about it.

But I've had the opportunity to do some really cool tours, and I really appreciate all of you that have shared your experiences and what you're doing and the innovation that's happening in the region. So thank you very much for having me. I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Well, thank you, Mr. Chair. And like the majority leader said, thank you all for being here and showing your interest. I'm a proud Bruin. So I wasn't sure about coming to campus today, but this is an important topic. I'm going to be honest, a number of years ago, I was pretty ignorant around alternative proteins.

It wasn't until I saw Assemblymember Kalra wearing a shirt that said don't eat the homies that I began to ask some questions.

And as you dig into the science and as you dig into the research, you realize that our current way of cultivating food is also unsustainable, sustainable, and not environmentally conscious in the least, not to mention all the humanistic reasons why we shouldn't do things the way that we do it. We just don't have much better built out.

And that is where your research, your innovations are making that difference. And I'd love to continue to learn more about them. And I'm looking forward to the conversation today.

Thank you. To my colleagues, I want to thank you both for your humility and your curiosity, because I think it requires both for all of us to kind of learn more about what we need to do.

And speaking of that, I also want to thank Professor Greenwood, who's here with her class from the UC Davis Law School that focuses on food and the law. Great to have them here as well. The first. So I'll go ahead and jump right in with the first panel, which is a panel of one.

So I guess we could say the first speaker, which is really a really good way for us to kind of start the conversation. We'll be discussing bolstering sustainable solutions for agriculture in California to benefit the planet and farmers. And we have with us virtually Sanah Baig, Executive Director of the Plant Based Foods Institute.

And we'll have her available for questions after she speaks to our panelists or to our colleagues. So do we have her ready on line?

Hello, Good afternoon. Can you all hear me?

We can hear you.

Amazing. I hope you can see me and my presentation as well.

We can see the presentation, yes.

Okay. Well, that probably is more important. Well, good afternoon. First of all, thank you so very much, Chair Kalra and Members of the select Committee for this invitation and for allowing me to join you.

Virtually as much as I truly wish I could have been with you in Davis, I had a chance to visit a couple of years ago and one of the best joint partnerships that you have there with USDA and your nutrition center. So grateful to be with you all.

By way of background, I just, you know, I've spent the past 15 years really working at the intersection of agriculture, markets and public policy. That includes at USDA across two presidential administrations, at the Good Food Institute as chief of staff, and now as the Executive Director of the Plant Based Foods Institute.

And from that vantage point, I'm very confident about three things. The first is that California is the agricultural engine of this country. The second, California is the epicenter of alternative protein innovation and home to the industry's largest cluster of brands, manufacturers and ingredient suppliers. And third, and importantly, those two strengths are not in competition.

They are much stronger in partnership. Because let me be very clear, there is no future for alternative proteins, especially plant based proteins, without farmers. Full stop. So I'll flip over to the next slide, please, and very quickly touch just a little bit more about on my organization.

The Plant Based Food Institute exists because ensuring nutritious and affordable plant based foods become everyday staples really requires changes far upstream from the consumer. It requires aligning what farmers are supported to grow, how crops are processed, where capital flows and how policies and procurement pathways are designed.

And really, right now, way too many decisions that shape our food system are made in silos. So we're grateful to work in tandem with our sister organization, the Plant Based Food Association, the US Trade group for plant based food companies to harmonize industry goals with broader food systems transformation efforts.

And we're grateful to work with food systems partners. I imagine many in the room today, although I can only see the back of your heads to bridge gaps so that the plant based sector and alternative proteins, as well as the agricultural system that underpins it, can grow and thrive together.

So on the next slide, I do want to note that I'm truly grateful for the leadership of this Committee. And I'm especially excited that today's hearing focuses on California's circular agricultural bioeconomy, which connects the dots from inputs to R and D to commercialization with a true emphasis on benefiting farmers and our production community.

To me, that is exactly the right frame because California already has the ingredients for a circular loop. Grow here, process here, make food here, keep value here, and recycle side streams into things like energy, soil health and new bioproducts. So to me, all of that is fantastic.

And I think we should also be honest about the current state of US agriculture. You can see some of those statistics here on the screen. Farmers are increasingly navigating a brutal volatility. Not just water and weather stress, but input costs, labor shortages, trade shocks, shrinking farmland and whiplash in federal signals.

And the reality to me that often gets lost in these food debates is that for most farm households in the United States, income from farming itself is often slim or negative. In fact, according to USDA data in 2024, median farm only income across the country was actually negative 1830. It's $1830.

So farmers are losing money without federal supports and without off farm income. So I say this because when we talk about alternative proteins, I do want to be crystal clear. This is not farmers versus protein innovation. This is farmers plus new markets if we build thoughtfully.

So move to the next slide please and repeat what I'm sure many of you already know, that California is home to globally recognized companies and brands in this sector and including Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, Blue Diamond, who I know we'll, we'll present later, Califia Farms, Ripple Foods and so many more.

And of course every plant based product from Almond milk to a lentil based sausage to mushroom burger starts with a farmer. The inputs that fuel this sector in this industry are things like grains, pulses, beans, nuts, o oats, legumes, a wide arrange of a wide array of existing and emerging specialty crops.

These are all California crops and they're the foundation for next generation foods. And I also wanted to mention something I found quite interesting. California's export power is also enormous. In 2024, in fact, the state exported nearly $24 billion in agricultural goods which which represents more than a tenth of total US ag exports.

And California's top export by value, almonds at $4.4 billion. So to me there is opportunity hiding in plain sight here. We export a lot of high value crops as commodities when they could also be higher value ingredients and finished foods that are made in California.

If we build stronger in state linkages between growers, ingredient processing and food manufacturing, we keep more value at home. That also means better margins and more stable demand for growers, more processing and manufacturing jobs and supply chains that can withstand shocks when global markets swing wildly, as we've definitely seen in in the last year.

So the question to me here really isn't whether California can lead because California in my mind already does. The question is will we capture the value or will we export it? So I'll move on to the next slide and I want to zoom out very quickly.

This snapshot is meant to show you that this market is real and growing. US retail plant based food sales exceeded $8 billion across more than 20 categories in 2024. Six in 10 US households already purchase plant based foods. Plant based milks are now 15% of total milk sales and actually more than double that share in natural channels.

And interestingly, online sales are also growing at double the pace of conventional grocery outlets. So truly plant based foods really are mainstream. So in the next slide I'll note that the same is true globally where the plant based retail market is nearly $30 billion.

And what's driving that growth in regions like Europe is something I think Californians California understands very well, climate and supply chain accounting. So when retailers are required or strongly incentivized to account for supply chain emissions, they of course start looking hard at the biggest levers. We know food is one of them.

And of course conventional protein is one of the biggest contributors to emissions. So it's exciting to see bold retailers, major retailers, setting targets that truly reshape demand. As just one example, a whole Delhez has announced a target of 50% plant based food sales across its European retail brands by 2030.

So that's one signal that global buyers are increasingly looking for lower emission, resilient traceable ingredients and products. And California agriculture can meet that demand. But again, we have to build fit for purpose value chains from farm production to manufacturing to markets.

So we'll move on to the next slide and as you noted, thanks to your leadership Chair Kalra and The Committee here, California has already started through this fundamental $5 million investment in R&D across the UC system. I was a former Deputy Under Secretary of the research enterprise at usda.

I know how hard do so we were watching closely when this investment was made and it was truly and remains a noteworthy signal of leadership funding for public R&D remains crucial, especially in the environment that we're in today.

To me complementing that, I believe we're moving into a next chapter that includes moving from innovation to also adoption and commercialization, as I heard the Chancellor say, especially focusing on how farmers and workers can benefit. So I'll quickly highlight three ideas.

First, if we want California crops in California made foods, we truly need that in between step of building ingredient processing capacity that will be crucial for transforming crops into ingredients that food makers can reliably use. And second, we must put technical assistance where the market is headed.

That means helping farmers with things like crop and rotation guidance support navigating new contracts and specifications, and assistance de risking transitions when they want to diversify markets. Third, the fastest way to stabilize a new market is by anchoring it with predictable demand.

California can continue building procurement pathways connecting locally grown ingredients to food served in public schools and universities, hospitals and state facilities. Enabling institutions to purchase these foods supports not just affordable nutrition, but also climate and public health goals and California's farming and manufacturing growth.

So on the next slide I'll note that despite California's leadership, which is tremendous, the US overall is at great risk and I believe falling behind as other countries are investing heavily in agricultural innovation and development to grow their novel protein sectors.

I will, I will say though that a bright spot, A recent bright spot just last month at the federal level was the enactment of bipartisan legislation expanding schools flexibility to offer K through 12 students nutritionally equivalent plant based milkshake.

This new law signed by the President creates a clear opportunity for California to help districts make this choice real, especially by addressing the cost gap between price supported dairy, milk and nutritionally equivalent plant based alternatives.

That type of action would further cement California as a leader in the alternative protein space writ large, but also crucially in supporting schools ability to feed kids with lactose intolerance and or cultural, religious or personal preferences. But to me, really the bigger point is this, and I've repeated it. This is now my third time repeating it.

But if we can truly make the effort and the investment in building the full chain from farmers to processing to manufacturing to markets, California can keep leading the country and can keep more economic value in state. California truly is the doorway to untapped agricultural opportunity.

Perfectly positioned to open new domestic and international markets for US farmers while supporting the nation's health and food security goals. And on my next slide is just contact information. A big thank you for listening. Sorry you couldn't see me. I'm happy to. We could maybe close out the presentation.

If we have time for questions, I'm more than happy to take them.

Let me ask my colleagues if they do. But thank you so much, Asana, for the presentation for kind of really laying the foundation. oh, there you are. We can see you now. And hello. And laying the foundation for the further conversation we're going to have with the next couple panels. My colleagues have any questions? Assembly Member Bryan.

Good afternoon. Thank you for the presentation. One of the things that you mentioned was plugging into the plant based supply chain. Perhaps there could be incentives. You mentioned grants and loans. Is it a riskier investment for loans to be made? Is there less likelihood of an ROI or a smaller ROI?

Is there a reason that maybe venture capital or traditional lending markets aren't helping farmers in this transition? I'm just curious, are you suggesting the state should back loans and take on the risk? I'm curious what that means.

It's a great question. I think it's a few different things. So we have, you know, efforts at USDA that provide business loans and you know, industry loans to agricultural operations. But oftentimes companies in the sector are not eligible or don't meet certain requirements like being housed in a rural county or location.

The other thing is to your point is an excellent point is really especially with the VC funding drying up and the shorter term horizon they have for a return on their investment, it is, it is a difficult place to get capital to flow in especially for processing supports. So we have seen a lot of interesting projects.

I would say I'm happy to share more about what's going on in Minnesota. In particular, a couple of farmer led initiatives to pool funding to build processing facilities for things like oats which, you know, these facilities are quite expensive. And I think the other thing is a lot of financial institutions don't understand that kind of deal.

They don't really understand there's not many of them. It's because it's such a new and emerging sector that it's difficult to get approval and to get that type of backing. So guaranteed loans would be crucial. Grants for things like equipment for farmers to have on farm milling and processing would be crucial.

There's a range of different ways that I think both USDA funding paired and stacked with funding from the state would be helpful.

Thank you for your presentation. So I always go back to thinking about innovation hubs where I've seen products grow up and we have a couple here, one in Woodland that's doing really well. We have some here locally.

I think that is the way we have to do the foundation because I really feel like once people see the products that you're making and it will get the investors more interested in it because I think definitely it's not cheap.

And I've been to these hubs and innovation labs to see what they're doing and, and it just gets me really excited. I think there's so many possibilities, but I also look at it and think how much does it cost to really lift these products up?

So I think that's a really important thing, is that the smaller as you grow, you've got to find a place that's going to work. And it takes time, but I think it'll happen. It just, it's educating and as my colleague said, we all need to be educated and to make sure these kind of products move forward.

The last thing I really like that you talked about is technical assistance. We see this happen, doesn't matter if you're on a rural area and technical assistance for new farmers because you are to me a new farmer is. It takes time and to make sure that you have all the tools you need to be successful.

So I appreciate your conversation. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much. I would just say one additional thing is that farmers will grow what there's a market for. And I think, you know, what we really need to do is help share that information, that knowledge. What are the emerging crops? How can we support contracts? How can we de risk this opportunity?

Because as I mentioned, California growers are already growing the exact things that support especially plant based, but really the entire alternative protein sector, there's a value chain coordination issue and I think support further support both for innovation and for that, that type of coordination would be crucial. So thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Sanah. I really appreciate your expertise on this issue and I particularly like the aspect of creating, helping to create markets because the reality is that for much of plant based foods, the crops are very profitable.

But we have to create a market that makes sense, especially if it's a market here in California, whether it's plant based milks or other types of products. As you mentioned, our public institutions, our schools, our hospitals create that access point for a food that's already healthy and the products already being grown here in California.

So it can be a huge win win. But part of that is us as legislators understanding the importance for it, understanding how we make those connections. And that's why, as my colleague said, the education process, and that's what this site Committee in part is about, is really educating ourselves as to what the best legislative budget.

So a policy budget or in some cases marketing tools, we might have to be able to do that. So thank you so much, Sanah. I appreciate it.

Thank you so much. And my last plug would be extension is crucial. And extension, they're the greatest partners that we have to especially educate our farmers and link them with market opportunities. So thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you so much for sharing how the plan can address some of the challenges and support new opportunities for crop producers to expand the diversification of the food system. And it really is about supporting our California farmers. And that's where I really like the opening that Sanah had is like we're not talking about competing interests here.

It's quite the contrary. We're talking about very much interests that are completely aligned. And so on that point.

Up next on the second panel, focusing on California agricultural research and development, we have with us Karen Warner, the founder and CEO for Beam Circular, Kara Leong, Executive Director for Integrative center for Alternative Meat and Protein, also known as iCamp. You already heard a lot about it from a couple of us today. And I really appreciate Kara.

I've seen her in Sacramento and all points in the state advocating for ICAMP and for the General movement. And Gabe Utze, the chief innovation officer for the University of California Agricultural and Natural Resources.

And we also have, and I think there are going to be some switching around here at some point, Dr. Yijiang Zhu, research leader and supervisory research food technologist for the Healthy Processed Foods Research unit with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. So thank you all for being here. And begin.

There we go. Can you hear me? Okay. Wonderful Assembly Members, thank you so much for having us and for this opportunity to share. Is that okay? The sound. Okay, that's better. Lovely. Thank you so much for hosting this special session and to my colleagues from iCAMP and UC Davis for having us here today.

My name is Karen Warner and I was born and raised in the Central Valley of California in an ag family. I moved back home several years ago to raise my family here. And I'm so grateful every day to get to do work really relevant to what we're talking about today.

My organization, BEAM Circular, was launched three years ago, coming out of community based economic development planning. So we were really focused on the future of good jobs, education and career opportunities in the Central Valley.

And that work led our region in the San Joaquin Valley to identify growing bio based manufacturing opportunities as an incredible opportunity for the future of our local communities. Within that alternative proteins are an incredible and rising opportunity area.

And I'm excited to share a little bit about the big picture for us on a community level of this sector and what it means for local communities and how we're starting to mobilize action to grow some of these opportunities in the Central Valley and across California.

I think I'm supposed to say slide at this point to advance, if that's okay. Great. So in quick, you know, in quick order, Beam Circular really focuses on unlocking the opportunity for communities to transform waste into both economic prosperity and environmental solutions. And we're focused on those intersections of good jobs, community prosperity, and clean air and water.

You can move forward, you know, grounding in context on the next slide here for really what our work in our community initiative came out of is the dynamic that many folks, but not everyone is aware of, which is that over half of children in the San Joaquin Valley grow up in families who struggle to make ends meet.

We also have intersecting public health and environmental challenges, especially tied to really poor air quality. And if you move to the next slide, we have this additional context, which is that we're really at the heart as an agricultural region of a statewide and frankly global crisis, which is that we have an overabundance of organic waste.

California has actually really been forward thinking in trying to address organic waste, food waste, and organic materials that when they end up in landfills or rot on a field, result in methane emissions. We've also been a leader in things like dairy digesters that reduce emissions from our livestock industries.

But, you know, abundant and organic waste continues to be a high cost for local Communities even affecting things like our wildfire challenges. Finding new opportunities for utilization of biomass is really critical, both from an environmental level, but also on a cost level for local communities and businesses.

If you move to the next slide, the way that we really like to think about the really abundant organic materials that are produced every single day across California is that these right now are risks and challenges, but they can be opportunities, including and especially through growing bio based industries like the alternative protein space that use organic material to create valuable new products.

Beam circular in our region in the San Joaquin Valley is focused on the big tent of what we talk about as the circular bioeconomy sector.

So the many different types of industries and technologies that use the power of biology to create new products, ranging from food ingredients and food products like we're talking about today with alternative proteins, but also inclusive of sustainable aviation fuels and other types of growing segments of bioenergy, Bio based chemicals and materials, bioplastics, agricultural inputs, textiles, a huge range and according to BCG, up to 60% of the world's economic outputs can be made using a bio based input or technology in the coming couple decades.

So this is a huge sector and there's a wide range of new valuable industries that are growing today. A $4 trillion segment of the global economy in the coming decade that will be disrupted and growing based on bio based inputs if you move to the next slide.

The way we're thinking about this opportunity sector of the big bioeconomy is that California really needs to claim its place in the growing bioeconomy. We already have so many of the basic ingredients and components that you really need to lead if you go ahead and move to the next slide.

We've been thinking a lot about the ways that our region and regions across California can leverage the bioeconomy as an opportunity to create good jobs while building upon our existing competitive strengths. I'm based in the North San Joaquin Valley, which includes San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Merced counties.

But counties across the state of California are increasingly recognizing that the opportunity to build upon our existing competitive strengths across this state, including those many organic materials, but also our strengths in innovation, our strengths in manufacturing to grow and attract these emerging industries.

And in fact this over the past year the bioeconomy has been named a priority sector for the state of California through the California jobs First process. And really from a bottoms up through a bottoms up process across these many regions is increasingly a priority for local communities.

As a top opportunity sector, you can move to the next slide. So using our Region. As a particular case study, the North San Joaquin Valley is really unique globally. Not only are all three counties in our region among the top seven in the United States for agricultural production value, we're incredible leaders in food and ag production.

We also have a leading concentration of very large scale manufacturing.

We have the infrastructure, the workforce, the logistics and supply chain assets for very large scale manufacturing and especially food processing and food manufacturing, which means we have, you know, concentrated abundance of these feedstocks or input materials, all those side streams and residues and that we're already making through our food and ag production.

But we also have the right infrastructure and assets to support the growth of an industry.

We're really strategically located, including right next door to the incredible innovation hubs we have in this space, including right here in Davis, as well as collaborators from across the San Francisco Bay Area and growing at centers of innovation like that at UC Merced.

If you move to the next slide, the way that we are really thinking about what's next is based on the recognition that while there are incredible areas of R and D and innovation in the alternative protein space and across the broader industrial biomanufacturing sector, many of those technologies face barriers to scale.

This came out a little bit already today in conversation, but access to capital, commercialization of these technologies, connecting and activating that end market supply chain challenges and making sure that we have a prepared workforce are all really critical elements to making sure that we can get these really remarkable technologies out of the lab and into the market.

We have to see these businesses and technology scale if we want to see the returns come to local communities in the form of good jobs, new revenue opportunities for farmers, as well as environmental benefits. So the focus of our region and our partnership is really thinking through how do we address those barriers to scale.

And you can move here to the next slide. The aspects that we really focus on include investing in shared infrastructure, both hard and digital infrastructure to enable the growth of this target sector, targeted R and D partnerships and innovation investment, which California is a especially well positioned to lead in.

I want to highlight that it's especially critical that we stay focused on innovation that's use inspired and grounded in what's going to be relevant in the market and in practice and relevant for our local context.

In California, we're working on access to capital, bringing together the public and private partnerships to enable this sector to grow, workforce development and centering everything that we do in local communities, and cross sector collaboration. If you move to the next slide, I want to highlight just a few. If you There you go.

All of this is really requires an activated multi sector ecosystem.

So with Beam Circular we've really collaborated with our partners across the region and other parts of the state, including with co leadership from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Merced, to convene a really bright broad ecosystem of collaborators ranging from early stage startups, some of whom are here today, to large multinational biomanufacturing and biotechnology leaders.

Local and state governmental partners are going to be necessary to push this work forward. Community labor, environmental organizations and workforce and education partners ranging from our local community colleges, K12 and university and workforce training partners.

As we activate this growing ecosystem, this allows us to use all the tools in our toolkit that are going to be required to enable this emerging sector to grow.

Move to the next slide Just as a quick highlight here, you know what this has resulted in over the past three years since our launch in 2023 is the mobilization of over $45 million in public and private capital to really invest in a portfolio of projects and programs that create the enabling environment for the Circular Bioeconomy to grow.

The State of California has been a really critical partner in this work. The State has invested a little over $20 million over the past couple years into Beam Circular and our ecosystem, including shared infrastructure in the form of an innovation campus, the California Bioeconomy Innovation Campus being developed in Stanislaus County.

We're excited to break ground this year on that project which will really help to bridge the gap between lab and commercial scale production. With that you can move forward to the next slide.

A few just, you know, quick snapshots of what some of this regional innovation can look like in practice as we think about ways to continue to grow this work across the state and make sure it delivers positive outcomes for local communities. Next slide.

One element of this work over the past couple years has included really deep investments in innovation in entrepreneurship.

Last year beam circular supported 23 companies, especially early stage startups, but also connecting some of those earlier stage entrepreneurs with large farmers, agricultural businesses and food manufacturers to explore new ways to transform almond shells and almond holes or glass great pomace and olive pomace from local processing different types of side streams into new high value products including proteins and high value food ingredients.

If you move to the next slide, some of this work in action also looks like local community capacity building. So youth programs to make sure we're starting at early ages to inspire careers in science, in stem, in engineering and and in manufacturing.

There are incredibly high quality, high wage jobs in manufacturing occupations that are in demand now in our regional food manufacturing businesses and that are also in demand in the growing future bio based manufacturing industry.

We do a lot of deep engagement across our local schools and with community partners to ensure that as California grows its bio based manufacturing sector that those good jobs are being created in ways that are grounded in local community priorities.

If you move to the next slide in the education and workforce development space, some examples of work underway include over $1.5 million that we've invested over the last 12 months in a range of pilot projects across our region that will serve 11,000 students and workers over the coming five years.

Years that funding includes supporting work like the launch of a biotech camp with the San Joaquin County Office of Education, really supporting Early Career Exposure, a program at Modesto Junior College where chemistry and biology students are getting to do real life research in partnership with a lab right here at UC Davis where they're doing protein sequencing and getting hands on job skills that can lead to jobs right away as lab tests technicians and set them up for higher education pathways beyond if you move to the next slide.

Finally, as we think about infrastructure, we've launched a range of projects and partnerships thinking about both the shared data that needs to exist to accelerate and advance the bioeconomy supply chain.

So how do we connect our local farmers, growers and food processors with new offtake opportunities, new higher value product opportunities in this growing space that requires access to data to, you know, make the links between those users and producers?

But we also, as I mentioned, are investing in the development of shared infrastructure, including pilot and demonstration scale infrastructure that helps bring innovations out of the lab. You can move from there to the next slide.

And I'll end with just a little bit of a visual there on that front, which is that as we look ahead to the future of the bioeconomy for California, it really is about connecting the dots.

We have to be finding ways to break down the silos that have historically existed that keep communities, you know, separated from industry that's building in their own backyards that keeps farmers, you know, perhaps separated from emerging technologies that could unlock new value opportunities as well as more sustainable environmental outcomes.

And so as we think about both the physical shared spaces, but also the investments in partnerships and digital assets that we need to make this a growing ecosystem.

We're really looking forward to continuing to collaborate with folks here in the room and as well as with the state to make sure that we're unlocking these opportunities for communities in the years to come. And you can move ahead and I'll stop there. Thank you all.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Very exciting. Interesting. I think necessary technology and innovation. Appreciate you sharing about BEAM Circular. And up next, our Executive Director of iCAMP, Kara Leong.

Hi there. I think my slides are not saunas. Hi everyone. So I am Kara Leong. I'm the Executive Director for iCAMP, also known as the Integrative center for Alternative Meat and Protein. As mentioned, we are the first center of excellence to launch. But quickly after we launched probably six to eight different centers globally launched within the same year.

So we've been in existence for the just over two years now. But just to set the stage quickly and I know Gary Chancellor May mentioned a lot of these stats but next slide. So I know many of you familiar that we are the fourth largest economy in the world.

And he did mention we are the nation's leader in food and beverage manufacturing facilities. We have over 6,500 facilities across the across the state. And just to put that in reference, that is more than Texas number two and New York number three combined by over 1500 facilities.

We're also the nation's leader in biomanufacturing with 396 billion in economic output. And then they mentioned we produce 1/3 of the vegetables, 3/4 of the fruits and nuts. So we are the nation's leader in that.

And then of course there are 10 campuses across the state and we own about 17% of the academic patents in the U.S. next slide please. So since we're here at UC Davis, I just go ahead and I'm a three time UC Davis alum. So go Aggies.

We do have over 40,000 students and we are first in the nation for all of the things mentioned for campus sustainability, biological and agricultural engineering. But we also have the national number one school of Veterinary Medicine, the number one animal science program and we're number one in the nation for plant sciences as well.

It's well known we probably have more plant scientists here on campus than anywhere else in the world. So just to mention, we are the only food science and technology Department in the entire UC system. We're number one in the state and we're number one in the country.

We're also one of the largest undergraduate programs with about 300 undergraduates at any one time. We're also the world leaders in fermentation science and wine fermentation. We work quite a bit with Gallo which produces quite a bit of the world's wine.

So we're also one of only two biochemical accredited engineering programs and a lot of that is because most of our students come from the Bay Area. Most of them will go back. So a lot of that biochemical engineering as biopharma. And we've done over a billion dollars worth of research funding over the last three consecutive years.

Next slide please. So let's just talk a little bit about iCamp. It's the integrative center for alternative Meat and Protein. Our mission statement is to accelerate the commercialization of food innovation, biomanufacturing for plant fermentation and cell based meats, proteins and food ingredients to meet that global need.

So it's predicted that our need will double by 2050 and that can't be done just through conventional livestock production. Now we focus on four main buckets. Like all alternative protein centers at academic institutions, we do a lot of work on research and technology. We have approximately 45 to 50 lead researchers, depending on how you cut that.

And we focus on education and training, a lot on public outreach, for example, hosting this today. And we do a lot of work on industry partnership. So we probably have on average about 300 industry meetings a year and about 90 in person industry visits to our facilities.

We work on plant based, so that can cover everything from crop breeding to improve performance, plant protein processing and extraction for better food production. And we also work on plant cell culture for biomanufacturing, which is doing a lot of work in both coffee and chocolate. Now we also, like I said, world leaders on fermentation science.

That can be precision fermentation, which is what you would think of for biopharma, but that could be things like casein and whey for dairy proteins. It could be things like, for example, the enzyme that's used for cheese production, but it also could be biomass production as well.

So for those of you who have gone to the Better Meat Company, for example, or optimized foods, that is what we call biomass fermentation, which is using a lot of agricultural side streams to produce bulk amounts of protein. We're also the first federal and state funded cell based meat research group.

And so we have researchers that are working on cell line development and scaffolding and media optimization and looking at the economic processes for those as well. We are a partnership between seven different institutions though we are headquartered at UC Davis and 3/4 of our researchers are here.

But we're partnered with two branches of USDA, both the Western center for Human Nutrition and the Western center for in Albany for plant processing. We also are partnered with UCLA. Our co Director is Amy Rowat who is a professor at UCLA that I believe hosted your last session.

We're also partnered with UC AG and Natural Resources and Gabe will talk quite a bit about the work that they're doing as well. We are also partnered with Solano Community College which has the first two and four year bioprocessing technical program in the nation.

The Culinary Institute of America which has headquarters in New York, Texas and in Napa as well as Singapore which is one of the lead culinary training institutes in the U.S. and also our part partners at the University of Maryland, Baltimore county who have excellent fungal genetics researchers. Next slide please.

So we have focused quite extensively on education and workforce development and have a recent NSF grant for $3 million to work on bioindustrial engineering training programs that's really to train that next generation of of scientists and biomanufacturers that will produce these products.

We've also identified all the extensive courses, undergraduate courses for alternative protein research so those students have a pathway towards this new career field. And we also received a grant for Future Foods for Space which has been a lot of fun working with NASA on how we're going to develop foods for sustainable future space travel.

And we have a long standing Teen Biotech Pro Biotech challenge which works with over 400 of our high school students across the state on a poster competition that addresses a lot of the alternative protein and cellular agriculture for identification and understanding with this new career field could be.

We also work quite extensively with UCLA and they've developed a Future Food Fellows program which I'm sure you learned a bit about. But they focus on bioengineering, chemistry and biology. But they also have a large focus on law and policy and consumer acceptance through psychology.

And then of course Solano Community College which is directly located across from the genetech, the former Genentech facility, now Lwanza Facility facility which is the largest cell culturing facility in the world at 25,000 liters, has very extensive 2 and 4 year biomanufacturing training program and they're a fun team. Next slide please.

So this is a lot of the work that we're doing here which has been mentioned and that's getting you to commercialization. Just a little bit of background. I've worked in three different biotechs startups, bioPharma, AG, Pharma and I was chief of staff for a Singapore based alternative protein company called Turtle Tree.

And one of the biggest problems is getting from the bench to scaling and it's where one of the biggest bottlenecks for fundraising is right now. So while we do A lot of work on the bench top and developing those ideas and working with industry and doing a lot of workforce training.

One of the biggest bottlenecks is showing proof of scaling. So you can't do that in glass, you really do need to do that in stainless steel. We have a 40 and 140 liter stainless steel bioreactors in our chemical engineering right now. That's over a million dollars worth of equipment. A lot of the startups here have used that.

The problem is it's not food grade. So you can't taste it, you can't smell it, you can't eat it and really understand what these products can do as you get to commercial grade. So we are working to move those, those reactors into our food grade facilities that hopefully you'll get a chance to see later this afternoon.

But it's critical for fundraising. The biggest bottleneck for most of these companies is being able to show that you can go from benchtop to commercial scale. And if you can do it in 100 liters, you can do it in a thousand liters, you should be able to do it in 25100600,000 liter capacity.

We also have some of the world's leading sensory and food and beverage chemical analytics facilities in the world which you will get hopefully get a chance to see. But they're here, they're some of the best facilities in the world.

And it's really critical that you taste, smell, understand what these products really look and feel like because it all comes down to taste. So that is really important for consumer information. Next slide please. So this is a proposal we put into the University of California office, the President system last August.

And part of it was, has been placed into the infrastructure priority facilities list. And this was a partnership between multiple campuses, ucla, UC Davis and UC Ag and Natural Resources.

It was to include, it's to include 12.5 million for a food grade test cafe at UCLA which has been ranked for I think 10 years now as the best college food in America. And this is a critical asset for consumer research to understand what these new products do from, from a consumer perspective.

And then for UC Davis we have put in a proposal 40 million to expand our existing LEED Platinum food and beverage pilot facilities. And that is to increase by about 8,000 square feet room to do cell culture, plant protein processing as well as cell culture facilities for training, supporting for industry.

And these would be very pilot scale facilities that will feed into our existing ecosystem. And then we're also asking for 30 million to support iCAMP different states including Illinois, Massachusetts and North Carolina have done incredibly large investments into their alternative protein centers.

Illinois has been over 600 million with Champaign, Urbana, Massachusetts, 10 North Carolina, they received the Bezos Fund of 30 million. And we're asking for likewise investment into the state of California. And then UCNR also put in an ask for their plant, the plant plant project which Gabe will talk about much more extensively. Next slide please.

And this is just to understand a little bit about the ecosystem that is being built in this corridor. So just to understand, 40% of all the alternative protein companies in the US are here in California, not just in the Bay Area, but of them are and they are largely working themselves their way towards the Sacramento region.

And then as they expand, we expect that they'll be down in central California as they're looking to expand to hundreds of thousands of liters. But this just shows you.

We have five biotech incubators that all work on fermentation, food and ag biotechnology within a 16 mile race of UC Davis, Flex LifeSpace Labs in Vacaville, AgStart in Woodland, Life Hub with Bear in Woodland as well.

We have three incubators here in Davis alone in Ventopia, the HM Clouse incubator and we have new incubator spaces developing at Aggie Square in Sacramento and then we have research parks that are are developing as well of over a million square feet within that 16 miles as well.

So Axiom Point and Vacaville, the Commercial research park in Woodland Biospace and the Capital Innovation District with Blue Rise Ventures and Aggie Square is in existence. And to support that there are four food systems centers including iCAMP across UC Davis campus. Aphis, the AI Institute for Food Systems which is very similar to us.

They are a partnership between Cornell and UC Berkeley and USDA.

The Innovation Institute for Foods for Health which has been around for about 10 years with huge support from the Mars Corporation and then the Resnick center for Agricultural Innovation based based on a 50 million dollar philanthropic donation by the Resnicks, the largest farmers in the state of California. Next slide please.

So before I end I will just say because we have a lot of people here, we throw a lot of events. I am a really strong believer that we need to meet multiple times, at least five times, times repeating somebody's name before you remember it.

So I host a, we host a lot of events to build that larger food and ag biomanufacturing and innovation community. So please note these events and we hope to see you at some of them. We're going to be hosting one of them later this evening. I hope you're registered because we're above capacity right now.

So please come join us for these events and the last slide. And if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.

Thank you so much. And I love seeing that map. It really shows that UC Davis, this community, is the innovation research hub for this industry, not just in California, but in the entire country. So thank you so much for sharing what's happening here on campus and around. And Gabe,

hello. Thank you for having me. Appreciate being in front of this Committee. Nice to see some of you again. Gabe Youtsey, Chief Innovation Officer for UC Agriculture and Natural Resources. As was a nice plug by son at the beginning, we are the extension or cooperative extension function for California and have been so for over 110 years.

Next slide. So extension has a unique critical role in our agricultural and food system and communities in California.

That is, we work to take the amazing discoveries and innovations that happen on the UC campuses like UC Davis, UC Berkeley, UC Riverside and others and really bring those into communities and industry through what we call in one word extension or cooperative extension.

And there's lots of other words and structures around it, but that's what we do in a nutshell. And it's mission oriented research. Next slide. Our focus is across these topics. This is from our latest 2040 strategic plan.

Agricultural and food systems, natural ecosystems, working landscapes, but also our people and communities supporting and addressing big systemic challenges like climate change, but also support, supporting innovation, but also regulatory policy compliance and the inequities that exist in the system. That's what drives UCNR's mission. Next slide. And this is our footprint.

We are across the entire state of California. Our foundational campuses include UC Davis, UC Berkeley, UC Riverside, but now UC Merced and UC Santa Cruz. But we also have academics and and staff and increasingly every other UC campus such as a brand new academic at the UC San Diego Supercomputing Center.

In addition, we've got nine actually now ten research and extension centers across campus the state, excuse me, I'll talk about but presence in every single county in California, boots on the ground, people in every food, natural resource, youth, community engagement, discipline that there is. Next slide.

Our research and extension centers are a really important set of places around California that are very complementary to our campuses because they provide a place to do research, engagement and extension in the communities with the crops, with the natural ecosystems that exist across the state.

So we can highlighted a couple there that are a little bit more in the coastal regions, but they're really they span all the way to the Oregon border, to the Mexican border and in between. Next slide.

Just a little bit about what the work that I do, I run a statewide program called UCANR Innovate that takes a different approach to extension and that is in one word, commercialization of commercialization or commercialization of technology that spans the amazing innovation that happens on the campuses. Great example from ICAMP was discussed here.

Translate those into technology that's really commercialization. We use the word translation a lot in the university context, but really to support scale up and to really support the goals that Karen talked about from beam circular and driving workforce of the future, future economies of the future. So it really spans that work.

And that's the work that I have been tasked to do is to really think about extension as commercialization of technology, bringing workforce and economic development together. Next slide. So we do that. I also on top of the UC in our network just recently funded through the California Jobs program.

So it's a scale up to our program because just like bioeconomy is a part priority for the, for the California Jobs first program, Ag tech, which is very complimentary, is also a priority.

And they just recently funded and we're about to launch formally the California Ag Tech alliance, which includes many of the partners represented here today and many others from the uc, from nonprofits, from community colleges and from industry trying to really be a driver of California as an entity around the world of ag and food and bioeconomy technology.

Next slide. And so here are a few of the innovation areas that I focus on and that are sort of pressing for us as I think about spanning what's next in food and agriculture on the left, starting with, you know, things like regenerative agriculture.

And how is AI going to help us deliver more efficient use of chemistry and biology into the fields and biological alternatives to chemicals. But also how are we going to think about new machinery that's safer and more effective at delivering materials and save on cost on robotics?

Then we get into our food and food as medicine applications, which are proteins of all different kinds and other applications future or alternative proteins like we're discussing today, circular bioproducts.

The 0.1 of the points to make here that I'm going to talk about in the subsequent slides is a lot of these are based on biology, as Karen said, and biotechnology and figuring out how to scale those things up. Many of them, not just the food, but all of it. Next slide.

So we, you know, I mentioned about our research and extension centers several years ago.

We thought we really, really need to think about a new kind of innovation center that gets at this new technology and how do we help support it from the University of California to scale that up and bringing together artificial intelligence, biotechnology and advanced manufacturing.

And advanced manufacturing is important because we are great at innovating in Silicon Valley, in the Sacramento region, in the North San Joaquin Valley in Southern California. But can we create this next generation manufacturing jobs? Because it's a new sector and it's not a foregone conclusion that it will happen in California unless we act and invest. Next slide.

So other states, as has been previously pointed out, are investing. North Carolina Plant Sciences center at NC State has some of these capabilities. Illinois University of Illinois was already mentioned, has a IFAB tech hub invested from the state and the feds in biomanufacturing. Kansas State biosecurity slightly different, that's a Federal Government university plan.

And then Ohio State controlled environment agriculture. What we're thinking about is something that's a confluence of all of those things. Next slide. And that's the project I've been working on for several years called the Plant Innovation center which brings agriculture, food, climate, biotech, AI together in one facility. Next.

And our vision was to bring together these capabilities really in one facility that have never been put together in a single place anywhere that we've seen in the world. And that's greenhouses, wet and core labs, incubation capabilities, biomanufacturing pilot and demo scale.

As Karen talked about, kitchen and food processing and even some vertical farming capabilities co located because the outputs from one drive inputs to the other. Next slide. And that's going to enable a lot of the technologies that have already been discussed. The things that we're focused on here, the future of proteins and fats.

But but also as has been mentioned, other products, food products like specialty carbohydrates, colors and dyes which increasingly the consumers and public don't want to have synthetic dyes and colors. So how can we produce those with biotechnology? And then we talked about all these bio based inputs of fertilizers or pesticide alternatives.

Those are new forms of ag tech. All that is developed with biomanufacturing and biotech technology and has to be scaled up. Next slide.

So we have here in California been looking at a place in the Sacramento region to do that and we've identified an existing facility that we plan to partnership partner with in West Sacramento which has many of these capabilities already in place that we plan to add and build on.

Has biomanufacturing capacity capacity and downstream processing, natural product, chemistry and chemistry labs and over 200,000 square feet of space and greenhouses facilities which have state of the art phenotyping facilities.

So what that means is what we were originally planning is maybe a five or six year, very expensive project goes down a lot in cost and speeds us up to market by a lot. Next slide.

And so the timeline for that, just so you know, we're working on sort of the partnership and the due diligence and then the initial operations are planned to begin in 2027. So coming very soon and we'll announce more about that later. Next slide. And thank you very much, please reach out to me.

I put my boss, our Vice President Glenda Humeston on there as well. We're both deeply involved and so many of you know her too. So we thank you for being here and love to discuss further.

Thank you. Thank you so much. That plant that looks amazing. So I can't wait to get a tour of that sometime soon since you've been able to speed up the timeline there.

Our final speaker for this panel is Dr. Yijiang Zhu, research leader and supervisor, Research supervisor, Research Food technologist, Healthy Processed Foods Research unit with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service. That's a lot. You fit that all in one business card.

Okay. Yeah. Good afternoon. My name is Yixiang Xu. You can call me Yi Xiang or Su is whatever is convenient. Is so honor and happy to be here and to share our research.

So we are called Healthy Processing Food Research unit is one of research units in the Western Regional Research Center in the USDA ARS and USDARS is in house USDA in house research facilities across the whole country from different state and location. So we are lucky in California.

So we are one of four research regional Research center and located at California Albany. So we are about 70 miles from Davis. Next out to Berkeley cross Bay Bridge to the like San Francisco. So in our. So for our research unit we have about six research scientists with food technologists, research chemistry and and research engineering.

Then we also have like technical support scientists and the postdoc. And so this is our research unit people and one like my colleague today join me here today for like this event. Next one please. Next slide please. Okay, so I want to talk about a little bit our mission for our research unit.

So for our mission is develop new technologies to adding value to crops and their products. So for us we mainly emphasize on specialty crops like fruits and vegetable nuts and legumes. So our purpose is to enhance their healthiness and marketability of the foods. So I personally I moved from East Coast to California three years ago.

So I feel really fortunate to be here because when I learn more about California I'm so amazed. So many agricultural crops and leading in the nation. So for our own unit research units we working on different specialty crops like for grape and grape farmers. And currently we also working on the tomato and the tomato palmers.

So last year I was living in the in this area and especially in the June to September I was so amazed. Every day when I drive to the train station I saw a lot of the tomato. The truck like had a tomato loading to into the facility to being processed. So also our units so we have.

We're working on the like almonds for almond processing and byproduct use. So also including for legumes. So today because of a plant based protein. So I want to more focus on our efforts working on like for co products and also legume products for the for plant based protein. Next slide please.

So first one we I want to talk about our efforts working on the winterization of brewing spent grains. That's also called BSG. Actually California is the number one in the total of craft beverage in the US and currently over 900 craft breweries in California. So make like 3.7 million barrels of craft Beer annually is amazing.

But after we make the beer and the leftover. That is a byproduct from brain industry. So what we're going to use. So currently lot of just become go to the landfill. But these byproducts content 20 to 30% protein and also 40 to 60% of fibers.

So that's our job is how we can use these byproducts to make a value added utilization. And so our current efforts is we working with Virginia Tech in their group to try to use a different extraction method to make BSG protein concentrate in. You can see that is the project we're currently working on.

The main thing is the cost. Because Rhino has so many plant based protein on the market. We want to know is any extraction method from a Tech economic standpoint is economic feasible for industry skills for BSC protein. So this is ongoing research. We compare for different like the extraction method.

Then we see like how much including like facility investment, including manpower labor investment. How much by end this plant based BSC protein the price. How they can compare with the current market available plant based proteins.

So with this result we found actually with proper extraction method is really we can be the potential to scale up also to provide sustainability to make BSG protein. So this opportunity also offer practical solution for other plant based protein production from agriculture byproducts for the new market opportunities.

Even today in the morning we have a discussion in our units talk about tomato palmers. So tomato palmas especially including for like seeds like seed except oil. They also have a protein site. So that is also can be used. Good point. For like a protein side for plant based protein.

So with this information and so we want to see is any like byproducts can for new market opportunities. Next slide please. And another thing like I mentioned for Sarah for like I mentioned about food ingredients. Especially I want to mention about what our goal is. We want you when we make the plant based.

We also want to make a healthy food ingredients. In that way we for new market. Like I want to give one example is Lima beans. Lima bean and I did little research. When we do research, we found us actually produce 60 to 80% world Lima bean in the whole world.

Then California actually is number one provide 99% US domestic Lima Bin. And mainly as in the central Sacramento and Central Valley here. So good thing is right now we working with UC Davis team. And our goal is can we promote lima bean as health ingredients. So currently most lima bean when they produced they import outside.

But our goal is can we make lima bean as a healthy ingredients add in the food products leave perfect in the state instead of directly sent to overseas. So that's why currently we're working on is one with. You see David's plant science teams.

We got seed from their trial and for baby lima bean and the large lima bean. So we want to determine like a nutritional and functional quality affect by different varieties and growing conditions. With this information, our next job we want to say is is any way we can select some lima beans to use as a food ingredients.

That's why our next one we're working on is we collaborate UC Davis team and also in the Kansas State University. So our job is we want to do fermentation germination to improve their quality. By endeavor to increase to end use performance. So by this way we want to see like Lima bean not only way to export.

We also can use this lima bean to add food ingredients to like get gluten free products like improve like a plant based foods and ingredients in the market. So that's our job is expand the market opportunities for these farmers to they can make a profit. That's one work we do it. So next one please.

And another one is we're working on is a chickpea. So chickpea. So this is my personal research. So I've been working on the chickpea for more than decades. The reason is when I was in the Virginia we have a hummus company and they use a chickpea. So when we come here we continue our chickpea study.

Then when we did I did research. I'm excited to find actually California also leading state to make chickpea production in the US So right now main thing is main cultivated is a large kabuli chickpeas. So mainly in the central valley. So same thing what we did is we want to promote chickpea as health ingredients.

Not only make in hummus can we use as other plant based protein for gluten free products. But the challenge is for this seed protein is their protein solubility. And also they have the poor function properties. That's a challenge for us is how we can modify their structures in. In that way they can adaptable in the food systems.

So our research including using like a non thermal food processing. Including like a high high pressure processing to modify the structure. In that way we improve their function properties. So we also right now we currently working on the different extraction method.

Because by end of day the plant based protein is the people accepting this is the process is expensive. So what we try to do is can we we fund it? Can we using try different extraction and processing method improve their function property. In the meantime we can reduce the cost. In that way the industry can accept it.

So that's effort. We're working on that. Next one please. Next slide. So I want to introduce for our unit we have about 10,000 square foot pallet plan equivalent with different facility equipment including different drying method. Also we including like extruder. So we just recently bought a new twin school extruder.

So that extruder can make a different healthy snacks incorporate the different plant based protein or the fibers. And also we can working with like you know like impossible meat. They make like a plant based protein texturized for twin Screw Extruder. So next one please. So this is all stakeholders.

So so we like as USDA ARS as in house research facility. Our job is we want to working with a local company also cross country to help to our stakeholders. So we've been like actively collaborate with different industry also like universities. So I'm being like so parents like Icamp.

We are part of ICAMP to promote this program plant based protein and initiatives. So with that. So last slide please. So that's my thank you for all the beautiful, beautiful flowers from Abney Street.

Thank you so much Dr. Xu. And if you come to an Indian household we'll show you 10 ways to make chickpeas and probably 20 to make lentils. So there are ways to do it. But I actually I'm really appreciative. I mean I love these hearings. I learned so much.

The BSG protein is fascinating how much protein is in there. And I think that working with some of the, with ICAMP and some of the partners finding an application to use that protein, so much bio waste is being created there that can we can shift into the food system.

Because that's one of the highlights or at least one of the things that I know that a lot of plant based producers try to do is try to get protein into their foods. And there's a lot of it coming from those breweries.

And so I think it's great to have this connection with ICAMP and the community to figure out okay which application makes the most sense, which companies out there can actually use that product and get a high volume of protein for a relatively low cost which is really at the end of the day when we talk about commercialization, it's bringing down the cost cost across a broad scale.

And just a couple of the comments from Mr. Yuzi about the advanced manufacturing. Being in Silicon Valley myself, advanced manufacturing is the cornerstone of innovation and technology. And what really drives Silicon Valley.

And I think that we need to have these spaces when it comes to alternative proteins for advanced manufacturing to be able to do that here in California, in and around our UCs, in and around our agriculture communities, it's critical to be able to do that.

And I know that it costs, that's a big cost to be able to do that. But I think it pays huge dividends as we've seen in so many different innovations in Silicon Valley. And the last thing I want to mention, Kara Leong was talking about the future food fellows at ucla.

And it actually kind of also blends the whole, the plant concept facility that's being built here. And I wanted to touch a little bit on psychology because I know it was talked about during the last Committee, but I want to bring it up here just for a second.

The food industry spends tens of billions, you know, the meat and dairy industry, the fast food industry, pushing very unhealthy foods, whether they're plant based or meat based. But you get inundated with many, many billions of dollars, tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars a year in marketing.

And so I think this looking at the psychology, what they're doing at UCLA is extraordinary because they have, as they put it, the guinea pigs there every day, right?

They have an opportunity to really test things out with students and then figure out what the marketing can be to expand markets for the products and kind of the alternative proteins that we're talking about.

And so I think we will be seeing, and we need to be seeing more and more of that aspect in addition to the actual creation of the products and the testing labs and things of that nature as well. Brian, did you have any comments or any questions?

Maybe a question for Ms. Warner also? Incredible presentations and thank you all so much. I'm just kind of grappling with kind of bio waste and the circular life cycle. I'm thinking about the BSG proteins and the idea that we could extract those and create from it and then.

But also thinking about kind of, you know, in your presentation, a lot of the bio waste was fuels and pyrolysis and other things that have tremendous emissions. And is this like a way to. It is circular and perhaps better than some other ways, you know, biofuel versus other ways that we're creat currently doing fuel.

How does that square with kind of the environmental arguments we make around the alternative protein space? And is this a second life that we need to make this all pencil out because we need to sell, you know, the biofuels and the other end uses of some of this waste to make the investments that we need in innovation.

It's a beautiful and important question which I really appreciate. In our work we very explicitly talk about the circular bioeconomy because just because a technology or a manufacturing process is bio based doesn't actually necessarily mean that it's completely or holistically environmentally friendly. That is a super important reality to acknowledge.

It's also really important to acknowledge that within the scope of bio based technologies or thermochemical technologies, but pyrolysis, gasification or otherwise, that there's been tremendous advancements over the last couple decades, especially first generation biofuels, is a very, very, very different ball game from some of the advanced sustainable aviation fuel pathways and other things that we're seeing today, fermentation based and otherwise.

And even within the pyrolysis space, just incredible differences in the technologies. So the thing that we really like to advocate for and then build local capacity to embrace is attracting and investing in intentionally in the types of bio based industries that we want to nurture here.

And that comes down to one looking at the full lifecycle analysis of each and every project.

So just being really outcomes oriented, what is the emissions story across the full value chain, looking at that project in a really, you know, thoughtful and critical way and the big picture of how it's going to affect local communities as well as big picture GHG emissions.

So that's just kind of, you know, best practice number one, with every technology and project and making sure we aren't making assumptions based on 50 year old science or like old models, but what is actually possible today with the breakthroughs that we're making in universities like this one.

So that's number one and then number two is that circularity piece. And I, especially in California, we have to ask ourselves continuously, what is the feedstock meaning what is the input, the raw material?

And it is a reality of a lot of the biotechnology and biomanufacturing space, including in proteins, that the vast majority of the industry often relies on. What you would call conventional feedstock sugars sourced from corn, soy, sugar cane, maybe sugar beets. Those are not the primary crops of California. We are net importers of, of corn.

That is a really important reality. We will never compete for the types of projects realistically at commercial scale that use corn as their feedstock. We would argue at beam circular, those aren't the projects we want anyway because we're interested in not having to use more land to grow more corn through conventional agricultural processes.

To produce, you know, an end product. We're excited about unlocking, blocking higher and best value from everything we're already producing right here in California. Sometimes that's our beautiful specialty crops themselves and putting them to higher value use.

And sometimes it's the co products, it's the byproducts, almond hulls which are produced every single day with the almonds that we produce have incredible nutritional value.

And right now there are incredible scientists and, and innovators and entrepreneurs, including here in this room, that are unlocking those almond holes which are traditionally seen as, you know, a waste or a byproduct or residue, as something that can not only be animal food grade but human food grade and contribute to really high value products.

And so look at what the feedstock is and look at the true life cycle analysis of each technology and project is how we think about it and how our local community is, is wanting to embrace this opportunity.

Yeah. Senator Bryan, being Chair of our natural Resources Committee, he's a very deep thinker on these issues. So I appreciate your very thorough response to that. And the last thing, if we can be just as brief as possible since we have a couple more on the next panel.

Ms. Leong, you mentioned a couple people talked about the $5 million that was invested to start these research centers and then the additional million last year.

I want you to briefly tell us how important those investments have been, particularly this last 1 million that we were able to get this last year in terms of continuing the innovation and research.

Well, incredibly helpful. The 5 million went to three universities, UC Berkeley, UC Davis and UCLA and allowed us to continue the work that we're doing now. And incredibly grateful because I'm funded under that. So thank you for my job.

And it has allowed us to be on a global stage for alternative proteins even though most of the companies are based here in California. We didn't have a representative alternative mouthpiece as an academic institution to be able to share with the world if it wasn't for this funding.

And we're still working through, through the process with the 1 million for the nature and climate facilities grant. But that is going to be incredibly instrumental to move over that million dollars of equipment from chemical engineering to here that will be critical to show food grade scaling production value.

So we're hoping to support many of the companies that are using things like almond hull, rice bran waste, tomato processing. Hopefully we will start to explore more with the great pumice because that's a huge industry and really be able to scale that manufacturing.

Thank you for that. And I just want to, I just want to mention that because this was a first time we've ever done that and it was quite a sell to try to get buy in, especially for the first 5 million. But I think it is truly paying dividends and we see all the partnerships being created.

And quite honestly, after visiting all three campuses, it's really the students, the graduates, students that I've met that are going to save us all, that are really getting inspired in these programs that are going to go into the industry in food innovation, alternative protein research and innovation that never would have had their eyes open to that if it weren't for what's happening on this campus as well as UCLA and Berkeley.

So thank you.

Thank you. I just wanted your consumer acceptance note is something that we really should tap on 10 campuses in the UC system that equates to 30,000 meals a day here at UC Davis, 34,000 meals a day at UCLA. And we really should capture that because we are an early adopter population in a very forward thinking state.

Thank you so, thank you all so much. And we have one final panel with two speakers that are going to be a spotlight on California county companies and economic opportunities. We have Cody Yothers, Vice President of Research and Development for Optimized Foods and Cynthia Machado, Senior Technical and Business Development Manager for Blue Diamond Almond Breeze.

All right, thank you. I'm Cody Yothers, co-founder of Optimized Foods. And thank you for having us and also want to thank UC Davis for hosting. We wouldn't exist without this community that you've heard a lot from today in this ecosystem, particularly in the SAC corridor here. So next slide please.

So Optimized Foods is a company that takes these agricultural byproducts and residues that Karen just was describing so, so well in the last panel. And we take that and we try to make food products of higher value.

And the really we talked a lot about this, but the thing I want to really focus on is the value of that to the farmers in the ag sector.

So by, you know, there's an abundance of agricultural byproducts and side streams like we've talked about it, almost every crop we're in billions of tons of byproducts that are underutilized every year. They're extremely rich in the sugars and nutrients and compounds that we are already eating and seeking in our food system.

And they're low cost relatively and local. And if new technologies can be studied and developed and then implemented to utilize some of this tonnage that even by an incremental increase will greatly benefit the farmers, the processors, and eventually the end consumers. Next slide, please.

So what we do is we take these residues and we use the amazing power of fungi to do fermentation to turn the sugars and other high value compounds into protein and bioavailable nutrients. Next slide.

So this is enabled by technology that actually was originally researched and came out of the work of students here at UC Davis call this a microcarrier. And the organism we're using is Koji, which is grass status. It grows rapidly, it's commercially scalable, and it currently is in our food system making soy sauce, citric acid and sake.

Next slide, please. So our company takes these different residues and we grow the koji on it not just to produce protein, but importantly to harvest and to isolate and to stabilize the valuable compounds that are inherently in all these crops. And next slide, please.

So for each crop residue, let's say tomato pumice, for example, is really rich in lycopene. We're able to take that, encapsulate it and stabilize it. And we're essentially mining the byproduct heap and bringing more of the value of the crop that the farmer is growing back into the marketplace.

So I'm just going to show you a few examples of what we've done in terms of products that we're developing with our partners. Next slide. So, for example, cocoa is a byproduct that you might not think of it as a California crop, but actually the processing of cocoa does happen in California, and that bean comes in.

So the actual byproducts when it's deshelled and transformed into cocoa powder, that waste stream is here in California and generally domestically, it is very recently a great example of a commodity because of climate pressure and invasive species pressure that skyrocketed in price. And so it's a great avenue to think about an alternative ingredient.

So when we grow our Koji on that side stream, we're able to increase the yield essentially of their harvest by working on the tonnage. And we're going to go to the next slide and see a cool picture of that.

So it's a little dark for you guys maybe, but what you can see here is chocolate in the background is that that cocoa waste stream, domestically made here in California, and the left is a high protein, 25% protein cocoa powder alternative that we can produce and sell for, you know, under that market rate.

And we'll go to the next slide. We'll go a little quicker here. So almond halls, we've already heard a little bit about them. There's a lot in the state. The amazing thing about almond halls is that they already contain about 30% from fermentable sugar with no biological or thermochemical transformation needed.

They're also really rich in polyphenols and they're concentrated at the processing sites. There's one just a couple miles of here, mountains and mountains of it. And they currently have a market, but even a small increase in that value by putting into a higher market is going to benefit those farmers.

So we'll go to the next slide and we'll show you our high protein powder that we've developed. So in this one, you can see the almonds in the almond hulls in the background. And in the foreground you see our Koji fungi pellets that we grow. And then closest to you is that powdered protein powder.

This is a real product that we've made and we're developing with our partners. And so next slide, please. Finally, I want to talk about tomato pumice, which is, I think, my favorite. So there's about 33% of the tomatoes right now goes to landfill or essentially to composting or methane production.

So it has this really amazing compound, lycopene, which is a great nutrient, but lycopene is really labile and it falls apart. And so we'll go to the next slide. When we grow fungi on it, we can actually stabilize that lycopene into these little pellets and therefore make a more bioavailable and deliverable, you know, lycopene vitamin enriched product.

So this represents sort of a way to take something that's currently, it's very high value, it's being discarded, and to bring it back into the marketplace for the benefit of, you know, us and also of the farmers that are producing that tomato.

So, yeah, those are just a few examples of really cool things we're doing with the agricultural residues that are right here in California. And we can go to the next slide and I'd love to take your questions.

But first, you know, what this represents is one process, fermentation in General, we're able to target a lot of different markets with the same equipment, same organism and same process. What we're changing is what our inputs are and also how we're cultivating that. And each of these products is being developed with a different partner. Yeah.

So next slide, please. Yeah, thank you very much and I'd love to take your questions whenever.

Thank you so much for these innovations. And we'll get questions and comments in a moment, if there are any. And Ms. Machado, thank you. Sorry, Dr. Machado.

That's okay. Can everybody hear me okay? Okay, perfect. So I guess I'm the last one, so I promise I'm going to keep it short. So yeah. My name is Cynthia Machado. I'm a Technical and Business Development Manager for Blue Diamond Growers. I support mainly the ingredient side of the business.

First, I want to thank the Good Food Institute for the invitation to participate in this event. I'm going to spend a few minutes sharing some details about who Blue Diamond Growers is, what we produce, where we operate, what is our commitment as a company.

And also I'm going to share a few examples of research and development capabilities and innovation projects. Next slide, please. So who is Blue Diamond Growers? So we are basically a cooperative of almond growers. The company was founded in 1910 as a marketing company to protect small farmers in a volatile market. Today, the company has around 1,300 employees.

We have three facilities here in California and we represent about 3,000 small almond growers in the state. Most of the farms are small, less than 100 acres. And most of these farms are owned and run by families. And these farms have been passed down through generations. Next slide, please.

So as a company, our commitment is to growing with care. So what it means is basically that we care for our people, our land, our water, our products are almonds. However, it takes a lot of resources to grow high quality almonds. And that includes clean water, healthy soil, and also billions of honeybees.

And because of that, we work very closely with our farmers to improve our agricultural practices. We were lucky that in 2022 we were awarded a five year grant from the USDA for $45 million to help our growers to expand into different markets by implementing on farms practices.

And one of those practices is, for example, the use of cover crops. Why it's important to use cover crops. Cover crops mainly because they can help to reduce erosion of the land. Cover crops also help to maintain the water in the land. And also because when cover crops bloom, they can also provide food for the pollinators.

So thanks to this grant, in 2024, our farmers were able to to plant 22 acres of orchards with cover crops. And just to give you a perspective, these 22,000 acres of orchards is similar to cover the island of Manhattan in New York with orchards one and a half times.

So besides that, we also work with our farmers to reduce the amount of water that it's used during the irrigation portion of the season. Something that I didn't know until I joined Blue Diamond Growers is that since 1990, we've been able to reduce the amount of water that is used to grow one pound of almonds by 33%.

And then in addition of that, 15% of our farms are now bee friendly farming certified. And this certification, basically it recognizes farms or like gardens or communities that they implement different initiatives to protect and support pollinators. Next slide please. So what do we produce? We have a broad portfolio of almond base ingredients and branded products.

We have different types of ingredients that they go all the way from like whole almonds to almond flour, almond butter, almond oil and then in our branded, for our branded products you've probably seen our snack almonds or you've probably seen our well known almond milk under the almond breeze brand where you've probably seen our crackers or almond flour in the grocery store.

And these products are sold in around 45 countries. Next slide. So we have a portfolio of plant based beverages that they were designed with the consumer needs in mind. So some of our consumers, they like our almond milk. Basically they consume our almond milk for different reasons, including health reasons.

Some of our consumers, they are lactose intolerant also because of dietary restrictions. Sometimes they have ethical concerns or it's just pure preference that they like the taste, the texture, the light texture of our almond milk. Next slide please. So our company has invested extensively in innovation. For example, we have the only almond innovation center in the world.

It's located in Sacramento. This center houses our food scientists, our engineers, our regulatory experiment specialist. And in this building, we have the capability to produce different samples for not just flavored almonds, but also snack bars, bakery items, beverages, fermented dairy analogs and more. Next slide please.

So our team of scientists and engineers, they work in a very broad range of projects. They go from just improving like margin or like improving the quality of the products to developing like new ingredients or developing new branded items and also to scouting new technologies that we can use in our different processing facilities. Next slide.

And finally, I just want to share with you two of our most recent innovation projects. The first one, the team work in updating modernizing the look of our packaging for our branded products. And then recently we launched a new line of almond milk products.

Products that they have less ingredients is targeted for consumers who are looking for clean labels. Less ingredients in the ingredient deck. And we also launch an almond milk that has a higher protein content. And that's all what I had Today. Thank you for your time.

Well, thank you so much. And I know we're running a little short of time, but I had one question, because you're talking a lot about the Almond milk. What, if any, growth have you seen in the demand for Almond milk over the last few years?

That's a good question. And I feel like, overall, it has been going down, unfortunately. And it's probably, like, different reasons. One is price. Almonds, unfortunately, are not the most. I mean, they're an expensive nut. Right. I mean, like, they're the most expensive one. And yeah, unfortunately, I mean, we've seen, like, a decrease.

I think it might be competition. I mean, I think a few years ago, you kind of only saw maybe soy and almond. Now you're seeing oat milk, you're seeing other options that are there even outside of dairy milk. And so.

But, and then the other reason, too, it's because, again, consumers are looking for, like, more clean, label type of products. And that was the reason why we recently launch, like, this new line of products.

Like that goes back to the psychology, the marketing. Yeah, thank you for that. And almonds are the number one exported crop in the state of California, which means there's a lot of those husks, a lot of that byproduct that's there. And, you know, where do you source your products, the product from? Because you have a potential.

There's many. Right. I mean, just some benefits of the way that the almond in particular is processed is that it's dry and they're regionally located at the processing plants and they're available. So it really is an incredible feedstock for fermentation.

I think one big area of development is to look at what can happen at the processing plant, to now prepare those for the next step, which could be fermentation or it could be another utilization. So that's an area where, you know, more research and investment is.

And I saw one of the byproducts that could be made are fats, which is also something that in kind of alternative protein products, trying to, in the right proportions, instill fat into the products as well. And so that would seem like a unique aspect of one of the. Being one of the byproducts as well.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Well, thank you both so much. I appreciate you for taking the time to share. And by the way, just I want to thank all the speakers for being here. And for those that are not as familiar with our select committees, we actually have 11 Members of the select Committee.

And oftentimes the select Committee, especially when they're in Sacramento, but no matter where they are, Senator Bryant had to catch a flight and this, that and the other. But it's live streamed for a reason, because it's permanently recorded and accessible to not only our Assembly Members, but our staff as well as any members of the public.

And so that's why these select Committee hearings are so important, because it's really about collecting information from all of our experts on this wide range of issues. So even if you want to watch the set Committee hearing we had in Sacramento or at ucla, those are all available.

So when we make references to things that may have happened in those past hearings as well, you can go back and take a look. And maybe if you want to hear from one particular program UCLA is doing, I want to hear from a particular speaker. So likewise for today as well.

If there's any aspect of today you want to share with your colleagues or with friends or folks in the industry, the link will be made available and you can certainly do that. But I don't want to for folks that aren't as familiar with the process or Slack Committee hearing.

I don't want folks to think that because folks have to get up and go or come and go, that there's a disinterest. Quite to the contrary, our colleagues and our staffs are actually incredibly interested in the topic.

And that's why we even have a select Committee, because we only have select committees on issues where there is a shared interest with our colleagues and with stakeholders outside of the Capitol as well. Just want to put that out there because some folks may not be as familiar with the select Committee hearing process.

So again, thank you to all of our speakers for their presentations today. Next we'll move to those who are wishing to make a public comment. And so we're going to have a microphone placed in the middle of the aisle there. Yes, you two can. Thank you so much. Can you get us here?

If you'd like to, we'll have a microphone in the middle there. So anyone that would like to come up and make any public comment on today's topic, feel free to do so. Just introduce yourself, name and organization, if any.

Hello, my name is Nicholaus Sackett. I work for an animal rights organization called Social Compassion Legislation and just want to thank you, some of you, for, you know, getting this select Committee started advocating for it, advocating for animals at the, at the Capitol as you have.

One thing that, you know, we know as animal rights activists is that as much as we see progress with plant based food and culture rising up within the culture, we know that we're never going to outrun the global demand for meat.

And so it's very encouraging to see the technology and the interests in the STEM fields in UC Davis at the Legislature for this because we know that we won't be able to outrun that demand. So thank you.

Thank you. Any other public comment? And I'll just add to that point that at the same time, we also know that the conventional meat industry is not going to be able to supply the necessary protein supply that the world is going to require. It's unsustainable.

And so it's, it's not necessarily an either or, although I do think that we all benefit when folks make wise choices. But we don't have a choice. We have to innovate.

And that's why what we're discussing with the Select Committee is so important, because this is really the forefront, this is the beginning of what's going to be a journey of many, many years that we have to take because there's really no other alternative but alternative proteins. And so thank you all so much.

We also, as I mentioned, Erica Salazar in my office for any follow up following the Committee. I also have my chief of staff, Ryan Guillen here as well. And I want to thank both of them for their tremendous work in making this select Committee process very productive. Not just today's hearing, but the other hearings that we've had.

And I would like to just make a couple closing remarks. I am pleased to announce we talked about some of the different things that we're going to need going forward, that I will be advocating for a budget request of $25 million to support ongoing research and development efforts and biomanufacturing innovations.

And so I hope everyone here, once that ask is made, can put in letters of support or contact the Legislature and let them know that this matters to you.

As we heard from Sana, our original, our first speaker, talking about that, that's one of the steps we need to take is really that investment, which is still a drop in the bucket of so many other industries. But because there's so much excitement and innovations happening right here, a lot can be done with those resources.

And those resources can go to academic institutions as well as nonprofits and others that are doing innovative work. I again want to thank all the guest speakers for sharing your expertise on how we as a state can meet the moment and support the cultivation of partnerships with the agricultural producers and the alternative protein industry.

I want to thank my colleagues and staff who were able to join us today, as well as those that are joining in remotely for taking the time to learn, continuing to learn more about alternative proteins. You heard from my colleagues how they didn't know much about it at Fuseco.

I think a lot of us didn't know about much about it a few years ago. I think this is a newer industry, but I'm very grateful to the curiosity and interest from my colleagues. That's the only way we were able to get that initial 5 million, the additional 1 million.

But more importantly be a hub as a state for innovation for companies that are really making those innovations as well. I want to thank ICAMP and the UC Davis Government Relations team and UC Davis the Chancellor for hosting us for our third informational hearing.

All of today's materials will be available on our select Committee page on assembly.ca.gov website and as mentioned, you can contact our office for any follow up. I want to thank the Select Committee alternative or I want to. Actually I'm going to mention this before we adjourn. Well, an announcement. Well let me go ahead and adjourn the meeting.

So we're adjourned. Watch this little I never became a judge. This is my chance to use a gavel or adjourn.

Please join us for the Protein Central networking event hosted by ICAMP at the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science Today at 5pm There will be network opportunities program with featured speakers and a special sample tasting from Wild Type.

If you haven't had Wild Type, you're going to want to try I'm vegan, I eat Wild Type which is actually cultivated salmon for those that are interested to try it. It's remarkable and it really tells you of what the potential of this industry is in the years ahead.

But I hope you signed up for it because it sounds like it's all booked up. So I'll see you all at the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and food at 5pm Hope you can join us and thank you all so much.