Seafood provides nearly 20% of the animal protein humans consume globally. This growing source of protein is also rather healthy with many of our nutrient-rich foods coming from aquatic creatures. But already, the supply of our wild capture seafood has flattened, meaning that the vast majority of our global fisheries today are being overfished in an unsustainable manner. Fortunately, Finless Foods and other sustainable seafood startups are working to bring sustainability-driven innovation to the seafood space. With both plant-based and cell-cultured options, consumers are finally beginning to experience the taste and value of seafood alternatives that are better for our oceans and their inhabitants as well as our climate. In this episode, Chad Reed talks with Finless Foods’ chief strategy officer Shannon Consentino-Roush about the past, present and future of the sustainable seafood movement and industry.
Seafood provides nearly 20% of the animal protein humans consume globally. This growing source of protein is also rather healthy with many of our nutrient-rich foods coming from aquatic creatures. But already, the supply of our wild capture seafood has flattened, meaning that the vast majority of our global fisheries today are being overfished in an unsustainable manner.
Fortunately, Finless Foods and other sustainable seafood startups are working to bring sustainability-driven innovation to the seafood space. With both plant-based and cell-cultured options, consumers are finally beginning to experience the taste and value of seafood alternatives that are better for our oceans and their inhabitants as well as our climate. In this episode, Chad Reed talks with Finless Foods’ chief strategy officer Shannon Consentino-Roush about the past, present and future of the sustainable seafood movement and industry.
Links:
Article: World Tuna Day: How sustainable are tuna fisheries?
Episode recorded: April 21, 2023
Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, and Hilary at climatepositive@hasi.com or tweet them to @ClimatePosiPod.
Chad Reed: I'm Chad Reed.
Hillary Langer: I'm Hillary Langer.
Gil Jenkins: I'm Gil Jenkins.
Chad: This is Climate Positive.
Shannon Consentino-Roush: If you look at the supply curve, it's pretty much flattened out in the last 50 years. What that means is we're not really able to get more fish from the ocean sustainably.94% or 95% of our fisheries are either maximally fished, meaning that's it, that's all we can get, and it's sustainable, or it's overfished, meaning you're going deeper into your bank account. You're eating into your savings. If our wild capture is leveling off, where are we getting additional supply?
Chad: Seafood provides nearly 20% of the animal protein humans consume globally. This growing source of protein is also rather healthy with many of our nutrient-rich foods coming from aquatic creatures. But already, the supply of our wild capture seafood has flattened, meaning that the vast majority of our global fisheries today are being overfished in an unsustainable manner.
Fortunately, Finless Foods and other sustainable seafood startups are working to bring sustainability-driven innovation to the seafood space. With both plant-based and cell-cultured options, consumers are finally beginning to experience the taste and value of seafood alternatives that are better for our oceans and their inhabitants as well as our climate. In this episode, I sit down with Finless Foods’ chief strategy officer Shannon Consentino-Roush about the past, present and future of the sustainable seafood movement and industry.
Chad: Shannon, thank you for joining us today. It's a pleasure to have you.
Shannon: Thank you for having me.
Chad: Shannon, you've built your career around implementing policies and systems that strengthen fisheries, protect endangered species, and sustain a healthy ocean. Was there a seminal experience for you when you were growing up when you said, "This is it. I want to devote my career to protecting the ocean and protecting endangered species"?
Shannon: It's funny because I don't know that there was a single moment, but it really all links back to my dad, which is maybe a little bizarre to folks or you wouldn't expect it. He was quite passionate about international tuna fisheries, so I actually grew up having an ocean library and I may have every book that was written around international tuna fisheries dating back to the '80s.
Chad: How many have been written? I didn't even know there were many. [laughs]
Shannon: Our bookshelf pretty much lines the wall of their house, and it's mostly ocean books. I still, to this day, will go to my parents and grab a book that I didn't know existed and be like, "Hey," to my colleagues, "Do you want to check this book out? It actually is quite interesting." There's an entire book on sushi. I grew up just learning about these issues in a very detailed way. Maybe more so than you would expect for someone who's six. I think every chance my dad could get, he would take me to the ocean. I grew up right across the coastal range in the Bay Area, so I was very often, if not every weekend, at the beach.
I also grew up very blessed to be able to say I lived within very reasonable driving distance to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We had annual memberships and we would very frequently go maybe as much as once a month at times. They had very cutting-edge, if you will, at the time, exhibits, especially around international fisheries and the impacts to biodiversity and the ocean. I think I was always, just growing up, really interested in these subjects and the implications, very young, I think realizing the implications of our day-to-day lives and how governance really shapes everything we touch. Maybe we don't even always realize how much governance shapes our lives.
I think the moment I knew I wanted to make it a career was probably when I was in the end of middle school, early high school when I realized that environmental law actually could be a career. I knew about law. My grandfather was a patent attorney, but I didn't per se know that there could be jobs where you used law to protect the ocean. Once I really unlocked that, [chuckles] I think my fate was locked and I focused on that ever since, to be honest.
Chad: Excellent. Well, from a lawyer to now the chief strategy officer for Finless Foods, we can talk more about the company in a moment, but how did you find your way to the company? Tell us a little about your path.
Shannon: I love this question too. It maybe seems more circuitous than it is, but I got really passionate about innovation, and I actually led and organized a zero-waste hackathon in New York City. Just seeing the amount of solutions that were intersectional, crossing between policy and market solutions, some of them were more like education solutions, I really got inspired by the suite of things that you could achieve through innovation, particularly around issues that policy and law have struggled to solve like plastic pollution because it's really hard to legislate.
Anyway, so when I moved back to the Bay Area, I got connected into an organization that was looking for a director of global policy and campaigns, but also hosted an accelerator program for ocean tech. I quickly was like, "Wow, I can do my two passions in one." I can continue to run international policy campaigns and work with all the governments and environmental NGOs that I really enjoyed and built my career on, but I also get to really support the suite of companies working in ocean tech, one of which was Finless Foods at the time.
A mentor of mine was also supporting Finless and was also obviously my mentor and supporting the organization I was at. He and I were trying to help support Finless in searching for their next, like what was this role that they needed. There was a lot of different components to it, but how do you define it? Who are you really looking for? I was actually helping figure that out.
My mentor was like, "Why don't you consider this? This is actually all the things that you know how to do. Understand working with the government and agencies, understanding the difference between legislation and agency work and regulatory work. Also, really understanding the sustainable seafood movement working with the seafood industry, but also understanding the civil society angle to it, so you're perfect." I don't know that it took persuading, but it took me meditating on it. It was a big switch to make that leap into the private sector, but I did and I never looked back, really.
Chad: Excellent. What does the chief strategy officer do on a day-to-day basis?
Shannon: No day is the same. I wear many hats and I love it. I wouldn't trade it in for anything. The day-to-day can entail everything from regulatory calls related to the cell-cultured product, which we'll get into, marketing calls related to the plant-based product, working with our policy manager and our sustainability lead around all of our government relations work in DC, right now it's really around the farm bill and appropriations, to figuring out what our 2023 sustainability goals are going to be internally. Any and all of those subjects are fair game every day. Some would say it's a little manic, but I just am a builder and I love that. It's actually to me a blessing that I get to wear so many hats.
Chad: Excellent. Let's now dive into the challenge your company is trying to address, and that is the unsustainability of our oceans. Seafood provides over 17% of the animal protein that humans consume. This is going up pretty quickly as a result of the rapid expansion of aquaculture (or fish farming for lack of a better word). This growing source of protein is also rather healthy. Most of our nutrient-rich animal-sourced foods are from the sea, whether that's pelagic fish, bivalves, or salmonids. I personally became a pescatarian a few years ago living here in the Chesapeake Bay area. I have come to appreciate seafood a lot more than I once did.
What's the problem here? Why is there an issue with how we procure our seafood historically?
Shannon: We can have an entire episode on this, but I will give you the high-level points. Also, I have to pin this Chesapeake Bay for the parking lot. It's pretty exciting. The general theme is what you can imagine, as you just stated, the demand for seafood has gone up and all of the projections and forecasts show it continuing to go up. I think that's for various reasons. Everything from middle-income growth means that folks unlock the access to more animal protein, seafood being one. We live in a ever more globalized society where we're getting exposed to foods that we maybe didn't grow up eating but then we decide we like. Think about the expansion of sushi and poke since when we were young to now.
At the same time, obviously, the global population is increasing. You add all these things together and it leads to this increased demand for seafood, but honestly just for animal protein. Now, where do we get that from? The first place most folks think of is fishing boats on the ocean, our wild capture seafood. If you look at the supply curve, it's pretty much flattened out in the last 50 years. What that means is we're not really able to get more fish from the ocean sustainably. Right now, only 6% of our fisheries are underfished, meaning that we can actually get more fish from the ocean sustainably.
Think about that. That's such a small amount. That means that 94% or 95% of our fisheries are either maximally fished, meaning that's it, that's all we can get, and it's sustainable, or it's overfished, meaning we're actually, thinking about it, you're going deeper into your bank account. You're eating into your savings. If our wild capture is leveling off, where are we getting additional supply? You are right on point. Aquaculture is on the rise. For folks, that's also fish farming. It basically means we're growing more traditional animal ag fish.
That is interesting. It's in its own cycle of innovation, meaning you're seeing rapid improvements in the technology and feed conversion. What do you feed the fish and how much do they translate that to growth? The unique thing is that not all species currently are aquaculturable at scale. One of which is tuna. Any tuna you're eating is wild capture. The most you'll see is tuna ranching. That's still an input of wild fish that they're just fattening.
For species like that, as the demand increases, we still have this delta, where are we going to get increased supply? I think that's where cellular agriculture and the plant-based movement come in, where companies like Finless come in saying, "How can we find ways to increase our supply that also respects our ocean?" One thing you did mention about seafood, I just want to call out. That's not even touching on other implications of the seafood industry, including bycatch, carbon emissions.
Chad: What is bycatch?
Shannon: Bycatch basically means when you're trying to catch a target species, a target fish like tuna, you also catch other things. Depending on the fishery, it could be other species of fish. It also can be whales, dolphins, seabirds, sea turtles. Though those are charismatic, those actually are often very much affiliated with fisheries, especially tuna fisheries. At the same time, there's carbon emissions. Our tuna is caught literally to the corners of our earth and transported back, or it's processed and then transported somewhere else, and then transported to our plate.
There's environmental contaminants in our ocean like mercury and plastic, which leads to those being obviously aggregated up into the fish we eat. I think there's just all of these things swirling around and some of the alternative seafood companies stand poised to address some of those.
Chad: I want to go back to that carbon emissions point later, but great distillation of all the challenges facing our oceans today. Many of us may be familiar with plant-based burgers, Impossible or Beyond Burgers. I enjoy those, or plant-based nuggets. I've had those as well from Whole Foods, also rather tasty in my view, but I don't know that I've ever had a piece of plant-based seafood. But in 2017, your company, Finless Foods, created the first fish meat grown outside of a living fish ever to be consumed by a person. Tell us a little bit about the process that went into this effort.
Shannon: Totally. I'm going to really just create two buckets. Cell-cultured, or maybe you've heard cultivated, or maybe you've heard lab-grown. We don't love that term but maybe you've heard it, and then plant-based. Those are two distinct buckets. I'll go into both so that folks see that. On the plant-based side, you were mentioning Impossible or plant-based nuggets, that basically means the product is made of 100% plants. For those who follow these labels, those products would be vegan.
On the other side, cell-cultured products are real meat, real poultry, real beef, or real tuna. It basically means cells were taken from a wild or conventionally-raised animal, they're fed nutrients that cells even in cells in our body enjoy like salt, sugars, and amino acids that you need to grow and proliferate. That's done in a bioreactor, think like a large steel drum like you'd see in a microbrewery. The cells are harvested and grown out around scaffold, think New York City and the scaffolding that they're building buildings, it's basically given form. The cells grow around that to the structure that you're seeking, whether that's a steak or sashimi.
At the end, that product does contain real animal cells. For example, if you had a seafood allergy and you ate cell-cultured bluefin tuna, that would apply. I'm distinguishing those because the company being founded in 2017 in that first tasting, that was a cell-cultured product, and it was quite revolutionary because there hadn't been cell-cultured tasting. That is the products that we're working on, starting with bluefin tuna. Cell-cultured bluefin tuna and sashimi. Quite a mouthful. Those products require regulatory approval. We're working with the FDA to get a green light for those to be not just sold, but also consumed in the United States.
The plant-based side, it really depends on the technology, but very often don't require regulatory approval because they're using things that we already eat in our food system – peas, winter melon in our case. You're just using different processes to maybe give it taste and texture. The revolutionary technology early on is this cell culture technology. I think it'll really unlock the future of meat production. On the plant-based side, I think it really unlocks this growing climatarian/flexitarian movement saying, "How do we reduce emissions from our diet?"
Plants are a great way to do that because you feed plants to animals and then you eat the animal. Then this version, it's saying, "Why don't we just go straight to the plant?"
Chad: No, I haven't actually heard the term climatarian, and I love it. I might just adopt that myself.
Shannon: I use that often when I'm asking friends and we're out to dinner what we're going to eat, and they're like, "What are you picking?" I'm like, "Let's just make a climatarian choice."
Chad: [laughs] I do want to go back to the FDA process as well, but first, your first, I believe, marketable product is a plant-based bluefin tuna – the main ingredient of which is this superfood called ash gourd or winter melon. Can you just talk a little bit about how that plant-based product is made? Without revealing too much your secret sauce, why is it so good and tasty?
Shannon: Of course. Our plant-based product, the first thing I'm going to note is we actually benchmark it against more of a yellowfin and ahi because it is basically a plant-based poke-style tuna. What that means is it's intended to be consumed raw like you would a poke bowl or a spicy tuna roll, or a piece of sushi, et cetera. It has a lot of versatility. We often use it in plant-based tuna nachos, plant-based tacos, but it really performs its best in its raw state, not cooked. I always like to differentiate that because that really differentiates where our cell-cultured fits in.
What's the process behind this? How do we do it? Basically, you mentioned, our hero ingredient is winter melon. The product is nine whole plant-based ingredients, and it's minimally processed. We basically take the winter melon, dice it up, it's stewed like you would on a home kitchen basically to infuse it with flavoring. We dehydrate. We dehydrate, basically just taking out some excess water to basically release some of that, maybe, sap you would see in a melon. It's HPP basically for shelf life. That's basically it.
We're pretty proud of it because, one, there's been a lot of conversation within the plant-based space, regardless of which side we fall around minimal or highly processed. We're excited to say that our product is minimally processed. Also, it's a simple short ingredient statement, the main ingredient being winter melon, something folks understand, can touch and see and have a reference point for.
Chad: Your customers, let's talk about your customers because I think you're first attempting to sell this product primarily to restaurants rather than direct to consumer. Talk about that customer segmentation process and why you're prioritizing the way you are.
Shannon: Yes, definitely. You are right, we are selling B2B, Business to Business, which in the food world is called food service. Basically, meaning we're selling to the folks that are preparing your food and you're buying out, whether you're going to fine dining or fast casual like your Sweetgreen or a sit-down. We made this decision because, one, the majority of seafood in the US is consumed out of home, out of the house, which means folks are going to get it from locations like these restaurants, Sweetgreen, that type of thing. In many ways, we're just trying to meet the consumers where they already are and where they expect to get seafood.
I'd also say that the average person in the US is not going to buy wild tuna to come home and prep sushi and spicy tuna rolls and poke bowls. Again, if we're trying to really meet consumers where they are and how they're used to interacting with those tuna dishes, we were like, "Food service is where it's at." I think we've also seen in the plant-based space that there's a lot of success in starting with food service because consumers see making a decision to try a new dish as a lower-risk decision than buying an entire box of something and taking it home and trying to see what you would do with it.
It's really like, "Okay, the worst case is I don't like this one lunch," versus, "Well, now I have 3 pounds of this, what am I going to do and I don't want to throw it away?" Whether that's for food waste or wasting money, it's the same principle. I think we've seen that when folks feel like they can have a low barrier to trial, they're at a trusted location, they know that they generally liked the food from this place, so if they try something new, the chances are they'll like it. That just increases the likelihood for consumer trial. If it's done well, they trust the chefs at that location, there's a higher chance for repeat purchase.
That's largely the reason behind our launch into food service rather than retailer or D2C. I'd also say that we really saw our plant-based tuna product as like getting the flywheel started for our cell-cultured product when it comes out. We've already done a lot of the thinking and the strategizing around that and launching in high-end restaurants makes the most sense, so we see this plant-based product as an opportunity to build out our business side of the company, learn how to be a food company, learn consumer insights, what do they expect from products?
What do operators, the food service, the chefs, what do they expect from products? Starting with food service for plant-based makes it really easy to slide in to our food service for our cell-cultured product as well.
Chad: That makes a lot of sense, well articulated as well. Let's talk about the cell-cultured product and specifically the process there. What does the FDA approval process look like? Where are you in that process? It is different, as you mentioned, from plant-based product launches. Talk to us about that a bit.
Shannon: Yes, of course. We get this question often. You didn't ask it but I'm going to slide it in. The FDA has been very collaborative and great. I don't mean collaborative in that they're not being rigorous and they're not making sure that they're asking the hard questions to ensure these products are safe. They very much are, but it's also a partnership and them learning a new industry and understanding a new technology, and being eager to see this technology come to life in the United States.
This is an evolution that's happening globally, various governments are thinking about this technology and taking various stances on not to say yay or nay but how much they're going to incentivize and push and help build enabling conditions. It's really exciting for us that the US is taking a quite proactive approach because it's ensuring, not only American competitiveness in this industry but also we believe this industry has a lot of potential for sustainability. It's also the US committing to basically exploring a more sustainable food system in the future.
What does that process with the FDA look like? It's basically consultative. We basically share our process and data like, "This is what we're doing, and here's some data from it." They ask questions, and then we submit more data and they ask questions. Ultimately getting to a place where we submit a full document submission, which is called a dossier. The FDA will pressure test that, ask more questions, have more meetings. When they feel like there's no more questions to be had, they give you basically a no-questions letter.
Again, no more questions to be had. We officially codified that, which means you have the green light to go to market and sell the product in the United States. We are in the thick of it in the best of ways, meaning that we've been making a lot of progress and we've been having meetings with the FDA and making submissions and preparing basically all the information they'll need to be able to get Finless that no-questions letter.
Chad: Excellent. Ballpark, how long does the process typically take?
Shannon: It's really hard. The FDA will say 9 to 12 months to review a full submission. Obviously, there's time with the consultative, so it really depends-- This is not trying to give a wishy-washy answer, it's because it really depends on the technology. Every company's technology though there's very similar building blocks are very uniquely different, so it's hard to say what that consultative front-time looks like.
I would say the FDA has now given two no-questions letters. We've had two approvals. We're only seeing them get more and more efficient at it because now many of their early questions of understanding this technology have been answered. I would say that 9 to 12 months timeline they've given is pretty accurate, which means you'll continue to see more approvals coming in the short term. It could be months, it could be a year, but it's definitely going to continue to be a clip. I don't think it's going to be another five years before the next approval.
Chad: That's great. You started with tuna, maybe you could tell us a little bit more about why tuna specifically. Then what are your next potential product lines? Are you looking at shrimp? Are you looking at scallops? What product lines you're looking at after tuna?
Shannon: Why tuna? I think there's two main pillars to that decision. One, the sustainability and, two, the business. On the sustainability side, I started with that. In the last 50 years, there's been a 60% decrease in our global tuna populations. We are having less and less tuna in the ocean. As I mentioned, tuna are very difficult to aquaculture at scale. There are very few success stories there. Right now the real only place to get supply for tuna is from the ocean.
Huge conservation story for all these reasons. There was so much written in the-- I'm dating myself maybe, but in the '90s and early 2000s, there was a lot of press around the plight of tuna. All of those stories still pertain to today. It was very clear to us. It's a win for tuna, it's a win for dolphins and sharks and turtles, et cetera. On the business side, as you can imagine with a new technology, especially one like cell-ag, dropping cost is one of the big challenges. How do we get to a place where these products are not thousands of dollars per burger or hundreds of dollars per burger, but reach price parity?
For us, bluefin tuna, for example, not just even skipjack or albacore, has a pretty high price point. It's seen as a premium product in premium dishes at premium locations. That means that our journey to price parity is much more achievable. That makes a lot of business sense. I think if you put together the conservation or sustainability story and the business story, it just adds up to a really great strategy. That's why we started there. I will say that that means Finless started in a hard place first, meaning that tuna cell lines, just fun facts, are less researched than, for example, cattle or chicken or even salmon.
As you can imagine, because we have industrial agriculture for those, and then we've obviously been aquaculturing salmon at scale. It means we started in a hard place working on foundational research for tuna, but we believe it has been super strategic for the company and has really put us in successful positioning.
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Chad: Let's talk about scaling as you alluded to. As many alternative protein companies scale, they often need a lot more space, so you can move from the lab to pilot to large-scale manufacturing eventually. I know late last year you moved into an 11,000 square foot space, I believe in Emeryville, California, and you tripled the size of your science team and quadrupled the size of your bioprocess team. How do you think about scaling the company going forward?
Shannon: Yes, definitely. Scale is always on our minds. At the heart of many if not all of our decisions in terms of both, like you mentioned, manufacturing capacity, but also in terms of optimization of ingredients like media. How do we think about it? One, you're right, we have plans. We had a plan to build out the facility we're in currently, which has started building lots of lessons. That was the lesson that construction timelines are always longer than you think they are and harder than you think and there's a lot to retrofit a space for food. We are really proud of our new facility. Actually, we were just doing a lab tour yesterday and I was like, "This is so beautiful."
We've come so far in the original design to now seeing it as the space we all work in and hang out in every day and show folks. I think that also means that we're building out our manufacturing capacity plans. What does our next space look like and what's the square footage? Even the size of the bioreactors. What is the geography that makes the most sense, for various reasons, including sustainability? The grid you're going to be part of. I think that we are always really building that scale into our planning.
We're also always building that scale into our R&D work, because like I mentioned, a big part of scale is not only are you stress testing the cells to be able to proliferate in larger and larger bioreactors, but you're also looking at things like your supply chains and your media and how can you drop costs to also assist with that scale. A big part of that journey is moving from traditional pharma equipment and supply chains to more food grade.
I would say scale is at the heart of this industry because not only is it going to mean that we can demonstrate a successful business model, and that's really important not just for venture and the raises, but also to be able to be seen as a successful industry, one that will survive and have potential. It's also really important for sustainability because if the goal here is to be another source of sustainable animal protein, having one 11,000-square-foot facility isn't going to get us there, so I think the industry is also really focused on how can we bring this animal protein from this process online and how can we do it as quick as possible?
Chad: Yes. I want to talk about the industry and lessons we can learn from the two largest and most successful plant-based meat companies that I'm personally aware of are Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat. I'm sure you have some competitors out there as well in the plant-based seafood space that maybe you can garner some lessons from. What have we learned to date from both successful companies in this space more broadly and maybe other peers or competitors in your space as you look to grow your company going forward?
Shannon: This could be another session.
[laughter]
I would say the lessons are continuing and they will continue because in the grand scheme of things, I know there are so many articles right now about forecasting the forever fate of the plant-based industry, and it's so fascinating to me because it's still in its infancy all things considered, especially given the history of traditional conventional animal protein. I would say there's a lot of lessons. One thing to say on the competitor side before I get into that, on seafood is like you mentioned, it still really is a white space.
There are so many companies popping up every day, in the grand scheme of it, it's still very much a white space. There's very few companies, all things considered, they're launching new products, they're learning about scale and how do they get these products to be accessible in the hands of many people and many places at the right price points, so I think in some ways, the competitive landscape in the seafood space is still smaller and the alt seafood space.
On the plant-based side, I think there are-- I like to talk about this as like V1.0 of plant-based seafood and now we're maybe V2.0 where there have been the shelf stable, maybe tuna cans like alternative seafood but now we're getting into the land of poke-style tuna and scallops and crabcakes and taking this industry to a whole other level. That's just been a rapid increase even in the last six months along the last year, so I would say that competitor landscape is very much shapeshifting and the things we're wrestling with are the exact things any new category would wrestle with, like product performance and how we continue to meet consumers where they are and improve and improve.
How do we hit the price points they expect? How do we get distribution and get through gatekeepers and figure out how to make these products accessible to people? How do we hit scale and produce for quantities at national chain? I would say across the competitive landscape, those are things that are pretty thematic. What have we learned so far? I would just say that we're learning a lot about consumer behavior. Consumer behavior and folks can't see, I saw a question form on your face. Translating for folks.
Basically, the choices we make around food and then shifting those is behavior change, just like anything else. Getting someone to decide to have a plant-based crab cake versus a crab cake or that plant-based burger over the burger. How do we drive those changes? I think we've seen the industry rapidly grow, and some may argue will level off. Well, I think every new food category levels off and nothing has infinite growth, but also, once we've already built traction with the folks that are most inclined to try these products and adopt them first, integrate them to their lifestyles, how do we get that next batch of consumer?
I think the thing we're all learning about from each other in this competitive landscape is what kind of product performance are folks expecting. How can we make these products differentiated? For some, they want it to be exactly like a burger, which means they don't care that it's highly processed. They're not eating it for health reasons, they might be eating it for sustainability reasons.
Others want this to improve, not only meet their health expectations for products but improve, and they want to eat these products solely for health reasons. How do we better understand those consumer insights and how do we understand how we can unlock that behavior change to get more folks to be considering and integrating these products into their day-to-day?
Chad: Excellent. Well, you also mentioned earlier the issue of carbon emissions. While both wild fisheries and aquaculture result in lower emissions per gram of protein than land-based meat, including beef, which is six times higher than wild catch seafood, mutton, which is five times higher, pork, poultry, and even cheese, all higher in terms of emissions per gram of protein than either wild-catch or aquaculture. Still, both wild catch and aquaculture result in some emissions. I believe it's between 20 and 40-ish grams of CO2 equivalent per gram of protein.
Is it safe to assume that your products, either the plant-based or the cell-cultured seafood, are less carbon intensive than existing wild-catch or aquaculture?
Shannon: First thing I have to say, I'm thinking about it. What do you think folks how they would react if they knew these numbers, were top of their mind every time they made a choice? I know these numbers and even every time you say them out loud, it's very humbling for me. I really appreciate you calling it out. There's a lot of research into this space exactly around that. I think the general perception is plants are going to have lower emissions largely even because of feed conversion.
Let's say a cow. You're using a lot of land space to grow a lot of corn, or soy, et cetera, or grazing land to feed one animal that takes X, Y, Z years of lifespan to get to a place of harvest and then you consume one piece of it versus you're eating that exact plant at the very origin story of that and it just takes a lot less land space and emissions and et cetera to produce that ingredient or whatever you're going to eat, pea or et cetera. I would say the general hypothesis is that plant-based products inherently will have lower emissions associated than other meat products. Just even based on that fact.
I would say there's a lot of work being done in this industry to dig into that, tease it out, especially as companies and products become more mature, being like you're not making supply chain changes every day, which makes it very hard to measure. You're seeing LCAs roll out, folks basically walking you through not only what the footprint of their product is, but how that compares to the conventional equivalent. You're seeing that with companies like Oatly or Perfect Day or Impossible, Beyond, and you're starting to be able to see those numbers.
On the cell side, I would say that the hypothesis also is that there is a pathway to lower emission. Not just lower emission, I'm going to say lower footprint because there's a lot of things that go into that water. It's not just emissions, but a lower footprint of cell-cultured products than their conventional competitors. I will say that we are in very early day of this industry and so many of the companies-- Actually, I would say all of the companies are mission-founded and mission-driven. Since this is our goal for this hypothesis to become true, we're all baking this into our business strategies as much as possible.
For example, as you're building out the facilities you're going to produce baking in those best practices into manufacturing buildout. As you know, some of the easiest things-- Not the easiest, but it's easier to have your built environment built in a way that lends itself to sustainability than trying to retrofit something later. That makes a huge difference, that in supply chains and what your footprint is going to look like. It's something we're baking in already and we're really aspiring to have that hypothesis be proven true.
It's too challenging to say right now what that number is because in rapid scale-up, this is your space, so I'm almost like preaching to the choir. It's very hard to measure something that's ever-changing and that we've not refined the ultimate production process yet. I think we're trying to do our best to baseline and dig into these numbers and work on supply chain improvements, but I think all things considered, third parties and folks that are really looking into this and research organizations are really in favor and believe that this hypothesis can be true.
Chad: Yes, absolutely. I know you alluded to it in that previous answer, but we are a very mission-driven sustainability-oriented company and ESG is very important for companies even like ours. I would say Finless Foods is very similar in that regard too. Talk to us about your sustainability goals for 2023. I know that there's a new sustainability reporting framework created for the alternative meat industry. Talk to us about how you're engaged in that and maybe some of the key metrics that you're looking at this year especially.
Shannon: Well, first, I'm really proud to say that a company of our size and at our lifecycle, if you will, how young we are, we already have a sustainability lead that's been with the company for over a year now, which is tremendous. It's very hard, as you know, to advocate for one headcount or two headcount of a very small company to be solely dedicated to sustainability. That was something that was really important to the company but personally to me and advocating for that. It's a tremendous asset to our team and the one exactly working on this on the day-to-day.
I'd also say that we have already created a green team. We have a culture committee, and we have a green team that's part of that, and actually, our sustainability lead is involved in both. That is another way that we're trying to bake this into not only company culture but also into broader company goals rather than just an individual department. I think that's really important as being someone in sustainability.
Even prior to this, it was really important to me that sustainability wasn't just this side department that operates as an internal consultant advocating for things, but that it is integrated to all the department's goals, and it's integrated into the business strategy like I was saying about bluefin tuna. It's not something that can be sidelined, which I think can unfortunately often happen.
What are we doing in 2023? We've been doing a lot in 2022 to lead up to here. One, we're really digging in deep to our baselining. I think we spent a lot of time last year, exactly just what you mentioned, digging into the various standards. There are so many, which one are you going to use? What's the reporting structures? There's new guidance documents coming out literally every few months. Really figuring out, "Okay, what are we going to baseline against?"
We're also working a lot on supply chain transparency. We really put those foundational steps in place last year as well, but now really just going into full ramp-up mode. I think last year we built it and did a few trials to see how it worked. This year it's really fully integrating that. We're continuing to integrate sustainability goals into all of our departmental goals. If you maybe are familiar with SMART goals, our company uses that kind of framework, so every department is building their SMART goals. It's been really important for us that sustainability is built into the departmental SMART goals so that we're a partnership.
We're working with those departments to achieve, let's say it's greening the lab or it's getting the Alameda County's Green Business certificate, how are we working together on that? That's I think our North Star for this year, not to mention just staying engaged in the dialogues that we have been around like Climate Week. I was there speaking in San Francisco, Climate Week in New York City, really digging into the UN global compact and how are they looking at sustainability and doing a lot of that thought leadership work to move the entire sustainability and I guess in some ways the startup world forward in that space.
Chad: Excellent. Well, thank you, Shannon. We're almost done, but first, we have the hot seat, so we ask for your immediate reactions to the following statements.
Shannon: Is the hot seat the favorite part for folks listening in? I think it was my favorite part. I don't get to answer these questions, so I appreciate you doing this.
Chad: I've been told we should move the hot seat to the beginning of the podcast. We haven't done that yet, but we are considering it. The hardest decision I've ever made is?
Shannon: Every transition. Moving to Africa, moving home from Africa. Moving from New York to California. I would say every one of those is the hardest decision I've ever made.
Chad: I definitely understand that. One thing I've changed my mind on is?
Shannon: The power of the private sector to make positive environmental change.
Chad: Excellent. The person I've learned the most from is?
Shannon: My mentors. I can't just name one because they all are equally valuable in moving my life forward.
Chad: Excellent. If I had to do it all over again I would?
Shannon: Do nothing different.
Chad: No regrets.
Shannon: No
Chad: Good. When I need to recharge I?
Shannon: Go to the beach.
Chad: Which one?
Shannon: Mostly Santa Cruz, but honestly, I don't discriminate. I will go to any beach around the world. Whether it's hiking, biking. I don't even mind the activity. I think they all do the same thing for me.
Chad: The key ingredient to my productivity is?
Shannon: My team. A good leader is only built on a good team.
Chad: I don't know if you are a parent, but if you are, I want my kids to know.
Shannon: I'm not a parent except to kitties, but if I am a parent, I would still say the same answer, that I made the hard decisions.
Chad: The best hiking spot in the Bay Area is?
Shannon: I can't even answer this one. There are too many. I can't put one to the top. I will say that my favorite hike recently was actually in Santa Barbara. One of my favorite Bay Area nature response is Point Reyes, the National Seashore.
Chad: Beautiful.
Shannon: Unparalleled, I think maybe in the world.
Chad: Beautiful. I agree. I agree there. The most insightful book or article I've read recently is?
Shannon: I have to say it's not a book, but the thing that most inspired me recently was going to IDEO in San Francisco. They have an entire exhibit on the climate era and how we've evolved industries in the past to future and how we can learn from that to symbolize how we can move industries into the climate era. That was the most inspiring thing to me.
Chad: I love it that maybe we've gone from an industrial era to a climate era. That would be amazing.
Shannon: I thought about it. I took photos of the exhibit's words to remind myself this and put it really front of mind every day. To me, that really symbolizes-- It touched me on a deep level.
Chad: To me, climate positive means?
Shannon: Breaking beyond the status quo and breaking even.
Chad: Excellent. Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Shannon. This has been really fun and very informative. I wish you and Finless Foods the very best going forward.
Shannon: Thank you so much for having me. This also is fun, particularly the hot seat.
[laughter]
I wish you all, and if anyone has any questions or is really interested in Finless, just follow us on social or check out our website, or even find me on LinkedIn. We're here to empower and educate. No bad questions.
Chad: Excellent. We'll put some of those links in the show notes as well.
Shannon: Great.
Chad: Thank you very much, Shannon. Take care.
Shannon: Thank you.
Chad: If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, please leave us a leave a rating and review on Apple and Spotify. This really helps us reach more listeners.
You can also let us know what you thought via Twitter @ClimatePosiPod or email us at climatepositive@hasi.com
I'm Chad Reed.
And this is Climate Positive.