Community acceptance of low-methane meat
Welcome to our 2021/2022 wrap where we’ll be highlighting the work being done by our corporate members. First up is FutureFeed, the company licensing impact partners around the world to take Asparagopsis based products to market.
FutureFeed is the Australian company that holds the patents for and licences impact partners to take Asparagopsis-based products to the livestock supplement market to reduce methane emissions.
Although the foundational science, completed in a collaboration between CSIRO, Meat and Livestock Corporation and James Cook University dates back to 2016, FutureFeed, the company, was only formed in August 2020, as a joint venture between. Its investors include CSIRO, Woolworths Group, GrainCorp, Harvest Road Group, and AGP Sustainable Real Assets/ Sparklabs Cultiv8.
In the past 18 months, it has licenced its technology to seven businesses across Australia, New Zealand, the US, Europe and Canada. The company itself has grown from one staff member to a team of eight, with an additional four staff to be recruited before the end of the 2022.
Eve Faulkner, spokesperson for FutureFeed, says during the past year FutureFeed has focused on four key areas:
significant trial work and R&D to build upon the foundational science,
furthering the scientific evidence to support regulatory pathways and access to markets in the US and EU for both Asparagopsis as a livestock supplement,
establishing certification, production standards and a digital traceability program, and
marketing and education about Asparagopsis and low-methane meat.
Highlights for the company include a representation of FutureFeed meat being included in a six-month exhibition about the future of food and sustainable production systems at the Smithsonian Institution in the US.
“A cooking demonstration led by celebrity chef Matt Moran was also a milestone for us,” Faulkner says. “Moran is a fourth-generation farmer and renowned chef and it was great to see him so enthusiastic about the solution and the lower-methane meat.”
These kinds of events are an important part of the company’s marketing and education program, generating acceptance and confidence from all across the value chain.
And in July 2022, FutureFeed won the Australian Financial Reviews’ Sustainability Leaders Award in the Agriculture & Environment category.
In the year ahead, FutureFeed will begin a large-scale trial to generate highly replicated data demonstrating how the Asparagopsis supplements improve the productivity of cattle.
Faulkner explains that previous small-scale trials showed that energy that otherwise lost to methane can be re-directed into better nutrition for livestock. One trial showed a 20% weight gain in cattle that were fed the seaweed supplement. Another showed a 14% increase in feed efficiency.
This latest trial involving 300 cattle seeks to validate and consolidate these findings. It is being conducted by the University of New England with $500,000 support from the Australian Government’s Methane Emissions Reduction In Livestock program.