ARTICLE F&A Alternative Proteins Edition April 2023 39 from the fermentation of sugar beet waste, are already commercially available. In contrast, others, like those derived from methane and algae, are newer to the market. THE POSITIVES AND THE NEGATIVES There are both positives and negatives for these sustainable animal feed protein alternatives. For instance, nutritional tailoring of existing products is easy with single-cell protein, certainly relative to plant-based systems, for example. This is a combined result of an immense naturally-occurring diversity of single-celled organisms, tight control of production conditions during fermentation, and rapid development cycles for new and optimised products. Insects, meanwhile, are often heralded for containing easily digestible protein and a good balance of essential amino acids for the diets of many farmed animals, which is likely at least a partial result of natural dietary evolution across animal species. Additionally, protein sources derived from existing agricultural and horticultural waste streams, such as blood and feather-meals, are already well set up within existing supply chains and the infrastructure needed to produce animal feed. One of the main challenges facing these sustainable alternatives and perhaps all new types of animal feed is scalability. Scalability is an important criterion for driving new product adoption in the feed markets, particularly for bulk feed ingredients. It is improvements in this space where the most significant sustainability benefits can be realised. The traditional methods for producing feed are long-established, so there has to be a substantial push from major industry players to move away from the likes of fishmeal and soybean protein concentrate to focus on new sustainable alternatives. Ensuring the scale and availability of any alternative ingredient is crucial in incentivising uptake by compound feed producers. This is particularly relevant where driving engagement and transactions on new ingredients based on sustainability credentials alone has been challenging in the comfortable and well-established feed markets. The scalability of insects is under particular scrutiny before it can take a commercially leading position. Specifically, insect systems must demonstrate successful scaling of the process using sustainable feedstocks based on waste streams from other industries. Such waste streams have historically created issues due to inherent and hardto-deal-with variability at scale. Other sustainable technologies have fallen at this hurdle after showing comparable initial promise at pilot and demonstration scales. Validating the required robustness of the insect production systems against these inherent feedstock risks will be critical. THE BENEFITS OF GAS FERMENTATION I was very excited when I first heard of gas fermentation, as it represented a technology platform with enormous potential. Gas fermentation connects two completely different industries upstream and downstream of the process. From the upstream perspective, this is a novel gas utilisation technology. From the downstream perspective, it unlocks previously unusable feedstocks for producing various fermentation products. Essentially, gas-fermentation technology offers a means of creating high-value biological or biologically-derived products from inputs traditionally not associated with the end markets for these, and the opportunities are enormous. At Deep Branch, we focus on a particular branch of gas fermentation which uses three primary gas inputs: hydrogen, carbon dioxide and oxygen. Using
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