So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June. That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal. That has made them expensive and less appealing to consumers, he said.īy signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from Mother Jones and our partners. Most common alternative meats rely on heavy processing to transform soy or pea protein into a stimuli-meat. It’s more natural” than existing plant-based commercial meat alternatives, said Sylvain Charlebois, a professor at Dalhousie University who studies the food industry. You don’t have to conduct so much processing. Still, some observers say this more sombre outlook shouldn’t hit mycelium “meat” too hard. Recent months have tempered those expectations, with analysts now predicting more modest growth in the sector. On the back of this hype, startups like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods shot onto fast-food chain menus and legacy meat processors like Maple Leaf Foods started investing heavily in the industry. More people were growing concerned about the environmental and ethical impacts of animal agriculture-particularly factory farming-fueling widespread speculation that plant-based meats could be key to edging out the real thing. “I think there is really going to be a niche of application,” said UC Davis professor Valeria La Saponara, an aerospace engineer who started working with mycelium several years ago. The popcorn-like mycelium flakes can “become anything you want,” from imitation burgers to plant-based steak. The Canadian Space Agency has even shown interest in Schneider’s work as a possible source of food for space missions. This long-overlooked organism has recently burst into the spotlight, with proponents saying it offers remedies to some of the ills of industrialization, like plastic pollution. The paste is mycelium, the so-called “body” of fungi. In an anodyne gray North Vancouver business park, Gavin Schneider is growing a whitish paste he believes will one day replace meat and feed astronauts on Mars. This story was originally published by Canada’s National Observer and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Fungi by Orrin Grey