The current human diet is not sustainable. Current estimates estimate that the world population will increase by 2 billion people in the next 25 years, which will practically reach 10 billion inhabitants. How can the world's population be fed sustainably? Now let's imagine how we can respond to the demand for food in an overpopulated world. If we do not want to destroy the ecosystem, we need to do research and promote innovation to offer alternatives and solutions to a global food sustainability problem.
According to some studies, by 2040 30% of the meat on the market will be grown in laboratories using cells. The company Current Foods , led by Sònia Hurtado , is a pioneer in plant-based fish food products, specifically raw bluefin tuna. The recognitions and awards received show that they are achieving this. It is for these reasons that research projects such as those she leads are so valuable for the Industrial Doctorate (DI) program, since they have a great potential for impact on the world we live in. For now, her great challenge is to convey to the consumer the benefits of this type of fish, focused on a very favorable story for the sustainability of the oceans, animals and the planet in general. An entrepreneur very convinced of her mission for food sustainability, with a very interesting career path aimed at creating products that can ultimately create eating habits that care for the planet and health in the same way.
What happens to the oceans with overfishing?
The overfishing that has been occurring over the last 50 years has caused a deterioration of the oceans. This is a fact that is evident both in fish populations (more exaggerated in fish that are at the top of the food chain, which causes a destabilization of the ecosystem), and in the deforestation of the underwater floor, which is equivalent to 1.5 times the surface area of the European continent. An example, which is the one that personally shocked me the most when I learned the figure, is that the bluefin tuna, both Pacific and Atlantic, has been reduced by 97% in population. In other words, only 3% remain and are in critical danger of extinction.
What impact can the consumption of plant-based proteins have?
It would undoubtedly improve the situation, because the consumption of animal protein is not efficient in any way. To feed livestock we need quantities of grain and water that have a terrible environmental impact. In the case of fish, the same thing happens: both at the scale of fish farms and wild fishing, the impact on the sea is devastating. Increasing the direct consumption of vegetable protein and reducing that of animals has an immediate environmental benefit. This will help to resolve the situation we have today, which will soon become irreversible if we do not make real and substantial changes. We must also take into account that the population is growing, and the problem is getting worse!
These food products with plant-based proteins seem to only attract people who are sensitive to animals or the environment.
This is what we want to change: to develop plant-based products that appeal to current consumers of animal meat and fish, so that they can have the same organoleptic experience, but know that they are not consuming parasites, antibiotics, microplastics, etc., and also that nutritionally they will be equally covered as with animal products. That is why we need to do a lot of research and little by little we will be equal to the animal products that we are so used to and that we like so much.
Is it about raising awareness among citizens?
Citizens need to be aware that alternatives need to be found. Therefore, a lot of education and visibility about the problem is needed. Most people are unaware of the real situation on an environmental scale; they believe that it is being exaggerated: so we show the data, because they are so obvious and so indisputable that there is no possible subjectivity. They are facts, and we need to know them. If alternatives and solutions are not discovered, the future of the planet does not look very good.
“With Current Foods I want to help animals, the oceans and the planet, to do everything in my power to achieve this goal.”
You have an impressive career path…
Thank you! I guess life takes you there and in my case there is a whole mission behind it that is very much linked to helping animals, which I have had for as long as I can remember. Everything I have done has been following this personal path. When I chose the studies I wanted to do, I wasn't so clear yet, but after having my daughter Júlia and a personal crisis, I realized that I wanted to associate my professional life with something that had to do with who I am: I had to do something for animals.
I deduce, therefore, that behind the DI projects there are principles and values.
Yes, and that's it! Both my partner and I started the company with a very clear mission. He had just started animal activism with PETA in Austin (Texas), and was helping to set up the Proveg Incubator for start-ups in Berlin. In my personal case, my path has been different: I trained in food technology and have been working in the food industry for seventeen years. This has helped me gain knowledge that I can now use for this mission we have. In my case, the interest goes far beyond starting a business or doing projects: with Current Foods I want to help animals, the oceans and the planet, doing everything in my power to achieve this goal.
You have left a crucial mark on research and innovation in business projects such as Heura and Altervego de La Selva. How do you remember it?
Well, I remember it with great affection and gratitude, in both projects. At that time, I was focused on doing projects that had to do with finding alternatives to animal protein, in which I always wanted to stay freelance. My phrase was: "the next company I work for will be my own". I think I did this well, staying freelance and being able to be with different battles within the same mission: discovering alternatives to animal protein. While I was doing research with pig blood proteins at the UdG I wondered if I was really doing anything for animals. Ever since I was a very little girl I wanted to help animals in some way.
In the case of Heura, pioneers in the plant-based alternative to chicken meat, I can say that I am very grateful to Marc Coloma because he opened a door for me at that moment, and I felt very involved in the project. I think I contributed a lot in that first phase of creation. On the other hand, I remember the Altervego project in La Selva with much more affection, because despite being a meat company that is over a hundred years old, its owner, Xavier Albertí, is a person with a very open mentality. I want to highlight the fact that La Selva is a meat company, but it has the will and desire to do these projects and find alternatives to meat, since they are aware of the problem that exists with animal protein. Within the company team I discovered a lot of skepticism at the beginning of the project, but now they are very excited about the Altervego project. Just seeing this and thinking that I was able to make a difference in these people, who have been working in the meat industry for so many years, makes me think that this change can be made all over the world. These are small waves that eventually become a tsunami, which is what should happen, that would change the food industry completely. That is the hope and the excitement.
Going from salaried to entrepreneur is a big step. What made you start a business?
My first experience in the start-up world was with Natural Machines , where I worked for five years. There I learned to work in the frugal style: acting with austerity, but doing very promising work that everyone is amazed by. The same thing happened to the investors: when they saw that we were building a 3D food printer from scratch, they were amazed. It was spectacular to work with Natural Machines. Even so, when you are inside you know the resources that are there, which are minimal. A lot of things have to be paid for, and how do you do that? You have to get investors with resources to survive for a while until you have your own income. You can also try to get public funding, but that's another story!
I had a great time at Natural Machines, but I suffered a lot financially: I promised myself that the next start-up I worked at would be mine. At a time when many job opportunities came my way, I decided to start my own project. One of these work experiences opened my eyes: I didn't want job stability at any price, what I wanted was to work with something that was in line with my values, that made sense to me, and was consistent with the mission I had decided on. At that moment, Jacek Prus, who is now my partner, appeared; it was all said and done. I saw clearly that it was time to start: this will be my first start-up , I told myself, now I do. I wasn't doing it alone, because I was holding Jacek's hand, because he had many contacts and came from animal activism.
"The university really likes this type of project, because in some way it can collaborate with the company on innovative projects, with very attractive topics like what we do"
We are leaders in the sector.
Leaders? Yes, because there is still practically no one who does what we do. This is one of the reasons why we could consider ourselves leaders. I think what makes us special is the fact that my partner and I are literally separated by an ocean. What separates us also unites us: we have one leg in San Francisco and the other in Barcelona, and this allows us to have two very different visions in many aspects. There is also the fact that Jacek is a person from the business world and I am more of an R&D person: it complements us and makes us special. In many start-ups this does not happen; we always end up associating with profiles similar to us, and that is a mistake. We are a very multidisciplinary team of more than twenty people, which is growing practically every week! We are also a multinational team with people from Sri Lanka, Iran, Thailand or the United States.
Sometimes we wonder if we are more of a technology-focused company or just another company in the global food industry. I think we are a hybrid: we use biotechnology, and we have long-term projects with patents that we are developing. But at the same time, we were clear that we wanted to get to market as quickly as possible, and we created a product development line to have prototypes quickly. Despite doing a lot of R&D, we also have products on the market that we have developed ourselves. We have made them practically in our home kitchen, and from there to the laboratory; then we bought a factory! Here too we make a difference: we didn't have the product, we had to make it from scratch, but now it is exclusively our product.
CurrentFoods, named among the best inventions of 2021 by TIME magazine; how did you receive the news?
We were really amazed. At Expo West in Los Angeles they also gave us an award for one of the twelve best products at the fair. Imagine it, as if it were the Innoval exhibition at Alimentaria, but much bigger and more powerful; it was a great success in which everyone was fascinated with queues at our stand. We have been in a lot of news, and we have also had recognitions or awards such as the Guinness World Record .
At first it's very exciting, but then you hit the ground running. We have to be aware of the amount of work we have to do. We have a mission to reduce fish consumption, specifically bluefin tuna, by fifty percent, and that's very ambitious. To be able to do that, we have to develop products that are truly spectacular: to get a Japanese sushi chef to eat our tuna sashimi and think he's eating animal tuna. The day we achieve that, we'll have it! Everything can be done better, and we still have a lot to do. Nature is perfect, the skeletal muscle of fish is perfect, and we won't achieve that degree of perfection, but we have to get as close as possible to it, and that takes a lot of work.
How did you identify the opportunity to enter this field?
We detected the urgency due to the state of bluefin tuna: critically endangered. And also because we saw that there was no one doing this at the time, or making raw fish for sushi , etc. At that time we saw that it was a good opportunity; the market was very saturated with processed meat analogues, such as hamburgers, sausages, etc. And, on the other hand, there was nothing at that time that imitated the whole cut and raw product, raw or vegetable foods. Our innovation has been the result of research into the whole cut product, what we would call a whole raw cut.
Therefore, I confirm that it is the result of our research and market studies. To enter this world, we decided to go to the United States, and take advantage of the opportunity to enter Y Combinator , the most important start-up accelerator in the world. The West Coast market of the United States was more mature in general, especially in the field of plant-based foods, and we were located in Silicon Valley, which was another very good opportunity.
How do you make a vegetable taste like raw bluefin tuna?
Doing a lot of research! Especially doing a lot of product development work with a lot of iterations, one attempt after another. The taste of raw tuna is really hard to achieve because it's so subtle, soft and delicate; that's why it costs so much. It's easier with salmon or canned tuna. There are many flavors available from the biggest flavor companies around the world, and we've been given many suggestions, but we haven't found one that we like 100 percent. In fact, it's an issue that hasn't been resolved yet.
Do you disseminate your research in order to raise public awareness?
We don't do much research dissemination because we are developing products; therefore, the research we do we want to keep to ourselves to protect this knowledge and intellectual property. We seek awareness through other means such as educating through marketing. We always support those who do similar things to us, because in the end we are all in the same boat, never could it be better! What we want is to reduce overfishing as much as possible, or to improve fishing practices.
I want to comment that there are many projects in the line of protecting the oceans: taking advantage of the overpopulation of algae, managing microplastics in the sea or managing the barbarity of nets on the seabed. And then there is the delicate issue of fishermen, who have enough problems with fishing restrictions. But it would be interesting to look for projects that would allow them to collaborate to remove fishing nets from the seabed, and contribute in some way to repairing the damage that has been done during all these years of overfishing. In fact, this idea was given to me by my eleven-year-old daughter! We would do well to listen to girls of this age; perhaps they have better ideas than us.
Tell us what your day-to-day life is like tutoring the research project.
We now have a very attractive project with the doctoral student Dafne Jumilla, who currently lives in San Francisco; I am her business tutor and Dolors Paredes from the UdG is the thesis director. We both monitor her weekly online, but the one who monitors her daily live in San Francisco is Tiffany Suekama. I move between Spain and the United States, and I do the complementary monitoring of Tiffany, Vice President of Research and Development at Current Foods in San Francisco. I always put a spoon in it, because it is a very nice project on plant-based proteins for food applications that can replace those of animal origin.
You have participated in three Industrial Doctorate projects; what do you think of this Program?
My experience has been very good, because it is a program that allows you to collaborate closely with the university. In the end, you see that the university really likes this type of project, because in some way it can collaborate with the company on innovative projects, with very attractive topics like what we do.
For Catalan universities it is a very good opportunity. In the United States they do not have this type of program: when you work with the university, everything related to intellectual property is much more difficult, or the fact that universities demand a lot of money. On the other hand, here in Catalonia the universities are already satisfied with being able to do research projects with companies. My experience at both the UAB and the UdG has been very good. The truth is that it is a pleasure to collaborate with people like that; they make it very easy for you.
Your idea is to expand internationally. What cultural differences do you find between Europe and America?
The differences between the two countries are very big, as I told you before with the issue of universities. If, for example, you are a start-up in the United States, it is much easier to get funding, especially if you are in Silicon Valley. It is much easier to raise capital to undertake projects. On the other hand, here in Europe it is horrible! Especially here in Catalonia it is hell to get funding. It is true that the fact that our project is attractive and the good work of the co-founder Jacek Prus have made it easy for us; we have done things well! But as I told you before, there is the issue of public funding, which I see as easier here in Europe than in the United States, or the collaboration tools with universities such as the Industrial Doctorate Plan.
What role do research and innovation play in the future?
It's not about what role research and innovation play in the future, it's about whether research and innovation are the future, or should be the future. If I'm honest, sometimes I'm hopeful and other times I see everything very badly. It seems like everyone is looking the other way, continuing to eat meat and fish, or is not aware of the serious problem with plastics in the oceans. It really makes me suffer a lot. Maybe the only solution is to better educate the little people we have today, so that we can have more conscious adults tomorrow, and who do things better.
I also think it is very important that governments help and give more relevance to research work. If we continue doing the same thing we have been doing so far, I think our days are numbered and not only for us but for the entire planet. Maybe I am being very catastrophic, but in short we all need to invest much more in research and innovation.
The day will come when we will mass-farm meat...
I think so. In the future, everything will be about growing meat, fish and the nutrients we need in a lab. This is the future, however, there is still a lot of work to be done, especially to scale up and mass produce. Today, this is not yet resolved; that is why a lot of people are needed investing in these projects, and in fact it is already happening on a global scale. You can see a lot of huge investments in companies that are focused on projects for the cellular production of food. I think that in the future there will probably be an impasse between plant-based hybrids and cultured cells. It will probably end up like this: if you make a cell-based product, you need a structure, which for example can be made of plant fibers or algae. This will be what will end up replacing animal protein. I believe, hope and wish.
