Interview: the skeptic's view on Precision fermentation & biomanufacturing — what would change their mind

Despite precision fermentation companies raising over $3.5 billion between 2020 and 2024, the technology faces mounting skepticism from industry veterans who question whether unit economics can ever compete with conventional agriculture at scale. With the global precision fermentation market projected to reach $36.3 billion by 2030 according to McKinsey, understanding these critiques—and what evidence might overcome them—has become essential for investors, policymakers, and food system innovators navigating this rapidly evolving sector.

This synthesized perspective draws from conversations with fermentation scientists, bioprocess engineers, food industry executives, and sustainability analysts who have spent decades working across both traditional and novel protein production systems. Their skepticism is not rooted in anti-innovation sentiment but rather in hard-won experience with the gap between laboratory promise and commercial reality.

Why It Matters

The stakes surrounding precision fermentation extend far beyond venture capital returns. Global food systems account for approximately 26% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, with animal agriculture contributing roughly 14.5% according to FAO estimates. Precision fermentation theoretically offers a pathway to produce animal-identical proteins—whey, casein, collagen, ovalbumin—without the land use, water consumption, and methane emissions associated with livestock production.

Between 2024 and 2025, investment patterns revealed both continued enthusiasm and growing caution. The Good Food Institute reported that precision fermentation companies attracted $487 million in disclosed funding during 2024, a 28% decline from 2023's peak. This cooling reflects not technological failure but rather investor recognition that the path to profitability requires longer timelines than initial projections suggested. Notable scale-up challenges have emerged across the sector: production costs remain 5-10x higher than conventional dairy equivalents, feedstock expenses consume 40-60% of operating budgets, and capacity utilization at purpose-built facilities has averaged below 50%.

Simultaneously, regulatory frameworks are maturing. Singapore's novel food approval pathway has processed 17 precision fermentation products since 2020, while the FDA's GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) notification system has greenlighted multiple precision fermentation proteins including Perfect Day's whey and Impossible Foods' soy leghemoglobin. The European Food Safety Authority approved its first precision-fermented protein in 2023, signaling continental market access is forthcoming.

Consumer acceptance data presents mixed signals. A 2024 International Food Information Council survey found that 53% of American consumers expressed willingness to try precision-fermented products, but only 19% would pay a premium exceeding 10% over conventional alternatives. This price sensitivity creates a fundamental challenge: precision fermentation must achieve cost parity before it can capture mainstream market share, yet it needs market share to achieve the economies of scale necessary for cost parity.

Key Concepts

Understanding the skeptic's perspective requires clarity on the technical and economic fundamentals distinguishing precision fermentation from adjacent technologies.

Precision Fermentation vs. Traditional Fermentation: Traditional fermentation uses microorganisms to transform substrates (beer, yogurt, tempeh), with the microbial biomass or its metabolic byproducts becoming the final product. Precision fermentation engineers microorganisms—typically yeast, bacteria, or fungi—to produce specific target molecules that the organism would not naturally synthesize. The microorganism serves as a biological factory; the valuable output is a precise protein, lipid, or compound identical to what might otherwise come from animals or plants.

Titers, Yields, and Productivity: Commercial viability hinges on three interconnected metrics. Titer refers to the concentration of target protein in the fermentation broth, typically measured in grams per liter. Yields describe how efficiently feedstock converts into product. Productivity captures how quickly the system generates output, measured in grams per liter per hour. Industry targets for cost-competitive whey protein production require titers exceeding 50 g/L, yields above 40%, and productivities approaching 2 g/L/hr—thresholds that few commercial operations have consistently achieved.

Scale-Up Economics: Laboratory fermenters typically operate at 1-10 liter volumes. Pilot facilities run 1,000-10,000 liter bioreactors. Commercial production requires 100,000+ liter vessels. Each scale transition introduces non-linear challenges: oxygen transfer becomes rate-limiting, heat dissipation requires enhanced cooling systems, contamination risks multiply, and strain performance often deteriorates. Capital expenditure for a greenfield precision fermentation facility capable of producing 10,000 metric tons annually exceeds $250 million.

Regulatory Pathways: Precision-fermented products face distinct regulatory treatment across jurisdictions. The FDA distinguishes between proteins produced through genetic engineering (requiring pre-market review) and those produced via conventional fermentation (eligible for GRAS self-affirmation). European Union Novel Food regulations mandate full safety dossiers and EFSA assessment. These divergent frameworks create market fragmentation and extend commercialization timelines.

Precision Fermentation KPI Benchmarks

Metric	Current Industry Average	Target for Cost Parity	Best-in-Class Achieved
Protein Titer (g/L)	15-25	>50	38
Feedstock Yield (%)	25-35	>40	42
Productivity (g/L/hr)	0.3-0.8	>2.0	1.4
Downstream Recovery (%)	70-85	>90	88
CAPEX per MT Capacity ($)	25,000-35,000	<15,000	22,000
OPEX per kg Protein ($)	8-15	<5	6.50
Carbon Intensity (kg CO2e/kg)	3-8	<2	2.8

What's Working and What Isn't

What's Working

Whey Protein Production at Demonstrated Scale: Perfect Day's partnership with ADM has established production capacity exceeding 5,000 metric tons annually, with their animal-free whey protein incorporated into products from Brave Robot ice cream to California Performance Company sports nutrition. The company achieved FDA GRAS status in 2020 and has since secured regulatory clearance in Singapore, Australia, and Israel. This demonstrates that precision fermentation can navigate regulatory complexity and achieve meaningful commercial volumes.

Historical Precedent from Insulin Production: Skeptics often overlook that precision fermentation has operated at industrial scale for four decades. Genentech and Eli Lilly commercialized recombinant human insulin produced in E. coli in 1982, and the technology now supplies virtually all global insulin demand—over 8,000 metric tons annually. The transition from animal-derived to precision-fermented insulin proves that biological manufacturing can achieve quality, consistency, and cost-competitiveness sufficient to displace incumbent production methods entirely.

Enzyme Production Economics: Industrial enzyme manufacturers including Novozymes and DSM-Firmenich produce millions of metric tons of precision-fermented enzymes annually for applications spanning food processing, detergents, and biofuels. These operations achieve production costs below $2/kg for bulk enzymes, demonstrating that precision fermentation economics can work when target molecules are functionally valuable even at modest concentrations and purity requirements are less stringent than food-grade proteins.

What Isn't Working

Cost Parity Remains Elusive: Despite a decade of investment and technological advancement, precision-fermented whey protein costs approximately $25-40/kg at commercial scale, compared to $6-10/kg for conventional dairy whey protein concentrate. This 3-5x premium limits market penetration to premium segments and prevents displacement of conventional dairy in mainstream applications. Feedstock costs—primarily glucose derived from corn or sugarcane—represent the largest cost driver and remain tied to agricultural commodity markets.

Capital Intensity Creates Financing Challenges: Building commercial-scale precision fermentation infrastructure requires capital commitments exceeding $500 million for integrated facilities including upstream fermentation, downstream processing, and ingredient finishing. With extended construction timelines (3-5 years), uncertain demand trajectories, and evolving technology, project financing structures struggle to price risk appropriately. Several planned facilities have been delayed or downsized due to capital constraints.

Strain Optimization Plateaus: Initial improvements in strain productivity followed steep learning curves, with titers doubling every 2-3 years during early development phases. Industry sources indicate these improvement rates have slowed substantially, with incremental gains requiring exponentially greater R&D investment. Genetic engineering of production strains approaches theoretical metabolic limits, and alternative hosts (filamentous fungi, novel yeast species) introduce new scale-up uncertainties.

Key Players

Established Leaders

Perfect Day (Berkeley, California): The category pioneer has raised over $750 million and achieved the broadest commercial footprint for precision-fermented dairy proteins. Their B2B ingredient model avoids consumer brand-building costs while enabling rapid market penetration through co-manufacturing partnerships.

DSM-Firmenich (Kaiseraugst, Switzerland): The fermentation conglomerate brings six decades of industrial enzyme and specialty ingredient experience to precision fermentation. Their 2023 acquisition of The Protein Brewery positions them as a vertically integrated player across fermentation, processing, and application development.

Ginkgo Bioworks (Boston, Massachusetts): Operating the largest organism engineering platform globally, Ginkgo provides strain development and process optimization services to precision fermentation startups. Their foundry model spreads R&D costs across multiple customers while accumulating proprietary biological IP.

Emerging Startups

Formo (Berlin, Germany): Focused on precision-fermented casein for cheese applications, Formo has piloted products with European retailers and secured €61 million in Series A funding. Their cheese-first strategy targets a higher-value application where functional properties command premium pricing.

New Culture (San Francisco, California): Developing mozzarella cheese using precision-fermented casein, New Culture has partnered with foodservice operators to validate product performance in pizza and prepared food applications where melt and stretch characteristics are paramount.

Onego Bio (Helsinki, Finland): Specializing in precision-fermented ovalbumin (egg white protein), Onego addresses the $200+ billion global egg market with a functionally equivalent alternative produced via Trichoderma fungal fermentation.

Key Investors and Funders

Temasek Holdings: The Singapore sovereign wealth fund has deployed over $500 million across precision fermentation and cellular agriculture companies, reflecting national food security priorities for the import-dependent city-state.

Breakthrough Energy Ventures: Bill Gates' climate-focused fund has invested in multiple precision fermentation platforms, viewing the technology as essential for decarbonizing protein production.

USDA and DOE: Federal programs including the BioPreferred procurement initiative and DOE's Industrial Decarbonization programs have allocated grants and loan guarantees supporting precision fermentation infrastructure development.

Examples

1. Perfect Day's Brave Robot Launch and Market Learning: When Perfect Day's consumer brand Brave Robot launched in 2020, it represented the first precision-fermented dairy product available in mainstream US retail. Initial pricing at $5.99 for 14oz positioned the product at 40% premiums to conventional ice cream. Sales data revealed that early adopters were predominantly plant-based consumers seeking improved taste rather than conventional dairy consumers motivated by sustainability. By 2024, the company pivoted toward B2B ingredient sales, recognizing that consumer education costs exceeded realistic marketing budgets.

2. Remilk's Israeli Factory Delays: Israeli precision fermentation company Remilk announced in 2022 a partnership to build the world's largest precision fermentation facility in Denmark, projecting 2024 operations. Technical challenges in scaling fermentation processes and downstream protein recovery delayed commercial production until late 2025, illustrating the persistent gap between announcement timelines and operational reality. The delays consumed additional capital while competitors advanced, demonstrating the execution risk inherent in first-of-kind industrial facilities.

3. Motif FoodWorks Strategic Repositioning: Motif FoodWorks raised $345 million to develop precision-fermented ingredients for plant-based meat improvement, including myoglobin for color and bovine serum albumin for texture. By 2024, the company had reduced headcount by 60% and pivoted toward licensing existing technology rather than pursuing further R&D. This repositioning reflects the challenge of commercializing precision fermentation ingredients when the target market (plant-based meat) itself faces demand headwinds.

Action Checklist

• Conduct total cost of ownership analysis comparing precision-fermented proteins against conventional alternatives across 5-year and 10-year horizons, incorporating projected feedstock cost trajectories and facility depreciation
• Map regulatory pathways for each target market jurisdiction, identifying documentation requirements and approval timeline estimates for your specific protein or ingredient category
• Evaluate contract manufacturing partnerships versus greenfield facility development, recognizing that toll manufacturing preserves capital flexibility while sacrificing margin and capacity assurance
• Develop feedstock diversification strategies exploring side-stream utilization (brewery waste, agricultural residues) to reduce glucose dependency and improve sustainability metrics
• Establish offtake agreements with anchor customers before committing to capacity expansion, de-risking volume projections with binding purchase commitments
• Benchmark strain performance quarterly against published industry titers and yields to identify competitive positioning and prioritize R&D investments

FAQ

Q: Can precision fermentation ever achieve true cost parity with conventional dairy proteins? A: Skeptics argue that cost parity requires simultaneous breakthroughs in strain productivity, feedstock costs, and capital efficiency that may not materialize within the 2030 timeframes projected by industry proponents. Optimists point to historical precedents (insulin, industrial enzymes) where decades of incremental improvement eventually achieved cost-competitiveness. The realistic assessment suggests that certain applications (specialty proteins, medical-grade ingredients) will achieve cost parity first, while commodity displacement may require 15-20 year horizons and policy interventions such as carbon pricing that internalize environmental externalities.

Q: What evidence would change a skeptic's mind about precision fermentation viability? A: Three data points would significantly shift skeptical perspectives: (1) audited production data demonstrating titers consistently above 50 g/L at commercial scale (100,000+ liter bioreactors); (2) feedstock utilization of non-food substrates (lignocellulosic biomass, CO2) at production economics within 30% of glucose-based systems; (3) capacity utilization above 80% at multiple commercial facilities for consecutive fiscal years. None of these thresholds have been publicly demonstrated as of 2026.

Q: How do Scope 3 emissions calculations affect precision fermentation's sustainability claims? A: Comprehensive life-cycle assessments must include emissions from feedstock agriculture, processing energy, nitrogen sources, and downstream logistics. Studies by CE Delft and others indicate that precision-fermented proteins typically achieve 40-65% lower carbon intensity than conventional dairy when renewable electricity powers fermentation. However, if feedstock production involves high-emission practices (deforestation-linked soy, coal-powered glucose refining), climate benefits diminish substantially. Skeptics emphasize that sustainability advantages depend heavily on supply chain choices that companies control imperfectly.

Q: What regulatory risks could slow precision fermentation adoption? A: Labeling requirements represent the most immediate regulatory risk. Several US states have proposed legislation restricting "dairy" terminology for precision-fermented proteins, mirroring battles over plant-based milk labeling. European novel food approvals require 18-24 month assessment periods, limiting speed-to-market. Additionally, intellectual property disputes over CRISPR-based strain engineering could create licensing complexities affecting production costs.

Q: How should emerging market policymakers evaluate precision fermentation investments? A: Emerging markets face distinct considerations including limited domestic biotech expertise, infrastructure requirements for sterile manufacturing, and potential competition with existing agricultural employment. Policy evaluation frameworks should assess technology transfer requirements, local feedstock availability, and alignment with national food security objectives. Singapore's proactive regulatory approach offers one model, though smaller economies may lack the institutional capacity to develop bespoke novel food pathways.

Sources

• Good Food Institute. (2025). State of the Industry Report: Fermentation. Washington, DC.
• McKinsey & Company. (2024). The Future of Protein: Precision Fermentation Economics and Scale-Up Challenges.
• FAO. (2023). Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Food Systems: Global, Regional, and Country Trends 2000-2020.
• CE Delft. (2024). Life Cycle Assessment of Precision Fermentation Proteins: Comparative Analysis with Conventional Dairy.
• International Food Information Council. (2024). Food and Health Survey: Consumer Perceptions of Novel Proteins.
• FDA. (2024). GRAS Notices for Precision Fermentation-Derived Proteins. Silver Spring, MD.
• European Food Safety Authority. (2023). Scientific Opinion on the Safety of Precision Fermentation Proteins as Novel Foods.
• Temasek Holdings. (2024). Alternative Proteins Investment Outlook: Southeast Asian Perspectives.