FIRST BURGERS WITHOUT COWS, NOW EGGS WITHOUT CHICKENS

Finnish start-up Onego Bio has found a way to produce egg albumen—the white of an egg, almost pure protein—through precision fermentation, a process similar to brewing beer.
The company starts with Trichoderma reesei, a fungus discovered when it ate up soldiers’ tents and uniforms on the Solomon Islands during World War Two.
Trichoderma has a particular gift for turning carbohydrates into proteins.
The company infuses the fungus with albumen’s genetic blueprint and then feeds it carbohydrates in the form of sugars, so the trichoderma start making albumen instead of the biocompounds they would make if left on their own.
After letting the process play out in a bioreactor, company technicians scoop out the albumen, dry it, and turn it into powder.
The leftover biomass may have uses as fertilizer or feedstock for industrial processes; the company is exploring possibilities with several businesses.
The egg whites themselves have uses ranging from ingredients in processed foods, as an adhesive or binder when mixed with certain acids, and as an almost perfect protein for humans because they contain all essential amino acids the human body requires.
Onego Bio has just completed a €10-million funding round to begin work on a commercial plant.
The company will first market its products in the U.S., where regulatory barriers are smaller than in Europe’s. It will begin by offering its egg white product to the food processing industry and as a protein supplement for bodybuilders.
Later, it will offer its own branded products through retail food outlets.
TRENDPOST: Worldwide, egg production has almost doubled in the last 20 years and is expected to reach 138 million tons by the end of this decade.
Commercial livestock farms take up a lot of space, produce a lot of animal waste that isn’t often disposed of responsibly, and often rely on antibiotics and other drugs to keep animals fat and disease-free.
Especially with droughts on the rise and less land available to grow crops, making animal protein without animals will continue to be a growth industry, so to speak, for the foreseeable future.

Onego Bio’s fungus-grown egg whites.
Photo credit:  Reeta Ilo