The alternative proteins (AP) industry offers further evidence of the fertile convergence between software-enabled ICTs and DNA-enabled biotechnologies that underlies structural change in modern agro-food systems. The myriad inter-related disciplines engendered by this convergence, such as genome sequencing, bioinformatics, synthetic biology, and cellular engineering, are at the heart of this nascent industry, aka ‘molecular farming’. Advocates claim that this emerging sector will contribute significantly to environmental and human health and animal welfare by substituting alternative proteins for conventional farmed sources, structurally undermining the livestock-feed grains complex, the fulcrum of today's industrial food system, and a major source of GHG emissions.

Technological miniaturisation and reductionism again are central mechanisms underpinning these transformative claims since the aim is to replicate meat, fish, milk, and eggs by identifying their constituent properties at the molecular and cellular level. These mechanisms are pinpointed in the next section, which reviews the innovative technologies developed by the pioneering start-up firms in the two main branches of the AP industry: plant-based meat analogues and cellular agriculture, comprising tissue culture engineering and fermentation-based protein production systems. We then focus on the emerging industrial structure of the AP space as Big Food actors are drawn to this rapidly growing sector and launch their self-styled future as ‘protein corporations’. The penultimate section explores the contested ontological politics of the discursive strategies and ‘promissory narratives’ deployed by AP start-ups and Silicon Valley venture capitalists, and particularly the claim that the new industry is the forerunner of the paradigm shift needed to meet the multiple challenges of global climate change. A final section reflects briefly on the ‘substitutionist turn’ or Substitutionism 4.0 as the protein economy diversifies away from its traditional roots.

Bio-mimicry and its technologies

Plant-based protein

The use of microbial fermentation to produce non-animal proteins, particularly with yeasts, dates back to the ancient practices of the baking, brewing, wine-making, and food industries. Jumping forward to the post-Second World War years, advances in chemical and biochemical engineering raised the efficiency of whole cell and enzyme fermentation processes and extended the range of feedstocks that could be used. However, the real breakthrough came with the application of recombinant-DNA methods in industrial microbiology in the later 1970s and 1980s (OTA, 1981, 1984).