Morning Folks,

Yesterday was Earth Day. Did you celebrate? Did your social feed light up? Did you even notice? Likely not. Earth Day used to feel like a moment. Not just a date on the calendar, but a cultural checkpoint — a day when companies, governments, institutions and consumers were at least forced to say something about the planet.

Of the 8 daily newsletters aggregating the day’s headlines that arrive in my inbox, only 2 mentioned it. A few years ago, we would have been planning weeks in advance for content, campaigns and hashtags…No more. The power of Earth Day, which has been going since 1970 and was founded by a US Senator, has faded.

These days, Earth Day feels more like a branding exercise than a rallying point, and in a world where climate fatigue is real and political urgency has shifted elsewhere, it no longer carries the same weight. That doesn’t mean the issues are any less urgent. It just means the old symbolism is no longer doing the work it once did.

For those of us working in food system change, that’s worth sitting with. Food has always sat at the intersection of climate, health, biodiversity, land use and justice…but it has also often been carried by the language of environmentalism, and Earth Day was one of the easiest ways to frame that story. The problem is that people are no longer moved by broad, abstract appeals to “save the planet” as they once were. The message is not landing with the same force. The sector has to be honest about that. If Earth Day no longer has the cultural power to shift the conversation, then food system change needs to be talked about in more immediate, more human terms: health, resilience, affordability, security, and quality of life.

Maybe that’s not a bad thing. In some ways, the fading of Earth Day’s influence forces a healthier reset. It asks us to stop relying on symbolic moments and start building around the things that actually move people: what they feed their children, what they can afford, what makes them feel better, what protects them from volatility, and what gives them more control over their lives. Food system change is too important to depend on one annual moment of moral attention. The work now is to make it feel relevant every day, not just on Earth Day.

Or as Misha Narberhaus argues in this excellent essay: “If the central failure of the [climate] movement is that it has lost touch with ordinary people, the first step is disarmingly simple: listen to them. This means not trying to educate them, nudge their behaviour or reframe the same agenda in more palatable language, but genuinely understanding what they value, what they fear and why they have turned away.”

To close my note, and since it is Earth Day week after all, I am sharing a few stats from a just-released Gallup survey that I found interesting:

• Globally, 57% of adults across 140 countries said in 2025 that they were satisfied with efforts to preserve the environment in their country, up from 49% in 2022.

• In the U.S., only 42% said they were satisfied with efforts to preserve the environment last year, well below the 56% OECD median.

• 44% of Americans said they worry a great deal about global warming or climate change, one of Gallup’s highest readings since 1989.

• 61% of Americans say the effects of global warming have already begun, and 64% attribute rising temperatures to pollution from human activities.

My takeaways:

• More and more people know climate is a problem (even amongst US Republican voters). That’s not the issue to solve for, which is what a lot of climate work is working on. This needs to change.

• People think we (and their governments) are doing more to fight climate than we are. Given that environmental indicators are worsening across the board, this is a narrative/bias we need to push back against.

• It may be time for the climate movement to come up with a new theory of change.

-Sonalie

 💡 Only On Green Queen

🌱 Industry Insights: This CEO on Straddling the Line Between Plant-Based Meat & Whole-Food Proteins
Mark Cuddigan, CEO of UK plant-based brand This, says the company is “very close” to achieving annual profitability and explains why it’s embracing both meat alternatives and whole-food formats.

 💰Funding News

🇨🇭 Swiss biomanufacturing startup Planetary raised $28 million to expand its global fermentation infrastructure and licensing platform, and diversify its alternative protein product portfolio.
💡Planetary operates an IP-rich, full-scale biomass and precision fermentation platform encompassing bioprocess design, scale-up, and industrial manufacturing.

💵 Switzerland’s Cosaic secured $6 million in a seed extension round to scale up its yeast-derived emulsifier and advance its regulatory efforts in the US and Europe.
Cosaic notes that it can deliver eight functional benefits in a single ingredient, addressing formulation challenges that otherwise require a multitude of components and additives, and meeting needs of consumers looking for clean labels.

🧀 Canada’s AuX Labs raised $4 million to scale production of its precision-fermented dairy protein and bring animal-free cheese to pizzerias and cafes.
AuX Labs is leveraging existing, globally available brewing capacity in a capital-efficient approach, which allows it to close the price gap with conventional casein.

🐶 US-based Bond Pet Foods, which makes recombinant animal proteins via precision fermentation for dogs and cats, secured investment from German flavour and chemicals giant Symrise. 
💡The firms are partnering to create new precision-fermented products to better meet the nutritional requirements of pets.

 ✅ Must-Read Headlines

🥛 UK wellness-focused investor Tooru has agreed to purchase Mylky, a Belgian company selling at-home plant-based milk machines, for £12 million ($16.2 million).
💡Mylky has a large active customer list of over 70,000 Europeans across eight countries, led by Germany, France and Switzerland.

🇰🇷 South Korea’s science ministry is backing Kookmin University’s project to engineer food-grade yeast for precision fermentation in the 2026 Basic Research Program.
💡The project focuses on developing a genetic toolkit for a food-grade yeast strain, which can then be applied to precision fermentation technology to produce future foods.

🇸🇬 The Singapore Food Agency has published its complete list of 14 approved novel foods, including cultivated meat and fermentation-derived proteins.
💡 The Southeast Asian city-state has firmly established itself as a future food leader, and one industry leader predicts that up to a dozen other companies are already awaiting approval for cultivated meat.

⚡️ Scientific Breakthroughs

🍫 Mondelēz International and Celleste Bio unveiled the world’s first cell-based chocolate bars, made with the startup’s cultivated cocoa butter.
💡The innovation is proof that the technology works at scale and meets the consumption standards of an industry giant, and could potentially open up an almost $8 billion market.

🇨🇦 Canadian biotech Pinnacle Food Group has developed a methanol-free precision fermentation process to manufacture recombinant human lactoferrin cost-effectively at its Hong Kong lab.
💡Purified lactoferrin is hard to obtain, so its supply is limited and costs are astronomical; this breakthrough marks a significant opportunity for Pinnacle Food Group.

🧫 Japanese conglomerate Ajinomoto has developed a plant-derived transferrin protein alternative that can significantly lower culture media costs for cultivated meat production.
💡The technology has already undergone prototype testing and Ajinomoto aims to introduce it to the cultivated meat market within the next several years.

🌱 Finnish startup Happy Plant Protein is set to deploy its dry extrusion technology in a first-of-its-kind facility in Latvia to process locally grown crops into high-value proteins.
💡The project represents a greenfield investment of around $7 million, much lower than traditional plant protein isolate facilities, which can require up to $175 million in capital.

📖 Latest Research

📈 Alternative protein think tank the Good Food Institute released its State of the Industry reports for 2025, covering plant-based, fermentation-derived and cultivated proteins. Here’s the good news.

🇺🇸 In interviews with the Bezos Center for Sustainable Protein, industry stakeholders lay out the challenges faced by the US market for alternative proteins and the best ways to address them.

🏆 A new peer-reviewed study published in the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment reveals that cultivated meat is significantly more environmentally friendly than conventional animal proteins like beef or pork.

🚀 Everything Else In Future Food

😋 Paris-based La Vie has expanded beyond meat alternatives with a line of tofu products, leaning into the demand for less processed, cleaner-label protein options in Europe.

🌭 British plant-based food brand Gosh unveiled a range of Super Plants Sausages, which are made from whole foods, rich in fibre, and high in ‘plant points’.

🥤 Beyond Meat has introduced its Beyond Immerse line of sparkling protein beverages to the retail market through a partnership with one of the largest non-alcoholic beverage distributors in the US, Big Geyser.

🍔 Rewe Group, which operates more stores than any other supermarket in Germany, launched a blended burger with 70% beef and 30% plant-based ingredients.

👩🏻‍⚖ US supermarket chain Walmart has been hit with a $5 million class-action lawsuit for labelling its Bettergoods dairy-free milks as ‘plant-based’ despite allegedly containing inorganic or animal-derived additives.

🌱🍔  Future Food Quick Bites 

In our weekly column, Future Food Quick Bites, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Project Eaden’s vegan ham sandwich, Julienne Bruno’s return, and the UK government’s U-turn on novel foods.

📆 Scene & Heard

🇩🇰 Join Sonalie at the Bridge2Food Europe 2026

📣 Green Queen’s founder and editor-in-chief Sonalie Figueiras will be speaking at Bridge2Food Europe 2026, happening 9-11 June 2026 in Copenhagen, where she will give a keynote titled “The Global Politicization of Food and the Influence on Consumer Choices”. Catch her live to unpack how geopolitics and consumer behavior are increasingly intertwined in the future of food. The early bird rate expires tomorrow, so register to attend here.

🚀 Join the SynBioBeta community on 4th-7th May for three days of high-signal talks, curated 1:1 meetings, real partnering, and hands-on exposure at the frontier of biology and technology. Get your pass here.

🌏 Vitafoods Asia is the leading annual trade show in the Asia-Pacific region for the nutraceutical, functional food, and dietary supplement industries. It will bring together over 16,000+ professionals on 2nd-4th September; secure your spot here.

Become An AI Expert In Just 5 Minutes

If you’re a decision maker at your company, you need to be on the bleeding edge of, well, everything. But before you go signing up for seminars, conferences, lunch ‘n learns, and all that jazz, just know there’s a far better (and simpler) way: Subscribing to The Deep View.

This daily newsletter condenses everything you need to know about the latest and greatest AI developments into a 5-minute read. Squeeze it into your morning coffee break and before you know it, you’ll be an expert too.

Subscribe right here. It’s totally free, wildly informative, and trusted by 600,000+ readers at Google, Meta, Microsoft, and beyond.