Meati's Idle Tanks Find New Life in India, Plus an Honest Muscle Study
Ayana Bio and India's Zenfold bought Meati Foods' shuttered fermentation plant for $75,000 at auction, after the mycelium-meat maker's owner laid off all 150 staff.
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Ayana Bio and India's Zenfold bought Meati Foods' shuttered fermentation plant for $75,000 at auction, after the mycelium-meat maker's owner laid off all 150 staff [97].
02
A 12-week randomized trial found a self-selected vegan diet without deliberate protein planning shrank older adults' muscle mass, a loss resistance exercise roughly halved [20].
03
Mercy For Animals filmed a Brazilian hatchery macerating live day-old male chicks, renewing its push for in-ovo sexing technology already required by law in Germany, France, Austria, and Italy [111].
04
Oxford Brookes taste tests rated a yeast-fermented cocoa butter alternative from Sun Bear Biofuture equal to or better than the real thing in four of five products, as cocoa costs squeeze Mondelēz's margins [96].
05
Beyond Meat's mycelium-based Beyond Steak Filet landed at Erewhon stores across Southern California, its latest push into wellness-focused retail [75].
06
The European Commission's new food research strategy praises alternative proteins but earmarks no dedicated funding to fix their taste, texture, or cost [85].
Ayana Bio Buys Meati's Idle Fermentation Tanks for $75,000
Photo: vegconomist
Ayana Bio and Indian partner Zenfold Sustainable Technologies bought the fermentation equipment Meati Foods left behind at its shuttered Thornton, Colorado plant for $75,000 at auction [97]. The package covers twelve 25,000-liter tanks and their seed trains, 300,000 liters of capacity that will ship to Zenfold's sites in India rather than restart in Colorado [97]. Meati's owner, Emergy Inc., had entered an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors process in spring 2025 after a lender swept its cash reserves, permanently terminating all 150 staff [97].
“Purchasing its fermentation assets for $75,000, partnering with Zenfold and relocating them to India fundamentally rewrites our CAPEX efficiency, allowing us to accelerate pilot and production timelines for plant cell bioactives at commercial scale.”
Vegan Diet Shrinks Muscle Mass in Older Adults Without Exercise
Wikimedia Commons / Strength training
A randomized trial split 72 healthy adults over 65 into an omnivorous diet, a self-selected vegan diet, or the same vegan diet plus resistance exercise for 12 weeks, and found the vegan-only group's protein intake and muscle mass fell while the omnivorous group's did not change [20][60]. Thigh muscle volume dropped 0.61 liters and appendicular lean mass fell 1.15 kilograms on the vegan-only diet, against no significant change for omnivores [20]. Adding resistance exercise to the identical vegan diet roughly halved those losses [20].
“A self-selected vegan diet reduces protein intake, skeletal muscle mass, and MPS in older adults. The negative impact of a vegan diet on skeletal muscle mass can be mitigated by RE.”
study authors, Wageningen University and Maastricht University Medical Centre · [20]
By the numbers
-1.15 kgappendicular lean mass lost on the self-selected vegan diet over 12 weeks, versus +0.05 kg on the omnivorous diet [20]
-27.7 g/dthe vegan group's drop in protein intake in week one, while omnivore intake did not change [20]
-0.62 kgappendicular lean mass lost when resistance exercise was added to the same vegan diet, roughly half the loss without it [20]
Mercy For Animals Films Male Chicks Macerated Alive in Brazil
Photo: mercy for animals
Mercy For Animals released undercover footage from inside a Brazilian hatchery showing newly hatched male chicks forced onto a conveyor belt, crammed into boxes, and thrown alive into a macerator, along with female chicks the industry deemed unsuitable [111]. The investigation renews the group's push for in-ovo sexing, which determines a chick's sex before hatching and is already commercial in the US and Brazil, and is already banned into law in Germany, France, Austria, and Italy [111]. Norway adopted the technology without regulatory pressure in 2023 and now plans to eliminate chick culling entirely [111].
“The technology to end this practice already exists. There is no justification for allowing it to continue.”
Arash Yomtobian, president and CEO, Mercy For Animals · [111]
By the numbers
nearly 8 billionchicks killed worldwide every year, equal to more than 200 a second, per a Faunalytics report [111]
over 70%of polled US consumers say the egg industry should find an alternative to culling male chicks [111]
WatchNorway's Meat and Poultry Association plans to phase out chick culling entirely by July 2027 [111].
Yeast-Fermented Cocoa Butter Alternative Passes Blind Consumer Taste Tests
Photo: vegconomist
Consumer trials run by Oxford Brookes University's Centre for Nutrition and Health rated a yeast-fermented cocoa butter alternative from UK startup Sun Bear Biofuture equal to or ahead of real cocoa butter in four of five tested products, with tasters correctly identifying the substitute in only one case [96]. A second trial at University of the Arts London found the ingredient worked as a direct swap for cocoa butter in a hand balm formulation from a high street cosmetics brand [96]. The results land as Mondelēz reported a 23.3% fall in 2025 gross profit that CEO Dirk Van de Put attributed to "unprecedented cocoa cost headwinds" [96].
“This study set out to ask whether Sun Bear Biofutures cocoa butter alternative behaves as a direct, like-for-like swap for cocoa butter in this formulation. On the evidence gathered here it does, in manufacture and in function alike.”
4 of 5products where tasters rated the yeast-derived alternative equal to or ahead of real cocoa butter [96]
23.3%the fall in Mondelēz's 2025 gross profit, which its CEO attributed to cocoa cost pressure [96]
well over 500 million tonnesthe combined annual carbon footprint Sun Bear Biofuture attributes to palm oil and cocoa butter production [96]
WatchSun Bear Biofuture is targeting industrial-scale production by the end of 2027 and full industrial operations by 2029 [96].
Fromvegconomist the vegan business magazine
Worth Knowing
Food & Recipes
Try VegNews' vegan pumpkin spice oatmeal cream pies: gluten-free oat cookies sandwiched with a pumpkin-spice vegan buttercream [76].
Yves Veggie Cuisine returned to Canadian grocery shelves under new owner Maple Leaf Foods, more than a year after it disappeared [75].
A meta-analysis of 17 trials and nearly 97,000 people found eating 20-40 grams of cruciferous vegetables daily cut colon cancer risk by 20% [79].
Rhode Island's small vegan food scene keeps expanding, with its VegFest drawing more than 5,000 attendees over two days in February [74].
Innovation
PETA protesters disrupted H&M's London Fashion Week show over wool, continuing a campaign tied to a South African supplier investigation [87].
University of Leeds spinout MicroLub raised $10 million to scale a water-based fat replacer that cuts calories in plant-based foods by up to 75% without changing texture [98].
Nordic Foodtech VC neared an €80 million second fund after the European Investment Fund committed up to €30 million to back pre-seed food and ag startups [99].
Dutch startup Greencovery raised €1 million to upcycle cocoa industry waste into fiber and extract ingredients [95].
Germany's Cremer Group launched a standardized yeast trace-element blend meant to simplify and cut costs for fermentation startups [94].
Wins & Culture
London's Science Museum ended its 25-year sponsorship deal with BP after decades of activist and scientist pressure [122].
Activism & Animals
An Austrian study of 1,652 shoppers found negative animal-welfare labels on meat packaging cut meat selection from 62% to 56% in a simulated grocery task [107].
Research & Nutrition
A Trends in Biotechnology opinion piece argues cultivated meat's scaling problems are linked "constraint coupling," not isolated technical fixes to solve one at a time [39].
One Good Thing
Rich Gaccione was raised by a single mom on a limited income, started selling homemade seitan at Rhode Island pop-ups and farmers' markets in 2020, and now that his PVD Vegan Deli on Providence's Hope Street draws lines for grinders like the housemade-pepperoni Frank, the Italian, he still hands out free sandwiches to anyone who needs one [74]. "It goes hand-in-hand with the concept of veganism," he says. "Treating living beings in a good and positive way." [74]
Flaky pastry meets the cosy flavours of maple and pecan in these simply delicious vegan pinwheels. They're perfect with a morning coffee or an afternoon cup of tea.
30 min6 servings5 ingredients
See the ingredients
100 g pecans (crushed)
60 g light soft brown sugar
3 Tbsp maple syrup
1 sheet ready-rolled puff pastry (cut into 6 squares)
vegconomist the vegan business magazine
