The Nonlinear Library EA - Funding priorities at the Good Food Institute Europe: what additional impact will be created by marginal grants to GFI Europe? by emilygjohnson
Nov 21, 2023
17:14
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Funding priorities at the Good Food Institute Europe: what additional impact will be created by marginal grants to GFI Europe?, published by emilygjohnson on November 21, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
The Good Food Institute is a non-profit think tank helping to build a more sustainable, secure and just food system by transforming meat production. We work with scientists, businesses and policymakers to advance plant-based and cultivated meat and precision-fermented food - making these alternative proteins delicious, affordable and accessible.
By making meat from plants and cultivating it from cells, we can reduce the environmental impact of our food system and address the welfare of animals in industrial animal agriculture. Founded on effective altruism principles, GFI identifies and advances high-impact, achievable solutions in areas where too few people are working. We focus on what is needed most and provide the talent and resources necessary to have the biggest impact possible.
GFI is a global network of six organisations focused on one vision: creating a world where alternative proteins are no longer alternative. We are powered by philanthropy and we are currently fundraising to seed our collective 2024 budget, with a gap to goal of $12.7 million, as of today. Within that, GFI Europe has a funding gap of 1.5million EUR that will allow us to have substantial additional counterfactual impact in 2024.
The Good Food Institute Europe (GFI Europe) is an affiliate of the Good Food Institute and has been identified as a priority area for GFI's growth over the next couple of years. As Senior Philanthropy Manager for GFI Europe, in response to this post, I thought it would be helpful to expand upon why this is the case and to use GFI Europe as an example of how we would leverage marginal increases in funding to generate as much impact as possible in this region, and by extension, globally.
While I am shining a light on GFI Europe in this post, in every region where we operate, our global teams identify and advance good food solutions. All of our growth is carefully planned to ensure that we can have the greatest possible impact on the ecosystem as a whole.
Why expansion in Europe is an urgent priority for GFI
GFI's global priority is to unlock
$10.1billion in public funding for alternative proteins ($4.4bn for R&D; $5.7 towards commercialisation), $1.5 billion of which we believe could come from Europe. Each additional hire, most directly in our Policy and Science & Technology teams, increases the likelihood of unlocking this funding, especially if equipped with evidence and research in support of the benefits and feasibility of alternative proteins.
In other words, each marginal increase in funding for GFI Europe has the potential to leverage much greater sums in R&D funding. Unlocking R&D funding is on the critical path for plant-based and cultivated meat to reach taste and price parity and to become the default choice for consumers, so is an urgent priority.
In addition to this, political opposition in Europe presents a particular - and, arguably, existential - risk to alternative proteins. The risk to a more sustainable and just future of food is not simply that the potential funding fails to be unlocked, but that political opponents could derail attempts to achieve regulatory approval for novel alternative proteins. With applications for regulatory approval of cultivated meat
beginning to appear on the horizon and countries considering their climate and food strategies, now is a critical time to ensure that we can take advantage of opportunities and mitigate risks. Indeed, with alternative proteins firmly on the policy agenda, and decision-makers trying to make up their minds about what position to take on them, the next few years are likely to set the course...
The Good Food Institute is a non-profit think tank helping to build a more sustainable, secure and just food system by transforming meat production. We work with scientists, businesses and policymakers to advance plant-based and cultivated meat and precision-fermented food - making these alternative proteins delicious, affordable and accessible.
By making meat from plants and cultivating it from cells, we can reduce the environmental impact of our food system and address the welfare of animals in industrial animal agriculture. Founded on effective altruism principles, GFI identifies and advances high-impact, achievable solutions in areas where too few people are working. We focus on what is needed most and provide the talent and resources necessary to have the biggest impact possible.
GFI is a global network of six organisations focused on one vision: creating a world where alternative proteins are no longer alternative. We are powered by philanthropy and we are currently fundraising to seed our collective 2024 budget, with a gap to goal of $12.7 million, as of today. Within that, GFI Europe has a funding gap of 1.5million EUR that will allow us to have substantial additional counterfactual impact in 2024.
The Good Food Institute Europe (GFI Europe) is an affiliate of the Good Food Institute and has been identified as a priority area for GFI's growth over the next couple of years. As Senior Philanthropy Manager for GFI Europe, in response to this post, I thought it would be helpful to expand upon why this is the case and to use GFI Europe as an example of how we would leverage marginal increases in funding to generate as much impact as possible in this region, and by extension, globally.
While I am shining a light on GFI Europe in this post, in every region where we operate, our global teams identify and advance good food solutions. All of our growth is carefully planned to ensure that we can have the greatest possible impact on the ecosystem as a whole.
Why expansion in Europe is an urgent priority for GFI
GFI's global priority is to unlock
$10.1billion in public funding for alternative proteins ($4.4bn for R&D; $5.7 towards commercialisation), $1.5 billion of which we believe could come from Europe. Each additional hire, most directly in our Policy and Science & Technology teams, increases the likelihood of unlocking this funding, especially if equipped with evidence and research in support of the benefits and feasibility of alternative proteins.
In other words, each marginal increase in funding for GFI Europe has the potential to leverage much greater sums in R&D funding. Unlocking R&D funding is on the critical path for plant-based and cultivated meat to reach taste and price parity and to become the default choice for consumers, so is an urgent priority.
In addition to this, political opposition in Europe presents a particular - and, arguably, existential - risk to alternative proteins. The risk to a more sustainable and just future of food is not simply that the potential funding fails to be unlocked, but that political opponents could derail attempts to achieve regulatory approval for novel alternative proteins. With applications for regulatory approval of cultivated meat
beginning to appear on the horizon and countries considering their climate and food strategies, now is a critical time to ensure that we can take advantage of opportunities and mitigate risks. Indeed, with alternative proteins firmly on the policy agenda, and decision-makers trying to make up their minds about what position to take on them, the next few years are likely to set the course...