A decade of impact: Let’s imagine more

Ten years ago, GFI was founded with a simple question.

Could meat be made differently? That was the question posed just over a decade ago that started a journey we’re still on today. A journey hard to fully imagine, but so necessary to take.

Yes, the Good Food Institute officially turned 10 in 2026. What started as a small handful of visionaries concerned about the impacts of conventional meat production on animals, ecosystems, and human health is now an international network of organizations advancing alternative proteins for the benefit of people and the planet. Today, across Asia Pacific, Brazil, Europe, India, Israel, and the United States, an extraordinary team of about 250 scientists, policy experts, industry engagement specialists, communicators, and other professionals—some of the best, brightest, and most caring colleagues I’ve been fortunate enough to work alongside—are finding new ways to spur innovation and progress on meat made differently.     

Like what often happens with milestones, we’ve been reflecting quite a lot these days. We’ve been zooming out, taking stock, and resetting in a few different ways—aligning on strategic priorities and goals, refreshing our vision and mission, evolving into a truly global organization, reinvesting in our team members, and maximizing impact that can propel the entire field forward. Check out our special 10th anniversary edition Year in Review, where we reflect on where we started, what we see today, and what we want to see more of tomorrow. 

Milestones themselves, while meaningful and worthy to mark, are only part of the story. It’s what they point to that matters, along with the choices and actions that get us there. To be sure, there are milestones happening all around us that are no fun to mark: planetary limits being reached, emission targets missed, species lost, health risks mounting—all milestones pointing toward more vulnerability, instability, and harm. 

Surely, none of us want to head toward a future like that. That’s not why we show up, is it? But it’s hard when everyone around us, it seems, is stuck in the “what is.” What we really need is more people asking “what if.”

“Imagination is the ability to look at things as if they could be otherwise.”

– John Dewey, educational reformer and philosopher

No doubt: Imagination is in short supply these days. But as this brilliant read from Rob Hopkins posits, it’s exactly what the world needs more of if we are to think and act in proportion to the challenges we are facing and if we are to aim for a future we actually feel good about. 

So we hope everyone out there takes time this year to get way more imaginative. Here are four ways we’ll be doing exactly that throughout 2026:

1. Bruce wrote a book! Check it out.

Published in February 2026, MEAT: How the next agricultural revolution will transform humanity’s favorite food…and our future offers an imaginative, hopeful, and rigorously researched take on how science, policy, industry, and philanthropy can work together to satisfy the world’s soaring demand for meat in vastly more sustainable ways. 

Written by GFI founder and president Bruce Friedrich, MEAT reckons with a big “what is”—humanity’s love of meat and its desire to eat more and more of it—and then asks one of the biggest “what if” questions of our time: What if we could give humanity the meat it craves, but produced differently? Plant-based and cultivated meats that are just as delicious, but more affordable, healthier, better for animals and ecosystems, less vulnerable to supply chain shocks, and globally scalable. 

And man, does he bring the receipts. And if you know Bruce, I imagine you’re thinking “Of course he does.” 

A personal aside here: I have been with GFI for exactly half of its first decade. Bruce hired me in 2020, near the end of a COVID-intense year. After years steeped in plant science, sustainability, and wildlife conservation, I was craving root-cause solutions that stood a chance of not just halting biodiversity loss, but reversing it—and on a global scale. GFI, and Bruce, practically had me at hello. 

Throughout my five-plus years here, I’ve learned so much—and continue to every day. Bruce is a big reason why. He has some pretty idiosyncratic ways of delving deep into numbers and loves to do back-of-the-napkin math. He excels at making the case, and routinely provokes and invites evidence-based arguments. I was among a few invited into the early, messy days of book-writing, when his raw thoughts were first pouring out on the page. He welcomed us in, took our notes, questions, fact-checks, and critiques seriously, and ultimately delivered what Kim Stanley Robinson described as an “eye-opener that could help save the world.” 

If you haven’t already picked up a copy, get on it. (Oh, and all royalties benefit GFI, so there’s that.) 

2. We’ve recast our vision and mission.

To be sure, it’s not every day that an organization wakes up and decides to change its mission and vision. But again, milestones trigger reflection. And sometimes resets. 

In 2025, as we recast our five-year global priorities and goals, we thought deeply about purpose—a purpose that extends beyond alternative proteins for alternative proteins’ sake. 

We thought deeply about the urgent causes and global challenges we were founded to address, and knew we needed a mission and vision that made clear our bigger-picture aims—the causes that we, our donors, and so many others care about: protection of forests, oceans, and other ecosystems; reductions in emissions and cleaner air and water; preventing harm to billions of animals; health and vibrancy for billions of people around the world.

Without further ado:

Our new mission: We unlock the knowledge and resources needed to transform how meat is made—satisfying rising food demand in ways that accelerate climate progress, protect animals and ecosystems, and strengthen public health.

Our new vision: A thriving world, fed sustainably

And if I may, a quick glimpse behind the scenes: This was no wordsmithing exercise for us. It required intent, discipline, global collaboration, great care, thoughtfulness, and yes—imagination. It required a reckoning of sorts—a re-commitment to the whys behind our work. It unfolded with spirited feedback, fine-tuning, more feedback, ultimately earning a collective nod of support and affirmation on the eve of our 10th anniversary year. Where we landed and how we got there—for me, at least—served as a healthy reminder that we’re all in this important work together.

3. We’re lifting up voices and visions from around the world.

At GFI, imagination is ensconced in our own dang tagline: To reimagine protein. A decade later, the theme “Imagine more” gives us a chance to double-down on this core part of who we are, makes clear that our work is far from done, and serves as an abundance-driven rallying cry.

Recently, we prompted GFIers to imagine the futures our work could contribute to. Throughout our special-edition Year in Review, you’ll see a few of these “Imagine more” responses sprinkled in, and throughout 2026, we’ll be sharing others. We’ll hand all sorts of people the mic (literally and figuratively), give space to big ideas, stretch our worldviews, and learn new things—together. Watch this space! 

4. We’re charting the path forward.   

Of course, compelling visions of a far better food future on their own won’t cut it. We need to figure out how to get there. 

Picture a paper map for a moment—the kind they used to have in highway rest stops and gas stations (do they still?), where you needed to unfold it like 17 times before seeing the whole route you’d need to take to get where you wanted to go. (Depending on your age, you may have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, but stick with me please.)  

Now imagine folding it all back up really small (and maybe saying a few quiet curse words as you attempted to do so in your lap sitting in a cramped hot car), so that now you only see your final destination. You’ve lost all the information you needed to get there—all the cities, towns, and milemarkers along the way. 

That wouldn’t be helpful, would it? Those milemarkers along the way sure would come in handy, keeping you headed where you want to go. 

At GFI, while we don’t have a magic map that unfolds all at once to show us exactly how to get to the better future we know is attainable, we can indeed lay down milemarkers in that direction. 

Take our recently reimagined 2030 milestone: By 2030, leading alternative protein products achieve taste parity with conventional meat, demonstrate a credible path to price parity, and have a clear path to widespread adoption.

And the strategic priorities that get us there?

• Advanced technologies that solve for taste and cost parity challenges
• Scalable supply chains that can support mass-market penetration
• Ready markets where culture, policy, regulation, and business interests align
• A thriving organization that enables collaboration across the global GFI network

Throughout 2026 and the critical years ahead, GFI’s global experts across science and technology, policy, and corporate engagement will be fleshing out the map, figuring out what breakthroughs are needed when, what tractable pathways can overcome obstacles, and how to widen and smooth the road along the way. As a nonprofit supported by philanthropy, we can zoom out to see and build the whole map over time and space. Our global community of donors is the reason such a map exists at all, and their continued support means the path ahead grows clearer every day. Technical analyses, research funding partnerships, capital mobilization, multinational engagement, coalition-building, regional food innovation corridors—just a few of the ways donors are helping us chart the path forward. Here again, watch this space.

A thriving world, fed sustainably

One final note on our new vision—the north star guiding our journey.

A thriving world, fed sustainably. 

We were deeply intentional with this broader vision of a world GFI’s work helps make possible. 

We know that transforming how meat is made is just one part of a much larger food system story still unfolding. We know this vision is not unique to us, nor niche or radical, and that’s really the point. We’re all in this together after all, this whole co-existence on a tiny blue dot. This is about a future we can all get behind—a future where the food people are nourished by is produced in ways that ensure all life thrives.

I mean, just imagine.