The State of Global Policy

Global uncertainty kicked up once again in 2025. As supply chains reacted to a flurry of new trade barriers, policymakers invested in secure domestic food supply chains through plant-based proteins, fermentation, and cultivated meat.

• Business support programs in Canada and France supported local farmers and producers to switch to locally grown protein crops.
• Researchers in India, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, and more investigated new uses for local agricultural sidestreams.
• Programs in Australia, Canada, China, India, South Korea, and others incentivized the construction of shared biomanufacturing facilities to help retain businesses during their development.

This turn inward coincided with a greater appreciation of the benefits new protein options offer to agricultural regions, rural communities, and farmers. The aforementioned research on agricultural sidestreams aims to benefit local farmers by creating new markets and sources of value. Enterprising governments are funding this research to ensure that sidestreams from their agricultural sectors become foundational ingredients for next-generation foods.

Additionally, policymakers are working to actively include and prioritize agricultural communities in production. Projects in Canada and Germany provide farmers and producers with essential resources to make the most of emerging food products and production systems, while an EU-backed project in the Netherlands has installed a cultivated meat production unit directly on a dairy farm.

China and the European Union led the world in new investments in 2025, both recognizing biomanufacturing capacity as a strategic and economic priority. China’s state-owned State Development and Investment Corporation announced nearly $1 billion in investments in biotechnology facilities in 2025, specifically including food applications, while the European Union awarded over €100 million ($113 million) in loans to plant-based and fermentation companies for scaling up, in addition to tens of millions more for research across the continent. 

India, Japan, and the United Kingdom similarly signaled intentions to invest more heavily in infrastructure, while Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands directly funded the construction of shared fermentation facilities to support domestic startups. Among major economies, only the federal government of the United States markedly drew back from food biotechnology investments amid government-wide cuts to science and technology development, announcing only $6 million in new research funding for plant-based, fermented, or cultivated protein sources.

By investing in research hubs like the Novel Protein Bio-Manufacturing Innovation Center in China, the Cultivate at Scale facility in the Netherlands, or the Neptune BioInnovation Centre in Canada, policymakers are developing high-quality, popular consumer goods that can sustain a biomanufacturing base and create a pipeline for startups to move from research to commercial production.

In 2025, Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ), which regulates food products in both countries, approved a cultivated quail product, making it the third jurisdiction to greenlight a cultivated meat product, joining Singapore and the United States. FSANZ also became the second jurisdiction, after the United States, to use a specific process to approve cultivated food products separate from their novel foods framework. South Korea finalized a similar process in 2024 and has received several applications, while plans to develop processes based on these examples are underway in Abu Dhabi, China, Japan, and the United Kingdom. In 2025, the United States also gave the regulatory green light to two other firsts: the first cultivated seafood product and the first cultivated pork product.

The debate over how to properly label alternatives to animal products is by no means settled, and developments cut both ways in 2025. At issue is whether products can use “meaty” terms like “sausage” or “steak” or animal-related words like “chicken” or “pork.” Crucially, research shows that consumers do not find these terms misleading when properly described as plant-based, and that these terms provide important information about taste and preparation, making them easier to use. In jurisdictions such as some European Union countries that are working hard to stimulate demand for plant-based foods to support the environment and public health, allowing the use of these terms on labels should be a priority.

If the world has seemed to become more complex in the last five years, so too has the process of tracking and categorizing investments in alternative proteins. Companies in the sector are now receiving government-backed loans, loan guarantees, blended finance, and direct investments in addition to direct grant funding; new research often cuts across multiple technology sectors and product categories; and large commitments to build out biotechnology leadership and biomanufacturing capacity often highlight food production without specifying the exact amount of investment in it. These developments bode well for plant-based, fermentation-enabled, and cultivated protein sources as more funders include them in general research calls, investment portfolios, and bioeconomy plans. 

However, these developments also make the clear, consistent tracking of government investment into alternative proteins more complex, and render previous methods of reporting these investments less accurate. Moving forward, these reports will feature as much detail on the past year’s activity as before, without pursuing a single top-line annual funding number. The public investment database contains much of the data underlying these statistics and now includes over 1,000 research projects, business grants, loans, loan guarantees, initiatives, investments, and more.

Despite the changes, much remains the same. GFI’s 2021 report noted: “Governments worldwide are grappling with how to feed growing populations and keep their economies strong in the face of fragile supply chains, intensifying climate events, and the looming threat of future pandemics and antibiotic resistance.” These threats have become only more evident in the years since, but so too has the potential of new food technologies to address these challenges. 

Forward-looking governments have rallied behind plant-based protein sources to support agricultural communities and public health goals, fermentation technology to supercharge biomanufacturing capacity and valorize underused resources, and cultivated meat for point-of-need nutrition and sustainable animal proteins. All of these new protein sources can help create a resilient, prosperous food system.

Unfortunately, the gap between what is available and what is needed also remains significant. Five years ago, a Global Innovation Needs Assessment found that governments must invest $10.1 billion in alternative proteins on an annual basis to fully reap the rewards of a mature alternative protein sector, including up to 9.8 million jobs, $1 trillion in economic value, and benefits for food resilience, global health, and environmental security. Despite progress and enthusiasm from policymakers worldwide, governments’ estimated investment in 2025 amounts to no more than 10 percent of this benchmark. Though broader biotechnology development programs show promise for creating the infrastructure and workforce needed for a more resilient food system, dedicated funding to increase consumer appeal and availability of new protein sources is necessary to build a future-proof food system.