Life Cycle Assessment of Cell-Cultured Chicken Ovalbumin

The global food systems are increasingly challenged by the population growth, climate change, animal welfare and change of land use. More food needs to be produced in declining cultivation conditions while market demand and ethical considerations set stricter societal preconditions for the livestock production in the future. Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies about cellular agriculture, defined as utilization of cell-culturing technologies for food production, have indicated promising results regarding water and land use whereas impacts of energy usage remain somewhat controversial due to the energy intensive cell-culturing processes. Cellular agriculture as a production sector provide cellular products made of cells such as cultured meat and acellular products made by cells such as proteins provided by microbes. One of the acellular product innovation is the cell-cultured chicken ovalbumin produced by Trichoderma reesei developed by the VTT technical research centre of Finland ltd (VTT). Ovalbumin produced by fungus is purified and concentrated before drying to a powder. The objective of this study is to estimate the greenhouse gas emissions, energy use and land use for industrial scale production of cell-cultured chicken ovalbumin powder. Based on the previous LCA-studies on cellular agriculture, the working hypothesis was that cell-cultured ovalbumin is more energy efficient and have less greenhouse gas emissions compared with the conventional egg powder production. The environmental impacts were modelled by using life cycle assessment. The preliminary results indicate lower greenhouse gas emissions compared with traditionally produced dried egg white powder. Novel foods like chicken ovalbumin produced by T.reesei can be one answer to food challenges we are facing, but legislations and consumer acceptance are crucial.