Christie Lagally of Rebellyous Foods on scaling up high-quality plant-based foods

Since about 75% or so (and that’s just a rough estimate)... of plant-based products on the market today are actually made on off-the-shelf meat processing equipment, we’re looking to actually change that part of the industry by actually designing new production equipment that is appropriate for the production of plant-based meat… By creating new production methods and new equipment at Rebellyous, we can bring down the cost of plant-based meat, increase the quality, and increase the volume of our products to well beyond what it is currently, [just] 0.2% of the meat industry.- Christie Lagally

Many advocates hope that conventional animal products will eventually be entirely replaced by animal-free foods. But what are the challenges in the way of achieving this goal? What role can entrepreneurs play in encouraging change?

Christie Lagally is the Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Rebellyous Foods, a company that is working to produce high-quality plant-based chicken nuggets in large quantities. She previously worked for 15 years in mechanical engineering and has also worked with the Good Food Institute and volunteered for the Humane Society of the United States.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• Why and how Rebellyous Foods focuses on developing better tools for scaling the production of plant-based products (2:02) 
• The specific equipment types and processes that the plant-based food industry currently relies on that need to be replaced (7:34)
• The uses and limitations of extruders (16:45)
• Who designs, produces, and sells the equipment that is used in plant-based products (19:02)
• The technical difficulties in producing plant-based chicken products compared to plant-based burgers (24:52)
• Developing plant-based fish products (33:14)
• Business to business vs. business to consumer strategies (36:43)
• The importance of branding in marketing animal-free food tech products (41:00)
• The use of engineering experience in developing plant-based foods (43:07)
• The importance of mission alignment in working in animal-free food technology startups (50:23)
• The transferability of experience in nonprofits to work in animal-free food technology companies (52:28)
• Christie’s experience with political actions for animals and views on the interaction between animal advocacy nonprofits and the animal-free food technology movement (56:45)
• The investment and support that Rebellyous Foods has received and the role of impact investment (1:04:48)

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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