Future of Foods Interviews - Alt Proteins, Cell Agriculture, an End to Factory Farming.

Can campaigning against factory farming reach people who have largely switched off from traditional animal-rights messages?
In this episode of Future of Foods Interviews, Alex Crisp speaks to Naomi Hallum, co-founder and CEO of Project Slingshot, about a new approach to changing public attitudes towards industrial animal agriculture.
You may already have seen the campaign on the London Underground. Featuring familiar faces including Diane Morgan and Sir Mark Rylance, its striking adverts highlight practices used in intensive farming and takes the message directly to millions of commuters.
Naomi explains why she believes this kind of campaigning can succeed where others have struggled. Rather than telling people what they should or shouldn't eat, the organisation focuses attention on specific farming practices and asks whether the public is comfortable with them.
Drawing on more than a decade of campaigning experience, Naomi talks about the thinking behind the language, imagery and humour used by Slingshot, the importance of reaching people outside the traditional animal-advocacy audience, and how celebrity involvement can amplify a campaign.
Alex and Naomi also discuss what success actually looks like – and where Project Slingshot goes next.

In this episode of Future of Foods Interviews, Alex Crisp speaks to Christian Poppe, Senior Director, Global Public Affairs & Communicationsof German food-tech company Formo, about reinventing cheese without the animal.
Formo is using precision fermentation technologies to create cheese products without conventional dairy farming. But producing the proteins is only part of the challenge. To succeed, the company has to turn biotechnology into food that tastes good, performs like cheese, can be produced economically and, crucially, that consumers actually want to buy.
Christian discusses Formo's journey from the laboratory to commercial products, including the decisions the company has made about technology, ingredients and product development. The conversation explores the realities facing today's alternative-protein sector: scaling production, bringing down costs, navigating novel-food regulation and the road to profitability in a tough commercial environment.
If fermentation can deliver the taste, functionality and experience of conventional cheese, will consumers care whether a cow was involved at all?

What happens when the daughter of the man who first imagined cultivated meat decides to bring that vision back to the farm?
In this conversation, Ira van Eelen, co-founder of RespectFarms and daughter of cultivated meat pioneer Willem van Eelen, shares the story behind one of the most ambitious projects in food innovation today: the world’s first cultivated meat farm. Built in collaboration with the farmer, the project integrates cultivated meat production directly into a working farm, creating a new model that keeps farmers at the centre of the protein transition.
We explore the legacy of Willem van Eelen’s groundbreaking work, the challenges of turning a decades-old vision into reality, and why Ira believes the future of food should be farmer-led rather than factory-driven. The discussion also covers the opening of the RespectFarms Experience Centre, designed to bring together farmers, scientists, policymakers, and the public to explore what food production could look like in the decades ahead.
This is a conversation about reimagining agriculture, and building the future of meat from the farm up.

On this episode of Future of Foods Interviews, I speak to Thomas Van Duijn, from Cellulaire Agricultuur Nederland, about how the Netherlands is building one of the most ambitious cellular agriculture ecosystems in the world.
Backed by €60 million from the Dutch National Growth Fund, this national programme brings together researchers, startups, and industry leaders to accelerate the development of cultivated meat and other cell-based food technologies. The goal: to move breakthroughs out of the lab and into scalable, real-world production.
Thomas shares how this funding is being put to work—supporting collaboration across the ecosystem, investing in research and infrastructure, and tackling key challenges such as cost reduction and scale-up. We also explore what it takes to turn cellular agriculture into a viable part of the global food system, and why the Netherlands is uniquely positioned to lead in this space.

In this Future of Foods interview, Reed McCord, founder of First Bite, reflects on the realities of scaling food brands in the complex foodservice ecosystem. McCord explains how First Bite was built to solve a critical gap he experienced at Impossible Foods—a lack of visibility into customers and purchasing behavior once products move through distributors. Today, First Bite provides manufacturers with data, CRM tools, and digital rebate systems to identify restaurant partners, track performance, and build direct relationships with operators.
The conversation centers on the importance of staying close to customers despite these structural barriers. McCord argues that the most successful food companies are those that actively seek feedback, understand where and why their products are used, and iterate quickly. Drawing from his experience, he offers a clear takeaway: growth in food isn’t just about distribution—it’s about maintaining genuine, data-informed connections with the people actually serving your product.