It's time for Australia to lead the food revolution.
Australia has a unique chance to shape the future of food. We’re calling on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to appoint a Minister for Food and Food Innovation and commit to a bold, long-term investment that will launch Australia to the forefront of sustainable protein production.
Animal agriculture has a significant impact on our environment. In Australia, it drives deforestation, produces massive greenhouse gas emissions, and uses more than half of our land. Around the world, livestock farming is the leading cause of biodiversity loss and a major threat to public health and food security.
But there’s a better way.
New technologies like precision fermentation, cultivated meat, and advanced plant-based foods are making it possible to produce healthy proteins without animals. They can help us restore nature, reduce emissions, and build a more secure global food system.
Australia could be a leader in this transformation. But right now, we’re falling behind. Countries like Singapore, the United States, Israel and China are investing heavily in sustainable protein. If we don’t act, we risk losing our place as a global agricultural leader.
We’re urging the government to act. A dedicated Minister for Food and Food Innovation would drive the coordination we need. A decade-long investment would bring sustainable protein to market, unlock thousands of jobs, and strengthen Australia’s economy and environment. Such an investment would complement the $22.7 billion already committed to clean energy by Labor in the last partliament as part of their Future Made in Australia policy.
The world is changing fast. We can either follow, or lead.
Sign the petition now.
- Full Open Letter.
Sustainable Proteins Made in Australia Open Letter
Dear Prime Minister Anthony Albanese,
Appoint a Minister of Food and Food Innovation and make a ‘moonshot’ investment to fuel a rapid protein transition and make Australia a world leader in the crucial technology of sustainable proteins.
We are entering a transformative moment in food technology, one not seen since the advent of farming thousands of years ago. The rapidly evolving sector of animal-free protein production offers Australia a significant opportunity to invest early and reap the benefits. By strategically positioning itself in this emerging sector, Australia can contribute to global food security and a nature positive food system while fostering innovation and creating new jobs domestically. This requires careful consideration of economic, environmental, and social factors to ensure a sustainable and equitable transition, led by the appointment of a Minister for Food and Food Innovation.
Impact and scale of animal agriculture
Agriculture is Australia’s leading cause of deforestation, is a major contributor to our biodiversity loss, and is the cause of about 18% of Australia's greenhouse gases, higher than the global average owing to Australia's large beef and dairy industry. Raising livestock is the most emissions-intensive way to produce protein. Globally, agriculture is the largest single cause of biodiversity loss and emits about a quarter of all greenhouse gases—more than all our cars, planes and ships combined. Most of the damage is caused by livestock farming, which covers 26% of the Earth’s land surface, more than all the world’s forests combined, and in Australia, staggeringly utilises more than half our landmass. There is no net zero without addressing emissions from farming. Meanwhile, war, climate shocks, and supply chain vulnerabilities are driving shortages that imperil our food security.
Australian agriculture has been made highly efficient thanks to decades of innovation. Still, the global demand from protein is growing, and there are hard limits to both the efficiency of animal farming and to the amount of land that can be dedicated to this industry.
The crises caused by our diets seem insurmountable. But are they really? Just as clean energy sources are quickly displacing fossil fuels, sustainable protein production has the potential to displace the most harmful forms of animal agriculture at a speed and scale previously unimaginable.
Australia’s red meat and livestock industry has a turnover of roughly $75 billion, about 4.5% of national GDP, and like the fossil fuel industry, faces the potential for a steady decline if the global market moves away from ecologically damaging products. We face the choice of either spending money defending an established industry regardless of future demand or investing that money into transitioning our agricultural sector into the products of the future—bringing jobs and prosperity to our nation.
The future of food
Sustainable protein production includes three crucial areas of innovation: precision fermentation (an advanced form of brewing in which microflora are used to produce the individual proteins and fats found in animal products), cultivated meat (a method in which animal cells are scaled up in a bioreactor to produce real animal tissues), and plant-based foods (which includes everything from whole-food beans and pulses to plant-based milks, burgers, sausages, and steaks).
Of these, precision fermentation shows particular promise. In this field, food innovators have now perfected the ancient process of brewing to do something remarkable: produce proteins that are biologically identical to those we find in traditional meat and dairy. By partnering with the microscopic world, precision fermentation companies here in Australia now have the technical ability to make animal-free products. Beyond our shores, precision fermentation ice cream, egg whites, ‘bleeding’ burgers and more are already reaching the market. Most importantly, precision fermentation is already proven at a global scale, producing 99% of global insulin, over 80% of global rennet, and the vast majority of the world’s citric acid.
Will this industry reach maturity overseas with the result that foreign companies gradually drive Australia’s dairy and livestock industries out of business? Or will Australia be at the forefront of the transition, with the result that new products are integrated into Australia’s existing export relationships and take advantage of Australia’s recognised food safety standards, especially among emerging markets in Asia? Australia can only lead the world in biomanufacturing if the right policy settings are in place.
Climate, biodiversity, socioeconomic and resiliency benefits
The potential environmental and socioeconomic benefits of the protein transition are enormous. Moving to sustainable proteins could reduce the climate impacts of meat by up to 92%, and investments in the sector offer the greatest decarbonisation potential of any industry per dollar of capital invested—greater even than direct investments in clean power. Ecologically, the transition can be ‘nature positive’. By freeing up vast areas of land from livestock farming, the transition will allow for an unprecedented scale of nature restoration that can help bring back vital habitats and draw down further carbon.
Economically, a fully deployed sustainable protein sector could bring $1.1 trillion in gross value added and create up to 9.8 million green jobs worldwide by 2050. These green jobs will also, importantly, include opportunities for farmers, not only in the production of plant-based ingredients and feedstocks but also in ecosystem services payments for carbon sequestered on rewilded land.
Of all these benefits, the greatest is sustainable proteins' unrivalled resilience to the shocks and instability of our current food system’s fragile supply chains. This is likely one reason why the rest of the world is rapidly moving ahead. Pioneering nations such as Singapore, Canada, the USA, Israel, Japan, and China are now investing deeply in the R&D and commercialisation of sustainable proteins while urgently improving their regulatory, tax and labelling landscapes to help them enter the market. In the USA, precision fermentation ice cream and milk are on supermarket shelves, while in Singapore, cultivated meat is already on the market.
Australia stands at a turning point in food innovation, but without decisive leadership, we risk falling behind. The alt-proteins industry, which holds enormous potential to sustainably feed a growing global population, is being undermined not by a lack of talent or research, but by fragmented oversight. Right now, responsibility for the sector is scattered across multiple ministerial portfolios, including Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry; Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water; Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts; and Industry, Science and Resources. This fractured approach has left the industry without clear regulation, consistent support, or a coherent national strategy. While other countries are moving quickly to capture the benefits of a global protein transition, Australia risks missing out. It’s time to appoint a dedicated Minister for Food and Food Innovation to provide the direction and coordination this sector needs to reach its full potential.
The protein revolution is happening now. If Australia fails to act our comparative advantages in agricultural exports may be lost.
Call to appoint a Minister for Food and Food Innovation
This is why we, the undersigned, are calling on you to appoint a Minister for Food and Food Innovation and make an immediate commitment to a moonshot investment over 10 years to turbocharge the development and commercialisation of an Australian sustainable protein industry. Such an investment would complement the $22.7 billion committed as part of the Future Made in Australia policy by your government in clean energy. With such a public-led investment, we can also fully research and mitigate any unintended consequences of the sustainable protein transition and ensure that the benefits are widely shared in an open-source manner and not captured entirely by private sector corporations.
We believe that this measure, alongside essential regulatory, tax, and labelling refinements, will make the food revolution unstoppable and make healthy, affordable proteins accessible to all while realising significant ecological, climate and economic benefits. Now is the time for Australia to lead the food revolution.
Yours sincerely,
The Undersigned