New York-based MyForest Foods is entering 2023 with a goal of taking its mycelium-based meat to new heights. Last year, the company broke ground on commercializing its MyBacon, a vegan bacon it makes from mycelium—or the mushroom’s fast-growing root system.
Although MyBacon is only available in a few stores on the East Coast, this month, the company expanded vegan bacon to 32 retailers and foodservice locations across Massachusetts and New York, including popular New York City retailers such as Orchard Grocer, Lifetime Natural Market and Perelandra Natural Foods.
To further its mycelium meat expansion, MyForest has also added food industry veteran Jeff Mundt—who most recently worked at poultry company Butterball—to its team as vice president of research and development.
MyForest Foods
“MyForest Foods has an extremely fast launch in 2023—with key hires, new Partnerships, and increased harvesting capacity—we are in an excellent position to expand our product offering and meet growing consumer demand,” Eben Bayer, founder and CEO of MyForest Foods, told VegNews.
MyForest Foods is the food arm of Ecovative, a larger sustainability-focused company owned by Bayer that develops mycelium-based solutions to problems like plastic waste. This month, Ecovative announced the acquisition of the Lambert Span Europa BV facility in the Netherlands, which will directly benefit its mycelium production in several ways, including supporting the growth of mybacon and other mycelium meats.
Bacon and beef, made better with mycelium
From environmental degradation to animal cruelty, industrial pork farming brings many uncomfortable issues. The mycelium version of mybacon improves on pork in that it contains no cholesterol or nitrates, grows much faster, is much more environmentally friendly to produce, and, of course, does not require the slaughter of pigs.
And while MyForest Foods can make a lot of mycelium meat, Bayer decided that its flagship product would be vegan bacon because he identified it as a leverage point.
“Bacon, interestingly, is what I call the ‘trim tab’ that turns the boat that looks like the rudder of the boat,” Baer previously told VegNews. “The idea is that this is the point of maximum leverage.”
“[Bacon] It was a trim tab because in our first iteration of all the whole cut meats we made, the bacon blew it out of the water in our taste tests against existing bacon, plant-based bacon, and in general, people loved it.”
MyForest Foods
And soon, Bayer will be ready to test the waters with additional mycelium meat as MyForest Foods prepares to enter a new category with the upcoming launch of its vegan beef jerky.
Dubbed “maizerky,” this snackable vegan meat will be made from ingredients similar to mybacon. While MyForest isn’t sharing full details about its vegan jerky yet, Baer told VegNews that his team has already been snacking on prototypes for a while.
“While mybacon mycelium was an important introduction to consumers in the category, it certainly won’t be our last product innovation,” he says. “For the past year, the internal MyForest Foods team has been enjoying MyJerky, and we’re proud to introduce the product to our customers later this year as a delicious, snack-able, plant-based option.”
The new era of meat production: mycelium farms
Last month, Colorado got its first animal-free farm that can produce 45 million pounds of meat annually without slaughtering a single cow. Because this ‘mega ranch’ is run by Meaty Foods, another company that converts mycelium into meat. Here, one tablespoon of fungal spores is capable of producing hundreds of beef in a few days.
The founders of MyForest and Metty both have one thing in common as they grew up around livestock, Bayer was introduced to raising pigs and chickens on his family farm in Vermont, and Metty’s Tyler Huggins grew up on a bison farm. Both entrepreneurs are working to make mycelium farming the future of meat production.
MyForest Foods
Canadian farm MyForest has completed its first commercial harvest of whitecrest mushrooms. Equipped with Ecovative’s patented airmycelium technology, the farm can produce nearly three million pounds of bacon on less than an acre—an astronomical improvement over traditional pork bacon production.
Tyler Watson, a mycologist at Whitecrest Mushrooms, is excited to be a part of this future. “As the importance and utility of mycelium is increasingly recognized, I am extremely excited to reach this important milestone,” he said in a statement.
“Working with MyForest Foods to grow production of its amazing MyBacon product has been an incredible journey and I couldn’t be more excited for what the future holds,” said Watson.
MyForest is producing mycelium at its newly opened Suez silos in New York, with additional production to support its expansion into the beef segment.
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Anna Starostenetskaya is Senior News Editor at VegNews and keeps an eye on all things vegan in her hometown of San Francisco, CA and beyond.