MTE combines protein and data science with food engineering. Using all-natural products and processing, the company is working to re-invent alternative protein ingredients

By MAAYAN JAFFE-HOFFMAN

https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/tech-and-start-ups/article-739789

Published: APRIL 20, 2023 17:01

   

Chickpea meat burger

(photo credit: RUTI AMANO)

An Israeli company announced Thursday that it had developed a meat analog out of chickpea protein – the first in the world.

Meat. The End (MTE), a meat alternative company based in Tel Aviv, creates technological solutions that enhance the texture properties of alternative protein products. Its latest innovation “behaves exactly like meat,” according to company founder and CEO Dr. Yishai Mishor. 

“The ‘meat’ is frozen. You take it out of the freezer, put it on a pan, in the rover or even on the grill, and it cooks just like meat,” Mishor said. “The fat kind of trickles down. It takes about the same time to cook. And, in the end, when you eat it, what you are putting in your mouth is something that has the same texture as meat – the juiciness, the firmness you would expect to have when you bite into a real meat burger.”Top ArticlesRead More

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MTE combines protein and data science with food engineering. Using all-natural products and processing, the company is working to re-invent alternative protein ingredients that achieve the textures they should have. The company already makes soy and pea burgers, sausages and chicken nuggets. 

Several companies worldwide, including in Israel, are already working on innovative ways to extract and use chickpea protein. In general, there are more than 100 Israeli companies in the alternative protein industry – including those developing meat alternatives from crickets and black soldier flies. However, most protein sources come as powders, isolates and concentrates. 

Meat.The End (MTE) founder and CEO Dr. Yishai Mishor. (credit: Ruti Amnu)

“Turning this into alternative meat is a huge deal, and as we see it, no one is playing in that field,” Mishor said. 

The meat alternative industry has been growing for more than a decade. Initially, it was centered around soy. More recently, the introduction of pea protein was a game changer. But with consumers eager for innovation and diversity, companies are looking beyond, Mishor explained. 

Introducing texturized chickpea protein as a meat alternative application is a first-of-its-kind breakthrough. But, if pea protein is a precedent, chickpeas can potentially make a billion-dollar impact. 

“If you think about climate change and how it affects our crops – because there is serious instability in the climate, this leads to unstable crop production and supply chains,” Mishor added. “When you think about the food industry, we have to consider this and have a much wider variety of alternative proteins than we are using.

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He said his company would tackle fava beans next.

 Meat. The End

MTE was founded in 2020, just before the coronavirus pandemic. The team consists of several well-known technologists from across the food industry, including David Bensal, a former chief technologist at Strauss Coffee Israel; Moshe Juki Nesher, a former chief technologist for Nestle-Israel; and many others. 

Mishor said the team combines academic research and very traditional food industry experience with one goal: “to provide the world with the best meat alternative so we can accelerate the transition away from meat, which is one of the most important things we can do to tackle climate change.”

The company recently closed a SEED round of about $3 million. Six months ago, it signed a contract and started selling its soy products at Burger King Israel branches. It just received the green light from Burger King International to sell them to other franchises worldwide. MTE is only one of three companies approved to provide a plant-based whopper. The other two are American companies – Impossible Foods and Unilever.

“Unlike many start-ups that I respect in this industry with 3D printing and cultured meat, their solutions will take at least 10 years before they are practical and widespread,” Mishor concluded. “Our solution is the opposite: We are moving fast so we can handle the climate crisis as quickly and effectively as possible.”

The failed vote on House Bill 1230 came after more than 12 hours of testimony and hundreds of witnesses

Bill that would have banned sale of so-called assault weapons in Colorado is rejected, even after attempt to dramatically strip it down

Elliott Wenzler and Jesse Paul12:54 AM MDT on Apr 20, 2023

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Abill that would have banned the sale or transfer of so-called assault weapons in Colorado narrowly failed in a Democratic-majority state House committee early Thursday, even after the sponsor of the measure proposed a much narrower prohibition on devices that make semi-automatic weapons fire at a rate similar to automatic firearms. 

House Bill 1230 was rejected in a dramatic, 6-7 vote in the House Judiciary Committee at about 1 a.m. following a 14-hour hearing that featured testimony from hundreds of people. 

Rep. Elisabeth Epps, a Denver Democrat and the lone prime House sponsor of the bill, proposed two amendments that would have limited the bill to a ban on the sale of either rapid-fire trigger activators and/or bump stocks. 

Both failed on 6-7 votes, with three Democrats — Reps. Lindsey Daugherty, Said Sharbini and Marc Snyder — joining the four Republicans on the committee in rejecting the changes.

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Bump stocks, a device that allows a semi-automatic firearm to fire at the rate of an automatic gun, were banned by the Trump administration in 2018 following a massacre at a music festival in Las Vegas in the prior year in which the shooter used the device to kill 58 people. 

“I’m slightly in shock right now,” Epps said just before the final vote on the bill was taken and after her amendments failed.

The Democrats who voted against advancing the bill were Sharbini, Snyder and Rep. Bob Marshall.

Snyder, who has voted in favor of other gun control measures this session, said when he was campaigning he told voters he wouldn’t take guns away from law-abiding citizens. “The bill, I believe, does that,” he said.

The hearing on the bill began at about 9:30 a.m. Wednesday. Epps signaled early on that she was planning to pare the bill down to ban bump stocks and rapid-fire trigger activators in a nod to the political reality that her measure, as introduced, was unlikely to pass. The proposed change surprised and frustrated many on the Judiciary Committee and at the Capitol.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives regulation outlawing bump stocks has bounced around the federal court system since and was struck down by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in January, which said the ATF didn’t have the congressional authority to enact the ban. For now, the ban remains in effect. 

Trigger activators, which also increase the rate of fire for firearms, are regulated in several other states. 

Hours of testimony happened anyway. 

“I’ve long said that Democrats weren’t serious about a statewide ban on assault weapons. If we fail, I was right. I want to be wrong,” Epps said in the opening of the hearing.

She went on to encourage supporters of the concept to focus their frustration on the “gatekeeping” rather than on moderate Democrats or those firmly against the bill.

“It’s just hard to look at the math and know that we have so many more than 33 votes in this House of Representatives and to not be assigned to a committee where we could get to the floor with the bill intact,” she said.

That appeared to be a jab at Democratic leadership in the House, who determine to which committees bills are assigned. The Judiciary Committee has several Democratic members who have voted against other gun regulations this session, including Marshall and Sharbini. Bills need at least 33 votes in the House to be approved. 

Earlier in the week, House Speaker Julie McCluskie, D-Dillon, and Majority Leader Monica Duran, D-Wheat Ridge, both declined to take a position on the assault weapons bill.

A handful of states including California, Illinois, New York and Maryland have bans on assault weapons. 

More than a dozen states restrict access in some way to either bump stocks or other devices that allow a semi-automatic firearm to operate like an automatic, according to Giffords Law Center, a gun violence prevention group that tracks firearm regulations.

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Epps’ bill wasn’t included in a Democratic news conference earlier this year where the party’s state lawmakers rolled out a series of gun regulations they pursued this year. 

All four bills unveiled at the news conference are now waiting to be signed by the governor. They would: 

• Raise the minimum age to buy any gun to 21
• Impose a three-day waiting period between when someone can purchase a firearm and access it
• Expand the state’s existing red flag law, which lets judges order the temporary seizure of firearms from people deemed a significant risk to themselves or others 
• Make it easier to sue gun and ammunition manufacturers and sellers 

The legislature is also considering a ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of so-called ghost guns, which are homemade weapons that don’t have serial numbers and thus are untraceable.  

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House Bill 1230 would have also defined assault weapons by their features, rather than by specific makes and models. Those definitions, all for semi-automatic firearms, included ammunition-feeding devices, large-capacity magazines and pistol grips.

Under the bill, selling or attempting to sell a so-called assault weapon would have been a Class 2 misdemeanor, which is punishable by up to 120 days in jail, a fine of up to $750 or both. 

Gov. Jared Polis signaled he was opposed to the measure, as did many Democrats in the House and Senate. Even if the bill had passed the House Judiciary committee on Thursday morning, it was unlikely to be signed into law. 

The 2023 legislative session ends May 8.

APRIL 18, 2023 / 9:30 AM / CBS/AP

• https://www.cbsnews.com/news/italy-bear-killed-italian-runner-captured-three-cubs-freed/

Authorities in northern Italy captured a bear that fatally mauled a runner and became the focus of a battle over what to do with Italy’s growing Alpine brown bear population. The animals were once nearly extinct but their numbers have rebounded thanks to a European Union-funded project.

Officials in Trento announced Tuesday that the female bear, identified as Jj4, had been captured overnight in a tube trap, baited by fresh fruit. She was sedated and taken to a holding center pending a final decision on her fate. Her three cubs, who are 2 years old and self-sufficient, were with her at the time but were freed unharmed.

Andrea Papi, 26, was killed by Jj4 while out on a mountain training run between April 5-6. After identifying Jj4 as his killer through her DNA, Trento provincial authorities ordered her euthanized, but animal rights groups appealed to an administrative court, which suspended the order.

The bear wears a GPS radio collar that tracks its movements, but the monitoring page for the animal said there was a faulty signal from its collar before the fatal attack on Papi, Reuters reported.

“The removal of Jj4 now ensures greater peace of mind and security in the area,” officials said in a statement along with a photo of the bear’s capture.

Jj4 is the same Alpine brown bear that injured a father and son out walking in the region in 2020. Then too, Trento provincial authorities ordered her killed but a court blocked the move.

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At a news conference Tuesday, Trento’s provincial president, Maurizio Fugatti, expressed anger that Papi’s death could have been avoided if Jj4 had been euthanized after her first dangerous encounter with humans.

He denounced as “ideological” the arguments by animal rights groups that have opposed selective euthanasia for known aggressive bears like Jj4, and said the province would have preferred to have euthanized her on the spot and still hopes to pending a final court ruling.

Jj4 was born to two bears brought to Italy from Slovenia two decades ago as part of an EU-funded program to repopulate the brown bear population that had been dwindling to the point of near extinction.

The Life Ursus project began in 1999 with the introduction of three male and six female bears in the Trento forests, aiming to rebuild the population to 40-60 bears over a few decades. But the population has rebounded to more than 100 identified bears, according to Italian news reports, and is increasingly having encounters with the human population.

Fugatti is seeking the transfer of some 60 “excess” bears from the Trento region and said he plans to convene a working group to discuss the next steps.

In March, a man was attacked by a bear in the same region, launching a debate on the dangers posed by the animals.

A coalition of animal rights groups, including the International Organization of Animal Protection, or OIPA, demanded Trento authorities “rigorously” respect the court suspension of the kill order and vowed to defend Jj4 and her cubs “via all available legal means.”

Papi’s family had said they didn’t want the bear culled.

Annamaria Procacci, a former ecologist deputy who now works with the animal welfare group ENPA, denounced the lack of precautions taken by local officials. Bears normally kept their distance from people, she argued.

The local authority had to ensure that people were kept away from zones where female bears were raising their cubs, she added.

In 2020, a brown bear was caught on camera climbing onto a balcony of an apartment building in the northern Italian city of Calliano.

AFP contributed to this report.