RFK Jr Confirmation: Food Tech Winners & Losers

Donald Trump’s pick for Health & Human Services Secretary has been confirmed. From cultivated meat to methane vaccines, how will food tech fare over the next four years?

It took a while, but Donald Trump got his man.

Robert F Kennedy Jr’s journey from climate champion to championing a president who calls it a hoax has been successful. As the new secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, he now has power over several key agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“I’m gonna let him go wild on health. I’m gonna let him go wild on the food. I’m gonna let him go wild on medicines,” Trump had promised before being re-elected to the White House.

The climate-smart food sector is bracing itself for an uncertain four years. As part of his Make America Healthy Again mandate, Kennedy has been a leading voice against ultra-processed and genetically modified (GMO) foods, cultivated meat, vaccines and pesticides. At the same time, he has been a proponent of natural foods, fertilisers, and regenerative agriculture.

So what do the next four years hold for some of the most promising emissions-reducing food technologies? We give you the low-down.

Regenerative agriculture – positive

“I’ve seen some of what America’s most innovative, regenerative farmers are doing today,” Kennedy as said. “They can literally green deserts. They rebuild depleted soils, wells that have been dry for 30 years start flowing again.”

One of the loudest voices in favour of regenerative agriculture, the new health secretary has touted its benefits on soil and nature. He isn’t the only one – many crop and livestock farmers and experts have found this to be the case.

But there is a lack of standards and definitions when it comes to regenerative agriculture, which climate activists argue has allowed meat and dairy producers to spout it as a greenwashing tool.

Still, standards or not, there’s no denying that the formerly niche regenerative agriculture space should get ready for prime time, thanks to their powerful new ambassador.

Eco fertilisers – unclear but likely positive

Kennedy has railed against synthetic “carbon-based fertilisers” and called for the chemical industry to pay for nitrogen pollution.

“We’re going to give farmers an off-ramp from the current system that destroys soil, makes people sick, and harms family farms,” he has previously promised.

“I’m going to reverse 80 years of farm policy in this country, which have directed us toward industrial agriculture, industrial meat production, factory farming, and chemical-based agriculture, carbon-based fertilisers – all of these things that are destroying the soils in our country.”

While some have argued that his stance could lower agricultural productivity and raise consumer prices, this could potentially also benefit companies making fossil-fuel-free fertilisers.

So while it’s as yet unclear how Kennedy views these solutions, it could be a boon for the sector.

Sugar reduction – unclear but likely positive

RFK Jr’s stance against ultra-processed foods (UPFs) is shared by some of the most leftist, high-profile figures in US politics, including Senator Bernie Sanders and California Governor Gavin Newsom.

A lot of discourse around UPFs surrounds sugary foods and beverages, with criticism especially directed to ultra-processed ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup, which Kennedy has called “just a formula for making you obese and diabetic”. Moreover, he has promised to ban the purchase of processed foods and sweet drinks through food stamps.

Sugar reduction startups have started to receive attention as a potential solution to this health epidemic.

Overall though, it’s hard to know whether Kennedy will support these technologies as a way to lower US sugar consumption, or whether he will denounce them as a toxic techno-fix, in which case sweet protein companies could face regulatory challenges/slowdowns.

Methane-reducing cattle additives – unclear but likely problematic

It’s only been two months since the controversy over Bovear, the feed additive trialled by dairy giant Arla, in an effort to reduce methane emissions. While approved as safe by regulators, it caused a social media storm—with some pouring Arla milk down the sink and boycotting the company—because of misinformation surrounding its safety.

Some consumers criticised the use of certain compounds used to make the additive, but experts pointed out that these elements were not present in the resulting milk or produce, since they’re broken down in the cow’s stomach.

Kennedy has long been a critic of food additives saying at his confirmation hearing: “We have to study the additives.” This could extend to animal feed additives too. Given this position, he is likely to pick up on the distrust Bovear has caused, and could be against their introduction on account of these ingredients being ‘unnatural’ or ‘untested’.

Could this prove to be an opportunity for alternatives made from a more ‘natural’ source like seaweed? Proponents of this tech cite a study that suggested a methane reduction of over 80% when you put a type of red seaweed in livestock feed, though a subsequent trial showed that this only amounted to a 28% cut in methane.

Several companies are working on developing a seaweed additive for cattle, including Bill-Gates-backed-Rumin8, Sea Forest, CH4 Global, and Symbrosia – the latter just submitted data to the FDA and has plans for a 15-acre production site.

As with sweet proteins, it’s hard to know whether Kennedy will go on the warpath against synthetic biology or whether he will see this as an emissions win worth taking a chance on, though the former is more likely.

Cultivated meat – problematic

“Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Hollywood actors, venture capitalists — they’re all pushing lab-grown meat as the solution to world hunger + sustainability, but scientists last week told a panel of experts they have serious concerns about the product’s safety,” RFK tweeted in November 2022, reposting the introduction from an article on the Children’s Health Defense website, the anti-vaccine disinformation organisation he was chairman of until April 2023.

He has also agreed with the view that cultivated meat is a money-making scheme for corporations and billionaires, and questioned the safety and climate benefits of cultivated meat.

While more than a dozen states have attempted to ban these foods – Florida and Alabama successful among them – there are suggestions that RFK Jr won’t push forward for a nationwide ban. But his appointment could make the regulatory pathway for novel foods much more complicated, with multiple sources telling Green Queen they believe the sector will be dormant for the next four years.

Some alternative protein startups remain optimistic. Cultivated meat pioneer Upside Foods – already authorised to sell its chicken in the US and looking for a second approval this year – is one of them. The startup’s communications head, Melissa Musiker, told Green Queen last month that “most of the work” done to get its first product approved in 2023 “was under the first Trump administration”.

“We’re gonna continue moving forward, and we remain optimistic that we’ll be able to do a commercial launch in 2025,” she added.

Cattle methane vaccines – unclear but likely problematic

RFK Jr has agreed that methane is causing climate change, but methane-curbing vaccines for cattle could come under scrutiny. Touted as a scaleable and cost-effective way to reduce the gas’s emissions, the idea is to create antibodies that target the methanogens, the methane-producing microbes that colonise the digestive tracts of cattle.

There have been significant investments internationally to develop this technology, most prominently a collaboration between the Pirbright Institute, the Royal Veterinary College, and the Bezos Earth Fund. The full impact of a vaccine – on both the health of the ruminants and the planet – is yet to be proven on a large scale, but these efforts could now become more complex to navigate.

RFK Jr is a known vaccine-sceptic, and this was one of the major talking points during his confirmation hearing, leading many Republicans to question him, and one – Mitch McConnell – to vote against his appointment.

“That’s a pejorative that’s applied to me to keep me from asking difficult questions about powerful interests,” the political dynast told senators of his anti-vaccine label. But they highlighted his comments from 2023, when he told a podcast: “I think some of the live virus vaccines are probably averting more problems than they’re causing. There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.”

That rhetoric hasn’t stopped him from becoming the HHS head, and it may not stop him from culling any efforts to develop methane vaccines though it remains unclear whether he views cattle vaccines in the same way as human ones.

Plant-based meat – problematic

Concerns around UPFs have reached fever pitch, and the plant-based meat industry has been caught in the crossfire, subjected to biased criticism amid misguided connections of processing with nutrition.

As a long-standing critic of processed food, Kennedy has pushed this rhetoric too. In November 2022, he retweeted a story titled ‘The Fake Meat Scam’, quoting the introduction: “Using strategies to position it as a healthy alternative for natural meat, the industry’s fake meat is just another name for ultra-processed food, full of GE and pesticide-laden ingredients designed to look as much like meat as possible.”

Kennedy has vowed to remove UPFs from school lunches should he become health secretary, chiming with a lawsuit against some of the largest food companies in America.

That said, in his confirmation hearing, he indicated that he wouldn’t necessarily call for a ban on UPFs. “I don’t want to take food away from anybody. If you like a cheeseburger, a McDonald’s cheeseburger or a Diet Coke, which my boss loves, you should be able to get them,” he said. “But you should know what the impacts are on your family and on your health.”

All of this suggests that for the plant-based meat sector, Kennedy’s appointment could be a mixed bag.

Precision fermentation – unclear but likely problematic

RFK Jr’s crusade against GMOs could threaten foods made from precision fermentation, which involves the use of microbes to produce bioidentical versions of animal proteins like dairy, eggs or meat. Several companies making such foods got the green light from the FDA over the last 12 months, but that progress may stall now.

In addition to comments about his wish to ban GMOs, there was a further ominous warning at his confirmation hearing. Novel foods must undergo the FDA’s Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) process, but this process has been scrutinised by the new health secretary as one that “looks at any new chemical [as] innocent until proven guilty”.

It could be a marker for a potential shift that requires new ingredients to meet greater standards before they’re authorised for use by the regulator. That being said, Kennedy is unlikely to be a friend to ingredients classified as GMO so it could be a bumpy few years for the industry.