Food biomanufacturing: A national security issue

When most people think of the US defense industrial base, they envision aircraft carriers, stealth bombers, drones, or semiconductors. Yet as Dr Liz Specht, Research Fellow at the Emerging Technologies Institute, recently highlighted on the Good Food Institute’s Business of Alt Protein Seminar, food production technologies, including alternative proteins, are increasingly relevant to national security. Food is not just fuel for service members, it is a strategic asset that underpins resilience, readiness, and global competitiveness.

Food biomanufacturing, an umbrella term that encompasses many alternative protein technologies, offers advantages that align directly with national security priorities. It is efficient, eliminating the ‘carcass balancing’ problem of conventional livestock and enabling rapid scale-up to meet surge demand during crises. It enhances biosecurity by reducing reliance on fragile global supply chains, insulating the nation from natural disruptions like pandemics or crop failures as well as adversarial threats. It strengthens supply chain independence by creating domestic alternatives to imported ingredients, such as palm oil, through microbial fermentation. It is also adaptable, with platforms that can pivot between food, fuel, feed, and other outputs depending on circumstances. And it is flexible at the feedstock level, too, capable of running not only on common sugars but also on woody biomass, agricultural residues, or even gaseous inputs such as carbon dioxide or methane.

Alternative proteins in particular map directly to defense needs. Prolonged operations in extreme environments could benefit from locally sourced or shelf-stable feedstocks, enabling on-site protein production and reducing risky resupply missions. Forward-deployed biomanufacturing, using modular fermentation units, could bring fresh, nutritious food closer to where it is needed most. On the home front, facilities could be designed with domestic surge capacity in mind. Just as automakers pivoted to airplane production during World War II, food biomanufacturing infrastructure could be repurposed under the Defense Production Act to scale quickly for critical supplies.

Supply chain resilience and supply chain independence are two of the hottest topics within defense circles today, and biomanufacturing solves challenges in both of these areas

As Dr Specht observes, surge capacity usually runs counter to free market incentives, since private investors are unlikely to fund idle facilities. Yet food biomanufacturing is unusual in that civilian demand ensures peacetime infrastructure is active and economically viable. That same infrastructure then doubles as a national security asset when crises emerge.

“Supply chain resilience and supply chain independence are two of the hottest topics within defense circles today, and biomanufacturing solves challenges in both of these areas,” Dr Specht notes. “Applying biomanufacturing to food presents a unique opportunity to tap into high-volume, consistent, peacetime demand for establishing large-scale domestic biomanufacturing capacity writ large, which contributes to our defense readiness and national security.”

Other nations are moving quickly. China’s 2025 No. 1 Central Document explicitly prioritizes “building a diversified food supply system” through biological agriculture and novel food resources. Singapore has also invested heavily in cultivated proteins as part of its ‘30 for 30’ food security strategy, which aims to produce 30% of its nutrition domestically by 2030. For the USA, failing to lead in food biomanufacturing carries both economic and biosecurity risks. Domestic leadership in alternative proteins is therefore about maintaining global competitiveness as much as it is about ensuring national nutrition.

Alternative proteins are more than a climate or consumer play. They are a lever for bolstering resilience and defense readiness. As the USA modernizes its defense industrial base, food biomanufacturing deserves a seat at the table alongside energy, semiconductors, and cybersecurity. Securing the future of protein means securing the future of national security. Food security is national security.

You can watch Dr Liz Specht’s full presentation on the Good Food Institute’s YouTube channel here.

Pat McAuley is Startup Innovation Lead at The Good Food Institute, founder and host of Eat Green Make Green podcast, and an Ironman All World Triathlete. This article is republished from the Q3 2025 edition of Protein Production Technology International, the industry's leading resource for alternative proteins. To subscribe to all future editions, please click here