animal-nutrition
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The Feed Company That Built an 800-Acre Laboratory
KENT Nutrition began with a blunt promise - no filler. Nearly a century later, the family-owned Iowa business tests feed on an 800-acre research farm and sells hundreds of formulas for animals ranging from feedlot cattle to backyard rabbits.
The Danish Company Betting That Microbes Can Do What Chemistry Can't
Novozymes and Chr. Hansen spent a century turning bacteria and enzymes into industrial ingredients. In 2024 they became one company - and quietly one of the biggest biotech businesses you have never heard of.
The Dumpling Company That Also Grows Plastic
CJ CheilJedang turned Korean pantry staples into a global frozen-food business. Behind the dumplings is a second company built on fermentation, amino acids and a bet that microbes can make better materials.
Champion Petfoods
Champion Petfoods turned a simple premise - put more recognizable animal ingredients into the bowl - into two global premium brands. Four decades in, the Mars-owned company is betting that the next contest in pet food will be won in the pilot kitchen as much as the pet-store aisle.
ADM
The company you have never heard of is inside almost everything you eat. Here is how a linseed-crushing shop from 1902 became the invisible spine of the global food supply.
Number 8 Bio
Number 8 Bio is a Sydney-based agtech and climate startup building BetterFeed, a low-cost feed additive and slow-release rumen bolus that cuts enteric methane from cattle and sheep by up to 90% in trials while recapturing wasted feed energy to lift animal productivity. After pivoting from yeast biomanufacturing to synthetic-chemistry small molecules, the company targets grass-fed grazing systems - about 95% of Australia's livestock - and has raised roughly A$18 million to move toward commercial release.
Calysta
Calysta is a San Mateo, California biotechnology company that uses a patented gas-fermentation platform to turn methane into FeedKind, a single-cell protein for aquaculture, livestock and pet feed - and increasingly human food. Its bacteria eat natural gas instead of arable land, plants or animals, producing protein with a low environmental footprint. Backed by Cargill, BP and Temasek and partnered with Adisseo through the Calysseo joint venture, Calysta opened the world's first industrial-scale single-cell protein plant in Chongqing, China in 2022.