To celebrate Earth Day, CJ Newsroom is exploring CJ’s efforts in Green Bio and the sustainable industries of the future.
Celebrating Earth Day 2023 With CJ
Every year, on April 22, an estimated one billion people across the world celebrate Earth Day. Widely recognized as the biggest secular observance on the planet, Earth Day was founded in 1970 and aims to spread awareness about environmental issues and encourage actions to tackle them.
CJ is proud of its efforts towards building a sustainable future for all. Embracing customers’ increasing environmental priorities, CJ’s Green Bio products and technologies aim to make the world a fairer, greener place. To mark Earth Day, CJ Newsroom is taking a closer look at these efforts.
Green Bio: Why the World Needs New, Greener Industries
Green Bio refers to the concept of biotechnology applied in areas like agriculture and fishery industries. It spans genetically modified foods, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), improving seed quality, smart farms, and alternative foods and feed additives. Its goals include reducing greenhouse gas emissions from animal agriculture and animal welfare, and solving food crises by producing safer, more sustainable food. The industry shows how modern technology can advance environmental causes and realize innovative, ambitious sustainability solutions. Focused on agriculture and food, Green Bio brings together nature and technology by applying new engineering methods to plants and microorganisms.
“We are at a point in time where how and what we eat have become very important,” said Professor Lee Ki-won from the Department of Food Technology at Seoul National University. “If the Green Bio market continues to grow, technology can boost eco-sustainable lifestyles and develop nutritious, eco-friendly foods.”
Beyond the clear environmental benefits, the Green Bio industry also has substantial potential as a growing market.
“It has become a necessity to build an industry that is more sustainable using eco-friendly technology,” Lee elaborated. “However, the advantages are not limited to the environment and the public. Green Bio can also be seen as a new, innovative technology industry in its own right, one that is expected to grow to the size of the semiconductor market by 2025.”
CJ’s Efforts in Green Biotechnology
CJ’s Green Bio activities include food ingredients, seasonings and animal feed, with facilities located in many different countries and markets. With its world-class microbial research, fermentation and purification technologies, it is a global leader in the Green Bio business.
In the feed additives sector, CJ holds the world’s top position in five of the eight major feed amino acid markets – lysine, tryptophan, valine, arginine and histidine – while leading the market in food flavoring components, such as nucleic acids and MSG.
CJ’s Green Bio research also explores new alternatives to additives. In 2020, it launched TasteNrich®, a next-generation flavoring solution that uses natural ingredients to enhance flavors,
leveraging more than sixty years of CJ’s experience with fermentation to find new, clean label-aligned alternatives to some additives like nucleic acid and MSG.
*Clean label: A term referring to food or food ingredients with characteristics such as additive-free, allergen-free, non-GMO and made using natural ingredients. It has recently emerged as an important value in the global food market.
One prominent use for TasteNrich® is in CJ Bio’s Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP) product, which it developed as a meat alternative to make plant-based foods taste flavorful and authentic. Used in CJ CheilJedang’s own PlanTable vegan food range, TVP is an independently developed vegetable protein that uses TasteNrich® to achieve the meaty flavor and texture in products like plant-based grilled short rib patties and burger steaks.
Beyond TasteNrich®, TVP and PlanTable, other CJ products include Vegan DASIDA beef-flavored seasoning, FlavorNrich™ – the world’s first natural, vegan cysteine flavor solution and Haechandle Gochujang’s recent V-Label certification. Through these efforts, CJ is making Korean foods and flavors more sustainable and more accessible to vegan customers everywhere.
With a wide range of Green Bio projects, CJ facilities around the world are striving to deliver innovative products that benefit humans and the environment alike, while helping establish the new sustainable industries of the future. This Earth Day, CJ is proud to be able to make unique contributions to sustainable industries and is enthusiastic about the challenges to come.
