CharitiesGood Food Institute
Good Food Institute
Charity

Good Food Institute

Alternative Protein Field Building

The Good Food Institute accelerates the transition of the world’s food system toward alternative proteins by developing and promoting plant- and cell-based alternatives to animal products.

Animal welfare

What problem is GFI working on?

Globally, meat consumption is the highest it has ever been. According to the UN, global meat production is projected to double by 2050.

GFI’s mission is to develop “the roadmap for a sustainable, secure, and just protein supply.” As an international network of organizations, GFI works globally to “identify the most effective solutions, mobilize resources and talent, and empower partners across the food system to make alternative proteins accessible, affordable, and delicious.”

In addition to reducing animal suffering, GFI believes that transforming the food system would help reduce the risk of disease, feed more people, and positively impact the climate and biodiversity.

What does GFI do?

GFI is working to build “a world where alternative proteins are no longer alternative.” To that end, GFI:

  • Conducts and advances scientific, open-access research in food technology, including plant-based and cultivated alternatives to animal products like meat, dairy, eggs, and seafood.
  • Engages in policy work focused on procuring public (government) funding for alternative protein research and advocating for the fair regulation and labelling of alternative proteins.
  • Works across the industry to advance private sector innovation and investment in alternative proteins. This includes increasing access to market research and consumer perception insights, providing mentorship and guidance to startups, and convening and connecting the next generation of innovators.

What information does Giving What We Can have about the cost-effectiveness of GFI?1.

We previously included GFI as one of our recommended charities based on several positive indications:

  • Animal Charity Evaluators previously listed GFI as a top charity: “The main interventions used by GFI (research, policy work, and corporate outreach) are likely to be highly effective in strengthening the animal advocacy movement and increasing the availability of animal-free products.” (They no longer recommend GFI due to GFI deciding to postpone re-evaluation to a future year so it could focus on new opportunities and challenges in the alternative proteins sector. )
  • Open Philanthropy believes the acceleration of cost-competitive protein alternatives is an animal welfare avenue that is worth pursuing, and has awarded several grants to GFI. In 2021, it stated that its Farm Animal Welfare Team “has been particularly impressed with GFI’s public policy work relating to plant-based products.”
  • Founders Pledge also recommends GFI as a top charity in animal welfare.

GFI also recently received a recommendation from the impact-focused evaluator Giving Green.

We’ve updated our recommendations to reflect only organisations recommended by evaluators we’ve looked into as part of our evaluator investigations and chosen to rely on; as such, we don’t currently include GFI as one of our recommended programs but you can still donate to it via our donation platform.

Please note that GWWC does not evaluate individual charities. Our recommendations are based on the research of third-party, impact-focused charity evaluators our research team has found to be particularly well-suited to help donors do the most good per dollar, according to their recent evaluator investigations. Our other supported programs are those that align with our charitable purpose — they are working on a high-impact problem and take a reasonably promising approach (based on publicly-available information).

At Giving What We Can, we focus on the effectiveness of an organisation's work -- what the organisation is actually doing and whether their programs are making a big difference. Some others in the charity recommendation space focus instead on the ratio of admin costs to program spending, part of what we’ve termed the “overhead myth.” See why overhead isn’t the full story and learn more about our approach to charity evaluation.

We have varying degrees of information about the cost-effectiveness of our supported programs. We have more information about programs that impact-focused evaluators (some of which our research team expects to investigate soon as part of their evaluator investigations) have looked into, as well as programs that we’ve previously included on our list of recommended charities. We think it’s important to share the information we have with donors as we expect it will be useful in their donation decisions, but don’t want donors to mistakenly overweight the extent to which we share information about some charities and not others. Therefore, we want to clarify two things:

  • When we include information about an organisation’s cost-effectiveness, this may not be the only evidence that exists. It is simply the evidence the GWWC research team has at this time.
  • When we don’t include information about an organisation’s cost-effectiveness, this does not necessarily mean there is no such information. However, it does mean the GWWC research team isn’t privy to any more information at this time.