New plant in Jefferson County will ‘brew’ egg whites by fermenting with fungus

A new type of brewery is coming to Jefferson County. But it won’t be producing beer; instead, it’ll be brewing eggs.

San Diego-based biotech firm Onego Bio uses fermentation of a fungus called Trichoderma reesei to produce the same protein found in egg whites. Now the firm has plans to construct its first plant on Jefferson County’s Food and Beverage Innovation Campus.

Onego Bio expects the 130,000-square-foot facility to produce egg protein at the same rate annually as 6 million egg-laying hens. And it has the potential to produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions and use less land and water than those hens.

But Onego Bio co-founder and chief technology officer Christopher Landowski says his company is not trying to replace chickens. Landowski, originally from Milwaukee, says Onego Bio’s egg white product will be sold to food manufacturers, not directly to consumers. And he hopes it will help make all eggs more affordable, especially during shortages.

“These days, when there’s avian flu or something [else] happening to the chickens, there are not enough eggs available. So we’re trying to buffer the supply of the egg that is needed for food manufacturing,” Landowski recently told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”

The Wisconsin Farmers Union acknowledged the potential economic benefits of Onego Bio’s facility, but a spokesperson said the group is concerned about misleading consumers about the origin of their food.

“Our members have long advocated that terms like ‘meat,’ ‘eggs’ and species-specific designations be reserved for products that come from animals raised and harvested on farms,” said communications director Tommy Enright. “Transparency and fair labeling are critical to maintaining trust in our food system and ensuring a level playing field for family farmers.”

Old methods create new products

Making a product using fermentation and fungus isn’t new — just think of brewing beer, when yeast fungus is fed sugar to ferment into alcohol.

Trichoderma reesei has been used in the same way for decades to create enzymes used in paper and textile manufacturing, as well as in laundry detergent.

According to Landowski, the fungus can also be genetically modified to create other animal-derived materials including milk, insulin, silk — and egg whites. 

To make the egg white protein, the fungus is introduced to corn sugar. Wisconsin’s readily available supply of corn is one reason why Onego Bio chose the state for its first facility. 

“We monitor it inside of the bioreactor and look at the amount of sugar we have to keep feeding it,” Landowski said. “We actually starve the fungus a little bit, in a nice way, so that it promotes more production of the product that we make.”

In exchange for the sugar, the fungus secretes ovalbumin, the main protein found in egg whites. The protein is extracted and dried into a powder that Onego Bio will sell to food manufacturers who use egg whites in their products — such as mayonnaise, pasta, baked goods or candy.

Later, the fungus can be repurposed in pet food or to make packaging or leather-like materials, Landowski said.

Wisconsin ‘has a very strong history of food manufacturing’

Although Landowski was born and raised in Wisconsin, locating the facility here wasn’t a given. He gave other midwestern states a look. But Wisconsin had a lot going for it.

“[Wisconsin] has a very strong history of food manufacturing. And that was very appealing, because there is lots of skilled labor who know about manufacturing food,” Landowski said. “[There are] also lots of skilled and educated people coming from the universities, especially [University of Wisconsin]-Madison.”

Onego Bio was also drawn by the Jefferson County Food and Beverage Innovation Campus, and business incentives in Wisconsin. 

“The state of Wisconsin is also very attractive from a tax point of view,” Landowski said. “They had a very good subsidies package, a very attractive plan for bringing businesses into that Jefferson site.”

Landowski said that, on a personal level, locating his company’s flagship facility in Wisconsin marked a big success for him.

“It sort of completed the circle for me — starting off in Madison studying biotechnology and now coming back to the state with a new business,” he said.

Onego Bio hopes to begin operations at their facility in Jefferson County by 2028.