Arturo Elizondo, The EVERY Company

Unlike lab-grown animal products that incorporate cellular agriculture, the EVERY Egg — aka the world's first liquid egg "made without the hen" — was created via precision fermentation, "a process reminiscent of time-honored brewing traditions," EVERY Co-Founder and CEO Arturo Elizondo exclusively tells Green Matters via email.

The brewers follow a chicken's "protein recipe" via a DNA sequence library.

Though the chicken definitely came first, the EVERY Company doesn't require her services, and that's makes for a better planet.

According to Animal Equality, each hen's egg eaten is responsible for a half a pound of greenhouse gases. Additionally, in the U.S., 72 percent of hens are crammed into battery cages and about 250 million male chicks are killed annually, as they're deemed useless by the industry.

To learn more about EVERY Egg, we spoke with the company's leader Arturo Elizondo, who is also a 2020 Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and the National Hispanic Institute's 2019 Person of the Year. In an e-interview with Green Matters, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur discussed precision fermentation, our broken food system, and collaborating with Chef Daniel Humm.

Elizondo once said: “For nine years, my dream has been to build a food system humanity can be proud of."

From concept to commercialization, Elizondo has done just that with the EVERY Company, introducing the world to "powerful proteins designed for the future of every human, every animal, everywhere," as per the brand's website.

"Growing up in Laredo, Texas, I saw the massive disparity in food quality and access between myself and children who looked just like me but who happened to live on the other side of the U.S.-Mexico border," Elizondo tells Green Matters. "I envisioned a world where we can produce the same or even better products as those from animals, but in a much more efficient, equitable, and sustainable manner."

The Harvard grad threw us some unsettling food system impact facts: "Animal protein production is already the No. 1 cause of deforestation on Earth. It is the No. 1 cause of extinction. And it is the No. 1 user of the world’s arable land. Meanwhile, demand continues to grow year over year."

According to a report by the USDA, the average American consumed a whopping 279 eggs in 2022.

"Globally, about a third of greenhouse gas emissions are linked to our food system. ... We would have to use every acre of habitable land on Earth AND colonize a second Earth in order for everyone in the world to adopt the average American diet. But why shouldn’t developing nations have access to the same high-quality animal proteins that we in America enjoy?" Elizondo questioned.

With the launch of EVERY Egg, "that vision is becoming a reality."

"We’re able to achieve this milestone while using only a tiny fraction of the land and water necessary to produce a conventional chicken egg," he proclaims.

Using a combination of ingredients, "including the ovalbumin egg white protein that EVERY makes using yeast instead of chickens" and plant-based elements, Elizondo explains, EVERY developed a groundbreaking product. "The hero ingredient for our EVERY Egg is our EVERY EggWhite proteins," which are FDA-approved, he says.

EVERY relays that precision fermentation separates "proteins from the animals that make them."

"We combine a special yeast — originally found on a California black oak tree in the 1950s — with sugar and water in a fermentation vessel," Elizondo shares. "Our yeast brews egg protein. We then separate our yeast, leaving us with a clarified broth teeming with real egg proteins."

Beer enthusiasts surely understand, as the beverage is made with a similar process.

The EVERY Egg website boasts that its product has a “similar taste, nutritional profile, and performance to eggs from hens.”

Elizondo stands by this claim.

"EVERY Egg delivers the craveable taste and texture of a whole egg but with the health profile of an egg white: All the essential amino acids required for good nutrition, but no cholesterol and no saturated fat," he shares.

In December 2023, EVERY Egg debuted during a multi-course dinner at culinary legend Chef Daniel Humm’s world-famous three-star Michelin restaurant in NYC, Eleven Madison Park.

Elizondo tells us Chef Humm and his team found the EVERY Egg to be "'all but indistinguishable' from hen eggs."

Elizondo believes EVERY Egg "opens the door to a future where delicious, nutritious eggs are finally possible without the production variability, disease risk, and high environmental impact of animal agriculture."

We can't help it — that sounds eggcellent.