You may think that some of the technologies that we take for granted today were destined for success from the day they were invented. Can you imagine getting a life-threatening bacterial infection only to find out that although antibiotics were invented long ago, you cannot access them because nobody cared to invest in producing them at scale? Can you imagine not being able to hop on a flight to visit your aging grandparents because even though airplanes exist, companies and governments didn’t see their potential for widespread adoption?

Sometimes, so-called “obvious” technological innovations require drastic measures in order to find their footing in the world.

In 1903, an editorial in the New York Times titled "Flying Machines Which Do Not Fly" predicted that it would take 1 to 10 million years for humanity to develop an operating flying machine. However on December 17, 1903, two bicycle mechanics named Orville and Wilbur Wright achieved the first powered, controlled, and sustained heavier-than-air flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Although the flight was a success, aviation technology remained short-ranged and unreliable. Leading scientists dismissed it and major newspapers were skeptical. In 1906, the New York Herald wrote that the brothers were “either fliers or liars.” Even military leaders did not grasp the potential of airplanes, and French Marshal Ferdinand Foch is widely quoted as declaring in 1911 that airplanes were "interesting toys but of no military value." Then came the First World War.

First deployed by the Royal Flying Corps of the British Army in 1914, aircraft used for surveillance of the enemy became increasingly common across the German, French, and British armies. This international arms race led to the development of over 50 different aircraft designs and over 200,000 total deployed during World War I. Engines, airframes, and design advanced under the intense pressure of combat. This wartime laboratory created the technological and industrial foundation for commercial aviation as we know it today. Today, air travel is so thoroughly embedded in global life that a world without it is hard to imagine.

Left: “Flying Machines Which Do Not Fly”, New York Times, October 9, 1903.

Right: Wright, Wilbur, and Orville Wright, photographer. Crumpled glider wrecked by the wind on Hill of the Wreck named after a shipwreck. [Oct. 10, 1900] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2001696439/>.

You may recognize the name Alexander Fleming. He is the Scottish physician and microbiologist who is credited for first discovering the antimicrobial properties of the mold Penicillium rubens in 1928. He named the active compound “penicillin.” Although its incredible properties were understood from the moment Fleming published his scientific article in 1929, by the end of 1942, more than a decade after its discovery, the United States did not have enough penicillin to treat even one patient. Purification was extremely difficult, yields were tiny, and pharmaceutical companies showed limited commercial interest. Many viewed it as impractical for real-world medicine.

Then came World War II. Infected wounds were a major cause of disability and death among the Allied soldiers, and the U.S. government responded by coordinating a group of academic, industrial and government scientists to rapidly scale up the production of penicillin for the troops. By the second half of 1943, the U.S. had enough stock of penicillin to supply the entire Allied Armed Forces. In 1944, Alexander Fleming was knighted for his scientific achievements, and medicine without penicillin is almost unfathomable today.

In the case of both aviation and penicillin, technical feasibility existed before the crises. What the crises supplied was urgency, a concentration of resources, and a willingness to overcome earlier inertia and skepticism. The result? Technologies that moved from the margins to the mainstream.

This historical pattern offers a useful lens for viewing the alternative protein sector, although it is not a proven trajectory. Alternative proteins refer to plant-based, fermentation-derived, and cultivated alternatives to meat, fish, eggs, and dairy. Although the future scale of alternative proteins is not guaranteed, what recent events do show is that supply chain shocks in conventional animal agriculture can rapidly increase the trial, visibility, and demand for alternatives that already exist but have not yet secured their spot in the mainstream.

The first major modern evidence of alternative proteins getting a boost from a crisis came during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Meatpacking plants became hotspots for the virus, leading to temporary closures, reduced slaughter capacity, and a mixture of shortages and price increases of conventional meat in a number of grocery stores in the USA and Europe. Retail sales of plant-based meat skyrocketed to meet the demand for protein. By mid-March 2020, refrigerated plant-based meat sales grew more than 240% year-over-year in some categories, and overall plant-based meat sales roughly doubled. In response, companies accelerated retail expansion to meet the surge in demand. The category maintained its gains until about 2022, when a combination of factors, including inflation and a growing concern about ultra-processed food, slowly started chipping away at sales.

Credit: New Age Meats

A second more recent example emerged with the highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreaks which began in the United States in early 2022 and have continued in waves. In 2022 alone, more than 40 million egg-laying hens were slaughtered. Egg supply tightened, and egg prices reached record highs. Plant-based egg alternatives, led by products such as Just Egg, saw clear demand increases. Sales velocity rose and household penetration expanded. In later waves of the flu, plant-based egg companies reported sales several times higher than comparable prior-year periods, with a large share of new buyers not identifying as either vegan or vegetarian. For example, Just Food Company’s first liquid plant-based egg was put on retail shelves in 2018. Sales grew slowly but steadily until 2025, when a wave of avian flu led to Just Eggs reaching price parity with conventional chicken eggs for the first time, and sales growing five times faster than the same period the previous year. According to Just CEO Josh Tetrick, large industrial egg users and even the US military, tired of volatile egg prices, reached out to him during this period to express interest in Just’s plant-based eggs.

It is not guaranteed that alternative proteins are destined to reach huge scales and replace conventional animal products. However, these examples demonstrate how disruptions to conventional supply chains, whether caused by disease or logistical failures, can rapidly accelerate interest in existing products such as plant-based meat or eggs. Today's overlapping geopolitical and economic instability may be creating conditions for this pattern to repeat itself with alternative proteins. The ongoing conflict involving the United States and Iran has disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical route for fertilizers and agricultural inputs. Fertilizers such as urea, ammonia, and sulfur have faced supply constraints and price increases. At the same time, the Russia-Ukraine war is impeding grain exports of wheat and corn, raising prices of these staples which are commonly used in animal feed, and forcing importers across the globe to seek alternatives.

Livestock production systems depend on these inputs and therefore are poised to become more volatile and vulnerable to disruption. In such an environment, protein production methods that require fewer intermediate steps, less fertilizer, and that are less vulnerable to disease gain strategic value. Alternative proteins typically use significantly less land, water, and fertilizers to produce the same amount of calories and protein as conventional animal products. And, of course, the risk of avian and mammalian diseases are eliminated completely.

Whether plant-based, fermented, and cultivated proteins will exactly follow the trajectory of penicillin or early aviation (that is, moving from promising but limited technologies to something society cannot imagine living without) is still an open question.These historical cases required sustained investment, maturation of supporting industries, and institutional commitment after the initial crisis. Alternative proteins will also need continued improvements in taste, cost, and scale, as well as policy and market support in a society that values resilience as a priority rather than an afterthought. For better or worse, today's global instability may be setting the stage for alternative proteins to shine sooner than anyone expected.

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