Alison Stille: Walding Foods
Developing sustainable meat alternatives based on tree mushrooms
Alison is the Co-Founder and CEO of Walding Foods. The half-Irish entrepreneur and communication-enthusiast obtained a master’s degree in Biotechnology at Imperial College London in 2015, followed by another master’s in Management and Innovation at the Technical University of Munich. When she and her friends came across the bright-yellow and huge Chicken of the Woods mushroom by chance in 2016, she saw the perfect opportunity for an innovative, new type of meat alternative.
Walding Foods are the first team to cultivate the tree mushroom chicken of the woods using only byproducts from agriculture and forestry. Mushroom farms have a smaller environmental impact than almost any other farms, using less water, less energy, and releasing the lowest CO2 emissions of any other US crop. Mushroom farming also requires much less land than other types of agriculture.
By conserving space, the need for deforestation - a major problem within the agriculture industry - is reduced. A study conducted by The Mushroom Council showed that growing mushrooms also generates far less carbon dioxide (CO2) than other types of vegetables.
