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GREEN ISLAND -  Bacon is being made here, but this place is no pig pen.

In fact, MyForest Foods mushroom-bacon plant looks more like a computer clean room or data center than a traditional farm. 

There are rows of 16-foot-tall steel racks and near-sterile conditions that will hold large mats of mycelium which will, after harvesting and processing,  have the look, texture and flavor of bacon, even though they are made from mushroom roots.

A spinoff and affiliate of Ecovative, which has pioneered development of mycelium packaging and textiles,  MyForest has been developing a meat-like product since 2020.

Now, equipped with a new 80,000-square foot growing area and two massive silos, the company is poised to push production to the next level, with new “farms” in the offing which will increase capacity and, they hope, expand their market for this non-meat bacon alternative.

It’s the latest entry in a fast-growing field of meat alternatives which aims to serve vegetarians as well as those who worry about the environmental effects of factory livestock farming.

Earlier this month, MyForest executives and employees christened their new indoor farm expansion by giving visitors a glimpse of how mushrooms are turned into a vegetarian bacon-like product. When most people think of mushrooms, which are actually a fungus, they picture the round, bulbous fruit or tip of the plant structure. 

But supporting that fruit is a large mycelium root structure, usually underground or inside the wood of a tree.

Nutritious and edible, mycelium can grow with minimal water and input. 

Scientists and engineers at Ecovative have developed methods to efficiently grow mycelium which is then processed into fiber and they have licensed the process with partners around the globe. Now they are looking to harness mycelium for food that avoids the water pollution, high energy use and some would say, cruel, methods used in hog farming.

Ecovative was started in 2007 by Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre, who were students together at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.   They were in an Inventors Studio course taught by the late Burt Swersey, an entrepreneur who invented medical devices and became an RPI professor.

Eben, who is CEO of MyForest, credited Swersey with inspiring them to push ahead with a plan to harness mycelium and he was one of the early investors.

When expanding from packaging to food, creating a mycelium bacon was an easy choice said Bayer.

“Bacon is the one food that meat eaters say they can’t give up,” he said.

The growing rooms or foundries as they call them, are a far cry from what most people think of when they talk about farms. Part of the difference is owed to the apparent simplicity of they way they develop their mycelium.

It starts with piles of waste product, which are basically wood chips and mulch mixed together. That is the substrate or foundation upon which the mycelium feeds and grows. 

The substrate actually looks like large piles of brownies from a distance.

“Mycelium can actually eat almost anything,” said Hannah Johnson, an engineer at the facility. 

The mycelium are then added to the substrate and placed on the aforementioned shelves. The shelves look like the racks of computers that data centers or crypto miners use to hold their servers.

“This is where the magic happens,” said another engineer, Asa Snyder. “It’s just a pure mat of mushroom material.”

Once the mats are laid out, the rooms are kept in a moderate, humid environment where the mycelium bacon product develops from the mulch and wood chips. It sounds simple, but some of the processes are patented and the company restricted photos on the tour, for fear of giving up secrets.

And under a microscope, one would see complex intertwining  hyphae, analogous to cells, that comprise the structure of mushrooms.

“Mycelium is a biological marvel,” said Peter Mueller, Ecovative’s chief technology officer. “They will self-assemble into a predictable complex product.”

Once developed, the farmers  add liquid smoke (for that bacon smell), flavoring such as salt, beet juice and coconut oil.  What results are massive slabs of MyBacon, which is the product name of the food.

MyBacon requires far less water, land and other resources than what a traditional hog farm needs, noted Adam Heinze, director of operations.

The slabs are sliced and dried at what was Chester’s Smokehouse in Albany but will next year be processed in a new facility in Saratoga County.

The new facilities should produce about 1 million pounds of MyBacon annually, from 3 million pounds of raw mycelium.

MyBacon costs about $7.99 for a 6 ounce package, which is pricey but not outlandish, with some premium bacons going for almost $10 a pound (16 ounces).

For now, MyBacon is sold in specialty stores like the Honest Weight food co-op in Albany and they have expanded to the Berkshire Food Co-op and Cornucopia Natural Wellness stores in Great Barrington and Northampton, Mass. respectively.

Eventually, they want to expand with a food truck and start distributing toward the New York City market.

To be sure, mycelium and other non-meat bacon products remain a small part of the overall pork market.

According to the National Pork Producers Council, an industry trade group, $28 billion worth of hogs were sold by farmers in 2021. Bacon sales are a $35 billion industry.

And the scale of industrial hog farming appears to be borne out by statistics: 73 percent of U.S. hog farms have 5,000 or more animals.

The market for bacon is equally large. Census data shows that 268 million Americans consumed at least some bacon in 2020, with over 16 million consuming five pounds or more.

MyForest Foods is projected to serve MyBacon to more than one million consumers by 2024.

Bayer, who grew up on a Vermont Farm, said he believes the issues of climate change and the resources required by traditional animal farming, will only increase demand for products like MyBacon,

“This isn’t a one-off,” said Heinze.

“From the perspective of our scientists, we are still at the beginning of this journey,” added Mueller.

Rick Karlin covers the environment and energy development for the Times Union. Has previously covered education and state government and wrote about natural resources and state government in Colorado and Maine. You can reach him at  rkarlin@timesunion.com or  518-454-5758.