Tiffany Chartier – Senior Production Editor
The Egg Without A Chicken: What Shoppers Need To Know | Image by DX
A protein made from yeast rather than chickens is entering mainstream packaged food products, raising questions about what consumers are actually buying and what federal (and, where applicable, state) labeling laws require companies to disclose.
The EVERY Company says its OvoPro egg-white protein is now being used in products sold through Walmart and Target. The company says annual orders secured during the first four months of 2026 were equivalent to 550% of its total order volume for all of 2025.
OvoPro Is Real Protein — But It Is Not A Chicken Egg
OvoPro is produced through precision fermentation, a process in which microorganisms are programmed to produce a particular protein.
In this case, the microorganism is Komagataella phaffii, a yeast. The resulting protein is intended to function as egg-white protein in food products, but no chicken is required to produce it.
The FDA has reviewed the ingredient through its Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) notification process. In GRAS Notice 1104, the FDA said it had “no questions” regarding the company’s conclusion that egg-white protein produced by K. phaffii was GRAS for its intended uses.
The FDA notice describes the ingredient as a substitute for hen egg-white protein and whole eggs.
OvoPro also should not be confused with cultivated meat. Cultivated meat is produced by growing animal cells. Precision fermentation instead uses microorganisms to produce a particular protein.
Is OvoPro Already on Walmart and Target Shelves?
Yes — as an ingredient in finished packaged foods.
EVERY said in June that OvoPro had secured national retail placement in Walmart and Target, alongside demand through e-commerce and foodservice channels. The company announced a partnership expansion with Huvepharma (via subsidiary Biovet AD) intended to quadruple its production capacity.
OvoPro is a B2B ingredient used by food manufacturers. Consumers are therefore more likely to encounter it in a packaged food than in a carton of shell eggs.
(A B2B ingredient is raw material sold by one business to other businesses like food manufacturers for use inside their finished products, rather than sold directly to shoppers.)
How Can Consumers Tell What They Are Buying?
The answer is the ingredient label.
Federal FDA rules require packaged foods containing multiple ingredients to identify ingredients by their common or usual names. FDA guidance specifically identifies failure to provide a complete ingredient list or failure to use an ingredient’s common or usual name as labeling violations.
Food labeling also cannot be false or misleading.
That means a food manufacturer cannot simply purchase an ingredient from a third-party supplier and use the supplier relationship as a reason to omit a required ingredient from the finished product’s ingredient statement.
The more complicated question is what name must appear on the label.
EVERY has said it recommends identifying its product as “animal-free egg white protein” or “egg white protein from yeast,” but the final label is determined by the company selling the finished food.