Beyond Investing

28/10/2026

Beyond Investing CEO Claire Smith joined the Alternative Investing Advantage podcast hosted by Advanta IRA to explain what it actually takes to build a vegan investment platform and why the exclusionary approach produces a better portfolio than most people expect. 🌱

The conversation covers the full picture: how the US Vegan Climate ETF (VEGN) and International Vegan Climate ETF (VEGX) screen out animal exploitation across entire supply chains, why about half the stock market fails that screen, and how divestment creates real financial pressure on excluded companies over time.

There's also the Apple story – sold out of the US Vegan Climate ETF (VEGN) portfolio over leather watch bands, bought back in once Apple removed leather entirely. And a fascinating look at the venture capital side through Beyond Impact, backing companies replacing animal inputs in nutrition, ingredients, pharmaceuticals, and materials — from cultivated meat to precision fermentation to alternative leather made from Italian fruit waste.

One standout point: the biotech alternatives Beyond Impact backs use up to 90% less carbon, water, and waste compared to traditional animal production. The ethics and economics point in the same direction.

🎙️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eidKPvvMfbA

Please see veganetf.com and veganclimateetf.com for important disclosures and standardized performance information. Holdings subject to change.

Impact investing lets investors put their capital behind their valu...

27/10/2026

What is the true cost of livestock production?

A new analysis from Zero Carbon Analytics estimates that greenhouse gas emissions from global livestock production could impose a financial burden of up to $2.1 trillion every year when valued using a carbon price aligned with a 1.5°C climate pathway.

Livestock production currently accounts for around 12.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet much of the resulting climate cost is not reflected in the price of meat, dairy or eggs. Instead, those costs are absorbed more broadly through impacts such as extreme weather, healthcare pressures, food price volatility and infrastructure damage.

The analysis also finds that 68% of the estimated emissions-related burden comes from meat production, with cattle responsible for a significant share.

And this only captures greenhouse gas emissions. Wider impacts associated with livestock production, including biodiversity loss, land-use change, water pollution and antimicrobial resistance, sit outside this estimate.

For us at Beyond Impact, this reinforces the importance of investing in technologies that can decouple food and ingredient production from resource-intensive animal agriculture.

Plant-based foods, precision fermentation, cellular agriculture and other bio-based technologies offer an opportunity to build systems where environmental costs are reduced at source rather than externalised to society.

📖 Read the full analysis here: https://zerocarbon-analytics.org/nature/food-and-farming/global-livestock-emissions-costs-as-high-as-usd-2-1-trillion/

26/10/2026

What is my money actually funding? 🤔

It's a question most investors never ask, but Beyond Investing CEO Claire Smith has spent her career making sure they can answer it. She joined the Black Men Sundays Podcast to break down ETFs from zero, explain active vs passive investing, and make the case that building wealth and investing according to your values are not mutually exclusive.

Some highlights from the conversation:

On why vegan doesn't mean tofu companies: The US Vegan Climate ETF (VEGN) holds Apple, NVIDIA, Alphabet, Micron Technology, Mastercard and more – vegan means screening out harm to animals across every business model, not investing only in vegan products.

On transparency: index-tracking ETFs are required by law to publish their complete holdings every single day.

On where to start: "The only free lunch is diversification." The US Vegan Climate ETF (VEGN) starts at $76 per share and International Vegan Climate ETF (VEGX) at $25 – both accessible entry points for investors at any level.

And when asked what she'd do with just $100 to start over: "One share of each."

🎙️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnKZdQBokl0

Please see veganetf.com and veganclimateetf.com for important disclosures, standardized performance information, and current holdings information. Holdings subject to change.

What is your money actually funding?Claire Smith, CEO of Beyond In...

22/10/2026

What if we could produce the same proteins, fats and ingredients we rely on today, without the animal?

That is the opportunity behind precision fermentation.

Using microorganisms such as yeast, bacteria and fungi as microscopic factories, precision fermentation can produce targeted ingredients including dairy and egg proteins, collagen, fats and enzymes.

The technology itself isn’t new. It has already transformed areas such as medicine, food processing and nutrition. Now, innovators are applying the same principles to rethink how some of our most resource-intensive ingredients are produced.

The potential is significant:

🌱 Up to 99% less land use
💧 Around 90% less water
🌍 90–99% fewer emissions
🔬 Applications extending beyond food into pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, materials and industrial enzymes

And as production scales and costs fall, the economic case becomes increasingly compelling too.

This is just one of the technologies explored in Beyond Impact’s white paper, Ingredients for a Sustainable Future, looking at the innovations reshaping how we produce the ingredients and materials society depends on.

👉 Read the full paper to explore the opportunity: https://beyondimpact.hubspotpagebuilder.com/-ingredients-for-a-sustainable-future

22/10/2026

"What gets financed gets done." 🌱

Beyond Investing CEO Claire Smith joined the Women's Money Wisdom Podcast to talk about why she left a decades-long career in finance to build a vegan and climate-conscious investment platform – and why the two things most people think are in conflict, values and returns, don't have to be.
Some highlights from the conversation:

On performance: the US Vegan Climate ETF (VEGN) launched at $25 in September 2019 and has run at approximately 2% annualized above the S&P 500, net of all fees, through to August 2026.

On Apple: Beyond Investing removed Apple from the US Vegan Climate ETF (VEGN) portfolio when leather watch straps became a growing concern and told Apple exactly why. Once Apple removed leather from their wearables, Apple went back into the portfolio.

On broken business models: 94% of drugs proven to work in animals don't work in humans. Animal testing is not just an ethical issue, it's an inaccurate testing methodology that the pharmaceutical industry should be addressing.
On the feminist angle: a disproportionate number of exploited animals are females kept in systems of repeated reproduction to produce eggs and milk, their male offspring killed almost immediately. As Claire puts it: "It's The Handmaid's Tale, but within the animal world."

On withdrawing capital: when you move from a standard index fund into the US Vegan Climate ETF (VEGN) or International Vegan Climate ETF (VEGX), you are selling the excluded stocks and buying the included ones. That selling pressure matters. It makes life harder for the companies we exclude.

🎙️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGn9vUAvgAM

Please see veganetf.com and veganclimateetf.com for important disclosures, standardized performance information, and current holdings information. Holdings subject to change.

Melissa Joy, CFP®, sits down with Claire Smith, CEO of Beyond Inves...

21/10/2026

Alternative protein funding in Europe is rising, but the way the sector is financed is changing.

New analysis from GFI Europe shows investment in European plant-based, cultivated and fermentation companies increased 56% in the first half of 2026 compared with the same period last year.

At the same time, the number of deals fell sharply, meaning capital is becoming more concentrated in fewer companies and investors are becoming increasingly selective.

One of the clearest trends is the strength of fermentation, where companies raised more in the first six months of 2026 than across the whole of 2025.

Another important shift is the growing role of blended finance.

Grants, loans and equity are increasingly being combined to help companies bridge the gap between innovation and industrial scale. For sectors such as precision fermentation, cultivated meat and plant-based manufacturing, this is becoming critical as companies move beyond R&D into infrastructure-heavy commercialisation.

At Beyond Impact, we believe this is exactly the kind of evolution the sector needs.

Breakthrough science alone is not enough. Scaling the bioeconomy will require patient capital, public-private collaboration, shared infrastructure and financing models that match the realities of industrial deployment.

The capital is still there. It is simply becoming more disciplined, more strategic and more focused on commercial readiness.

Credit: The Good Food Institute Europe

20/10/2026

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." – Albert Einstein 🌱

Beyond Investing Founder and CEO Claire Smith joined the Inspired to Invest Podcast for a wide-ranging conversation about what it took to launch the world's first vegan investment platform, why resilience has been the biggest lesson of her career, and where animal-free products are headed in the next decade.

On ESG fund compromises: "For most large asset managers creating so-called ESG products, they are very uncomfortable removing quite so much of the market. They call it best in class. I call it least worst. And we just refuse to do that."

On the shift ahead: "In the food space, we will see a similar shift to what we've seen in electric vehicles over the next 10 years. And nobody necessarily saw that happening at that speed."

Claire also discusses the launch of the International Vegan Climate ETF (VEGX), the venture capital side of Beyond Investing, and why aligning your investments with your values is more accessible than most people think.

🎙️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz5gjnfwvlk

Please see veganetf.com and veganclimateetf.com for important disclosures and standardized performance information.

Can you build wealth while investing in a better future without sac...

16/10/2026

Most ESG funds still invest in harmful industries; they just pick the ones doing slightly less damage. Beyond Investing takes a different approach entirely.

CEO Claire Smith sat down with Asset TV to explain the philosophy behind the US and Europe Vegan Climate Indexes and the launch of the International Vegan Climate ETF (VEGX) – and why genuinely vegan investing means being completely exclusionary, not just selective. The same way a vegan reads every ingredient on a label and puts the product back if anything animal-based is in it, Beyond Investing looks through the entire business model and supply chain of every company in the index.

Some standout points from the conversation:

The indexes remove around 75-80% of Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions from the portfolio. On water usage and waste, they get to less than 10% of the market benchmark – removing 90-95% of freshwater usage and waste production compared to the broader market.

On why standard ESG isn't enough: "We find some of these ESG funds rather lukewarm in their approach. They seem to be applying a least worst type of analysis. If you're a vegan walking up and down the supermarket aisle and you see anything with animal content in it, you put it back on the shelf. We needed to be completely exclusionary."

On diversification: the US Vegan Climate ETF (VEGN) and the International Vegan Climate ETF (VEGX) are only about 42% correlated – meaning combining the two gives investors genuine diversification across US and international markets while staying fully aligned with vegan and climate-conscious principles.

Watch the interview here: https://www.assettv.com/video/beyond-investing

Please see veganclimateetf.com and veganetf.com for important disclosures and standardized performance information.

Claire Smith discusses the development of the Beyond Investing Vegan Climate Indexes, the successful first 7 years of the US Vegan Clinate ETF and the launch of the International Vegan Climate ETF. Speakers: Claire Smith (Beyond Investing).

15/10/2026

Northern Europe does not just import feed. It imports risk.

At the centre of Northern Europe’s food system lies a network of dependencies that extends far beyond the region’s borders.

Animal agriculture relies heavily on globally traded feed, fertilisers, energy and specialised inputs. Europe’s soy dependency is a particularly striking example: despite growth in domestic production, around 91% of its soy supply remains imported.

That dependence creates exposure to much more than commodity prices.

Changes in trade policy, extreme weather in exporting regions, energy volatility, geopolitical tensions and logistical disruption can all cascade through the system - affecting feed availability, production costs and ultimately food prices.

In our new white paper, Resilient Food Systems for Northern Europe: From Agricultural Dependence to Bio-Based Sovereignty, we examine these structural dependencies and ask what a more resilient, regionally secure model of food production could look like.

This is one of the challenges at the heart of the paper. The next question is how we begin to address it.

👉 Download the full white paper to explore the complete thesis: https://beyondimpact.hubspotpagebuilder.com/resilient-food-northern-europe

14/10/2026

Beyond Investing was proud to sponsor the launch of "Farm Sanctuary: The Story of a Movement" – a new book by Farm Sanctuary Co-Founder and President Gene Baur, celebrating 40 years of rescue, education, and advocacy for farm animals. 🌱

The event took place September 29 at Project Farmhouse in New York City, bringing together the animal advocacy community to mark four decades of work that helped pass the first U.S. laws protecting farm animals and inspire a global movement.

Farm Sanctuary's mission to end factory farming and build a kinder food system aligns deeply with the values behind the US and Europe Vegan Climate Indexes and the US Vegan Climate ETF (VEGN) and International Vegan Climate ETF (VEGX). Your investments can reflect those same values.

Congratulations to Gene Baur and the entire Farm Sanctuary team. 🐄

Order the book at https://www.farmsanctuary.org/farm-sanctuary-the-story-of-a-movement/

Please see veganetf.com and veganclimateetf.com for important disclosures and standardized performance information.