Spotlight on Pasture Biosciences
Pasture Biosciences is a biotechnology company developing next-generation veterinary vaccines that improve livestock productivity while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The company is building an AI-enabled RNA platform to target the microbiology of cattle in fundamentally new ways.
CEO Matt Zehnder brings a rare combination to biotech: a multi-generational family history in cattle ranching and veterinary medicine, a product design background, and a prior startup exit. Matt found himself with the freedom to choose his next problem, and he chose deliberately. Concerned about climate change and drawn to build something connected to his family’s legacy, he looked for a high-impact opportunity in the beef and dairy industry – and found one.
Archimedes’ line about a lever long enough to move the world comes to mind – not as flourish, but as a fair description of what Pasture Bio has built: a precise technical intervention, enabled by de-risked science and capabilities that didn’t exist in biotech a decade ago, applied at a critical point in a massive system with outsized downstream effects.
Pasture has built an RNA vaccine that uses multiplexing to target microbes in the rumen of cattle, leveraging AI-powered antigen identification and vaccine design. In a study conducted at Texas A&M, the approach demonstrated a 15% reduction in methane emissions – comparable at scale to taking most cars in America off the road – as well as a 7% improvement in feed efficiency, roughly doubling the net economic benefit per head versus leading feed additives today.
This is not a solution built in Silicon Valley for Silicon Valley. Beef and dairy represent a $1.5 trillion global industry, and 80% of Americans consume them daily. Ranchers operate on thin margins, where a bad drought year can mean an outright loss. Feed efficiency is directly tied to rancher livelihoods – and nearly everyone depends on this system in some way.
Matt’s story is compelling because it is a case study in choosing the right problem. He deliberately sought the place where his background, experience, and perspective would matter most. Working out of MBC BioLabs’ 135 Mississippi campus, a small but exceptional team of vaccine development experts has built a focused, capital-efficient program – developing a safe and effective vaccine with just $5 million in funding. Matt complements the team’s technical strength with an insider’s understanding of how ranchers make adoption decisions, the economics that shape them, and the trust required to succeed in an industry that is justifiably skeptical of outsiders.
Just as important as the science itself is the team behind it. Pasture’s progress is the result of a tightly integrated group of specialists across immunology, computational biology, RNA engineering, and veterinary science, all operating with unusually high alignment and speed. In a space where success depends on translating complex biology into deployable agricultural products, execution quality matters as much as innovation. The team’s ability to move from hypothesis to in vivo validation, while iterating across computational design and wet-lab results, is what turns a promising platform into a credible product pipeline.
It is also a story about consequence at scale. Pasture Bio sits at the intersection of a massive market, de-risked science enabled by cutting-edge technology, and a founder uniquely positioned to bridge modern biotech tools with American agriculture – creating a credible path to meaningful climate impact along the way.
We’re rooting for you, Pasture Bio.