Protein Signals - Week of November 9, 2026

Deep Dive - Circularity Fuels Closes $7 Million Seed Round to Scale Jet Fuel From Dairy Biogas

Circularity Fuels, a DCVC-incubated Redwood City startup, closed a $7 million seed round led by Trucks and DCVC, bringing total funding to about $17 million. It follows the six-month pilot at a Madera, California dairy covered here June 22, and funds an 18-month push to a daily demonstration plant and a 75-barrel-per-day commercial design. USDA advanced Circularity's Section 9003 loan-guarantee application to Phase 2, and the startup will begin licensing its Ouro reactor to partners. Adding reactor licensing to its plant plans makes the company's projection of capital costs near one-fifth of European jet-fuel plants under construction the number partners will diligence.

Alltech formed an alliance with ProGnosis Biotech, a Greek diagnostics maker founded in 2011, to run ProGnosis lateral flow strips and readers through Alltech's RAPIREAD mycotoxin risk-analysis platform. The initial phase targets Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and RAPIREAD today identifies six mycotoxins in grains, forages and select complete feeds. Alltech's RAPIREAD page already features a farm using Neogen's Raptor testing system, so adding ProGnosis positions Alltech's portal, not the test strip, as the record for mycotoxin results. That could make Alltech's portal the interpretation layer for results, with compatible kit makers supplying the hardware.

Nofence, the Norwegian virtual-fencing company, and EarthOptics, a Minneapolis soil-intelligence firm, will run on-ranch pilots through year-end 2026 pairing livestock collar data with soil data. The pilots span thousands of acres in Arkansas and Hawaii and may expand to Texas and Nebraska, and Nofence says it has sold more than 200,000 collars. The companies will test whether soil data can inform virtual boundaries and herd moves, and whether combined data improves forage forecasts and soil-carbon measurement for ecosystem programs. Pairing collar movement data with soil readings could move Nofence into measurement work for those programs, a revenue path containment alone does not open.

The Swine Health Information Center, a Checkoff-launched emerging-disease group, funded five more H5N1 Risk to Swine projects with the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research and the Pork Checkoff. FFAR's grant listing puts the five awards at $937,633, chosen from 42 proposals by 26 organizations in three countries after the first round funded 10 projects. The work covers surveillance, introduction and transmission risks, biosecurity, pork safety and production impact, gaps SHIC flagged after round one. SHIC expects to fold into the National Pork Board by year-end, which puts these contracts and future emerging-disease budget decisions with NPB staff.

Zoetis reported third-quarter revenue of $2,391 million, down 1%, as companion animal sales fell 5% and livestock sales rose 7% to $797 million, with cattle up 6%. Full-year adjusted net income guidance rose to $2,600 million to $2,640 million from $2,570 million to $2,620 million, still a 5% to 7% organic decline. Reported diluted EPS guidance slipped to $5.50 to $5.60, while expected significant items and deal-related costs rose to about $210 million. Zoetis tied an 8% drop in U.S. companion animal revenue to price sensitivity, dermatology competition and generics, with livestock and diagnostics only partly offsetting it.

The ten grants come from a $57 million, 40-state Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Program round that USDA began obligating once the congressional notification period ended. Nine awards run from $116,280 to $250,000 and mostly buy smokehouses, packaging and cold storage, with disclosed capacity gains of about 25 to 200 percent on differing measures. Plainview Beef Company of Peabody takes the remaining $2 million to renovate a newly acquired plant, including tallow rendering, collagen processing and wastewater treatment. That concentration means the round's effect on cattle-market competition rests largely on Plainview's ramp-up, a throughput figure USDA does not disclose.