Israel’s Believer Meats has received official clearance from the USDA to produce and sell its cultivated chicken in the country, becoming the first non-US startup to reach the milestone.
Months after receiving a ‘no questions’ letter from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Believer Meats has now completed the regulatory path for its cultivated chicken with approval from the Department of Agriculture (USDA).
The firm has received the latter’s green light for its product label and factory in North Carolina, which was completed earlier this year and is the world’s largest cultivated meat facility.
In a post on LinkedIn, CEO Gustavo Burger called it “a major milestone that authorises us to begin commercial production and sales of our cultivated chicken products in the US and export to international markets”.
Formerly called Future Meat Technologies, Believer Meats is the third startup to be cleared to sell cultivated meat in the US this year, following the regulatory success of Wildtype and Mission Barns. It’s also the first overseas company to accomplish the feat in the country.
Burger did not respond to Green Queen’s queries about Believer Meats’s launch plans.
How Believer Meats produces its cultivated chicken
Founded in 2018 by Yaakov Nahmias, a biomedical engineering professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Believer Meats employs centrifuge-based perfusion and a cell media rejuvenation process to produce its cultivated meat.
The startup uses spontaneously immortalised fibroblast cells from fertilised eggs of domestic chickens. The cell lines are adapted to grow in suspension culture and serum-free media, and are stored in cell banks. These cells are then seeded into bioreactors and expanded until a sufficient volume of cultured chicken mass is produced.
The cells are filtered out from the media and washed in a sodium chloride solution. The harvested material is described as cultured chicken fibroblasts, which are similar in composition and nutritional characteristics to conventional chicken.
Last year, it demonstrated how tangential flow filtration (TFF), an efficient way to separate and purify biomolecules, can be an effective method for the continuous manufacturing of cultivated meat. It also introduced an animal-free culture medium that cost just $0.63 per litre, further allowing the startup to lower production costs.
Inspired by how Ford’s automated assembly line transformed the auto industry in the early 20th century, its new bioreactor assembly method allowed biomass expansion of 130 billion cells per litre, with a yield of 43% weight per volume. This process of cultivating the chicken cells was carried out continuously for over 20 days, leading to daily harvests of the biomass.
Believer Meats’s technology can optimise cell performance and save water, nutrients, and resources, allowing it to reduce production costs by eliminating byproducts and enabling the reuse of media. The resulting cultivated mass can be mixed with plant-based ingredients to be extruded into finished food products, like chicken breast.
The company claims its tech breakthroughs can bring the cost of cultivated chicken down to $6.20 per lb on a 50,000-litre scale, in line with the retail price of conventional USDA organic chicken.
Despite the bans, five companies can now sell cultivated meat in the US
Fuelled by a $123M investment, Believer Meats’s 200,000 sq ft plant is located in Wilson County, North Carolina. It features an innovation centre and tasting kitchen, and will be able to churn out 12,000 tonnes of cultivated chicken every year.
“We are the first and only large-scale cultivated meat facility to have earned this approval from USDA. This achievement is a testament to the dedication, innovation, and integrity of our entire team,” said Burger.
In the US, cultivated protein products (excluding seafood) are jointly regulated by the FDA and the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). The former oversees cell collection, cell banks, and cell growth and differentiation, before handing over to the latter during the harvesting stage. FSIS also inspects the further production and labelling of these products.
“With both FDA and USDA regulatory milestones behind us, we are one step closer to bringing cultivated meat to consumers around the world and to advancing our vision to lead food innovations that care for the planet,” noted Burger.
Believer Meats is the fifth company to be allowed to sell cultivated meat in the US, joining Upside Foods, Eat Just (both approved for chicken), Wildtype (salmon), and Mission Barns (pork).
The cultivated meat industry may have struggled to attract investors lately and had to contend with bans in seven US states, but on a regulatory front, it has been a watershed year. Globally, eight startups have received some form of approval for their products in 2025.
Vow has been selling its cultured quail products in Australia after securing the green light in June. And this week, Parima announced it had earned the go-ahead from the Singapore Food Agency for its Vital Meat chicken.
Also in Singapore, Friends & Family Pet Food Co got the nod for its cat and dog treats. And in the EU, Biocraft Pet Nutrition and Umami Bioworks registered their cultivated meat innovations as feed materials, which can now be sold as pet food ingredients.
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