In a potentially big win for cultivated meat and precision fermentation, the EU is set to publish a document outlining its push to overhaul and fast-track novel food approval.
Novel food approval could receive a boost under a new legislation proposed by the European Commission, helping the region catch up with regulators in the US and Asia.
The executive arm of the EU is set to unveil a draft of its Life Sciences Strategy on Wednesday (July 2), which will contain details of how the upcoming Biotech Act will seek to modernise the bloc’s novel food regulation, as reported by Euractiv.
“The Commission will propose a Biotech Act to make the EU regulatory system more conducive to biotech innovation in various sectors such as health and food; and will facilitate and accelerate the approval procedures for Novel Foods,” the document reads.
It would prove a major win for stakeholders in the alternative protein and future food industry, who have long called for an overhaul of the EU’s novel food framework.
EU pinpoints precision fermentation amid need for public education
Courtesy: Formo
Current EU law considers any food that wasn’t consumed to a significant degree before May 1997 a novel ingredient. This includes everything from cultivated beef and precision-fermented dairy to UV-treated vegetables and certain algae-based foods.
It has already approved over 200 novel food products, and many others are waiting in the wings for the go-ahead.
The Biotech Act was first announced by Margrethe Vestager, executive VP of the EU Commission, last year, with its final publication slated for 2026. Its aim is to drive economic development via high-value job creation and greater investment, ultimately enhancing the region’s global competitiveness.
Moreover, the EU hopes to meet its environmental goals and boost food security by promoting sustainable agriculture and developing bio-based products through the act. In a briefing released last month, the European Parliamentary Research Service explained how public acceptance of novel foods and GMOs remains a “major challenge” that can “polarise opinion”.
“Effective communication with the public could emphasise that biotechnology is already integrated in daily life, with many products relying on biotech processes or components, and to already very good results – not only in healthcare, but also in areas such as soil protection, energy, fertilisers, and combating water pollution, etc.,” it said.
The current regulatory process to approve novel foods, run by the European Food Safety Authority, is too stringent and long, “hindering uptake and competitiveness” in the sector, the EU Commission argues in the draft.
One of the technologies name-checked as having transformative potential for the food industry is precision fermentation, which combines traditional fermentation with the latest biotech advances to produce proteins, fats and other compounds. It enables companies to create bioidentical dairy, egg and other proteins, sans the animal.
The EU Commission is planning the launch of an annual Food Fermentation Conference, which would connect industry stakeholders and bolster support for this technology.
Cultivated meat and Impossible Foods’ struggles reflect the complicated EU novel food landscape
Courtesy: Sherry Hack
The EU’s regulatory framework for novel foods is amongst the world’s most rigorous, with the complexity and timelines driving many homegrown companies to look to other markets first. For example, Dutch cultivated pork startup Meatable is targeting Singapore as its debut market, as is France’s Vital Meat. Meanwhile, precision fermentation firms Vivici, Onego Bio and 21st.Bio have all focused on the US.
Despite changes by the EFSA hinting at a shift towards an easier pathway to file for approval, the current deadlock has come to the benefit of non-EU countries in Europe. The UK began shifting away from its pre-Brexit regulations last year and is now working with several companies to fast-track approval – it has already received applications from European startups Vital Meat, Mosa Meat, and Gourmey.
In addition, the latter two startups have filed dossiers in Switzerland (and are the only ones to have applied for EU approval too). Even companies from outside Europe, like Aleph Farms, have targeted the UK and Switzerland first.
It’s not just new products untested in the market – even established ones that have found success elsewhere have struggled to get into the EU. Impossible Foods is a prime example here. While the company sells plant-based meat in the US, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand, its use of soy leghemoglobin – a precision-fermented heme protein – has kept its signature alt beef lineup out of Europe for almost a decade.
The company first filed for approval of the ingredient in March 2021. Last year, the EFSA Panel on Food Additives and Flavourings issued a positive safety assessment of LegH Prep, a liquid preparation containing soy leghemoglobin and other ingredients.
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
This was followed by a ruling by the regulator’s GMO panel, calling soy leghemoglobin “safe for human consumption with regard to the effects of the genetic modification”. The EFSA’s opinion was then followed by a period of public consultation ahead of final approval by the EU Commission and member states. Then, in February of this year, the EFSA stated that the public comments didn’t raise any further concerns, moving Impossible Foods an inch closer to the green light.
In an interview at the Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summit in London this month, Impossible Foods CEO Peter McGuinness called the regulatory process in the EU (and the UK) “on the slow side”.
“That’s a double-edged sword,” he said. “When it comes to food and the health of people and the planet, the government should have a keen interest in that… The flip side of that is we’ve been trying for four years to get Impossible in [Europe], and we’re still not there yet. But we’re waiting patiently impatiently.”
The Biotech Act, therefore, will be keenly watched by industry leaders. It could usher in some long-awaited changes to position the EU, already a leader in R&D funding for alternative proteins, as a future food leader.
UK firm Multus Biotechnology has unveiled an animal-free media formulation for cultivated meat, allowing companies to eliminate serum from their products.
To ease ethical concerns, optimise production and lower costs, British company Multus Biotechnology has developed an animal-free culture medium to replace fetal bovine serum (FBS) for cultivated meat.
Animal serum contains high amounts of protein, alongside growth factors, hormones, antioxidants, lipids, and other components that replicate a fetal-like state for cell proliferation. It has been used as a key component in cell culture for decades.
The problem? It can contain unknown amounts of thousands of different components and poses the threat of antibacterial contamination. It’s also in short supply and thus highly expensive, and has sparked ethical concerns about the use of fetal animals to produce cultivated meat.
Over the years, many companies have moved away from cultivated meat to use animal-component-free (ACF) media formulations for production. Multus’s latest innovation, developed with the help of artificial intelligence (AI), adds to the list of solutions for producers in this space.
How Multus uses AI to develop serum replacements
Courtesy: Multus Biotechnology
The new serum replacement has been described as the first commercially available ACF media formulation for porcine adipose-derived stem cells. These are multipotent cells that differentiate into fat, bone and cartilage, which makes them valuable for a variety of applications, from food production to regenerative medicine.
Titled Proliferum P, the ACF formulation is said to match or outperform the functionality of FBS, while maintaining critical stemness characteristics and adipogenic differentiation capacity.
Traditionally, media development is expensive, labour-intensive, and slow – it can take two to four years to develop FBS alternatives, which delays product roadmaps. Multus uses AI and automation to speed things up, creating machine learning models and integrating them with high-throughput lab automation systems.
It uses machine learning to screen dozens of potential ingredients for each cell to figure out the specific formulation, and automate media preparation, cell culturing, data collection, and data analysis.
“We’ve built a process that not only accelerates the media development process, but also customises it to specific cell types,” said Soraya Padilla, project lead for Proliferum P.
The technology helped Multus develop Proliferum P in less than six months, while optimising for cost, cell growth and functional performance. This was faster than Proliferum B, a serum replacement for bovine fibroblasts that was created in nine months.
Proliferum P is said to be quality-controlled and scalable, and is available for testing and evaluation by companies working with porcine ASCs to create food and healthcare products.
Serum-free media becoming the norm for cultivated meat
Courtesy: Multus Biotechnology
Multus, which has raised over $14M to date, said the launch represented a “breakthrough in both development speed and performance”, and showcased its platform’s ability to deliver optimal formulations for diverse cell types.
“Our platform doesn’t just allow us to match industry standards – it ensures we continuously raise the bar,” said co-founder and CEO Cai Linton. “With Proliferum P, we’re delivering a superior product to FBS while demonstrating how AI and automation, in the hands of our experienced scientists, can transform biotechnology development timelines.”
It marks the firm’s third product launch in six months. In May, it introduced its food-grade basal media, developed in tandem with global food and feed ingredient companies.
Multus is working with bioprocess optimisation firm New Wave Biotech to create more affordable inputs for cultivated meat makers, as well as with Quest Meat to develop a cell culture ingredients platform as part of a £1M project co-funded by the UK government. And last year, it opened a food-safe media manufacturing facility that can support 500 tonnes of cultivated meat per year.
Efforts to eliminate FBS from cultivated meat production have been growing. Dutch firm Mosa Meat is a pioneer in this space, having removed animal serum from its products in 2019 and later making its serum-free formulation open-source.
Elsewhere, Japanese startup IntegriCulture developed cultivated chicken and duck liver cells using a serum-free medium, and South Korea’s CellMeat and Simple Planet have created serum-free cell culture media too. Meanwhile, Eat Just’s Good Meat won regulatory approval for its serum-free media in Singapore back in 2023.
By replacing animal serum in its cultivated pork production tech, US startup Clever Carnivore has achieved industry-leading media costs of $0.07 per litre. A 2023 industry survey by the Good Food Institute showed the benefits of eliminating ASF formulations, with 74% of companies reporting identical or better results after establishing a cell line in serum-free conditions.
While young men are driving the rise in meat consumption in the UK, they’re also more open to cultivated meat than other demographics.
Two in five young men in the UK are eating more meat than they did last year, and 83% of them don’t feel comfortable eating plants in public.
New research shows that this group is also the most likely to think that cultivated meat should be available for sale, demonstrating that their affection for meat isn’t limited to conventional options. That said, their opinion is still split – 44% of men are in favour of these proteins entering the market and 43% are against.
In contrast, only 28% of women are supportive of this, versus 51% who aren’t. Meanwhile, half of Brits aged 16-34 are in favour, and this receptiveness declines with age – only 26% of people between 55 and 75 want to see cultivated meat on the market.
The 1,100-person survey was carried out by Ipsos Observer UK this month and reveals the underlying trends informing sustainable food consumption in the country.
The results chime with another survey by YouGov last year, which found that men and people aged 18-24 (36% each) are much more likely than women (16%) and Brits aged 50 and above (18%) to try cultivated meat.
Cultivated meat is more popular among youth, but there’s a lack of awareness
Willingness to try cultivated meat in the UK | Courtesy: Ipsos
What would Brits do if cultivated meat became available? Nearly a third (32%) say they are open to eating it, though a much larger share (56%) is against. Gen Z is the only group where the willingness to try these products (cited by 47%) is higher than the reluctance (43%).
Cultivated meat becomes less popular with age in terms of potential consumption too – 39% of millennials say they’d eat it, versus only 21% of Gen Xers and 22% of boomers.
The results show that UK attitudes towards cultivated meat haven’t changed. A 2022 survey by the government found that a third of its citizens were willing to try these proteins, a year before they were approved for sale anywhere in the world.
This can be interpreted in two ways – enthusiasm for cultivated meat hasn’t waned, and it hasn’t magnified either. In fact, it remains low, with more people opposed to its sale and consumption than not.
One possible reason is simply a lack of awareness. Less than one-sixth of respondents to Ipsos’s survey said they knew “a great deal” or “a fair amount” about these proteins. More concerningly, a third have never heard of it, and a quarter are aware of it but know nothing about it.
It highlights the importance of marketing campaigns by businesses and the government to help familiarise the public with cultivated meat, which experts say will be a crucial cog in the future of the food system and help the UK meet its climate goals.
“With limited knowledge about cultivated, or ‘lab-grown’ meat, there is a chance for producers to shape perceptions before it’s done for them,” said Peter Cooper, director of global Omnibus services at Ipsos.
Animal welfare benefits are popular amid health concerns
Drivers of interest in cultivated meat in the UK | Courtesy: Ipsos
Ipsos’s new research underscores “a genuine potential growth market for cultivated meat in Britain, in particular among younger people”, according to Cooper.
The thing that draws most Brits to cultivated meat is the fact that it doesn’t involve raising and slaughtering animals – a third of respondents feel this is the main benefit. For 20%, cultivated meat reduces the risk of zoonotic diseases, and a similar number of consumers are attracted by the climate benefits, agreeing that it generates fewer emissions and takes up less land than livestock farming.
“That being said, consumers do still have some concerns, in particular around the unclear long-term health impacts of cultivated meat. This will need to be addressed for perceived environmental upsides to be realised,” Cooper said.
Indeed, Brits do feel strongly about the perceived health implications of cultivated meat. Nearly half (48%) feel the impact of long-term consumption is unclear, and 42% say it isn’t a natural food source, a nod to the discourse around ultra-processed food.
Barriers to cultivated meat consumption in the UK | Courtesy: Ipsos
Around a quarter, meanwhile, are concerned about the high price and the potential negative impacts on farming – although several cultivated meat startups have made major strides in cost reductions lately (including one based in the UK), and British farmers recognise the opportunities presented by these proteins, finding the climate change and global market volatility a much bigger threat.
There was one more interesting finding from the Ipsos survey, specifically from omnivores who say they’ll eat cultivated meat in the future. Assuming it becomes widely available and cost-competitive, more than half (52%) say it will replace at least half of their meat consumption.
Only 9% said it wouldn’t substitute their conventional meat intake, outlining these proteins’ true potential for dietary change.
French startup Gourmey, which is awaiting regulatory approval for cultivated meat in six markets, is betting on AI to solve the industry’s greatest problem.
Gourmey, the Parisian firm producing foie gras by cultivating duck cells in bioreactors, is leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to address the scale and cost challenges that have long plagued the future food sector.
The startup has partnered with DeepLife, an AI-led cellular digital twin tech company, to develop the world’s first avian digital twin. This is a virtual replica of poultry cells engineered to optimise growth conditions, nutrient density and flavour expression in cultivated meat.
“The digital twin is an AI-powered virtual replica of our cell cultivation process. We train the model using comprehensive ‘omics’ data, such as gene expression and cellular composition, collected throughout the production cycle,” Gourmey co-founder and CEO Nicolas Morin-Forest tells Green Queen.
“By integrating this data with first-principle models of cell metabolism, the digital twin enables us to run thousands of virtual experiments. This helps us identify the optimal feed formulations and bioreactor conditions to maximise yield, minimise resource use, and enhance the sensory qualities of our cultivated meat,” he adds.
“Much like how animal feed impacts the quality of conventional meat, our digital twin helps us precisely tune every aspect of cell nutrition to deliver consistently high-quality products.”
How DeepLife and Gourmey are leveraging AI to lower costs
Courtesy: Sherry Hack
The collaboration is initially centred on cultivated duck and poultry products, and combines DeepLife’s biology simulation engine with Gourmey’s proprietary cell cultivation platform. The goal is to produce cultivated meat on a large scale, at lower costs, and faster.
DeepLife’s systems biology engine simulates and enhances key cellular behaviours, enabling companies to tweak variables like media composition (which tends to be the most expensive part of producing cultivated meat) and metabolic efficiency, ahead of conducting costly wet lab experiments.
“Our goal is to tailor the feed and cultivation conditions to the exact needs of our cells. This optimisation increases yield and reduces feed waste, directly lowering our production costs. Moreover, the composition of the feed has a major influence on the sensory attributes, such as flavour and texture, of the final product,” says Morin-Forest.
“By using digital twin models, we can optimise feed formulations not only to maximise efficiency but also to deliver the highest nutritional and sensory quality. And because we can simulate these changes virtually, we accelerate our R&D cycles and reduce costs associated with traditional trial-and-error.”
The two firms are banking on the potential of an “integrative multi-omics approach” to optimise cultivated meat production. This combines studies of genomes, proteins, transcriptomes and metabolites to offer a powerful framework for characterising and validating cultivated meat at multiple biological levels.
“These approaches can help ensure the stability of cell lines, characterise cellular composition, identify potential allergens, metabolites and other bioactive compounds, and assess the bioavailability of key nutrients,” reads a study by the two companies.
“While many techniques can be adapted from pharma-oriented bioprocessing, cultivated meat production presents distinct challenges, including stricter cost constraints on culture media, constraints on the nutritional value of the cultured cells themselves, and a regulatory landscape that differs from that of pharmaceuticals,” it adds.
“Currently, integrative omics strategies are not widely used in novel food risk assessment, due to a lack of validated approaches, although they represent a potential powerful tool to complement risk assessment and regulatory science.”
Price reductions paramount for future of cultivated meat
Courtesy: Sherry Hack
Gourmey’s announcement of its partnership with DeepLife comes a month after a techno-economic analysis revealed that its 5,000-litre bioreactor system can potentially enable it to manufacture cultivated meat for as little as $3.43 per lb.
“Because our cells thrive without proteins or growth factors, we can bring our food-safe feed price down to around 20 cents per litre, just a fraction of what’s typical in the industry,” Morin-Forest explained in an interview with Green Queen at the time.
“This shows that cost-competitive, scalable, and economically viable cultivated meat is now within reach. Bringing costs down enables us to expand access, accelerate adoption, and maximise our positive impact across both premium and commodity protein markets,” he says now.
“Lowering costs is critical for cultivated meat to become a mainstream, sustainable protein,” he adds. According to a 4,000-person survey, three in five Europeans feel cultivated meat will only be successful if it’s affordable for everyone. In fact, nearly half expect it to be cheaper than conventional meat, and only 15% would buy it if it’s more expensive (versus 60% who wouldn’t).
Efforts to do so have been top of mind for companies in the space. Experts suggest that cultivated meat can compete with conventional animal protein at a production cost of $2.92 by 2030. The industry has already lowered this by 99% in the last decade or so.
Over the last year, several startups have achieved breakthroughs on this front. Meatly, which is approved to sell cultivated chicken to pets in the UK, recently reduced culture media costs to $0.30 per litre, which will further be lowered to just $0.02 at industrial scale.
Another cultivated pet food startup, BioCraft Pet Nutrition, has developed a plant-based growth medium that reduces the cost of its ingredient to $2-2.50 per lb. And in Israel, SuperMeat has made several breakthroughs to produce its cultivated chicken for $12 per lb, while Believer Meats has described how its continuous process can potentially produce cultivated chicken for $6 per lb at scale.
And last week, Chicago’s Clever Carnivore announced it has been operating with a media cost of $0.07 at pilot scale for over two years now.
How AI can support filings for regulatory approval
Courtesy: Romain Buisson
Gourmey is pursuing regulatory approval in six markets, including the US, the UK, Switzerland, and the EU, and expects the greenlight in Singapore soon. It is using these AI-led optimisations to inform commercial-scale production and support its regulatory filings.
“AI-powered digital twins provide a deep, data-driven understanding of our cell metabolism and production process. This allows us to demonstrate consistent product quality, traceability, and safety, key requirements for regulatory approval,” explains Morin-Forest.
“By having robust, predictive models, we can more effectively document and verify the nutritional and sensory attributes of our products, which supports our applications with regulators in Europe, the US, and Asia.”
Its partnership with DeepLife comes at a critical juncture for the cultivated meat industry. Seven countries have granted some form of approval for the sale of these proteins, and several others are evaluating applications. Currently, however, you can only buy cultivated meat in three nations (Singapore, Australia and the US).
Meanwhile, in Italy and certain states in the US, politicians have banned the production and sale of cultivated meat, a move many others are trying to replicate. “We believe that consumers should have the freedom to choose foods that align with their values and preferences,” says Morin-Forest. “Rather than restricting choice, we encourage constructive dialogue and science-based regulation to ensure safety, transparency, and trust.”
This is one of the many obstacles to large-scale, cost-competitive production of cultivated meat. And with investors no longer pouring sufficient capital into the industry to tackle these issues, it has prompted Gourmey to leverage their new favourite technology: AI.
“This isn’t just a new biotech innovation – it’s the first step toward a food revolution,” claims DeepLife CO Jonathan Baptista. “And we are delighted to launch this partnership with Gourmey to create the AI-native leader in this emerging market.”
Asian biotech startup Avant has received the C-Label accreditation for its ZelluGen peptide complex, a first for a non-food product.
Aiming to clean up both our skin and the marine peptide industry, Avant’s ZelluGen peptide complex – marketed under its Biotecq brand – has received the first non-food certification from the C-Label.
Launched by Swiss organisation V-Label in January, the C-Label is a globally registered “robust certification system” to ensure the highest standards of cultivated meat production and distribution. Its first recipient was UK pet food startup Meatly, which is the only company to have commercialised cultivated meat in Europe.
The label covers non-food products too, and Avant’s ZelluGen is the inaugural recipient. Derived from fish cells using its Zellulin BioPlatform, this is a cultured skincare bioactive that has the same functional benefits, sans the animal, for moisturisers, creams and serums.
“Certifying Zellulin marks a significant step in our mission to extend ethical standards to all products derived from cellular agriculture,” said Lubo Yotov, head of C-Label. “We are excited to support innovations that align with our vision of a more compassionate and sustainable future.”
How Avant makes its ZelluGen peptide
Courtesy: Biotecq
With operations in Hong Kong and Singapore, Avant makes cultivated seafood under its Avie brand, and first unveiled Zellulin when it expanded its cell-based marine protein expertise to skincare in 2021.
ZelluGen powers its Biotecq brand of ethical skincare, which only debuted in February. The bioactive is produced through the advanced Zellulin BioPlatform, which eschews the animal-derived materials and ocean harvesting that conventional peptides require.
Peptides are a class of short-chain amino acids that act as building blocks of proteins like collagen, keratin, and elastin. In the skincare industry, these ingredients are revered for their anti-ageing, anti-oxidation, regeneration and skin-repairing properties.
The reliance on sea sponges, molluscs, and fish needs to be addressed immediately, thanks to the 56% decline in marine populations in the 50 years since 1970, and continued threats to and from the climate crisis. Moreover, current production methods involve chemical extraction and conditioned medium using animal-sourced raw materials and synthetic processes.
Avant leverages cell cultivation technology to produce bioidentical peptides without animal inputs, isolating healthy cells from a small number of fish just once before cultivating them, meaning there’s no need for a continuous supply of seed cells. The resulting ingredients have a 75% lower greenhouse gas footprint.
ZelluGen works by instructing skin cells to boost the extracellular matrix and generate more collagen, integrin and fibrinogen. Both efficacy and consumer perception studies show that small amounts of the peptide, as little as 1%, improve the skin significantly.
V-Label helps keep pace with innovation
Courtesy: C-Label
All this is crucial for cosmetic manufacturers, whose consumers are demanding better ethical standards. ‘Cruelty-free’ is the second most important factor for beauty shoppers in the US, 93% of whom describe clean beauty as very important to their purchasing decisions. In Asia-Pacific, a quarter of shoppers rate ingredient transparency as the most influential factor in deciding what beauty products to buy.
Communicating the use of ethical, cruelty-free ingredients with a certification like the C-Label will likely become an important part of their marketing.
To attain the label, a product must be free from the use of animal-free media and adhere to ethical cell sourcing practices. In addition, it must not contain any pathogens, antibiotics, heavy metals, plastics and GMOs.
“The C-Label establishes clear standards, supports industry collaboration, and helps educate consumers, ensuring the industry develops responsibly and is ready to scale when approval is gained in each region,” Renato Pichler, founder of V-Label, told Green Queen in January. In addition to C-Label, V-Label also offer the V-Label certification for vegan products and the recently introduced F-Label for proteins derived via fermentation.
“The pace at which we create new things far outstrips our ability to name, regulate, and adopt them. This lag often becomes a significant hurdle for innovations and for those trying to fund or support them,” said Avant co-founder and CEO Carrie Chan. “That’s why foresight and timely action from those in key positions are so critical to the progress of innovation.”
She added: “We commend V-Label for its foresight in pioneering the C-Label, a timely and important step toward greater transparency and acceptance of novel sustainable food and biotech products.”
Certifying ZelluGen with the C-Label would pave the way for further non-food cellular agriculture applications, the accreditation body predicted. A host of companies are using the technology to produce materials like leather (including Faircraft, Modern Meadow, Lab-Grown Leather, 3D Bio-Tissues, Qorium and Pelagen) and cotton (Galy).
US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has pledged to cut red tape and maintain the country’s biotech leadership, despite the rollback of a Biden-era biomanufacturing mandate.
From MAHA to MABA, the current US administration sure loves an acronym.
Amid his war on pesticides and ultra-processed foods (UPFs), health secretary and former CRISPR investor Robert F Kennedy Jr has announced his intention to “Make American Biotech Accelerate”, as foreign powers gain ground in the sector.
“The mission to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) includes MABA – Make American Biotech Accelerate,” he tweeted earlier this week. “We’re clearing the path to transform great science into real cures, at lower costs, and better health for the American people. Life science and biotech are at the heart of that.”
The move is in direct contrast with Donald Trump’s executive order that rescinded his predecessor’s actions to advance biomanufacturing, as well as the government’s mass job cuts at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) earlier this year.
But could this biotech focus extend to food tech – and particularly alternative proteins, which have come under threat from state-level bans, a lack of investment, and the UPF discourse?
The mission to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) includes MABA — Make American Biotech Accelerate.
President Trump showed in his first term what happens when you unlock American science — breakthroughs happen fast.
RFK Jr looks to speed up regulatory approvals with MABA
“President Trump showed in his first term what happens when you unlock American science – breakthroughs happen fast. Now, we’re going to do it again,” said Kennedy.
Within the food tech world, cultivated meat firm Upside Foods previously told Green Queen that “most of the work” it did to get its chicken approved for sale in the US “was under the first Trump administration”. The same goes for Eat Just’s Good Meat, which was simultaneously greenlit by the US Department of Agriculture in June 2023.
When RFK Jr took office, there were suggestions that the regulatory pathway for novel foods could become much more complicated. One close ally indicated that the health secretary was likely to make things much more complicated for startups pursuing FDA approval for cultivated meat.
Courtesy: Win McNamee/Getty Images | Illustration by Green Queen
Shortly after, he moved to eliminate a rule that allowed food and drug makers to self-affirm new ingredients under the FDA’s Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) pathway, calling it a “loophole” exploited by companies.
“If the agency moves toward stricter oversight, it risks stifling innovation in the US, making it harder to bring groundbreaking, sustainable food solutions to market,” Brittany Chibe, co-founder and CEO of Aqua Cultured Foods, told Green Queen in March. Her startup uses biomass fermentation to make seafood analogues, and obtained self-determined GRAS status last year.
Responding to the uncertainty, an FDA official told this publication at the time: “As the FDA continues to support innovation in food technologies, the agency’s priority is the safety of food produced through both innovative and traditional methods. The agency is committed to transparency on our approach to regulating foods made using innovative food technologies.”
“We’re going to make sure that the United States remains the centre of [the] biotech revolution,” he said. “We’re going to try to dismantle the barriers to biotech development and approval, and to make sure that we do everything that we can to support that industry.”
Already this year, Mission Barns and Wildtype have both received the FDA’s go-ahead to sell their cultivated pork and salmon, respectively, making the US the only country to have approved four such products. RFK Jr’s MABA initiative has a chance to extend this leadership, if deployed correctly.
MABA is in contrast with Trump and RFK Jr’s actions
“We know the power of US biotech. It’s time to let it flourish – not tie it up in red tape, misalignment, and a process that gives the edge to foreign interests and large incumbents,” Kennedy’s tweet read.
Indeed, slowing action by the US government has driven increased innovation elsewhere. Singapore has long been a food tech leader (and was the first to clear the sale of cultivated meat), but China has made a wave of strategic advancements and backed alternative proteins to strengthen its biotech leadership.
That has grasped the attention of Republicans, who last year aired their concerns in a letter responding to the director of national intelligence’s annual threat assessment. “Put simply, we cannot allow China to control more of the world’s food supply than it already does. To cede American leadership in the global innovative protein market to foreign adversaries like China is to forfeit the food security of the United States and its allies,” they wrote.
Courtesy: Jose Luis Magana/AP
It’s in line with RFK Jr’s comments to the House this week, where he pointed out how China is “putting huge amounts of money into this space, and it’s important that we do the same thing”.
But money is precisely the problem. Food tech funding has been on the decline, thanks to geopolitical uncertainty, rising costs, Trump’s tariff wars, and the rise of AI. But it’s not just private investors – the US government itself is divesting from the sector.
One of the myriad executive orders signed by Trump upon his return to office rescinded a 2022 action by former President Joe Biden, which sought to advance biotech and biomanufacturing by prioritising R&D funding and streamlining regulation for precision fermentation, cultivated meat, and other novel foods. It led the Department of Defense to invest over $60M in 34 companies, including a host of alternative protein players.
So the president has shied away from biotech innovation – how will that dovetail with RFK Jr’s promise? There’s also another conflict to consider. The health secretary wants to make it easier for biotech companies to secure regulatory approval, but seven states have now banned cultivated meat, and many others are planning to do the same.
Courtesy: Margo Martin
RFK Jr has also railed against UPFs, a classification most alternative proteins fall under. The government is now planning to launch a “bold, edgy” campaign to warn Americans about the health impact of these foods. These products have drawn ire from across the aisle, as well as Kennedy’s nominee for surgeon general, Casey Means, despite nutritionists warning against a blanket rejection of all UPFs.
It remains to be seen what the MABA programme really entails – and how it will sidestep the barriers created by its own proponents.
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Violife’s protein-packed Cheddar alternative, Petaluma’s plant-based dehydrated dog food, and the EU’s vegan labelling war.
New products and launches
Vegan cheese giant Violife has launched Supreme Cheddarton in the UK. It’s a Cheddar alternative with at least 30% less fat and over 9g of plant protein (a rarity for coconut-oil-based cheeses), and is available at all major supermarkets for £2.95 per 200g block.
Courtesy: Violife
British frozen vegan pizza startup One Planet Pizza has revamped its recipe to add a bigger sourdough base, hand-stretched cheese, and more toppings.
Still in the UK, the ongoing heatwave has led to plant-based meat firm Thiswitnessing a 21% hike in sales of its vegan burgers and sausages over the past two weeks.
German ingredient producer Raps has introduced Compound Vegan Roast, a functional solution to enhance the flavour of plant-based roast meat analogues.
Courtesy: Raps
Likewise, French plant-based ingredient supplier Roquette has expanded its Nutralys line with two new textured solutions from wheat and pea protein.
Following its success in the Netherlands, discount retailer Lidl has launched blended burger and mince SKUs with 60% beef and 40% plants in Belgium.
In the UK, meanwhile, Lidl has unveiled high-protein vegan pudding pots in chocolate, caramel and hazelnut flavours under its Vemondo brand. They’re priced at £1.29 per 200g pack, each of which contains 20g of protein.
Courtesy: Unlimeat/Green Queen
South Korean plant-based brand Unlimeat has launched two desserts in the US. The Oat Cream Buns and Hotteok will be sold under the new Bbang label.
Speaking of the US, plant-based chicken makerRebellyous Foods has expanded its offerings with Spicy Kickin’ Nuggets, Tenders and Kickin’ Popcorn, which are now being served in over 390 school districts.
Californian vegan pet food firm Petaluma has introduced the Whole Food Mixer, a dehydrated dog food topper with organic kale, spinach, and antioxidant-rich fruits.
Courtesy: Petaluma
And Indian vegan startup Plant Yum has released a millet-based, protein-packed mango shake premix as part of a new suite of instant drink powders aimed at the health-forward consumer segment.
Company and finance updates
Greek functional dairy-free ice cream maker Plan(e)t Foods has scooped up €1.05M to fuel its product development and expand into other European countries.
Univer Solutions Belgium has expanded the distribution deal between its Foodology division and ingredient giant Ingredion to introduce plant proteins, functional native starches, and a range of stevia sweeteners to the Benelux region.
Courtesy: Proeon
Dutch startup Proeon Foods is scaling up the production of its mung and peanut protein isolates in Pune, India, through funding from Invest International and national government agencies.
Canada’s Burcon NutraScience Corporation, meanwhile, has signed a multi-year deal worth $6.8M to supply a leading provider of clean-label plant-based ingredients from its facility in Galesburg, Illinois. The first year is set to generate at least $1.4M in revenue for the manufacturer, which is set to increase every year.
Swiss giant Nestlé will let go of 80 employees at its Krupka factory in Czechia, representing a fifth of the workforce. The move is in response to slowing demand for plant-based meat products in Europe.
Courtesy: Edinburgh Innovations
The University of Edinburgh is leading the £14M state-backed Carbon-Loop Sustainable Biomanufacturing Hub, which aims to turn carbon-based waste into next-gen pharmaceuticals and cosmetics via microbial fermentation.
Singaporean deep tech startup KosmodeHealth has shut its pilot plant for the production of its upcycled, high-protein W0W Noodle range, and shrunk its team by 80% as it is “trimming to grow”, its founder has announced.
Belgian early-stage investor Biotope Ventures has announced the first close of €5M for its Biotope Ventures 2 fund, with an additional €4M set to be raised over the next 12 months to allow the fir to invest in up to 30 early-stage biotech startups.
Research and policy developments
The ‘veggie burger’ debate has cropped up again in the EU, with a group of ministers looking to introduce new rules to ban the use of meaty terms on plant-based products. It comes just months after the EU’s top court rejected a similar effort by France.
Belgium has released its new food-based dietary guidelines, advising citizens to limit unprocessed red meat intake to 300g a week and promoting plant proteins, but there’s a lack of focus on dairy alternatives and sustainability-based recommendations.
Researchers from South Korea have developed a scaffolding technology that can achieve precise marbling textures in cultivated meat. They used self-healing hydrogens that achieve robust, reversible bonding at a neutral pH.
A report by tech forecasting firm GetFocussuggests that cultivated meat technologies are advancing faster than livestock farming, potentially accelerating the path to price parity.
Courtesy: GetFocus
Food awareness organisation ProVeg International has rolled out Future Plates, a catering guide to help large-scale event organisers offer plant-based meals to attendees.
Events and awards
Dutch cultivated pork startup Meatable is continuing its outreach efforts by participating in the Blue Earth Forum at the ongoing London Climate Action Week 2025 (June 21-29).
On International Picnic Day, animal rights charity PETAunveiled a 23-metre-long vegan ham and butter sandwich at Place de la Bastille in partnership with La Vie, to symbolise the 23 million pigs killed for meat each year in France.
Courtesy: Pam Méliee/PETA
World Animal Protection, meanwhile, has launched the first Dine Vegan Nashville event. Running from June 22-28, it will promote vegan dining across the Music City via partnerships with local restaurants.
In Hong Kong, animal welfare organisation Planet for All partnered with cruelty-free beauty pioneer Lush to promote Cage-Free Hong Kong, the city’s first welfare campaign for laying hens.
In the US, organic plant milk brand Mooala‘s Simple Almond Milk has been named the Best Almond Milk in Good Housekeeping’s 2025 Snack Awards and Self Magazine’s 2025 Pantry Awards.
Finally, ClimateCats Studios, the film studio run by the influencer duo Root the Future, has won the Best TV Series 2025 for its upcoming docuseries, Culturally Plant-Based, at the Milan Independent Awards.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has made the state the seventh in the US to ban the sale of cultivated meat. He has also ordered an investigation into ultra-processed foods.
Despite two more companies receiving regulatory approval to sell cultivated proteins in the US this year, the number of states banning these foods continues to rise.
Texas has become the latest state to prohibit the sale, the result of an effort that began in November. SB 261 was one of the 300-plus bills signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott last week, imposing a two-year ban that starts on September 1 this year.
“The offering for sale or sale of cell-cultured protein for human consumption within this state is unlawful and prohibited,” the bill read.
It was backed by the cattle industry, which took a familiar line to its bipartisan passage last month. “The bill prohibits the sale and offer of sale of cell-cultured proteins to prevent Texas consumers from being a science experiment as companies seek to profit from selling cell-cultured protein with no long-term health studies,” said the Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA).
“This bill also pushes back on an agenda by certain radical groups and companies who seek to end traditional animal agriculture,” it added.
Texas takes aim at cultivated meat and ultra-processed foods
Courtesy: Mission Barns
The effort to ban cultivated meat in Texas was spearheaded by Senator Charles Perry, who authored 2023’s SB 664, which successfully restricted how these proteins are labelled.
The bill was read for the first time in February, and eventually passed the Senate with no opposition. In the House, two-thirds of representatives voted in favour, while only a quarter were against the measure. It moved to the governor’s desk last week, and was signed alongside hundreds of bills.
Despite banning their sale, it still outlines how cultivated meat products must be labelled. It necessitates that these foods need to be labelled in a prominent font that’s equal to or larger than the surrounding text, using the terms ‘cell-cultured’, ‘lab-grown’, or “a similar qualifying term or disclaimer intended to clearly communicate to a consumer the contents of the protein”.
“Ranchers across Texas work tirelessly to raise healthy cattle and produce high-quality beef,” TSCRA president Carl Ray Polk Jr said last month. “Our association is grateful for those legislators who voted in support of this legislation and understood the core of this bill, to protect our consumers, the beef industry and animal agriculture.”
As the leading cattle producer in the US, Texas’ impact on the planet is outsized. Beef is the food system’s single-worst polluter, emitting twice as many greenhouse gases as the next product on the list (dark chocolate).
Instead of mitigating the impact of beef, Texas – like many other US states – is exploring ways to protect the industry, which is the third-largest economic generator in the state. It comes amid a wider backdrop of a federal administration that has rallied against what they call “fake meat”, coupled with the rise of the meat-eating manosphere, which led Americans to spend more on meat last year than ever before.
Apart from banning cultivated meat, Abbott signed a bill called Make Texas Healthy Again, aligning with health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s MAHA movement. A key focus? To review the impact of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) on human health, keying into a major point of discourse in American food culture.
It chimes with a similar executive order from California Governor Gavin Newsom, and RFK Jr’s opposition to these foods, which include alternative proteins like plant-based and cultivated meat. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is now working to develop a definition of UPFs too.
US both the most receptive and opposed to cultivated meat
These bans have been criticised for limiting consumer choice, stifling innovation, and being anti-competitive. One farmer told the AP that he welcomes cultivated meat producers to “jump into the pool” and try to compete with his Waygu beef, while the North American Meat Institute has suggested that these bans “bills establish a precedent for adopting policies and regulatory requirements that could one day adversely affect the bills’ supporters”.
Even consumers are against these efforts. Every American who tasted Upside Foods’ cultivated chicken ahead of Florida’s move last year opposed political bans on these foods.
States are already facing legal challenges. Florida has been sued by Upside Foods, the first company to receive federal approval to sell cultivated meat in the country, with a judge recently rejecting the state’s request to throw out the case.
And in sharp contrast to the legislative upheaval, the FDA approved two additional companies to sell cultivated meat, with Mission Barns now awaiting the greenlight from the Department of Agriculture for its pork fat, and Wildtype’s salmon already available in a Portland restaurant. These companies have joined Upside Foods and Eat Just’s Good Meat in getting the FDA greenlight.
All this illustrates the contradictory landscape around cultivated meat regulation. While the US is the country with the most attempted (and successful) bans on these proteins, it’s also the one with the most approvals. Over the coming months, more of both are expected.
A new map by RA Capital Management and the Nature Conservancy uncovers ‘the true impact’ of agriculture on Earth’s systems, and why it’s the most overlooked opportunity to improve public and planetary health.
Despite the food system using half of Earth’s habitable land and 70% of its freshwater resources, and generating more methane than any other industry, its impact and scale often go unnoticed.
A new Agriculture Map aims to change that. Created by investment firm RA Capital Management’s Planetary Health team and NGO the Nature Conservancy, the tool blends “proprietary data analysis” with a “systems-level approach” to help visualise agriculture’s effects on the planet and provide solutions to stakeholders at all levels.
“The environmental and human health challenges posed by the food system are well-understood in some circles, but making this information material and actionable to stakeholders can be a real challenge,” said Stephen Wood, a senior scientist of agriculture and food systems at the Nature Conservancy.
“This map makes it possible for non-experts to quickly understand the scope and scale of the problem, as well as the solutions,” he noted.
Here are some key takeaways from the Agriculture Map.
Agriculture’s climate impact outweighs other industries, including oil and gas
Courtesy: RA Capital Management/Nature Conservancy
The agriculture industry produces more output by weight, from food and fibre to fuel and wood, than each of the cement, steel, and oil and gas industries. When it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, its impact is larger than all three of these heavy industries combined.
Further, agriculture consumes more water and causes more water pollution than any other human activity. The other industries use just a fraction of the water agriculture does, and less than 1% of its land footprint.
Energy is the only area where these heavy industries surpass agriculture, given the use of fossil fuels as power sources.
Food production is the biggest methane culprit
Courtesy: RA Capital Management/Nature Conservancy
More than any other human activity, it’s agriculture that releases the most amount of methane into the atmosphere. This gas is 28 times more potent than carbon over a 100-year period, and is linked to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths.
The map shows that enteric fermentation, manure, and rice paddies contribute to 24% of global methane emissions. The digestive system of cows alone emits more methane than the oil, coal and bioenergy sectors combined. In fact, the overall GHG impact of cattle is roughly the same as all cars on the road globally.
The amount of food we waste is off the charts
Roughly a third of all food produced never ends up being eaten. That could actually feed a quarter of the world’s population, helping alleviate global hunger.
It’s not just a blight to food security, but also to the planet. The land required to grow all the food we waste is almost twice the size of the US, and the water needed would fill 100 million Olympic-sized swimming pools. That’s a lot of resources to eventually toss into the bin.
Courtesy: RA Capital Management/Nature Conservancy
Ozempic could make the food system more equitable
The report suggests that the food system produces twice as many calories as needed to support the global population, concluding that the driver of malnutrition and food insecurity isn’t a lack of food, but rather inadequate distribution.
The rise of weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro “likely foreshadows [a] further reduced need for producing excess calories in richer countries”.
Switching to cultivated meat brings massive land benefits
If the entire meat industry were to exclusively switch to cultivated proteins, it would save over 36.3 million sq km of area currently being used for pasture and animal feed. It would free up 96% of land currently being used by the livestock sector – that’s equivalent to more than 18 Mexicos.
Courtesy: RA Capital Management/Nature Conservancy
So, what can we do?
While these stats make for grim reading, there are a host of solutions that can help decarbonise the food system and safeguard the planet’s future.
The report touts the use of feed additives, vaccines, improved manure management, and rotational grazing to cut the methane impact of cattle, although studies have warned that the efficacy of some additives is vastly overstated.
Optimising yields by applying the most productive practices across all staple grains and produce globally can help clear up land the size of Mexico. Shifting a significant chunk of fruit and vegetable production to greenhouses could save up to 40% of the land it currently uses.
The report advocates for on-field interventions like cover crops, nutrient optimisation, weed control, and genetically optimised plant traits, as well as edge-of-field measures such as land restoration and terracing.
Finally, the adoption of alternative proteins to reduce or replace animal-based foods represents a $14B opportunity, with more than 200 startups working in the space. The impact of displacing conventional meat with cellular agriculture exhibits the potential of protein diversification in the long term.
“If we are serious about tackling climate change, water pollution, and food security, we must rethink how we grow, produce, and manage our resources,” said Kyle Teamey, managing partner of RA Capital’s Planetary Health team. “Sustainable solutions are not just an option – they are a necessity to transform agriculture into a cleaner, more efficient, and resilient industry that can feed the world for generations to come.”
British cultivated pork startup Hoxton Farms has teamed up with Japan’s Mitsui Chemicals in its latest move, spotlighting Asia’s biomanufacturing leadership.
When it comes to cultivated meat, Europe is still playing catch-up thanks to its regulatory framework, leading many startups to look elsewhere. But while the US may be the only country to have approved four of these products for sale, the protein culture wars have left the novel industry vulnerable.
That leaves an Asia-sized opportunity for Europe’s alternative protein leaders, and they’re going all in. Several firms have applied for regulatory approval and struck partnerships to manufacture cultivated meat in the world’s largest continent, thanks to a thriving biomanufacturing ecosystem and an increasingly inviting regulatory landscape.
One of those companies is Hoxton Farms, the London-based producer of cultivated meat. In March, it teamed up with Japanese conglomerate Sumitomo Corporation to commercialise its pork fat ingredient in the country and the wider Asia-Pacific region.
Now, it is doubling down on Japan through a partnership with Mitsui Chemicals, which has joined as an investor in the British startup. They will work together to expand biomanufacturing, cultivated fat, and other cell-based ingredients across Asia-Pacific.
Hoxton Farms and Mitsui Chemicals to develop suite of cell-based ingredients
Courtesy: Hoxton Farms
The collaboration will leverage Hoxton Farms’s technology and Mitsui Chemicals’s manufacturing expertise to accelerate the scale-up and commercialisation of biomanufacturing tech for high-value industries, including food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and sustainable materials.
Hoxton Farms’s modular bioreactor systems are designed for large-scale cell culture at drastically low costs, paving the way for the manufacturing of a range of bioproducts. Mitsui Chemicals, meanwhile, has decades of experience in chemicals manufacturing, process engineering, and infrastructure development, alongside a portfolio of biomanufacturing-ready materials.
The two companies said they will co-develop and deploy advanced materials that enhance the efficiency, durability and scalability of biomanufacturing systems.
They will start with Hoxton Fat, a lipid derived from cultivated pork cells that offers manufacturers a “drop-in” replacement for unhealthy animal fats and poor-performing plant oils in products like soups, sauces, and even conventional meat. The alliance will further explore opportunities for other cell-cultured and bioengineered products – think cosmetics, cell therapies, or bio-based chemicals.
“Starting with Hoxton Fat, an innovative and delicious ingredient that aligns with the sustainability policy of Mitsui Chemicals Group, we look forward to working together to establish an ecosystem for a wide range of applications and worldwide regions, leveraging our knowledge of materials and manufacturing,” said Shunsuke Fujii, general manager of Mitsui Chemicals’s New Business Incubation Center.
Tapping into Asia’s biomanufacturing leadership
Courtesy: Hoxton Farms
Max Jamilly, co-founder and CEO of Hoxton Farms, said: “As demand for sustainable alternatives grows across industries, we need a new generation of biomanufacturing infrastructure.” The goal of the collaboration is to unlock cross-sector innovation and economic growth in Asia-Pacific and across the world.
Globally, the next-gen biomanufacturing market, which offers low-carbon alternatives to petrochemicals and animal-derived products, was valued at $24B last year, and is expected to nearly triple by 2037. While North America retained the largest share, Asia-Pacific isn’t far behind.
This is thanks to a rise in policies establishing robust local supply chains that lower the reliance on imports and boost the economy. China has already established itself as a biomanufacturing leader, integrating biotech into its Made in China 2025 strategy and the 14th Five-Year Plan (covering 2021 to 2025).
Others are gaining ground too. South Korea’s Bio-Health Industry Promotion Plan looks to enhance its biotech ecosystem via initiatives like the Advanced Biotechnology Initiative and the National Synthetic Biology Initiative (which aims to turn 30% of its manufacturing into the bio-industry within a decade).
Singapore has long been a pioneer of food tech innovation, having been the first country to approve the sale of cultivated meat and gas proteins. The Biologics Pharma Innovation Programme Singapore, meanwhile, aims to boost local manufacturing via a public-private consortium.
Courtesy: Eat Just
Last year, India launched its BioE3 policy with a focus on accelerating tech development and commercialisation by setting up biomanufacturing hubs and biofoundries. Japan, meanwhile, wants to become the most advanced bioeconomy society by 2030, and has announced an $8B fund to support biomanufacturing.
Speaking to Green Queen in March, Jamilly said: “We will file this year in Singapore and the US, followed by UK and other jurisdictions such as Thailand, Japan, Korea, and Australia and New Zealand. We expect to go to market in Singapore first.”
US food tech startup Clever Carnivore has achieved industry-leading cost reductions for its cultivated pork, which it hopes to begin selling in the country next year.
As companies scramble to lower the production costs of cultivated meat, one Chicago startup has announced several breakthroughs to compete with the price of conventional pork.
Chicago-based Clever Carnivore has brought the cost of its culture media down to $0.07 per litre at pilot scale, sped up the doubling times of its porcine cells, and designed inexpensive bioreactors that could enable its demo facility to reach profitability in its first full year of production.
Typically, cell culture media costs hundreds of dollars per litre, thanks to expensive inputs like bovine serum albumin (BSA) and fetal bovine serum (FBS), as well as growth factors and basal media (like amino acids, vitamins, and glucose).
“Our expertise in media optimisation allows us to replace expensive components like BSA and FBS with carefully chosen alternatives, [and] ensure that we’re using only the absolutely essential components, maximising growth and minimising cost and waste,” CEO Virginia Rangos, who co-founded the startup with CSO Paul Burridge in 2022, tells Green Queen.
Clever Carnivore is now raising a $7M extension to its seed round from 2023 (which also closed at $7M) to focus on new products and regulatory approval. “We have a term sheet in hand and commitments from current investors. We’re beginning concerted outreach to fill out the round,” she says.
In addition, the firm is aiming to secure the regulatory green light from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and credits “pioneers in the space” that have already received approval and made it easier for companies to do so.
“In reviewing their published dossiers, we paid close attention to which data the FDA ultimately asked them to provide, and we’re providing as much information as possible in our initial submission,” Rangos explains. “We project [our] cultivated meat could be available on the market as early as summer 2026.”
How Clever Carnivore achieved industry-best media costs
Courtesy: Clever Carnivore
The bulk of the cost of cultivated meat comes from culture media. Over the last year, several startups have announced milestones to slash media costs, including Gourmey (€0.2/$0.23 per litre) and Meatly (£0.22/$0.30).
Clever Carnivore’s culture media cost – which has been at the $0.07 level for two years now – undercuts its competitors. “That’s what we’re paying today – including our in-house growth factor production, water purification and mixing. We anticipate further reductions as we scale to a production plant with a capacity of thousands of litres,” says Burridge, who has over 20 years of research experience in cell line development and growth media optimisation.
Most companies buy off-the-shelf bottled media or a pre-made powder. To help lower this cost, Clever Carnivore produces its media in-house, mixing it from stocks of vitamins, salts, and amino acids. This eliminates the cost of logistics, as well as the “massive profit margins of commercial media suppliers”, according to Rangos.
“We also make our own growth factors – reducing what would otherwise be the most expensive component of our media to a negligible cost,” she says. These are specifically engineered for optimal performance with enhanced temperature stability and cost-effective production. “Most companies are reliant on external suppliers, and these suppliers charge a premium.”
She adds: “To achieve a profitable, scalable process, cheap media is necessary, but not sufficient. Your media must also provide every resource your cells need to grow quickly and at high density. Our highly optimised media ensures the cells have exactly what they need (and nothing else) at each time point in their development.”
One key aspect is the creation of cell lines that are never exposed to animal-based inputs; instead, they grow in this custom culture medium from the get-go. “It’s incredibly difficult to eliminate FBS or BSA from your media if your cells are ‘used to’ these expensive components. If you take them away from cells that have been exposed to them, their growth rate will plummet,” explains Rangos.
Unlike human nutrition, cells aren’t influenced by the cost or variety of their diet. Once they’re adapted to a medium, they prefer it over others. “Our medium has the bare minimum inputs that cells require, and they thrive in that low-cost medium better than they would in a high-cost medium.”
Innovative bioreactors further drive down costs
Courtesy: Clever Carnivore
Aside from the culture media cost reductions and optimised cell lines, Clever Carnivore’s porcine cells are capable of doubling in less than 14 hours in adherent culture. “We use our media to signal our cells to enter a naturally highly proliferative state,” says Rangos. “We don’t have to use genetic modification to ‘immortalise’ cells, but our cells are still extremely proliferative.”
“With the right process and training, our method is actually much more robust than methods that rely on genetic modification. We can reliably produce new cell lines on demand, whereas methods like spontaneous immortalisation rely on chance mutations that cannot be reliably reproduced.”
The startup is banking on a proprietary bioprocess design to lower costs and increase efficiency. Having low-cost media and numerous bioreactors allows it to run bioprocess experiments at an “unmatched pace” and refine all the parameters contributing to cell growth. “Elements like ideal temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, and bioreactor design make a huge difference in yield,” says Rangos.
A key factor was the use of secondhand bioreactors for benchtop experiments, which the company bought on eBay. The company has since moved to large-scale stainless-steel bioreactors, which form the basis of the process described in the dossier it will submit to the FDA.
“Our goal has always been to submit for approval a process as identical as possible to our production process at full commercial scale, to ensure a streamlined path through approval,” explains Rangos.
The cultivated pork is produced in two 500-litre bioreactors, with a third on the way. The firm has managed to cut costs on these larger-scale tanks considerably by developing a design without expensive components – while they might be standard in biopharma applications, they are unnecessary for cultivated meat production.
It’s additionally working directly with steel fabricators that cater to food manufacturers, instead of ordering off the shelf from standard suppliers that usually serve the biopharma sector.
Clever Carnivore’s other bioprocess innovations include the growth of cells without microcarriers, which are “expensive, yield-limiting components that must be included in the final food product”, and a seed chain design and disaggregation/re-aggregation method that substantially increase yield and shorten the production timeline.
Upside Foods and Eat Just’s journeys paved the way forward
Courtesy: Clever Carnivore
The startup isn’t shy about the fact that it benefitted from being a late entrant to the space. Witnessing early pioneers hit R&D hurdles and various milestones allowed it to avoid common pitfalls.
Rangos notes how Upside Foods and Eat Just – the first two cultivated meat makers to receive regulatory approval in the US – “didn’t have the luxury of waiting to submit a dossier for regulatory review until they had developed a process viable at factory scale”.
“Investors wanted to see that cultivated meat could pass regulatory review, so that was a box they needed to check. We’ve had more flexibility to allow science to drive strategy because pioneers have already proven that cultivated meat can be sold and that consumers will buy it,” she explains.
“We didn’t have to pitch why cultivated meat was important – just that we had viable technology and strategy to get profitable products to market.
“We’re also unusual because – in part due to the personalities of the founders and in part through necessity – we’ve run a very lean operation. The executives take their turns cleaning the bathrooms, our team painted our new facility together, and if the bioprocess team have an idea, Paul is the first to drive over to the hardware store to find a part we can adapt to try it out right away.”
Rangos outlines how early regulatory submissions “took a lot longer to progress” because the government and businesses had to work together to figure out how to evaluate cultivated meat.
“Our path to approval should be relatively smooth because the groundwork for evaluation has already been laid, we’re presenting as much information as possible up front, [and] we’re submitting a process that is identical in all meaningful ways to what we intend to do at factory scale, ensuring we won’t need to complicate the FDA’s workflow by submitting substantive changes for review.”
Complying with the FDA and the US Department of Agriculture’s standards for production facilities is critical. Clever Carnivore is designing its demo plant with a “well-validated process, high-level quality controls, and equipment that is proven and can be amortised under known schedules”, explained Burridge. It features low-cost inputs and equipment, helping the firm keep buildout costs under $4.5M.
VC landscape forces Clever Carnivore to revise fundraising plans
Courtesy: Clever Carnivore
To date, Clever Carnivore has secured $9.1M from investors, most of which came from the seed round that it’s looking to extend now.
“We initially planned to raise a Series A round to build our demonstration facility. Our commercial-scale factory design is composed of modular units of bioreactors and related processing equipment. The demonstration facility is designed to get a complete module up and running, producing profitable cultivated meat and providing final proof of concept for larger-scale facilities.”
That plan would require an $18M raise. The problem is, capital is “tremendously expensive” now, as investors flock away from food tech. After attracting $1.3B in 2021, investment in cultivated meat has dipped dramatically. In 2023, funding fell by 75%, followed by another 40% drop in 2024, reaching just $139M. In fact, in the last three years, this sector has cumulatively raised less money than it did in 2021 alone.
The headwinds have continued in 2025, with Aleph Farms’s $29M round the only sizeable raise for cultivated meat this year. “We’ve revised our initial plan for a Series A raise because cultivated meat valuations are at an all-time low, and many investors are sceptical about the space, due in part to the political climate, and in part to challenges faced by first-gen cultivated meat companies,” says Rangos.
“Many food and ag tech investors made early bets in the space and aren’t looking to make additional cultivated meat investments, and many sustainability or generalist investors are taking a ‘wait and see’ approach to the space right now.
“We decided to pivot to a plan that allows us to raise less and focus on regulatory approval, commercial partnerships, and beginning beef R&D. That said, we’ve received positive feedback and interest from both seasoned alt-protein investors and more generalist funds. We look forward to building our demonstration facility when capital markets are more favourable.”
Taste tests attract consumers and chefs alike
Courtesy: Clever Carnivore
Investors aren’t the only source of positive feedback for Clever Carnivore – consumers and chefs have taken to its cultivated bratwursts, breakfast sausages, hot dogs and meatballs too. This month, it held two tasting events, where it served over 50 bratwursts to rave reviews, according to the startup.
“We’ve spoken to conventional meat advocates who candidly told us they ‘wanted to hate’ our product,” recalls Ramos. “But when presented with a product that cooks and tastes just like the sausage they’ve always loved, they quickly became intrigued.”
Aside from taste, consumers have expressed appreciation for its value proposition – think meat free from steroids, antibiotics or GMOs, a secure food supply chain with domestic production, and expanded options that will keep products on shelves amid shortages and price inflation for conventional meat.
“We’re very interested in partnering with existing conventional meat and restaurant chain brands. We know we’re asking consumers to try something new, and we think presenting Clever Carnivore’s cultivated meat for the first time under a label consumers recognise and trust will go a long way toward getting consumers to try the product.”
The nutritional profile will only help expand the appeal, with the cultivated pork exhibiting similar amino acid profiles and nutritional values to conventional versions. “Our prototype products incorporate a plant-based fat. Our cultivated pork delivers the ‘meaty’ flavour, allowing us to use plant-based fats and reap the nutritional benefits of plant-based vs animal fats.”
Why Clever Carnivore is targeting processed cultivated meat
Courtesy: Clever Carnivore
Clever Carnivore is among a number of companies working on cultivated pork, offering alternatives to products that the WHO has deemed carcinogenic, like sausages and hot dogs. These include Mission Barns (already approved by the FDA), Meatable, Mewery, and Magic Valley.
The decision to focus on processed pork instead of whole cuts was driven by “a combination of scientific considerations, budgetary constraints, and strategic market positioning”.
“Producing whole cuts requires more time in the bioreactors – you need to swap the media and allow cells time to form tissues. Transition to a specialty bioreactor for added tissue development might also be necessary,” says Rangos.
“We’ve progressed to this point with only $9M in investment so far. To use resources as efficiently as possible and to avoid overstretching our team, we decided to focus our R&D on pork before other meat and on formed products before whole cuts,” she adds. “We like the idea of debuting accessible products – cultivated meat not as a luxury, but as a high-quality, reasonably priced staple.”
That being said, its process does make it feasible to develop whole cuts someday. “Getting there will require additional time and money, and we believe it’s important to bring competitively priced and compelling products to market as soon as possible,” she says.
Aside from pork, Clever Carnivore’s expertise in mammalian cell biology and bioprocess enables it to fast-track other mammalian species through its R&D pipeline. “Our next priority is beef, but we’re also interested in working on lamb to expand our appeal to international markets where pork and beef are less popular.”
Sydney-based Vow received regulatory approval to sell cultivated meat in Australia and New Zealand, which will begin appearing on restaurant menus in the coming weeks.
Australians will soon be able to order cultivated meat from restaurant menus, following the country’s first approval of these novel proteins.
The joint food safety regulator of Australia and New Zealand has amended its Food Standards Code following a multi-year assessment of Vow’s cultured quail, allowing the startup to sell its innovation in eateries and supermarkets across the two countries.
It followed the preliminary approval granted by Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) in March, when its board had finalised the required food code changes, as first reported by Green Queen. They were then under review by food ministers across the two countries, before culminating in the approval decision for Vow.
Speaking to Green Queen in April, co-founder and CEO George Peppou had confirmed the company would launch in Australia first, via “high-end restaurants and elevated fast-casual concepts first, followed by retail partnerships later in the year”.
Now, the firm has announced that its cultured Japanese quail – sold under the Forged brand in concepts like parfait and foie gras – will debut at dozens of restaurants within weeks, including Bottarga and The Lincoln in Melbourne, and Nel, The Waratah, and Kitchen by Mike in Sydney.
“This isn’t about replacing the meats we know and love. It’s about trying something entirely new – something that can only exist because of how it’s made. For chefs, that’s incredibly exciting. But for all of us, it’s a huge opportunity,” said Mike McEnearney, owner and executive chef at Kitchen by Mike.
He has signed on as the first Australian ambassador of Forged, and will showcase its cultivated meat at the soon-to-open 1Hotel in Melbourne too. “The future always lies in bold ideas that seem impossible at first, but are rooted in real innovation – the kind that drives culture forward,” he added.
FSANZ approval could speed up future applications
Courtesy: Vow
Vow is already one of the leading cultivated meat players globally, becoming the only startup to be approved to sell in three geographies.
It first secured the greenlight in Singapore last year, where its quail has rolled out at a growing list of venues since, including Two Men Bagel House, Mirko Febbrile’s Somma, and sustainability-forward bar Fura. According to the company, it is posting a 200% month-over-month growth in the city-state. Now, it can be sold in Australia and New Zealand too.
In its approval decision, FSANZ confirmed that Vow’s cultured quail will be mixed with other ingredients – as is the norm for cultivated meat – to produce dishes in restaurants and foodservice establishments, and end products for supermarkets.
It further noted that the product cannot be included in “special purpose foods” like sports foods, infant formula, or food for special medical purposes without additional pre-market assessments.
And in the amended code, FSANZ clarified that these proteins must be labelled as “cell-cultured” or “cell-cultivated” on packaging, if it’s “represented in words, images or both as being from the animal” from which the food is sourced.
“FSANZ has now successfully developed a dedicated regulatory pathway for cell-cultured foods, opting to introduce two new standards for Cell-Cultured Foods rather than relying on the existing Novel Foods Framework. This establishes ANZ as only the second jurisdiction globally (after the US) to adopt a bespoke regulatory process for cell-cultured meat,” explained Kim Tonnet, head of regulatory affairs at Cellular Agriculture Australia.
“This move will make the requirements clear and defined for future applicants, reducing uncertainty and delays, and thereby streamlining the approval process. In a really positive step, FSANZ also indicated that future applications under these standards may benefit from faster and more cost-effective assessments,” she added.
Vow hits production milestone with largest-ever cultivated meat
Courtesy: Vow
To make its cultivated meat, Vow uses a small selection of cells from a Japanese quail and places them in a nutrient-rich broth, which is transferred into fermentation tanks that recreate the conditions inside a quail’s body and allow the cells to grow and multiply naturally. The meat is ready for harvest in 79 days, when it is separated from the broth and incorporated into delicacies like parfait and foie gras.
“Flavour is everything to us – it’s the reason Forged exists. We’re crafting meats that aren’t just rich and complex, but downright irresistible,” said Peppou. “Many [chefs] describe the product’s signature umami depth and silky, melt-in-your-mouth texture as unlike anything they’ve worked with before.”
The startup has raised $55M to date, entering the market with a smaller outlay than others that have received approval, including Upside Foods ($608M), Eat Just ($270M), Aleph Farms ($147M), Wildtype ($120M) and Mission Barns ($60M).
The FSANZ’s initial approval had come weeks after Vow cut back 30% of its workforce, a decision that stemmed from a longer-than-expected timeline for regulatory clearance, but one Peppou described as coming from a “position of strength as the industry leader, not a position of weakness”.
The company has hit several production milestones in recent months. Its cell cultivation capacity has extended to 35,000 litres within its second factory, which it says was 20 to 50 times cheaper to build than competitors. It operates the largest food-grade cell culture bioreactor at 20,000 litres, and claims to have completed the largest cultivated meat harvest in history (538 kg) last month.
By the end of the year, Vow expects to reach a production capability of up to 900 kg per harvest, scaling to 10,800 kg monthly or 130,000 kg annually. Longer-term improvements that make use of the full factory capacity will allow it to eventually surpass 20,000 kg a month.
A ‘momentum shift’ away from the US?
Courtesy: Vow
“Meat has never been more popular, especially in Asian markets that import top-quality proteins from down under. The challenge is that conventional production methods are highly inefficient: we currently feed up to 100 calories to a cow to produce just one calorie of beef,” said Mirte Gosker, managing director of alternative protein think tank the Good Food Institute.
“Sustainably satisfying rising meat demand will require scaling up additional forms of protein production that can complement the traditional farming methods Australia is renowned for,” she added.
“Australia’s public embrace of cellular agriculture could enable local food producers to sell healthy and delicious cultivated proteins through existing agricultural distribution networks and add substantial new revenue streams to their ledgers. It also sets the stage for greater international regulatory harmonisation, which has the potential to unlock export opportunities across the world’s most populous region.”
Globally, six other companies have received some form of regulatory clearance to sell cultivated meat, including Eat Just (in Singapore and the US), Upside Foods, Mission Barns and Wildtype (all in the US), Aleph Farms (in Israel), and Meatly (in the UK). Regulators in the EU, Switzerland and Thailand are evaluating applications too.
Vow’s success over the last 18 months comes as “momentum shifts away from the US”, according to the company, which appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for its viral woolly mammoth meatball stunt in 2023. Cultivated meat has become entrenched in the culture wars, with six states having banned these proteins from being sold or produced.
Meanwhile, investment in cultivated meat has also continued to fall, by 75% in 2023 and another 40% in 2024. In the last three years, startups in this category have cumulatively raised less money than they did in 2021 alone.
Currently, Wildtype and Vow are the only two companies actively selling cultivated meat in restaurants, highlighting the scale and commercialisation challenges faced by many startups. Vow’s cultured quail, however, will soon be served in over 50 venues, showcasing the true potential of the sector.
“With an expanding network of restaurants in Singapore continuing to serve Forged just 14 months after launch, the appetite for what’s next is already clear,” said Peppou. “This is a new category of food that hasn’t just been accepted – it’s been embraced. And if that’s any signal, Australia’s just getting started.”
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers a host of protein lattes, Better Nature’s tempeh rollouts, and Meatable’s presentation at a Wall Street Journal forum.
New products and launches
New York-based Laird Superfood has released an instant protein latte powder with 10g of plant protein per serving. It combines pea, hemp and pumpkin seed protein with mushroom extracts, coconut MCTs and Aquamin. It retails for $19 per six servings and is available on its website and at Sprouts Farmers Market nationwide.
Likewise, plant-based milk brand Califia Farms has introduced a ready-to-drink protein vanilla almond latte, offering 10g of pea protein per serving. It can be found at Target stores for $5.29 per 40z bottle.
In similar news, Indian fitness and lifestyle brand HRX – co-owned by Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan – has unveiled a line of oat milk protein shakes, starting with a chocolate flavour (with 25g of plant protein per 100ml), ahead of introducing vanilla, cold coffee and lighter chocolate variants.
Courtesy: HRX
Still in India, Néktar Bakerymakes vegan desserts and viennoiseries, and will open a cloud location this month in the city of Pune.
Back in the US, the owners of Salt Lake City’s Vertical Diner have inaugurated a new plant-based deli, with a menu featuring sandwiches, burgers, bowls, pastries, and more.
Courtesy: Better Nature
Elsewhere, British tempeh brandBetter Nature has rolled out its organic tempeh into around 150 additional Asda stores, and added a new Mediterranean-flavoured block to its lineup, which is available on Ocado for £3 per 220g pack.
Beyond Meat, meanwhile, has introduced its jalapeño-flavoured burger to 317 Asda stores in the UK, in addition to bringing its original burger to 350 of the retailer’s sites.
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
And Danish mycelium meat maker Tempty Foods has brought its Spicy Korean Sticks to 7-Eleven Denmark stores. The product was created through 7-Eleven’s Innovation Corner competition last year.
Company and finance updates
Dutch cultivated meat producer Meatable was present at the Wall Street Journal’s Global Food Forum event in Chicago (June 16), where CEO Jeff Tripician spoke on how cultivated meat can complement conventional agriculture and boost global food security.
Fresh from hosting a cultivated meat tasting in the New South Wales parliament, Australia’s Magic Valley is raising A$3M ($1.9M) to build its first manufacturing facility (which is expected to cost A$5M, or $3.3M) and produce 500 tonnes of product per year.
Planted, the Swiss plant-based meat maker, has opened its new production facility in Bavaria, Germany, featuring “state-of-the-art fermentation technology”, which the company says will double its manufacturing capacity.
Courtesy: Magic Valley
Agriculture giant the Groan Group has signed a strategic partnership with plant-based ingredient maker Aminola to accelerate and expand the use of sustainable ingredients in the human food, pet food and aquafeed sectors.
British plant-based ingredient maker Novo Farina has ceased trading, with its former managing director citing “market factors and ever-increasing cost challenges”.
AgFunder News reports that Yasir Abdul, the executive behind InvenTel, the company known for ‘As Seen on TV’ infomercials, has surfaced as the unexpected potential buyer of Meati, a fungi-based alternative meat company. The acquisition is being pursued through an entity named Meati Holdings, with Ryan Bethencourt, CEO of Wild Earth and an early-stage alt-protein investor, providing support during the transition.
Courtesy: Little Island
In New Zealand, plant-based dairy and ice cream firm Little Island has entered liquidation after 15 years in operation.
Luxembourg-based Moulins de Kleinbettingen has installed its second production line for plant proteins with a total investment of nearly €20M in its plant-based business, doubling its initial capacity and making co-manufacturing deals more flexible.
In Sweden, Stockeld Dreamery and Jävligt Gott have openedLabbet, a food tech hub equipped with a kitchen, lab spaces and offices for small and growing businesses.
Courtesy: Jävligt Gott
Similarly, Malaysia’s Pure Mylk has opened The Mylky Way in Kuala Lumpur, which is Southeast Asia’s first end-to-end innovation hub for plant-based milk and beverages. It aims to support companies small and big with product formulation, testing, and scaleable production.
Research, policy and awards
A Canadian-American study shows that a low-fat vegan diet can reduce moderate to severe hot flashes by 92% after women hit menopause, while also losing 16 times more weight than the control group.
UK coalition Plant-Based Universities is convening over 200 students for a Plant-Based Universities Europe Camp in August.
Bruce Friedrich, founder and president of alternative protein think tank the Good Food Institute,has been appointed to the Board of Advisors of EAT, the global food systems transformation non-profit.
Strategic consultancy Mission Plant has compiled a list of job boards and resources for folks looking for positions in the alternative protein industry.
Courtesy: Institute for Organic Farming
Research by the Institute for Organic Farming (commissioned by the WWF) has revealed that a vegan diet is the cheapest expensive for a family of four in Austria, saving €225 per month compared to an omnivore diet.
Finally, Hélène Briand, co-founder of French precision fermentation startup Verley (formerly Bon Vivant), won the Female Founder Challenge at Vivatech in Paris.
Owen Ensor, co-founder and CEO of British cultivated pet food startup Meatly, on why political bans shouldn’t deter investors from the alternative protein ecosystem.
There is a dark cloud of local bans in the US and labelling disputes alongside this exciting industry progress. However, we need to have a perspective on these and look at what is actually going on.
In the last few years, many governments have funded, approved, or supported cultivated meat. By contrast, cell-cultivated meat has been banned in a handful of right-wing US states. The balance of debate is clear – there is great technical progress, and almost all governments are backing this innovative product.
So we need to ask ourselves: why are we giving these bans so much attention?
Even the meat industry is against the bans
Courtesy: Meatly
This negative coverage is driven largely by right-leaning political factions, attempting to cast this innovative food technology as the latest battleground in the ever-escalating culture wars. Alarmist language, such as accusations of “global elite authoritarianism“, has been deployed to fuel opposition, particularly in ultra-conservative strongholds.
To date, six US states have banned cultivated meat. At the same time, bans in other regions have been attempted, including Romania, where the bill is stuck in the legislature and is unlikely to proceed, and Italy, where a proposed ban contravenes EU law.
To my knowledge, cultivated meat is the first food ever to be banned before even being on sale, and for political reasons. These bans are purely to appeal to a hard right-wing electorate in certain states. The US meat lobby doesn’t even want cultivated meat banned.
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association recently stated: “Telling Americans what they can and cannot buy at the grocery store does not align with NCBA’s policy book or our conservative values… and setting a precedent that the federal government can remove a product from the shelves completely is not wise for the cattle industry, when we have no idea who might be sitting in the White House or in Congress 10 years from now.”
The global excitement for cultivated meat
Courtesy: Meatly
Looking beyond these bans, we get a clearer, more genuine understanding of the development and excitement of this industry.
Globally, there is a growing consensus in some of the world’s largest economies that cultivated meat and other cell-cultivated food solutions hold the keys to bolstering food security and creating a food system which supports sustainable farming.
Several markets across the globe – including the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, and Singapore – have already granted regulatory clearance for cultivated meat for either human or pet consumption. A Trump appointee has also signed off on the most recent US approvals.
These nations and regions, spanning diverse political landscapes and geographical locations, have undertaken rigorous safety assessments and concluded that cultivated meat is a viable and safe food source. This crucial step of regulatory approval signals a fundamental acceptance of the technology and paves the way for its integration into a sustainable food system.
But that’s not all. The financial backing for cultivated meat research and development paints an even broader picture of commitment to this new food industry. A remarkable 22 countries, encompassing virtually every major global economy, have actively funded cultivated meat initiatives.
This extensive list includes nations such as Canada, China, Norway, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Israel, France, Germany, Poland, Spain, India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Brazil, in addition to those with regulatory approvals.
It’s clear that while a handful of regions grapple with politically motivated bans, the overwhelming global direction of travel points firmly towards acceptance and support.
A trillion-dollar opportunity
Courtesy: Jack Lawson/Meatly
Such widespread investment and attention underscore a deep-seated understanding of the potential benefits that cultivated meat offers across a spectrum of critical areas, beyond just tackling the substantial emissions behind industrial animal agriculture.
The biggest benefit is an economic one. The global meat market is worth $1.55T, and global demand for meat continues to grow. Countries that can get ahead on cultivated meat and other cellular agriculture technologies are looking at a major economic win, creating local industries that can feed people sustainably while creating jobs and generating revenue.
Cultivated meat will also boost food security, not threaten it. This innovation can help produce sustainable meat in high volumes, while farmers can focus on high-quality, high-value regeneratively farmed meat. These proteins can also shorten supply chains and make nations less dependent on imported meat. This will have knock-on benefits for human health, where a reliance on industrial agriculture will limit the use of antibiotics and the risk of spread of zoonotic diseases such as avian flu.
That’s why, when a handful of conservative US states push back with politically motivated bans, it feels increasingly out of sync with this broader global momentum and more like an attempt to stifle innovation and limit consumer choice. The sole outcome of this is that the future of food is passed from the US to Europe and Asia.
It’s clear that by focusing on these bans, we obscure the significant progress being made globally, the substantial investments being channelled into the sector, and the growing recognition of its crucial role in building a more sustainable and secure food future.
What this means for the industry
Graphic by Green Queen
For cultivated meat companies, the advice is simple: stay focused.
The world is vast, and almost all regions actively support and encourage the development and commercialisation of cultivated meat. Direct your attention, resources, and efforts towards these receptive markets. Engage with governments and regulatory bodies that understand the value proposition and are committed to fostering innovation. The long-term trajectory is undeniably positive, and short-term political noise should not derail strategic goals.
For investors, the message is equally resolute: recognise the global landscape.
The commitment to cultivated meat is not confined to a few progressive enclaves; it has widespread support, embraced by major economies and forward-thinking governments worldwide. We’ve had VCs say they will not invest because of the ‘geopolitical debate’. It’s really staggering to hear a global VC fund is making investment decisions based on what a provincial hard-right legislator is doing.
Let’s be very clear: you can build an exceptionally profitable, high-return business outside of Alabama… in fact, you can build an exceptional business outside of the US.
The potential for significant returns and the opportunity to contribute to a more sustainable future remains, with the global support for cultivated meat providing a robust foundation for long-term growth and success. Now is actually the ideal time to be investing, given the suppressed valuations that the current debate has created.
The direction of travel is clear. Governments around the world realise the environmental, health, economic, security, and ethical potential of cultivated meat, as well as the value in allowing consumers and the free market to decide which safe products should be sold. It’s time we started having this define the political conversation around cultivated meat.
A study of Upside Foods’ cultivated meat tasting shows what consumers want from these proteins and what they don’t want from their lawmakers.
On June 27, 2024, a California company took a stand against the state of Florida.
Upside Foods, the first startup to be approved to sell cultivated meat in the US, held a public tasting of its chicken at a rooftop in Miami. It was a precursor to what was to come four days later: a statewide ban on these proteins, championed by Governor Ron DeSantis.
Since then, five more states have followed suit. Alabama, Mississippi, Montana, Indiana, and Nebraska have all outlawed the sale of cultivated meat, but the public doesn’t seem to be aligned with their leaders on this issue.
In an analysis of Upside Foods’s tasting event, researchers at Tufts University found that cultivated meat is viewed favourably both on a sensory and political scale. Every attendee who was interviewed opposed a ban on these foods, be it Democrats, Republicans, or those with another political inclination.
It comes during a year when the Food and Drug Administration has approved two additional companies to sell cultivated meat in the US, with Mission Barns now awaiting the greenlight from the Department of Agriculture for its pork fat, and Wildtype’s salmon already available in a Portland restaurant.
Courtesy: Upside Foods
How do Americans feel about cultivated meat?
Attendees lining up to taste the cultivated meat spanned all ages, and while most attendees were white or Latinx, people from other ethnic and racial backgrounds were also present. That said, there were roughly twice as many men as women.
They tasted the chicken as part of a tostada created by Caja Caliente owner and TV personality Mika Leon. The cultivated chicken was made a la Plancha con Sazón and accompanied by avocado, chipotle crema, beet sprouts, and fresh lime zest.
Of those interviewed, 73% had a favourable review of the taste, but an equal share called for sensory improvements, mostly in terms of the chicken’s texture. This split opinion. Some found the cultivated meat indistinguishable from conventional chicken, while others found it similar or inferior to plant-based alternatives.
Aside from complaints about a “rubbery” texture, one key concern was the use of fetal bovine serum, which led to “striking and sudden reversals” from acceptance to rejection. “I wish I’d known they use animal ingredients. If I had known, I wouldn’t have tried it. I wouldn’t have eaten it,” said one taster.
Courtesy: Kevin Martin Galante/Upside Foods
Yet others indicated that they’d like to see cultivated meat reach price parity, an effort being accelerated across the industry. These reasons are why, while 80% expressed a willingness to try it again, only a quarter said they would do so regularly, pending further product development.
Interestingly, many attendees wanted to try it in other formats and see if they could cook it themselves. “The skill of a celebrity chef cooking the food was highly salient for respondents and led to caution or hesitation when answering whether what they tried would influence future food decisions,” the study notes in the NPJ Science of Food journal, quoting one attendee who said: “This was definitely cooked by someone who knew what they were doing.”
Democrat or Republican, nobody wants a cultivated meat ban
While Floridians had some words of advice for cultivated meat manufacturers, they had stronger words for the politicians looking to ban the innovation.
“I support innovation and I’m usually a big DeSantis supporter. But I don’t support him on this. I would vote against the ban,” said one attendee. “I feel like the ban is an interesting choice for a state that allegedly supports smaller government,” added another.
For one taste-tester, the ban was “completely based on scare tactics and political nonsense” and set a “really terrible precedent”. “We don’t ban foods in America. That’s not who we are, that’s just not what we do,” they said. “There’s no science behind the ban. It’s nonsense.”
The divergence from traditional party positions, particularly for those identifying as Democratic or liberal (who typically do not oppose government intervention), suggests that cultivated meat “might create new political fault lines defying traditional party stances”, the researchers write.
Miami chef Mika Leon and Upside Foods CEO Uma Valeti at the Freedom of Food tasting event in June 2024 | Courtesy: Kevin Martin Galante/Upside Foods
At the same time, the opposition to banning cultivated meat is non-partisan. “Self-identified Democrats, liberals, Libertarians and Republicans aligned on the belief that these technologies and foods should be allowed to progress and that government interference was overreach,” they explain.
“The ban violates ingrained values of freedom for Libertarians, free markets for Republicans, and signifies moving away from progress for societal benefit for Democrats and liberals.”
The study uncovered three theoretical pathways of acceptance: American identity, perceived sensory and cultural values, and the need for transparency and further innovation.
“Cultivated meat companies must prioritise transparent communication that dispels misconceptions and educates consumers about the production process, while avoiding marketing strategies that could provoke a backlash when setting unrealistic expectations,” says the study.
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Oatly’s recipe lookbook, Villareal CF’s tofu seminar, and People Magazine’s plant-based awards.
New products and launches
Swedish oat milk giant Oatly has unveiled a lookbook for the Spring/Summer 2025 season, featuring a range of recipes using its products. Think a maple miso latte, a lacto-fermented blueberry matcha, and a salty banana split.
Courtesy: Oatly
Dutch alternative protein producer Schouten has launched three Taste of the World veggie burgers inspired by Mexican, Italian and Thai cuisines.
McDonald’s Netherlands has re-released the Meatless McKroket two years after it was first launched, with a jackfruit filling made from Fiber Foods‘s PrimeJack ingredient.
Swiss plant-based meat giant Planted has introduced ready-to-eat steak bites in select Coop stores across the nation.
Courtesy: Yellow Sunshine
Yellow Sunshine is a new Swiss brand established by the founders of vegan creamery New Roots, Alice Fauconnet and Freddy Hunziker. It makes lupin protein blocks in plain, garlic and herbs, and pepper-paprika flavours.
While Ferrero has just launched its vegan Nutella in the UK, a new competitor has already emerged. Pip & Nut has released a chocolate-hazelnut spread with a sixth of the sugar content. It retails at Sainsbury’s for £3.50 per 165g hat and £7.65 per 400g tub, before rolling out at Whole Foods Market, Ocado and Amazon.
Spanish football club Villareal CF and the Embassy of Japan in Spain partnered to host a tofu seminar with Somenoya Co, a 163-year-old tofu company from Tokyo.
Courtesy: Yellow Sunshine
In response to the high prices and market volatility of cocoa, German food giant Dr. Oetker has released a carob flour for consumers in Turkey to replace cocoa powder at home.
In more alt-cocoa news, US flour giant Ardent Mills has launched a wheat-based Cocoa Replace product. It can substitute 25% of cocoa powder in baking applications.
Kraft Heinz Not Company has unveiled the latest innovations in its US lineup: a NotMayo Chipotle Squeeze and Kraft NotMac & Cheese Cups.
Courtesy: Kraft Heinz Not Company/Green Queen
US breakfast foods company Purely Elizabeth has rolled out a Protein Oatmeal range in Apple Harvest Crumble, Chocolate Chip Banana Bread and Maple Cinnamon Roll. The vegan products have 10g of protein per serving and retail for $6.49 per 235g pack in supermarkets nationwide,
Also in the US, the Plant-Based Seafood Co‘s Mind Blown brand has reignited its partnership with PLNT Burger to offer its Maryland-style crab cake in a limited-edition Happy Crabby Sandwich for the third year in a row.
Häagen-Dazs Shops, meanwhile, has launched a summer blueberry collection featuring the brand’s first oat milk offering in the US. The Blueberry Lemon Non-Dairy Freeze drink combines its blueberry and lemon sorbet with oat milk and blueberry preserve.
Courtesy: Häagen-Dazs Shops
Plant-based ingredients maker Planteneers has introduced a methylcellulose-free texturiser blend with functional yeast protein for clean-label plant-based meat.
And Israeli startup Alfred’s Foodtech has released dairy-free Gouda slices with 18% protein under its new Alfred’s Deli brand. They come in original and pesto flavours.
Company and finance updates
Danish ingredients firm Feast Foods has ceased operations after failing to secure funding for its yeast extract replacer.
Also in the Nordics, Swedish dairy giant Valio has announced that it will close the Kauhava factory it took over from Raisio by the end of this year, relocating operations to its Joensuu site instead.
Courtesy: Valio
Online grocer Vegan Essentials has been acquired by Fake Meats owners Steven and Kim Skaff, who bought it from fellow retailer PlantX.
British cultivated meat firm Ivy Farm Technologies has appointed Rebecca Wright as chief legal officer, as part of its effort to work with regulators globally to bring its Wagyu beef to market.
US vegan fast-food chain Slutty Vegan has hired entrepreneur, investor and marketer Lauren Maillian as brand president.
Courtesy: Slutty Vegan/LinkedIn
The new owners of the Merit Functional Foods plant in Winnipeg, which went into receivership in March 2023, are not planning to restart it as a plant protein business.
But fellow Canadian company Burcon NutraScience has completed the first production run of its Peazazz C pea protein at its facility in Galesburg, Illinois.
Edinburgh’s Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre’s FlexBio facility is home to Scotland’s first open-access 300-litre fermenter, which was supported by an £847,000 grant from national agency Scottish Enterprise.
Courtesy: Blue Tribe Foods
As part of its 2025 sustainability initiative, Indian plant-based meat startup Blue Tribe Foods recycled 1,475 kg of plastic in the first quarter of 2025, building on the 2,333 kg it recycled last year.
A bankruptcy judge in Delaware has given vegan sushi chain Planta final approval to secure nearly $5M in financing after resolving comments from its debtor-in-possession.
Venture firm Nordic Foodtech VC has hit its first close of €40M as part of an €80M fund to invest in new technologies for the food and agriculture industry.
Policy, research and awards
Californian precision fermentation leader Perfect Day has asked a District of Columbia court to throw out a lawsuit alleging that it had misled consumers about its animal-free whey products.
Courtesy: Perfect Day
Scotland’s biotechnology sector is celebrating the launch of the country’s first open-access 300-litre fermenter, which has been installed thanks to an £847,000 grant from the national economic development agency, Scottish Enterprise.
Also in Scotland, the University of Stirling has developed the Clean Food Consumerism scale to help manufacturers meet evolving consumer preferences for clean-label foods.
Ahead of its Singapore approval, French cultivated foie gras maker Gourmey has joined the APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo have found a way to control the key amino acids responsible for flavour in a bid to get cultivated meat to taste closer to its conventional counterpart.
A study by the Federal University of São Paulo has revealed that 80% of these plant-based meat products in Brazil have good nutritional quality, based on the Nutri-Score indicator. Meanwhile, 73% of vegan alternatives were classed as ultra-processed, much lower than animal-derived meats (92%).
Along with its upcoming fundraise, Simple Planet is about to submit dossiers in South Korea and Singapore for regulatory approval – a feat its CEO says will make cultivated meat resurgent.
Despite continued declines in funding and escalating political challenges, regulatory progress shows that cultivated meat can weather the storm, according to the CEO of one major industry player.
Funding for cultivated meat startups shrunk by 75% in 2023, and another 40% last year, just as politicians in Italy, Florida, Alabama, and now Mississippi have banned the sale and production of these proteins. The industry, meanwhile, continues to face major headwinds due to high R&D costs, scaling difficulties, and the macroeconomic landscape.
“However, as more bio-food tech companies gradually receive regulatory approvals from various countries, we remain optimistic that the cultivated meat sector will continue to expand, leading to a resurgence in investment and funding,” says Dominic Jeong.
He is the co-founder and CEO of Simple Planet, a South Korean food tech startup that is taking a unique approach to cultivated meat. It produces cell-cultured ingredients like proteins (specifically, amino acids) in powder and paste formats, and omega-3 fatty acids in the form of an oil and a paste.
Graphic by Green Queen
The firm – which is prioritising beef, chicken, and fish from its suite of 13 cell lines – is preparing regulatory dossiers for food safety authorities in South Korea and Singapore, aiming to file them within the first half of this year. It means its products could come to market in 2026, given the timeline of approvals in each country.
“We are initially working on a muscle-derived cell line. This cell line will be submitted for regulatory approval upon completion of the necessary application data,” Jeong tells Green Queen.
Simple Planet also has an eye on Thailand and Indonesia, and is amplifying its presence in the Middle East and North America. These efforts will be helped by its upcoming bridge loan worth $10M, Jeong notes.
“It’s a complex time for cell-based food globally, particularly in funding and regulation,” Jeong says. “With investors becoming more cautious, having a clear path to market and a scalable business model is more important than ever. At Simple Planet, we’ve stayed focused on efficiency, partnerships, and long-term viability.”
The company has already raised $8M from investors, in addition to an $8M government grant it received as part of a food security project last year. The new funding, the CEO says, will primarily be used to drive commercialisation, establish an industrial production facility, and expand Simple Planet’s business operations.
Simple Planet’s multi-pronged path to market
Courtesy: Simple Planet
Simple Planet is producing a lyophilised cell powder with 16 times more protein than whey. “The powder has the potential to effectively substitute the whey protein currently used in Formula 75 (F-75) and Formula 100 (F-100), which are therapeutic milk formulations designed for the treatment of severe malnutrition,” explains Jeong.
“We are actively engaged in efforts to replace whey protein in these products to provide a reliable and effective source of protein nutrition.”
In addition to these ingredients, it has unveiled Balboa Kitchen, a healthy snacking brand featuring ready-to-eat granola, functional snacks, and “other clean-label products” made from the cell-based ingredients.
“We’re planning to enter global markets this year, starting with Southeast Asia and Japan, where demand for Korean-made healthy food continues to grow,” reveals Jeong.
Meanwhile, Simple Planet’s patented serum-free culture medium replaces fetal bovine serum with probiotic-derived metabolites, slashing costs by over 99.8% and addressing key ethical concerns. “Our serum-free culture media is aimed at research labs and biotech startups, particularly those working on cell-based food. We’re leveraging our network to support innovation across the industry,” he says.
Since its innovations are ingredients rather than fully formed products, a direct comparison with the cost of conventional meat is not an appropriate measure, Jeong argues. “However, the initial cost per kilogram is comparable to that of conventional meat, while the protein content per unit weight is significantly higher. As production scales up to industrial levels, the cost is expected to decrease significantly,” he explains.
“Our scale of production is using 1,000-litre bioreactors, and the capacity goal of ingredient production is a maximum of 3.2 tonnes per month,” he adds. “Our facility is currently in the process of obtaining GMP [Good Manufacturing Practice] certification, which will ensure that our production is conducted in a highly controlled, contaminant-free environment.”
Simple Planet is targeting CPG players with the cultivated protein and fat. “We aim to produce at scale and collaborate with food conglomerates to enhance the nutrition of their products. These ingredients are highly versatile and can be applied to snacks, beverages, ready meals, and more,” says Jeong.
“We’ve already completed successful proof-of-concepts with major Korean players like Nongshim and CJ, developing more nutritious versions of products like instant noodles and gyoza.”
Several projects underway to advance cultivated meat
Courtesy: Simple Planet
The purpose of the bridge funding is fourfold. Simple Planet will aim to set up a large-scale production plant, establish strategic partnerships for product integration with food and beverage companies, expand its presence in global markets while pursuing regulatory approval, and hire top biotech, food science, and commercialisation experts to help execute these goals.
In the meantime, it has embarked on several projects to advance its path to market. One of these is a proof-of-concept collaboration with a “global food conglomerate” to explore how its ingredients can enhance the taste and nutrition of its products across the food, beverage, supplement and wellness categories.
“We are also exploring ways to support Indonesia’s national priority programme for free nutritious meals, working with local partners to contribute to sustainable and accessible nutrition solutions,” says Jeong.
In February, Simple Planet announced it was collaborating with Chulalongkorn University’s Halal Research Center in Thailand to integrate Halal standards into its manufacturing practices. After the startup initiated discussions and shared data on its technology, the Korean Muslim Federation issued a fatwa confirming that cultivated meat can be consumed by Muslims if it meets certain criteria.
In addition, the company is working with the Indonesian National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) and Thailand’s National Food Institute to advance the development of cell-cultured ingredients. And the startup has signed an MoU to partner with the newly announced cultivated meat research centre in Uiseong County.
“For Simple Planet, government approval and halal certification are top priorities,” says Jeong. “We work closely with halal authorities and food regulators to ensure our serum-free, halal-compliant cell culture medium meets industry standards.”
Cultivated meat needs ‘stronger government support’
Courtesy: GFI APAC
Simple Planet has been engaging with regulators across key markets, including the Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (which established a novel food framework in 2024 and is expected to greenlight an application from local startup CellMeat soon). Further, it’s working with the Singapore Food Agency and the National Agency of Drug and Food Control (BPOM) in Indonesia.
“In Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea, and Singapore, there is increasing interest in alternative proteins as part of national food security and sustainability initiatives,” says Jeong. “Singapore has led the way with a regulatory framework, while other countries are actively developing policies on food safety and halal compliance.”
He calls for “stronger government support” in regulation, research, and halal certification, which is crucial to unlocking the full potential of cultivated meat in mainstream markets.
So far, cultivated meat has been cleared to be sold in Singapore (from two startups), the US (four), Israel, the UK, Hong Kong, and (preliminarily) Australia and New Zealand (one each). Despite all the turmoil in the sector, three approval decisions have come this year. Regulators in the EU, Switzerland, Thailand and South Korea are assessing applications too.
“Regulatory progress varies widely – countries like Singapore and the US are moving forward, while others are still developing frameworks. This creates uncertainty, but also opportunities to help shape the conversation,” says Jeong.
“Europe remains cautious about the commercialisation of cell-based food, although some products have entered the market as pet food. This might be an early sign that Europe may gradually open up to cultivated meat in the future,” he adds. Even in Singapore and Israel, challenges remain in terms of standardisation, market access, and regulatory consistency.
But he indicates that the wave of approvals over the last 18 months is a sign of good things to come after a period of turbulence: “These hurdles appear to be part of the natural progression of introducing a new technology to consumers, and we believe they will be resolved in the near future.”
Researchers have uncovered eight themes that prevailed in the media coverage of the USDA’s first two approvals of cultivated meat in 2023, which had implications.
Is cultivated meat ‘real meat’? Does it pose any benefits? Is it an inevitable, necessary marker of change to the food system?
If you were reading the coverage of the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) approval of Upside Foods and Eat Just’s cultivated chicken products in summer 2023, the answer to all of these questions would likely have been yes.
How the media frames a story has wide-ranging implications for policy and public opinion. For example, many people remain unaware of livestock’s significant impact on global greenhouse gas emissions, which is hardly surprising given that only 7% of stories about climate change mention animal agriculture at all. This media framing issue is true for cultivated meat, too, and the many other terms it is known by.
“The optimistic framing of cell-cultivated meat as a more ethical and sustainable alternative notwithstanding, significant uncertainties and political resistance persist in media narratives, which likely influence regulatory pathways and consumer acceptance,” researchers from Tufts University write in a new study published in the Future Foods journal.
Coverage of USDA’s approval of cultivated meat is largely positive
Eat Just’s Good Meat chicken at China Chilcano | Courtesy: Ana Isabel Martinez Chamorro
The study analysed 34 articles from leading publications – including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Fox News, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal – and found eight prevailing themes in the coverage.
The most common theme was the description of cultivated meat as “real meat”, which appeared in 92% of the stories. Most journalists defined cultivated meat through its production in facilities and termed it “lab-grown”, while simultaneously arguing that it is real meat, effectively differentiating it from plant-based alternatives.
A similar share of stories (91%) discussed the benefits of cultivated meat, most often discussing the emissions, land and water benefits these proteins present. “Removing animal suffering from the act of eating meat was a core talking point,” the study also found, as were health benefits, efficiency, food security, reduced antibiotic use, and increased choice for consumers.
Another major theme revolved around the technical feasibility of cultivated meat, with 79% of articles highlighting the challenge of scaling production while reducing production costs.
Some 71% of articles, meanwhile, talked about the taste experience of cultivated meat. There were suggestions that growing acceptance among the public is a “good bet”, though one carnivore said she’d “rather eat [her] shoe” instead. Others who had actually tasted it likened it to eating conventional chicken, with some room for textural improvements.
One positive frame that appeared in 61% of the stories put cultivated meat in the context of ecological damage and growing meat demand. Reporters highlighted the climate impact of the livestock industry, drew parallels with the popularity of vegan meat alternatives, and noted how large meat processors like Tyson and Cargill had invested in startups in this space.
Political and cultural themes were less common across coverage
Courtesy: Upside Foods
In 76% of the analysed reporting, two opposing frames persisted. One constructed cultivated meat as a “groundbreaking”, necessary, and good innovation that would eventually replace conventional meat, and the other described it as unnecessary and problematic.
“As a result, readers consuming articles where both frames are simultaneously offered might be left with a sense of uncertainty, or even ambivalence, surrounding the ‘true’ meaning of cell-cultivated meat,” the researchers wrote.
Certain hints of the political upheaval we see today existed in 2023, too, with 68% of stories discussing this theme. Safety and labelling dominated coverage about the USDA’s regulation of cultivated meat, while some suggested it paved the way for other countries to follow.
However, discussions about labelling showed political opposition to calling these proteins “meat”, with lawmakers in Texas, Chile and Italy looking to restrict labelling or ban their sale (the latter was successful in its effort, despite being unlawful). Fox News portrayed it as a “vested interest” of the left.
Overall, concerns about cultivated meat were the least commonly discussed theme in the analysed reporting. Only 53% of articles were found to do so. Some referred to bogus studies arguing that it’s worse for the environment, others warned of “a range of unknowns” and “unforeseen dangers”, and yet others were worried about the safety, naturalness and nutritional quality of these proteins.
The fate of farmers was a major talking point too, with some believing cultivated meat could “take local farmers and ranchers out of the equation”. Another viewpoint that permeates is that these foods are only for the rich, with Fox News quoting a chef saying: “Only the elites are going to be able to try it and tell their friends about it.”
Cultivated meat coverage is shaping regulation
Courtesy: Mission Barns
The researchers argue that the “media’s construction of the emerging meaning system of cell-cultivated meat” has both political and regulatory implications, and that this actively shapes consumer trust in the industry. “The reporting on this is widely believed to have brought added scrutiny to the process, resulting in a two-year slowdown,” they note.
The news coverage analysed in the study demonstrated that cultivated chicken is “appropriately inspected, approved, and regulated”; in addition, it discussed political contentions regarding its labelling and sales, which have “only grown since we started writing this paper”, the researchers argue.
Indeed, six US states have now passed laws banning cultivated meat, and 15 have proposed restrictive bills this year alone. Globally, Hungary has taken major steps to ban these proteins, but was blocked by fellow EU member states and the European Commission.
“The discussion of the policy debates and contentious political meanings surrounding cell-cultivated products may imply a precarious outlook for the future of cellular agriculture,” the study states, adding that for some people, the discourse about cultivated meat products has become “confounded with preexisting political identities”.
“Differences in perception of cellular agriculture across the political spectrum should be explored in further research for a better understanding of the emerging political meanings associated with this novel technology,” the researchers write.
“Improved regulatory processes, awareness of labelling guidance, creating standards of identity, and transparent quality assurance in a collaborative industry-government framework could perhaps address these concerns constructively while also fostering competition.”
Australian cultivated meat startup Magic Valley held a tasting for politicians in the New South Wales parliament last week.
Just months before cultivated meat makes it onto restaurant menus in Australia, some of the country’s policymakers got a taste of it themselves.
In the New South Wales parliament last week, politicians were treated to cultivated lamb meatballs and pork dumplings from Melbourne startup Magic Valley. And they were impressed.
“It was delicious,” said Alex Greenwich, an independent representative for Sydney. “This type of meat is guilt-free: no animal cruelty, no deforestation, and saves water and CO2 emissions,” he added, a nod to lamb’s status as the third most polluting food product (after beef and dark chocolate).
The tasting event came months after the firm received an A$100,000 ($63,000) injection from the federal government to transition from research to commercial production of its cultivated meat.
Cultivated meat as an economic opportunity for Australia
Courtesy: Magic Valley
The tasting was held at the parliament’s Rooftop Garden, attended by 17 politicians and ministers, including state treasurer Daniel Mookhey and innovation minister Anoulack Chanthivong. The dumplings were served with chilli oil and chilli crisp, and the meatballs featured a classic marinara sauce.
Magic Valley’s technology eschews fetal bovine serum and leverages induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). It takes a small sample of skin cells from a living animal, which are expanded and turned into iPSCs, which in turn can be converted into muscle and fat.
The cells are grown in a bioreactor, in a mixture of water, amino acids, and other nutrients. They’re harvested after a few weeks and turned into meat products. These can be made over and over again from the original cell sample, since the iPSCs can grow in an unlimited way.
According to the startup, its process can reduce emissions by 92%, land use by 95%, and water use by 78% compared to conventional meat.
The event came a year after it held a public tasting for its cultivated pork, serving it as part of baos at John Gorilla Café in Brunswick, Victoria. Magic Valley has also hosted a televised tasting on Australia’s Channel 7 network and appeared on Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars Australia.
Highlighting why it was important for politicians to try it, founder and CEO Paul Bevan said that the event was about more than just food. “It’s about jobs, technology, and positioning Australia as a leader in one of the world’s fastest-growing industries,” he said.
Emma Hurst, a representative of the Animal Justice Party who hosted the tasting, concurred: “There is a real economic opportunity for New South Wales and indeed Australia to become a leader in the production, sale and export of cellular agriculture and to be part of this worldwide shift in the food system.”
Government support is critical ahead of cultivated meat debut
Courtesy: Magic Valley
Magic Valley expanded into a new pilot facility at bio-innovator and incubator Co-Labs in 2023, which can house bioreactors with a capacity of up to 3,000 litres, allowing it to potentially produce 150,000 kgs of cultivated meat annually.
As of now, it is raising capital to build its first manufacturing facility in the country, an effort backed by the A$100M grant from the government’s Industry Growth Program. The company is eligible for up to $5M in funding through the initiative.
“With support from both government and private investors, we can build advanced facilities, create regional employment, and export high-tech protein to the world,” said Bevan.
New South Wales is already home to one of the world’s leading cultivated meat startups. Vow, based in Sydney, makes cultured quail and foie gras, which have been on the market in Singapore since last year.
In April, the firm received preliminary approval from Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) for its quail product. With the final green light from ministers expected in June, Vow will debut its cultivated meat at “high-end restaurants and elevated fast-casual concepts” in Australia, before rolling out in retail later in the year.
These developments coincide with a decline in meat consumption among Australians, 42% of whom are either reducing or not eating animal protein at all. But a 2023 survey of Australians and New Zealanders found that 74% weren’t familiar with cultivated meat, while only 24% would readily incorporate it into their diets (and 48% said they wouldn’t do so).
Research has also found that when it comes to alternative protein policies, Australia ranks bottom of the list of the 10 most supportive governments in Asia-Pacific. So public tasting events and government support are key to building awareness and advancing the industry.
Home to a host of leading future food startups, California has established a special committee to advance innovation in the alternative protein sector.
While several states in the US are banning (or hoping to ban) cultivated meat from being sold within their borders, some are doubling down on their commitment to supercharge the future food industry.
Among those is California, which last month established the Assembly Select Committee on Alternative Protein Innovation to boost the state’s position as a leader in sustainable food systems.
The special committee is being chaired by Ash Kalra, a Democrat from San José, who was instrumental in California’s $5M investment in alternative protein research in 2022.
Why California is betting on alternative proteins
Beyond Meat is one of a number of alternative protein leaders hailing from California | Courtesy: Beyond Meat
In the US, select committees are established by the Senate for a limited time, and tend to be investigative rather than legislative in nature. These committees may or may not be given the authority to report legislation to the chamber.
California’s alternative protein committee will focus on efforts to support all pillars of the alternative protein sector, including plant-based proteins, fermentation-derived foods, and cultivated meat.
It will begin by organising information hearings to determine how California can expand its alternative protein economy while aligning with its climate and sustainability goals. “This committee is about more than just boosting a promising sector of our economy,” Kalra said. “It’s about investing in climate-smart food solutions that meet the needs of a growing population.”
In 2022, the state unveiled what it claimed was the world’s first detailed climate neutrality pathway, aiming to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 48% in 2030 and 85% by the target year of 2045. It also aims to save $200B in healthcare costs related to pollution.
California is also working to redirect 20% of food from being sent to landfills by this year, and reduce methane emissions by 40% (below 2013 levels) by the end of this decade. Targeting meat and dairy production is a key tenet of this latter target, considering that livestock is responsible for half of the state’s methane footprint.
In fact, animal agriculture is responsible for 70% of California’s total emissions from the food system, and takes up a third of its land area. Expanding its alternative protein ecosystem is therefore a critical step towards decarbonisation.
Producing foods from plant-based ingredients, microbes or cellular agriculture uses a tiny share of the land and water that animal proteins do, while emitting a fraction of the greenhouse gases as well.
The Golden State is already a leader in alternative protein
Courtesy: Wildtype
“Our state is a leader in alternative protein innovation and home to the first major plant-based protein companies, the first-ever cultivated meat startups, and numerous inventive fermentation food companies,” said Kalra.
Indeed, California is the birthplace of modern-day plant-based giants Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, and a host of leading cultivated meat startups. In fact, all four companies approved to sell cultivated proteins in the US – Eat Just, Upside Foods, Mission Barns, and Wildtype – hail from the Golden State.
It is also home to the Integrative Center for Alternative Meat and Protein. Opened last year at the University of California, Davis, it is conducting research on speeding up these future foods’ path to market.
California also made the single-largest alternative protein R&D investment of any state back three years ago, with Governor Gavin Newsom signing a budget bill that provided $5M to UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and UCLA. As mentioned above, this effort was facilitated by Kalra.
Courtesy: UC Davis
“I look forward to holding informational hearings on the topic of growing this new economy and how it can support California’s climate and food sustainability goals,” the senator said.
Other states that have championed alternative proteins in recent years include Illinois, which poured in $680M in the iFAB Tech Hub to advance precision fermentation research and its biomanufacturing capabilities. Massachusetts, meanwhile, is home to Tufts University and its Center for Cellular Agriculture, and passed an economic development bill that pledged investment in the sector.
The state has pledged $10M for local companies and to match grants supporting these proteins, and another $115M for an infrastucture programme to support job growth in key tech sectors, including plant-based, fermented and cultivated foods with “sensory characteristics that are consistent with conventional meat and dairy”.
“I think it’s incumbent on us lawmakers to think long-term,” Senator Barry Finegold, chairperson of Massachusetts’s economic development and emerging tech committee, told Green Queen last year. “If we’re concerned about climate change, if we’re concerned about people’s health, then I think we have to take science seriously.”
In its latest conference in Doha, the International Islamic Fiqh Academy ruled that Muslims can consume cultivated meat if certain conditions are met.
The world’s two billion Muslims can eat cultivated meat, according to a fatwa by a leading Islamic authority.
At the 26th International Islamic Fiqh Academy (IIFA) Conference in Doha this month, scholars deliberated on the consumption of cultivated meat and genetically modified food under Islamic law.
They approved the marketing and consumption of these foods, so long as they meet certain specific requirements, opening up the novel food market to a quarter of the global population.
What conditions does cultivated meat need to meet?
Courtesy: Aleph Farms
Operating under the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the IIFA is one of the world’s leading legal authorities on Islam. Its members include Muslim jurists, scholars and intellectuals with expertise in various fields, who provide guidance on how Islamic principles apply to contemporary issues in science, medicine, economics, and technology.
Its latest conference was held in Doha in early May, with 230 experts from over 60 countries attending. Among the issues discussed were artificial intelligence, video games, genetically modified foods, and cultivated meat.
On the latter, the IIFA laid out several conditions that need to be met before Muslims can consume cultivated meat:
The source cells must come from animals permissible to eat and be slaughtered according to Islamic law – so pork products are prohibited.
The animal cells must be cultured in a medium free from prohibited substances like blood. It means products can’t be produced with fetal bovine serum, which is derived from the blood of unborn calves.
The products must be developed under trustworthy regulatory supervision.
Additionally, the Academy stressed the need for full consumer transparency and adherence to food safety standards, noting that cultivated meat should complement – not replace – conventional sources of meat.
Meanwhile, the IIFA permitted the consumption of genetically modified foods when sourced from animals permissible to eat, processed in a safe manner, and compliant with Sharia law. It underscored the importance of disclosing relevant information about these foods and their preparation methods.
Growing recognition for cultivated meat under Islamic law
Courtesy: International Islamic Fiqh Academy
The IIFA ruling is the third fatwa in favour of Muslims’ consumption of cultivated meat. A fatwa is a non-binding legal opinion based on Sharia law, and is an important guideline for Muslims on matters not specifically defined in the Quran.
In 2024, the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore issued a fatwa recognising these proteins as halal, a decision replicated by the Korean Muslim Federation earlier this year.
These were followed by similar conclusions by three leading Shariah scholars in Saudi Arabia in 2023, who told cultivated chicken maker Good Meat that cultivated meat can be considered halal, and the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America in 2022, who adjudged it as provisionally permissible by default, provided Halal criteria are followed.
Halal diets refer to food consumption in accordance with Islamic law. When it comes to meat, it means animals must be slaughtered in a prescribed way, and certain types of meat and byproducts – including pork and blood products – are prohibited. Globally, the Halal meat market is estimated to grow by 7% annually to reach $1.6T by 2032.
Cultivated meat producers understand the opportunity. A 44-company survey in 2023 revealed that complying with halal requirements was a priority for 87% of the firms. A lack of resources outlining how products can adhere to such religious certifications remained a significant entry barrier, the study added.
“Ultimately, this decision marks a major step forward in aligning food innovation with cultural and religious values, a crucial ingredient in creating a world where alternative proteins are no longer alternative,” said the Good Food Institute APAC, an alternative protein think tank.
“It also clarifies religious guidelines for Asia-Pacific companies developing such products, opens doors for regulatory collaboration and halal certification frameworks across the region, and encourages Muslim organisations in other countries to follow in the footsteps of Singapore and South Korea,” it added.
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Kellanova’s plant-based RXBars, Vivera’s pre-frozen tofu, and a cultivated seafood tasting event.
New products and launches
Kellanova (formerly Kellogg’s) has launchedRXBar High Protein, a plant-based line of its famous clean-label bars. The peanut butter bars come in strawberry and vanilla flavours, and are packed with 18g of protein and only six ingredients.
Courtesy: Kellanova/Valerii Evlakhov/Getty Images
US wellness startup Happy Aging has launched a plant protein powder called Lean Muscle Formula. It contains 20g of pea and pumpkin seed protein and 5g of creatine monohydrate per 100g, and comes in vanilla and chocolate flavours. The product is available on its website for $55 per 725g pouch.
Israeli food tech startup Meala has partnered with DSM-Firmenich to launch a texturising pea protein called Vertis PB Pea. The ingredient is designed to replace modified binders like hydrocolloids to make cleaner-label meat alternatives, and is available in Europe.
Also in Israel, Efishient Protein has introduced a plant-based grouper fillet. It is working on a cultivated tilapia in the background.
Courtesy: Oshi
Speaking of alternative seafood, plant-based firm Oshi has begun direct-to-consumer sales of its vegan salmon, expanding from its foodservice-only model.
In more seafood news, Austrian mycoprotein startup Revo Foods has unveiled a BBQ flavour of its flagship product, The FIlet – Inspired by Salmon.
Chilean food tech firm NotCo has released the newest iteration of its AI-powered NotMilk, with a focus on a clean-label formulation. The NotMilk Avena SKU contains just oats, coconut butter, chicory fibre, and water, and is available in Chile and Brazil. It will soon roll out in Mexico too.
Courtesy: NotCo
French dairy-free brand Atelier Dessy has introduced a plant-based alternative to Icelandic skyr in raspberry and mango-passionfruit flavours.
Dutch vegan giant Vivera has introduced a pre-frozen firm tofu that absorbs marinades more quickly, responding to a TikTok trend of freezing the protein to make it spongier. It will be available in UK supermarkets from June 9 for £2.75 per 200g pack.
British food tech firm Myco, known for its oyster-mushroom-based burgers, has signed a deal to provide its Hooba ingredient to Teesside University as part of a blended meat range.
Courtesy: Treets/Candy Kittens
Planet A Foods‘s cocoa-free ChoViva chocolate is part of Candy Kittens and Treets‘s Crunchy Corn, Crispy, and Salted Peanuts dragées in the UK. They’re available online and at retailers including Boots.
South Korean food giant Pulmuone has revamped its dairy-free ice cream brand Planto with new packaging and label descriptors like ‘reduced sugar’ and ‘high dietary fibre’. The new products come in 90ml strawberry-raspberry and chocolate brownie packs, and will primarily be available online and through B2B channels, including Kurly, Coupang, and Shop Pulmuone.
Company and finance updates
Singaporean cultivated meat firm Umami Bioworksheld a public tasting for its white fish (served in a fish-and-chips format) and caviar (served plain and in canapé-style) at London’s Underground Cookery School.
Likewise, plant-based firm Simply Better Brands – which makes vegan protein powders and bars – has rebranded to Trubar.
Dutch fermentation startup The Protein Brewery has appointed former Cousin executive Thijs Bosch as its new CEO. He succeeds Sue Garfitt, who will transition into a non-executive role.
Courtesy: cReal
Swedish food tech firm cReal Food has opened a zero-waste oat milk powder facility in Bjuv, backed by a 300 million kronor ($31.3M) investment by Lindéngruppen and other investors.
Finnish startup Enifer has partnered with Brazilian ethanol producer FS to produce its Pekilo mycoprotein in Latin America, using thin stillage derived from corn ethanol as feedstock.
Research and policy developments
The Spanish city of Parla has become the country’s first city (and the world’s 40th) to sign the call for an international Plant-Based Treaty.
Vegans and vegetarians should receive special rations if the UK is hit with a major disaster, according to Prof Tim Lang, an emeritus professor of food policy at the University of London and an adviser to the National Preparedness Commission.
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
With BBQ season upon us, a survey by Beyond Meat has found that 42% of Brits eat less meat during the week now than two years ago, and 47% say having plant-based options on the menu is important to them.
Two new studies show that the plant-based Portfolio Diet can lower the risk of cardiovascular disease and mortality, and improve heart health across diverse demographics.
A landmark study by the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture has revealed that the region can produce significantly more food with less money and fewer resources with regenerative agriculture systems.
San Francisco startup Wildtype has become the world’s first startup to get US regulatory approved to sell cultivated seafood, with its salmon now on the menu at Kann in Portland, Oregon.
Cultivated seafood has cruised to become a reality.
US startup Wildtype has received regulatory approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to sell its sushi-grade cultivated salmon in the country. It is now available at Kann, James Beard Award winner Gregory Gourdet’s live-fire Haitian restaurant in Portland, Oregon.
“We have no questions at this time about Wildtype’s conclusion that foods comprising or containing cultured coho salmon cell material resulting from the production process defined in [its application] are as safe as comparable foods produced by other methods,” the FDA said in a scientific memo.
It concludes a process that began three summers ago and required eight amendments as the startup’s process evolved and the regulator worked to confirm the safety of cell-cultured salmon.
“Cultivated seafood, apart from catfish, is regulated solely by the FDA; there is no subsequent USDA step as there is for chicken and beef,” Wildtype co-founders Aryé Elfenbein and Justin Kolbeck told Green Queen in an email.
Wildtype’s salmon at Kann in Portland, Oregon | Courtesy: Wildtype
That cleared the way for Wildtype to begin offering its salmon to restaurants immediately. “Regarding the timing of our Kann launch, Wildtype salmon is on the menu now,” the founders confirmed. “It is available on Thursdays in June, and every day starting July.”
Backed by the likes of Robert Downey Jr, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jeff Bezos, the startup is preparing launches with four other restaurants over the next four months. “Our plans for retail launch will follow our launch in foodservice,” they revealed.
It is the fourth cultivated protein firm to be allowed to sell in the US, and the third with full approval. Fellow Californian startup Mission Barns secured the FDA letter for its cultivated pork fat in March, though it is still awaiting USDA authorisation for its pilot plant and product labelling.
How Wildtype makes its cultivated salmon
Wildtype co-founders Justin Kolbeck and Aryé Elfenbein | Courtesy: Wildtype
Elfenbein and Kolbeck founded Wildtype nearly a decade ago, working to commercialise cultivated coho salmon saku, the most expensive part of the fish. Some populations of this species are either threatened or endangered, necessitating innovations like cellular agriculture.
Wildtype obtains living cells from Pacific salmon, which are adapted to suspension culture. They are grown in tanks similar to those used to make beer or kombucha, under temperature and pH conditions that wild fish thrive in, alongside a nutrient mix containing proteins, sugar, fat, salt, and minerals like iron and zinc.
The cells are harvested using bowl centrifugation, washed three times with a water and sugar solution, rapidly cooled using blast chillers, and stored frozen. They’re mixed with certain plant-based ingredients to replicate the structure and texture of conventional salmon, and the resulting product is used in raw sushi preparations like sashimi and maki.
“The composition of Wildtype salmon has always included cells as the primary ingredient after water,” Elfenbein and Kolbeck said, but did not confirm which other ingredients are used.
Wildtype’s cultvated salmon can be used in raw sushi applications | Courtesy: Wildtype
In 2021, Wildtype opened a pilot-scale Fishery in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighbourhood. At the time, it had the ability to produce 50,000 lbs of seafood per year, which could be expanded to 200,000 lbs at maximum capacity.
The firm has held numerous tasting events for its coho salmon across the US, teaming up with chefs like José Andrés, Rose Ha, and Adam Tortosa to rave reviews.
“You would have to tell someone that the Wildtype lox wasn’t conventional for them to suspect it was anything different,” suggested Brian Cooley, a technology expert who spent nearly three decades as CNET’s tech editor.
He tried the salmon as part of a $24 bagel at a pop-up event at Loveski Deli in Marin County, California earlier this year. “I think it’s actually better than conventional lox because it doesn’t have the occasional gristle or silverskin you find in conventional products,” he told Green Queen.
A ‘watershed moment’ for seafood and cultivated proteins
Wildtype’s salmon will debut at chef Gregory Gourdet’s Kann restaurant | Courtesy: Wildtype
At Kann, Wildtype’s salmon is paired in a summery dish with pickled strawberry, spiced tomato, strawberry juice, and an epis rice cracker.
“We take pride in the ingredients we utilise,” said Gourdet. “Introducing Wildtype’s cultivated salmon to our menu hits the elevated and sustainable marks we want our menu to offer guests who share a similar value system to ours.”
It is a milestone for the alternative seafood industry, which has long been an afterthought to beef, chicken, and pork analogues. There are several startups working on cultivated seafood, including BlueNalu and Umami Bioworks; Wildtype’s approval will likely usher them to advance their commercialisation efforts.
It comes at a time when cultivated meat faces both financial and political upheaval. After VCs pumped $1.3B into the category in 2021, investment has dipped dramatically. In 2023, funding fell by 75%, followed by another 40% drop in 2024, reaching just $139M. It means that in the last three years, this sector has cumulatively raised less money than it did in 2021 alone.
Wildtype itself has raised $120M, most of which came in a $100M Series B round in 2022. But its founders did not respond to a question about its fundraising plans now.
“Wildtype’s achievement is a watershed moment for domestic seafood production and for the cultivated protein industry overall,” said Dr Suzi Gerber, executive director of the Association for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation, a cellular agriculture trade group.
“The thoughtful, evidence-driven review proves that innovative food technologies meet the highest safety standards, and can play a vital role in healthy American diets, while strengthening our food system’s domestic production and resilience, supporting the president’s executive order to expand seafood production in the US,” she added.
While pet food brands tout the use of animal byproducts as sustainable, a new analysis shows that products made with cultivated meat generate a fraction of the emissions.
Producing meat from cellular agriculture instead of conventional farming can drastically lower the climate impact of pet food producers, according to a new analysis.
Many believe pet food to be a sustainable product due to the use of animal byproducts, since this is waste from the production of meat for human use that would otherwise be discarded. In fact, some use this argument to suggest that pet food actually offsets the impact of the human food industry.
In reality, these products aren’t emission-free, and to highlight the true reduction potential for pet food, Austrian-American food tech startup BioCraft Pet Nutrition commissioned a carbon footprint analysis of its cultivated mouse meat and the conventional beef byproducts used in the industry.
Conducted by corporate environmental consultancy ClimatePartner, the assessment showed that the firm’s BioCrafted Meat emits one-twelfth of the carbon dioxide of beef byproducts.
BioCraft co-founder and CEO Dr Shannon Falconer ascribed the difference to the startup’s “unique production process, which harvests the full contents of the bioreactor, which also makes it quite different from cultivated meat production”.
Byproducts don’t make pet food as sustainable as you think
Courtesy: BioCraft Pet Nutrition/ClimatePartner
The analysis was based on internationally recognised methodologies, including the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard (GHG Protocol), and used emissions factors from databases like Ecoinvent and the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
BioCraft’s emissions were calculated based on its ingredients being produced with mixed energy in Europe, considering all relevant greenhouse gases and calculating their values as CO2 equivalents.
ClimatePartner’s analysis revealed that, based on standard EU beef production processes, beef byproducts emit 21.28kg of CO2 per kg. In comparison, BioCraft’s cultivated mouse meat produces just 1.73kg of CO2 for the same amount, offering manufacturers a 92% reduction.
While the use of offal, bones, blood, and fat instead of prime beef cuts makes many consumers regard byproducts as low-impact alternatives, that isn’t necessarily the case. “The environmental impacts of raising cattle are caused by the entire animal, not merely the portions used in the human food supply,” said Falconer.
Research shows that only around a quarter of animal byproducts produced in wealthy nations go towards the pet food industry, which competes for these ingredients with the likes of the livestock, energy and pharma sectors.
Some studies have contended that byproducts actually have a worse environmental impact because of their poor nutritional content. “For dog food, using animal byproducts rather than human-grade meat requires 1.4 times more livestock carcasses, and for cat food, 1.9 times more,” a recent analysis found.
“Hence, animal byproducts are less efficient to produce than human-grade meat. Their production requires significantly more livestock carcasses. This has the potential to increase the number of livestock animals required, and the associated environmental impacts,” its authors explained.
Courtesy: BioCraft Pet Nutrition
Cultivated meat presents climate wins as alternative pet food heats up
BioCraft’s unstructured ingredient is grown from cultured mouse cells and doesn’t require additional downstream processing. It’s also cost-effective. Typically, animal-derived growth media – the mix of proteins, sugar and nutrients that feed animal cells in a bioreactor – cost hundreds of dollars per litre.
BioCraft has developed a plant-based growth medium formulated to provide a nutritious boost to the end product, allowing its pet food ingredient to be priced at $2-2.50 per pound.
Importantly, the carbon footprint analysis looked at manufacturer-driven life-cycle stages – from raw material extraction and pre-processing to packaging, delivery, and disposal. It didn’t take into account the emissions from the manufacturing of final products or consumer use, since BioCraft solely operates as a B2B supplier of raw materials.
Still, this gives a glimpse of the emissions reduction potential for pet food producers that swap beef byproducts with cultivated meat. BioCraft’s ingredient has a comparable consistency and nutritional profile to conventional slurry, and so can be used as a one-to-one replacement in wet or dry pet food at similar inclusion levels.
Courtesy: BioCraft Pet Nutrition
The firm recently received registration from Austrian authorities to use Category 3 animal byproducts (ABPs) in the EU, allowing it to sell the cultivated mouse meat to pet food producers in the region. It is already working with Partner in Pet Food and Prefera Petfood to bring the ingredient to market, having earmarked early 2026 for its debut.
Czech startup Bene Meat Technologies was the first to register cultivated pet food as an EU feed material back in 2023, although it did so under the fermentation category instead of as an ABP. It claims that its cultivated meat generates 84-95% fewer emissions than beef, though this analysis did not focus specifically on byproducts.
It is a ripe time for alternative pet food. The UK became the first country where consumers could buy cultivated meat for their cats and dogs off the shelves this year, while Germany’s Marsapet rolled out a kibble product for dogs using Calysta’s gas-fermented FeedKind protein in Europe.
Meanwhile, British vegan pet food maker The Pack was acquired by Prefera Petfood, and fellow London-based startup Omni saw sales shoot up by 130% with 20,000 new customers in the three months after securing an investment from Steven Bartlett and Deborah Meaden on Dragons’ Den.
Elsewhere, one US startup has conducted feeding trials in pursuit of regulatory approval in the US, and Bene Meat has filed for approval there too. Meanwhile, California’s Friends & Family Pet Food Co has inked two deals to launch stateside and in Singapore.
California Cultured, a food tech startup making cocoa via cellular agriculture, has transitioned to large-scale biomanufacturing in a key breakthrough for the industry.
US startup California Cultured has successfully moved from lab-scale shake flash experiments to large-scale manufacturing of its cell-based cocoa, proving the viability of using cellular agriculture to make commodity foods facing multiple risks.
The expansion to precision-controlled bioreactor fermentation was executed with the help of Berkeley-based biomanufacturing firm Pow.Bio, and validates the economic and technical feasibility of producing cell-cultured cocoa on a commercial scale.
It is a major win for the cellular agriculture industry and comes at a time when the chocolate industry faces numerous climate and supply chain threats, which have driven cocoa prices to record highs and threatened the future of the industry as we know it.
How California Cultured reached commercial scale
Courtesy: California Cultured
Founded in 2020 by CEO Alan Perlstein and COO Harrison Yoon, California Cultured collects samples from a cocoa plant with ideal organoleptic properties. These are then cultured in fermentation tanks that mimic the conditions of the rainforests where cocoa thrives. Within three to four days, the cells are ready to be harvested, fermented and roasted.
To optimise it cocoa fermentation process for commercial volumes, it worked out of Pow.Bio’s newly commissioned 25,000 sq ft facility, which offers clean room capabilities, dual-chamber continuous fermentation systems, and real-time AI-based process control.
Pow.Bio helps synthetic biology companies commercialise faster and at competitive cost advanatges through its AI platform, which rapidly identifies better-performing process conditions for fermentation, helping increase outputs from existing infrastucture in a short time frame.
The project with California Cultured focused on the culture media optimisation (which makes the bulk of the cost of cell-based foods), oxygen transfer rates, and pH control to improve cell growth and metabolite production.
Among its core development goals were boosting metabolic efficiency to enhance growth kinetics and flavonoid and lipid synthesis (which are crucial for replicating the taste and mouthfeel of conventional chocolate). In addition, it tested scalable feed strategies and conducted continuous bioprocess monitoring to lower the cost per kg while maintaining product consistency.
“This scale-up marks a major achievement in the food tech sector,” said Scott Mitchell, CEO of Cult Food Science, an investor in the startup. “By unlocking scalable, ethical alternatives to traditionally resource-intensive commodities like cocoa, California Cultured is helping shape a more sustainable global food system.”
Cellular agriculture has the potential to drastically reduce emissions, resource use, water consumption, and land use, but the industry has historically been hampered by high costs, thanks in part to the use of pharmaceutical bioreactors that are ill-suited for food production.
Cult Food Science called California Culture’s breakthrough a “key inflexion point” for the alternative cocoa category, and suggested that it laid the “foundation for future innovations, including continuous fermentation and commercial launch of cocoa and coffee-based ingredients and products”.
Alternative cocoa is becoming more important by the day
These companies are aiming to address an urgent problem. Producing dark chocolate already emits more greenhouse gases than every other food except beef, while each bar of chocolate requires 1,700 litres of water on average. Add to that the vast amount of deforestation linked to the cocoa industry, thanks to increasing demand and the widespread use of palm oil.
The cocoa industry finds itself in a two-sided bind: it is both exacerbating climate change and facing the full force of its impacts. Global cocoa stocks have dropped to their lowest levels in a decade. Ivory Coast and Ghana – the two largest producers of the crop – have been the biggest victims, thanks to extreme weather and crop diseases (as well as reduced plantations in favour of illegal gold mining).
Scientists have warned that cocoa trees are threatened, and a third of them could die out by 2050, which could lead to a global chocolate shortage.
All this has already caused major price hikes. In 2024, cocoa futures broke all-time records, and the cost will continue to remain high this year. That has hurt the sales of industry behemoths like Hershey’s, whose profit forecast for 2025 is below analysts’ expectations.
Some are now turning to alternative cocoa products – Barry Callebaut, the world’s largest cocoa manufacturer, is using precision-fermented sunflower seeds for some of its offerings in Europe. Others, like Lindt & Sprüngli and Sparkalis (the VC arm of bakery and confectionery group Puratos), are investing in cell-based cocoa startups.
Sparkalis is also an investor in California Cultured, which opened its new 12,000 sq ft facility in West Sacramento earlier this year. Additionally, it is co-developing products with Japanese chocolate giant Meiji as part of a decade-long partnership. “Meiji came to us because unpredictable weather patterns – including heavy rainfall – have disrupted cacao cultivation, leading to a consecutive year of supply shortages,” California Cultured’s head of strategy, Steve Stearns, told Green Queen last year.
“This scarcity has driven futures prices to unprecedented levels, reflecting the strain on supply and demand dynamics within the chocolate industry.”
After a decline in alternative protein investments in 2024, funding further fell by 28% in Q1 2025 compared to the same period a year ago. Analysts blame AI, high costs, and low sales.
There’s no other way to put it: 2024 was a bleak year for food tech. Post-Covid geopolitical tensions and higher living costs continued to threaten both shoppers’ wallets and investor sentiment, and startups aiming to futureproof the food system bore the brunt of the impact.
It hasn’t gotten any easier, with 2025 bringing its own set of headwinds. President Donald Trump’s tariff war, Robert F Kennedy Jr’s attack on ultra-processed food and regulatory pathways, more bans on cultivated meat, a resurgence of beef and dairy both stateside and in Europe, and continued sales declines in several markets have all contributed to the storm engulfing the alternative protein industry.
Graphic by Green Queen
After a 44% drop in 2023, VC investments in plant-based food, fermentation-derived ingredients, and cultivated meat fell by a further 27% in 2024, according to Net Zero Insights data crunched by the Good Food Institute (GFI)
Q1 2025 investments in the sector declined by 28% YoY, falling to $235M. Fermentation startups capture the bulk of this, attracting $146M, while plant-based ($54M) and cultivated protein firms ($35M) continued to falter.
So who – or what – is to blame? And are there any bright spots for alternative protein?
Fermentation continues to thrive
Looking at the figures for both 2024 and early 2025, one segment sticks out: fermentation. It was the only alternative protein pillar to witness an increase in investment last year (by 43%), against decreases for both plant-based food (-64%) and cultivated meat (-40%).
In Q1 2025, fermentation startups attracted half of all funding flowing into the sector, with precision fermentation particularly piquing investor interest. This tech vertical was responsible for the three largest rounds of the quarter: Formo’s $36M venture debt loan from the European Investment Bank, Vivici’s $33.8M Series A round, and Liberation Labs’s $31.5M investment.
The only other investment round above $25M in this period was for Israeli cultivated meat startup Aleph Farms, which secured $29M as part of a larger fundraise in the coming months.
Courtesy: GFI
“Many of the fermentation companies that received large investments are focused on leveraging agricultural and food industry sidestreams as a sustainable feed source, helping produce food more efficiently and affordably – both of which are attractive propositions for investors,” Helene Grosshans, infrastructure investment manager at GFI Europe, wrote last year about the success of fermentation.
Still, fermentation investment totals fell year-over-year in Q1 2025, according to Daniel Gertner, lead economic and industry analyst for the organisation, yet ranked in the top half of the 10 most recent quarters.
So while alternative protein funding remained subdued in the first quarter of this year, he warns that “few meaningful trends can be identified in a single quarter”.
Can Europe keep up its momentum?
Alongside fermentation, European startups showed promising signs, collectively raising $509M in 2024 (a 23% annual increase). This included a record year for Germany, where alternative protein firms attracted $145M (although $61M of that came from Formo’s Series B round).
Here, too, fermentation shone. Biomass fermentation startups saw a 10% hike in investment in 2024, while those working on precision fermentation bagged more than thrice the funding totals of 2023. As mentioned above, that trend has continued this year, thanks to Vivici and Formo’s latest rounds.
Courtesy: GFI Europe
While at first glance it may seem that plant-based and cultivated meat startups performed miserably, context is crucial. As GFI Europe’s Grosshans points out, the decline for the former category is due to Oatly’s large $425M raise over two deals; if you discount publicly traded companies, privately held plant-based firms in Europe actually saw investment grow by 37% last year.
Similarly, two relatively large deals for Mosa Meat and Meatable, totalling $53.3M, skewed the data for cultivated meat, too, where funding dipped by 59%. These two Dutch startups are preparing to enter the market soon, so they’re not reflective of where most of the sector is.
AI has wrecked the investment landscape for everyone else
In 2024, there was a 38% dip in climate tech venture funding, thanks to a shift in investor interest towards artificial intelligence (AI), where financing crossed $100B.
In the first 12 weeks of this year, AI propelled global venture financing to its highest quarterly levels in nearly three years. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, raised $40B – that’s with a ‘B’ – which led AI to account for 58% of VC deal value in Q1 2025.
Non-AI sectors, however, experienced their weakest deal activity in a decade, notes Gertner. “Recent growth in overall venture funding has largely been driven by surges in AI investments, which have likely redirected capital flows from other industries,” he tells Green Queen.
“Alternative protein funding has slowed amid this increased investor focus on AI, while elevated interest rates, high production costs, and topline sales declines have also weighed on investment activity,” he adds. “Alternative proteins are not alone in this trend: adjacent industries like climate tech and consumer packaged goods have experienced similar investment slowdowns.”
Courtesy: DigitalFoodLab
Indeed, the wider food tech sector’s $2.2B funding in Q1 2025 was the worst quarterly performance in years. Matthieu Vincent, co-founder of strategy consultancy firm DigitalFoodLab, ascribes this to contextual reasons, as opposed to structural factors like the VC ecosystem being unsuited to long-term innovation.
The Q1 decline is linked to “the current economic uncertainties, notably on tariffs and their impact on the overall agrifood industries”, he explained in his newsletter.
Trump’s tariffs have already had investors worried, with Grey Silo Ventures’s investment manager, Matteo Leonardi, telling Green Queen last month: “As we are dealing with an industry that is already fighting to survive on the slightest of margins – and at industrial scale, let alone at pilot scale – US tariffs could result in a complete erosion of those already-thin margins.”
Adam Bergman, managing director of EcoTech Capital, predicted the downturn to continue in 2026. “I expect that over 70% of agtech and food tech companies will either go bankrupt, cease operations, or be liquidated in a fire sale. It is likely that a similar percentage of the capital invested in these companies will never be recouped,” he wrote.
The way forward for alternative protein
“As AI dominates investor attention, alternative protein companies are either developing novel applications of AI for alternative proteins or choosing to compete for a smaller slice of non-AI capital,” Gertner wrote in a recent newsletter, signalling the pivots this sector may need to make to survive.
Leading companies also need to turn their sales around, and fast. Addressing misinformation about meat, dairy, and plant-based alternatives is a crucial step.
“Instead of creating more noise, we have been systematically engaging with registered and renowned dietitians, nutritionists and key opinion leaders, arming them with science-based facts about our category and our products, so they can be advocates for the truth,” said Daniel Ordonez, COO of Oatly, which recorded a 0.8% year-on-year decline in revenue in Q1 2025, but cut its losses by 73%.
Courtesy: Oatly
Beyond Meat’s fortunes worsened in Q1 after two quarters of revenue hikes, with sales dipping by 9% in the first three months of this year, with its founder and CEO Ethan Brown suggesting misinformation played a big part. Like Oatly, he added that the “truth is starting to come out” now, and that the meat alternative maker has “made it through that really intense pressure cooker”.
Despite its disappointing sales, it did receive $100M in debt financing from Unprocessed Foods, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ahimsa Foundation, proving that investors still have an appetite for plant-based burgers. “The overall macro environment is challenging for alt-protein, but we are confident of the leadership and the outlook,” Ahimsa Foundation president Shaleen Shah told Bloomberg News.
The volatility of the market was highlighted by Meati’s $4M sale this month. Once valued at $650M, its $100M Series C round was the largest alternative protein investment of 2024, but a technical default led its lender to unexpectedly sweep two-thirds of its cash reserves, leading to the sale at the paltry valuation.
One of the issues in alternative protein is that there aren’t enough exits for startups, though there has been a rapid wave of M&A in the sector of late, from Danone and Chobani’s acquistions of Kate Farms and Daily Harvest, respectively, this month, to Ahimsa Foundation’s takeover of Wicked Kitchen, Simulate and Blackbird Foods in the last year. But exits like Meati’s don’t fill venture capitalists with confidence.
It’s worth noting that despite the VC decline, public sector investment was still strong in 2024, reaching $510M, in line with the year before.
Courtesy: GFI
“Going forward, the companies demonstrating clear competitive advantages, unique value propositions, and strong business models will have the best chance of securing funding,” Gertner tells Green Queen.
“However, venture capital is only one piece of the investment puzzle,” he adds, outlining the importance of additional avenues for companies pursuing investment, like equipment leasing, strategic partnerships, sovereign wealth funds, blended finance, and government programmes.
“Alternative protein companies and founders should continue exploring these creative and multipronged funding strategies to support growth,” he says.
British pet food startup Meatly has announced a wave of breakthroughs that significantly slash the cost of cultivated meat, bringing it closer to price parity with chicken.
Food tech innovators are continuing to make advancements that close the price gap between cultivated meat and conventional animal proteins.
That limited-edition, co-branded product – titled Chick Bites – was priced at £3.49 per 50g pouch – or £69.80 per kg. And that only contained 4% of cultivated meat. In comparison, an oven-baked chicken treat by Good Boy is priced at £23.08 per kg. Conventional dog food can be three times cheaper than cultivated meat right now, but that may be about to change.
Meatly has announced several tech breakthroughs in its production process, including the development of a new bioreactor and the optimisation of its protein-free culture medium, which allow the startup to inch closer to price parity with conventional chicken.
“Many have cast doubt that the industry would ever reach this point – but we’re pleased to prove these critics wrong,” says Meatly co-founder and chief scientific officer Helder Cruz. “We are showing the world that we can produce meat in a kinder, better way, and we can make it at a price which makes it easy for brands to incorporate Meatly Chicken as an affordable ingredient in their existing product range.”
Meatly breaks away from pharma bioreactors
A rendering of Meatly’s future cultivated meat facility | Courtesy: Meatly
According to consultancy giant McKinsey, to meet the industry’s growth demands, cultivated meat firms would need up to 22 times more fermentation capacity than currently exists in the global pharmaceutical sector.
But it’s not just the capacity. Much of the biotechnology created to make pharmaceuticals isn’t purpose-built for cultivated meat. The per-tonne demand for cultivated meat is seven times higher than for biopharma drugs produced from mammalian cell cultures.
There’s also a perception problem. People have more concerns about GMOs in food than in medicines, while the accepted ideal costs for biopharma drugs are between $500,000 and $1M. For cultivated meat, this is as low as $5-10 per kg.
It necessitates the need for more modern, purpose-built bioreactors. Meatly has successfully built and conducted a first cell growth run in a custom-designed, pilot-scale bioreactor with a capacity of 320 litres. It has the biocompatibility, longevity, scalability and overall performance to meet the cell culture requirements of an industrial-scale facility with multiple 20,000-litre bioreactors.
Meatly intends to develop tanks with the latter capacity as part of its next funding stage, but its new 320-litre equipment costs just £12,500 ($16,900), making it 95% cheaper than traditional fermenters, which can cost up to £250,000 ($338,000).
It is one of several companies that have announced bioreactor breakthroughs. US startup Mission Barns, whose cultivated pork was approved for sale in the country this year, has developed a novel bioreactor that makes a departure from the single-cell suspension tanks of the biopharma sector, making cultivated meat production more efficient, easier to scale, and cheaper.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Ever After Foods is working with Bühler Group to build a commercial-scale system that can produce cultivated meat using equipment at least 10 times smaller than the industry standard.
Culture media wins will enable price parity at scale
Courtesy: Meatly
Meatly’s second crucial advancement concerns its culture medium, a mix of nutrients that facilitate the growth of animal cells. Typically, culture media cost hundreds of pounds per litre and account for the majority of the costs involved in the entire process.
But last year, the London-based startup created a protein-free medium that contains no serum or animal-derived components, steroids, hormones, antibiotics or growth factors. The startup’s innovation is food-safe and used in its suspension culture bioreactors without microcarriers, which are typically needed to help cells proliferate and enhance their density.
This has lots of advantages when it comes to cost and quality controls. “But in the composition of the cells, not so much,” Cruz told Green Queen last year. “Of course, we can always play with some nutrients, but not necessarily proteins, to fine-tune the composition – like fatty acids, some amino acids and so on.”
Then, this culture medium cost £1 ($1.25 at the time) per litre. But now, it has further reduced this price to 22p (30 cents) per litre, which will further reduce to 1.5p (two cents) at industrial scale.
“We’ve achieved this reduction by successfully replacing costly components such as albumin, transferrin, insulin, and all growth factors in our culture media – an industry first,” Meatly co-founder and CEO Owen Ensor tells Green Queen.
“Additionally, we’ve managed to replicate performance using food-grade ingredients. This breakthrough has significantly lowered costs and improved supply chain resilience.”
Additionally, the medium is now capable of supporting cell growth for over 175 doublings, a substantial improvement on historical media performance. It will allow Meatly’s cultivated chicken to be priced competitively with average EU chicken breast prices once scaled.
Meatly confident in fundraising despite industry-wide downturn
Courtesy: Meatly
“Our continued development of this protein-free culture medium marks a significant milestone for both Meatly and the broader cultivated meat sector,” says Ensor. “By setting a new cost benchmark, we’re addressing one of the industry’s most persistent challenges – bringing production costs down to make cultivated meat commercially viable and reach price parity with traditional products.”
The company, which has raised £5M to date, is now kickstarting a funding round for a low-cost industrial facility to profitably scale production of its cultivated meat.
“We’re confident in securing the capital we need. While we’re not disclosing the exact target publicly at this stage, we have a healthy runway in place and are actively engaged with several interested partners,” says Ensor.
Convincing investors to bet on cultivated meat today is a tall order – the sector saw funding decline by 75% in 2023, and a further 40% in 2024. In fact, in the last three years, this sector has cumulatively raised less money than it did in 2021 alone.
Graphic by Green Queen
“We recognise that the current investment climate is more cautious, particularly within the cultivated meat sector, so we’re taking a measured approach. That said, we’re well-positioned to scale quickly once funding is secured. Updates like the ones we’re making today show how Meatly is focused on continuing to prove there is a fast, efficient way to scale cultivated meat,” says Ensor.
Fellow cultivated pet food startup BioCraft Pet Nutrition has also developed a plant-based growth medium that reduces the cost of its ingredient to $2-2.50 per lb. And in Israel, SuperMeat has made several breakthroughs to produce its cultivated chicken for $12 per lb, while Believer Meats has described how its continuous process can potentially produce cultivated chicken for $6 per lb at scale.
As for Meatly, Ensor notes that the Chick Bites were a “one-off” product launch. “We’re now working on providing our Meatly Chicken for additional products in the near future,” he says, without going into any specifics. He teases more information on new products “in the coming months”.
Its costs advancements are vital for the mainstream adoption of cultivated meat. According to a recent 4,000-person survey in Europe, three in five consumers feel cultivated meat will only be successful if it’s affordable for everyone. In fact, nearly half expect it to be cheaper than conventional meat, and only 15% would buy it if it’s more expensive (versus 60% who wouldn’t).
“By reaching price parity, it then becomes a simple and easy choice for consumers to buy better meat for their pets,” says Cruz.
Beef and lamb are among the foods that face the biggest threats from competition with cultivated meat, underscoring why some lawmakers want to ban the latter.
One country and six US states have so far passed laws that prohibit companies from making or selling cultivated meat within their boundaries.
For Italy, the reason behind the ban was a threat to its cultural identity. For policymakers in the US, while the arguments often touch upon food safety concerns, more often than not, they are tied to the same theme: protecting the ranchers.
Take Nebraska, the latest state to join the list. Its governor is Jim Pillen, owner of one of the country’s largest pork processors, who has repeated this rhetoric over the last few months. “It’s important we get on the offence so that Nebraska farmers and ranchers are not undermined,” he said last year when making a promise to ban these proteins.
Jack Williams made a similar comment when putting forward a similar proposal in Alabama. “Meat comes from livestock raised by hardworking farmers and ranchers, not from a petri dish grown by scientists. We are protecting our farmers and the integrity of American agriculture,” he said, before the law came into effect last October.
Then there’s Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, on a mission to “save our beef”. “Some people think Florida is theme parks, South Beach and maybe some oranges, but they don’t understand that we have one of the top cattle industries in the country,” he said when signing the bill to ban cultivated meat last May.
“What we’re protecting here is the industry against acts of man, against an ideological agenda that wants to finger agriculture as the problem, that views things like raising cattle as destroying our climate.”
Those are all strong words, based on a common theme: cultivated meat is a threat to the livestock industry. And a new study seems to confirm those fears, highlighting how this novel food leaves staples like beef and lamb susceptible, and the planet happier.
Carbon taxes could threaten high-polluting foods
Courtesy: AI-Generated Image via Canva
The socio-economic analysis was conducted by researchers at the UK’s James Hutton Institute and Norway’s Ruralis Institute for Rural and Regional Research. They modelled two scenarios – one with a carbon tax, one without – to measure the impact of cell-cultured foods on both the food system and global emissions.
Funded by the Research Council of Norway, the authors noted how cultivated meat offers much better benefits for the planet. Studies have shown that when produced via renewable energy, these proteins can have a 92% lower impact on global heating, need 95% less land, and use 78% less water compared to conventionally farmed beef.
The issue, however, is that the livestock industry is backed by vast government subsidies that enable producers to keep animal proteins cheap, and make it much more difficult for cultivated meat, already a highly expensive technology, to compete on price.
For example, in the EU, over 80% of farm subsidies are directed towards animal agriculture (and 44% alone went to the production of feed for livestock. This sum is four times higher than the amount invested in plant-based farming, whose inputs are a key part of cultivated meat production.
The researchers focused on Norway and found that some animal products will be affected more adversely than others. Conventional beef, lamb, milk and egg are more likely to lose their market share to cultivated meat than pork and chicken, regardless of a carbon tax.
When the tax is implemented, though, the loss of market share is much quicker and more dramatic due to the increased costs. Pork and chicken, which have relatively lower climate footprints, proved more resilient to the carbon tax in the study.
As part of the project, the researchers conducted a related survey to find that consumers would be willing to treat cultivated and conventional proteins as “broadly interchangeable” up to a certain market share. The main factor influencing choice is price.
Cultivated meat firms must focus on cost reductions
Courtesy: Believer Meats
“While there are still plenty of uncertainties here – such as whether technologies will ever improve to the point where cultivated proteins are commercially viable – this study suggests that sheep and cattle rearing could be most vulnerable to competition, especially if a carbon tax is introduced,” said Nick Roxburgh, a social systems simulation modeller at the James Hutton Institute.
The research confirms the results of numerous polls and studies: for cultivated meat to succeed, the cost needs to come down rapidly. The industry has already made tons of progress, having lowered the average cost of these proteins by 99% in less than a decade. According to McKinsey, however, it will take until at least 2030 for cultivated meat to reach price parity with its conventional counterparts.
To that end, Israel’s Ever After Foods has developed a bioreactor platform that offers a 90% reduction in cultivated meat prices for its B2B clients. Meanwhile, Israeli startup SuperMeat has made several breakthroughs to produce its cultivated chicken for $12 per lb, and Believer Meats has described how its continuous process can potentially produce cultivated chicken for $6 per lb at scale.
Consumer research underlines the importance of these advancements. According to a 4,000-person survey in Europe, three in five consumers feel cultivated meat will only be successful if it’s affordable for everyone. In fact, nearly half expect it to be cheaper than conventional meat, and only 15% would buy it if it’s more expensive (versus 60% who wouldn’t).
Farmers are more game for cultivated meat than politicians
Courtesy: RESPECTfarms
“Given the potential for disruption, it will be important to plan carefully for the possible impacts of cultivated proteins on livestock farming and rural livelihoods,” said Roxburgh.
Livestock farmers will undoubtedly be the group most acutely affected if cultivated meat takes off on a large scale, but it doesn’t necessarily represent an end to their livelihoods. One project from the Netherlands is working with farmers to show how this industry could be an additional source of income for them.
Farmers in the UK also recognise the opportunities presented by cultivated meat, and are more worried about the social issues brought on by these proteins, like Big Food controlling the market or the knock-on effects on rural communities, than the impact on their bottom lines. And when considering changing weather patterns and global commodity markets, the threat of competition from cultivated meat feels like a “slow burn” to them.
Andy Jarvis, director of the Bezos Earth Fund’s Future of Food scheme, debunked the idea that cultivated meat is completely detached from farming. “The [culture] media are sugars, and all sorts of minerals and things that are coming from crops, and they’re farmed goods,” he told Green Queen last year.
“This is not an anti-farmer sector; this is a sector that is using farmed products in new ways. And generally using farmed products that are more profitable and highly sustainable in the way they’re produced.”
In the US, too, livestock farmers themselves have opposed the numerous bans on cultivated meat, noting that they didn’t need the government’s help to compete with cultivated meat. One farmer told the AP that he welcomes cultivated meat producers to “jump into the pool” and try to compete with his Waygu beef, going on to describe his disdain for lawmakers’ efforts to stifle competition in a free market.
This is also the view of the North American Meat Institute, the country’s oldest and largest trade association (representing 95% of the US’s meat output). In a letter sent to DeSantis in March 2024, it called Florida’s ban “bad public policy”.
“These bills establish a precedent for adopting policies and regulatory requirements that could one day adversely affect the bills’ supporters,” it said, stressing the importance of consumer choice.
A techno-economic analysis has found that French cultivated meat startup Gourmey’s bioreactor system can reach production costs of $3.43 per lb.
When you remove the politics of it all, people aren’t as resistant to cultivated meat as some would have you believe.
In a 16-country survey last year, support for the sale of these foods – if they pass regulatory assessments – ranged from 48-69% in Europe. Those who backed a ban on cultivated meat, meanwhile, were largely in the minority.
One of the most influential barriers to any potential intake of cultivated meat isn’t cultural, as Italy’s ban seems to suggest. Instead, it has to do with the price tag.
According to a 4,000-person survey in Europe, three in five consumers feel cultivated meat will only be successful if it’s affordable for everyone. In fact, nearly half expect it to be cheaper than conventional meat, and only 15% would buy it if it’s more expensive (versus 60% who wouldn’t).
While the cost of producing meat by culturing animal cells in bioreactors has long been prohibitive, things are changing quickly.
Among the companies spearheading the price shift is Gourmey, a French startup culturing duck cells to produce cultivated foie gras (and working on cultivated chicken and turkey too). It is pursuing approval in six markets, and was the first to file an application in the EU.
Courtesy: Sherry Hack
A techno-economic analysis by consulting firm Arthur D Little has revealed that the firm’s production model can dramatically lower costs, allowing it to potentially manufacture cultivated meat for as little as $3.43 per lb.
The assessment validates the economic viability of Gourmey’s 5,000-litre bioreactor system, and confirms that it can reach these costs without relying on speculative technologies or mega-scale infrastructure.
Gourmey CEO Nicolas Morin-Forest explains that the analysis was conducted on a finished product containing about half cultivated cells, with the rest made up of plant-based ingredients like fats or proteins. “This approach can hence apply to a very wide range of cultivated products,” he tells Green Queen.
How Gourmey keeps cultivated meat cost-effective
Founded in 2019 by Morin-Forest, Jérôme Caron and Antoine Davydoff, Gourmey’s platform is built around a “second-generation” technology stack that replaces legacy biopharma techniques with food-grade, cost-effective, scalable processes. It combines continuous production, undifferentiated cell biomass, and suspension-based cell cultures to support efficiency and consistency.
“One of the main reasons we can keep costs low is that we use stem cells with natural, endless self-renewal capabilities. These cells can be cultivated for very long periods, allowing us to continuously apply selective pressure and adapt them to the most efficient cell feed formulations, all while maximising yields,” explains Morin-Forest.
“Our stem cells are extremely robust and grow very quickly, doubling in less than 16 hours, which lets us reach exceptionally high cell densities,” he adds, outlining how this has enabled the breakthrough of its proprietary cell culture medium.
Courtesy: Sherry Hack
“Because our cells thrive without proteins or growth factors, we can bring our food-safe feed price down to around 20 cents per litre, just a fraction of what’s typical in the industry,” he says. “The stability and performance of our stem cells also make them ideally suited for continuous manufacturing, and we’re able to avoid traditional scale-up bottlenecks like scaffolding and micro-carriers to drive costs down even further.”
Arthur D Little’s analysis finds that Gourmey’s modular and repeatable platform can enable it to keep capital expenditure under €35M per facility, with an output of 1,700 tonnes using just six 5,000-litre bioreactors. These benchmarks can be met via “achievable and clearly defined process optimisations”, the startup says.
“The main levers are about relentlessly increasing cell densities by refining our proprietary, food-safe cell feed to reduce its cost while maintaining performance,” says Morin-Forest. “One of the industry’s challenges is minimising waste and making sure that every single compound in the cell feed is genuinely used for cell growth. We’re speeding up these developments with advanced modelling that predicts cellular behaviour, so we can cut iteration time.”
He adds: “Ultimately, much of the cost reduction comes from trivialities: scaling out by adding more bioreactors and unlocking economies of scale as we ramp up cell feed purchases, just like in any industry.”
Courtesy: Sherry Hack
Gourmey expects Singapore approval soon, hints at broader portfolio
Gourmey currently operates an innovation centre and a pilot facility in central Paris, where its team runs multiple 400L bioreactors. “In addition, we have a dedicated setup with a 5,000L bioreactor, the largest bioreactor for cultivated meat in Europe to our knowledge,” says Morin-Forest.
“Most of the scale effects on production cost are already delivered at the 5,000L scale, allowing us to reach $3.43/lb, or €7/kg in a commercial setup, without the need for even larger, unproven bioreactors.
Gourney”s approach keeps operational complexity, industrial risk, and capital needs much lower. Our production process is so efficient that scaling beyond 5,000 litres simply isn’t necessary.”
The company has so far raised €65M via public and private investments: when asked about future fundraising plans, it declined to comment. No other cultivated meat company has filed regulatory dossiers in as many markets as Gourmey, which is awaiting approval in the US, Singapore, the UK, Switzerland, the EU, and another undisclosed region.
“We expect our first approval in Singapore soon,” Morin-Forest reveals.
It has been gearing up for launch over the last year, forming an advisory board with Michelin-starred chefs Claude Le Tohic (One65), Rasmus Munk (Alchemist), and Daniel Calvert (Sézanne), holding talks with major protein producers, and securing deals with premium foodservice and distribution partners.
Three-Michelin-starrd chef and One65 owner Claude Le Tohic | Courtesy: Sherry Hack
Its cultivated foie gras is a high-margin product that takes on an industry marred in controversy. More than a dozen countries have banned the prized delicacy out of animal welfare concerns (geese and ducks are traditionally force-fed to fatten their liver). Gourmey’s version “significantly lowers the environmental footprint” and does away with the cruelty.
It is not the only company making cultivated foie gras. Australia’s Vow unveiled its innovation last year under its Forged brand and has rolled it out to restaurants in Singapore. It will launch in its home country later this year, following final ministerial approval.
As for Gourmey, the demand for their product is already outpacing its supply. “We’re a B2B company and our first customers are premium food wholesalers serving the world’s best tables,” says Morin-Forest. “Demand from premium food service and distribution partners now exceeds our planned production capacity.”
And it isn’t stopping here. “Cultivated foie gras is our launchpad for a broader portfolio, including additional poultry proteins and other species,” he says.
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Impossible Foods’ new vegan chicken, Quorn’s Mission: Impossible collab, and a new kind of tempeh.
New products and launches
Mycoprotein pioneer Quorn has launched a summer marketing campaign with Paramount Pictures to align with the launch of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. The brand hired a Tom Cruise lookalike to sign autographs in London’s West End while eating its Cocktail Sausages, and also has a Mission Snack Swap ad campaign featuring its farm animal puppets.
Courtesy: Quorn
British oat milk brand Minor Figures has teamed up with Nigo‘s lifestyle label Human Made on a clothing and accessory collection, featuring a sweatshirt, apron, milk bottle, milk sleeve, an art toy, and more. It will be featured at a pop-up at StandBy in Harajuku, Tokyo this weekend (May 31 to June 1).
Also in the UK, vegan meal kit maker Grubby has launched an eight-recipe menu featuring Symplicity Foods‘s plant-based meat alternatives. It includes a BBQ Smash Burger with Carrot Slaw, Hoi Sin Garlic Chilli Noodles, and Symplicity Schnitzel with Curried Potato Salad.
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
Plant-based meat leader Impossible Foodsteased its new Crispy Chicken Fillets at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago. It has 17g of protein and half as much saturated fat compared to conventional fillets, and will roll out at restaurants soon.
US startup LiveComplete will soon launch a new protein powder made using its NutriMatch technology, which blends plant proteins in a way that mirrors human muscles.
Courtesy: Upside Foods
To protest Indiana’s upcoming ban on cultivated meat (which comes into effect on July 1), Upside Foodsserved cultured chicken sandwiches at the Indianapolis 500 race on Memorial Day weekend.
Canadian vegan fast-food chain Odd Burger has earned an exclusive listing at 7-Eleven for four of its retail products. The Crispy ChickUn Fillet, Chickpea Burger, Smash Burger and Breakfast Sausage will be available at over 500 locations, with select stores stocking them from next month.
Courtesy: Daiya
Fellow Canadian plant-based company Daiya has introduced a single-serve cream cheese featuring its fermented oat cream. The 1oz packs are aimed at foodservice operators. It will soon also launch a dairy-free cheese sauce.
Danish biosolutions giant Novonesis has rolled out Vertera Velvet, an ingredient aimed at tackling weak foam and curdling in plant-based barista milks, with a specific focus on oat, pea and blended milks.
Courtesy: Umami Bioworks
And Singaporean food tech startup Umami Bioworks has partnered with Japanese seafood firm Maruha Nichiro to co-develop and commercialise cultivated tuna.
Company and finance updates
German retailer Rewe Group has joined Food Fermentation Europe, a trade association representing the fermentation-derived food sector.
Courtesy: Kind Kones
Singaporean vegan ice cream maker Kind Kones has secured an undisclosed sum of funding from female-led firm Epic Angels. It will use the capital to expand its presence in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, specifically Dubai.
Australian precision fermentation firm All G has filed a patent application for an infant formula innovation that includes all five major human breast milk proteins.
Courtesy: Solar Foods
Finnish gas protein firm Solar Foods has verified its pilot production parameters at an industrial scale at its first facility, confirming that the company’s upcoming Factory 02 will be profitable and enabling the production of its Solein protein in the US.
Fellow Nordic fermentation startup Norwegian Mycelium (or NoMy) has received €1.25M in a funding round led by Nippon Beet Sugar Manufacturing Co (Nitten), listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. It comes months after the company set up a subsidiary in Japan.
Courtesy: NoMy
In the three months since its appearance on Dragons’ Den, where it earned €75,000 from investors Deborah Madden and Steven Bartlett, UK vegan dog food maker Omni has added 20,000 new customers with a 130% growth in sales. It is now approaching £10M in annualised revenue.
Research, policy and events
Drive-thru coffee chain 7 Brew has scrapped the dairy-free milk surcharge at all its 360 locations across the US.
Dutch cultivated pork startup Meatable will join the Alternative Proteins mission at the Dutch Pavilion at World Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan, next month to outline its optimisations in cell feed, which have helped reduce its preparation time from several days to just 30 minutes.
Courtesy: Meatable
Yet more research has come out proving the environmental superiority of plant-based eating. Focused on Iceland, the study found that vegan diets generate just half the emissions of an omnivore diet, and are overall more compliant with macronutrient recommendations.
At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, one researcher is looking to develop a new kind of tempeh with peas and chickpeas. Backed by a four-year, $387,000 USDA Pulse Crop Health Initiative grant, the protein could help counteract health risks associated with the Western diet, like obesity, fatty liver, and diabetes.
Courtesy: Vivici
Finally, biotech startups Agrobiomics and Vivici have won the Feike Sijbesma Sustainable Innovation Award 2025 for their work in climate-resilient farming and precision-fermented protein production at the F&A Next conference in Wageningen. Each received a $12,500 prize.
