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Category: Cell-Based News

  • Aleph Farms Sets Sights on Europe with Cultivated Beef Facility in Switzerland

    aleph farms switzerland
    4 Mins Read

    Israeli food tech pioneer Aleph Farms has struck a deal to produce its cultivated meat in Europe, setting up at The Cultured Hub facility in Kemptthal.

    As it awaits regulatory approval in Switzerland, Aleph Farms has chosen the canton of Zurich as the European production hub for its cultivated beef.

    The Israeli startup has teamed up with The Cultured Hub, a biotech facility situated in The Valley in Kemptthal, opened last year by retail giant Migros, flavour specialist Givaudan, and equipment manufacturer Bühler Group.

    The move is part of Aleph Farms’s localised production strategy, and marks a key milestone for its international expansion. It’s also an extension of the firm’s six-year-long strategic partnership with Migros, which supported the firm’s regulatory application to the Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office in 2023.

    “Our collaboration with The Cultured Hub builds on years of joint work to advance the regulatory and operational readiness of cultivated meat in Switzerland,” said Aleph Farms co-founder and CEO Didier Toubia.

    How Aleph Farms is charting its global footprint

    aleph farms facility
    Aleph Farms operates a 65,000 square foot facility in Rehovot, Israel. Courtesy: Amit Goren/Aleph Farms

    Aleph Farms’s signature offering is the Petit Steak, a hybrid meat product combining non-modified, non-immortalised cells of a premium Black Angus cow with a plant protein matrix made of soy and wheat.

    The firm has already received regulatory clearance in Israel, though this was contingent on the company clearing a Good Manufacturing Practices inspection for its production facility, on which there has been no public update yet.

    Additionally, it has filed for approval in Singapore, the UK, Thailand, and Switzerland, and is engaged in advanced pre-submission consultations in countries including the US. It plans to eventually expand into Japan, South Korea, Australia, China, and Hong Kong too.

    This strategy would give way to a complex supply chain, so setting up facilities in local hotspots would help Aleph Farms streamline its manufacturing and distribution. It currently operates a 65,000 sq ft plant in Rehovot, Israel (with a capacity to initially produce 10 tonnes of cultivated steak annually), and has acquired another factory in Modi’in.

    Elsewhere, the startup has signed a co-manufacturing deal with Singapore’s ESCO Aster (the first approved cultivated meat facility globally), and is building a factory in Thailand with biotech firms BBGI and Fermbox Bio.

    The Swiss facility is an extension of this approach, and will allow Aleph Farms to create a long-term partnership framework for production in the canton of Zurich, with the potential for future expansion into other European markets.

    Aleph Farms will prepare for commercial launch with Swiss facility

    the cultured hub
    The Cultured Hub is located in The Valley business park | Courtesy: The Valley

    Opened in December, The Cultured Hub aims to speed up the development and commercialisation of cellular agriculture products. It’s equipped with advanced production development labs, as well as cell culture and fermentation capabilities and equipment.

    The hub can host three companies at a time, which can work simultaneously in fully separated suites. Producers can scale up from small lab experiments to 1,000-litre pilot operations without investing in expensive assets or diluting equity. This helps accelerate market entry by saving time and resources, and allowing the entities to focus on creating the optimal food products at competitive costs.

    “We believe the future of food depends on cross-industry collaboration to create impact at scale,” said Fabio Campanile, chairman of The Cultured Hub and head of science and tech at Givaudan. “We are confident that we can provide the infrastructure, services, and networks needed to bring great new products to market by combining Aleph’s innovation and expertise with our platform.”

    The establishment of Aleph Farms’s Swiss operations is supported by the regional administration. “The company strengthens Zurich’s position as a hub for innovation and brings fresh momentum to the growing Zurich food ecosystem, which includes the Food Hub in Wädenswil and nearly 11,000 businesses across the canton,” said Carmen Walker Späh, the canton’s economic affairs councillor.

    According to Aleph Farms, the collaboration supports the startup’s goal of decentralising production and boosting Switzerland’s domestic meat supply – currently, 20% of its beef is imported. It will further help the startup prepare for its commercial launch through relevant distribution channels, once it’s cleared to sell.

    “This partnership allows us to execute our global strategy in the best possible way – one that is both capital-efficient and deeply embedded in the local market,” said Toubia.

    It comes months after the firm secured $29M in the first closing of a larger funding round, taking its total investment to nearly $150M. And last week, an independent analysis showed that Aleph Farms’s steak could be produced at $6.45 per lb and sold in wholesale for $12.25, generating annual net profits of $78.5M. With further process enhancement, the cost of goods sold could fall to just $4.08 per lb.

    The post Aleph Farms Sets Sights on Europe with Cultivated Beef Facility in Switzerland appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Why Upside Foods & Wildtype Are Suing Texas for Its Cultivated Meat Ban

    lab grown meat texas
    7 Mins Read

    A day after Texas’s ban on cultivated meat came into force, two food tech startups sued the state for its decision. Their legal team explains why.

    When Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a law to ban cultivated meat in the state, companies had just over two months before it went into effect.

    In that period, Wildtype, a US startup approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to sell cultivated salmon nationwide, debuted its product at Otoko, an omakase restaurant in Austin known for its blend of Tokyo-style sushi and Kyoto-style kaiseki.

    “Farm-raised salmon creates so much pollution, so it’s not sustainable. You want to enjoy seafood long-term, so Wildtype’s good because you don’t have to kill the fish anymore,” chef-owner Yoshi Okai said. “It’s something new. It’s awesome.”

    The eatery was one of Wildtype’s first launch partners, alongside outposts in Oregon, California, Washington, and Colorado. “We had selected Otoko and chef Yoshi Okai for a number of reasons, many months before this ban was floated in Texas,” co-founder and CEO Justin Kolbeck tells Green Queen.

    “Following our launch in July, we had planned to build on our momentum in Austin by making Wildtype available to a number of seafood restaurants across Texas, including in Dallas and Houston, but this bill closed those markets to us,” he says.

    Before Texas’s ban was even discussed by policymakers, Upside Foods – a cultivated meat startup approved to sell both by the FDA and the US Department of Agriculture – sold limited amounts of its first chicken product at a “well-attended private event” during the 2024 South by Southwest conference in Austin.

    “The company is preparing for a larger-scale commercial launch of its new chicken products in the coming months,” says Upside Foods general counsel Myra Pasek. “Texas businesses – both restaurants and grocery stores – have expressed serious interest in selling Upside chicken in Texas. With the ban in effect, these sales would be prohibited.”

    These missed opportunities have driven Wildtype and Upside Foods to join forces with the Institute for Justice to file a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas, alleging that the state’s SB 261 is “unconstitutional”.

    wildtype salmon where to buy
    Wildtype was selling its cultivated salmon at Yoshi Okai’s Otoko restaurant in Austin before Texas’s ban | Courtesy: Wildtype

    What clauses is Texas allegedly violating?

    In the legal complaint, the Institute for Justice noted that the law wasn’t passed to protect the health and safety of consumers, since it allows the distribution of cultivated meat as long as it isn’t sold.

    “Instead, SB 261 was enacted to stifle the growth of the cultivated meat industry to protect Texas’s conventional agricultural industry from innovative competition that is exclusively based outside of Texas,” it said.

    It argues that Texas’s ban violates the Commerce and Supremacy Clauses of the US Constitution. Under the former’s dormant clause, the federal government has exclusive power to regulate interstate commerce, with states having limited power to interfere. It’s designed to prohibit economic protectionism that benefits in-state interests.

    The Supremacy Clause, meanwhile, makes the Constitution and federal laws the highest law of the land. The decisions by two federal departments to allow Wildtype and Upside Foods to sell products in the interstate market supersede any contrary state laws.

    “Texas’s law is unconstitutional because it was enacted for the purpose, and has the effect, of protecting in-state economic interests from out-of-state competition. That sort of discrimination violates the Commerce Clause,” explains Paul Sherman, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice.

    “Second, as to Upside, Texas’s law is preempted by federal law. The Poultry Product Inspection Act prohibits states from imposing rules on the permissible ingredients in poultry products – or the manner in which they’re produced – that differ from or exceed federal standards,” he notes.

    “The USDA has given Upside the green light to manufacture chicken products from cultivated cells. Texas has said Upside can’t sell products containing cultivated cells. That’s not allowed.”

    florida bans lab grown meat
    Courtesy: Kevin Martin Galante/Upside Foods

    Texas’s cultivated meat ban is ‘pure economic protectionism’

    Texas is one of seven states to have banned cultivated meat. Florida was the first, and was at the end of a similar lawsuit brought by the Institute for Justice on behalf of Upside Foods last year. Alabama, Mississippi, Montana, Indiana, and Nebraska have also outlawed the sale of cultivated meat.

    So why choose Texas for the lawsuit instead of the others? “Texas is the second most populous state in the country. It’s an important market,” says Sherman. “And it’s one in which both Wildtype and Upside have distributed their products. A victory there would send a strong signal to other states that this sort of economic protectionism will not stand.”

    He confirms that the Institute for Justice is “monitoring legislative activity in all the states and will certainly consider filing other lawsuits if necessary”.

    All the states that have banned cultivated meat are led by Republican governors, and surveys have shown that cultivated meat acceptance skews lower among Americans who vote red. But Wildtype’s Kolbeck doesn’t think such legislation is driven by partisan politics.

    “This is pure economic protectionism,” he says. “There were countless points made during deliberations on this bill about protecting Texas ranchers. The complaint filed by the Institute for Justice provides examples. This law is all about keeping competition out of Texas. Wildtype was collateral damage.”

    Indeed, Texas is the top meat producer in the US – last year, it churned out 4.5 billion lbs of beef. The industry is the third-largest economic generator in the state. And in the run-up to the bill’s signing, SB 261’s sponsor, Senator Charles Perry, said the introduction of cultivated meat “could disrupt traditional livestock markets, affecting rural communities and family farms”.

    Likewise, Stan Gerdes, the bill’s lead sponsor in the House, said: “The goal of this bill is to protect our agriculture industry.”

    wildtype salmon
    Courtesy: Wildtype

    What happens next?

    The Institute for Justice isn’t stopping here. “We will be filing a motion for preliminary injunction asking the court to allow Wildtype and UPSIDE to continue selling their products in Texas while the case moves forward,” says Sherman “Our hope is that we can have a ruling on that before the end of the year.”

    It attempted a similar move in Florida, though a judge rejected the preliminary injunction, cancelling Upside Foods’s scheduled appearances at Art Basel and the South Beach Wine and Food Festival, and postponing its planned product launch at a restaurant in the state in early 2025.

    “Although the Florida court rejected our preemption claim, its reasoning was based on a misunderstanding of how the federal law works. Briefly, the court believed that state and federal requirements had to conflict, but the federal law prohibits even non-conflicting state requirements,” says Sherman.

    “Meanwhile, the [Texas] government is likely to file a motion to dismiss the case. We defeated a motion to dismiss in our Florida challenge, and we’re confident we can defeat one here,” he adds. “We have strong arguments. The district court in our Florida lawsuit has already held that the government will have a heavy burden to justify the law on our Commerce Clause claim.”

    lab grown meat lawsuit
    Wildtype co-founders Aryé Elfenbein and Justin Kolbeck | Courtesy: Wildtype

    Apart from harming cultivated meat producers’ financial dealings, Kolbeck suggests that the ban has a wider effect on public perception. “In addition to shutting down one of the very first places cultivated seafood was available for sale, proponents of the bill made misrepresentations about cultivated foods during deliberations, all of which harmed the reputation of our emerging industry,” he says.

    The case has been assigned to Judge Alan Albright, who Sherman says is known for moving cases quickly: “Our hope is we’ll have a ruling from the trial court on the merits no later than summer next year.” 

    Asked for an update on the Florida case, Sherman adds: “We’ll be having an argument in the 11th Circuit on November 3 about whether the trial court erred when it denied Upside’s motion for a preliminary injunction. Besides that, we’re moving forward with discovery in the trial court.”

    The post Why Upside Foods & Wildtype Are Suing Texas for Its Cultivated Meat Ban appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Exclusive: Mission Barns Launches Cultivated Pork in World-First Dinner

    mission barns
    6 Mins Read

    Californian startup Mission Barns sold its cultivated pork for the first time at a dinner in San Francisco, with dishes featuring its meatballs and bacon.

    On Tuesday evening in San Francisco’s Sunset District, a small group of diners gathered for the first sale of cultivated pork anywhere in the world.

    Food tech firm Mission Barns held the exclusive dinner at Fiorella, weeks after securing approval from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for its cultivated pork fat. The event was the first of three pop-up dinners, convening six industry leaders and one sweepstakes winner.

    Fiorella served Mission Barns’s meatballs with Italian herbs and chilli, as well as in a Sicilian-inspired dish with raisins and pignoli, a creation of chef-owner Brandon Gillis. Diners also tried its Applewood-smoked bacon, which is layered with the startup’s cultivated fat.

    lab grown pork
    Courtesy: Mission Barns

    “We put our full trust in Fiorella and chef Brandon, who has deep experience working with the best local, seasonal ingredients in a farm-to-table Italian style,” Mission Barns CEO Cecilia Chang tells Green Queen.

    “After we walked him through our products, he created a menu that showcases them in true Fiorella fashion,” she says. “One highlight is his take on our meatball – he broke it apart, seasoned it with classic Sicilian ingredients like currants and pine nuts, and reformed it into something entirely new, while still letting our cultivated pork shine.”

    Chang recently took over from Eitan Fischer as CEO to lead the company into its next phase of growth, with Fischer still actively involved as founder and board member.

    The inaugural dinner will be followed by another event on September 24, where eight guests chosen from the public will be invited to try the cultivated pork dishes.

    What goes into Mission Barns’s meatballs?

    mission barns bacon
    Courtesy: Mission Barns

    Founded in 2018, Mission Barns uses belly fat cells from American Yorkshire pigs and grows them in bioreactors to make its Mission Fat. This fat is then mixed with plant-based ingredients to make meatballs, bacon, and more.

    This hybrid approach allows the startup to keep costs from soaring too high. And since fat is the primary flavour carrier in food, even a little bit goes a long way in replicating conventional meat.

    “The great thing about our cultivated fat ingredient is that we’ve found even at low inclusion rates (i.e., single-digit percentages), there’s a really noticeable improvement on taste and mouthfeel, and our products have been able to match conventional meat on blind taste tests with consumers,” says Chang.

    For example, the meatballs contain a base of pea protein and Mission Fat (which will appear on the label as a composition of purified water, cell-cultivated pork fat cells, and kosher salt).

    These are complemented by coconut oil, textured pea protein, Italian seasoning, and methylcellulose. In addition, the meatballs contain less than 2% of natural flavours and colours, sodium gluconate, salt, potato starch, red wine vinegar, lactic acid, xanthan gum, and liquid seasoning.

    Mission Barns is one of several startups taking the cultivated fat route. Hoxton Farms, Steakholder Foods, Genuine Taste, and Mosa Meat are doing the same – the latter has filed for regulatory approval in several geographies, including the EU, the UK, and Switzerland.

    lab grown meat restaurant
    Courtesy: Mission Barns

    Restaurant rollout is a gateway for B2B strategy

    At Fiorella, Gillis was “blown away” by the cultivated pork fat. “It had that same rich, savoury depth you get from traditional pork, but with a much smaller footprint,” he recalls. “Working with them on this launch lets us create dishes that are both familiar and groundbreaking.”

    As part of its launch strategy, Mission Barns has been working with front-of-house teams to help engage and educate diners. “At our restaurant, we’re always looking for ways to honour tradition while embracing innovation,” says Isabella Hare, a server at Fiorella.

    “Partnering with Mission Barns allows us to introduce our guests to a groundbreaking ingredient that’s not only delicious but also more sustainable for the future of food,” she adds.

    lab grown pork
    Courtesy: Mission Barns

    The three pop-up dinners had always been intended as a limited in-market test to gauge consumer response and gather valuable feedback, according to Chang.

    “While we’re excited to continue exploring opportunities with Fiorella and other chefs, our long-term strategy has always been B2B: licensing our technology so food partners and manufacturers can produce cultivated products at scale. These early sales and insights serve as proof points for potential partners,” she says.

    “We are having conversations with chefs and restaurants across several US cities,” she notes, but adds: “In the near term, our focus remains on scaling our bioreactor platform rather than expanding restaurant distribution.”

    The firm has designed a novel bioreactor technology that marks a departure from the single-cell suspension tanks of the biopharma sector, enabling more efficient, scalable, and cheaper production.

    mission barns funding
    Courtesy: Mission Barns

    Cultivated meat bans ‘limit choice and economic opportunity’

    Aside from its restaurant rollout, Mission Barns has announced a listing with Sprouts Farmers Market, which will make it the first cultivated meat product to be sold in a US supermarket.

    In July, Chang told Green Queen that the company expects to roll out its meatballs at the retailer’s Oakland locations in Q3. “We’re working closely with Sprouts on timing, but we aren’t announcing specific rollout dates just yet,” she says now. “What we can share is that consumers in the Bay Area will be among the first in the country to find Mission Barns cultivated pork on grocery shelves.”

    Though its current focus is on the US, Mission Barns is keeping an eye on markets that align with the US regulatory process, like Singapore and other Asian countries. It has secured $60 million in funding to date, and will now attempt to raise more capital to support commercial scale-up, strategic licensing, and global expansion.

    “We are raising enough to fund our scale-up work for the next few years,” says Chang. “As everyone knows, the fundraising landscape for cultivated meat is a tough one right now.”

    Indeed, in 2023, funding for cultivated meat startups fell by 75%, followed by another 40% drop in 2024, reaching just $137M. And in the first half of this year, this total dropped even further to $35M.

    mission barns
    Courtesy: Mission Barns

    What will convince investors to bet on Mission Barns? “We have a differentiated approach focused on cultivated fat as a low-inclusion-rate flavouring ingredient, and our novel patented bioreactor has broad applications for products outside of just food – so that’s a really attractive point for investors,” highlights Chang.

    It has been a big year for cultivated meat in the US. Aside from Mission Barns, Wildtype and Believer Meats have both also received a ‘no questions’ letter from the Food and Drug Administration – Wildtype’s salmon is already being served in several restaurants now (as seafood isn’t regulated by the USDA). At the same time, seven states have now banned cultivated meat, with Florida and Texas being sued for their decisions.

    “We believe consumers should have the right to choose safe, delicious, healthy products that are approved by US regulators (in our case, the FDA and the USDA),” says Chang. “The bans are unfortunate because they limit choice, innovation, and economic opportunity in those states. That said, they haven’t slowed our plans – we’re focusing on states where cultivated meat is welcomed, starting here in California.”

    The post Exclusive: Mission Barns Launches Cultivated Pork in World-First Dinner appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Iceland’s ORF Genetics Gets $5.8M to Advance Cultivated Meat via Molecular Farming

    orf genetics
    3 Mins Read

    Food tech startup ORF Genetics has raised €5M ($5.8M) in a new funding round to scale up production of specialised proteins key to cultivated meat.

    Icelandic firm ORF Genetics has secured €5M ($5.8M) in funding to advance and scale up its cultivated meat capabilities.

    The investment round saw participation from both existing and new shareholders, and will help the startup significantly scale up its capacity to produce specialised proteins via molecular farming. These proteins are key components for cultivated meat manufacturing.

    “We are at a pivotal moment,” said CEO Berglind Rán Ólafsdóttir. “This funding ensures that ORF can meet the imminent surge in commercial opportunities and supports the company’s next growth phase.”

    How ORF Genetics makes growth factors with barley

    orf genetics funding
    Courtesy: ORF Genetics

    ORF Genetics’s base technology leverages molecular farming, through which companies modify the cells of plants (instead of microbes or animals, as is the case in cultivated proteins or precision fermentation) to enable them to replicate animal proteins, which can be harvested from leaves or other plant tissues.

    Its unique expression system is called Orfeus, which uses barley as a vehicle for large-scale production of recombinant animal and human proteins. The startup identifies the genetic code for the target protein, which is cloned into a highly optimised expression vector called GrainVec.

    In a process mediated by bacteria, immature barley embryos undergo tissue culture in a carefully optimised medium, which then grow into strong, bioengineered plantlets with a well-developed root system.

    These are then transferred into a supporting matrix in small pots, in a controlled growth chamber. After a well-defined period, these plantlets are transferred into an automatic hydroponic conveyor belt cultivation system until they are ready for harvest.

    ORF Genetics chooses the highest-expressing barley lines (based on target protein levels in the barley seed extract), which are expanded further into a final selection of the best-yielding lines.

    ORF Genetics plans extension of funding round

    cultivated meat growth factors
    Courtesy: ORF Genetics

    The Orfeus platform has allowed the firm to develop a portfolio of growth factors, including Mesokine, its range for cultivated meat. Each product is a defined barley seed extract that contains endotoxin-free growth factors from cows, pigs, birds and marine species. They also contain selected barley proteins to stabilise them, prolong their lifetime, and enhance their bioactivity.

    ORF Genetics notes that Mesokine has become a trusted brand among key players in the cultivated meat space. One of its most notable customers is Australia’s Vow, whose cultured quail is made from the Icelandic firm’s growth factors, and is being sold at restaurants in Singapore and Australia.

    Further, it’s working with South Korea-based SeaWith, which is hoping to receive regulatory approval and launch cultivated seafood in its home country by the end of the year. The two companies hosted a public tasting for cultivated shellfish meat at the Iceland Ocean Cluster this February, in an event attended by First Gentleman Björn Skúlason and agrifood minister Hanna Katrín Friðriksson.

    Now, ORF Genetics is aiming to supercharge the production of Mesokine, with plans to expand capacity by 14-fold by 2027, and by a factor of 10,000 by 2032.

    To help with this effort, it’s extending its funding round with a goal of raising €7M. “We plan to expand the round by the end of October and welcome new investors to join us in building a company that holds a key position in a market with tremendous growth potential,” said Berglind Rán.

    ORF Genetics is among several companies innovating with molecular farming, including Moolec Science, Alpine Bio, PoLoPo, Mozza, Miruku, Tiamat Sciences, Bright Biotech, and NewMoo.

    The post Iceland’s ORF Genetics Gets $5.8M to Advance Cultivated Meat via Molecular Farming appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • This Startup is Launching Scandinavia’s First Cultivated Meat Factory

    remeat
    4 Mins Read

    Swedish cultivated meat startup Re:meat has struck a deal to establish a pilot facility in Lund, which will be the first such factory in Scandinavia.

    Months after securing $1.1M in funding, Malmö-based firm Re:meat has signed a partnership to establish Scandinavia’s first cultivated meat facility.

    The firm has teamed up with Biotech Heights, a biotech innovation hub supporting future food systems at Kemicentrum in Lund. Co-founded by Lund University, packaging giant Tetra Pak, and Sweden’s national innovation agency, Vinnova, it is located alongside the Lund University Pre-Pilot Plant (LUPPP).

    Re:meat has become Biotech Heights’s first startup member, which will launch its first pilot at the LUPPP. “Collaboration is necessary to advance the development of fermentation and apply bioprocess technologies to new industries,” said Emma Nordell, managing director of Biotech Heights.

    “Re:meat will be our first start-up to pave the way for collaboration between academia, start-ups and industry players within biosolutions,” she added.

    The pilot plant, titled Re:meatery, will be installed by the end of 2025 and validated with partners and clients in spring 2026.

    Re:meat bets on food-grade bioreactors to lower costs

    remeat funding
    Courtesy: Re:meat

    Founded in 2022 by Jacob Schaldemose Peterson, Marie Gibbons and Gittan Schiöld, Re:meat emerged from stealth a year later with cultivated Swedish meatballs that received “overwhelmingly positive” feedback in taste tests.

    It sources non-GMO cells through a biopsy of healthy free-range livestock. These are immortalised cells, meaning they can differentiate and multiply indefinitely. They’re fed a mix of nutrients and vitamins under an ideal temperature in fermentation tanks called bioreactors.

    Once they grow to the desired density, the cells are harvested – this process currently takes three weeks. Re:meat’s initial focus is on minced meat, but it is working towards whole-cut products in the long term.

    The company says its patented core technology radically lowers the cost of hardware for cultivated meat, an important step towards scaling cultivated food. It has developed an alternative to the controversial and expensive fetal bovine serum, and uses food-grade equipment instead of pharmaceutical bioreactors to meet the lower margins in this industry.

    It’s an approach being championed by companies like cultivated pork producer Mission Barns, cultivated pet food startup Meatly, and AI-led biotech firm Arsenale Bioyards.

    “Inspired by our many years in the brewing industry, combined with our R&D team in cell biology, we have developed a food-grade bioreactor that still meets the high standards and parameters to cultivate sensitive mammalian cells,” said Re:meat CTO Marten Schmidt.

    “This means that our Re:meatery also fits for yeast, and bacteria-based processes, such as precision fermentation. So, the potential really extends beyond cultivated meat,” he added.

    Re:meat plays into Swedes’ support for domestic production

    lab grown meat factory
    Courtesy: Re:meat

    While Re:meat is Sweden’s only dedicated cultivated meat startup, it doesn’t mean there’s a lack of appetite for these proteins in the country.

    Polling by the Good Food Institute (GFI) Europe has found that 55% of Swedes are open to trying cultivated meat, with 57% supporting its availability if approved by regulators.

    “Swedes are typically keen on new things,” Thomas Kalling, professor of strategic management at Lund University, told GFI Europe last year. “Their balanced perspective underscores the potential for cultivated meat to not only enhance our competitive edge, but also tackle pressing global challenges related to health, ecology, nutrition, and affordability.”

    Re:meat’s Schmidt noted: “We identified the need to design equipment that costs a fraction of today to be able to scale and industrialise alternative foods production and all its connected processes. This could enable a food revolution.

    “Biotech Heights is a great partner supporting our common goal of bridging academia and commercialisation by providing the perfect combination of available infrastructure and scientific know-how,” he added.

    “It is really inspiring that Re:meat wants to establish a pilot in our environment,” said LUPP manager Martin Hendström. “It will open up exciting new opportunities for innovation, research and education.”

    The GFI Europe survey showed that three in five Swedish consumers back domestic production to bolster the national economy. Re:meat’s new factory will lean into that. And it isn’t the only major alternative protein facility being built in the country.

    In April, agricultural cooperative Lantmännen received €50M from the European Investment Bank in part financing for a pea protein isolate factory. It will manufacture plant proteins for use in applications like protein bars, drinks, breads, as well as non-dairy alternatives and meat analogues.

    The post This Startup is Launching Scandinavia’s First Cultivated Meat Factory appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • The EU Backs The World’s First Cultivated Meat Farm

    lab grown meat farmers
    4 Mins Read

    The Craft Consortium is building a cultivated meat farm in the Netherlands, a first-of-its-kind project co-funded by the EU.

    When it comes to ensuring the safety of cultivated meat, way more Europeans place their trust in farmers (27%) than retailers or private companies (11%), according to a Euroconsumers survey this year.

    The fact that farmers themselves will be most acutely affected if cultivated meat takes off on a large scale further emphasises their critical role in this future food sector.

    These factors have led several stakeholders to join forces under the Craft (Cellular Revolution in Agriculture and Farming Technology) Consortium, with the aim of building the world’s first cultivated meat farm in the Netherlands.

    The project has been awarded the first €2M of a €4M grant request, co-funded by the EU-backed accelerator, EIT Food. It’s designed to decentralise cultivated meat production and enable farmers to diversify their businesses.

    The consortium is made up of RespectFarms, Wageningen University & Research, cultivated meat firms Mosa Meat, Aleph Farms, Multus, sustainable agriculture company Kipster, and facility design specialist Royal Kuijpers.

    “Craft boils down a world problem to farm size. So we can solve it,” said RespectFarms co-founder Ralf Becks. “And once it works, we scale this out to the world to increase impact. Let’s export technology instead of meat and animals.”

    How the cultivated meat farm would work

    The project is looking to integrate cultivated meat into real farms, ensuring that the production is led by farmers and embedded locally. It will demonstrate how cultivated meat can coexist with livestock and crops, creating resilient and sustainable food systems.

    “It is important for food innovations to stay as close as possible to primary food production, making use of local resources and waste streams,” said René Wijffels, a bioprocessing engineering professor at Wageningen University.

    RespectFarms has previously explained that through this model, farmers can work with experts (like architects) who can retrofit their stable with new designs that are fit for cultivated meat production and a farm of the future.

    They’d be able to produce more meat with fewer cows, and they don’t need to be slaughtered. It safeguards them against any disease risk to the livestock (and eventually humans who consume their meat), because you’re essentially taking them out of the equation.

    “This represents the first effort globally to merge cellular and traditional farming and promises to deliver consumers the best of both worlds: the unrivalled experience of real meat, through products produced and sold locally,” noted Peter Verstrate, co-founder and COO of Mosa Meat, which this year applied for regulatory approval for cultivated beef fat in the EU.

    “The project will deliver a business model that is fundamentally new on one hand, and centuries old on the other, and will add [a] new perspective, also for farmers, to agriculture as we know it,” he added.

    As things stand, the food system is simply not sustainable, both from a food security and climate perspective. There’s not enough land to produce food for a global population that will approach 10 billion by mid-century, while the emissions linked to livestock production make up the bulk of agriculture’s environmental footprint.

    Cultivated meat, though, can reduce water consumption by 78%, land use by 95%, emissions by 92%, and societal costs by 56%. “We need to find other ways to provide for our food – within the Earth’s capacity, with as little impact as possible on animals, humans, [and] the climate, and with a future for the (livestock) farmer,” said Ruud Zanders, co-founder of Kipster and RespectFarms. “Et voila: the cultured meat farm.”

    Many farmers have embraced cultivated meat

    cultivated meat farm
    Courtesy: RespectFarms

    The threat to farmers has been the source of reasoning behind bans (and attempted bans) on cultivated meat in the US and Europe, despite livestock producers being open to the competition and advocating for consumer choice.

    Farmers in the UK 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.

    This was the argument of the Euroconsumer report. “Cultivated meat can offer opportunities for farmers – but only if we make smart choices now, keep things fair, and make sure benefits don’t just go to a few big players,” it stated.

    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 these proteins.

    “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,” Andy Jarvis, director of the Bezos Earth Fund’s Future of Food scheme, told Green Queen last year. “The [culture] media are sugars, and all sorts of minerals and things that are coming from crops, and they’re farmed goods.”

    This sentiment was echoed by Euroconsumers, which highlighted “small-scale on-farm cultivated meat production” as an opportunity for farmers.

    Now, the EU agrees with this assessment, having invested in the Craft Consortium. “This grant enables us, together with RespectFarms and our partners, to pioneer farm-scale cultivated meat production, empowering farmers with viable, resilient, and sustainable models that align with Europe’s mission for healthier lives and fairer food systems,” said Neta Lavon, co-founder & CTO of Aleph Farms.

    “Combining knowledge, building trust and creating new narratives is what excites me about this project,” said Ira van Eelen, co-founder of RespectFarms and board member of Cellulaire Agricultuur Nederland. “I envision children’s books with fun educational stories about ‘Happy the Cell’ and his adventures in becoming the king’s meatball. This project is literally ‘Food for Thought’.”

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  • Industry Consolidation: 40+ Major Alternative Protein Companies Have Shut or Been Acquired in Past Year

    2 Mins Read

    The previous 12 months have seen a sharp increase in the number of alternative protein businesses that have ceased trading, come close to the brink, or been acquired. Here are all the major deals, starting September 2024.

    The alternative protein sector has experienced a dramatic rise in business failures and consolidation over the past 12 months, reflecting significant market turbulence and shifting investor sentiment.

    Research by Green Queen shows that between September 1, 2024 and August 31, 2025, more than 40 major alternative protein ventures have either shuttered their doors, undergone mergers, fallen into bankruptcy or liquidation, or been acquired – often at discounted valuations.

    Geographic and sector breakdown

    The bulk of activity occurred in Europe (23 deals) and North America (16 deals), with Asia-Pacific registering five notable events. This clustering highlights how alternative protein entrepreneurship, historically clustered in these regions, has faced pronounced headwinds from both consumer and funding challenges.

    Particularly in Europe, legacy brands in the UK and the Netherlands have wound down or switched ownership, while several US-based startups, including those with substantial venture capital backing, have ceased trading or sold assets at losses.

    Most casualties and transactions have been in plant-based companies (32 out of the total), whereas fermentation (7), cell cultivation (3), molecular farming (1), and blended protein (1) technologies make up far fewer. This skew suggests plant-based meat, dairy, and ready-meal startups have struggled most with scaling and profitability.

    Of these, meat analogues (18 deals) and dairy alternatives (10 deals) were especially susceptible, perhaps due to intensifying competition and slower-than-expected consumer adoption. B2B protein suppliers and niche categories like honey and eggs also saw closures and restructuring, indicating market saturation or lack of stand-out differentiation.

    Types of business events

    Acquisitions constituted the largest share of deals (24), flanked by multiple closures (11), liquidations (4), bankruptcies (2), one merger, and several notable asset sales*.

    In some cases, acquisitions afforded surviving entities access to IP or branded assets without assuming full operational risk. Other times, distressed sales reflected deep operational challenges and an inability to raise further funds.

    *Note: The estimates for liquidations and bankruptcies do not include businesses that were later acquired or shut.

    Macro implications

    The spike in closures, insolvencies, and “fire sale” acquisitions suggests intense market correction, likely driven by rising production costs, tighter capital flows, faltering retail demand, and ongoing price sensitivity among mainstream consumers.

    The sector is recalibrating around stronger, well-capitalised incumbents, with distressed startups finding new homes or dissolving. It’s clear that after years of expansion, alternative protein is experiencing its first widespread shakeout – a sign both of maturation and a need for strategic pivots in product, channel, and consumer engagement.

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  • Umami Bioworks Gets EU Registration to Sell Two Cultivated Fish Products for Pet Food

    umami bioworks approval
    4 Mins Read

    Singaporean food tech startup Umami Bioworks has registered two cultivated seafood ingredients for pet food in the EU, and is eyeing a 2026 launch.

    In a year of milestones for the industry, cultivated pet food has landed on another.

    Singapore’s Umami Bioworks, which specialises in cell-cultured seafood, has registered two pet food ingredients with EU authorities, paving the way for commercialisation in the EU.

    While human pet food still remains a fair way off, this is the third startup cleared to sell cultivated pet food in the EU. The two ingredients registered with the EU Feed Materials Register involve cultivated white fish, with one suspended in a liquid nutrient broth.

    They’re classed under the register’s Category 10, which involves fish, aquatic animals and their derivative products. “This marks an important regulatory milestone for us and establishes a clear pathway to market,” Gayathri Mani, product manager at Umami Bioworks, tells Green Queen in an email.

    “We’re already working with partners, and preparing for launches in 2026,” she added, outlining that the development ensures it can now “move forward with the next steps to bring cultivated seafood into real products for pets in Europe”.

    Further, the startup has announced a renewed partnership with California’s Friends & Family Pet Food Company, which earned its own regulatory approval for cultivated pet food in Singapore in June. It comes a year after the two firms first began collaborating, and will entail pilot launches in Singapore, the UK, and the EU.

    Umami Bioworks’ EU registration covers cultivated white fish

    umami bioworks
    Courtesy: Umami Bioworks

    In the EU, companies looking to sell animal-derived ingredients to pet food manufacturers need to meet legal requirements ensuring the ingredients are safe, and register as a user of animal byproducts.

    There’s no pre-market approval process to sell feed ingredients, unlike human food ingredients. This means it isn’t the cultivated pet food ingredients that are subject to registration, but the facility producing these proteins.

    Umami Bioworks’ cultured white fish is derived from a non-GMO cell line and grown in a controlled, antibiotic- and animal-free medium. The second ingredient is the same biomass, but suspended in a liquid nutrient broth. Both are described as sources of omega-3 fatty acids, protein and nutrients for pet food.

    The startup’s pet food exploits go back to 2023, when it partnered with Canada’s Cult Food Science to unveil the Marina Cat brand of cultivated fish treats. “With nearly 90 million European households owning a pet and the region’s pet food market growing at over 5% annually, the appetite for innovation has never been stronger,” the company said.

    Umami Bioworks, which merged with fellow cultivated seafood producer Shiok Meats in 2024, has additionally developed cultured Japanese eel and bluefin tuna for human food use, and is in the early stages of developing a white fish too.

    “Our eel programme is the most advanced, with regulatory filings made in several key markets and production running at pilot scale. We are planning multiple product launch campaigns with our partners and will share more on those campaigns in the near future,” Mani told Green Queen last month.

    Cultivated meat regulation continues to progress in 2025

    lab grown meat approved
    Graphic by Green Queen

    In March, Austrian-American firm BioCraft Pet Nutrition registered its cultivated mouse meat for pet food use in the EU, under the  Category 3 animal byproducts category. 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 has since filed an application to the US Food and Drug Administration.

    Speaking of which, Cult Food Science has conducted feeding trials in the US in pursuit of regulatory approval for its Noochies! brand.

    Last year, London-based startup Meatly passed stringent inspections from UK regulatory bodies to receive approval for its cultured pet food, which made it onto Pets At Home shelves in a partnership with vegan dog food maker The Pack this spring.

    And as reported by Green Queen, Friends & Family secured approval from Singapore’s Animal & Veterinary Services (AVS) to sell cultivated meat for dogs and cats. It will roll out eight SKUs this autumn.

    It’s not just cultivated pet food that has seen a surge in regulatory progress this year. Four startups making cultivated meat for humans also received some form of approval. Vow got cleared to sell its cultured quail in Australia and New Zealand, following its Singapore green light in 2024.

    Meanwhile, Mission Barns secured the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) green light for its cultured pork fat (its debut tasting event is next week), Believer Meats received a ‘no questions’ letter from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its cultivated chicken, and Wildtype began selling its cultivated salmon after earning the FDA nod (the USDA doesn’t oversee seafood).

    These developments may continue this year, with industry experts hopeful of approvals in Thailand and South Korea by the end of 2025, too.

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  • UK Cultivated Meat Tech Firm CellRev Calls It Quits, Citing Funding Woes

    cellrev administration
    4 Mins Read

    CellRev, a Newcastle-based bioprocessor of cell culture technologies, has ceased trading and appointed administrators to sell its assets.

    UK biotech firm CellulaREvolution (CellRev), an enzyme technology specialist for the cultivated meat, regenerative medicine and vaccine sectors, has gone into administration.

    “We couldn’t deliver commercial milestones fast enough to secure Series A investment. The bar is higher than anyone (in 2021) could have foreseen,” said CEO Chris Green.

    CellRev brought in Ed Connell and Mike Kienlen from advisory firm Armstrong Watson as administrators on August 12. “Following their appointment, the joint administrators have made all staff redundant and are working with their agents, Hilco Valuation Services, in relation to realising the assets of the company,” a spokesperson for Armstrong Watson said.

    CellRev’s partnership with BSF Enterprise was abandoned last year

    cellrev administration
    Courtesy: CellRev

    CellRev spun out from Newcastle University in 2018 with a breakthrough novel enzymatic process that overcame longstanding bottlenecks in bioprocessing. It aimed to optimise cell manufacturing with reagents, addressing the industry’s scalability, quality and cost barriers.

    The company sought to tackle the manufacturing challenges in the cultivated meat industry to help change consumption habits, and produce tissues for clinical trials to speed up the development of life-saving treatments. It served a global customer base of biopharma, vaccine producers, regenerative medicine developers, and cultivated meat startups, supplying them with high-value media additives in trial and production volumes.

    Its flagship product, AggreGuard, is a specialist enzyme blend that stops cells from clumping together during production, which helps increase yields, improve quality, and reduce waste, without slowing cell growth.

    And Continuase is its continuous cell manufacturing enzyme solution, which enables extended production runs and reduces downtime to offer step-change improvements in efficiency and cost-effectiveness for large-scale manufacturing.

    Over the years, CellRev has secured multiple rounds of investment. It closed a £1.2M seed round in 2021, followed by another £1.75M raise a year later. In 2023, the firm brought in £1.4M (supported by the European Regional Development Fund), and secured a £330,000 grant from national innovation agency Innovate UK.

    In December 2023, CellRev partnered with BSF Enterprise (parent company of cellular agriculture startup 3D Bio-Tissues) to launch a joint venture, Cultivated Meat Technologies Limited, to mass-produce cultivated meat in a cost-effective manner.

    The entity set out to secure licensing agreements with meat producers who could help provide capital, production expertise and supply chain relationships. It was working on producing cultivated meat fillets as a proof of concept.

    Late last year, BSF abandoned the joint venture, retaining full ownership and instead focusing on different ways to produce cultivated meat with major British and European food processors.

    CellRev pivoted away from under-the-pump cultivated meat sector

    lab grown meat funding
    Courtesy: CellRev

    While CellRev developed an industry-first cell production platform, filed three patent families, and secured initial strategic partnerships to launch products, its target market was “hit unbelievably hard by industry shifts” starting in late 2022, according to Green.

    He explained that the startup pivoted in a major way, stripping back to a reagents-only model and focusing solely on the life sciences opportunity. CellRev settled on vaccines as its target, secured commercial partnerships and began conducting pilots. It also signed deals to develop a cell and gene therapy product range, secured its first pharma evaluation, and set up distributors.

    “It wasn’t enough,” said Green. “We are still adamant that what CellRev set out to do is transformative and very much needed; however, we ran out of time.”

    Now, the administrators are aiming to sell off the company’s assets, including the CellRev brand, the AggreGuard and Continuase products, its trademarks, patent applications, website and domain name, as well as tangible assets like centrifuges, bioreactors and microscopes.

    The Newcastle University spinout is the latest example highlighting the hurdles facing the cultivated meat industry, with investors losing faith, governments attempting to restrict these products, and consumers continuing to be sceptical.

    Cultivated meat witnessed a 40% decline in funding in 2024, securing only $139M, its lowest annual total since 2019. In fact, between 2022 and 2024, this sector cumulatively raised less money than it did in 2021 alone. This year has been even bleaker, with companies in this space receiving just $35M in the first six months.

    It has resulted in startups either running out of cash or pivoting their strategies completely, much like CellRev had done. Last year, SciFi Foods wound down after facing fundraising difficulties, while in July, insect farming company FlyBlast declared bankruptcy and blamed its strategy of targeting the cultivated meat sector.

    And this month, UK startup Uncommon Bio sold off its cultivated meat assets separately to Meatable and Vow, turning its attention to therapeutics with an initial focus on severe lung diseases like idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

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  • Inside India’s First Cultivated Chicken Competition for Chefs

    great indian cultivated chicken cook off
    5 Mins Read

    Biokraft Foods held a Great Indian Cultivated Chicken Cook-Off last week, with young chefs showcasing the future of food in the Navi Mumbai event.

    For the most part, cultivated meat companies have relied on chefs to flaunt the full potential of their products. The majority of launches have been held at innovative restaurants in the US, Singapore and Australia. Only two of these innovations have entered a supermarket, and one was for pets.

    Biokraft Foods is taking the same approach in India. The Mumbai-based maker of cultivated chicken held a cooking competition for its product, dubbed the Great Indian Cultivated Chicken Cook-Off, at the DY Patil School of Hospitality & Tourism Studies last week.

    The final involved 10 culinary students, who were tasked to create an appetiser using the cultivated meat as a hero ingredient for a four-strong panel of leading chefs.

    “We wanted to show that cultivated chicken is real food with real culinary potential. By bringing cultivated chicken meat to young chefs, we encouraged them to reimagine cultivated chicken through creativity, culture, and tast,,” Biokraft Foods founder and CEO Kamalnayan Tibrewal tells Green Queen.

    “These young chefs represent the future of the food ecosystem, and it is important that they engage with ideas that go beyond cooking and that sustainability, ethics, and delicious new ingredients are equally important,” he adds. “The cook-off was our way of making the idea tangible and sparking conversations about how cultivated meat could fit into India’s food future.”

    lab grown meat india
    Courtesy: Biokraft Foods

    The cook-off’s winning cultivated chicken dishes

    The competition saw participants from some of India’s leading culinary schools, and the dishes were judged with several criteria in mind, including hygiene and food waste management, taste and texture, innovation and creativity, and presentation.

    The winning dish, called Masalon ka Safar (Hindi for ‘A Journey of Spices’), came courtesy of Issa Patel, a student at the Patkar-Varde College Department of Hospitality and Catering. He won a prize of ₹40,000 ($455). It brought together flavours from across India: saffron naan from the north, Champaran chicken from the east, tangy tomato chutney from the south, and green chilli thecha from the West.

    “Cultivated chicken felt no different from conventional chicken, tasty, tender, and satisfying. The real plus is that it’s an ethical and sustainable way to enjoy meat,” Patel tells Green Queen.

    cultivated meat india
    Issa Patel’s winning dish, Masalon ka Safar | Courtesy: Biokraft Foods

    Another student from the same institute, Shlok Khedekar, secured second place and ₹30,000 ($340) for his creation, Nawabi Yakitori with Miso-Caramel Sauce. “For me, cultivated chicken represents a step towards modern gastronomy, meeting protein needs, delighting taste palettes, and offering a humane, cruelty-free way to enjoy meat,” he says.

    The third prize (worth ₹20,000/$230) went to Vedika Sakpal, a student from the host institute, who made Malai Rose Dumplings. The Kohinoor College of Hotel and Tourism Management Studies’s Shravan Kadam, meanwhile, won ₹10,000 ($115) as part of a special innovation prize for his dish, called Sanjeevani Jugalbandi.

    “As a chef, it is inspiring to see cultivated chicken, just like farmed chicken, being marinated, grilled, spiced, and plated with pride, using different techniques, in a commercial environment,” says Demetrius Cordeiro D’Souza, new product development chef at Biokraft Foods.

    “This competition proves that innovation and tradition can share the same plate, thus opening doors to a revolutionary culinary experience in the future,” he adds.

    biokraft foods
    Courtesy: Biokraft Foods

    Biokraft Foods charts path to market for cultivated meat

    The winners of Biokraft Foods’s cook-off will receive a sponsored visit to the Merck Life Science facility in Bangalore, giving them a glimpse of the food science behind cultivated meat.

    “This is just the beginning. We see the winners as ambassadors of what is possible with cultivated meat,” says Tibrewal. “We would love to involve them in future collaborations, whether through recipe development, showcasing cultivated chicken at pop-ups, or even supporting our eventual market entry. Their creativity helps us connect with consumers in ways science [or] food tech alone cannot.”

    In addition to the cook-off, Biokraft Foods also hosted Forkward, a series of panels highlighting the views of stakeholders across the food industry. They included discussions about modernising menus with cultivated meat, the health and sustainability potential of these proteins, and the bridge between innovation and consumer trust.

    lab grown meat chefs
    Courtesy: Biokraft Foods

    This series of talks gave chefs the chance to “learn directly from diverse voices across the food ecosystem, including non-profits, foodtech pioneers, founders, and leaders from hospitality”, according to Tibrewal. “This is just the beginning of many such conversations that will shape India’s journey towards sustainable proteins,” he said.

    Speaking to Green Queen after hosting India’s first public tasting for cultivated meat in April, he said the two-year-old startup planned to file for regulatory approval with the Food Safety and Standards Authority (FSSAI) of India this year.

    “The approval pathway calls for thorough safety evaluations, detailed scientific evidence, and transparency in production practices, with the dual aim of safeguarding consumers and fostering innovation,” he says now.

    biokraft india
    Courtesy: Biokraft Foods

    “FSSAI has already set up a scientific working group to create clear evaluation frameworks for cultivated meat, and these frameworks reflect the country’s forward-looking stance on regulation and willingness to engage with next-generation food solutions. This is also complemented by industry efforts to provide strong data on safety, nutrition, and sustainability.”

    An update on its regulatory progress is expected soon, but in the meantime, Biokraft Foods is already plotting its path into the market. “Chefs, hotels and restaurants are the best partners to introduce cultivated meat to consumers because they shape taste experiences and build trust,” says Tibrewal. “Once acceptance grows, we would then look at retail formats.”

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  • Cultivated Meat Can Usher In A Just Transition of Protein Systems

    lab grown meat environmental impact
    4 Mins Read

    Cultivated meat, plant-based proteins and regenerative agriculture can facilitate a “just transition” of the protein industry, but factory farming needs to stop, a new study shows.

    In the energy industry, a just transition means replacing coal with renewable power. But when it comes to the agrifood sector, one system can’t simply be replaced with another, according to a new study.

    This is because food systems are “deeply embedded in culturally sensitive social structures and practices”, so a combination of methods is the key to ensuring a just transition of protein production. The answer may lie in a shift to regenerative agriculture and an increase in cultivated meat and plant-based proteins, alongside a rapid descaling of factory farming.

    The study, published in the Plos One journal, is the result of a four-year collaboration between Federation University Australia and Israeli cultivated beef producer Aleph Farms. The researchers evaluated 13 protein systems against 25 social, environmental, economic and governance indicators – these included seven beef production methods, one industrial pork system, two poultry systems, one plant-based alternative, and two types of cultivated meat (made via both conventional and renewable energy).

    The findings – built on a review of 285 studies – show that novel proteins like cultivated meat have a positive impact across several areas, and are a better way to produce proteins than most.

    Cultivated meat a positive lever for the protein transition

    just protein transition
    Courtesy: Plos One

    The researchers ranked each production system based on its impact on the indicators, with each category assigned a maximum positive and negative score.

    For example, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in the US had a score of -43 in the natural capital category (two above the lowest possible score), which included impacts like greenhouse gas emissions, land use change, on-farm waste, and water pollution.

    Industrial pork and caged poultry both scored -14 (the lowest possible total being -25) on human capital indicators, which refer to farmers’ and consumers’ health, workplace safety, and more.

    Cultivated meat performed positively across key environmental and social measures. When produced from sustainable energy, it had a combined score of six for GHG emissions, water and air pollution, land use change, and land degradation.

    It had an extremely positive impact on governance structures (a score of five) and workplace safety (four), and is beneficial for greater opportunities for youth (three), policy influence (three), and worker skills and knowledge (two). Aside from the net emissions, the impact was nearly identical across both conventional and green energy production systems for cultivated meat.

    Nine systems had overall positive impacts, led by regenerative farming (a score of 63 on a scale of -125 to 125), followed by organic systems (45). Cultivated meat from sustainable energy came in fifth position (24 points), three points ahead of the same from fossil-derived energy.

    Plant-based systems had an overall score of two, with lower scores on water pollution, soil contamination and other natural capital indicators due to their association with on-farm primary production. “This is because large amounts of lentils, grains, oilseed crops, etc., that form the key ingredients of highly processed plant-based food are grown using conventional farming methods,” the researchers explained.

    Four protein production methods had negative impacts: CAFOs (-46), industrial pork (-45), poultry (-35) and small-scale beef (-25).

    Cultivated meat would earn 33% market share in ideal just transition scenario

    just food system transition
    Courtesy: Plos One

    The authors then developed five “what if” scenarios for a just transition of protein production. The current scenario assumes business as usual, followed by situations outlining slow, moderate, fast and aggressive change.

    The fast-change scenario had the highest impact score, entailing a rapid reduction of industrial animal farming to 1% of the global market by 2040 (it currently occupies a 69% share). Simultaneously, plant-based proteins and cultivated meat each make up a third of the protein market by 2050 in this case.

    Regenerative agriculture emerged as the most effective approach for a just transition, with the authors highlighting its “enormous potential to contribute to climate-resilient, equitable and economically sustainable protein production systems”. “However, negative impacts associated with greenhouse gas emissions, freshwater extraction and livestock diversity need to be addressed,” they added.

    With cultivated meat, meanwhile, concerns about net emissions, energy use, and water consumption “remain unaddressed”. But there’s a caveat. “If the production of cultivated meat grows significantly in the future, it may effectively reduce the overall negative impacts of the protein production systems,” the study stated.

    The researchers point out how a large number of negative impacts could lead to adverse regulatory responses to certain protein systems, attracting heavy penalties, consumer backlash, and investor fallout. “Livestock farmers and protein producers can target short-, medium- and long-term responses to avoid risks arising from negative impacts,” they wrote.

    It is the first of a series of reports being produced by the Federation University and Aleph Farms, and comes at a time when politicians in the US and the EU are attempting to restrain cultivated meat with bans and proposed restrictions. One of the chief drivers of the efforts is the potential impact on farmers, despite livestock producers being open to the technology and speaking out against policy restrictions on it.

    The post Cultivated Meat Can Usher In A Just Transition of Protein Systems appeared first on Green Queen.

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  • Accellta Bets on Cultivated Dairy to Solve the Alternative Fat Puzzle

    accellta
    7 Mins Read

    Animal fats are terrible for the planet, but most plant-based alternatives fall short. For Israeli startup Accellta, the key lies with cell-cultured dairy.

    With plans for an $8M and a regulatory application in the US, Israeli firm Accellta is aiming to bring cultivated dairy fats to the forefront of the future food conversation.

    When it comes to food, cell cultivation technology is best associated with meat, with only a handful of companies focusing on dairy proteins. By focusing on milk fats, this startup is targeting something even more niche.

    This is because fat delivers the taste, texture and mouthfeel people love in dairy products. “While proteins are already produced at scale via fermentation and plant-based systems, fat is the real bottleneck,” Accellta co-founder and CEO Michal Amit tells Green Queen when asked why it’s choosing to focus on fats over proteins.

    “The dairy industry faces a structural shortage of milk fat,” she says, adding that discussions with global dairy leaders confirmed the urgent need for scalable and authentic milk fat solutions.

    There’s also a consistency issue. “Dairy companies struggle with operational challenges: milk fat concentration is not constant, varying between herds and across seasons. In summer months, fat levels are particularly low, forcing companies to purchase additional fat from external sources just to keep production lines running,” explains Amit.

    Cultured dairy fat, though, offers a “reliable, geographically closer, and consistent supply”, which streamlines operations and lowers dependency on volatile external markets.

    Accellta isn’t a new name in the biotech industry. It has been around since 2012, starting as a stem cell tech startup and building what Amit says was one of the world’s strongest large-scale suspension culture platforms.

    It has been profitable since 2018, thanks to tech and media licensing, process development, and media optimisation services. It was in 2023 when the firm turned its focus to the food sector, specifically cultivated fats for dairy products to solve the “fat balance” in the industry while simultaneously decarbonising it.

    How Accellta makes its cultivated dairy fat

    lab grown milk
    A microscopic view of cultivated milk fat droplets | Courtesy: Accellta

    Unlike cultivated meat, which often requires structured tissues, scaffolds, and multiple cell types, Accellta’s dairy production process focuses solely on fat cells grown efficiently in suspension. “This is simpler, more scalable, and directly aligned with the needs of dairy products, where fat is the key ingredient,” says Amit.

    Its proprietary 3D suspension culture grows stem cells in chemically defined media, eliminating the need for scaffolds or microcarriers and enabling very high cell densities with minimal contamination risk. It starts with pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) in suspension. Unlike immortalised cell lines that need to be altered to multiply indefinitely, these have the natural ability to continue multiplying, and in a rapid manner.

    The PSCs are then differentiated into adipocytes. “The resulting fat droplets are harvested and processed into functional dairy fat ingredients,” explains Amit. “A unique feature of our platform is the media formulation: it makes PSCs ‘think’ they are attached to a solid surface, while actually growing in suspension; achieved without any genetic modification of the cells.”

    She adds: “Importantly, we can also fine-tune the fatty acid composition inside the adipocytes, tailoring the nutritional and functional properties of the fat to specific dairy applications.”

    Asked if Accellta is using fetal bovine serum, an ethically controversial and highly expensive component that most of the cultivated meat industry is moving away from, its CEO says she isn’t disclosing details about media formulations right now.

    “We have over a decade of experience in developing and optimising suspension media for stem cells, and we are now applying this expertise to create a formulation that meets regulatory requirements while reaching a cost point that enables true commercial viability,” she offers. “Thanks to our strategic partners, we already have a clear target price for our cultured dairy fat that will allow us to compete effectively in the market.”

    Cell-cultured dairy fat can be blended with milk or alternative proteins

    lab grown dairy
    Accellta’s hybrid butter contains 20% cultivated milk fat | Courtesy: Accellta

    Instead of selling consumer products, Accellta is focused on the B2B market, supplying its cultivated dairy fat as a premium ingredient to food manufacturers and dairy processors.

    “These food manufacturers and dairy companies will then use our fat to create high-quality consumer products with authentic dairy taste and improved nutritional profiles,” says Amit. “Importantly, our technology also enables fine-tuning of the fatty acid composition, so we can adapt the ingredient to match the performance requirements of each customer application.”

    In fact, it has already produced prototypes with a fatty acid profile that matches dairy fats. Unlike plant-based fats, the firm’s cell-based dairy version can provide the same taste, mouthfeel and functionality as milk fat, and has the same melting point and flavour release.

    “Our cultured fat can be blended seamlessly with conventional dairy fat or with alternative protein bases,” she says. The inclusion rate depends on the specific product; ice cream typically contains 15% fat, butter around 80%, and cheese 20-35%.

    “We have already incorporated our cultured dairy fat into prototypes such as yoghurt, butter, and ice cream to demonstrate functionality and taste,” says Amit. Its hybrid butter contains 20% cultured fat.

    “We are planning to build our own production facilities to supply cultured fat as an immediate, high-quality ingredient for dairy applications. At the same time, we are pursuing joint ventures with strategic partners worldwide, enabling them to establish localised production facilities based on our technology,” she explains.

    “Through these partnerships, we provide technology licensing, hands-on operational support, and benefit from long-term royalty streams,” she adds. “This dual approach – combining direct ingredient supply with scalable global partnerships – allows us to address near-term market needs while positioning Accellta as a key enabler of the dairy industry’s transition to sustainable, cultured ingredients.”

    Accellta eyes $8M in funding, targets US as first market

    accellta funding
    Courtesy: Accellta

    Accellta is producing the fat in its in-house bioreactors, with monthly quantities enough for developing applications and prototypes to share with investors and strategic partners.

    “The next stage, supported by our fundraising, will be to scale production through contract manufacturing partners who specialise in transforming lab-scale processes into industrial-scale manufacturing,” Amit reveals. “Moving to larger scales will enable us to produce hundreds of kilograms of cultured dairy fat per month, enough for our customers to purchase small batches for the development of dairy products based on our fat.”

    Speaking of which, while it has been “self-sustaining and profitable for several years” – thanks to earlier investments, tech licensing revenues, and non-dilutive grants – Accellta is now raising $8M to speed up the development of the cultivated dairy fat, expand its production capacity, and deliver minimum viable product samples to partners.

    “This funding will enable us to demonstrate feasibility at commercial scale and secure our first sales agreements within 24 months of closing the round,” says Amit.

    Given that this is a novel food ingredient, the cell-based dairy fat would need regulatory approval in whichever markets it plans to enter. “Accellta is working with experienced international regulatory consultants to design and execute our approval strategy,” she says.

    “Our first target market is the US, where we are preparing a submission to the FDA, building on the regulatory precedents already established for cultivated food products. In parallel, we plan to engage with regulatory authorities in Singapore, Israel and Europe.”

    Alternative fats are heating up

    lab grown fat
    Accellta’s cultivated dairy fat | Courtesy: Accellta

    Animal fats are revered for their flavour and functionality, but they’re terrible for the environment. Livestock farming may just be the leading cause of climate change, and uses up vast amounts of land and water.

    Plant-based fats are essential too, with saturated fats providing form and functionality to legions of products. But palm oil alone is present in half of all supermarket items and responsible for most of the deforestation in tropical regions.

    According to calculations by Savor, a US company making butter with captured carbon, green hydrogen and methane, the production of animal and plant-based fats collectively generates 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. It underscores the need for new alternatives that don’t hurt the planet.

    Like Savor, many food tech firms are using microbes and fermentation to develop planet-friendly replacements for animal fats and palm oil, including Nourish Ingredients, Smey, NoPalm Ingredients, Clean Food Group, Palm-Alt, Äio, C16 Biosciences, Melt&Marble, and Lypid.

    Meanwhile, in the cell-based dairy category, Canada’s Opalia has secured the first commercial supply agreement for its milk from Dutch dairy giant Hoogwegt, ahead of an expected $4M fundraise.

    Other startups working in the cell-based dairy category include Wilk (Israel), Senara (Europe), Brown Foods‘s UnReal Milk (US/India). France’s Nūmi and US-based 108Labs, meanwhile, are developing cultivated breast milk.

    The post Accellta Bets on Cultivated Dairy to Solve the Alternative Fat Puzzle appeared first on Green Queen.

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  • In China, Nearly Half of Consumers Would Replace Meat with Cultivated Proteins

    lab grown meat china
    5 Mins Read

    Nearly half of citizens in China’s tier 1 cities would choose cultivated meat and seafood over conventional options – but health and safety remain the main concern.

    As China’s government ramps up support for cultivated meat, people in its major metropolises are all for it too.

    The country is the world’s largest producer, consumer, and importer of meat, and the appetite for these proteins will continue to rise as urbanisation and affluence make them more accessible. However, where that meat comes from may change, since 60% of China’s protein supply needs to come from alternative sources by 2060 for a realistic chance of decarbonisation.

    Cultivated meat, grown by culturing real animal cells in bioreactors, can drastically lower the greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption and land use associated with meat production. China is already at the forefront of this shift, home to eight of the top 20 patent applicants for these novel proteins.

    Its protein diversification drive is bolstered by public support. According to a 1,000-person survey by the APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture (APAC-SCA), 77% of people in four tier 1 cities – Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen – are willing to try cultivated meat and seafood.

    Health and food safety top of mind for China’s consumers

    china cultivated meat
    Courtesy: APAC-SCA

    The poll reveals that the interest in cultivated meat stems from the appeal of trying new and innovative foods, and comes despite relatively little understanding about these proteins.

    A third (34%) of Chinese consumers aren’t familiar with the term at all. And while 63% have heard of cultivated meat, just one in 10 knows what the concept means. But even among the latter group of respondents, only about half can provide an accurate technical definition.

    Still, the positive outlook towards these proteins persists, with 45% of consumers saying they’re likely to replace conventional meat and seafood with cell-cultured versions.

    This is primarily due to “the new and innovative aspects of cultivated meat and seafood, and the health benefits these products may bring when compared to their conventional counterparts”, APAC-SCA project manager Calisa Lim told Green Queen.

    That said, health is a recurring concern too. A perceived unnaturalness, food safety worries, and doubts over health are the top three hurdles for cultivated meat. “When it comes to a new food product, especially novel foods, safety aspects will always be at the top of consumers’ minds, due to their unfamiliarity,” said Lim.

    “For China, in particular, healthy living has been consistently promoted by the Chinese government and adopted by its citizens, with healthy eating playing a huge role. What we see in terms of the presence of health and food safety aligns with what Chinese consumers already tend to prioritise when purchasing ordinary foods.”

    The respondents also place a lot of emphasis on local government laws, regulations, and safety standards, and indicate that these would also shape their perceptions of cultivated proteins. Streamlined messaging about the safety and health benefits of these foods, both from regulators and the industry, are thus critical to building consumer trust.

    “Assurance on health and safety cannot come solely from the alternative protein industry,” explained Lim. “As consumers place a strong belief and trust in food safety regulators, unified messages from government stakeholders and industry players would be most effective to provide assurance on health and safety.”

    lab grown meat consumer acceptance
    Courtesy: APAC-SCA/Marco Livolsi/Green Queen

    APAC-SCA lauds Chinese government support for cultivated meat

    Speaking of which, the government is already betting big on future foods. The current five-year agriculture plan encourages research in cultivated meat, while the bioeconomy development strategy aims to advance novel foods.

    This year, the country saw its first alternative protein innovation centre open in Beijing, fuelled by an $11M investment from public and private investors to develop novel foods like cultivated meat. And in the Guangdong province, China’s most populous region, local officials are planning to build a biomanufacturing hub to pioneer tech breakthroughs in plant-based, microbial and cultivated proteins.

    At the annual Two Sessions summit, top government officials called for a deeper integration of strategic emerging industries (which included biomanufacturing), shortly after the agriculture ministry highlighted the safety and nutritional efficacy of alternative proteins as a key priority. Meanwhile, No. 1 Central Document (which signals China’s top goals for the year), underscored the importance of protein diversification, including efforts “to explore novel food resources”.

    “We are excited by the decision of the Chinese government to ramp up support for the cultivated meat and seafood sector, especially with China’s declaration that food security is a top national priority,” said Lim.

    “China’s lead in cultivated meat patent filings globally illustrates the deep interest from the scientific community and the rich scientific knowledge of the local industry and research centres that have accumulated thus far. Once the pathways for commercialisation are set in place, China would be a formidable marketplace for such products,” she added.

    lab grown meat patents
    Graphic by Green Queen

    APAC-SCA is calling for the creation of coherent, consistent regulatory guidelines and international alignment on the risk assessment frameworks of cultivated meat. Lim noted that the country introduced a novel food framework back in 2013. “However, a clear guideline for the preparation of cultivated meat and seafood dossiers remains in the works,” she said.

    The organisation further noted that engagement with regulators through tools like virtual clinics and sandboxes can provide clarity to companies looking to commercialise their products. Tasting sessions on pre-approved products are also crucial to get public feedback and fine-tune taste and texture ahead of market launch, it said.

    “As one of the world’s largest meat consumers, China is very susceptible to livestock diseases such as the African swine fever,” outlined Lim. “The production process of cultivated meat and seafood thus provides a stable alternative for the growing affluent Chinese population (which is eating more meat), from the point of shifting trade relations and climate change.”

    The post In China, Nearly Half of Consumers Would Replace Meat with Cultivated Proteins appeared first on Green Queen.

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  • Meatable Acquires Cultivated Meat Platform from Uncommon Bio, Which Turns to Therapeutics

    5 Mins Read

    Dutch food tech startup Meatable has acquired UK-based Uncommon Bio’s cultivated meat platform and key staff, as the latter shifts focus to therapeutics.

    As it works to secure regulatory approval in multiple markets, Dutch cultivated pork startup Meatable is expanding its future food portfolio with the acquisition of several critical assets from Uncommon Bio.

    Meatable has taken over the UK firm’s cultivated meat platform, including key technology, several IP assets and high-performing cell lines, and expert staff. The move will allow the former to expand into new species and accelerate its regulatory and market launch efforts.

    “The acquisition opens up exciting possibilities for diversification. Pork has always been our starting point, but this additional platform enables us to respond more flexibly to customer demand, whether that’s beef, chicken, or other species,” Meatable CTO Aris de Rijke told Green Queen.

    Uncommon Bio, meanwhile, is spinning out to therapeutics in stealth mode, building on the non-GMO mRNA reprogramming and saRNA differentiation technologies it has developed. It is “focusing on changing medicine through multi-targeting”, it said on a job posting on its website.

    Its “polysaccharide-based delivery platform enables multi-pathway cell programming, offering a safe, efficient and scalable alternative to multi-target therapies”, the startup added, noting that it was initially targeting severe lung diseases like idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

    “We wanted to find the best home for our technology and it’s exciting to see Meatable carry our work forward and apply it at scale,” said Uncommon Bio CEO Benjamina Bollag. “I look forward to continuing our collaboration and watching their continued success and global impact in the years ahead.”

    uncommon bio
    Uncommon Bio founders Ruth Faram and Benjamina Bollag | Courtesy: Uncommon Bio

    Meatable eyes new products like cultivated chicken and lamb

    Meatable operates one of the fastest cell differentiation processes in the cultivated meat industry. Its Opti-ox technology uses pluripotent stem cells (PSCs), which – unlike immortalised cell lines that need to be altered to multiply indefinitely – have the natural ability to continue multiplying, and do so rapidly.

    This is coupled with a perfusion process that enables a continuous cycle to generate very high cell densities and produce fully differentiated muscle and fat cells in just four days.

    The acquisition of Uncommon Bio’s platform will allow Meatable to rapidly expand across species, markets, and consumer segments. “The main advantage of acquiring an additional technique lies in the added versatility it brings, enabling us to broaden product lines and work with more breeds,” said de Rijke.

    He added that the major attraction was a diversification across possible GMO and non-GMO product lines – until now, Meatable only had the GMO option. “From our conversations with meat companies, it’s clear that speed to market is critical, and achieving this is often easier with a non-GMO product since it typically involves fewer regulatory hurdles,” he explained.

    “While our core focus will remain on pork and beef, we are seeing growing demand for other species such as chicken and lamb, areas where Uncommon’s technology will be especially valuable.”

    meatable opti ox
    Courtesy: Meatable

    The acquisition further boosts Meatable’s IP portfolio with additional patents and proprietary assets. “The value of the IP is strengthened by the calibre of investors who have supported Uncommon’s mission from the start,” said de Rijke.

    Uncommon Bio, formerly called Higher Steaks, raised $30M in Series A funding in 2023, bringing in investors like OpenAI founder Sam Altman, his brother Max, and film producer Sebastiano Castiglioni. “We’re proud to carry forward technology that has earned the trust of such respected backers… further fueling our path toward success at scale,” de Rijke noted.

    Meatable CEO Jeff Tripician added: “By combining two highly complementary platforms, Meatable is now equipped to reliably deliver high-quality cultivated meat at a global scale. This enables us to support the meat industry with a stable, secure, and future-proof supply of species like pork, beef, lamb, and poultry, ensuring business continuity and resilience in the face of increasingly uncertain times.”

    Uncommon Bio acquisition will fast-track regulatory approval for Meatable

    In addition to the non-GMO status, Uncommon Bio’s “regulatory-ready dossier” was a big attraction for Meatable, paving the way for faster regulatory approval in multiple regions.

    “We have ongoing, constructive conversations with regulators worldwide for our current process, but we recognise that approvals are often faster for non-GMO products,” said de Rijke. “Uncommon has already done impressive work compiling the necessary data for a regulatory dossier, and we look forward to finalising and submitting this in the coming months to accelerate our commercial rollout.”

    In a wide-ranging interview with Green Queen last year, Tripician indicated the company planned to file dossiers in the six geographies, with Singapore its first market. The firm, which is building a large-scale facility in the city-state, was expecting approval here by Q1 2025. Though this has been delayed, its strategy is to use the approval as a proxy to get clearance in other countries, as a form of international cooperation for novel food authorisation.

    “I see us moving with pretty good speed through 2025,” Tripician said in October. “At the end, I would be very disappointed in our team if we don’t have approval in five, six countries by this time or the end of next year.”

    meatable lab grown meat
    Courtesy: Meatable

    The company did not elaborate on its regulatory progress when asked by Green Queen; however, it acknowledged that it was essential before moving forward on its commercial plans. Tripician had noted how Meatable’s approach had shifted to becoming a supplier to the meat industry, which would use its cultivated ingredients in blended protein products: “They take raw material – meat – they turn it into food, and they sell it. We now provide them with some of the meat. Very simple.”

    Expanding on this, de Rijke added: “We’ve been in discussions with forward-looking meat companies globally, including in Southeast Asia, the UK, and the Middle East. These partners are eager to establish reliable product lines in today’s volatile market while also making a positive impact on the planet.”

    Having raised $95M to date, Meatable is looking to secure around $35M in a Series C raise. In February, it diversified beyond food through a partnership with fellow Dutch firm Pelagen, which specialises in cell-based leather. The two will work to enhance the production, efficiency and scalability of the material for use in a variety of industries, including fashion, automotive, and interiors.

    The post Meatable Acquires Cultivated Meat Platform from Uncommon Bio, Which Turns to Therapeutics appeared first on Green Queen.

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  • Asian Startups Team Up to Create Cosmetics from Cultivated Fish Cells

    4 Mins Read

    Japan’s IntegriCulture and Singapore’s Umami Bioworks have joined forces to leverage their cellular agriculture expertise and develop novel cosmetics from cultured fish cells.

    Ahead of Japan’s inaugural Cellular Agriculture Week, one of its industry pioneers has notched a key partnership to innovate in the future-friendly cosmetics space.

    Tokyo-based IntegriCulture, Japan’s first cultivated meat firm, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Singaporean cultured seafood pioneer Umami Bioworks. Together, the two Asian biotech startups will develop beauty and skincare products using cultured fish cells, as part of Umami Bioworks’s newly unveiled Marine Radiance line of cell-cultured bioactives.

    “Umami has partnered with Integriculture as our first launch partner in Japan for our Marine Radiance portfolio of cosmetics ingredients,” Umami Bioworks founder and CEO Mihir Pershad told Green Queen.

    “Integriculture has already established relationships with many cosmetics brands within Japan through sales of its own ingredients, and we believe they can help us to more quickly find the best paths to commercialising our ingredients,” he added.

    “Further, together we can collectively build the market understanding of cultivated cosmetics ingredients, creating greater opportunity for both companies going forward.”

    Future-facing skincare with egg and fish cells

    integriculture
    Courtesy: IntegriCulture

    The strategic collaboration combines IntegriCulture’s Cellament ingredient (derived from egg cells) with Umami Bioworks’s core AI platform, Alkemyst.

    Launched in 2021, Cellament is a cell-cultured serum said to be “rich in nourishing proteins and rejuvenating growth factors” to revitalise the skin at the cellular level. It’s made by the selective cultivation of egg cells, such as the amnion, yolk sac, and plasma membrane, which amplify the potency of the nutritional elements in chicken eggs.

    IntegriCulture’s skincare ingredient can reduce the enzymatic activity that degrades skin elasticity by 10-70%, as well as accelerate skin cell turnover, which increases smoothness and helps prevent wrinkling. The ingredient is also linked to an increase in moisture retention of keratinocytes, cells that make up 90% of the skin’s outermost layer.

    Moreover, Cellament targets free radicals, which can speed up signs of ageing, while the egg proteins reduce the presence of inflammatory cytokines, which cause redness.

    Umami Bioworks’s Alkemyst toolkit uses machine learning, computational biology, and digital twin technology to deliver a faster, more precise R&D approach to growing and optimising the production of any marine species via cellular agriculture.

    The platform analyses data, identifies patterns and optimises R&D and scale-up parameters across areas like cell line selection, media development, and process controls. The digital twin tech allows it to simulate and predict outcomes, reducing the amount of screening and scale-up experiments needed and thus saving both time and resources.

    According to Umami Bioworks, Alkemyst also enables it to transfer learnings from one species to another, improving the efficiency with which it can develop new products.

    The two companies are now combining their core competencies to co-develop novel cosmetics that are “fundamentally different” from conventional products, with plans to launch a line of fish-cell-derived innovations in the future.

    Responding to consumer beauty trends

    pdrn skincare
    Courtesy: Youngoldman/Getty Images

    The Marine Radiance range is designed for personal care and nutraceutical products and seeks to address the supply chain instability, ethical concerns, and quality variability that limit access to high-efficacy marine ingredients by offering market-ready solutions that offer consistent, scalable, and traceable supply.

    Its first offering under the range is animal-free polydeoxyribonucleotide (PDRN), a compound traditionally extracted from salmon sperm and known for its anti-inflammatory and wound-healing properties. It can synthesise collagen and reduce hyperpigmentation, and is becoming increasingly popular in skincare, wound healing, and regenerative medicine.

    “Umami decided to enter the cosmetics sector after discovering that our cells generated co-products that had strong cosmetics activity (anti-ageing, antioxidant, etc),” explained Pershad. “We conducted intensive discovery conversations with a range of cosmetics brands and ingredients companies, and were surprised by how many immediately asked when they could get samples and how much volume we could produce.

    “This strong market pull convinced us that cultivated cosmetics ingredients could serve a real market need, which we could supply from co-products of our cultivation process.”

    These launches come amid heightened consumer demand for eco-friendly and ethical beauty. Last year, searches for ‘sustainable beauty’ were up by 200% since 2019, and 80% of global consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable goods.

    Meanwhile, clean beauty is important to 93% of people. In Asia-Pacific, half of consumers say their purchasing decisions for cosmetics are influenced by their sustainability and social responsibility impact. The region is also the fastest-growing cruelty-free beauty market.

    It’s why another Asian cell ag firm, Avant, has developed a cell-cultured peptide complex, ZelluGen, using its Zellulin BioPlatform.

    Both IntegriCulture and Umami Bioworks are simultaneously working to advance their food applications too. The former unveiled several prototype cultivated duck dishes and products this spring (including foie gras). The latter, meanwhile, is working with global seafood and food CPG companies to commercialise cultured Japanese eel and bluefin tuna, and is also in the early stages of developing a white fish.

    “Our eel programme is the most advanced, with regulatory filings made in several key markets and production running at pilot scale. We are planning multiple product launch campaigns with our partners and will share more on those campaigns in the near future,” product manager Gayathri Mani told Green Queen last week.

    The post Asian Startups Team Up to Create Cosmetics from Cultivated Fish Cells appeared first on Green Queen.

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  • Exclusive: Merck Spinout Banks on Edible Membrane Tech to Produce Whole-Cut Cultivated Meat

    edimembre
    7 Mins Read

    EdiMembre has spun off from Merck’s MilliporeSigma to commercialise an edible membrane technology for sustainable foods, starting with whole-cut cultivated meat and high-protein pasta.

    In Massachusetts, EdiMembre is a new startup hoping to enable scalable manufacturing for future food companies with hollow fibre membrane technology.

    The food tech firm has spun out from MilliporeSigma, the US life sciences arm of Germany’s Merck Group, with an exclusive licence to commercialise its edible membrane platform.

    “Inspired by traditional membrane formation techniques, EdiMembre uses a patented phase-inversion approach to form micro- and nanoporous membranes from legume protein isolates. These membranes have the ability to pass large molecules through them, while promoting cell attachment,” co-founder and CSO Ryan Sylvia tells Green Queen.

    EdiMembre has already developed countertop bioreactors to create whole-cut pieces of cultivated meat and high-protein pasta made with legume protein isolate. “Beyond this, we can tune the physical properties of the membrane, opening up a range of culinary experiences and applications,” adds Sylvia.

    As it transfers the tech from MilliporeSigma, the startup has raised $500,000 in pre-seed investment from Siddhi Capital, Replicator VC, Meach Cove Capital, Alwyn Capital, and Cellular Agriculture Ltd, among others.

    “Over the next few weeks, we will be unpacking and building our beta pilot machine to start manufacturing edible fibres in our new headquarters at the Atlas Commercial Kitchen in Woburn, Massachusetts,” notes co-founder and CEO Timothy Ryan Olsen. “Two key members from the technical project team at MilliporeSigma have been hired and are onboarded.”

    How edible membrane tech can transform future food manufacturing

    edimembre cultivated meat
    Courtesy: EdiMembre

    MilliporeSigma’s cultivated meat programme led to the development of a strong IP portfolio and alternative protein partnerships, which presented an externalisation opportunity to fine-tune the tech further with AI-led company builder Mantro.

    The latter is managing MilliporeSigma’s stake in EdiMembre, which will develop and commercialise the patent-protected edible membrane tech to deliver efficient solutions for future food manufacturing.

    “EdiMembre’s flagship technology is CraftRidge, which is the patent-protected edible hollow fibre bioreactor for growing structured whole-cut cultivated meat at scale,” explains Sylvia. “Thus far, we have worked with partners to demonstrate application for multiple cell types and species, while using single-cell, aggregate, and adherent cell bioprocess modalities. Today, we can offer bench-top devices for growing a few grams, but are actively working towards kilogram scales.”

    The startup has demonstrated membranes with several off-the-shelf legume protein isolates, with soy, mung or lentil-derived options preferred most. “From a labelling standpoint, this becomes very attractive, since the membrane is composed of a single material: legume protein isolate,” he says.

    The isolates can result in pasta with plant protein content higher than 80%, well above the market standard of 15-40%. They can also help make whole cuts of cultivated meat. Scaling up these novel proteins is a major challenge that requires large amounts of capital expenditure.

    “Our scaled-out edible hollow fibre bioprocess approach alleviates this capex burden for the industry while solving the harvest and whole-cut formation challenges,” Sylvia outlines. “The technology platform has been shown to accommodate multiple cell types, species and bioprocess modalities. To use our device is straightforward – you put your cells in, use your bioprocess, harvest, cook, then eat.”

    He adds: “Depending on the end user’s preference, we can easily control the amount of hollow fibre membrane that goes into the bioreactor. For most users, our protein hollow fibres are expected to be in the bulk range of 30-50% of the final product, which is great as it will contribute to the final protein content of the cultivated meat.

    “The cultivated meat companies can fill the lumen of the fibres with fat content as a post-processing step, allowing for homogenous distribution of fat content throughout the whole-cut meat.”

    EdiMembre targets cultivated protein startups and Big Meat

    hollow fiber bioreactor cultured meat
    Courtesy: EdiMembre

    EdiMembre plans to leverage a B2B consumables model. “CraftRidge is a single-use edible hollow fibre bioreactor consumable part that will be manufactured and available off the shelf, or made to order for custom cultivated meat products,” explains Olsen.

    He expects cultivated meat and seafood startups that are bringing products to market today as its initial customers, with future clients including large meat producers that have integrated cell-cultured protein into their supply chain.

    “Over the last few years, we have already built partnerships with the leading cultivated meat startups to kickstart industry-relevant testing of our prototypes. They are the true experts with their cells and bioprocess, while also having the vision for the product concept they are bringing to market,” he says.

    “As cultivated meat companies are successful in creating products 2.0 and 3.0 with CraftRidge over the next few years, licensing opportunities will naturally present themselves both for access to the consumable for production of cultivated meat and also the equipment used for manufacturing the edible hollow fibres and single-use devices.”

    Olsen acknowledges that to enter the market, CraftRidge would need to show strong bioprocess performance, regulatory alignment and seamless integration into existing cultured protein workflows. So it’s critical to work closely with its partners to secure feedback and technical insights at each development stage.

    “The go-to-market strategy began with industry testing of our prototypes over the last year. EdiMembre provided the device with a basic protocol, and the cultivated meat startups shared data and bioprocess feedback. We use feedback to set our product specifications with the vision of allowing the launch of a product that can be used by as many customers as possible,” the CEO says.

    “As with all biotechnology, scaling sizes are required for the manufacturers to build their bioprocess. After the prototype stage, EdiMembre is targeting a 1kg device as the first ‘usable’ device for making significant quantities of structured cultured meat,” he adds.

    “We are planning to have the first version of the 1kg device in our hands by the end of 2025. In the future, we envision a 30kg device being the industrial workhorse for large meat producers.”

    Gearing up for $5M seed round

    edible membrane technology
    Courtesy: EdiMembre

    The edible membrane technology enables a broad range of applications, including substrates for cell-based leather and encapsulation of biologics. Right now, though, EdiMembre is “laser-focused” on cultivated meat, with some of its priorities including the optimisation of protein solutions, formation of bath chemistries, increase of fibre-spinning speeds, and the design of scaled versions of its spinning machines.

    “As we build for the cultivated meat industry, we are anticipating opportunistic commercial opportunities for protein pasta via licensing of our manufacturing capabilities. Early wins here would help to advance our technology readiness level across the platform, validate our capabilities, and provide early revenues for our company,” says Olsen.

    With the new funds, EdiMembre is working to improve its edible hollow fibre spinning process at the benchtop scale and developing plans to make its manufacturing commercially relevant. It’s not stopping at the pre-seed round, though.

    “We have already started our seed round fundraising, and are targeting $5M. These funds will be directed at building out the full pilot machine to enable production of the 1kg CraftRidge devices for delivery to customers, partnering to demonstrate a bioprocess run at the 1kg scale to produce structured whole-cut meat, advancing patent applications on scalable production processes and equipment, and continuing to build out a world-class team,” Olsen says.

    The startup will now get its lab up and running and ready its platform, while forging new partnerships that multiply its existing capabilities and create early revenue opportunities. Success in the first six months would allow it to showcase both the tech and its ability to move quickly with a strong yet lean team. “This was key for securing EdiMembre’s first investors, and we know it will be absolutely paramount for our seed fundraising success, especially given the current environment.”

    Funding for alternative proteins has dipped dramatically. Cultivated meat companies raised more in 2021 than in the following three years combined. And this year, the sector had only secured $35M by the first half. In the US, where EdiMembre operates, seven states have banned these proteins, and plenty of others are hoping to do the same.

    Olsen, however, remains optimistic about the industry’s future, pointing to the host of regulatory wins this year. Three companies received some form of regulatory clearance in the US (one’s products are already on sale), while one startup went on sale in Australia, and another was approved to sell cultivated meat for pets in Singapore.

    “The cultured meat market has seemed to ‘correct’ itself in terms of valuations and expectations from a few years ago, which has led to the current funding environment. EdiMembre’s first investors and our team are aligned in that cultivated meat is still a huge opportunity, but will just take time and hard work,” Olsen contends.

    “As cultured meat companies continue to make progress with cost, scale, product development, infrastructure, regulatory, and beyond, we will do our part to be a key enabling technology partner to accelerate their efforts in bringing delicious cultured products to the global market.”

    The post Exclusive: Merck Spinout Banks on Edible Membrane Tech to Produce Whole-Cut Cultivated Meat appeared first on Green Queen.

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  • India Opens First Animal Stem Cell Biobank, With Cultivated Meat A Key Focus

    cultured meat in india
    4 Mins Read

    India’s cultivated meat industry just got a big boost, with a first-of-a-kind animal stem cell biobank listing proteins as a key priority.

    India has opened its first animal stem cell biobank at the National Institute of Animal Biotechnology (NIAB) in Hyderabad, earmarking cultivated protein production as a major focus.

    The centre was inaugurated by science and technology minister Jitendra Singh last weekend, and is aimed at revolutionising animal health, regenerative medicine, and agricultural productivity, in line with the country’s growing emphasis on biotech.

    The 9,300 sq ft biobank was built with a ₹1.85 crore ($210,000) investment from the government. The NIAB is an autonomous institute of the Department of Biotechnology’s Biotechnology Research Innovation Council.

    Biobank will supply stem cells and culture media

    animal stem cell biobank india
    Courtesy: National Institute of Animal Biotechnology

    The laboratory will provide high-quality stem cells of various animal origins, as well as indigenous, cost-effective culture media, to research institutions, veterinary clinics, hospitals, and industry. It will support disease modelling, reproductive biotechnology, and tissue regeneration, with plans to expand under the National Biopharma Mission for biobanking animal stem cells and their derivatives.

    Some of its priorities include accelerating advances in veterinary medicine, regenerative therapies, and cultivated protein production, in a bid to reduce the dependence on imports and foster the country’s biomanufacturing capacity.

    The biobank is equipped with a stem cell culture unit, a 3D bioprinter for tissue engineering, a bacterial culture lab, cryostorage facilities, autoclave rooms, advanced air handling systems, and uninterrupted power backup.

    Singh suggested that these innovations will boost the country’s agriculture-linked GDP, labelling the opening as an “evergreen revolution”.

    “With 18% of GDP from agriculture and 60% of our workforce depending on it, innovations in veterinary health will have a transformative impact. ₹1 spent on agricultural research yields a return of ₹13, and linking industry partners from day one ensures these technologies reach the ground,” he said.

    “The economy will shift from manufacturing to regenerative and genetic processes, and India has already initiated this transition,” he added. “We will not lag behind when the next industrial revolution – driven by biotechnology – takes over.”

    Building on India’s BioE3 strategy and cultivated meat developments

    lab grown meat india
    Courtesy: Biokraft Foods

    Alongside the biobank, Singh also launched five diagnostic tools to enhance animal health “The innovations align with the government’s BioE3 policy, focusing on economy, employment, and environment, to create sustainable, knowledge-based livestock health solutions, from disease control to smart protein production,” said NIAB director G Taru Sharma.

    Short for Biotechnology for Economy, Employment, and Environment, the BioE3 strategy was announced 12 months ago to foster high-performance biomanufacturing, with a focus on accelerating tech development and commercialisation by setting up biomanufacturing hubs and biofoundries.

    Among the policy’s six pillars are smart proteins and functional foods. “By providing dedicated R&D and innovation support, the policy will accelerate the development of new technologies and processes that can pave the way towards the nutrition, price, and taste parity of smart protein products, making them a truly competitive alternative to their animal-derived counterparts,” Sneha Singh, managing director of the Good Food Institute India, told Green Queen last year.

    “Smart protein startups will gain significant momentum through dedicated R&D and innovation support, greater investments, and a nurturing ecosystem. The policy will foster a collaborative environment, facilitating the exchange of knowledge and resources between industry and academia, and encouraging public and private partnerships, leading to faster development and commercialisation of smart protein technologies with biohubs and biofoundries.”

    The new biobank is the latest in a list of developments signalling the advancement of India’s future food economy. Two alternative protein centres opened in Bengaluru in 2024, just as the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) worked on establishing a regulatory framework for novel foods.

    In December, Biokraft Foods held the country’s first public tasting of cultivated meat, presenting hybrid chicken to over 30 attendees in Mumbai. And this year, it unveiled cultivated fish products as part of a project with a government-backed research institute, while announcing its intention to file for regulatory approval with the FSSAI.

    Biokraft Foods aims to achieve a commercial rollout of both its meat and seafood products by 2026. The market seems ready. A 2024 survey found that over 60% of Indians are willing to buy cultivated meat, with 59% identifying it as an alternative to conventional meat that promotes nutritional security.

    The post India Opens First Animal Stem Cell Biobank, With Cultivated Meat A Key Focus appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • This Startup Has Created the World’s First Lab-Grown Leather Jewellery

    lab grown leather
    7 Mins Read

    US biotech startup Cultivated Biomaterials has created Angelry, a line of jewellery made with the cultivated leather from the cells of a sanctuary-grazing cow.

    Beef may be the cattle industry’s climate Achilles’ heel, but its environmental impact extends beyond food. Cows are the source of leather, one of fashion’s most revered – and most problematic – materials.

    Advocates of leather have long argued that it is a byproduct of meat and dairy production, but critics counter that the material should more accurately be viewed as a co-product. In many cases, it is the primary product, and manufacturing it is an energy– and water-intensive process linked to deforestation and biodiversity loss.

    Producing a square metre of leather generates 110kg of CO2e, much higher than synthetic and plant-based alternatives. Moreover, animal-derived leather releases lots of health-harming chemicals during tanning.

    However, most first-generation vegan leather products use petroleum-derived plastic, which can take up to 500 years to break down and shed microplastics that harm marine life, the waterways, and our health.

    For a new crop of companies, the optimal solution lies with cellular agriculture. By using cells from living cows and cultivating them in fermentation tanks, they can produce truly sustainable leather without all the climate and animal welfare questions hanging over it. Some firms have claimed that cell-based leather generates 90% fewer CO2 emissions and 95% less waste, and needs 80% less water to produce.

    Joining that crop of innovators is Cultivated Biomaterials, a startup based in Raleigh, North Carolina. It has created the world’s first line of lab-grown leather jewellery, called Angelry, and will next month begin a crowdfunding drive on Kickstarter to bring its products to the market.

    “The goal of our upcoming Kickstarter campaign is to raise non-dilutive funds to produce and ship our first cultivated leather jewellery products, while continuing to optimise our processes,” founder and CEO George Engelmayr tells Green Queen.

    How Cultivated Biomaterials makes its lab-grown leather

    lab grown leather jewelry
    Courtesy: Cultivated Biomaterials

    Engelmayr is the former CSO of cultivated pork startup Mission Barns, and has worked at cultivated chicken leader Upside Foods and lab-grown leather firm VitroLabs (which was acquired by competitor Faircraft this year).

    “I’ve been conducting tissue-engineering research directed towards growing strong collagenous tissues for 25 years,” he says. “In particular, I’ve worked on a variety of soft tissue applications, such as heart valves for children with congenital heart lesions, cardiac muscle for myocardial infarction, skeletal muscle for volumetric muscle loss and dystrophies, and blood vessels for dialysis access and trauma.”

    Many of those same composition-structure-function relationships apply to skin, and, therefore, cultivated leather. “For example, bioprosthetic heart valve leaflets are essentially chemically stabilised sheets of collagen, just like leather,” he explains.

    Cultivated Biomaterials’s process is based on the tissue engineering approaches pioneered in the early 1990s by one of Engelmayr’s postdoctoral advisors at MIT, Prof Robert Langer. The ‘top-down’ process involves four principal components: cells, scaffolds, culture media, and bioreactors.

    “Regarding cells, our process has been differentiated from that of others from the very outset. Specifically, we are growing cultivated leather harmlessly from the skin cells of a living, sanctuary-grazing cow named Angel,” he says. The cow lives at Sweet Farm sanctuary in New York.

    “Our novel, patent-pending plant-based scaffolds are unique in that they are sustainably derived from intrinsically hydrophobic, windborne seed hairs. Like the clock of the dandelion plant (which I’ve used to make cultivated bacon), the seed hairs of the kapok tree, milkweed plant and others are notoriously difficult to wet with water,” he outlines.

    “As described in our patent application, we developed a novel, entirely plant-based solution to this challenge. We use amphiphilic sunflower lecithin to render these seed hairs hydrophilic, thereby enabling them to be seeded with cells.”

    Engelmayr described having 100% animal-free culture media (so, minus fetal bovine serum) as “absolutely essential” to the startup. “We are working with UK-based Multus Biotechnology on our fully animal-free culture media components,” he reveals.

    “The development of novel bioreactors leveraging biophysical stimulation to elicit cell proliferation, differentiation, and maturation has been a running theme throughout my career. Our cultivated leather bioreactor designs continue to evolve, always keeping front and centre the goals of minimising capex, maximising scalability, and simplifying process flow,” he adds.

    How is cell-based leather different from cultivated meat?

    cultivated biomaterials
    Courtesy: Cultivated Biomaterials

    Animal-derived leather can release lots of health-harming chemicals during tanning, an issue Cultivated Biomaterials is also addressing. “We tan and finish our cultivated leather using a natural, vegetable-based tanning (veg-tan) process. No animal products are ever used in our tanning, fatliquoring, dying, or finishing our cultivated leather,” says Engelmayr.

    But aside from the tanning, the startup’s tissue engineering approach is entirely compatible with cultivated meat production. “A difference in our implementation for cultivated leather is that instead of muscle cells, we use dermal fibroblasts harmlessly isolated from Angel,” he explains, adding that its novel plant-based scaffolds are compatible with muscle cells.

    “Unlike cultivated meat, bringing cultivated leather to market does not require regulatory approval, nor does it require any shifts in consumer sentiment towards novel foods,” he says. “And cost considerations are not as critical initially for high-end market entry. Cultivated leather simply needs to stand on its own as a beautiful, novel luxury material.”

    Expanding on this, Engelmayr highlights that the startup isn’t aiming to be cost-competitive with conventional leather in the near term, nor does he view price parity as an appropriate target.

    “I feel targeting price parity with conventional leather devalues what we’re creating here. Indeed, I see the extraordinary confluence of advanced tissue-engineering technologies and Angel’s cells as the birth of a truly novel, exotic luxury material,” he explains.

    “As we scale and optimise, costs will naturally come down. But our goal is not to compete head-on with any species of conventional leather, but rather to offer designers and consumers an exciting high-tech option for high-end luxury goods,” he says. “Our cultivated leather… has never existed on Earth before. I feel it should be valued as such.”

    Cultivated Biomaterials is currently producing the leather by hand at bench scale. “Our current scale is adequate for making our cultivated leather jewellery, and it is modular, so it can be scaled as needed for small goods,” its founder says. “We are taking a more organic approach to growth, wherein we are not seeking to raise venture capital.”

    Cultivated Biomaterials bets on crowdfunding and ‘smaller, simpler’ goods

    cell-based leather
    Courtesy: Cultivated Biomaterials

    Speaking of which, Engelmayr believes the VC model demands that lab-grown leather must achieve price parity, and quickly: “As a tissue engineer with 25+ years’ experience, I am not confident that cultivated leather of any sort will reach price parity with the most prevalent conventional leather in the near term.”

    Venture capital for climate tech has diminished over the last couple of years, and cell cultivation companies have felt the squeeze. In the cultivated leather world, Modern Meadow pivoted away from the technology to instead focus on a plant-based version, while VitroLabs ended up being acquired by Faircraft.

    This is why Cultivated Biomaterials is opting to take the crowdfunding route. “With Kickstarter, we don’t need to concern ourselves with valuations, term sheets, or cap tables. The more we raise from generous backers who are excited by our mission and cultivated leather, the faster we can optimise and scale,” says Engelmayr.

    “Our target raise from Kickstarter is as high as possible,” he adds. “To date, the most funding a Kickstarter project has ever raised was over $46M. Our campaign will officially launch on Tuesday, September 9 and will last 60 days.”

    The company’s next steps include fashion partnerships and possibly another Kickstarter for its next line of products. For now, it aims to circumvent the fledgling sector’s challenges by focusing on jewellery, which requires “significantly smaller quantities” of cell-based leather.

    These products allow the startup to showcase the material “beautifully in settings, almost like the biological equivalent of a gemstone”, notes Engelmayr. “Jewellery is also more forgiving than bags when it comes to strength and durability.”

    That doesn’t mean items like bags or shoes are a no-go for the firm. “But we will first optimise the strength and durability of our cultivated leather in the setting of smaller and simpler luxury goods, such as cardholders,” he says.

    “Our novel plant-based scaffolds and veg-tanned cultivated leather do not benefit from the reinforcing effects of synthetic plastics, either internally or in external finishes. Hence, we will focus on optimising tissue composition and structure so that we can ensure strength and durability are achieved while upholding our commitment to a truly sustainable and harmless offering.”

    Aside from Cultivated Biomaterials, startups working with cell-based leather include Faircraft, Lab-Grown Leather, 3D Bio-Tissues, Qorium and Pelagen.

    The post This Startup Has Created the World’s First Lab-Grown Leather Jewellery appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Umami Bioworks Expands AI Platform for Cell-Based Marine Bioactives

    pdrn alternative
    5 Mins Read

    Singaporean cellular agriculture startup Umami Bioworks has launched Marine Radiance, a line of cell-cultured marine bioactives, starting with regenerative compound PDRN.

    Singapore-based Umami Bioworks has expanded its AI-led cell cultivation platform to produce sustainable marine bioactives for use in the personal care and nutraceutical industries.

    They will be sold under a new line called Marine Radiance. “We launched it to address supply chain instability, ethical concerns, and quality variability that have long limited access to high-efficacy marine ingredients,” Gayathri Mani, the firm’s product manager, tells Green Queen.

    Umami Bioworks has unveiled animal-free polydeoxyribonucleotide (PDRN) as the inaugural ingredient of this range. The compound is traditionally extracted from salmon sperm, and is a fast-growing ingredient used in skincare, wound healing, and regenerative medicine.

    “We are rethinking how bioactives like PDRN are made,” says Mani. “Our platform provides a scalable, animal-free source of PDRN with optimised yields and the flexibility to meet growing global demand through localised production.”

    Why Umami Bioworks began bioactive line with PDRN

    pdrn skincare
    Courtesy: Youngoldman/Getty Images

    Known primarily for its cultivated seafood portfolio, Umami Bioworks diversified from its protein portfolio last year, creating a pathogen-detecting tool for the seafood industry.

    The Marine Radiance portfolio is an extension of its core AI platform, Alkemyst, which enables a faster, more precise R&D approach to growing and optimising the production of any marine species.

    “Applying this capability to challenges in marine bioactives allowed us to rapidly move from ingredient discovery to our Marine Radiance portfolio of market-ready solutions that offer consistent, scalable, and traceable supply,” explains Mani.

    PDRN has made a meteoric rise in the active ingredients world, especially for skincare, thanks to its prominence in the K-beauty space. Studies suggest the ingredient has anti-inflammatory and wound-healing properties, with the ability to synthesise collagen and reduce hyperpigmentation.

    However, the regenerative compound faces a host of challenges, from supply consistency and ethical concerns to biosecurity risks. Umami Bioworks’s cell biology platform allows it to produce bioidentical PDRN by cultivating marine cell lines under precisely controlled conditions, eschewing the need to transport salmon testicles globally.

    “Our PDRN is produced through a proprietary cell cultivation and downstream harvesting process powered by our Alkemyst platform, which precisely replicates and optimises the natural conditions needed to produce a bioequivalent, animal-free ingredient, with unmatched consistency and purity, at price parity with current PDRN,” says Mani.

    The global market for PDRN was valued at $72M last year, but analysts predict it to grow rapidly to reach $855M in 2031, thanks to its various skincare and medical applications, as well as rising demand for cruelty-free anti-ageing and regenerative solutions.

    Marine Radiance bioactives face regulatory challenges

    umami bioworks
    Courtesy: Umami Bioworks

    Umami Bioworks is already in early talks with personal care and regenerative medicine customers to co-create PDRN-based products, including anti-ageing and skin repair products.

    “Marine Radiance bioactives can be applied across high-performance skincare, ingestible beauty, regenerative medicine, and advanced nutritional supplements,” notes Mani, adding that it’s working with partners to develop products with other marine actives that support collagen production, wound healing, and cellular regeneration.

    “These collaborations are focused on delivering premium, sustainable products that match or exceed the efficacy of their animal-derived counterparts while offering unmatched consistency and traceability,” she says.

    For cosmetics, the use of bioactives is regulated differently across markets. “In South Korea, pre-market notification is required, with a more rigorous approval process required for ‘functional’ cosmetics Similarly, Japan distinguishes cosmetics, which require streamlined notification, from ‘quasi-drugs’, which require approvals,” Mani explains.

    “Umami works closely with partners to understand their desired product strategy and to align our regulatory approach with the product positioning and intended claims.”

    With cell-based ingredients, price is always front of mind. Umami Bioworks has aligned its costs with premium marine bioactives, making the Marine Radiance range accessible for brands “looking to differentiate with high-efficacy, sustainable ingredients”.

    “Our initial launch will be through select B2B partnerships in skincare and ingestible beauty, with several leading brands already in advanced discussions,” says Mani. “We are targeting scaled production by Q4 to enable these partners to bring new formulations to market quickly, and with reliable supply.”

    Umami Bioworks plans fundraise as cultivated seafood progresses

    lab grown seafood
    Courtesy: Shlomi Arbiv

    The diversification of its portfolio doesn’t mean Umami Bioworks is abandoning its cultivated seafood dream. The company has quietly been making moves on this front, having submitted regulatory dossiers in major markets across North America, Europe, and Asia.

    The firm has secured partnerships in India and South Korea to scale up and launch into market, and is also in active discussions with the UK’s Food Standards Agency.

    “We have active development programmes for Japanese eel and bluefin tuna with global seafood and food CPG companies as commercialisation partners, and a white fish development programme in the early stages,” says Mani.

    “Our eel programme is the most advanced, with regulatory filings made in several key markets and production running at pilot scale. We are planning multiple product launch campaigns with our partners and will share more on those campaigns in the near future,” she adds.

    This year has marked the arrival of the first cultivated seafood product on the market, with Wildtype securing approval for its cell-cultured salmon from the US Food and Drug Administration and now selling it in several restaurants.

    Umami Bioworks isn’t the only cultivated seafood startup to expand its portfolio past the food industry. Fellow Asian firm Avant has developed ZelluGen, a cell-cultured peptide complex, using its Zellulin BioPlatform.

    Now, Umami Bioworks is looking to open up a new investment round to speed up its path to market. “We do have plans to fundraise in the coming months to support market launches of first products in collaboration with our customers and to enable us to deliver a first full-scale production facility for a major customer,” says Mani.

    The post Umami Bioworks Expands AI Platform for Cell-Based Marine Bioactives appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Clever Carnivore Gives California A Taste of Its Cultivated Pork

    lab grown meat taste test
    4 Mins Read

    US cultivated pork startup Clever Carnivore has hosted its first tasting events on the West Coast, ahead of a planned launch in 2026.

    Chicago-based Clever Carnivore is continuing to gear up for the launch of its cultivated pork products in the US.

    The company hosted private tastings in Palo Alto and San Francisco on July 29, its first such events on the West Coast, convening investors, chefs, and food industry operators.

    “Everyone was impressed by the delicious product, but even more so by our low production costs and scalable, modular process,” Clever Carnivore claimed in a LinkedIn post.

    Clever Carnivore’s prototype bratwurst contains 10% pork cells

    lab grown pork
    Courtesy: Clever Carnivore

    At the events, attendees got a taste of the startup’s cultivated bratwursts, which contained 10% pork cells. This form of hybrid meat, which combines cultured and plant-based ingredients, is a common fixture in the industry, as it allows companies to keep costs low and supplies stable at current scales.

    “Our prototype products incorporate a plant-based fat,” co-founder and CEO Virginia Rangos told Green Queen in June. “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.”

    Despite the low inclusion rate, the sausages seemed to prove a hit with taste-testers. “As someone from Germany who hasn’t eaten a traditional [bratwurst] in years, I was shocked,” said Anita Broellochs, founder of fermented plant protein powder maker Balletic Foods. “It honestly was one of the best bratwursts I’ve ever had.”

    The cultivated pork product also left Irfan Tahir, a scientist at light-derived novel protein maker Prolific Machines, impressed. “I may have gone back for seconds (okay, I definitely did),” he remarked.

    Tasting events are crucial for cultivated meat startups, allowing them to gain first-hand consumer insights about their products and finetune them before market launch. Clever Carnivore’s West Coast events follow two tastings in June (including one in Chicago), where it served over 50 bratwursts.

    “We’ve spoken to conventional meat advocates who candidly told us they ‘wanted to hate’ our product,” Ramos said. “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, she noted that people have appreciated its value proposition: the cultivated pork is free from steroids, antibiotics or GMOs; has a secure food supply chain with domestic production; and offers expanded options that will keep products on shelves amid shortages and price inflation for conventional meat.

    Clever Carnivore targets 2026 launch with industry-leading media costs

    clever carnivore
    Courtesy: Clever Carnivore

    Rangos was speaking to Green Queen to discuss Clever Carnivore’s latest cost breakthroughs, in its effort to match the price of conventional pork.

    The company has brought the cost of its culture media down to an industry-leading $0.07 per litre at pilot scale, sped up the doubling times of its porcine cells to 14 hours, and designed inexpensive bioreactors that could enable its demo facility to reach profitability in its first full year of production.

    “Our expertise in media optimisation allows us to replace expensive components like bovine serum albumin and fetal bovine serum with carefully chosen alternatives, [and] ensure that we’re using only the absolutely essential components, maximising growth and minimising cost and waste,” Rangos explained.

    Clever Carnivore is now raising a $7M extension to its seed round from 2023 (which also closed at $7M) to develop new products and secure regulatory approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). So far, Upside Foods, Good Meat, Mission Barns, Wildtype, and Believer Meats have received a ‘no questions’ letter from the agency.

    “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.”

    Asked how the company plans to launch its innovations, she added: “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 company’s tastings come at an exciting time for cultivated meat in the US. Wildtype’s cultured salmon is rolling out at restaurants across the US, including in Oregon, California and Washington state. Mission Barns, meanwhile, has earned its USDA approval and will debut its cultivated pork products at Fiorella Sunset in San Francisco, alongside a retail launch at Sprouts Farmers Market.

    The post Clever Carnivore Gives California A Taste of Its Cultivated Pork appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Exclusive: Opalia Lands First Sale of Cell-Based Milk Ahead of $4M Fundraise

    lab grown milk
    5 Mins Read

    Canadian food tech startup Opalia has secured what it claims is the world’s first commercial supply agreement for cell-based dairy, weeks ahead of an expected $4M fundraise.

    Taking a big step forward for the nascent cell-based milk category, Opalia has secured the first sale of its ingredients from Dutch dairy giant Hoogwegt.

    The two-year agreement (starting in 2026) will see the firms create a range of cell-cultured dairy products and showcase the viability of Opalia’s tech. The startup called it a major milestone for its scale-up and commercialisation plans.

    Opalia co-founder and CEO Jennifer Côté tells Green Queen that the deal originated from Hoogwegt’s initial investment in the food tech startup in 2023. “Over the past two years, we have worked closely together,” she says.

    “We determined that to support our next phase of development, we needed to establish a commercial partnership to showcase the world’s first cell-based milk dairy products. We want to show the world that it is possible to produce milk from cow mammary cells at scale.”

    While Côté isn’t drawn on the quantity of milk it will supply as part of the agreement, she confirms the “raw product will be used for product development across a wide range of dairy applications to showcase our milk’s versatility”.

    Cell culture tech allows Opalia to make whole milk

    opalia
    Courtesy: Opalia

    Founded in 2020 by Côté and CTO Lucas House, Opalia is one of very few companies globally working on cell-based milk. It emerged as an early leader of the category with a patent-pending technology that can produce products like butter, cream, cheese, yoghurts, and other dairy products without the cow.

    “The first step was establishing our proprietary bovine mammary cell line from tissue. Because we have an immortal cell line, we don’t have to harvest more tissue from the cow. Simply put, we grow our cells and then induce lactation,” explains Côté.

    “We have a fully continuous process. The same cells can make milk for extended periods of time. We don’t have to regrow our cells every time we harvest the milk produced by them. This makes our process very cost-efficient,” she adds. “The harvested milk follows a similar downstream process to that of milk produced by cows on dairy farms. However, we don’t pasteurise our milk because it does not contain bacteria.”

    In 2023, Opalia successfully removed fetal bovine serum from its process, a major milestone for its scalability and costs, as well as consumer acceptance.

    Côté describes cell-based milk production as a hybrid process between precision fermentation and cultivated meat. “Mammary cells are not the final product, unlike fat or muscle cells in cultivated meat products. The milk produced by our mammary cells is harvested as a fluid. After a harvest, the cells remain in culture and continue producing milk,” she explains.

    “Since we manufacture whole milk, we can work with our customers to supply our product in whatever form they want,” she adds. “This milk can be sold as is and/or transformed into a cheese, butter or another dairy product. Since the mammary cells are not consumed as part of the final product, the process is much more cost-efficient and, from discussions with the regulators, easier to regulate.”

    Speaking of which, Opalia says it is actively working with regulatory agencies to showcase its cell-based dairy products at tasting events. “We are focusing on obtaining regulatory approval in North America first. We are also monitoring regulatory guideline developments in other strategic regions,” says Côté.

    The company is currently building its dossiers for submission, with approval needed from both the US Food and Drug Administration and Department of Agriculture. “We are still early in the regulatory process and are actively working with the regulators to distinguish between cell-based meat and milk-specific regulations,” she explains.

    “The main difference in regulatory approval between cell-based milk and meat is the cell characterisation requirements. Because you are not consuming the cell, but simply the byproduct of the cell (milk), the stringency of the testing at the cellular level changes.”

    Opalia targets $4M round for regulatory approval and market entry

    cell based milk
    Courtesy: Opalia

    Hoogwegt is among the world’s largest privately held dairy ingredient suppliers, with operations in 130 countries over six continents. For such an industry behemoth to bet on cell culture technology is a sign of the category’s potential.

    “After already having invested in Opalia, this commercial purchase agreement between Opalia and Hoogwegt is a next major step towards establishing Opalia as a strategic supplier of cell-based milk in Hoogwegt’s future sustainable dairy supply chain,” said the company’s CEO, Sander Hulsebos.

    Ahead of its scale-up efforts, Opalia is currently working on reducing its production costs. “We have plans to scale to pilot production over the next two years,” Côté suggests. “[The] cell culture medium is the main cost driver in our process right now. We are actively working to reduce the price to allow us to be competitive at commercial scale.”

    While most cultivated meat makers are focused on a hybrid model – combining cultured proteins or fats with plant-based ingredients – to manage costs and scale when entering the market, Opalia’s cell-based whole milk can be used in multiple ways.

    “Since we make whole milk, that is milk with all of its major constituents, it can be used as a full replacement,” explains Côté. “Additionally, conventional milk ingredients can be isolated from our milk (fat, casein or whey proteins) and be part of hybrid products to enhance their nutrition, taste, and functionality.”

    The firm has so far secured $3M from investors including Hoogwegt, Big Idea Ventures, Ahimsa Foundation, and the Québec government. “We are actively fundraising, and while we anticipate a close in the next few weeks, we still have space remaining for the right partners,” says the Opalia CEO. “We are raising $4M to scale to pilot production, obtain regulatory approval, and begin commercialisation.”

    Accorsing to the company, its technology can lower emissions by 95%, land use by 90%, and water consumption by 95% compared to conventional dairy, one of the reasons why it has been nominated for the 2025 Earthshot Prize.

    Other startups working in the cell-based dairy category include Wilk (Israel), Senara (Europe), Brown Foods‘s UnReal Milk (US/India). France’s Nūmi and US-based 108Labs, meanwhile, are developing cultivated breast milk.

    The post Exclusive: Opalia Lands First Sale of Cell-Based Milk Ahead of $4M Fundraise appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Weeks After FDA Approval, Wildtype Expands Cultivated Salmon Across US

    wildtype salmon
    5 Mins Read

    Californian food tech startup Wildtype is taking its cultivated salmon to restaurants across the US, showcasing its potential with award-winning chefs.

    More and more Americans can now get their hands on cultivated seafood, thanks to San Francisco firm Wildtype’s expansion drive.

    The company’s cell-cultured coho salmon, which received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in late May, is now available in four restaurants, with another soon to be announced.

    The product is available at eateries in Oregon, California, Washington, and Texas – in the latter, it’s a limited-time offering, given the incoming ban on cultivated proteins next month. With these rollouts, Wildtype is aiming to enhance consumer acceptance by letting award-winning chefs get the best out of its innovation.

    kann wildtype salmon
    Courtesy: Kann

    How America’s chefs are serving Wildtype salmon

    The first restaurant to feature the Wildtype salmon was Kann in Portland, Oregon, where it’s 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 chef-owner Gregory 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.”

    The sushi-grade cultivated salmon then made its debut at Otoko, led by Yoshi Okai. The Austin eatery is known for a multi-course omakase experience that blends Tokyo-style sushi and Kyoto-style kaiseki, with tasting menus costing between $150 and $250.

    “Farm-raised salmon creates so much pollution, so it’s not sustainable. You want to enjoy seafood long-term, so Wildtype’s good because you don’t have to kill the fish anymore,” said Okai. “It’s something new. It’s awesome.”

    wildtype salmon where to buy
    Courtesy: Wildtype

    Now, Wildtype is returning to its home state of California through a partnership with Adam Tortosa’s San Francisco outpost, Robin. Also an omakase restaurant, its tasting menus range from $119 to $219, with Wildtype landing on the menu on August 14.

    “The way I would describe Wildtype’s taste is the same as regular salmon. If it didn’t taste like salmon, we wouldn’t consider it,” Tortosa said. “I’m more excited about what it means for the future of the seafood industry. It means that there is a future.”

    A week after landing at Robin, Wildtype’s salmon will make its way into Seattle, where it will be on the menu of James Beard-nominated oyster bar The Walrus and the Carpenter. Chef Renee Erickson will serve it as part of a tostada, with the salmon tossed with lime juice and paired with cucumber, pickled carrot, olive oil and herbs.

    “The Wildtype salmon saku that we serve raw has pure salmon flavour – it’s amazing. It also has a really dense, nice quality, and I think the fattiness and the deliciousness you’re used to in wild salmon, you get as well in this,” Erickson noted. “It is mind-blowing that it actually is salmon, just not in the sense of what I’ve been used to my entire life.”

    wildtype salmon fda
    Courtesy: Wildtype

    More cultivated meat expected on restaurant menus

    Backed by the likes of Robert Downey Jr, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jeff Bezos, 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.

    The spate of rollouts follows the FDA’s issuance of a ‘no questions’ letter to Wildtype, which confirmed that the cultivated salmon is “as safe as comparable foods produced by other methods”. Founders Aryé Elfenbein and Justin Kolbeck told Green Queen that the startup plans to debut in retail too, following the foodservice launches. It isn’t the only cultivated protein to land restaurant deals in the US this year.

    Mission Barns, which received the FDA green light in March and US Department of Agriculture approval last month (Wildtype’s salmon does not fall under the latter’s oversight), will soon debut its cultivated pork at Fiorella Sunset in San Francisco this quarter. Its meatballs will also be available at Sprouts Farmers Market.

    lab grown meat approved
    Courtesy: Mission Barns

    These developments come in what is turning out to be a milestone year for cultivated meat in the US. In July, Israel’s Believer Meats joined the list of startups with FDA authorisation for its cultivated chicken.

    These three regulatory wins two years after Upside Foods and Good Meat’s cultivated chicken products made their way at restaurants in the US, including at Dominique Crenn’s Michelin-starred Bar Crenn in San Francisco and José Andrés’s China Chilcano in Washington, DC. Upside Foods is now aiming to secure approval for cultivated chicken shreds and bring them to US eateries by the end of the year.

    Meanwhile, last week, Clever Carnivore hosted a public tasting of its cultivated bratwurst in Palo Alto and San Francisco, ahead of a planned launch in 2026.

    And outside the US, Vow’s cultured quail has been available at restaurants in Singapore since April 2024, and in Australia since June.

    The post Weeks After FDA Approval, Wildtype Expands Cultivated Salmon Across US appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • EU Pumps $3.3M in Mewery to Scale Up Cultivated Pork

    mewery
    7 Mins Read

    Czech startup Mewery has secured €2.9M ($3.3M) in grants from the EU to expand the production of its cultivated pork and launch pilot projects with meat producers.

    While private investment in cultivated meat is in freefall, public support for the category remains robust.

    The EU has made its biomanufacturing ambitions clear, with €350M available in biotech funding and a new act aimed at simplifying the novel food regulatory process.

    As part of its goal to establish the region as a future food leader, its key R&D funding programme, Horizon Europe, has invested €2.9M ($3.3M) in Brno-based cultivated pork maker Mewery.

    Most of the funding comes from a €2.5M ($2.86M) grant via Horizon Europe’s EIC Accelerator, backed by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic. The rest comes from its participation in the international research consortium Alliance, a Horizon Europe initiative led by Wageningen University and supported by CzechInvest, which convenes 19 partners to expand the use of microalgae-based ingredients by developing multi-product biorefineries.

    Mewery has already demonstrated its co-cultivation technology (combining pork and microalgae cells) on four prototypes. At the start of the year, it began gradual production in a medium-sized bioreactor with a production capacity in the lower kg range. Now, the firm will use the funds to scale up its tech to higher kg volumes of biomass, which it plans to achieve at the turn of the year.

    “This will be a crucial step that will open the way for us to test our technology with meat producers,” says founder and CEO Roman Lauš. Initial talks are already underway, with pilot projects expected to be launched in the EU in the coming months.

    “We are currently adjusting our bioprocess for the use in our medium-sized bioreactor with a goal to produce enough biomass for pilot testing projects with partners across Europe, i.e., kilos,” Rostislav Brzobohatý, Mewery’s chief commercial officer, told Green Queen.

    “These projects will be in our focus in the coming months. Specific volumes will depend on the needs of individual manufacturing partners that we plan to involve in testing the unit across Europe,” he added.

    mewery czech republic
    Courtesy: Mewery

    How Mewery is reducing the costs of cultivated pork

    Founded in 2020 by Lauš, Mewery’s co-cultivation tech allows it to enhance cell growth efficiency and reduce costs, resulting in a product with “highly valuable composition”. Last year, the company established a stable cell line and expanded its cell bank to include multiple types of non-GMO porcine cells.

    It has since begun operating a pilot plant within its facilities at Brno’s Mendel University, which will help with the testing project. “Right now, we are focusing on internal validation of the bioprocess and its optimisation for the current bioreactor size,” says Brzobohatý.

    “Mewery will produce the agreed volumes of biomass at its own facility and deliver them to manufacturing partners for testing. We expect them to test our biomass as part of their product applications,” he adds.

    “We don’t consider the co-production of our biomass with external manufacturers as we expect to be able to produce required volumes with our current capacities. The co-production is not planned in later stages either, as our long-term business model is built on licensing and our effort will be to enable our manufacturing partners to develop their own production capabilities [by] leveraging our co-cultivation technology.”

    Currently, its cost per kg of meat is in the tens of euros. “We are still in low experimental volumes compared to industrial production, and it is premature to draw conclusions about future prices from these figures,” notes Brzobohatý.

    Its cost pipeline is pointing towards a price below €10 per kg, driven by the continuous optimisation of its inputs. “With up to 10 times higher yield than industry standard, we significantly reduce the amount of growth media required while simultaneously lowering waste management costs,” he says.

    Replacing high-cost components like fetal bovine serum with its proprietary microalgae-based alternative and producing recombinant proteins internally allows it to reduce reliance on expensive external suppliers. “Combined, these factors are steadily narrowing the gap to conventional meat pricing and positioning Mewery not only as a technological pioneer, but as a commercially viable player in the future protein market,” Brzobohatý says.

    “However, right now, we are primarily focusing our efforts on developing the right product together with our partners – a product that will excite consumers and deliver real added value, which is ultimately what will determine the perceived value for money and the whole production and pricing strategy,” he adds.

    mewery funding
    Courtesy: Mewery

    Testing project will inform regulatory filings

    Mewery has previously teased products like meatballs and tenderloin made from 75% porcine cells and 25% microalgae cells. In 2023, it debuted a burger at a small tasting in its home country, where over 90% of attendees indicated their willingness to taste the cultivated product.

    “Mendel University will collaborate on tests related to nutritional composition and safety and will assist in finetuning the joint product,” says Brzobohatý. “In the event of a successful application, we will continue to discuss with our partner regarding a possible joint application to the European Food Safety Authority.”

    Only Gourmey and Mosa Meat have applied to sell cultivated meat in the EU so far, with its rigorous and – in its own words – “lengthy” approval process a major barrier for novel food companies. For Mewery, however, it would “make a lot of sense to start in Europe” with partners with whom it’s ready to move from joint development to commercialisation.

    “However, we are still planning to apply in the US at the same time, despite the current developments in the field of cultivated meat there,” Brzobohatý says, nodding to the spate of state-level cultivated meat bans. “Based on the current schedule, we expect to apply in 2027-28.”

    lab grown pork
    Courtesy: Mewery

    High costs, low scalability and ‘unfulfilled promises’ have led to funding gap

    Mewery has secured €4M from public and private investors since its inception. Moreover, thanks to an EIC grant, it has won a Seal of Excellence, a European quality label awarded to projects that meet the highest standards set by the EU Commission.

    “We see this award and funding from local sources as a strong sign of confidence, not only in our team, but also in the very idea of cultivated meat as a sustainable alternative,” said Lauš. “European validation at this level proves that our project is at the absolute forefront of technology and ready for scaling up to pilot production.”

    Funding for cultivated meat has slowed dramatically since the turn of the decade. The sector saw funding decline by 75% in 2023, and another 40% in 2024. In fact, in the last three years, these companies have cumulatively raised less money than they did in 2021 alone ($1.3B). And this year so far, the category has only attracted $35M.

    cultivated meat investment
    Graphic by Green Queen

    Brzobohatý ascribes the slowdown to high production costs, limited scalability, and unfulfilled promises from earlier market players: “Many companies are struggling to transition from lab-based production to industrial-scale manufacturing or to develop cost-effective processes, leading investors to take a more cautious approach. At the same time, regulatory uncertainty is further dampening investor enthusiasm.”

    What makes Mewery a prospect? Based on feedback from EIC biotech and VC experts, it points to two main factors. “Our proprietary unique co-cultivation method with technological advantages [is] already proven in previous proof-of-concept studies (high yield, lower production costs, longer shelf life, easier scalability, and more). These are arguments that give hope for a potential breakthrough in the industry that investors are waiting for,” he says.

    Then there’s its commercial pipeline, which “takes into account the needs of our future manufacturing partners and involves them in joint development at an early stage”. This has the potential to “accelerate joint market entry after the regulatory phase”.

    He adds: “We believe that there will be several major developments in the meat cultivation industry in the near future, which will attract renewed investor interest and confirm the enormous potential of our industry.

    The post EU Pumps $3.3M in Mewery to Scale Up Cultivated Pork appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Alternative Protein Funding Down by 50% in the First Half of 2025

    beyond meat mycelium steak
    5 Mins Read

    Investment in plant-based, fermentation-derived and cultivated proteins declined by half in the first six months of 2025, outlining continued headwinds for the sector.

    Alternative proteins haven’t had the same pull with investors as they did at the turn of the decade, and the consistent downturn in funding has reached a new low in 2025.

    In the first six months of this year, funding for plant-based, fermentation-derived and cultivated proteins fell by 49% compared to the same period in 2024, according to the Good Food Institute’s (GFI) analysis of data from Net Zero Insights.

    This is after alternative protein companies raised just $129.5M in Q2, a 45% decline from the previous quarter. It took total funding for the first half of 2025 to $364M.

    alternative protein investment
    Courtesy: GFI

    Unlike recent quarters, where fermentation companies have gone the opposite way of the otherwise declining trend, they only raised $2.6M in Q2 (down from $146M in Q1). And while there were three investments announced for cultivated meat, the amount of each deal remained undisclosed.

    Plant-based food companies received $127M in the April to June period. However, a large chunk of that was thanks to Beyond‘s $100M debt financing deal. Without this, the plant-based category would have received just half of its Q1 total in this period.

    AI a threat and an opportunity for alternative protein funding

    alternative protein investment
    Graphic by Green Queen

    For context, investment in the future food sector has been slowing for a few years now. After attracting nearly $7B in 2021, there has been a constant drop, to $3.2B in 2022, $1.5B in 2023, and $1.1B in 2024.

    The trend was already worsening in Q1 2025, when alternative protein investments declined by 28% year-on-year. But the subsequent performance in Q2 has left more questions for the sector for the rest of the year.

    VCs, in general, are a conscious class right now. It’s not just this sector that has seen a downward trend in funding, agrifood tech (a 37% year-on-year decline), biotech (-35%) and climate tech (-19%) have all suffered similarly.

    With alternative proteins, the hesitance in investing stems from a range of factors, including geopolitical uncertainties, President Donald Trump’s tariff war, Robert F Kennedy Jr’s MAHA policies, the constant attacks on ultra-processed food, legislative bans on cultivated meat, and a resurgence of animal proteins amid continued sales declines for plant-based proteins in several markets.

    “Recent investment levels in alternative proteins reflect a market-wide slowdown in food and climate tech funding, driven in part by the reallocation of investor capital toward artificial intelligence,” Daniel Gertner, GFI’s lead economic and industry analyst, told Green Queen.

    ai lab grown meat
    Courtesy: Cyril Marcilhacy

    “These conditions present headwinds for alternative protein startups seeking to raise capital. Topline investment totals fluctuate from quarter to quarter, but the broader trend points to a more cautious capital environment in the near term,” he added.

    Like in 2024, there’s one area that has dominated the share of investment and presented additional headwinds for food tech: artificial intelligence. These companies received 53% of all venture capital flows in the first half of this year.

    That said, the tech is driving innovations within the alternative protein industry. Companies and researchers are using it to discover ingredients, optimise processes and develop better products.

    So for alternative proteins to keep investor interest piqued, a focus on using AI for practical and industrial applications may be the best way forward for now.

    De-risking events could usher in more renewed investor interest

    daily harvest chobani
    Courtesy: Chobani

    Despite the doom and gloom, there were some signs of progress, according to GFI. At least five M&A deals took place in Q2, while partnership activity remained robust. Businesses have been looking to consolidate or collaborate to share costs, strengthen distribution networks, and accelerate regulatory pathways.

    Speaking of which, it has been a milestone year for cultivated meat and seafood regulation. In Q2, US startups Mission Barns and Wildtype received the green light from the FDA, with the latter’s salmon going on sale since it doesn’t require USDA approval. Sydney startup Vow, meanwhile, gained final authorisation in Australia and New Zealand, and began selling its cultured quail in the former’s restaurants.

    This month, Mission Barns obtained USDA approval, clearing the way for market entry, while Israel’s Believer Meats got the FDA nod for its cultivated chicken. And Friends & Family Pet Food Company secured clearance to sell cultivated chicken for cats and dogs in Singapore.

    lab grown meat approved
    Graphic by Green Queen

    Public investment is also on the rise. The EU announced €350M in funding to scale up biomanufacturing, which could advance the fermentation sector and support the development of sustainable food ingredients. That said, a recent report showed that the fermentation industry needs $500B to meet its true potential.

    According to GFI, companies would need to deliver commercialised technologies and successful exits to kickstart a sustained turnaround in funding. But the increase in strategic deals and regulatory wins could be early signs of a resurgence in investment.

    “Several de-risking developments have occurred in recent months, including regulatory approvals for multiple cultivated meat companies and growing momentum in mergers, acquisitions, and strategic partnerships,” Gertner said.

    “While still early, these developments may help lay the groundwork for a more favourable investment climate and renewed investor interest in the months ahead.”

    The post Alternative Protein Funding Down by 50% in the First Half of 2025 appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Future Food Quick Bites: Alpro Kids, 3D-Printed Shawarma & Vegan Meat Labels

    alpro kids milk
    4 Mins Read

    Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Alpro Kids’ video-game-style campaign, Mighty Drinks’ rescue deal, and South Africa’s plant-based meat labelling law.

    New products and launches

    To market its new Alpro Kids range of plant-based dairy products in the UK, Danone has teamed up with Appetite Creative to launch an immersive connected packaging experience. It can be accessed through QR codes and embodies a classic adventure video game style, complete with leaderboards and prize winners.

    alpro kids
    Courtesy: Appetite Creative

    Swedish pea milk producer Sproud has gained a listing at 193 Sainsbury’s stores in the UK. The retailer will stock its barista, barista zero, and unsweetened products from August 10.

    And Israeli 3D-printed meat pioneer Redefine Meat has introduced a new spicy shawarma SKU with 22g of protein and 4g of fibre per serving. It’s available on Ocado in the UK at £4 per 200g pack.

    Company and finance updates

    Fellow Israeli 3D-printed protein maker Steakholder Foods has obtained a positive Written Opinion from the International Searching Authority (ISA) for an international patent application for its vegan fish printer.

    mighty drinks
    Courtesy: Mighty Drinks

    British non-dairy milk firm Mighty Drinks has been rescued from administration by plant protein supplier The Mighty Kitchen, which has bought its IP and some stock.

    Dutch food tech firm Muchgroup has received €375,000 in funding to scale up production of its shiitake-mushroom-based meat alternatives for the foodservice sector.

    muchgroup
    Courtesy: Muchgroup

    Indian precision-fermented protein startup Genexis Biotech has raised ₹40M ($460,000) in seed funding to expand its bioreactor capacity, develop downstream processing infrastructure, and launch a suite of smart proteins and recombinant enzymes.

    Vegan business community Vegpreneur and e-commerce platform Shopline have launched the Vegpreneur DTC Accelerator to help better-for-you plant-based brands scale up faster and more profitably.

    abunda mycoprotein
    Courtesy: Enough

    Scottish-Dutch mycoprotein startup Enough has appointed former Henkel executive Jan Agter as interim CEO. He is taking over from co-founder Jim Laird.

    Finnish vegan company Oddlygood, which owns UK plant-based milk brand Rude Health, has hired Katie Simpson as its head of marketing. She previously held the same position for Innocent Drinks’s UK and Ireland business, and has worked at Diageo, AB InBev and Ferrero.

    rude health oddlygood
    Courtesy: Oddlygood

    Singaporean firm Mottainai Food Tech has opened a pilot facility and R&D lab in Jalan Besut, Jurong to upcycle food waste into fermented plant-based proteins. At full capacity, it will be able to process around 100 tonnes of food industry byproducts annually.

    Policy and awards

    Latin American cruelty-free NGO Te Pretejo has developed a map to showcase a network of laboratories using alternative methods to animal testing.

    UK charity Vegetarian for Life will host its Awards for Excellence in Veg*n Care Catering at the Houses of Parliament in October, recognising individuals and organisations working to enhance plant-based catering standards across care homes, hospitals, and other later-life care settings.

    let's eat balanced
    Courtesy: AHDB | Composite by Green Queen

    In a petition, Ecotricity founder Dale Vince has urged the UK government to end its support for meat and dairy advertising campaigns and promote plant-based foods instead, namechecking the Let’s Eat Balanced drive run by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board. It has garnered nearly 25,000 signatures so far.

    In South Africa, the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development has updated its labelling rules for plant-based meat, allowing terms like ‘burger’ and ‘hot dog’ but not ‘beef’ or ‘pork’. Meat analogues must also have qualifiers like ‘plant-based’, and the move was welcomed by LiveKindly Collective Africa and Fry Family Foods.

    nourish you
    Courtesy: Nourish You

    Finally, Indian vegan startup Nourish You has won the Best Plant-Based Milk Award at the 2025 Vegan India Conference for its Millet Mlk.

    Check out last week’s Future Food Quick Bites.

    The post Future Food Quick Bites: Alpro Kids, 3D-Printed Shawarma & Vegan Meat Labels appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • In Europe’s Meat-Rich Cultures, Cultivated Proteins Need A Rebrand

    lab grown meat europe
    7 Mins Read

    There’s a reason why meat is at the heart of the culture wars – for cultivated proteins to succeed, companies need to tap into consumers’ emotions.

    After four successive years of declining consumption, Europeans began eating more meat in 2024, with average annual intake reaching 66kg per person. That’s over four times more than what’s recommended by Eat-Lancet’s Planetary Health Diet guidelines.

    The reason why meat is so revered in Europe is because it is far more than just food – it’s deeply woven into the region’s cultural fabric, representing tradition, identity and community. As is the agricultural systems that produce it.

    According to a new report by the EU-backed EIT Food Consumer Observatory, Europeans view meat in four overarching ways. Some see it as a resource to be exploited for human benefit, some as part of a harmonious system with nature and society. Others believe eating meat is driven by instinctual and primal tendencies, and yet others think innovation and technology will reshape the way we eat.

    “The cultural meaning of meat is in transition, moving from commoditised to more mindful narratives,” the 17-country More than Meat study states.

    However, meat consumption isn’t sustainable for the planet, our health, and global food security. Existing farming systems are overstressed and incapable of keeping up with rising population numbers, while generating a third of all greenhouse gases. Meat, meanwhile, is being increasingly linked to a number of health detriments, from cardiovascular disease and cancer to type 2 diabetes and obesity.

    It’s why climate-friendly alternatives like plant-based meat exist, and cultivated proteins are popping up. However, after peaking in hype in the late 2010s, the progress made by these innovations has slowed. They’re seen as artificial, overprocessed, and disconnected from traditional farming practices.

    However, these proteins “address environmental, ethical, and health concerns associated with conventional meat production” and mitigate “the need for traditional animal farming”, EIT Food says.

    “If we want sustainable meat alternatives to resonate with diverse European consumers, we must first grasp what meat means to them,” said Klaus Grunert, lead of the Consumer Observatory. Effective positioning and communication around alternatives requires more than environmental arguments. It must speak to values, habits, and emotions tied to food.”

    Three types of consumers when it comes to meat

    upside foods florida
    Courtesy: Upside Foods

    A companion report published by EIT Food, titled Reimagining Protein and also covering 17 nations, assesses how Europeans perceive cultivated meat, and the best strategies to bring it to market. It found that only 29% of consumers are open to trying these proteins.

    EIT Food identified three main segments of consumers with different attitudes and consumption patterns around meat. Majority Meat includes people devoted to conventional meat, eating it several times a week and showing limited interest in reducing intake or trying alternatives. This group doesn’t prioritise environmental concerns, and sees meat as a natural part of their diet.

    The Preference for Plant-Based group, meanwhile, is focused on a plant-forward diet. Even if they enjoy the taste of meat, they’re deterred by its sustainability and animal cruelty impact – that said, health is often the main driver. But these consumers often find it difficult to find tasty options on the go or out of home.

    Finally, EIT Food found a middle ground in the Best of Both category. These are people who maintain a balanced approach to eating both meat and plant-based foods. They don’t believe eliminating it is necessary, but take issue with overconsumption, animal cruelty and factory farming. For this segment, higher prices make “responsible” meat unattainable.

    The study then analysed how these consumer sets perceive cultivated meat. While taste and texture are important, people want to “see it with their own eyes” instead of relying on third-party accounts in the media. The Majority Meat group may be the hardest to crack, as they’re the least likely to believe cultivated meat can successfully replicate the proteins they love.

    Concerningly for the industry, people who want to eat more healthily are less willing to try cultivated meat, primarily because they see the production process as unnatural and beyond simple food processing. People are also concerned about the long-term health effects for what is, by definition, a novel food.

    And while cultivated meat has been proven to be much more environmentally friendly, participants question whether it will truly have a lower climate impact, citing concerns around energy use. Meanwhile, those in the Majority Meat segment aren’t convinced that meat itself is bad for the planet, despite the livestock industry being responsible for up to a fifth of global emissions.

    When it comes to animal welfare, the Preference for Plant-Based group is unsure if the ethical promises can be fully realised since animals are still involved in the process. Even for the Best of Both category, cultivated meat isn’t seen as “the right solution” because they’re more likely to disapprove of the way animals are raised and slaughtered than their use in the food chain.

    Is hybrid meat the right strategy?

    mission barns usda approval
    Courtesy: Mission Barns

    The research highlighted several reasons why consumer confidence is low in cultivated meat. Manufacturers are one of the less trusted food chain actors generally – they’re seen as having more power than scientists, who are among the most trusted. Study participants also cite low levels of trust in authorities, a lack of publicity in the media, and negative coverage, which EIT Food ascribed to lobbying.

    One of the key strategies for bringing cultivated meat to market has been to mix it with plant-based ingredients to develop hybrid products. But while these may appeal to the Best of Both group, they’re currently seen as a compromise between plant-based and cultivated proteins that aren’t entirely appealing on their own, so their benefits need to be better explained.

    “The target audience for this product is unclear, as consumers in the Preference for Plant-Based group may avoid it due to the presence of animal fat, while those in the Majority Meat group might prefer real meat,” the report explains.

    Another strategy is to position cultivated meat as a premium option, which would make its high costs more acceptable in theory. But it’s “currently not associated with scarcity, exclusivity and premium quality, but with laboratories and artificial food”, EIT Food found. Majority Meat consumers are unconvinced by the taste, while the Best of Both group are less interested in premium meat.

    The authors write that the biggest barrier facing the industry is the perception that it is artificial, and that negatively influences both taste and safety. And with consumers having low expectations for the sensory experience and concerns about the long-term health effects, messaging that focuses on taste and nutrition may be hard to cut through.

    The biggest perceived benefit, however, is animal welfare, and companies should lean into that, particularly with the Best of Both and Preference for Plant-Based groups.

    How companies should market cultivated meat

    lab grown meat hong kong
    Courtesy: Vow

    In the companion Meaning of Meat report, EIT Food notes that consumers are “curious yet sceptical” about cultivated meat: “Despite its compelling ethical and environmental claims (which are positively evaluated by consumers), the perceived scientific nature of cultivated meat could push it towards the same territory as commoditised, industrial meat and plant-based meats. That is, a product perceived as artificial and soulless.”

    This is the opposite of the current cultural movement around meat. So companies must find a balance between being informative and approachable. “The health aspect is least addressed in current cultivated meat communication: many consumers see it as ‘double-processed’ (from cell to meat, and from meat to burger), reducing appeal and willingness to consume,” the report says.

    However, it adds: “Despite scepticism, consumers see cultivated meat entering the market sooner than later; in the far future, consumers perceive cultivated meat as a daily protein source alongside plant-based alternatives.”

    So how do companies market cultivated meat? EIT Food recommends ‘mindful science’, which involves humanising the tech-heavy narrative, showing real people behind the scenes, and design elements that blend clean visuals with soft colours and calm typography.

    Brands should also reclaim ‘real meat’ by clearly stating that cultivated meat is real, just made differently, and backing the claim with educational (not overly technical) storytelling. Products should be anchored in taste, health, and feel-good eating, with marketing communicating flavour, satisfaction and nutritional benefits – think images where friends are enjoying dishes with these proteins, instead of lab equipment.

    EIT Food also suggests companies start with ‘soft science’ in the short term to build trust, before pivoting to emotional and ethical narratives without needing to focus on the tech in the longer run. “Phase this messaging over time: now, focus on people, trust, and transparency; later, shift to the broader cultural benefits, positioning cultivated meat as the future of ethical and sustainable protein, and part of everyday life and community,” it states.

    “To successfully introduce cultivated meat into European markets, manufacturers must first understand how consumers perceive it – what excites them, what concerns them, and what values guide their food choices,” said Sofia Kuhn, director of public insights and engagement at EIT Food.

    “Effective positioning must be rooted in empathy and evidence, responding to consumer beliefs, not just scientific facts. By aligning communication and marketing strategies with real consumer perceptions, we can build trust, foster acceptance, and pave the way for a more sustainable food future.”

    The post In Europe’s Meat-Rich Cultures, Cultivated Proteins Need A Rebrand appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Exclusive: Friends & Family Pet Food Company Gets Singapore Approval for Cultivated Meat

    friends and family pet food
    8 Mins Read

    US food tech startup Friends & Family Pet Food Company has received regulatory approval to sell its cultivated meat for dogs and cats in Singapore, a first for Asia. Its inaugural treats will contain 65-70% cultured cells.

    Friends & Family Pet Food Company has secured approval from Singapore’s Animal & Veterinary Services (AVS) to sell cultivated meat for dogs and cats.

    The Californian startup is the first to be cleared to sell cultivated pet food in Asia. It produces human-grade cultivated meat from the cells of Kampung chickens, a breed native to Malaysia and Indonesia, and will initially sell it as part of eight SKUs, with more to follow.

    “We’ve formulated treats, supplements and food products, which I’ll launch individually when we are ready for production,” co-founder and CEO Joshua Errett tells Green Queen. “We’ll start production in late summer/early fall. So we’re aiming to have products on our site and in select stores shortly after that.”

    Back in 2016, he co-founded cultivated pet food firm BioCraft Pet Nutrition with CEO Shannon Falconer, before establishing vegan dog treats brand Noochies, which was acquired by Cult Food Science, where he served as a VP until December 2023.

    Errett argues that Friends & Family, which he co-founded with CSO Sarah Dodd and Jonny Cruz in 2024, is a nutrition company. “Our goal is to improve the underlying protein source in pet foods with cultivated meat,” he says. “Cultivated meat is the only ingredient I’ve come across in my decade in pet food that has this potential.”

    The announcement comes just days after two regulatory wins for cultivated meat startups in Friends & Family’s home country: Mission Barns secured the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) green light for its cultured pork fat, while Believer Meats received a ‘no questions’ letter from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its cultivated chicken.

    Friends & Family targets pet nutrition with cultivated meat

    lab grown pet food approved
    Courtesy: Friends & Family Pet Food Company

    Errett notes how dogs, cats and humans all source their food from the same supply chain. “There are no farms that I’m aware of that only produce meat for dogs. So the cow your steak is from may well be the same cow your dog’s beef kibble is from. That’s the current pet food production model, a shared supply with humans,” he says.

    “We’ve copied that model to an extent. We co-develop our ingredients with partners, working together to fully optimise cultivated meat and fish for cats and dogs. This allows us to focus solely on the nutrition, manufacturing and sale of high-performance, premium pet food products.”

    Friends & Family works with 10 undisclosed partners, including contract manufacturers and academic institutions, and employs a proprietary manufacturing process.

    “On the pet food side, we use freeze-dried, air-dried, frozen-fresh and broth formats for our end products, which are different production methods,” Errett says. “What I can say definitively is we avoid too much processing – we like to minimally process all our end products to keep the nutrients and flavours of the cultivated ingredients plentiful and bioavailable to the cat and dog.”

    The company will enter the market with freeze-dried treats. “Cultivated meat is the first ingredient by volume. It’ll come in at approximately 65-70% of the total volume,” he reveals. “We use a proprietary blend of nutritional yeast and prebiotic fibres to support immunity, digestion and longevity. And those are the ingredients.”

    The products contain prebiotics and oligosaccharides thanks to their ability to “make it through the digestive tract” to the microbiome. “We have 20+ peer-reviewed studies to show these specialised prebiotic fibres rehabilitate and regulate the microbiome, support stool quality, and improve nutrient absorption, which is crucial for cats and dogs. The majority of the immune function of a companion animal is in the gastrointestinal tract,” he says.

    A second SKU of treats will focus on bioavailable trace minerals, including zinc and vitamins B, K and A to support longer lifespans.

    lab grown meat pet food
    Courtesy: Friends & Family Pet Food Company

    Products to be sold indefinitely, not as a limited-edition trial

    Friends & Family’s inclusion rate is on the higher side, both for pet food and cell-cultured meat in general. The treats launched this year by London-based Meatly, the first company to receive approval for cultivated pet food, contained only 4% of cultured meat.

    Meanwhile, after registering its product with Austrian regulators (paving the way for market entry in the EU), BioCraft Pet Nutrition has been working on a product with 99% cultivated mouse meat – but it is yet to commercialise this innovation.

    The high share of cultivated meat content in Friends & Family’s treats begs the question: how expensive is it? “We’ll be priced competitively in the premium Southeast Asian market. I’m pleased where we are today with our price and margin, but we’ll aim to get better as we gain economies of scale,” says Errett.

    “I know there’s a lot of focus on price parity. If we were competing to get into the supply chain of a multinational pet corporation, I think we would need price parity – the pet industry loves very cheap proteins,” he adds.

    cultivated meat approval
    Friends & Family COO Maurice Yeo | Courtesy: Friends & Family Pet Food Company

    “We are creating nutrition to benefit the animal, and the buyer for that is the end consumer: pet parents. Consumers have more criteria than simply price. And, believe it or not, price is not always the driver. You wouldn’t see Farmer’s Dog break $1B in revenue if all the consumer cared about was price.

    “Value is the driver. What does this food do for my cat? What are the nutritional benefits? Why is it better long-term for the health and longevity of my dog? The benefit of the nutrition is measured against the price point, and there is the value. In terms of value, we believe we have made a superior freeze-dried treat to anything currently on the market.”

    Friends & Family’s pet food will be manufactured locally in Singapore, and it has an inventory of tonnes of cultivated meat. This will enable it to commercialise at scale in what is a relatively smaller market for pet food.

    “This is not a market test or a limited-time trial. We are going to sell our products as a going concern,” says Errett. “Through our partners, we have more cultivated meat and fish ingredients than we can use right now.”

    ‘We decided to step back’ from US regulatory efforts

    lab grown meat approved
    Graphic by Green Queen

    The approval from the AVS came in June, 10 months after Friends & Family filed its application. “I have a full appreciation for the Singapore regulatory system – it is open to innovation, but still thorough,” says Errett.

    The authorisation process for pet foods has different standards from that of novel food for humans, which is regulated by the Singapore Food Agency. “Obviously, pet food is similar to human food when it comes to general safety, but there are differences in nutrition, production, labelling, licensing required, and more,” he says. “For instance, pet foods generally consider crude fibre, while if you look at a human food label, you’d see a measure of dietary fibre.”

    He adds: “Overall, though, it wasn’t as painful as in other jurisdictions we’ve applied to, and I appreciated the people we worked with at the AVS in Singapore.”

    Speaking of which, while Friends & Family has been engaging with the US FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) for over a year, after striking partnerships with Umami Bioworks and Novel Farms, the re-election of Donald Trump and the chaotic restructuring of federal bodies and policy rollbacks have stalled progress.

    “We decided to step back to see what happens with a few priorities put forth by the new administration there,” says Errett. “Excitingly, the CVM just launched a new ingredient review process called the Animal Food Ingredient Consultation (AFIC), which I’m very intrigued by.”

    For all the political uproar about cultivated meat in the US – including seven state-level bans and numerous others under consideration – it is the country with the most regulatory approvals for these proteins. Eat Just‘s Good Meat, Upside Foods (both for chicken), Mission Barns (for pork fat), Wildtype (for salmon) are all allowed to sell cultivated meat there, and Believer Meats will join that list once the USDA approves its facility and labels.

    “We recently signed a deal with a major American pet company for cultivated products, so we’re definitely going to land here at some point,” says Errett. “Now, our focus is Asia.”

    And just as well. Singapore was the first to approve cultivated meat back in 2020, with Good Meat rolling out its chicken in restaurants and later in retail. Vow is cleared to sell its cultured quail in Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. Industry experts are also hopeful of approvals in Thailand and South Korea this year.

    Friends & Family has approval in other countries too

    cultivated meat pet food
    Courtesy: Friends & Family Pet Food Company

    Globally, regulators in the EU and Switzerland are evaluating regulatory dossiers for cultivated meat as well, while the UK has created a designated regulatory sandbox to help human food companies follow in Meatly’s footsteps.

    “We are working with other regulatory systems and do indeed have approval in other countries,” reveals Errett. “[However] we are very focused on Singapore right now – we need to get on the market before expanding anywhere.”

    He adds: “As much as we believe we are creating a foundational shift in pet food and nudging the industry into the future, we still need to use the established launch playbook, and do this one step at a time.”

    What’s in store for Friends & Family over the coming months? “We have cultivated fish products in the pipeline, so we’ll see how that goes in the next year or so,” he notes. “I’m cat-obsessed, and cultivated fish for cats has been a target of mine since forever.”

    The startup has raised “a small amount of venture capital”, with the rest of the funding coming from Errett’s last exit. “It was super challenging to raise money when you can’t even sell your products,” he says.

    “Now that we have market access, we are opening up a new round. We’re looking at scaling up production and nailing our product-market fit,” he reveals. “This is a brand new category, and we are the first to market in Asia, and first anywhere with cultivated products for cats, so that will take some effort and resources.”

    The post Exclusive: Friends & Family Pet Food Company Gets Singapore Approval for Cultivated Meat appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Believer Meats Earns FDA Approval & Completes World’s Largest Factory for Cultivated Meat

    believer meats fda approval
    4 Mins Read

    Israeli food tech firm Believer Meats has secured US FDA approval for its cultivated meat, and completed the construction of its manufacturing facility.

    Believer Meats has become the fifth cultivated meat startup to secure regulatory clearance in the US, having received a ‘no questions’ letter from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

    The Israeli startup has also completed the construction of the world’s largest cultivated meat factory in North Carolina, and is the first non-US company to be greenlit by the FDA.

    The food safety agency’s letter and scientific memo haven’t been published on its website yet, but the news was confirmed by Believer Meats CEO Gustavo Burger. In a post on LinkedIn, he called it “a transformative moment for Believer Meats and the cultivated meat industry as a whole”.

    “This is more than just progress – it’s a defining moment, a bold leap forward in our vision to lead food innovation that cares for the planet,” he said.

    The announcement came the same day California’s Mission Barns secured the facility and labelling nods from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for its cultivated pork fat.

    Believer Meats’ tech could make cultivated meat for $6.20 per lb

    lab grown meat cost
    Courtesy: Believer Meats

    Formerly known as Future Meat Technologies, Believer Meats was founded in 2018 by Yaakov Nahmias, a biomedical engineering professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

    The cultivated chicken maker leverages centrifuge-based perfusion and a cell media rejuvenation process that can optimise cell performance and save water, nutrients, and resources, allowing it to reduce production costs by eliminating byproducts and enabling the reuse of media.

    Last year, it demonstrated how tangential flow filtration (TFF), an efficient way to separate and purify biomolecules, can be an effective method for the continuous manufacturing of cultivated meat. It also introduced an animal-free culture medium that cost just $0.63 per litre, further allowing the startup to lower production costs.

    believer meats
    Courtesy: Believer Meats

    Inspired by how Ford’s automated assembly line transformed the auto industry in the early 20th century, their new bioreactor assembly method allowed biomass expansion of 130 billion cells per litre, with a yield of 43% weight per volume. This process of cultivating the chicken cells was carried out continuously for over 20 days, leading to daily harvests of the biomass.

    Believer Meats claimed this could bring down the cost of cultivated chicken to $6.20 per lb on a 50,000-litre scale, in line with the retail price of conventional USDA organic chicken.

    Getting the FDA green light is the first step towards full regulatory approval. The company will now require USDA’s clearance for its production facility and product labelling before bringing its cultivated chicken to the market.

    “As we move forward, our focus remains on execution – advancing cultivated meat from promise to product, and contributing to a more resilient, sustainable food system,” said Burger.

    A milestone year for cultivated meat approvals

    believer meats wilson nc
    Courtesy: Believer Meats

    Believer Meats first announced plans for its $123M facility in late 2022. The 200,000 sq ft plant, located in Wilson County, North Carolina, features an innovation centre and tasting kitchen, and will be able to churn out 12,000 tonnes of cultivated chicken every year.

    “Commissioning of the factory is underway now, and we are working with the USDA on the final steps for our facility’s grant of inspection,” the firm remarked on LinkedIn.

    It has partnered with German engineering firm GEA to develop processes to lower the costs and emissions of manufacturing cultivated meat. The two entities are focusing on advancements in bioreactor tech, perfusion systems, and media rejuvenation, and adopting strategies like optimised water usage, power consumption, and circular economy initiatives (such as waste stream utilisation).

    believer meats chicken
    Courtesy: Believer Meats

    “With our regulatory progress on track, production facility complete, and clear path to market, we are closer than ever to delivering cultivated meat at scale, strengthening global food security, and helping shape a more sustainable food system,” Believer Meats said.

    Four other cultivated meat startups have already received regulatory approval in the US: Eat Just‘s Good Meat, Upside Foods (both for chicken), Mission Barns (for pork fat), and Wildtype (for salmon).

    Globally, a handful of startups have been cleared to sell cultivated meat. Good Meat has approval in Singapore, Aleph Farms in Israel, while Vow is cleared to sell in Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. And in the UK, Meatly has commercialised cultivated chicken for pets. Regulators in the EU, Switzerland, Australia, Thailand and South Korea are evaluating applications too, while the UK has created a designated regulatory sandbox.

    Believer Meats’s approval is the fourth such instance this year, a much-needed boost to a category that has struggled to raise funds and faced political attacks via state-level bans in the US. And all signs point to further regulatory nods in the coming months.

    The post Believer Meats Earns FDA Approval & Completes World’s Largest Factory for Cultivated Meat appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Mission Barns Completes USDA Approval to Clear the Way for Cultivated Pork Fat Launch

    mission barns
    7 Mins Read

    US food tech startup Mission Barns has secured the USDA greenlight for its cultivated pork fat, paving the way for its launch into Sprouts and restaurant group Fiorella this quarter.

    While states continue to ban cultivated meat, at the federal level, these proteins are having a milestone year.

    The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has authorised the San Francisco pilot plant and product label for Mission Barns’ cultivated pork fat, three months after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a ‘no questions’ letter for the novel ingredient.

    It means the startup has now completed the full regulatory pathway approval for cultivated meat in the US, enabling the launch of its first products into the market.

    “The FDA oversees the safety of the cell culture process, while the USDA inspects and approves the production facility and labelling for meat products. Together, they confirm that our cultivated pork ingredient is safe, truthfully labelled, and legally cleared to be sold as food,” Cecilia Chang, chief business officer of Mission Barns, tells Green Queen.

    “It’s a critical milestone that allows us to launch commercially in the US – and one that sets the foundation for regulatory confidence in other countries as well.”

    The company’s cultivated fat is mixed with plant-based ingredients to form Italian-style meatballs and applewood-smoked bacon, which will debut at Bay Area restaurant Fiorella Sunset and Sprouts Farmers Market this quarter.

    Pea protein for meatballs, wheat for bacon

    mission barns usda approval
    Courtesy: Mission Barns

    Founded in 2018 by CEO Eitan Fischer, Mission Barns uses belly fat cells from American Yorkshire pigs and grows them in bioreactors to make its Mission Fat.

    It is among a number of startups – including Hoxton Farms, Steakholder Foods, Genuine Taste, and Mosa Meat – opting to commercialise cell-cultured fats, which are a more viable way to bring cultivated meat to market in the medium term. Since fat is the primary flavour carrier, even a little bit goes a long way in replicating conventional meat.

    “Our products are a blend of plant-based protein and a low inclusion rate of cultivated pork fat – typically in the single digits. Even at that level, the fat delivers a significant boost in flavour, juiciness, and mouthfeel that plant-based ingredients alone can’t replicate,” says Chang.

    The startup uses pea protein for its meatballs and wheat protein for its bacon. “Other ingredients include familiar pantry staples like spices and herbs. The cultivated fat is what elevates the entire experience – it’s the functional and sensory bridge between conventional meat and plant-based alternatives,” she adds.

    Such hybrid meats also offer a cost advantage, as cultured fat is a lot cheaper and faster to produce than lean meat. Chang describes it as a “low-inclusion, high-flavour ingredient that enables our partners to create cost-effective, delicious products with a fraction of the cultivated input”.

    Mission Barns’s pork products are currently priced in line with premium meat, which reflects the “novelty and small-scale nature of cultivated production”. “But our long-term goal is price parity – and we’re taking a pragmatic, partner-driven path to get there,” she says.

    At the heart of that strategy is its novel bioreactor technology, which marks a departure from the single-cell suspension tanks of the biopharma sector and enables more efficient, scalable, and cheaper production. This allows Mission Barns to serve a range of ingredient and co-development partners across the foodservice and CPG sectors.

    “By working with food companies and manufacturers to integrate our fat into familiar formats, and scaling our proprietary bioreactor technology through strategic licensing, we can bring down costs across the value chain and make better meat more accessible, faster,” Chang notes.

    When asked by Green Queen, Mission Barns declined to provide details about specific ingredients, prices, and nutritional facts at this time.

    Cultivated pork to feature in pastas, polentas and Italian classics

    lab grown meatballs
    Courtesy: Mission Barns

    Mission Barns will launch its hybrid bacon and meatballs at Fiorella Sunset in San Francisco in the coming weeks. “The team there has been incredibly collaborative in developing dishes that showcase our cultivated fat,” says Chang.

    “While we can’t share the full menu just yet, you can expect comforting, familiar formats – think Italian classics like pastas and polenta – where the richness and flavour of real pork fat make a real difference.”

    Meanwhile, select Sprouts locations will carry its meatballs, becoming the first supermarket in the US to sell cultivated meat. “We anticipate hitting shelves at Sprouts Farmers Market in Oakland in Q3. This rollout is designed to help us learn quickly from real consumer feedback and scale responsibly,” says Chang.

    With the US approvals secured, the company is now speeding up its B2B efforts both domestically and internationally. “Cultivated fat is a powerful ingredient that enhances taste, texture, and functionality, whether it’s used in hybrid products or to upgrade plant-based formulations,” she reveals.

    “Our go-to-market strategy is focused on working with our B2B partners across both traditional meat and plant-based sectors,” adds Chang. This is in line with the business models of several other cultivated meat producers, including Dutch firm Meatable.

    “We’re also licensing our proprietary bioreactor technology and regulatory know-how to partners looking to produce cultivated meat themselves,” she says. “This includes companies that want to scale their own cultivated pork offerings or integrate our platform into their existing infrastructure. It’s not just about ingredient supply, it’s about enabling the broader industry to scale cultivated meat faster, together.”

    Dual US approval will help international expansion

    mission barns bacon
    Courtesy: Mission Barns

    Upon launch, Mission Barns will be just the fourth company to sell cultivated meat in the US, following Eat Just‘s Good Meat, Upside Foods (both of which earned the USDA nod in 2023), and Wildtype, which received FDA approval for cultivated salmon in June (there’s no USDA review for this species).

    Globally, a handful of startups have received regulatory nods. Good Meat has approval in Singapore, Aleph Farms in Israel, while Vow is cleared to sell in Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. And in the UK, Meatly has commercialised cultivated chicken for pets.

    Regulators in the EU, Switzerland, Australia and Thailand are evaluating applications too while the UK has created a designated regulatory sandbox, and judging from its inventory, the US FDA seems to have received at least four others. Which other markets is Mission Barns eyeing?

    “Right now, our focus is on the US – it’s one of the largest meat markets in the world, and we’ve built strong momentum here with both FDA and USDA clearance,” says Chang. “That said, we’re working closely with our B2B partners to identify high-priority markets for near-term launches – particularly regions that recognise or align with the US regulatory process, such as Singapore and parts of Asia.

    “These regions are either already open to cultivated meat or actively shaping their frameworks, and our dual-agency approval puts us in a strong position to enter with credibility and speed when the time is right.”

    Mission Barns gears up for fundraising

    mission barns funding
    Mission Barns chief business officer Cecelia Chang and CEO Eitan Fischer | Courtesy: Mission Barns

    Mission Barns’s regulatory success comes amid widespread funding and political challenges for cultivated meat. After VCs invested $1.3B into the category in 2021, capital has diminished dramatically. In 2023, funding fell by 75%, followed by another 40% drop in 2024, reaching just $137M. It has forced some cultivated meat startups to shut down, and others to make cutbacks.

    The trend has continued this year, with this segment attracting just $35M in Q1 2025 (most of which came from Aleph Farms’s $29M raise).

    Mission Barns itself has raised over $60M to date, and the startup remains confident in the sector’s investment fortunes. “While the broader food tech sector has tightened, we’re seeing renewed investor interest in companies with real traction and a clear path to market,” says Chang.

    “Our capital-light B2B model, proprietary bioreactor platform, and focus on low-inclusion cultivated fat as a flavouring ingredient make Mission Barns a uniquely de-risked and scalable entry point into cultivated meat,” she adds.

    “Following our recent regulatory milestones, we’re preparing for our next fundraising round to support commercial scale-up, strategic licensing, and global expansion.”

    Meanwhile, seven states have now banned cultivated meat in the US, while several have put restrictions on how they can be labelled. Others are looking to make similar moves. At the same time, however, health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has announced his Make American Biotech Accelerate vision, part of which is a promise to “dismantle the barriers” to biotech development and approvals.

    “Not everyone has to love or eat cultivated meat – but in a free market, everyone should have the right to choose it, especially after it’s been rigorously reviewed and approved by federal regulators,” Chang says, suggesting that the state-level restrictions are “not grounded in science or safety concerns”.

    “Our products are legally classified as meat, and efforts to block or mislabel them only create confusion, suppress innovation, and limit access to safer, more sustainable options. We’re committed to working within the legal system to defend truth in labelling, scientific integrity, and the fundamental right of consumers to decide what’s on their plate.”

    The post Mission Barns Completes USDA Approval to Clear the Way for Cultivated Pork Fat Launch appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Future Food Quick Bites: Oatly Matcha, Mycoprotein Mince & A Vegan Football Kit

    oatly matcha latte
    5 Mins Read

    Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Oatly’s new matcha latte, Revo Foods’s clean-label mince, and Lactalis Canada’s plant-based exit.

    New products and launches

    Swedish oat milk giant Oatly is the latest to join the matcha craze, launching a ready-to-drink matcha latte with finely ground Tencha matcha. The one-litre packs are available in the UK for £2.95 at Sainsbury’s and Morrisons, with Ocado adding to the list next month.

    oatly matcha latte oat drink
    Courtesy: Oatly/Aflo Images/Green Queen

    Californian firm Mud\Wtr has introduced Nourish, a protein powder with 25g of complete plant protein per serving, along with lion’s mane, cordyceps, ashwagandha, Bacopa and prebiotic fibre. It’s available in chocolate and vanilla flavours on its website for $70 per 645g bag.

    Also in the US, plant-based waffle brand Vafels has rolled out gluten-free stroopwafels in caramel and maple flavours, which can be found on its website for €19.95 per 10-pack.

    revo foods minced fungi protein
    Courtesy: Revo Foods

    Austrian 3D-printed meat maker Revo Foods has launched a four-ingredient Minced Fungi Protein with more protein than beef and higher bioavailability than chicken. Made from mycoprotein, rapeseed oil, rapeseed protein and spices, each 160g pack contains 25g of protein. The product is available at Billa Pflanzilla, online on its webstore and Billa’s website, and Kokku in Germany.

    UK food manufacturer Premier Foods has unveiled a four-strong lineup of vegan jelly with no added sugar under its McDougalls brand. They come in 1.4kg packs (enough to make 17 litres of jelly), with flavours including strawberry, raspberry, orange, and lime.

    mcdougalls vegan jelly
    Courtesy: Premier Foods

    France’s Vétéjal has created a range of powdered seasonings for plant-based creams, sauces, marinades and grilled meals, which can be mixed with water, oil, milk and cream or sprinkled on top of dishes. Flavour options include cream of mushroom soup, king crab, spicy bacon, and Roquefort-style blue cheese.

    Dutch specialty ingredient supplier Prodalim has launched upcycled VivaPro Coloring Foodstuffs and NaturaPro Natural Colors lines to tackle the growing demand for clean-label and sustainable plant-based colour solutions.

    ajinomoto solar foods
    Courtesy: Atlr.72

    And Japanese conglomerate Ajinomoto‘s Atlr.72 Flowering Ice Cream, which uses Finnish gas fermentation firm Solar Foods‘s Solein protein, is available at food trucks at the World Aquatics Championships (July 18 to August 3) in Singapore.

    Company and finance updates

    English football club Forest Green Rovers have launched a fully vegan football kit for the next two seasons (as part of its efforts to cut waste), featuring Reflo’s Reloop technology (which offers a fibre-to-fibre mechanical recycling solution).

    vegan football kit
    Courtesy: Forest Green Rovers

    UK vegan pet food company Omni – which made a splash with its success on Dragons’ Den this year – has been certified as a B Corp.

    Speaking of certifications, Beyond Meat‘s burger, beef mince, steaks, chicken pieces, and sausages have now been accredited as Glyphosate Residue Free.

    beyond chicken
    Courtesy: Beyond Meat

    New York-based Helaina has expanded the manufacturing capacity of Effera, its precision-fermented human lactoferrin, to a metric-tonne scale, which would allow it to produce 10 million servings per production run.

    Planetarians, a US-based producer of upcycled plant-based meat, is shutting down and auctioning its IP and assets, citing fundraising challenges.

    lactalis plant based
    Courtesy: Enjoy

    Lactalis Canada, a subsidiary of the world’s largest dairy company, is closing its Sudbury plant and exiting the plant-based milk business this December. It comes just a year after the facility was turned into a vegan hub and the business introduced the Enjoy brand of dairy-free milk.

    Nurasa, the sustainable food innovation platform owned by Singapore’s Temasek, has signed a strategic partnership with Protein Industries Canada to fast-track the entry of Canadian plant-based companies into the city-state and Asia-Pacific through technical, regulatory, and commercialisation support.

    Policy developments

    Canada’s Ocean Supercluster has pledged C$750,000 in a C$1.9M project to develop a vegan whitefish fillet, working with Profillet, Ardra Inc, Mara Renewables, and Rondo North America.

    else nutrition infant formula
    Courtesy: Else Nutrition

    Weeks after criticising the FDA for its “outdated” regulation of dairy-free baby formula, Israel’s Else Nutrition has applauded the US House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations’s passage of bills that recognise the importance of expanding access to alternative infant formulas.

    US non-profit People For Better Food has launched its first “culture shift” campaign, Plants for the Win, to shift young men’s perceptions about protein myths and plant-rich diets.

    renault leather
    Courtesy: Renault Group

    French carmaker Renault has pledged to eliminate animal leather from its entire portfolio by the end of the year.

    In Spain, Alcorcón has become the third city in eight weeks to endorse the Plant Based Treaty, following in the footsteps of Parla, El Masnou and 40 other cities globally.

    Check out last week’s Future Food Quick Bites.

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    This post was originally published on Green Queen.